The Water is Wide

There’s a drawer in our apartment that I don’t like to think about. I hear a low thrum coming from inside it, beating like the tell-tale heart.

The drawer is filled with photos, a tiny just-home-from-the-hospital infant hat, a crazy log of contractions, a crazy log of breastfeeding times, cards, poems, first curls from a first haircut, handprints made at a street fair.

If I went to a Mom’s Anonymous meeting, I’d have to stand up and admit, “I’m Carla W, my daughter Kate is almost 5 years old and I still haven’t made her baby book.” And, as Kate reminds me on a daily basis with a classic hands-on-hips, eye-rolling, foot-stomp, she is not a baby anymore.

So, I try to write little notes to remind myself of funny things she has said. I send e-mails to the grandparents in the hopes that they’re saving these stories for posterity or they’ve forgotten how to delete. I have ambitiously transcribed a few of her “stories” when the muse strikes, but often I can’t decipher my shorthand. She talks really fast when she’s on a creative roll… The drawer’s cry becomes more audible to me with each birthday.

Last week we were eating dinner and listening to one of our "Music Together" cds. Kate and I started taking "Music Together" classes in New York when she was two months old. A mom friend convinced me to go and, although we mostly nursing through the songs, we enjoyed seeing the future in the faces of the new walkers and boisterous toddlers jumping about and singing along. One of the best parts of Music Together classes is that they give you swag - a cd and bound sheet music collection of the songs you’ll be hearing and singing that term.

Kate and I continued to attend classes and through the years we’ve had all sorts of teachers. From a cute curly-headed, hung-over rocker whose sly humor and energetic singing was fun for both kids and parents; to a zither-playing avant-garde jazz singer; to a lovely aspiring musical theatre performer whose lap Kate preferred to mine; to the unflappable Andy who runs Hong Kong’s "Music Together" classes with her sweet voice and Cheshire cat grin. We’ve been in classes full of loving care-givers, classes full of naughty kids who suck on the maracas and hit their mommies, classes full of perfect quiet children who make Kate look like a screaming banshee, and classes full of new friends who let the music lead them into 45 minutes of joyous abandon.

After Kate went to bed tonight I snuck into the living room and played four years of "Music Together" discs. Standing in front of our dusty stereo, I thought about making out to the greatest hits of the 80’s with Noah Kapstein in his dorm room. Teen grope fantasy pushed aside, I ate a bowl of bunny-shaped pasta with my fingers and listened to the greatest hits of Music Together. A "Mom’s Top of the Pops."

And then these real moments from Kate’s life came swimming back to me and I could taste them. Like an amnesiac reviving, I remembered.

I am proudly feeding Kate homemade apple sauce, which I’m convinced she loves much better than the store-bought baby-food. I’m making her open her mouth wide by singing: De colores, de colores se visten los campos en la primavera… all the colors in me and the colors I see come together in a rainbow of one…

She eats until... Lukey’s boat is painted green, Aha me boys! Then, like clockwork, she fidgets and fusses until she is lifted out of her bright blue feeding chair, bib off, face cleaned, and over to the rocker by the window where she gurgles and barks to: Stars shinin’, number, number one, number two, number three, Good night. By ‘n’ by, Good night, good night… until she starts to nod off for her morning nap.

Spinning in her exer-saucer in the weak mid-morning light of our garden apartment in Brooklyn. Put the rhythm in your hands and go clap, clap, clap; Put the rhythm in your feet and go tap, tap, tap. Suddenly, as the music instructs, Kate starts to clap her hands and stomp her feet. I call my mother, my sisters, my sister-in-law and 5 friends to brag.

In the music class, Kate is screeching with giggles as I “trot” her on my knee, holding tight onto my index fingers with her sweaty hands. Trot old Joe, Trot old Joe, You’re the best horse in the country-o, Whoa, Joe.

Suddenly she is weeping through her favorite song, A ram sam sam, a ram sam sam, goolie, goolie, goolie, goolie, goolie, ram, sam, sam. I try to jolly her up until an observant nanny points out that she looks feverish. Mortified, I rush her home and discover that she has her first very high temperature. After a panicked visit to the doctor, a tasty dose of grape Tylenol puts her to sleep in her stroller. I walk her through the snowy park eating a warm slice of pizza. I hum to calm myself...

The water is wide, I cannot cross o’er, and neither have I wings to fly. Give me a boat that can carry two, and both shall row, my child and I.

When we repeat the same music collection in Hong Kong, Kate gets much more demanding. No longer satisfied with just a “trot,” trusty old Joe must transform herself into a rodeo horse. My abs get a work-out every Wednesday morning as I hold a 35lb girl on my lap and throw myself backwards. The faster and higher the better. The screeching giggle remains the same.

These days Kate makes requests like, “I want the potato song.” Soon as we all cook, sweet potatoes, sweet potatoes, sweet potatoes, eat ‘em right straight up. Sometimes she imitates the kids from her classes instead of giving the song title. “I’m beezy mama, I’m beezy,” means: Two little blackbirds sitting on a hill, one named Jack and one named Jill. She once tried to make her little Korean friend be a blackbird in the song, and the friend turned to her and said, “I’m beezy” which cracked the whole class up. Now we even make up our own lyrics to the "Music Together" tunes. Though these days Kate’s lyrics mostly consist of scatological phrases strung together and punctuated by wild laughing and flashing of tushies.

