punchdrunkmom

I give this pandemic zero stars, do not recommend

Well. How are we doing? As of right this second I am an anxious ball of existential dread listening to the helicopters hover nearby. I am actively considering stress baking, which I haven’t done once during all of quarantine. I've frantically checking social media for updates and reading takedowns and thinkpieces. I signed up for an online meditation class this morning and bailed on it because I was too wound up, which is like, the opposite of what you're supposed to do.

When it finally got to be too much, I started writing, which is always a good idea (unless you occupy the White House and are rage tweeting from the toilet). I was saving a lot of these links for Friday, but it's possible you need them now. While we (I, me, white people) may not bury our heads in the sand, one thing I've learned during all of this (meaning 2016 to present) that when the depression/anxiety loop starts to play in your head, it's a really good idea to step away from the internet and do something unrelated.

So. Here is something completely different.

1.) Aside from Tiger King, I didn’t really watch a new series during shelter-in-place. Instead I put on an old one and rewatched from the beginning. I was slow to catch on to Mad Men when it originally aired. I don’t remember why. But once I caught on and caught up, I was so hooked. Re-bingeing it now was the television equivalent of putting on pants with an elastic waist and cracking open a bottle of wine at 3 pm. In the best way. The costumes, the hair, the one liners, the matinee idol-ness of Don Draper with his hat and the comb marks in his hair. Remember when he fixed the Campbells' sink? Then, as now, I digested a lot of the show with the help of the writers at Vulture.com, who ran plucky episode recaps that eventually evolved into a dense meditations on themes of death, identity and change.

It’s been five years since the series ended, which is hard to believe because it feels way longer than that. Then again, remember a few weeks ago when you might feel inclined to hug a stranger? EONS AGO. But show completely holds up. It’s still gorgeous. AND! My friends at Vulture tied all the relevant reading into a neat little box-set-style package with all the episode recaps and included some extra credit reading. (I believe that it's disappearing from Netflix soon, but this being 2020, you can probably buy a box set for Prime delivery some time in August.)

Also, I need to replace my Sterling Cooper Price mug, which is completely faded from going in the dishwasher and which I’ve used every day for five years. Not bad for ten bucks.

Also:

 

2.) I’m not, like a “royal watcher,” except that they keep turning up in my Facebook feed like bad pennies. So I sort of have opinions about them. I find Will and Kate to be incredibly boring and deeply stodgy. Harry and Meghan are much more exciting, but I also find their choices perplexing. L.A.? Really? However, I did get suckered into clicking this link to pictures of the jewelry that Kate and Meghan inherited from Princess Diana. May we all have an aquamarine divorce celebration ring and a go-to tiara.

Somehow in all of this I landed on the Town & Country website (?) and managed to find this loving tribute to caftans and how to wear them in our current circumstances. I don’t know why this hasn’t occurred to us before.

3.)

No one:

Not one person:

Etsy: Here’s a kit to DIY a tattoo at home!

Do not do this. It will not work out. Just go get a tattoo by someone who gives tattoos for a living that is not also a carnie (I speak these words from experience, though they were probably more carnie-adjacent than actual carnies, it's not a great tattoo. At least there are no typos.). 

4.) This guy found some mice in his back yard and built them a village that looks like Hobbiton. I’m 100% sure that he is a serial killer, but the mice seem to be enjoying themselves. At least until be builds them a murder dungeon.

5.) Okay, you guys. I'm going to say a thing and you are going to freak out, but hear me out: paranormal women's romance fiction. OMG! My tastes in books are weirdly specific. In the summer I like non-fiction. Last summer I did a deep dive into Bonnie and Clyde and the Dust Bowl. In the winter, I like to read heavier material with complicated protagonists and dark outcomes. But back when the pandemic started, I would start to read a book and my eyes would lose focus and I'd find myself rereading the same paragraph over and over. So I did what I did after my Dad died, and that was to reread all my Nancy Drew books. In the current climate I need to point out that Nancy, or should I say Carolyn Keene, is incredibly problematic. So I'm not really recommending those books so much as letting you know my current level of sophistication. Which brings me to....paranormal romance.

A couple of years ago, a friend gave me a book from a series she'd been enjoying about the adventures of a paranormal private investigator. I ate it all up. The protagonist is funny and supportive of other women, and her boyfriend is...well, not for the faint of heart. In case you're not clear, this book is full of paranormal sex. And solving crimes and Mexican food, but, well. You know. The series falls apart slightly under the weight of its own mythology, but creating a fictional world is hard. Just ask CS Lewis. Everyone's a critic.

Last week, I texted my friend that I was interested to see what she was reading. "I only read stories about like, hot fairy sex, so maybe you don't want my recommendation." But I was like, hello that's why you're my go-to right now.

My sister also recommended the Shadow and Bone series when I told her about my convo with my friend. Seems like the right idea.

Anyway, my friend gave me a list of ideas. I'm starting here. And if you're interested in more, lmk. 

All right you guys. Thank you to the marchers, supporters, sweepers, to those who lifted their voices, to those who donated, to those who are actively trying to change. Keep going. Now is not the time to be silently not racist. Now is the time to be LOUDLY ANTI-RACIST.  And it's okay to walk away from the computer or phone. You need to regroup so you still have strength to fight.

Also: 

XOXO
-PDM

Here we are again, in all the old familiar places

Why, hello! Another Friday is upon us. Honestly, next time we do this, I would just skip the Monday holiday. Or extend it to Memorial Week with no remote learning or work in general. No one had any idea what day it was this week. I mean, worse than usual even. Besides—someone asked me what I was doing or the holiday, and I was like, Madam, what the fuck are you even talking about?

One pretty big thing that happened is that I went back to work yesterday. The store is opening back up on June 1, so we went in to fix the space up in a socially distant manner. Oh, you guys. I know I’ve been pushing the masks in this space, and I will continue to use them even if they are awkward and feel weird. But wearing a mask for 8 hours suuuuuuuuuucks. It’s hot, and you’re just rebreathing your own air. I switched purses this morning, and my mints didn’t make it into the new bag, so after I ate tacos for lunch, I put my mask back on and smelled carnitas the rest of the day. It could have been worse. There was the time I wore the mask to the grocery store and hadn’t brushed my teeth.

I don’t mean to complain. At least I can breathe.

God damn.

So much terrible shit happened this week.

We will do a small amount of escaping, and then a bit of work. Here we go.

