pink pajama mama

Today was what we, in Babyworld, would call “a doozy.” I was baking away as usual and Annabelle became entranced by the container flour on the table. She ran to her own little kitchen and pulled out her little pots and pans and started mixing away. I figured it would be messy,  but I was happy she was getting some tactile stimulation–usually she doesn’t like to get her hands dirty. A few minutes I glance behind me and she is covered in flour from head to toe, including two handmarks on her cheeks and her pink princess underwear bulging with flour. She starts giggling maniacally (thank goodness Henry was sleeping and couldn’t join in the hijinks!) and takes off running through the house, delighting in the trail of powdery footprints she’s making all over the hardwood floors. A few seconds later, she’s grabbing handfuls of flour and throwing them against the wall, in her baby stroller, and into Daddy’s shoes. “Daddy’s going to love the powder I put in his shoes!” she shouts as she grabs another handful and flings it against the wall. I’m laughing so hard, there’s no way I can stop her, and so I resign myself to spending the afternoon cleaning it up. How hard can it be I ask myself?Ha! Have you ever tried to sweep up flour on hardwood floors? It just multiplies? And if you add water? It makes paste. Yes, now all the cracks in my gleaming hardwood floor are filled with flour paste. The cucurachas will be pulling out their maracas and having a fiesta tonight! And my whole body aches from the hour I spent on my knees trying to clean it up.This was followed by Henry insisting on wearing Annabelle’s white ruffled turtleneck under his overalls  and walking up to me with his big eyes and enormous cheeks, staring at me for a minute before reaching out one chubby hand to smack me across the face. This followed by Annabelle climbing on me like I’m a jungle gym. This followed by a nature walk to try to redirect some wild energy.We’d already spent the morning getting into costumes and partying at Gym Rompers. Henry refuses to wear a costume so he went as a cowboy in his underwear, wearing his striped longjohn pajamas tucked into Annabelle’s pink cowgirl boots (this is his favorite morning outfit every day) and I just added a red cowboy hat. Annabelle told me that after Halloween would come “Sanksgiving” as I dressed her up like Cinderella in her puffy dress and light-up shoes.No wonder I’m comatose tonight. What a day!

Ah this endless battle–to create, to accomplish, to achieve, to write, dance, sing…and the impossibility of doing any of this when all your energy goes into being a mom, a wife, keeper of home and hearth.  I make this my art, but I feel so much pressure to actually do something more tangibly valuable. Mothers are so undervalued in our culture, underappreciated, underpaid, it takes an iron will to hold steady.I read something today that inspired me: how does the individualist find dignity and purity in a plastic culture and a polluted world? And I think about this and I think, simplicity, nature, in the smell of the earth after it rains,  in watching my three-year-old run through the sprinklers in his pajamas after bedtime as the fog rolls in, in joining Annabelle and Henry’s pots-and-pans marching band, where Henry says there are no clothes allowed, only diapers and rainboots, in the beauty of feeling George quietly take my hand as I sit on the porch surrounded by trees, hearing only the occasional bird as they bed down for the night, in a good bottle of wine, rosy cheeks and lively conversation, in the feel of tiny soft pudgy hands grabbing my cheeks every night and saying “you’re the best mommy in the whole world,” in a trip to the library on a rainy day and the distinct satisfaction of a kind librarian stamping the back of each book, in running my hands along the rough edges of my lavendar granite sink, in feeling the power and stability of walking on the rocks in Menemsha and wishing they could talk and tell me their stories, we do love a good story around here, in the sound of the sea bell clanging its mournful song…