Once in a while I think about... my lady wind… round and round the house she blows, trying to get in… and I realize that the song still has the power to depress me. It makes me think about those dark, lonely winter hours when Kate would wake up very cranky from her afternoon nap at 5PM. How cold it was and how much I ached for adult companionship. I remembered carrying her in the sling into the windy sleet of a December night because I was just desperate to get out of the house. We walked along the streets and looked at Christmas lights in people’s windows and I felt like the only person in the world who had such an enormous burden. Just the two of us and all those endless hours until bedtime.

One day I’ll glue that tiny infant hat to a page. Until then... Goodbye, so long, farewell my friends, goodbye, so long farewell, We’ll see you soon again, and then we’ll make Music Together again.

The Time Thief

Don’t tell anyone but I ran away to the beach today.

I was on my way to the shower this morning when I got detoured into Kate’s bedroom. There I was transformed into “Hannah” a very sick girl who was required to “lie down flat” in bed and be “fixed” by the doctor. Twenty minutes later I finally broke free of my sickbed, unraveled the red yarn that was tightly wrapped around my “broken” legs, peeled six Dora Band-Aids off my “broken” arms, and fled to the bathroom. I locked the bedroom door. I could hear Kate banging on the door and the babysitter trying to distract her with offers of card games and water colors. Sitting on the toilet, peeling off another Band-Aid I discovered on my elbow, I felt a great peace descend. Then the cat nosed his way into the bathroom, sniffed, meowed, and crawled into the underwear that was pooled around my ankles.

Most mornings I’ve usually done one round arts and crafts; played one (endless) game of Groovy Girl Crazy Eights; performed one raucous duet to the soundtrack of High School Musical; and endured one stint as a customer in a painful beauty salon before 8:30AM. Then I drop Kate at school and steal away with my laptop to the local café. Today a lethal combination of 60’s-muzak and a local expectant-mom’s-meet-up makes it difficult to concentrate. I am too busy eavesdropping on an episiotomy conversation, imagining what the women would say if I butted in with a detailed description of Perineal massage. Clearly I’m procrastinating, but I can’t go back home. The cat has migrated from my underwear to the shelf under my computer table. Kate and her little friend have come to our house after school and are busy tormenting the cat with their Barbies. I can’t go home or I’ll be seduced into playing Polly Pockets and my working hours will evaporate into a blur of tiny pink shoes. So I ran away to the beach.

When Kate was four months old I took her to a housewarming party at a friend’s trendy Chelsea apartment. The baby was cute as a bunny in her one-piece fuzzy jumpsuit and I was feeling very happy to finally be out and about. A successful magazine editor with two young sons cooed over Kate and asked me how I was doing. She was surprised to hear me honestly respond that I was still in a fog, and I was wounded by her surprise. What was wrong with me? Why was I still floating in the confusing nether-world of new motherhood while others had emerged much sooner with their feet on the ground?

The editor then remembered that she had gone back to work full-time when both her boys were 3 months old. There was no opportunity for long-term fogginess. There was an office with a name on the door; employees to manage; and voicemail and e-mails to cut through the mist. She told me she thought I was very brave for choosing to freelance so I could spend more time with my daughter. She confessed her struggles, adding up the hours she spent commuting and working versus the hours she was able to spend with her boys. I felt a surge of terror as she sent up her list of compromises like a sinking ship. Nobody wins. The kitchen we were chatting in had a shiny new stainless steel refrigerator and I could see the fuzzy outline of my body in it. An anthropomorphized kangaroo-person with Kate stuck to my chest in her snuggly. How did I really feel about my new reflection?

I made a choice to freelance so I could have a flexible schedule and spend time with my daughter. But maybe the choice made me? Now that she’s older, and our bank balance reflects the loss of a full-time second income, I’m wondering who benefits most from this arrangement? I visit a moment in my childhood. I am sitting with my mother who has just started working part-time after freelancing for my first three years. She is holding a wall calendar while I cross off her “work days” with a giant red marker. Probably just as painful as peeling 6 Dora Band-Aids off.

Today I am a paranoid secret agent, I sprint down the beach road past the playground. I’m hoping that Kate or her playmates won’t spot me out of the corner of their steely eyes. Maybe they’re still at home under the spell of My Little Pony. It’s a gorgeous day. Hong Kong winters bring warmish winds and bright sunlight that make a person happy to be alive.

Between the glare of the sun and the hair blowing in my eyes, I can barely see the computer screen. As the waves rush in and the majestic Hong Kong kite birds swoop overhead, I squint at my writing and peck out words with one hand while I pick the hair out of my teeth with the other.

I have become a time thief. Stalking the streets of our small village, stealing away into the mid-morning light with my laptop and papers, hiding behind the fruit stand when I spot my daughter walking towards me. I sneak away before she gets home from school. I sneak away to the library, the cafe, and the windy beach. And then I worry about her. Is she bored? Did she eat her lunch? Is she arguing with her friends?

