Co-pilots and wingmen

art by tara mcpherson; keep art alive

There are many challenges you face when you become a parent, they say your life will never be the same, and that sleep will not be the only thing that irreversibly changes. We start and stop and stumble through the beginnings of parenthood, some of us clinging tightly to the What to Expect... self-help type books that often skip on the some of the rougher edges of raising a child. The books never clearly describe what it is like to smell of sour milk for months at a time or how it feels to hold your two-year old daughter's shaking hand as they slide her tiny body into a menacing Death Star looking machine meant to take a picture of her brain.

Those are the moments when you must pull from within yourself, locate the strengths you may not have know you had. Parenthood requires you to develop a technique that masks fear and loathing, turning it into confidence and make-believe bravado. It also helps to have an imaginative partner in crime to step in and save the day with you, or to run out for ice cream, when needed. This does not have to be found in a spouse, or even from your own familiy. Parenting wing-men and Clydes to your Bonnie can be your best friend, the across the courtyard neighbor, or another fly-by-the-underside-of-a-spaceship parent you may meet at the playground, the grocery store, or the hospital waiting room. Sometimes the best team is made up of mismatched players drafted and promoted as time goes by. They are all part of what I like to call your family of choice.

Mine has been sewn together by place and circumstance, and a rocket size blast of luck. My best friend of twenty-six years lived three houses down from me growing up. We met because our mother's were best friends at the time, though the bond Kate and I have has outlasted their relationship. We have been each other's strength and compassion when the world took upside down and inside out turns of fate; we have been each other's shipmates in the storm. There are things she knows about me that no one will ever know, and she knows every side of who I am, good and bad.

Our lives have had parallels, most likely due to our similar views and upbringings, or possibly because the major hops and steps in those rites of passage days were done with hands held. We traded notes and borrowed each other's text books when it came to sex and love and rock and roll, and as we grew older, to family. We both have three children, have been single mother's at different times, and have stood by each other through births, illness, catastrophe, and divorce. She is the one person I want to call when ever I am stuck in a situation that I feel lost in, and she is also the one I want to tell all my joys to right as they happen.

My oldest, Julia, once told me that "you and Auntie Kate are alien crazy, it is like you two came flying out of some far off planet". I smiled and thought to myself that she is right, but at least we speak the same language and know how to steer the spaceship. She is the one I turn to when life outside of the How-to books happens, and I believe I am on her quick dial list for those turn of events, as well. We all need to find those links to our sanity and companions to our hearts. We all need to have our chosen family members held close in our lives.

I remember the ones my mother had, the aunts and uncles with no blood ties, but who connected deeper to the core of who are family was then our actual family ever did. She chose who to gift our craziness and chaos to, and it is a tradition I am trying to continue on with. Kate is one of them, forever a part of the leaning to the side of the sun tree that we call family. David has picked a few to hang up in our family branches; Julia has, too.

Eventually I will sit back and watch as my family grows and changes. All of our pieces will press together forming a unique puzzle picture. All the cracks will smooth and fade in time, but we will know where they came from. We will know all the stories. I know that the family we choose is made more solid with each and every flaw, laugh, love, and heartache. We recover and glue ourselves together with each day we share, slowly turning our family into something beautiful.

I get so tired of
working so hard for our survival
I look to the time with you
to keep me awake and alive

In Your Eyes ~ Peter Gabriel

L.

Re-told happily ever after

art by daniel danger; keep art alive

We all want answers, easily drawn maps and charts that lead all the way to the last page of the book, and the predictable happy ending. Is there not a part of us that still hold some of those fairy tale stories to be true? That some nights when we toss and turn in sleepless anxiety, worrying over budgets and college funds and pre-school selections, do we not hold our breath for even just a second hoping the slightly older and carb-friendly fairy godmother will appear making everything alright? When faced with ditched classes, wet beds, and throw your body to the ground tantrums I know that I have harbored that fleeting wish that Alice will take my hand and lead me out of this upside down bizarro wonderland of being a grown-up; or that like Dorothy I will wake up from all the catastrophe and chaos to find only compassionate faces around me, nodding in understanding when I recall the troubles I had seen that they all held a role in. "And you were there, and you, and you."