My mother would make a brilliant scientific study–this is a 72-year-old woman in perfect health who has pretty much lived on candy and dessert her entire life. You may think I jest, but let me give you an example. She came to help me out when I had my second baby. My first baby had just turned two and never tasted candy. The first thing my Mom did when she got in the car was give my toddler a bag of gummy sharks. When my husband told her Annabelle didn’t even have the right amount of molars to chew such a thing, coupled with the fact that we didn’t give her candy, my Mom was awestruck. “Wow, you’re really serious about this candy thing,” she said.Yup. As long as I have control over what goes in my children’s mouths, it will not be candy. My mom, however raised us on candy. We were the envy of the neighborhood children with our kitchen full of candy jars. Dirty kids with long stringy hair would come to our sliding glass door, shield their eyes form the glare with their hands over their eyebrows, and try to catch a glimpse of our candy jars. It was a bit creepy.Cavities were par for the course when we visited the dentist, but no dental visit was complete without a beeline straight to the drive-thru for a milkshake. On the same visit to help me with the baby, my husband asked my Mom what she might want from the store. “Oh, just some little cookies,” she said, not missing a beat on the rocking chair. She had come to help with my toddler, but ended up holding my newborn in the rocking chair for hour upon hour being waited on hand and foot by me. It was like having three children.All these years have finally taken a toll on my Mom and her stomach is just not what it used to be. For years we have all marveled at her “iron stomach.” This is a woman who could sit in the back seat reading a book and munching on cookies as we drove the winding roads of the Redwood forests while the rest of us turned green and hung our heads out the window. This is a woman who wore a red bouffant wig and black go-go boots and piled her six children into her orange VW bus every Sunday for church. This is a woman who, at 72 years old, still has peaches and cream skin, big brown eyes, thick black lashes, and looks at least 15 years younger. This is a woman who told me that my 10-month-old baby girl was too pale and I should put a little blush on her cheeks.This is a woman who has finally met her match–an aging stomach. She recently got a blood test and was floored to find out she had food intolerances to almonds and wheat and flour and gluten. She spoke to me over the phone in amazement. “You wouldn’t believe it–everything has flour in it!?!”I told her that if she went to a health food store she could find gluten-free cookies.  She said,, “Yes, but they’re too expensive! Can you believe, even those little cookies, what are they called? The little round ones–vanilla wafers! Even they have flour in them!”Yes Mom, I would immediately assume with any food intolerances vanilla wafers would be the first to go.And so I hear she is shrinking smaller and smaller. She was already getting smaller from walking on her treadmill. She started doing pilates last year and said this is the first time in her life she has muscle tone. “Wow, this exercise thing really works!” she told me in amazement one day.Yes, so that’s my Mother. It took her 72 years to figure out that exercise is a positive thing and cookies are not. Will I miss all the cookie jars filled with gummy sharks around her house? Will I miss the jar containing 2 year-old yogurt-covered pretzels? (They still taste good!) Will I miss her constant experimenting with which salty food tastes best with Junior Mints? Almonds or peanuts or cashews? Will I miss her long distance calls to my friends to tell them her latest Junior Mint discovery?Now I’m waiting for her to realize that real foods have a shelf life. She doesn’t cook anymore so when I went through her spices to find some cinnamon, I was shocked to see an old jar labeled with masking tape that said “mole.” “Mom? What is this?” I asked her. “Oh, Lupe gave that to me.”"Grandma Lupe? Mom, Grandma Lupe died more than 20 years ago! Spices don’t last that long!”"Of course they do! Spices don’t wear out!”"Mom, I get rid of my spices if they’re more than a year old.”She grabbed it out my hand. “I like these spices, she gave them to me.” And she put them back in her cupboard where they sit to this day.I am consistently awestruck by my Mother and her amazing diet. She loves it when I come to visit because she says it’s the only time she eats vegetables. I called her today to see how she was doing. She was in the car with my father going to get a Diet Pepsi and then a frappucino. For some reason, her blood test didn’t tell her she was intolerant to soda pop and coffee milkshakes.By gummy shark or frappucino, that sugar will find its way into her system. I think she’s lived on preservatives and sugar for so long her system has been permanently preserved. And if that’s the case, all the better for us to keep her around forever, gummy sharks and all.