If I finish early I can sneak back to see her. I will put my key in the door and hear her scream “MAMA”. I won’t even make it inside the front hallway before she comes careening towards me to wrap her arms tight around my waist.

Quirky Gweilo Mama

In 1988, after a bad break-up, I wept on a New York City subway for 45 minutes. No one looked directly at me and most people slowly slid away from me. Unless you’re bleeding to death – and maybe even then – New Yorkers don’t like to get too involved. It’s a self-preservation thing. You never know who is really lurking behind the seemingly sweet façade of a teary young woman. It’s a big city full of all kinds. New Yorkers learn to mind their own business.

Which is why it’s deeply weird for me to walk out the door of our Hong Kong apartment. We live inside a street market and, unless it’s high tourist season, the vendors are usually so bored that any diversion is of interest to them. If the diversion happens to be me, that quirky Gweilo mama, then all the more welcome.

First there are friendly hellos and questions about where I’m going, what I’m doing, and where my daughter is. Sometimes there are comments on my appearance:

“You don’t look so fat today Carla…”

what I’m carrying:

“Why do you go to that expensive foodmarket… too expensive..”

what they hope I’m doing:

“Going to get Kate? Bring her back home so we can play with her!”

If I have a cold - diagnoses, medicines and herbal treatments are recommended. If Kate has mosquito bites, various unguents are pressed into my hands. If I’m dressed up, eyebrows are raised and I am asked questions about the location of my husband. Nothing goes unnoticed or uncommented on.

This winter there is a low level of shock and awe when Kate and I emerge dressed in what I feel is appropriate clothing for January in temperate Hong Kong. As our eternally over-heated girl bounds down the market street in a tee-shirt and light hoodie, I am besieged by concerns for her temperature. Hands reach out to touch her hands and stroke her arms. “She’s cold, she’s so cold… are you cold Kate?” I try to point out that they are standing still while she is generating the heat of a normal energetic child. My excuses are greeted with nods and sweet smiles, but underneath there is a question brewing. How clueless is the quirky Gweilo Mama?

They have uncovered my Achille’s heel: Mama Imposter Syndrome. Each morning the curtain rises just outside the door to our apartment, and my fears of being unmasked are realized. Sometimes, my wee drama queen doesn’t even make it down the stairs before she decides that it’s time to have a messy tantrum. Her loud wails rip through my shaky grasp on parenting and expose me to a rapt audience. I am on stage with no costume. I am taking a test in my pajamas. The salespeople and store owners from the street market where we live; the ancient bowlegged woman who tears up the cardboard boxes; the sanitation workers taking their morning tea break; the local philosopher who sells Ming vases; they’re all clucking, pointing and, incredibly, laughing. Maybe it’s my quirky Gweilo mama paranoia, but I feel like they all know something I don’t and it’s me they are laughing at.

I stand beside the histrionic pocket-diva and harrumph about a “huge time out” and “no videos for a week,” but she continues her barefoot soliloquy. All she lacks is a bullhorn, a sandwich board and a giant inflatable rat. She rejects the sneakers I am asking her to wear. She not only rejects the sneakers, she refuses all footwear that threatens to enclose her hot little feet.

It’s a stand-off. Actually, it’s a kneel off because now I’m kneeling down to make some serious and significant eye contact. It’s a useless gesture. At this point, the star of the show is speaking in tongues and practically levitating with the force of her indignation. Then, without warning, the Deus Ex Machina descends. It’s the lady who runs the silk bathrobe shop. Before I can make any more threats, Kate is scooped onto the bathrobe lady’s lap where she happily sucks a sweetie and patiently allows both sneakers to be placed and then firmly Velcro-ed on her newly placid feet.

I am left kneeling in the street, raw with the scratches of public humiliation and furious that bad behavior has been rewarded with candy. But, while I yearn for the anonymity of the F Train and my posse of "time-out-wielding-mind-your-own-business" mama-friends, I see that my daughter is growing up with an unparalleled sense of love and safety. Here strangers reach out to touch Kate’s hair or stroke her cheek with curiosity, affection and even reverence. She is often photographed, handed sweeties and engaged in conversation as if she was her own decision-making entity and not a dependent child.

Sometimes toothless grannies will see her eating an ice cream and, in clear-as-a-bell sign language, demand that she give them a bite. When she reluctantly offers up her treat, they applaud her generosity and kiss her on the cheek. They’re just testing her – it’s their job as part of the Hong Kong community that is raising our daughter. Grannies teach morality, bathrobe ladies give sweeties.

Before Kate and I go back to New York for a visit, I usually stage an intervention by role-playing “bad guys” and lecturing her on staying close and not trusting strangers. It feels strange to be injecting this element of fear into her innocent life but I think she understands that the world is filled with different kinds of people. I also think she understands that her tantrums won’t always end in sweeties. I know she understands, better than I do, that her quirky Gweilo mama is doing the best she can.