1.) So my daughter’s overnight camp got cancelled, which sucks, regardless that it was the right thing for them to do. I hated to tell her the news, but as a child of 2020, she was expecting it. I asked her if she would like to go camping with me over the summer, which sounds like an excellent way to social distance, if a challenging project considering a.) Scott does not camp b.) Neither does Kai c.) I’ve never camped where I was in charge of the camping. But Facebook seems to have come to the rescue, having overheard this conversation and sending camping-related items into my feed. And thank goodness, because we are for sure going to need a pair of these portable folding hammocks! Then I started seeing ads to win a Sprinter van that’s been customized like a tiny camper! OMG, it’s the coolest thing. I have no place to park it and would use it like once a year, but I’m super into it. In fact, maybe if I win it, I’ll sell my minivan and drive around in my tiny house, boiling hot water on the custom-built stove, just looking for a place to deploy my hammock. Also, check out this kickass leopard print tent!

2.) No one:

     Me: Want to see some pictures of a teenaged Melanie Griffith playing with her grandmother’s full grown lion named Neil?

3.) Speaking of animals, if you haven’t seen this video of the rocket scientist who made a Ninja Warrior course for the squirrels in his backyard, you need to. The entire family was riveted, even Kai, who, at 13, is too cool to be riveted by anything his mother has to show him.

4.) I bought this light for my zoom calls, because I always have to go to the darkest realms of the house for zooming to avoid the children screaming at the Roblox or the Minecraft or just into the void.

I mean, okay. Every little bit helps.

5.) So…you can see I’m a white woman. That’s not a shock. I do season my chicken breasts, but one cannot escape the fact that I am, in fact, white, and white people are…problematic. I don’t use this space often to get all that serious about things besides advocating for kids with special needs, but I also have a platform and the responsibility to use it. I’m scared and anxious because I want to be an ally and I don’t want to fuck it up. But I watched the video Christian Cooper made, and am following the George Floyd story. I have wanted to respond to anguished posts from friends of color, but I do not know what to say. Like I said, I don't want to fuck it up. Probably that statement is itself a fuckup. I clearly have things to learn and work to do. This helps.

Read it.

And here are some anti-racism resources for white people.

We have some work to do, even if you think you don’t. So let’s get after it.

I’m sorry. This is awful. I’m listening.

XOXO
-PDM

 

 

Hello, Friday, my old friend—I’m here to link with you again

I’m headed back to work at the end of next week, and I’m feeling some feelings. It's sort of like coming back from vacation. I don’t know if you do this, but whenever I am about to be done with a vacation, I grieve a little bit. Sometimes a lot. Maybe I spent the last few days sleeping as late as I want or spending good time with my kids who are growing up oh, so fast. Or maybe I am dreading turning back into a taught, frazzled husk of a woman whose every second is accounted for from the moment she wakes up in the morning until she falls exhausted into bed, and whose only salvation will be the sweet release of death.

Shit. Sorry. What were we talking about? Oh, yes, vacation!

I do a little bargaining with myself on every vacation I take, like I’ll go back home, but I’m going to still be in vacation mode. I’ll carve out more time for myself or learn to make that curry dish I couldn’t get enough of or try to surf on Lake Michigan.

My results are decidedly mixed.

Last week, however, I pulled an old piece of paper out of my wallet that I’ve been carrying around for quite a while. It’s a recipe for an amazing pineapple mezcal drink Scott and I couldn’t get enough of when we were in Honolulu a couple of years ago. I couldn’t remember the name of it, so I googled the menu at Nobu. Turns out it’s called the Pineapple Mezcal. I’ll confess to being a little disappointed at such a pedestrian and obvious name for such a great cocktail. But after sitting here for a few minutes, I guess I don’t really have any better ideas. Feel free to float them.

A Pineapple Mexcal, pictured next to the tropical scented candle
that I’ve had for a year and finally lit the other night.

Here's the recipe. Be warned that Green Chartreuse is $70 and you only need a single bar spoon of it, a truly frivolous endeavor. We'll just have to find other ways to use it.

1.5oz Mezcal
.25 Pineapple Puree
.25 Yuzu (we used lime juice)
.25 Simple Syrup
Pinch of Cilantro
Spoon of Roasted Pineapple
1 Barspoon of Green Chartreuse.

Step 1: Have Scott mix it up and serve it to you. There is no step 2.

1.) It was with this mindset that I idly clicked on this story about the drink recipes we’re googling during quarantine. It was fascinating. Alaska is drinking hurricanes, Nevadans are drinking grasshoppers. So many of you are out there doing Kamikaze shots! What? I’m very concerned that folks in the Carolinas and Louisiana are going to get diabetes. And Missouri! You guys had to google the recipe for a gin and tonic? Fun fact! It’s gin and tonic. Be better, Missouri.

I googled the recipe for my other favorite vacation drink, the When Doves Cry. It’s also Mezcal based, so you can sense a theme here. But, while I was googling, I came across this entire list of Prince-themed cocktails for you to dig if you will, as well as an alternate recipe for a pineapple mezcal drink that I’m only sharing here because I want to beat this bartender with his own old-timey hipster ice mallet. I’m so sick of ironic waxed mustaches. I can’t even with your hipster bullshit any more, sir!

2.) Quarantine happened right around the time that Better Call Saul ended it’s fifth season. Oh, how I love that show! In its way, it's better than Breaking Bad, which is a bold statement for me to make. The funny thing is that I thought this was the final season, and it turns out I was completely wrong, so there’s something we can all look forward to. I was thinking that I might write something about our collective feelings about Kim Wexler vs. Skyler White, but it turns out that I don’t need to, because the internet exists. I was completely taken aback years ago during the Breaking Bad run when I discovered that fans hated Skyler. Like, excuse me for not wanting my husband to be a drug-dealing murderer. Walter White was a selfish asshole who destroyed everyone around him, but sure, go ahead and hate Skyler. But I digress. This is all part of a larger pattern of sexism and misogyny. How else to explain hating women for standing up to difficult men? I love Kim Wexler and her amazing ponytail, but I feel slightly guilty about that, too, because a girl like Kim Wexler doesn’t actually exist. Except, of course, in the minds of men.

Oh, and please enjoy this takedown of a popular and upbeat musical based on a story of mass rape!

3.) Speaking of gender and entertainment, Scott turned on the utterly charming, informative and fascinating The Story of Soaps the other day. I definitely watched General Hospital during the Duke and Anna years, and can honestly say I arranged my college coursework around All My Children. The Story of Soaps makes such an interesting point about how the daytime soaps got away with so many timely, racy and topical storylines because, since it was “women’s television,” the top brass wasn’t really watching. But we wouldn't have have Breaking Bad with out One Life to Live. The soap opera as feminist and subversive. Who knew?

