PW, unedited

Speaking of tantrums I nearly threw one myself on Tuesday. Nearly? Maybe it was fully thrown--what constitutes a tantrum in an adult? As previously mentioned, I am not much of a yeller or a express-your-anger-in-a-healthy-external-way-er. I get pissed and I go quiet. That's what happened on Tuesday when I was home all day with the kids.

I won't go into all the reasons as they're myriad and nothing special. Typical toddler stuff driving me nuts. It was when nap time was a bust and no one but one was sleeping and I ended up having to clean up shit from the floor for the hundredth time. Hundredth is an exaggeration. Fifteenth? Let me just say that cleaning human feces that has been deposited all throughout a room with deliberation and artistic concentration takes it's toll and adds up exponentially so that each time feels like ten times. I was pissed.

I've gotten pissed about it before and I've yelled. I've held the small child by the shoulders and looked said child in the face, sternly and grimly, telling my beloved young person that pooping on the floor is not.ok.

Ok, the child says.

And then it happens again. Not always but often enough. It happened on Tuesday and it was the last straw. I gave up on the naps and stomped my way back to my bedroom where I furiously folded clothes and cleaned up my perpetually-messy space, taking deep breaths and blowing them out. Stomping around. Trying not to think that I'm the cause of all the wild behavior and tantrums--that it's not because I went back to work that they're acting this way. Even though I think that's part of it.

A child came back. Not the pooper. Attempted to engage me. And I responded "I need you to leave me alone please. I am mad and I need some quiet time."

This was respected.

The pooper eventually came back and I said something similar. That child left as well.

It took me thirty minutes of angry clean-up before I felt decent enough to go back out. I felt shy and very exposed to have gotten so mad with Phyllis here. Phyllis being here was the only reason I could escape to my room to cool off, for which I was grateful, but which also made me feel so embarrassed. I try to hide the less than perfect parts of me. Of course no one who knows me thinks I'm perfect. . .but that doesn't stop me from trying. What is starting to stop me from trying is the slow, drip drip of acknowledgement that I am hurting myself with this behavior. With this fear of making mistakes, of getting mad, of not having it all together. I especially don't like to show this stuff to someone I admire so much. To Phyllis.

Who is Phyllis? I've thought about writing about her so many times, though never in the same essay as one that starts with poop on the floor. Ack. The incongruity of those two things is a good place to start in explaining this woman who means so much to me. To my family.

Phyllis was my boss. Not just my boss, my big boss. The biggest. The CEO of the company I recently started working for again. Not just the CEO but the one who started the organization and ran it for twenty years or so. Not just the one who started the organization but the one who made it into the leader in the industry for years and years. A legend. I do not say that lightly.

In the days when I was hired she did the second interview for anyone being considered for hire. Alone. I don't remember being scared, though I'd never had an interview with a CEO before. I was nervous because I had bombed my first interview and because I was sick as a dog, carrying a pint of orange juice with me into her office. Within minutes I was at ease, talking to a woman who was clearly smart as hell and who also clearly got me. She saw me, she knew I was someone to hire and so she hired me.

I was introduced to organ donation by an organization that she created in her own image. There was a deep respect for donors and donor families, a deep respect for how hard the work was and how much the people doing it matter. A love of learning and trying to be better. A commitment to community and team, to talking about all aspects of our process and working together. She bought people gifts for their anniversaries with the company. She threw a going-away party for a colleague going off to Irag. And a coming-back party many months later when he returned. She started each day walking through the office, saying good morning to everyone. It felt really good to work there.

As I took on roles requiring more skill and more responsibility, I saw behind the curtain bit by bit. Saw some of the difficult decisions being made and the challenges being dealt with. I traveled to national meetings and learned that we were among the best in the country at what we did. People wanted to be like us and that had a lot to do with Phyllis. There was instant respect, instant cred, that came with the name of our organization, that followed her throughout the room. I felt proud.

The main thing, the most precious thing, that she gave me in those years was a confidence in myself, in my ability to assess a situation and make a decision, in my ability to take a risk. There were fewer rules back then. From the beginning, I knew I could walk to her office and say to her "Here's the situation. This is what I think we should do and this is why." She didn't always say yes but she usually did. She had my back, had all of our backs, and that inspired me and most others to ask why not, to push beyond perceived boundaries, to do what we could imagine was possible. I will never stop being grateful to her for that because that is in me, deep in my heart and my bones, and it makes me the thinker and problem-solver I am today.