Grilled Cheese

The jackhammer is a familiar sound in Hong Kong. Today there were three different hydraulic tunes competing for air time in our village. The high-pitched whine of the undersea derrick that is turning a rocky seawall into a seaside promenade; the rackety jangle of a sidewalk repair team; and a new piercing dentist’s-drill whirr from a construction crew down the street. It’s progress with a capital P, for Loud. Unlike our old Brooklyn neighborhood, where continuous but genteel brownstone renovation was the norm, Hong Kong is the frontier-land. A place ripe for round-the-clock conquest by implements of construction. And it isn’t just waking us plebes up at 6AM with its lawless drones and screeches; our friends in chic high-rise buildings and swanky condos are besieged as well. Progress is not intimidated by class or bad weather, it doesn’t take coffee breaks and it works on Sundays. We are forever taking inconvenient detours around its awkward saw horses and dusty arrows. I am learning to live with it, to absorb it as yet another instrument in the symphonic cacophony of our days here. In Hong Kong, the Goddess of Type-A-Personalities laughs nightly.

Festivals and celebrations take place all year in Hong Kong. Many of these events are somewhat difficult for us foreigners to decipher. One minute we’re walking to the post office, the next minute we’re running from a giant dancing lion with its own marching timpani band. Sometimes a simple one-day-holiday becomes an excuse for a weeklong celebration with roast-pork-filled karaoke parties, often right below our bedroom windows. People here live in such tight spaces that they’ll use any excuse to take a party outside – even to the non-descript cement walkway near our building. But, we don’t mind. They all work so hard, we’re happy they are taking the opportunity to cut loose and have some fun. Except when the karaoke machine gets stuck on the greatest hits of Deborah Gibson.

The Tin Hau Festival happens every year on the 23rd day of the third month of the lunar calendar. This year Tin Hau started on May 1st. Tin Hau is the patron saint of the fisherman; also known as the Queen of Heaven and the Goddess of the Sea. Before she was all those exalted things, she was just a fisherman’s daughter who was good at predicting storms. This is a very handy kind of daughter to have if you’re a fisherman.

During Tin Hau the normally murky gray Hong Kong sky was very blue because the black-smoke-belching factories in China were closed for the week. To our surprise, the soccer pitch across from our apartment was transformed into a theatre for a Chinese Opera company. It was an extraordinary thing to behold – like the Chinese version of an Amish barn-raising. First a giant load of bamboo was delivered and, before the last stick was unloaded, men were swinging from ropes and tip-toeing along unbelievably narrow bamboo rails in order to create a real theater out of thin air in 72 hours. This was old-fashioned progress, no jackhammers, no screaming work crews, just the solid sounds of hammer meeting wood and rope wrapping round bamboo. I was mesmerized. Having watched a few theatres go up in my time, I could not believe how fast they erected this very sound structure, complete with stage, backstage, sloped seating area and lighting grid. When I wandered in on day three, there was already a roof, a ramp entrance, many “NO SPITTING” signs (in English and Cantonese), and a snazzy elevated box office. That evening, when I looked out our living room window, colored lights were glittering in the night sky and bright flags were snapping in the sea breeze. It was exhilarating.

Then the opera started.

Twice a day, everyday. Each performance lasting roughly 4 hours. As far as I can tell, the main instrument in Chinese Opera is a cymbal that sounds like someone is slamming together the tops of two aluminum garbage cans. First slowly, over and over and over – then many times quickly for dramatic emphasis. Opening night of the opera, Kate came home from a late play-date just as Scene Two (of about 250) was starting. Our apartment, which has a lovely bank of windows facing the soccer pitch and the water, was lit up like a pinball machine. I was really hoping Kate wouldn’t notice that my shoulders were hovering near my ears and my jaw was locked with anxiety. While she was taking off her shoes, she looked up and said, “Mama, there’s a show in our living room!” My thoughts exactly. I lifted her up so she could see the multi-colored light-bulbs that were strung up over the roof of the theatre and were now making our living room look like a carnival sideshow. To Kate it looked like wonderland.

I tried to carry on as if nothing was happening. For a bedtime story I picked one of Kate’s favorite comfort books, an old-fashioned alphabet primer about two farm kids named Penny and Johnny. While I read, I found myself fantasizing about gathering eggs with Penny and making homemade jam with Johnny. I could almost feel the soft snow falling outside the farmhouse windows as the kids snuggled on their overstuffed couch in front of the fire. Suddenly, the soprano began to sing, and her high shrieky voice careened through the apartment. Kate looked up and said, “I want to see the show, but I’m scared because it’s very loud.” I just wanted fresh eggs, jam, and a blanket of quiet snow.

In desperation (and fear that Kate wouldn’t be able to fall asleep), I threw off my Jewish upbringing and embraced the polytheistic traditions of the East. I made up a story about the opera being very loud so that all the demons could be chased away and the Gods could protect our village. Kate nodded, gave me a hug, asked for water, and fell asleep almost immediately. Later, Peter and I laughed as we peeked in at her splayed, sleeping body oblivious to the clanging, screeching ruckus still happening all around her.

