I wandered into a kids clothing store today as I was running some errands, and right in the front of the store was a big display of training bras for “girls age 7-14.” And every single one of them was PADDED. There was not a single normal one. I then proceeded to have a mental breakdown (duh). Listen, I totally tried to sneak and stuff tissues into my training bra when I was in the 5th grade. But this is different. It’s as if “boobs” is right there on each 9 year-old girl’s back to school list, right after graph paper and cap erasers (I don’t know if kids still use either of those things. I’m old). And at least when I attempted to stuff my bra, my mom quietly pulled me aside before taking me to school and asked me if I had tissues in there. Then she gave me a smirk and a little eye roll, and held out her hand. I took the tissues out and gave them to her. The look on her face at that moment told me all I needed to know. It told me that none of this stuff is that big of a deal. It told me that breast size doesn’t matter. It told me that I never need to try to change any part of my body. And I believed her. And I still do. I think of this moment often as a parent, because all the big life lessons I learned as a child weren’t taught by sitting down and having a “talk,” but through my parents unfiltered reactions to life as it happened. Mom, you probably don’t remember this at all, but I do. So thanks. Thanks for making my life a tiny bit easier in that 2 second eye roll you gave to the tissues in my bra. In a perfect world, every mom that walks into that store with their daughter would point and laugh, then they would forget the whole bra thing and go get ice cream.

I’ve been breastfeeding nonstop for almost 5 years. I often fantasize about wearing nice clothes again, things that you can’t just yank on all day without damaging. Sequins. Sequined everything. Recently I caught myself missing turtlenecks. I haven’t worn a turtleneck since 1994. My hormones are a mess. My thyroid is a little wonky. My toddler desperately pleads, “Little boob!” in the most inconvenient places. Half of New York City has seen my boobs. And I feel like the luckiest woman alive.

I was sitting in a diner with my kids eating lunch the other day. Behind me sat a table of three men: a Puerto Rican, a Sicilian and a Polish guy. As we were leaving the Puerto Rican guy said to me, “Excuse me, miss? What’s your nationality?”
“Ehh, just American but my dad’s family is Swedish and my mom’s family is Native American.”
The Sicilian guy said to me, “I’ll give you $5 if you say you’re Polish!”
The Polish guy replied laughing, “Nope! Too late, she already said it!”
Then the Sicilian guy explained, “Sorry to bother you. We’ve been playing this game together for years whenever we need to kill time, we try to guess other people’s nationalities. Try to guess mine!”
“Hmmmm. Russian?”
“Nope, Italian! But lots of people think I look Russian.”
We laughed and wished each other well.
After lunch we went to the playground. All the kids immediately gravitate toward each other. Some speak Spanish, some speak English or Polish, but they all speak “kid” so it never matters. All the parents watch, all the parents push their children in the swings, all the parents tell their kids to stop climbing all over them when they’re wet from the sprinklers, until it gets hot and they change their mind. All the parents look at each other and laugh when their kids do something funny. A lady wears a burka, and her eyes are smiling. We are all the same. Our children even more so. A cop walks by and says hello. Later as we’re leaving, I see the same cop giving a guy a parking ticket. The guy looks minorly annoyed. No guns are drawn.
This is real life. This is real life for most people. The news is not real life. The news is a meticulously curated collection of the most tragic occurrences in our society. Some people are full of hate. They abuse their power. They get on the news. The ignorance and hate contained within a small number of people is being exposed every day. It’s difficult to watch. We’re in the middle of peeling off a huge band-aid that has masked the corruption in our society for a long time. But most people are not like this. Most people take their kids to the playground, don’t think twice about what language anyone else is speaking, and when it gets too hot we hug our wet kids to cool off.

I felt like a relatively calm and not at all uptight mother until just now when I left my kids with a babysitter for the 2nd time ever in their lives and suddenly heard myself saying, “I know this sounds ridiculous, but if you guys play Hungry Hungry Hippos I always count all the marbles when I’m putting it away. Can you believe a kids toy would use these tiny choking hazards? There are supposed to be 20. Hahaha I mean, it’s fine. Whatever you feel like doing. That’s just what I do to make sure. Because they’re so small! Haha. So silly.”

When you’re a stay at home mom and finally the weekend comes so you’re like, “I think I’ll go into the bedroom by myself so I can do a little yoga and clear my thoughts” then both your kids scream outside the door entire time like they’re being tortured and somehow manage to run in multiple times and jump on your back even though their dad is right there so clearly they have not been abandoned.

Happy 2nd birthday, O! Here he is as a fetus, clearly waving at the camera. This picture totally sums up his personality. From the very beginning he’s been more friendly and full of love than anyone I’ve ever known. The past two years felt like some sort of extreme parenting bonus round, with him throwing us new challenges almost daily. Lately his favorite toy is a tape measure, and he absolutely must have it every night as I rock him to sleep like a 30 lb newborn. Over the course of the next hour as he dozes off, he always finds a way to tangle himself up in it. When I finally lay him down in the crib I not only have to do so without him waking up, but I also need to bust out the Mommy MacGyver Moves (TM) and untangle his arms and legs. It’s straight out of one of those Chinese game shows you see on YouTube. He’s a little bit nuts in the same way that I’m a little bit nuts, and being with him has taught me more about myself than any amount of soul searching ever could. He talks to his big sister nonstop. Once he accidentally said something that sounded like “mommy muffin” and now that’s what they both call me. It melts my heart. There has never been a kid so specifically focused on the information he is trying to learn, or the task he is trying to accomplish. Instead of asking simply “why?” he says passionately, “WHY mommy, WHY?” When I start singing to him each night before bed, he stops and asks me to kiss his elbow. His favorite word is “schmutz.” If there is any schmutz in the stroller, he politely asks me to brush it out before he sits down. His face is constantly covered in a sticky film ranging anywhere from peanut butter to misapplied sunscreen, and his fingernails are constantly dirty. Walt Whitman would say he contains multitudes. He sometimes goes to the fridge and takes out a jar of spicy pickled string beans, then gets upset if you won’t eat one with him. He does not care if it’s 6 am. He came into our lives seemingly without warning, hungry and a little angry and wanting to be big. And now he is. He smiles and loves bigger than anyone, and when he gives you a hug you feel like it’s the first hug you’ve ever had. His hugs are different.