Was she perfect? Of course not but I don't know much about the parts of her that weren't. I'd sit in meetings with her and hold myself up against her, seeing her sitting sphinx-like in a room full of surgeons, keeping her emotions to herself. I want to be like that, I thought. I wore my reactions all over my face, in my voice. I felt too emotional, too reactive.  How did she do that? I still wonder

She retired several years ago and it was a blow.

To be continued....

On tantrums--unedited

My son woke me up this morning, asking if he could come sleep with me in our bed. I said yes, although his twin sister was asleep on the other side of me and there wasn't much room. He climbed in, rustled around as is his habit, and kept talking in a loud voice to me. After a couple minutes I sat up, gathering my wits about me.

Let's get out of here so we don't wake Lily up, I said.

He started yelling and I got immediately pissed. I scooped him up and stalked out of the room, putting him down in the kitchen where he continued to scream. Not proud to admit that I held my hand over his mouth, trying to staunch the sound. He yelled louder and louder and all I wanted to do was yell back STOP YELLING. You do not get to wake your sister up just because you're having a fit for no reason! I wanted to smash him.

I put myself outside, like a dog misbehaving. I closed the door on the screaming and stood in the cool morning air, braless in flannel pajama pants, closing my eyes and taking deep yogic breaths as I tried not to listen to the yelling muffled by the wood and glass. It's disorienting and scary to go from asleep to in a rage in less that five minutes.

When I was six my mom took me to a psychiatrist to help me stop having tantrums. I remember nothing of the experience except that I got to pick a candy bar afterwards and I picked Mr. Goodbar and hated it. Getting candy was a very rare occurrence so to think and choose so carefully and have it not be good was devastating enough to still live inside me as a visceral experience, three decades later.

A month ago a friend asked me to write about how we deal with tantrums. I wrote a quick response on Facebook but that wasn't enough. This is one area of parenting that I wonder about with some regularity.

One common piece of advice is to ignore them. I am almost certain that this is what I did during the many years I took care of other peoples' kids as a baby-sitter. I can't tell you for sure since that is pre-child raising and we all know my memory is completely shot. Unless it's candy as a six year old and then that shit is iron-tight. The reason I'm pretty sure is that it feels like what I would have done, feels like what I believe(d) was the right way to respond. Not to pay attention, let the tantrum burn itself out. Or maybe, now that I'm really thinking about it, I distracted. That seems more right, and more in line with the "Hey, I'm only here right now so I'll do what works" philosophy of a teenage sitter.

Here's the thing. I have been stomping down my own emotions, especially the bad ones, for years. Decades. A lifetime. I can't remember not doing it, though I wasn't always as aware that I was doing it. The bad ones--rage, fear, resentment, jealousy. The ones I don't like feeling, feel ashamed of feeling, feel exposed and wrong for feeling. So I shut them off, turn Ice Queen, and go on my way. Feeling like you want to smash your kid because he won't stop screaming would fall into the category of reactions I am not proud of. Even the thoughts that run through my head during it arne illustrative:

You are screaming for no reason.
You don't have the right

I want my kids to know it's ok to feel mad. So mad that you want to kick and scream and throw yourself on the floor because it's just so not ok what is happening. Even if what is happening is not getting to eat a cookie for breakfast. I mean, I'm not saying I want to listen to it. And I don't want to sit there narrating it to them either. If I could choose exactly what I want it would be to create the space for them to let it all out. And after a few minutes for them to go somewhere else to yell and scream in their own room. Because I am not a bottomless vessel for patience. Far, far from it. And though I want them to know it's ok to feel their feelings. . . the truth is I don't feel that comfortable in the face of anger and sadness. I'm getting better. I hope. And I think I'm better with sadness than with anger.

The truth is. . .I don't know anything about tantrums. Not enough to write in such a way that will be meaningful for everyone. I will say what I think and wonder about. What I hope for. What I worry about.

Last week a mom friend from the NICU wrote our group an email entitled OMG, the gist of which was Good grief I can't take the constant tantrums. I read it and thought, yeah we deal with more tantrums than we used to but it's not so bad. . .