En route to Bali for a peaceful respite from our intense Hong Kong lives, Kate’s bag went AWOL in Singapore. On the hot, bumpy car-ride to our remote villa, Peter and I sent each other worried looks. Kate’s Sheepie was in the missing bag. Sheepie, whose name conveniently rhymes with “sleepy,” is a very soft stuffed animal that has been in Kate’s constant sleeping companion since her baby days. Watching Kate fall asleep with Sheepie is like watching a time-lapse marriage of girl and beast: A vacant stare comes over Kate’s face as her chubby fingers rhythmically stroke Sheepie’s back; Sheepie’s ear is in Kate’s mouth; Sheepie is completely covering Kate’s head; Sheepie is flung over Kate’s back; Sheepie is squashed under Kate’s sweaty head; Sheepie is lying facedown on the floor… They are passionate co-sleepers who had never been separated.

When we arrived at the villa, I went to check out our bedrooms while Peter and Kate frolicked around the lush garden and giant fishponds that surrounded the compound. I discovered that the room we were intending to put Kate in was also a gallery of gorgeous but terrifying tribal masks. Hundreds of bold, colorful masks – many with dramatic, screaming faces - were hung on long, felt tapestries. While the lovely Balinese housekeepers played with Kate, I cornered Peter for a Mama-Anxiety-Explosion. No Sheepie, a room full of scary masks, very loud Friday night prayers from competing local temples echoing through our rice-pattied-paradise… WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO??? Vacation-mode Peter, yin to my clanging yang, was annoyingly calm.

After 2 pints of lukewarm Indonesian lager, we broke the news to Kate. Sheepie was having dinner and a sleepover in Singapore. We told her she could pick anything in the house to sleep with, including dolls and toys that were not allowed in her bed back home. She chose a bright pink batik pillow and her doll Maya (who is also called “my daughter,” and sometimes, inexplicably, “Sally”). She didn’t notice the masks. She wasn’t bothered by the Battle of the Imams echoing through the surrounding fields. She was almost asleep before the end of her bedtime story and she woke with the roosters in the morning.

Back on the soccer pitch, the Chinese Opera has crashed its last cymbal. The jackhammer continues to pound away, and it has been joined by a giant bulldozer that moves the shattered detritus to a growing pile of rubble. A sign outside the construction site tells us that in 2007 we can expect something really fabulous. Unfortunately, we don’t know what it is because the description is written in Chinese. One fact that is clear in any language - - it is officially typhoon season. I have stopped thinking about construction because I’m busy worrying about leaks, floods and monsoons. With 100% humidity and daily driving rainstorms, the seams of our walls weep from the overflow, while our sweating air conditioners spew water from their overworked vents. I know it’s not just me, I have a feeling that typhoon season probably stressed out the Goddess Tin Hau too.

Today Kate and I shared a grilled cheese sandwich for lunch. We were silent because Kate had assigned us roles in a pantomime. I was a fish and she was a crab. She apologized for giving herself the better part, and then demonstrated how many different movements crabs can make with their claws. When I suggested that fish also have some fancy moves, she shushed me and insisted that I, as the fish, could only have one wordless puffy-mouth movement.

I was happy to be silent while indulging in the buttery, cheesy pleasure of homemade grilled cheese. As long as I made a fish face every 10 seconds, Kate was happy to eat and commune with her inner (and very vivid) crab. Usually I’m not around when she has lunch or, if I am there, I’m reading to her or bustling about getting stuff organized. As we ate, I realized that she was slowly pulling pieces off the grilled cheese sandwich and eating them the way Sarah Jessica Parker might eat blini on Sex and the City. I started to feel faint watching her eat like that - she looked like she was 25. Suddenly her weird crab movements made her seem like she was sharing an animated gossip with someone across a table for two. And a memory came - so clear I could feel it on my hand. Feeding Kate tiny pieces of mango with my fingers, the slippery fruit disappearing instantly into her nearly toothless mouth.

Bouncing around together

I have this memory that has been haunting me. I’m very pregnant and I’m sitting on the floor of our living room on 3rd Street in Brooklyn. In front of me is an infant car seat and, in my hands, the instruction booklet. I am convinced that I will not be allowed to have a baby unless I can figure out how to properly thread the car seat. But my geometrically-impaired brain cannot make the diagram in the booklet correspond with the back of the actual car seat. And I know that if the seat isn’t threaded the exact right way, my tiny, defenseless, improperly tethered, new baby will ricochet out of the car seat and fly through the air. This image collides with the thick brew of pregnancy hormones coursing through my body. I am a mewling, weeping mess marooned on the living room floor.

Later, Peter’s less hormonally ravaged and more logical mind prevailed. I think we went to the local police station and met someone called the “Car Seat Safety Officer.” I have a vague notion that Mr. Car Seat Safety reassured us by poking and prodding the various buckles and belts and then stuck his uniformed knee firmly into our little grey plaid seat and pulled up hard on the seatbelt. I remember thinking that our car (a 1987 Chrysler Ciera called HotBird) was probably not the safest set of wheels on the block, but I was relieved that the car seat had gotten the official safety stamp of approval.