When school is out for the summer, you’ve been outside all day with your fair-skinned inside kids and you just can’t listen to the Paw Patrol theme song anymore (but let’s be honest, nobody is getting tired of this pop punk masterpiece anytime soon), here is a fun and easy art project. Put a little water in a plastic cup, let your child squirt shaving cream on the surface, then with an eye dropper have them drizzle drops of washable watercolor paint on top. As more paint collects it starts to rain down into the cup and looks really cool. It reminds me of those drippy colored glob things from Spencer Gifts in the mall when I was growing up. It’s a relaxing activity, and at the same time a lesson in the Earth’s water cycle. Just don’t eat it.

Most of the time I feel like a kangaroo without a pouch. As soon as my son falls asleep in the stroller, I make a bee-line to the nearest coffee shop so I can read. But even in his sleep he can tell he’s not in my arms, and wakes up crying after a few minutes. I pick him up and he nurses for a second, then falls asleep on me. About 15 minutes later as he starts to sleep a bit more deeply, his little teeth clamp down and I yell some sort of expletive. Everyone stares. I don’t blame them. I imagine it would confusing to see a loving mother and son moment interrupted by spastic cursing. But that’s how we roll. He doesn’t wake up of course, being a city kid and always nodding off to the sound of police sirens and fire engines. He sleeps like this for an hour, then wakes up so happy. So much happier than he does when he naps in the stroller. With a big toothy grin and drowsy eyes he looks up at me and wraps his arms around me tight. He says, “HUG!” or if I’m really lucky, “I love you, mommy.” He’s way too big for a moby wrap by now, and it makes me want to invent a huge kangaroo pouch for toddler humans. This boy is all consuming, but nobody has ever loved me this much.

We have all these mass shootings. All the time. And everyone thinks they know why. Too many guns. Too little mental health funding. Too much religious extremism. Toxic masculinity. Terrorism. Violent video games. Bullying. Our culture of homophobia and racism. Too few thoughts and prayers (no wait a minute, that’s the one thing we have plenty of). Well I have no solution. I’m smart enough to know that I’m not smart enough to know why we have so many shootings all the time. My only thought when this happens is, “That boy’s mom didn’t hug him enough as a child. She didn’t make him laugh enough. She didn’t tell him enough jokes. She didn’t show him enough 1970’s Sesame Street. Because I don’t care how much childhood trauma you’re working through or still lashing out about as an adult, shooting up a public place would never even occur to kids who grew up on old school Sesame Street. Maybe his family went to the church whose preacher droned on every Sunday about how “homosexuals are going to hell,” and not the church whose choir joyfully sang, “red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight.” Then I think of a bunch more reasons, and none of them are the right reason. Then I get frustrated and think to myself, “This isn’t my job! Why am I working so hard at thinking of reasons for this madness? It should be SOMEONE’S job, though. Why is this not a job? Why as a human race can we do so many amazing things, yet not make it some highly intelligent person’s sole purpose in life to figure out this mass shooting nonsense? Yeah it’s complex and could take decades of research, it just seems it should take priority over lots of other things. Like EVERY other thing.”

 
Mom, 4:39 am:
Hears toddler saying, “Mommy. Mommy. Mommy. Mooooommy. Mommy! MOMMY!”
Distributes morning hugs.
Makes coffee.
Unloads dishwasher.
Goes to fill sippy cup.
It looks a little crusty, better wash it.
Washes it.
Looks in fridge. How are we out of bread?
Packs lunch for school.
Searches the cabinet for some kind of fun treat to make up for the heel-only sandwich.
Glances at pile of mail on the kitchen counter. We only have a week left to renew our health insurance. That’s always a whole thing.
Chooses outfits for kids.
Checks weather.
Chooses different outfits.
Sniffs daughter’s sweater.
Gets the Febreze (please don’t tell anyone I spray my children with chemicals).
Mentally reviews Trader Joe’s With Stroller And Toddler plan of attack for later, precisely mapping out which subway stop has the elevator, noting that the line going back downtown is under construction so you need to give yourself extra time to get back before your oldest child gets out of school. Isn’t that a funny saying, “give yourself extra time?” As if everyone has a magic time wand to be used in case of emergencies? Poof! Now I have an extra hour that did not exist before. God I love my magic time wand.
Hears older child waking up. “MOMMY! COME GET MEEEEEEEEE!”
Suddenly gets pulled toward the window by a small person yelling, “Garbage truck! Digger! Bus!”
He is upset that he missed seeing the bus he just heard outside. To cheer him up and / or distract him you start singing, “Wheels On The Bus.”
Instead you become the distracted one as you stop singing and think, “This song is kind of outdated. It seems like it would be called ‘Wheels On The Hybrid Bus’ or ‘Wheels On The Bike’ by now.”
More crying.
You notice that you still aren’t dressed.

Dad, strolling in while checking his email:
“It always takes you so long to get dressed.”