And then every day since then it has been a constant barrage of fits being thrown. Over the slightest things. It's hard not to immediately think there's something deeper going on, like the fact that I went back to work and they're missing me and having a hard time adjusting. That's one of the many reasons I appreciate my tribe of parents, chiming in "Me too" about much of this--not just the tantrums being thrown by the short people but the tantrums we throw ourselves, out loud or by freezing them out or in an ongoing inner narrative. Have we learned to handle them better?

Lifey

This essay was written a couple weeks ago and put away until I could come back and edit. Reading it now I will leave it mostly untouched--not because it doesn't ask for editing but because I am tired and it seems good enough.

In the weeks since I've written this page has kept me company as I've wondered how to share the things I've seen and done and felt. Essays have partially formed in my head as I drove but none of those are there, sitting on a mental shelf, now that I'm ready for them.

It's been a month since I went to work. A long, 31-day month but whoa. That's a lot of life to pack into one month. Work has been intense and amazing and sweet and slow and full. In the world of organ donation there is a lot of hurry up and wait--hurry to get to a hospital and then wait until the right time to be introduced to a family. I knew this but mostly from an office perspective-from a far off, semi-connected perspective where I was acutely aware of time passing and couldn't do much about it. To have a job where I sit quietly for long stretches of time is so rich for me right now. Because that sitting doesn't happen a lot as a mom of four small children. During the sitting I am very aware of the people around me. Of the energy in the room. Of the walking to and fro happening in the hallways, in and out of rooms. Of the phones ringing. There can be an edginess in me, of wanting to do something. To make something happen. But I am there to wait. To learn. To remember to pause. To remember that very rarely will rushing to get something done make anything better in these circumstances.

It will be hard not to write and write and write about the holy experiences I am witnessing. I want to share them with you because they will make your life better. Confidentiality is hugely important though. So I will seek opportunities to give you things to hold, even for a moment. Because they are so worth holding.

Last week I worked three 12-hour shifts--each of them more than two hours away from my house. I flew to one in a private jet. I took Uber to one, sitting in the back seat of a car with a stranger for three hours. I drove myself to the last one, ready for some alone time. I left a hospital at 9 pm after spending the day in an alternate universe. The universe of the grief of strangers. A room I am invited into and allowed to stay for a while.

I walked out of the hospital and found my car--my husband's sedan that I'd driven, leaving the minivan with four car seats with him because I knew I might be home late. I sat on a bench and Facetimed with my family, those four little faces lit up with smiles and love. My son asking "Are you coming back?" I walked out of the room where a man's heart stopped beating and got to sit down and talk to my husband and my kids. Gratitude and life poured through me. So much of each.

I have three iPhones. One for each job and one for myself. Often I carry them all with me. The various vibrations and dings and rings can be hard to separate one from the next. Who is calling or texting? How quickly do I need to look?

On my way to the car a phone went off once. . .and then again. . .and then again. Not one text but three. I looked and saw notes from my mom. A quick response from my sister. Another one from my brother. The words referenced an email I hadn't read yet whose bad news was made clear. Family news from across the country. I thought I could guess at it and I almost didn't pull up the email in that dark parking lot in the land of lettuce farms worked by poor men and women. I was tired but glowing, as though the edges of my person had been mostly erased in order to hold space for necessary required unhoped for feelings. I ultimately opened the email because I couldn't leave it unread.

It was one sentence, written by my uncle. So stark and heartbreaking that I floated further away from my body. Confused. Lonely. So, so very sad. I drove a few miles in the dark, headlights shining only as far as their batteries could reach. Am I safe to drive? I wondered. I didn't want to sleep anywhere other than home so driving seemed like the best option. I called my husband to speak a few brief, full sentences about what was going on and how I felt. Strange. Other-wordly. Hearing his voice grounded me and I kept going, anxious to be home.

We all get those emails, or ones like them. Or phone calls bringing the worst news in the world. We sit at bedsides, hold hands, try to listen. And then go grocery shopping or for a tooth-cleaning, sitting in traffic, frustrated at a long red light, so many stories and losses or joys folded into our hearts for safe-keeping or to be discovered later or because there is nowhere else for them to go. Are we all just doing our best? We hold multitudes and I am reassured and bewildered by this fact.

