Our Boys

I can remember the day so clearly.  My best friend, Jen, had told me she was going to find out whether she was expecting a little boy or girl and that she’d let me know as soon as she left the doctor. I was at work and checked my phone a dozen times.  I finally texted her a pink heart, a blue heart, and a question mark, unable to wait any longer.  After a bit she texted back a blue heart and then right after that she said, “I hope that you’re okay with it.”  And with that my heart broke a little.  Here she was on one of the most exciting days of her life and she was worried about my feelings; I hated myself a little for that.  I hated that I had let my grief push its way to the forefront of yet another amazing moment and it wasn’t even my moment.  I quickly responded, “OF COURSE it’s okay!” And truly, it was. But I would be lying if I didn’t say it hurt something awful too.   The hurt wasn’t born of jealously-not an ounce of that-but that our beautiful baby boys would never play together; that we would never take a picture of them together and look back at it in wonder that they’d ever been that little, as there is no doubt in my mind that Jen and I will grow old together.  

I love me some Oliver; we all do.  Sean gets such a kick out of him and Kennedy has loved him like her own baby brother from the moment she first held him.  And so I was feeling pretty sad that we didn’t get to make a vacation happen with them the way with did last summer and so I made plans to head to Boston for a day or two with Carter since K would be at gymnastics camp.  

So after Kennedy’s first week of camp we made a visit to Long Island.  It was filled with family, boat rides, and pool days.  It was great and needed but all of it was overshadowed by the fact that my baby boy looked at me, while I was putting on makeup to head to a bridal shower and said, “Mama.”  I swear to God I almost cried ever drop of mascara I’d just applied. To hear that sound come from the mouth of a little boy has been something my heart has been desperate to hear for the last three and a half years.  He is a snuggly, mushy little mama’s boy (which I mean in the most affectionate way) and he soothes my soul in ways I can’t begin to put into words. It was a great long weekend but it took its toll on the little girl and so we skipped camp this week.  

I went back and forth about bringing her with us but decided not to, which she was not thrilled with me about.  The thing is, it would make it a very different visit and I felt like I needed it to be low key and low maintenance, neither of which describes my fiery, wild-haired girl.  She was entertained by her grandparents and did just fine through FaceTime calls and some whining.  The little man and me?  We did just fine too.  

The second we arrived to Jen and I saw Oliver’s little face light up as he shouted over the pouring rain, “Hi Baby!” I was done.  Jen parked the car for me and I made my way up the stairs holding one boy in my arms and the hand of the other as he chatted to me.  The second we walked through the door Oliver directed us to sit on the floor and he talked Carter, showing off all of his bog boy moves.  Carter was enthralled by him, laughing and trying to mimic the sounds and clapping.  Separated by one year and one day, they had not yet met face to face as life just got in the way, but they acted like old friends instantly (except when poor Oliver got close enough for a fistful of hair from the Ultimate Hair-Puller). Watching them, my heart was literally fluttering.  Though in this scenario Oliver was the big boy and Carter the baby, my brain allowed my heart to remind me he would have been sandwiched between my boys in a different life and I smiled to myself thinking of the noise level with three and how they’d have been thick as thieves. Just like that, our boys were together.  And it was everything I needed it be all of these years.  

We had a great visit that ended too quickly but we had a little girl that missed us and wanted us (mostly “her baby”) back home and so we got one last picture of the little men together and headed back to New York.

We decided to add another big milestone to month ten for Carter and took him to get his first haircut. While the mullet has always made me laugh I find it less funny on the heads of my children and so I thought a good trim was in order.  I went off the suggestion of a friend and brought him to an honest-to-God Barber Shop in the town next door; the kind where the barber’s were sitting outside waiting for men in need of some grooming.  A guy that could have been Sean’s doppelgänger was “up” and instantly started talking to Carter, making him feel at ease and let him touch the buzzer and combs.  My big guy- my last baby- he never fussed or cried once.  And though every snip of his baby hair’s made me want to scream STOP!!  I knew it was really Time I wanted to stop and not this sweet man cutting his hair.  In a month and a half he will be One and I’m just not ready to be there yet. So he is still my baby.  My baby with a pretty damn cute ‘do. 

As if there just wasn’t enough emotion coursing through my veins as we got in the car Kennedy asked why we were taking Carter’s hair home in a bag.  I explained that we’d done the same for her and that I had a special box to put it in.  Naturally, her mind always loops in Jack when I say “my kids” and so she asked, “Did you keep Jackie’s hair too?”  I could barely breath but managed to squeak out “No” as the tears started welling up behind my sunglasses.  When she asked why, I couldn’t give her a good answer because I was too busy asking myself the same question Why?! Why didn’t I ask them for a lock of his hair? He'd had so much.  It was dark blond and it was beautiful and I suddenly wanted to touch it more than anything in the world.  Grief is funny that way; it comes out at unexpected times and swallows you up.  And so, as I do whenever my heart calls out for Jack, I did my best to take in every second of time with his baby brother and sister, believing that he lives through them.

My summer vacation is winding down with my return to work starting in August.  Time off never feels like enough but there has been some pretty good moments to carry my through until our beach vacation down south the end of August.  Until then, I will soak in the sun and the chaos.  You do the same, my friends. 