The thing is, even if I found that my red shoes (that are really black) could click-clack together and get me the hell out of here, I think I would shove them off to the nearest thrift store, and stay. I would want to hang on to the parenting play-by-play book, though.

I cannot think of a harder job I have ever held, or heard about, then being a mother. Add to it the adjective, or really the active verb, of being a working mother and you are definitely in the hardest job ever category. That guy on the Discovery Channel who has that show called Dirty Jobs, where the host spends a day doing jobs that make us all groan in disgust and awe; why do they never send him off to be a working parent for the day?

I can see it now, the commercial break ends and you focus in on the host waking up to his son holding out a busted cup that was shoved in some ancient relic hideaway spot in his room that once contained some kind of milky concoction inside. Watching it you can almost smell it, wafts of sour and rot filling the room, but it does not end there. Next is the slightly older sibling stumbling into the room in a half-asleep stagger, she is holding her favorite blanket up to you as if it were a dying soldier in need of resucitation. At a closer look you notice her clothes sticking awkwardly in places, the new smell competing with the science sippy cup experiment, now adding the Sorry, I wet the bed odor to the mix. Only moments before he was in dreamland, and as the camera pans in a bit closer you see his eyes shut tight in that futile hope for escape, or at least the relief of a commercial break.

The early morning story arc concludes. The new scene looks brighter, kids cleaned-up and sitting around a table shovelling spoonfuls of cereal into their almost smiling mouths. There is the piped in soundtrack of soothing music, the kind you would hear in your Grandfather's old Caddilac, or a hospital waiting room. You know instinctively that he should be afraid, even if you are not quite sure why. Then it is all so suddenly made clear, in the corner of the screen you catch a glimpse, the undead has arrived with their bedhead disaster and zombie-grumble coming right for him. The viewers at home all simultaneously scream Run!

She was once a beautiful girl, you can sense that some of that may still exist under the decaying eyeliner and last minute term paper up-all-night pallor. For a moment she fools him into thinking she is harmless. Reaching over him for the cereal box she begins uttering soft compliments about his hair and choice of dress for the day. The flattery is pulling him in, leaving him at a vulnerable disadvantage, and he is almost caught in her coooing trap of can I stay home from school, just this once?

The last thing we see before the producers realize this is more than one show can handle is the attempt to leave for work unscathed moment. The walk from the kitchen table to the front door may only be a mere seven steps, but everything shifts into slow motion. Each step releases an obstacle to overcome, a puzzle that requires a secret code to pass, and the inevitable search for the missing keys. There is screaming, runny noses wiped on pant legs, while sticky breakfast fingers pull and grab, trying to keep him trapped in their clutches. The escape is narrow, he barely makes it to the car alive. His pulse is still racing as he starts up the engine to go, but by the time the freeway entrance looms ahead the sight of bumper-to-bumper traffic actually seems like paradise found.

Is this the happy ending we viewers have been waiting for? The office looms ahead and our surving host's briefcase swings back and forth in an almost jaunty bounce. There are no more funky smells permeating the air. There are no more teenage mutant girls. The yells and shouts seem to be just a residual ringing in our ears. Is this the tied up in a tidy bow curtain close? Is this a message of hope that no matter how rough our jobs may seem, it could be so much worse?

The show ends with an elevator opening, and our trusty host taking a step inside, proud and triumphant. It is then that we see it. We wonder how we missed it before. The sticky marshmellow encrusted cereal spoon stuck to the back of his suit jacket.

***

The real happy endings are hidden and hard to see. They are the tiny moments that we often forget when we are overwhelmed, overworked and overtired. The two youngest sharing a book together, the older one teaching the younger colors and the many names of things. The oldest choosing you as one of her heroes in a place she thinks you will never see. The ecstatic squeals of joy when you walk through that door at night of Momma, you're home! Those are the mis-matched glass slippers and golden eggs we are actuallygifted. Those are the stuff of our own happily ever after endings.

Like a good book

I can't put this day back

A sorta fairytalewith you

A Sorta Fairytale ~ Tori Amos

L.