On her maiden voyage down Manhattan’s West Side Drive, we were all scandalized when the supposedly well-tethered 18-hour-old-Kate’s entire top half of her body flopped down into her lap. We were all too terrified to tighten the straps around this new little translucent person, so as Peter drove us back to Brooklyn, my sister held Kate’s tiny grapefruit head in her hands. I stared over the back of the front seat in horror. I’m pretty sure the “Auntie’s Head-Hold” wasn’t one of the diagrams in the instruction booklet.

I subsequently became an expert at car seats. You've got to be. You can’t go anywhere without one, and even the most expensive ones - even the Consumer Reports A +++ rated ones - have straps that are forever getting mucked up and twisted. (It’s the babies, they’re busy messing them up back there while you’re listening to NPR.) I have spent so much time rethreading and futzing with Kate’s car seats that I have fantasized about being a contestant on a “Beat The Clock” type game show where I compete to restore car seats to order in mere moments. Or, better yet, try and stump me with a naked car seat frame after you've been forced to take the cover off and wash it because you can no longer stand the stench of the multiply-puked-on-fabric. I bet I can have that baby up and running in 6 minutes flat with just a phillips head screwdriver and one long pinky nail.

Eventually you lighten up a bit. Somewhere en route to Hong Kong via California, I lost the locking clip for Kate’s car seat and I never bothered to get a new one. Every time we went around a curve on the San Diego freeways, Kate’s seat would lurch to one side or the other because the automatic seatbelts in my dad’s car can’t hold a car seat securely without a clip. Kate enjoyed the excitement and I had other things on my mind. When we arrived in Hong Kong, I astonished the cab driver by trying to buckle the car seat into the back of his taxi. He kept up a constant mime of “mother holds baby in her lap” while I broke all my nails trying to pry the belt out from between the seats. Now the car seat has been banished to the utility room along with the bikes, the stroller and the roller blades. These days, Kate automatically sits on our laps on all methods of conveyance. She and Peter even have jokes about the “Dada seatbelt” (two hands that come around her and “lock” into place). Sometimes, when the bus is really crowded, we don’t get the window seat and I have to struggle to keep myself and Kate from spilling into the aisle as we careen around the hairpin curves that wind down from our village. Kate laughs as I try to keep her from flying out of my lap and I think about my sister calmly holding a floppy infant head in between her thumb and forefinger.

Off we go to Bali for our first holiday away from Hong Kong. We debate bringing the car seat, we even try to e-mail our Balinese driver to see if he has a car seat. When we don’t hear anything, we just get on the plane and decide to go with the flow. There are no seat belts in the van that picks us up at steamy Denpasar airport. Just Dewa, a lovely Balinese man who will be our driver for the week, and two rows of comfortable seats. Kate immediately clambers into the van and sits between us, pleased to have her own space for once. On the way to our villa in Ubud, our fears are somewhat allayed by the fact that Dewa is an excellent driver and no one is driving very fast because the roads are narrow and filled with motorbikes. Later we realize that most of the motorbikes in Bali carry a whole family, usually with babies perched jauntily, terrifyingly, on the driver’s lap. Sometimes the bikes carry a whole family and their groceries, with mama riding side-saddle holding the bags. In Lovina, a seaside village, a motorbike carrying a giant piece of bamboo made it look like the tree was taking a holiday.

During one of our excursions, we saw a motorbike chug by that appeared to be driven by a 6-year-old boy. Finally we just gave ourselves over to the place and felt grateful that we hadn’t lugged our car seat. Kate spent most of her time in the van comfortably bouncing around between us, sleeping sprawled on our laps, or scattering the refuse of her many half-eaten snacks on the floor. One evening Dewa brought his kids to meet Kate, and they shocked us by using the van as their playroom on wheels. As his father calmly steered down the dark, narrow lanes of Ubud, the younger boy climbed around like a monkey – switching the lights on and off and flipping over the seats. Kate watched in wonder. These are boundaries she had never considered breaking. She whispered to me, “He’s a bad boy,” and I realized that she was applying her own moral code to this very different world we’d entered. “No,” I said, “he just has a lot of energy.” She is old enough to start differentiating between what is right for her and what is right for others.

So are we. We’re learning to be flexible. No need to shed our ways completely if we can adapt to each new situation. But, on our own here, we’re learning to rely on our intuition, our consensus as parents, our gut. We miss the wonderful advice and counsel of our trusted friends, families, doctors, books, websites and teachers, but this experience is proving to be good for all three of us. We are each learning self-reliance, we’re getting tougher. We’re bouncing around in the car/bus/taxi together. We’ve left the instruction booklet behind.

Let her be... Let her be

I want one with blue and pink flowers. Not little ones, big ones. But not too big and with no freckles or bumps.


When we first arrived in Hong Kong, Kate was still pretty malleable in terms of fashion. Yes there were certain “itchy” or “yucchy” items that she refused to wear, but basically whatever I put on her stayed on her. I thought that I was an old hand at these quick-change days in Toddlerville, but I was completely surprised by the arrival of a pint-sized Valkyrie swooping down to her closet in full screech. Overnight Kate has become a snarling fashionista – somewhere between Anna Wintour and Stevie Nicks - rivaling a full-blown tween in her fierce unwillingness to allow certain pieces of clothing anywhere near her body. Strangely for me, her fashion taste is decidedly, well… weird. She likes things to be “close” to her body and she prefers very bold statements. This roughly translates into tight, garish, flowery summer dresses with no shirt underneath. Cold weather does not threaten these choices. Kate does not mind suffering for her beauty ideals.

