Times gone by

Well I wasn't planning on posting but then an old friend got in touch (Hi Jeanne, would you like some exposure?) and that led to me Facebook friending her and then I got all started thinking about friends from that era of my life (1990-94ish) and so I friended another friend who then linked me to other friends and so on and so forth so that through the magic of Facebook I am suddenly sitting back at Valley Mill Camp in the 90s.

Whew. What a time. There I was 18+ pretending to be a grown up, acting as a counsellor to impressionable young women. My first group of campers were 11-13 and I was way more scared than they on day one. Would they think I was cool? Would they like me? It was worse than high school. Thankfully, by the magic of just being a college student I started out with a large helping of assumed coolness and things went pretty smoothly. I remember a few of those first campers, I guess like teachers remember their students, but not all of them. Genna (Jenna?) and Eileen are names I remember. Narda and Hilary stayed at camp for years after, becoming counsellors alongside me and friends of a sort. But I had no preconceived notions of their futures. They were so interestingly different all of them. I wanted the best for them and experienced my first parental feelings I think, having to wipe away tears when they would do fantastic at the horse riding show.

Funny enough though, I was certain I never wanted to have children. I liked teenagers, hated babies and just thought it would never happen that my mind would change about the subject. I knew that part of the reason was that I was terrified I'd be like my mother to any children I might have. It didn't occur to me that right there at camp I was demonstrating otherwise. I was certain it was inevitable. It wasn't until years later that my therapist put the major reason into words for me: I had already raised a child.

My mother was obviously never capable of being a mom to me. She was the most important child in our family. Her insomnia ruled the house in the mornings, her depressions and highs determined how the day went and we all adjusted our selves and our lives around her needs. Every time we were about to depart on a family trip I counseled her out of her belief that it was a mistake to go. Every time she felt a distant relative had offended her I talked her through it. Present giving was about what she wanted us to like or what she might have wanted to receive at our age, not about what we really wanted. And there was no way to say you didn't want what she had given you, the rejection might kill her.

Somehow there was an unspoken rule that her psyche was so delicate we all had to tiptoe around her. So why would I feel parented in that situation? I was the parent, dad was oblivious, and only my brother and I grew up I guess. I always was a little older than my years. The death of my brother and the total deterioration of my mother sealed that deal.

So, I look on these women today who were children back then with me and am so proud, amazed and slightly self satisfied that perhaps I had a hand in who they've become. My proudest moment that first summer was when one of my kids called the other one "gay" and the second kid parroted back what I had been saying all summer "gay is not an insult." I hope that stuck. The next summer I learned from the kids to lighten up. I had been sticking the rules so hard down their throats that they told the boss I didn't like them. How horrifying. I loved them! So I learned some of the balancing act a parent has to do between rules and loving enough to let some rules slide. From my friend Jeanne, who started out as a peer but ended up as the boss lady the last two summers, I learned the value of not giving a crap what anyone thinks of you, whether it be on the improv stage (she is the best drama teacher ever) or on the dance floor. And years later, when she was my bridesmaid, we boogied down together without a care.

A lot of these lessons were not learned immediately, rather they percolated for years. Now I can see some of them becoming part of me and I hope that means that I taught those girls a thing or two also. Now I'm faced with the reality that 4 human beings are stuck with me for years, not just a summer, and I will determine a great deal of what they believe and who they become. I hope to heck they grow up wanting to parent because they want to be like me. I can only hope that they look back on my mothering with a laugh about the mistakes I made and a positive feeling about how I made them feel about themselves. Because I think they're neat as heck and thank God I decided to become a mother after all. Lord knows the world needs a few more people with my sarcastic sense of humor around.

The trip report

I know many of you have been hanging on the edge of your seats to hear about my trip to Maryland with the infant. Those of you who even knew I went that is. I think it's telling that the only photo I have of the whole weekend is this one:

Yes, that's my child chewing on the very common airport chair. 

It started out well enough. In fact I'm quite suspicious there was some kind of bait and switch thing my child did on me but I have no way of proving it. Truth serum only works on those able to form sentences. So, we headed out in the early morning hours of a Thursday to the airport. He slept in the car as I had hoped. He was great in the airport despite the computers breaking down and them having to hand write my boarding pass. Security, no problem. Bad decision to carry him to the gate after that combined with him choosing to roll off the changing table in the bathroom while I dug through the bag for a diaper shook me a bit, but I was more worried about him getting crabby in the waiting area. I am pretty sure we scared most of the waiting room into thinking they were getting on board a plane with a nightmare about to unfold, but I was not sure yet. I knew he was tired.