Wednesday call

On a muted conference calling sitting in the dining room, getting ready to present I case I was a part of this past Saturday. My first case presentation of this type though I've done in the past, from different viewpoints. The TV is on and the bigs are watching. Two of the three doors to the courtyard are open, the cool air drifts in, at least one child is unclothed. I can't see any of them but I hear sings of movement and, most important for me at this moment, no whining at my side. . .

that's changed in the past 10-15 minutes. Now I have one on my lap. One is standing on the couch, playing with the keys, glasses of water and Yahtzee cup that sit on top of the out-of-tune piano. I've already picked up poop from cement outside. We're in a a spectrum of potty-training and it is a combination of amazing and insane. Their pack mentality is in full-display--the alph has learned to use the potty and the other three are following in line, taking their time but stepping to. Have to keep up. We aren't doing much other than reminding them to go sit on the potty. Wiping butts. Cleaning surfaces of poop and pee. Putting on and then taking off and then putting on diapers.  Spending way more time in the bathroom than I would ever choose to. But all things considered I will take it. I see the future and it looks good.

 Sleep-wise, we've given up for the moment. Again. There is a session of musical bed, couch, floor mattress, crib. This is all with the bigs--the littles remain firmly in their cribs and oh please oh please can that just stay that way for much more time? Bedtime is no longer, or not at this moment, a nightmare. They get pretty hyper but we're for the most part avoiding the screaming when it's actually time to go down. Sunday morning I told them we would stop locking the door. They seemed glad about that. They have really not liked the locked door and I don't blame them--we both agree we would hate being locked in a room. It's one of the few parenting decisions we've made that I've felt icky about. But we did it because they would.not. stay.in.bed.no.matter.what else we tried and I couldn't stand extending the time awake another minute. My husband probably would have chosen to let them stay up until they got tired, though he too was pretty done by bedtime. It felt important to me that they have a firm bedtime, that they learn to fall asleep in their beds. That they get the rest they need. But we've spent the past two months taking turns sleeping in their rooms, getting shoulder muscles and back muscles tightened and stiffened up. I couldn't do it anymore. So now we put them down, I sing them a song or two, we close the but don't lock the door. They usually come open the door at least once. I tell them it's time for bed, walk them back and give them something nice to think about while falling asleep--our upcoming trip to Vermont, our visit to the fire station today.

Call done. Many strings of cheese consumed. Kids all quiet and engaged now but of course for the 5 minutes I was talking they surrounded me like a hula skirt. I'm working on a post about tantrums but for now, unedited update for your sake and mine.

A look inside

Some thoughts on raising four children under three. Aka an inside look at our life.

-I do not know what size shoe my children wear. Kids' feet somehow grow fast and slow and they are able to wear a size for a long time and then seem to skip two sizes over night. We have several bunches of shoes, some of which are definitely too small for the bigs but we keep for the littles. Some of which were lended by my sister and maybe once fit someone but now maybe don't fit anyone. Do twins wear the same size as one another? One has wider feet for sure. Some shoes are just designed in a dumb way and may fit but are so hard to put on that they might as well not fit. So yeah. What size do they wear? Not sure. There is a trail of shoes between our house and Stephanie's house, bridged by the seats and crevices of the mini van.

-Taking care of them is physically exhausting. By the end of a day of being with my kids my whole body hurts. They are heavy and fast and they treat us like essential, loved, pieces of furniture so we catch elbows and knees to the chin and nose. We receive full body tackles with a quick-shift to absorb the unannounced blow. Putting them in the car requires climbing into the van, reaching over seats, wrestling with buckles, negotiating strollers or bikes or bags in the way.

-Scarcity breeds desire. If I bring four full water bottles, no one will want any water. If I have one half-full bottle of water, everyone suddenly is dying of thirst.

-Any time I'm doing something I wonder if my time would be better spent doing something else. Is there any point in cleaning the kitchen right now or should I take this kid-free time to clean out the bigs' closet?

-Sometimes I get to just after bedtime and I have to ask myself whether I even made eye contact with a certain child.

-I crave alone time with them, and for them, and when it comes time to choose who will come out with me or spend time with Nana. . .it kills me. I hate to separate them. I struggle with trying to make it fair, trying to think of the week as a whole, trying to think of who seems to need it. It is so strange.

-There is so much poop. SO MUCH POOP.

-We own approximately 150 children's books. We read approximately 10 of them with any regularity. But we don't get rid of them because. . .they are books? Maybe someday soon someone will choose a new one?