Living in the market, we have instant access to a mouth-watering array of discounted children’s clothing. I have no idea what Gap truck pulls into these windy streets, but there are name brands at deep discounts literally hanging from the trees here. I know I’m feeling more at home because I recently balked at paying US$8.00 for a beautiful corduroy Oshkosh dress - an item I would have paid at least $20.00 for at home. It’s a good thing I balked, because Kate is not interested in the nice stuff – if it’s pretty or classy it’s not for her. Splash a day-glo rainbow or a giant rose on the front, plop a pink-tongued Japanese doggie in repeating patterns down the side, and she’s patting down my pockets panting, “buy that, I wanna buy that…”

She is starting to stand out at the playground. So many of the children here come from moneyed homes and their deliciously swank clothes are a reflection of this. Ever the label conscious New Yorker, I have become wincingly aware of my daughter’s incredibly odd-looking get-ups. Ever the aching-to-be-perfect parent, I have become increasingly uncomfortable with my uncharitable thoughts. Should I compromise her iconoclastic tendencies so she’ll fit in better? Should I force the matching tights, the pretty ponytails, the imitation Burberry skirts? It’s not like I would go broke outfitting her beautifully here. It’s not like I couldn’t just insist that she wear what I choose. I am the parent, I do rule.

Lately these irksome thoughts are starting to spread into other areas. Like when her meltdowns attract the clucks and stares of the Chinese grandmas and the Filipina helpers. We have always tried to ignore her typical toddler fits – staying calm but slightly detached when she loses her emotional cookies in public. We know that this is a necessary evil, and she usually bounces back very quickly. These days she is going to school during what used to be her nap-time, and she is a bit more irritable than usual. I’ve decided that she’s a cross between a raging lunatic and Shirley Temple. The fun part is that I never know who I’m going to pick up at school. I try to be prepared with snacks and sympathy. Often Shirley accompanies me to the playground, chatting or singing merrily away, holding my hand or sweetly popping grapes into her mouth. Unfortunately, it’s usually Chuckie who walks home with me. A snarling, wheedling, wildcat who, at a moment’s notice, can throw her possessed little body on the ground in despair at whatever fresh horror I have provoked by asking her to keep her voice down.

I’m slowly realizing that we live in a bit of a fishbowl. It’s an incredibly friendly place but we are swimming by the same fish and the same fake sea castles every day. I’m just beginning to notice how upset everyone around us gets when I don’t immediately peel Chuckie/Kate up off the ground. I have to fight all my self-conscious, good-girl instincts in order to just let her be. It looks and sounds and feels so much worse than it is. Or, that’s what I tell myself, over and over… We’re an attractive pair, while she’s frothing on the ground, I’m muttering to myself above her. Once she gets it out, she’s usually much better and we can walk home in peace. Now that I’m confessing, I’ll admit that sometimes she trips and falls in the market and I don’t rush to pick her up. If we lived in the suburbs, the same thing might happen in the backyard and I wouldn’t even notice. I’m pretty sure that those who witness these falls think I’m a heartless heathen who should have her motherhood license revoked. Though they look dramatic, most of her falls are pretty harmless. 95% of the time she jumps up and continues on her way. Now I wince when she falls, but it’s not for her, it’s for me. I know I am going to be the subject of gossip and whispers and, ever since 7th grade, I’ve always hated that feeling.

I am trying so hard to let my daughter be her own person. Trying so hard not to let my inner control freak spoil her fun. But, every time I see another mom check out one of Kate’s bizarre outfits, I am transported to 7th grade Social Studies and Barbie Alfieri’s withering gaze. Every time some well-meaning person leans down to pat my yowling, prostrate daughter, they might as well be handing me a report card with a big red “F” on it. And I really want to be the good girl, the best girl, the one with the gold stars for extra credit whom everyone wants to be friends with. How can I be that person with this unpredictable child clinging to my legs?

Today we went to the local cafe after music class. Some of the other moms from the class were there and they were chatting while their kids played. I bought some drinks for Kate and me, I turned around and found I couldn’t breathe. I was back in the High School cafeteria, emerging from the food line with my tray, goofy smile on my face as I desperately tried not to look desperate. One of the moms smiled at me and gestured for us to join their merry party. Relief washed over me. They like me, they really like me. Then I noticed that Kate was heading up the stairs. I tried to get her to turn around and come down. I patiently explained that we were going to sit with these nice, friendly folks from our music class who had INVITED us to have some fun together. I guess my voice got really high and squeaky, because she turned to me and said, “I want a mommy with a regular voice. Read to me upstairs. I don’t want to sit with those babies.”