And as long as we’re on the topic of television, please enjoy this ad for Dyke and Fats. Dear Lord, make this a real show, amen.

4.) Buy a cool mask.

5.) Did you know that this week was the 40th anniversary of the Mt. St. Helens eruption? I was 8 at the time, and remember it fairly vividly. My aunt lives about 60 miles away, so this was sort of a family emergency. Plus, every GenX kid can relate to the remote, almost charming danger of things like volcanos and quicksand due to their outsized presence popular culture when we were kids. I treasured my Wyler’s jar of actual Mt. St. Helens ash that my aunt sent me that has disappeared from my possession in the intervening years. Anyhow, this led down an internet rabbit hole at the bottom of which was Pompeii! The British museum has an 88-minute movie about Pompeii that I plan to watch over the weekend. I it found after reading an article comparing the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius to the COVID-19 pandemic.

And thus, we have come full circle.

Have a lovely weekend, my friends. Be kind to yourself.

Five links with which to pass a rainy Friday

Wow! Happy Friday, y’all. The weeks just keep coming, don’t they?

How did you spend your 147th week as a shut-in? Did you learn another language? No? Shocker!

I’m not 100% sure what I did this week. Seriously. The days passed and here I am. I can say that I’ve been growing seedlings, though. It's pretty easy and it feels like doing something wholesome and important. So, in August, when we’re back on lockdown because of all the rich middle-aged white ladies that stormed the salons with guns because they needed to get their roots did, I will at least have some vegetables to look forward to.

Also! Twice this week I, like, made stuff! Pancakes on Tuesday, muffins on Thursday. I’m not much of a maker or a baker, mostly because I don’t really want to eat what I bake. I would rather use my calories for say, margaritas or Sour Cream and Onion Pringles. Yet I somehow had all the ingredients to make cinnamon muffins with Ryan. This seemed like Good Mom Behavior(TM) and it made the house smell good. I put cake mix on the grocery list for next week’s project, along with green chartreuse liqueur for an unrelated project not involving Ryan at all. I’ll let you know how it goes.

And without further ado, here are is your linkage. May you find that you’ve passed an hour in peaceful tranquility without anyone suggesting you drink bleach.

1.) I had this super crazy idea that I wanted to get something for my home that would fill the tremendous void of…help me find the words….The Tremendous Void, and I found a little inspiration. I texted my friend Quincy about it:

Me: I think I need an inflatable hot tub.
Quincy: I think I need an inflatable hot tub. Fixed it for you.

With pools closed and nothing else to do, margaritas in THE HOT TUB IN YOUR BACKYARD seems like it might be the way to go. And if you only use it for this particular summer and throw it away at the first frost, with all the money you saved on camp and pool memberships, you’d definitely still come out ahead.

2.) Speaking of voids, do you want to read something on the Internet that’s not about COVID-19? I assure you that you do! I found a couple of things.

First, this charming and breathless review of a book about eels. Eels! It kind of makes me want to read the book, but also, eels? I’m sort of eel-curious but it’s also possible that this review is all I’ll ever need vis-a-vis eels.

Unrelated, Riot Fest had a loving tribute to Josie and the Pussycats, a fictitious band that actually had some real band cred and helped with the “girls to the front” movement of the late 90s and the aughts. The article includes a playlist of Josie-adjacent, lady-driven power-pop, with nary an eel in sight.

I also took a deep dive back into eel territory, metaphorically speaking, regarding a real-life Lord of the Flies scenario, where the shipwrecked boys cooperated peacefully and ended up being lifelong friends and workmates. Turns out there’s nothing that says we have to take each other down. Goulding, it seems, sold us on a lie that we are acting out in real time at this very second. Thanks for that, sir.

3.) Years ago, I made a fundamental error of not having an e-mail address for the sole purpose of giving to any company I don’t want to hear from a thousand times a day. Who knew that the place I ordered rug from from one time six years ago would e-mail me daily? I mean, what kind of outsized presence do they think they have in my life? How many rugs do they think I need? I’m constantly scrolling through all the marketing e-mails to get to the ones from actual people I need to correspond with.  But every now and then I get hit with something that I don’t know I want until I see it, and this week it was an online Ramen cooking class. For less than $100, I got ingredients to make ramen for two, a kit to make 4 sake bombs and a lesson from a Michelin star chef. Not only that, but my reservation is for Father’s Day weekend! Here you go, Baby.

4.) Get a new Zoom background.

5.) If you haven’t read Devil in the White City, you really should. That story has everything, including and especially the elaborate murder mansion of the diabolical serial killer H.H. Holmes. You know. If you’re into such things. Adam Selzer of Mysterious Chicago is doing a virtual series on the good doctor, with a talk and a virtual tour. The mansion was gutted in a fire and is now the location of the Englewood Post Office, and if that’s not a reason to go to Englewood to buy stamps, I don’t know what is. If you want even more, check out the Last Podcast on the Left’s 3-part series on H.H. Holmes, which is the funniest and least appropriate goddamn thing you’ll ever listen to in your life.

Have a good weekend, everyone. And wear a damn mask.

Let's pass this pandemic together with a five-link-Friday!

Well hello! How are you doing during this dystopian nightmare? I’m…you know. Fine.

I’ve been furloughed from my job. Well, all my jobs, actually. This is the first time I’ve been this idle in I don’t know how long. Actually I do. I was unemployed for 6 months or so after the dotcom bust in 2001. It feels eerily similar to that time. The world was grim in the aftermath of 9/11. I took baths in the middle of the day and felt anxious about my future. The biggest difference between now and then is that I have children and the world is about six million times grimmer. Also: murder hornets!

People still say, “How are you?” when they see you on zoom or call you, and it’s an awkward silence as we ponder what that question even means right now. Everything is weird. Good weird, like you can sleep until literally whenever. And bad weird because, you know. Human misery and existential dread, but also (and more practically) because I feel like I haven’t done anything. Like all those things I’ve been meaning to do, I still haven’t done them. This, of course, makes me feel anxious and guilty, like I’m frittering away an opportunity.

Maybe you feel the same. Or maybe you’ve knit ten sweaters and digitized your photographs and painted your garden gnomes. But, if you’re like me and feeling sidelined and slightly bored despite a long list of things you could be doing that don’t interest you, I would like to offer up one of my favorite things, a list of links!

Here are five things that are sustaining me this week. Enjoy.