-We own approximately 500 toys. The kids play with approximately 5 of them with any regularity. We have rotated them out several times but somehow we end up with piles and buckets of toys. The kids are more interested in getting the screw drivers out of the middle drawer in the kitchen and using them to "fix something". Of note, the bigs go to our neighbor's house about once a week. She has one toy--an old red barn with little people and animals that belonged to her now-adult children. She says Lily and Cyrus play with it diligently every week.

-There is so much laundry.

-Not only do we not keep track of milestones but we sometimes miss them entirely. Especially with the little girls. Hmmm, it suddenly occurs to me that you are talking? And I can understand you? And possibly this has been going on for a while and I didn't notice because I didn't expect you to  be talking yet? Or hmmm, perhaps you keep taking your diaper off because you are ready to start using the potty? But how can that be??

-Seeing the kids interact in all the various combination of sibling is a joy and a gift.

Is there anything specific you wonder about? Let me know and I'll try to describe it.

Tuesday afternoon

The big kids didn't nap today so in an unprecedented move I opened up the laptop and told them I was going to do a little work. Immediately they flocked to my sides and said "I want to do a little work", lingeringly touching the keyboard.

Me first, I said.

Now a new show is on and they are locked in place, eyes glazed. What is happening in their/our brains when we watch TV? I love TV very much. I watch too much. I mentally beat myself up about it. And I also rely on it to soothe my tired mind. It helps me stop.

What does that look like when I'm raising my kids? Does it need to be a good show? How much is too much? Would I rather see them playing, using their imaginations outside? Yes. I would rather that for myself. Maybe just in theory? I don't really know. I just feel so. . .tired. But I have somewhat distant memories of being outside in the world, feeling my body and insides light up with joy and the connectedness that comes from trees and water and dirt roads.

Losing the nap, I will take the necessary 30 minutes to answer a work email. To look at the possibility of me and my husband going away for a night or two. Because it feels impossible to imagine so that means we need to make it happen. To check Facebook. Another guilty pleasure, an addiction that I know is out of control. And yet. . .it is a community for me.

In some ways an additional layer to newly-forming relationships with other moms of young kids who live nearby. Who are raising their kids with me.

In some ways the only connection I have with women who live across the country, all of whom I knew before. Before marriage. Before any of us had kids. In past versions of ourselves. In our blessed, rich-tasting youth that seems to fall in layers through the decades that came before kids. And they knew me. We are a web of cheering each other on. Of eyes meeting across a screen to raise an eyebrow and say "Preach, sister." a

My family in Vermont. Even my parents and siblings in nearby cities. We connect in person. Via text. Sometimes emails. And we watch each other and learn each other via Facebook. I don't know what I would do without any of these people--my funny, spread-out, many-layered tribe.

And this blog in many way exists because of Facebook. Because I can write a handful of paragraphs and throw them into the winds of digital connectedness and people can read what I think about. I'm grateful for that.

One of the little girls is starting to wake and the cartoon is almost over. It's a gorgeous day outside. I haven't written the email yet. Time to go.

Monday

It's when I do things like take a challenging, emotionally-difficult job as a way to give myself a break that I wonder how skewed my sense of things really is. Though skewed in comparison to what or whom? The idea that there is a right way, a normal way, persists doggedly despite my attempts to weed it out.

In this moment I miss my kids acutely. In a painful way. Even though getting through the weekend was exhausting and the house is a mess and my list of things to do is impossibly long. It's hard when they're away from me. It's hard when they're with me.

Motherhood seriously makes me question my mental health. There have been times over the years where I've questioned it--because I think too much. Because it runs in my family. Because my moods are so up and down. I question the decision to blog about it right now because this essay smacks of a cry-for-help and. . . I don't even know if I want help right now? I just want to not feel so fucking crazy.

I haven't been writing much lately but my head has been so full of words that I want to get down. Because life and my heart and my brain feel so full. There are several half-finished essays in the queue, waiting for a spit shine or something.

There is so much more to say but for now I will just post this. Not a cry for help. A snapshot.

If you do feel like helping me, these are the things I could use:

-Social invitations to events or gatherings that make me feel fun

-A critical eye and some energy for picking an area of my house and figuring out how to make it functional/organized/less insane

-Topics you'd be interested in reading about

I'm ok! I miss this space.