We never even apologized. I’m sure those moms think I’m incredibly rude. I probably am. We read three books, upstairs, and talked about what happens when you lose your baby teeth. She is who she is. I am who I am. I just have to be her mom.

Holding on

We cannot hold them. Our children. We cannot hold them tight enough. That terrible tsunami stole so many children from their parents’ arms and parents from their children’s hands. I know how tight I would have held my daughter. I hope those parents who lost children find some solace in the knowledge that their strongest grip was no match for the strength of that seismic wave.

I have been thinking a lot about holding Kate close. Today was her first day at Montessori school and she ran right into the teacher’s arms, forgetting to kiss me goodbye. I’m sure that next week when she realizes this is an every day gig, she’ll have some tears. But today she flew from me and started the beginning of a (hopefully) long life of leaving me and her dad behind.

On Sunday morning Kate and I were playing outside when she looked up at me and said “I miss Dada. I’m tired of Mama and me.”

I know exactly how she feels.

Peter’s hours are very long right now and often demand his weekends as well. I miss him too. I’m also tired of “Mama and me.” Actually, I’m more than tired, I’m exhausted. I keep reminding myself that we only get this time once. That soon she’ll be at school and playing with friends, and I’ll look back longingly on these endless hours of having to pretend I’m Flounder, the Little Mermaid’s best friend. But today, it feels like a very long time that I’ll be pleading, prodding, provoking and placating for hours every day. I want motherhood to be a joy, not a job, but some days it feels like the worst kind of drudgery.

I’d be lying if I wrote that I wasn’t envious of the freshness that Peter is able to bring to his parenting. He and Kate have magical adventures – filled with stories, games, weird food and new friends – in the very same places she and I have been dully plodding about all week. We go to the playground often, and very occasionally meet another kid who plays with us for a little while. Mostly we try to steer clear of the bad boys who mistreat their babysitters and take apart the swing-set, and the chic girls who don’t like anyone to touch their hair. (Kate is as annoyingly persistent as the most flame-obsessed moth when it comes to girls with long, silky hair and cool barrettes.) Peter goes to the same playground and meets the Brady Bunch. Some law-abiding, short-haired, family of five whose children all play with Kate and hug her when she has to go.

Peter and Kate’s relationship gives me great joy, and I am always thankful to have such a committed and loving partner in parenthood. But they seem to be having a lot more fun with fewer conflicts. I feel like the two of them are in one of those ads where the people always look so happy and frolicky, and I, the annoyed consumer, am left wondering why that same product doesn’t make me as happy as it makes them. I’d be lying if I wrote that I wasn’t envious of their new intensely close relationship.

Before Kate and I arrived in Hong Kong, while we were together for six weeks in California, I was the prince. Now Dada is Aladdin and I am the monkey. Abu. The sidekick. Since the joyful reunion with Dada, I’m no longer Shrek, I am Donkey. Some days I get to be one of the Fairy Godmothers from Sleeping Beauty, but if I don’t act fast and do something really magical, I am demoted to the role of the Owl. I used to have this shtick that worked really well. I told “Kate and Her Magic Ballet Slippers” stories. Every story had a lost or hungry animal that Kate saved by donning her magic ballet slippers and leaping through the air with the animal safely tucked in her tutu. Those stories are now as outré as Barney. All the really good stories come from Dada. And, infuriatingly, the man can spin a fantastic story at the drop of a hat. When it’s clear to Kate that I don’t know which story she is referring to,

Mama, can you tell the potato man story?
YOU DON’T KNOW THE POTATO MAN STORY?
Okay, do you know the suspicious hippo one?
What about the puppet-head mother who eats breakfast?

she sighs and wearily instructs me to tell a Barbie story. These are all the same and have to do with a gorgeous Barbie who lives in a castle and has lots of clothes and some magic ponies. It’s the infomercial of kiddie stories, and she can tell that I’m phoning it in….

The indignities don’t stop there. I often have to run through the house while “mice” nibble on my “tushie.” When I feel the first nibble, I have to scream in the exact high-pitched scream that made her howl with laughter the first time she “nibbled” on Dada’s tushie. “DO THE GOOD SCREAM, MAMA – THE GOOD SCREAM.” I can’t remember the repertoire. I can’t make the good boy noises. I’m just mama, the one who makes her wear a jacket and combs the knots out of her screaming head of curls. I recently showed Kate our wedding album because I know she likes brides. Lost in a nostalgic haze, I didn’t realize that she was getting quieter and quieter. Finally, she whacked the book shut. Seeing pictures of her father on every page just made her realize who was missing. “Where’s Dada?” she cried, “I just want to be with him….” And then she buried her head in his pillow like a love-struck teen.

This afternoon when Kate came running out of school, she grabbed me so hard I thought I would suffocate. She refused to leave my arms and spent the next 5 minutes pressing her forehead tight against mine as if she wanted to inhale me. What I clearly need to remember is that while I’m busy trying to balance Kate, and my work, and my own increasingly desperate needs, Peter doesn’t get any balance at all. His scale is constantly unbalanced. In this time of tragedy and loss, I will try to put my better, smarter self forward and realize how lucky I am to be able to hold my sweet girl so tight to me.