1.) FabFitFun. This surprise beauty product subscription box is absolutely as silly and frivolous as you think it’s going to be, yet it was exactly what I needed this week. I’m not really a product whore. I tend to find one thing that works and stick with it. It’s probably why I’ve been in exactly three serious relationships and married two of them (though not at the same time).  

Anyhoo, I was in the mood to buy things but I had no idea what to buy. I'm not going anywhere or doing anything. So I signed up for the spring box, which arrived this week. It was in a pretty floral cardboard container, wrapped in tissue and floating on some festive bits of paper strips. It included a hair mask, a foot mask, a collagen infused moisturizer, a rose-gold brush, a weird rainbow lip gloss, hand cream and a robe.

I used the hair mask yesterday. It’s just some Moroccan oil that you spritz into wet hair. Later, as I was sitting on the couch bingeing Mad Men, I turned my head and caught a whiff of my hair. You guys, it smells amazing! I couldn’t stop smelling it. I made Scott smell it, too, and he agreed with me. Later, before bed, I applied the foot mask, which also smells heavenly. Plus I woke up with softer feet!

In a world where I have endless time to apply lotions and lounge in robes, yet eschew make-up and pants with buttons, this is the perfect little indulgence. I felt elevated, like I’d done a few things to pamper myself that I wouldn’t normally bother do, and it was only $39.

2.) Hey, hookers! Introducing Dixie Longate, y’all. My boss at the gym shared Dixie's Cinco de Mayo Facebook Live and I was dying. I did a little digging and she does a live show Tupperware party. Apparently it started on a dare in 2004 for drag performer Kris Anderson, who has since become the number 1 Tupperware sales representative in the US and Canada. This makes me love both Dixie and Tupperware even more, and will definitely end with me 1.) buying tickets to her show if we ever get to do such things again and 2.) buying Tupperware. Who knew the way to make Tupperware great again was drag? And what took us so long to realize it?

Follow her on Facebook and catch her live-streamed happy hours. Just like all the best things in life, they are both wholesome and dirty. “It’s like Jesus woke up and came in my mouth,” she says after taking a sip of her limoncello margarita, and I was dead right then and there.

3.) J Crew, you guys. I work in retail, so this is relevant to me, but it’s probably relevant to you, too, if you ever wanted to dress like you might go sailing in the boat you didn't own with the rich-ass friends you didn't have.

I don’t know what the retail landscape will look like in a month or two months or a year, but it’s interesting to take a deep dive into some iconic brands and the fickle tastes of the American buying public. This article is one of my favorite kind—a warren of links and directions you can take from here, including old J Crew catalog covers, provenance of classics they invented that you probably have in your closet right this second, and the triumph-to-tragedy career arc of creative director Jenna Lions, with a little Michelle Obama mixed in to keep it real.

4.) Pandemic needlepoint! I can’t decide which one I want. This one is making a great case for itself:

I will probably never actually do this project, but it will be there for the next pandemic. In today’s climate, you can probably put any year on it and be like, “well, yep.”

5.) Lastly, I was struggling mightily with one very serious problem at the beginning of this whole shelter-in-place thing: the quarantine bra. So here’s the thing. I usually wear lace bralettes, but of late my outfits are more of a long-term, 36-hour strategy than a daily switcheroo, and the lace bralettes are kind of itchy to sleep in, yet I don’t always feel like making the effort to take them off. I actually tried a regular bra (like the kind with hooks in the back), but when I put it on it felt like a horrible idea—constricting and inflexible. I had to give that a hard pass.

So I did some internet sleuthing to find something that felt like nothing but would help me retain my dignity should the UPS guy show up with something I bought after drinking too much wine, and came up with this:

It’s soft and stretchy, absolutely comfortable to sleep in if you're too lazy to take it off. In fact, I bought a few more and would have bought even more but they only have two colors and I have too much need for variety.

I will tell you that the last thing in the world I’d be doing during the apocalypse is trying to figure out the right bra, but I think a lot of us are surprised by what has become important to us in the last few weeks. (If anyone has any other quarantine bra suggestions, please post them in the comments!)

Wow, you guys! Look at that! I did something!

And right in time for Dixie’s happy hour. 

Ode to a Nine-Year-Old Girl

A couple of weeks ago, our family went on a trip to Lake Mead. We did this same houseboat trip last year, and some of my extended family thought it sounded like a great idea to get the gang together and go back, and so we did.

I was craving this time. Having gone back to work full time in June, I was missing my kids. I mean, Kai can take me or leave me right now and spends his days practicing being world weary, with a lot of heavy sighing and declaring things “typical,” or “predictable,” or characteristic of “these days,” like he’s 72 and not 12.

But Ryan still likes my company and I was looking forward to giving her my attention.

And she is happy to have it for the next 5, 4, 3, 2….

Ryan is kind of a darling in this part of the family. She has a great relationship with my brother and my sister-in-aw. She was the flower girl at their wedding. She, unlike her brother, responded to MY brother’s overtures of teasing and horsing around, and to my sister-in-law’s affection. She’s gotten too big to ride on his shoulders, and is as likely to roll her eyes at his effort, but they are still buddies.

For now.

That’s all any of us have with her—the now.

She is still little enough that when we first beached the boat, she asked if we could *finally* swim. She was the first down the slide, she’s the first to encourage everyone to come in with her. She would put her head in the water and narrate what she saw.

“I saw ton of fish!” She exclaimed happily. “They wouldn’t let me in to their school.”

My brother was worried that the laws in Nevada regarding the use of life jackets would upset her, because Kai might not need one. I looked into it and discovered that life jackets are required for all kids 12 and under.

“No problem,” I told him, “It’s the law for both of them.”

But Ryan is…really good at swimming. And hated the life jacket.

“Please, mom?” She asked, “It really rubs me and it hurts.”

I had to weigh my comfort against hers, my imagination of what could go wrong with letting her stretch her muscles and really enjoy herself. I would have been fine at her age, I reminded myself.

Eventually, I let her take it off.

She swam for hours at a time, and the rule was a grown-up had to be watching or with her. Most of the time it was me.

Rufus Cove, Lake Mead with Spider Island in the middle distance.

Lake Mead is a canyon full of water. Literally. Hoover Dam was built to hold back the Colorado River and prevent flooding in the Southern California farmlands, back in the 30s when we thought things like water were infinite. When the dam was finished, the canyon filled with water, making the lake really, really deep.

The depth of this water crossed my mind over and over as Ryan swam, finding me in my inner tube, then diving under to look at fish or turn somersaults or fly off the slide.

“Let go,” she’d say to me, asking me to loosen my grip on her.

And I would let go.

She’d fall back, Nestea-style, into the green murky depths.