Thankfully, he fell asleep on take off, let me eat breakfast, awoke, and played and then fell asleep again on my chest for most of the rest of the flight. I was bored once I was done napping, and he left a foot wide swath of drool on my chest but that's better than frantically managing a screaming infant. I arrived on the East Coast in good shape, got lost like an idiot who hadn't lived in the area for over 10 years, but made it to the hotel and collapsed with my favorite chinese food. Folks, I got to sleep in a bed for 11 hours with only one interruption requiring my attention the whole night. 11 HOURS. 

What mom can say that? 

Well apparently you moms with one child. Or maybe one child with an ear infection, who missed his nap and is doped up on ibuprofen. Whatever. 

In any case, one might think that the cough cough sneeze barf that occurred mid-day Friday all over the car seat was a bad omen, but I had a great Friday. I ended that day thinking this one kid stuff was a breeze. This traveling with a sick infant to a place where the temperatures had soared over 100 degrees while maintaining the humidity of a steam sauna and harboring a plague of stink bugs from a foreign land was easy!

Right. 

Somehow the honeymoon ended Saturday. I started crying about 10 am. I had driven for over an hour to try to get the kid to take a nap in the car only to find him just as crabby as if he hadn't had one, found that he had a taste for dirty hay strewn about the floor of the infirmary where I was to spend most of my time cataloguing silent auction items, come to the conclusion that I sure as heck couldn't handle the heat in that area and then realized that this child was not going to let me get jack done without swallowing a stink bug or some foreign object requiring surgery to remove. 

Now for some information you need to understand my tears. For the last 8 years (I think ) I have been the savior of this silent auction. I  usually had the luxury of spending hours there in the 3 days leading up to the event and 12 hours on the very day of the event running the auction while the rest of the fundraiser went on around me. It is chaos I turn into control. I feel like a rockstar and am told how fantastic I am multiple times per day while I'm there. Meanwhile, I get to revisit one of my favorite areas on the planet, the green, leafy, wild animal filled woodlands of Maryland. The old houses, the stone walls, the winding country roads. I love visiting even if I don't get to see friends. But this year I found myself incapable of accomplishing what I come there to do. I couldn't save the day if that infant wouldn't let me work!

In any case, not to draw out a long and boring story, I still managed to make it work. With the invaluable help of some 12th hour childcare I was freed to make it work with the time I had left. It wasn't as much fun as usual but they apparently made 12k off the silent auction alone, so we'll call that successful. But I had spent a lot of hours driving around the Maryland countryside thinking. Thinking about my dad mostly, and how little he knew of what I knew. 

Did that make sense? My father didn't really take the time to find out what I knew. He was such an expert on everything that I guess it didn't occur to him to find out what I was an expert about, something a parent should really do. I think most of you will agree with me on that. I hope to be an expert on what my childrens' strengths and powerhouse skills are. I hope to be constantly amazed by what they know that I don't know. But then I'm the result of how I was raised. Maybe I'll err in the other direction and they'll think I know nothing. Whatever. But the result of all this thinking was not apparent to me until the day after I returned home. I hit full on mourning my dad again. The second anniversary of his death is the end of November. Apparently it's still raw, especially when I'm back where he and I shared such a love of the area and spent hours driving around together and now I'm driving around with MY kid in the car. Heavy. 

So, after an exhausting couple of days in the heat and bugs we returned to the airport with a sense of confidence. The flight shouldn't have been any different than 4 days before. Same time of day, same seats, whatever. It was Not. The. Same. 

This child would not sleep. He teased me with a short nap on takeoff. But then? When I was desperate for rest? Not a chance. I was physically exhausted from the day before at the auction, I was mentally exhausted from caring for an infant 24 hours a day for 5 straight days in weird circumstances, I was emotionally exhausted from dealing with dad stuff. I lost my COTTON PICKING MIND. I was bawling 3 hours into the flight knowing there were two hours left and this child was going to explode any minute and there was nothing I could do about it. I bawled and couldn't stop. I would slow down and then catch a glimpse of a flight attendant or another flyer and think how much they must have been pitying me and I'd start all over again. At one point the flight attendant just walked over and handed me a gigantic Snickers bar. That's how pathetic I was. 

Well whatever, he slept in the car on the way home. While I bawled a bit more. The worst he got on the plane was some loud talking and this yelly thing he does when he's mad. Who knows if anyone got irritated, I was in my own world of self loathing. But we survived. And I had to have some help the next day from the therapist to get to the bottom of all the grief. Knowing it was about my dad made it a lot better and maybe I can just ask my psyche to next time not hit me with a two ton load of misery on a public plane where I have an infant so I can't go hide in the bathroom, Ok? Thanks. 

So there ya go. Something I will never have to do again: fly cross country with an infant while bawling like, well, like an infant. That can go in my life book. Yippee.