Another Sound of Love

So we are on day three of Summer Vacation with Kennedy.  I finished the week before her and so I had a few days to unwind and get my bearings. I got to attend her Kindergarten Fun Day, which she loved, and her summer kickoff carnival (and by the way: being at both of these showed me my child is wildly different in school than she is at home; more reserved, a little standoffish, even somewhat clingy). It was so nice to be able to show up for my kid, though there was a fair amount of guilt attached to it as I realized that this is more of a regular thing for many of the other parents, and I made a silent vow to myself that I would do more of that next school year for her…and me.  We finished off the last day with a little get-together at our house for her friends and their parents that have become our good friends. It was a great entryway into the summer months I yearn for all year long.  

All of that carried me through until about two o’clock Monday afternoon.  We met two of my girlfriends and their kiddos at the park and the moment we got in the car to head home Kennedy started complaining that she was bored and ‘what were we doing next’.   I immediately started yelling at her that she was not going to bombard me with boredom declarations all summer long.   Part of the problem is I generally jam-pack our weekends and so when you are six and used to either school days or days filled with all of the things you are in this constant what’s next mindset.  The other part of the problem is my kid, God love her, can be a bit of a pain in the ass (if I’m being honest).  When I called my sister to whine about Kennedy’s pain-in-the-assery she countered with her own tales of annoyances.  Being that she has a brand new baby on top of my other two nephews, she wins, but we seem to be rowing in the same boat. 

A day later she sent me a text if she thought our grandma and grandpa were yellers. She went on to say how she feels terrible that she yells so much.  Here’s the thing:  my mom and dad were yellers.  They are two loud people; they talk loud normally and when they were angry with us they yelled loud.  None of us were afraid of it; in fact it became somewhat of white noise to us as we grew up.  You were able to recognize the varying degrees of anger in the yelling and so many times it was just another mode of communication.  Flash forward to today and my sister and I seemed to have inherited that lack of control in the volume of our voices. I thought about her text for a while, all the way into today.  I yell a lot, I do.  I too am a loud person with a strong inherent desire to be heard and I am learning that as a mother that is, often, hard to come by; sometimes inadvertently, often very intentionally.  And so I yell.  I yell to make sure she heard me, to make sure the message is delivered, to make sure she remembers my voice the next time.  I yell.  

I yell at her for being fresh or rude when she is speaking to me, her father or another adult.  I do this because I would hate for her precociousness to be a trait that overshadows her kindness.  It is a kindness that lights up the room and will make her the kind of kid that people want their children to have as a friend.  I don’t want anyone to hear the sarcasm that comes frighteningly easy to a six year old and decide she isn’t welcome at their dinner table before they get to know that she would do anything to see people laugh and smile and that’s what the intent is.  So I yell.

I yell when she isn’t nice to her baby brother (I’ve caught her twice this week being mean to him). I remind her no one treated her meanly as a baby because I would never allow it.  I yell because I need for her to learn that your siblings are your tribe. They will annoy you and steal your thunder, get you in trouble or blame you for things.  But they will also protect you on the school bus, lie for you to keep you out of trouble, and hold your hand through anything.  She had a late start in navigating the sibling waters and we have a lot of ground to cover.  My kids will be no different than anyone else’s: sometimes they will treat each other badly- I accept that but I will teach them that at the end of each day it is the two of them.  And so I yell.

I yell when she does something dangerous.  I yell when she rocks on a chair too close to a glass window after being told nicely, twice, to stop.  I yell because the thought of anything bad happening to these two babies literally makes me feel like I could vomit (no joke-I feel sick right this moment typing about it).  I have already seen the worst side of parenting and do no think I could survive anything else.  I hover by the playground, and freak out during near choking episodes, and bring my kids to the pediatrician and urgent care much more frequently than I need to. I shout be careful at least fifteen times a day.  I’m scared; there just isn’t any other way to explain it.  So I yell.

I yell when she says bad words or uses potty-talk.  I yell because there are millions of beautiful words to be spoken and she has to learn to use some of them before she mixes in the words that will bring her down to the level swear words come in.  I say this as someone that loves words.  I also say this as someone that loves the word shit. It’s about balance but she’s six and balance is not something she can manage yet.  And so I yell.

I yell when she doesn’t listen to her dad or me.  Not because I can’t tolerate disrespect (I work with middle school kids for crying out loud) but because I need her to understand that we are her parents.  We are not her friends.  We will laugh with her and joke with her and forgive her all of her imperfections but when it comes down to the line what we say goes. And so I yell.

Do I feel like shit about this at the end of the day?  Absolutely. I go to bed trying to count how many times I had to yell at her, often stopping after I get to ten because then I feel downright lousy.  But here’s my thought (and maybe its just be trying to rationalize my own bad behavior and parental shortcomings):  yelling can be just another sound of love. And so while sometimes I worry all I am doing is yelling I stop to remind myself of all of the moments where there wasn’t just no yelling, but instead honest-to-god awe that a child could be so amazing:  When I watch her mother her little friends so effortlessly, or hear her tell me how excited she is to have the special needs students in her class next year (“One of the boys has Down syndrome, Mama.  Like Jack. Isn’t that awesome?”), or plan to ambush her dad with Nerf darts as he comes through the front door from work and giggle because it worked.  There is no yelling there.  There is praise and telling her how proud I am of her, and laughter-so so so much laughter.   Love is the language I speak.  Every single syllable I speak to my kids is spoken in love. My goal in life is to make sure that even if I am yelling at them that they can translate it into love.