I could still feel her fluttering heart beating sure and steady under my fingertips long after she swam out of sight.

One morning we swam out to an island in the middle of the lake. I made her put on a life jacket, and I wore one too, both to model good behavior and also to manage my anxiety about being in such deep water so that I could parent my children if I needed to. Kai declared it boring, but Ryan was into it until she went up on the surface of the tiny island and found it full of spiders.

However, later on in the day, Ryan and I took a swim by ourselves out to the newly christened Spider Island, and found a lovely sand bar that’d we’d missed before, a place where we could sit comfortably and explore. I let Ryan take off her life jacket.

“What should we do?” She asked.

“Do?” As a grown-up, I’m always happy to do exactly nothing.

“Yeah! Do you want to play Sand Bar? I’ll make you a drink!”

I was vaguely aware that I shouldn’t play anything with “bar” in the title with my daughter, but decided to roll with it. She found a shell, filled it with sand and put a smaller shell in the sand as a garnish.

“Here you go,” she said.

“Thank you,” I said, and pretended to drink it. “Delicious.”

“Should we have a contest? We could see who makes the better drink!”

And I mean, it was vacation.

So we searched for shells. I found a spiral mollusk thing and turned it into a straw. I found two different types of sand and divided my drink into dark and light. Ryan took my straw-mollusk home to Chicago.

Ryan is on the cusp of so much change-slash-horror in the next few years—of her body betraying her, of her psyche being invaded by outside influences. I’d call it the end of innocence but that puts a weird cultural label on puberty, the heavy, heady onslaught of adulthood. She is still a very little kid. She’s still willing to be vulnerable, willing to be silly, willing to be a cuddly, willing to play pretend with her mother.

When the trip was over, we pulled up stakes and motored the houseboat away from our cove. I watched Sand Bar Island, nee Spider Island disappear, wishing already that Ryan and I were back there, playing pretend.

 

 

 

In which wealth is redistributed and no one learns a moral lesson

I had Kai and Ryan with me in Wisconsin Dells for some family time recently. I was going to type “cheap” family time, but that is not actually true. By the time we hit the arcade, the frozen yogurt place, the ropes course, the laser maze and the go-karts, not to mention the bar bill, it’s a pretty spendy 24 hours. But everyone loves it and you can get a 48 oz bloody mary and that’s pretty magical stuff.

This particular morning, we were at the arcade. This was our second trip to the arcade in like 12 hours, so when I put money on the kids cards I told them that this was it, I wasn’t going to refill them, so spend the money wisely. I retired to a table to wait for them. This particular arcade is two stories, so both kids were largely out of my line of sight.

Kai, who on his best day isn’t known for his restraint, spent all of his credits trying to win a giant stuffed ice cream cone, and was thus divested of his resources in about 15 minutes. 

He came to sit by me at a table. Literally by me, as in in my same chair, and sighed heavily.

“I really wanted that stuffed ice cream cone,” he said. I could hear the emotion in his voice.

“That’s too bad, buddy,” I said.

He signed again.

I ignored him. 

“I wish someone would win that giant ice cream and give it to me,” he said. 

This time I sighed.

“I seem to recall you spending all your money there another time. It seems like it’s a hard crane game to win.” 

I was not going to refill his card so he could try to win the dang ice cream, a pointless boondoggle that was unlikely to result in winning the ice cream, which I also didn’t want in my house. This would have to be a lesson in consequences.

“You chose to spend all your credits, buddy, so that’s it. We can do the laser maze when Ryan’s done.”

Ryan, meanwhile, was raking in the prizes from the more generous cranes, and went downstairs to find more games. Kai followed her. And I was feeling pretty good about myself. This, of course, was my mistake—feeling good. Feeling good is when it all turns to crap. You know, like I was feeling good until I got a cramp during the race. Or I was feeling really good until I realized there was a bear outside my tent. Marian Crane was feeling pretty good when she got into the shower, you know?

Anyway, I was feeling good. I hate to see either of my kids with their hopes dashed, even if their hope is something stupid like a stuffed ice cream cone. And yeah, I could have refilled his card for a few more moments of peace. But I stuck to my guns and I felt good about it.

I gathered up my purse and walked downstairs to find the kids and buy tickets to the laser maze, and ran into Kai. He was holding a stuffed gorilla.

“Oh, hi, Mom,” he said. “Ryan let me use some of her credits and I won this!” He was standing next to a different crane game filled with stuffed gorillas. Another family was gathered around this machine as well, and they were all looking at me. I processed this fact at the same time Kai said, “Well, I may have reached in and just taken it.”

It took me a long moment to process the scene. Kai standing there with a stuffed gorilla, the man and his two sons staring at Kai in…wonder? Astonishment? The attendant behind the counter eyeing us as she helped someone pick out prizes.

“He’s awesome,” the dad said, finally. “We’ve been playing this game for forever. I must have dropped twenty bucks he just reaches in and takes a prize.”

I turned to Kai. “I wish I didn’t know about any of this,” was all I could think to say. 

“If he could reach in and grab two more, I know my boys would be his best friends for life!” 

I looked at the dad and tried to laugh in a “kids will be kids” kind of way and told Kai to walk away from the machine. I thought our best course of action would be to flee the scene and figure out what to do away from other people.

“I’m sorry,” the dad said, “I don’t mean to encourage him. It’s just that we tried so hard to win those gorillas.”

“Well, Kai just showed you how to do it,” I replied.

“I mean, if he could just grab two more…”

I grabbed Kai by the shoulders and steered him toward the laser maze and away from this guy who wanted Kai to steal for his kids. Like it’s okay for my kid to do it, but not for his own boys. I assumed he didn’t want to feel like a bad parent, which is exactly how I was feeling, and in all of this I still hadn’t taken away the gorilla or made him turn it into the attendant or reamed him out or any of the many things I should have probably done.

I bought laser maze tickets, which was going to be the last thing we did before hitting the road, and it seemed like the best way to steer the ship back on course. Laser maze, leave. Laser maze, leave. After signing the credit card slip I looked up to see that Kai was no longer by my side. Rather, he’d gone back to the gorilla crane machine, and was laying flat on his back, his arm in the prize dispenser all the way up to his bony shoulder.

By the time I got there, he’d given each of the boys a gorilla and received hugs from both. They were over the moon over the dumb gorillas, with Kai acting like a sort of arcade Robin Hood. And while I did not want him stealing, I was vaguely pleased to see him acting in someone else’s self interest. 

Of course, acting in someone’s best interest isn’t a great reason to commit a crime. Neither is the promise of friendship, which was the other carrot this dad dangled in front of Kai. I mean, if anyone promises you friendship in exchange for putting an ounce of heroin in your butt and flying to LaGuardia, you should not take that offer.

Later that day I texted my friend Quincy about it, and like all autism moms, she got all excited. Social skills! Developmentally appropriate petty crime! We came up with a list of things we wanted Kai to steal for us, including, but not limited to a golf cart, a cardboard cutout of the Dos Equis guy, a small plane, some bottles of airplane rum. She advised me to look on the bright side, as Kai didn’t get his arm stuck in the machine, necessitating a call to 911. We agreed, however, that I should have a talk with Kai about making people do their own dirty work.

Back at the arcade, the dad held out his hand for me to shake. He was a little too excited about all of this if you ask me, a little too impressed. I wondered if he got out much. 

“Your son’s great,” he said, shaking my hand.

I didn’t have a reply to that. I mean, yes, he’s great but this particular moment wasn’t one of my favorites, plus we really needed to leave before we were escorted out.

“Where are you all from?” he asked, like some hayseed who’d never seen anything like us before.

I perked up a little at this. I mean, we might as well do the thing right at this point, you know? Why live in a city globally renown for its corruption and violence if you can’t harness that narrative for your own purposes every now and then?

I stood a little taller and tried to pack some meaning into my expression—somewhere between “I might slash your tires” and “I might have a shank in my purse.” 

“We’re from Chicago,” I replied.

And I gathered my children and all of their prizes and left.

On love and loss in the train station

On Wednesdays, I teach yoga during lunch hour at a gym above Union Station in Chicago. This would seem like the world’s least favorable location. The parking garage is dark and grey and enormous and the only spaces available are at the very top. The station itself is a leaky, drippy, crumbling dystopia. Each track has an audio system so that sight-impared passengers can find their way to their train, but the message that the soft, robotic female voice delivers is indecipherable and each recording doubles over the one for the track next to it. It sounds like it was recorded before the unpleasantness with the zombies or mega-drought or rapture or whatever is going to happen to to end us all.

Yet the place has become kind of friendly for me. I've rescued many a frightened tourist from the garage and led them to their train. "I'm going to take you down a long, dark tunnel," I say. "It is kind of scary. You will become concerned that I will rob you, but I will not." They eye each other nervously, trying to decide if I am kidding, but scramble after me down the elevator. 

Several train operators take my yoga class. Same with the Korean woman who runs the flower stand, who gave me a flower on International Women's Day.

This last Wednesday, however, I was not feeling the train station. Or at least I was not feeling the vibe of the woman in the elevator with me. She takes my class on occasion, one of the rare yogis who live near the station rather than work in the surrounding skyscrapers. 

“Oh, good, I’m not late,” she said as she saw me get on the elevator with her.

“Nope,” I said, pocketing my phone. I’d been looking at the “memories” section of my Facebook feed. It was my brother’s wedding anniversary and pictures of the wedding came up, including several of my dad.

And perhaps it was this that made what the woman said next so jarring, or maybe she’s just crazy.

“My niece and I were talking the other day about how fat the Queen is,” the woman said.

I looked at her blankly for a moment. “Of England?” I asked.

“She’s hugely fat. It’s insane how fat she is.”

I couldn’t think of what to say to this. Aside from the fact that I don’t actually think the Queen of England is all that fat, I’m not really interested in body-shaming anyone. Plus I was longing to get my phone back out and scroll through the wedding pictures again.

“She’s the Queen,” I said finally. “If I were queen who’s to say I wouldn’t let myself go? I mean, I’d be the queen, so.”

“Yeah, but she has the best nutritionists and access to trainers! It’s just irresponsible to be that fat.”

The elevator opened up and we found ourselves in the lobby of the gym. I was grateful. This woman takes a second elevator up to the yoga room, and I take the stairs. I don’t take these stairs because I feel like I want to get maximum steps in or anything. I take them because until that exact moment, I had no idea that there was another elevator. This did not seem like a ride I wanted to take, however.

“The Queen of England is like 200 years old,” I said, as we parted ways. “Give her a break.”

Somehow we reached the yoga room at the same time, and she picked right back up where she’d left off.

“But really, she’s just so hugely fat, more so than other old ladies.”

I stared at this woman for a moment, then took out my phone to google images of the Queen of England.

“She’s fine,” I said

“Look at her!” the woman insisted.

Luckily for both me and Queen Elizabeth, the doors to the studio opened and the previous class exited. I vowed to time my arrival for class differently next time, or at least wait on a different elevator to avoid this woman who says she’s an artist, which I believe because she seems both quirky and funky, but also seems to use that vibe to cloak her rabid schadenfreude for debatably overweight English royalty.

The class went fine, and I didn’t linger very long after it was over, not wanting to get into a debate about additional sovereign powers and their BMI, but also because I wanted to grab a salad from the food court at the train station.

So I took the stairs back to the elevator to my favorite fast food place, where they were still selling their lobster salad (why yes, I eat train station lobster salad!) and stood in line behind a man and a little girl.

He was elderly, moving with the slowness that comes of advanced age. He wore a suit, complete with a hat. She was maybe 10 or so, wearing pink shorts, her braids hanging halfway down her back. I assumed that she was his granddaughter, and I wondered about their story, where they were going, if they traveled often or this was a one-time thing. He laid out exact change for a fountain soda on the counter, and gave her the proffered fountain cup.

There was something about this gesture, this gentle man that looked nothing like my dad but somehow reminded me profoundly of my him and suddenly, out of nowhere, a wave of grief so powerful washed over me such that I became nauseous. I missed my dad so much I found myself fighting back tears.

I paid for my salad without speaking and walked dazedly back through the station and down the escalator. I was thinking about all the times my dad bought me food or a soda. He always paid. He was happy to pay. I mourned the fact that he would never take Ryan on a train trip, never buy her a silly fountain soda, though he would have been glad to do so. His time with her was so short, but he’d made it so meaningful, reading her books or taking her strawberry picking or folding his 60-something frame into a sled and careening down a snowy hill. 

I took the escalator  and walked miserably to the tunnel that led to the parking garage, grief resolving itself into an aching sadness, and I looked up to see Irene, the woman who runs the flower shop and takes my yoga class when she can.

She greeted me warmly, apologizing for missing class all summer. “I go to Canada,” she said. Her daughters are far-flung.

“That’s okay,” I said. “You’ll come back when you can.”

She looked at me for a moment. “I give you flower,” she said, and pulled me into a tiny room crammed with ribbon and cellophane and scissors and raffia. It smelled like roses. She ducked into a walk-in refrigerator and came out with a bouquet.

“Oh my God, they’re beautiful,” I said, as Irene used a cutting board to slice some length off the stems. “Thank you.”

I gave her a hug and left, walking through the leaky tunnel to the parking garage. I realized that for a moment, I’d forgotten to be sad, and as those feelings began to creep back in I found that they were tempered by a hug and some train station flowers.

If I were the kind of person to believe such things, I would have thought that my dad sent her at that moment, taken it as a sign that he’s still with me somehow.

I don't necessarily believe that, but I am deeply grateful, deeply aware that, whether it was a coincidence or providence, it is the human connections that drag you forward through your grief. And if Dad didn’t somehow direct Irene into my path, he taught me well how to recognize some detail that makes life worth living even in the midst of a terrible circumstance and crushing sadness in a filthy train station, beauty that makes each day a gift.

I met a guy on the way who asked me where he could catch the bus to Rockford. I told him that I had no idea, but that if he walked in the opposite direction from me, he’d run into plenty of people who could, and I wished him luck, and I meant it with all my heart.

A Ode to the Working Mom

Way back in February, my boss at the store where I work got hit by a car. She shattered her knee and was out of commission for surgery and rehab for three months. During that time, I got temporarily promoted to Lead Stylist to cover some of her hours, adding about 25-28 hours a week to my schedule and became, briefly but memorably, a Working Mom. Of course, putting the words "working" and "mom" together under any context is the opposite of an oxymoron, or a "tautology," which is what came up up when I Googled "what is the opposite of an oxymoron." Because we all work our asses off no matter what we do. But that's a rant for another day. 

Working is a subject I talk about with my mom friends all the time, especially reentering the workforce and how to manage the responsibility, the guilt (that comes from pretty much every aspect of our lives, warranted or not), childcare (cripplingly expensive). The store where I work part time is often a place where women find a first job after full-time momming for several years. A couple have quit after a week or two because the guilt overwhelms them that first time their daughter gets sick at school and the mom can't drop everything and pick her up. One woman quit because her husband was giving her a hard time for not finishing household chores. They later worked it out.

My boss came back this week, and I go back to part-time employment. I would be remiss, however, if I didn't pass on my experiences to other women in similar situations. 

And so, this is what I discovered:

 

You can unload the dishwasher, but you are unlikely to have time to put the dirty dish back-up into the machine from the pile in the sink for several hours, if not an entire day.

Your dog will lack interaction and exercise, and act out by eating a tray of cookies and hiding your socks.

Your children will cry because you cannot go to their swim lesson and Facebook while they swim in a different room.

You will forget that you forgot to forget a forgotten card/permission slip/field trip day/variety show tryout/meeting promise/action-item follow-up/orthodontist appointment/birthday party/pre-school craft day.

You will realize that your family will need to be in four places at one wildly inconvenient time, that you cannot possibly get everyone where they are supposed to be, and you will consider how young a child can safely Uber.

You will find the energy to make food that has no more than three ingredients, because a fourth ingredient will either put you over the edge or require a trip to the store, and you can’t even.

You will scan your week and find a free hour on Thursday, and that will be your only free hour.

You will ask people to care about things in your absence that they won’t care about and you’ll still have to care about them.

Sleep. Exercise. Shower. Eat. Work. Friends. Leisure activities. Family. Pick three.

Your first thought when you wake up is "What day is this?" because that’s how the Tetris pieces that are your day coalesce into your consciousness.

You will stay up way too late because it’s so enjoyable to be watching TV with your feet on the coffee table, and also you’re too tired to move.

You will have three cases of Girl Scout cookies in your coat closet that you don’t have the energy to deliver. You will get Facebook notices from people who ordered cookies that you will ignore. Your husband will ask you about the cookies and you will get defensive, because the cookies are now both literal cookies and a metaphor for all impossible tasks.

Your oil will not get changed.

Your car will not get washed.

You will ask people that you’re not even that good of friends with for help and they will help you.

You will get money for doing things.

You will find yourself showing up to places on time sometimes because you’ve had to think so hard about your schedule, and it will make you feel like Chuck fucking Norris.

You will be amazed how much you can get done while the kids are at coding class for an hour, when you realize that Ulta, Subway and Costco are all in the same strip mall.

You will discover ordering Starbucks on your phone, and you will be on time for work more often, with the bonus of also being fed and caffienated.

You will experience the pride the comes from doing a job well, being on a team, the value of paid work.

You will miss your kids. 

Ha! Just kidding.

Well, a little kidding.

You will put on grown-up clothes and talk to other grown-ups.

Younger women will ask your advice on a variety of topics and you will give it.

Your boss might be 24. You will probably love her. #notallmillenials

There is no “have it all.” There is only Tuesday. Get through it, hopefully with your dignity intact.

Every day, you are out there killing it. Get that tattooed somewhere you can see it.

-PDM 

In which the dentists thinks I'm a bad mom

If you’ve heard me talk about my two children, you have probably heard me say that my hard one, the one with autism, is actually my easy one. That hasn’t always been the case, of course, but it is right now. Kai submits to chores with almost no protest, whereas Ryan will throw a volcanic tantrum over them. Kai is getting As and Bs on his report card, and Ryan is getting a D in reading.

But probably nowhere is the difference between them more apparent than at the dentist. I learned a long time ago that you can pretty much to anything to Kai and he will just…take it. Cleaning, flossing, cavity filling, tooth extraction, whatever. The most he will do is make a sound like a mournful cat’s meow, the kind of lowing they do just before they cough up a hairball. And this is true across all medical platforms! You can give him a shot, draw his blood, lose those results and have to draw it again and he’s fine.

Ryan, by contrast, gets very anxious about going to the dentist. She won’t walk to the chair by herself and when she comes back, she’s red-faced and sweaty, often still crying, the very picture of misery. She requires so much nitrous when she gets a cavity filled that I’ve asked if it would be easier just to give her a Xanax (they didn’t realize I was serious).

You might be asking yourself, why does she hate the dentist? Does she brush and floss her teeth? The answer, of course, is no, she does not. And, you may ask, whose fault is that? Why, one could easily make the argument that it is my fault. I do provide her with a toothbrush, toothpaste, flossers and tiny Dixie cups. But it’s a fight. And after all the fighting over the brushing of hair and picking up of rooms and just do your homework and her asking me every damn day if we can go to the Rainforest Cafe, I just don’t have it in me. It’s a classic vicious cycle: no brushing (and no pressure to brush from me), bad check-up with extra bloody scraping.

So you could, if you wanted to, make a pretty good case that Ryan’s dentist aversion and lack of general dental hygiene results from poor parenting. I myself have made that connection many times, and each time I drive her home from the dentist, Ryan still sobbing quietly in the back seat, I vow to do better.

:::

I don’t know when Ryan’s doctor and dentist aversion began, but it crept up slowly and is now A Thing. She hates getting her ears checked. You have to hold her down to give her a shot, which is no longer a practical solution. Last year she flailed so hard that she kicked a pregnant nurse in the belly by accident. The nurse was really mad, which was understandable, but it caused her to be extra harsh with Ryan who was genuinely freaking out, as well as with me.

Later that same week, Ryan needed to have some blood drawn. It took an hour. Actually, the blood draw took 30 seconds. The rest of the time was spent trying to convince her to trust us to do it. I promised her McDonald’s afterward, which seemed to move her until she saw the needle, then she drew up into a fetal position. I promised her a beanie baby from the gas station that she’s always begging me fore. Then two beanie babies. Finally, I promised to take her to Chuck E. Cheese for dinner. Finally, she extended a shaking arm to the phlebotomist, sobbing the whole time.

:::

After Ryan’s dental appointment last week, the hygienist called me to the back to talk about Ryan. Ryan had been uncooperative, she informed me, and there had been much scraping of plaque.

“She really needs to do a better job at home, Mom,” she said, and I am not that woman’s mom and I know Ryan needs to do a better job and that what she means is that I need to do a better job, and I was thinking all of this when the receptionist ran back to find me.

Ryan had thrown up in the waiting room.

When I found her, she had vomit all over her dress and was crying. I took her to the bathroom and cleaned her up the best I could, then gave her a long, long hug. I vowed to do better.

“Are you okay?” I asked her.

“I don’t want to be here anymore,” she whispered.

I assured her that we would be leaving soon and went back to finish my consultation with the dentist.

“I was much firmer with Ryan this visit,” she said, and at first I thanked her. I am always looking for ways to spread the villainy from me to someone else—like why should I ruin my relationship with my daughter fighting about homework when I didn’t assign it? Perhaps Ryan could take some more responsibility for her dental hygiene and at the behest of this lady instead of me.

Almost by way of an apology for my uncooperative child, I told the dentist that Ryan is becoming more averse to doctor and dentist visits, and recounted the story about the blood draw that ended in me eating bad Chuck E. Cheese pizza.

The dentist fixed me with a look.

“You know,” she said, “kids sometimes know that they get rewarded for going places and, you know, up the ante. I think you rewarded a lot of negative behavior promising Chuck E. Cheese that time.”

I said nothing, rendered temporarily speechless. I hadn’t asked her opinion and I didn’t think I had reinforced bad behavior.

But my parenting esteem was already kind of low and I questioned myself. Did I positively reinforce a negative behavior? Is “anxiety” the same as “behavior?”

“Kids are smart,” she went on. “They figure out, ‘Oh, the more I act out the bigger the reward when I’m done.’”

“I don’t think Ryan is quite that evil,” I said, and I was ready to go. I wanted to get out of there so I could think, get my daughter out of there so she could relax.

She kept talking and I let my mind wander. Negative rewarding is giving a kid with an oral fixation gum after he bites another kid, not before. Was this the same? I’m by no means a perfect mother, but I’m not stupid, and Ryan seems to have a genuine anxiety. And why had Ryan thrown up after a visit to this dentist? What had this lady said to her? I let my face go completely neutral and reached in my pocket for my Chapstick, popped the cap and applied it to my lips. She was still talking, but she watched me do this and seemed to sense that I was no longer interested in her advice.

She tossed her hair. “I’m just telling you what I know as a mother and a pediatric dentist.”

As a mother. Right.

“I’ll consider it,” I said, as neutrally as possible.

My eyes were drawn to a group of kids behind a closed glass door in an office. They were playing Monopoly.

“Are those your children?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. “They have the day off from school.”

I surveyed them, wondering which one would turn up with an eating disorder or get a face tattoo just to spite this woman who so clearly thought she had all the answers.

Then I collected my own children and left.

:::

My sister called as I was driving home.

“My dentist just told me that I am a bad mother,” I said, and I told her the story.

“You know,” my sister, who is a doctor, said, “dentists don’t understand anxiety. A lot of people don’t like going to the doctor. But almost nobody needs a Xanax to go see their physician. That lady is in a profession where grown men and women need prescription drugs to go there.”

I laughed. This is true.

“You know what Ryan needs?” I asked, realizing at once what I should have known months ago. “She needs some freaking cognitive behavior therapy and a dentist who won’t be an asshole to her.”

And it was like the clouds parted, sun came out and doves started flying all around the car. Yes! Yes of course. My job isn’t to verbally harass Ryan into liking the dentist. It’s to help her find a way to manage her anxieties. What would I do if it was Kai? Does Ryan not get the same consideration because she’s neurotypical?

I drove home and took Ryan inside to change her dress, then drove the kids to school, feeling not like a crappy parent who can’t get her kids to brush but like I was back in command of the ship. I had stumbled across a high-level solution to a problem that was obviously not going to go away. And that dentist? There are a million dentists. I spent the rest of the day feeling pretty good about myself.

:::

That evening, I had a little talk with Ryan.

“Honey,” I said, “we are going to put you into a little therapy to deal with your anxiety over doctors and dentists. I don’t know if it will make you less afraid, but it will help you find ways to deal with that fear so that the visits are less stressful.”

“Okay,” she whispered.

I regarded her for a minute or two.

“I’m not mad at you,” I said.

She looked at me.

“On the contrary. I’m mad at the dentist. I thought she could have been…”

I cast about for the right word. Nicer? Less judgy? More solution-oriented?

“Kinder?” Ryan supplied.

And you know those moments when your heart breaks because you realize how wise and grown-up your child is getting? Kinder. What a word. What a sentiment. The dentist did not treat her with kindness. Those are not the thoughts of a girl who wanted Chuck E. Cheese for her efforts. Those are the thoughts of a girl who knows that ultimately she’s okay but man, the dentist sucks. And you know what? She’s right. The dentist sucks. And telling a kid with a phobia or high anxiety that “it’s fine, you’re fine” isn’t a solution.

We got this, Ryan.

I’ve already asked for Ryan’s dental records to be sent to a new dentist, one I hear is good with reluctant patients. The old dentist’s office asked for the reason I was transferring her file.

“Looking for someone kinder,” seems like a good one.