It’s swimsuit season! If your backside puckers like it just ate a lemon, Make Lemonade!

“Really? You want to see my office?”

My friend Erin was puzzled.

“Uh-huh,” I said. “Your office, plus the conference room and reception.  The kitchenette, too, if you’ve got one.”

“Okay,” Erin replied. With my two kids in tow, I’d driven eighteen hours from Central Virginia to Madison, Wisconsin to visit her. She wasn’t about to deny me a corporate tour.

That wasn’t all I had planned for our five-day stay. I also wanted to see her grocery store. Her son’s school. Definitely her favorite restaurants and parks. Maybe even the recycling center where she deposits old phone books. Since Erin moved back to her hometown seven years ago, we’ve maintained our friendship by phone. This visit was my chance to animate the green screen behind our conversations, to drop a set behind the chats we’ve stolen during errands and lunch hours. In future calls, if she were to say “Let me grab my sandwich from the office fridge,” I could picture the correct black Amana, instead of my mind’s generic, beige Frigidaire. If she were at a playground with her son, I’d know to ask, “Circle Park or Winnequah?”  Should it be the latter, I could imagine her directing him away from the slide with “WEED!” emblazoned on the side.

Erin and I were nearly inseparable during our first two years of parenthood. For 100+ weeks, she, our friend Mary, and I threw life rings to each other at the deep end of the day: the hours between 3 and 5 pm. By that point in the afternoon, each of us had gone seven hours without seeing another adult. Each of us had filled a workday with failed attempts at productivity that eroded our Type-A morale: unanswered emails, unfinished articles, unsketched plans, and unsuccessful naps. We were operating on minimal sleep. At 3:00 on the dot, (the time the baby sleep books say to punt on the afternoon nap), our Stone-Age cell phones would light up. The three of us would meet up, that was certain; it was just a matter of where. We’d listen to each other’s delusional agendas and hold each other’s babies. Erin, Mary, and I still wrung our hands, but we wrung them less-chapped together.

Our daily visits ended when our babies turned two-and a half. That was when my husband and I welcomed our second child. A week later, Erin and her family moved back to Madison. Then Mary’s son started preschool.  Just before Erin left town, she visited me in the hospital, and then one last time at home.  I sat as still as a statue in the glider chair and held my newborn son. A powder-blue ice belt rested on my c-section incision. “May I refresh that drink before I go?,” she asked, pointing to the belt. “Yeah, I’ll have another round,” I said. Riffing on medical paraphernalia-as-booze was our weird way of coping. Here was someone who knew the exact nature of what I was going through, and she was about to melt away. An hour later, Erin backed out of our driveway, her car packed with a husband, a son, and 10,000 Legos. She blew me a kiss through the windshield and waved. I steadied my cankles and waved back. I was happy for her. And I was totally screwed.

Since 2006, Erin has come back East several times. During each trip, she’s made time to reconnect with me. On two occasions, I met her in Washington DC for a day. From dawn until dusk, we did only what we wanted to do. An 11 AM dal and Kingfisher ? Done and done! A shop with fragile things on low shelves? Undoubtedly! A store with grown-up books and records?  Champagne pedicures? A doughnut? Yes, yes, and yes.  This was our 3-5 PM dream of years past, and we were determined to live it for eight whole hours.

Last summer it was time to reciprocate Erin’s cross-country treks by racking up some miles of my own. The trip to see her in Wisconsin was a turning point in my life as a parent. To make such a long drive with now-old-enough children was a liberating coup. The days in the car were tiring, but pleasantly memorable. In Illinois, we witnessed a “corn storm.” Enormous bolts of lightening zigzagged like flights of stairs connecting black skies to green fields. We saw wind farms, and a sign for Tonica—the tiny town where my Japanese host sister lived as an exchange student in 1986.

True to form, Erin spoiled my kids and me during our stay in Madison. She brewed homemade chai, and plied us with udon at Umami. She proved that a lake-front bait shop with a grouchy proprietor can serve world-class ice cream. Erin’s wonderful husband and son kept my kids busy playing Ladder Toss so she and I could yammer on about poems and Fritos. She even let me use her library card. Erin welcomed us with cool breezes and Venetian light.  Which is another reason why, when she calls, I’m so very glad to see her.

My, how you've grown!

*

In addition to being a kick-ass friend, Erin Hanusa is a brilliant poet. Her book, The House of Marriage, is available here.

A submission is a hopeful torture. You wait for a stranger to decide, yes or no. A test, a number, an application or a Valentine—every kind of pick-me, pick-me missive sent out like a boomerang. You wait for word to bend back home.  You, your heart, and the tick-tock clock.

The Carnival comes but once a year, but I nominate it Year-Round Waiting Room. Spin up where the bolts are tightened enough, and where the lights are brightened at dusk.

Even for Superman, bending steel can be hard sometimes. So how are we mortals to be strong in the face of insurmountable odds?

I mean, what were the odds that I would catch the early-morning dog walker whose little darlin’ was dumping in our yard every day? After all that work I did last Fall to increase our curb appeal for the bank appraiser: the new lamp post, the ilex compactus hedgerow, the crushed limestone tableau where our giant weedpatch once thrived… In her report, the appraiser noted our property’s “extensive landscaping,” and “parking court.” If she stopped by in April, she might have edited to “Litter Box” and “Crap Magnet.”

The turds first appeared two weeks ago in the gravel where we park.  We’d find them by the back bumper one morning, then under the driver’s door the next. They were like Kryptonite, these piles. No matter how cheery my day began, or how eager I was to check on the garden, I’d catch sight of the poo by our cars and grow weak with defeat. A flurry of question ensued: Who is this mo^&erf&#@$%?

Dear Dog Walker,

Don’t you see my frigging peace pole? You’re not supposed to crap in a yard with a peace pole. It has four languages. What? This is Central Virginia? I thought of that already. Refer to deer rack on my shed. C’mon!

Signed,

Curb Your Dog

In the twilight, my kids would stand on the back porch in their PJs and call to me, “Are you gonna put us to bed?” I’d come through the gate and smile at them reassuringly. “Of course. Just watering the last flower box.” Once they stepped inside, I was back to weighing stake-out options. Which was better, behind the rain barrel (convenient), or the back of the station wagon (dramatic)?

“We just need to put up a sign,” my husband Joe said one night.

“And get it laminated,” I added. He looked at me, annoyed, in that you-know-we’ll-never-make-it-to-Kinko’s kind of way.

“I’ll just print extras in case it rains,” he offered.

“But then we’ll have to replace the signs. That’s as bad as scooping poop.”

We met in the middle, opting for clear packaging tape and a chopstick.

Throughout the next day as I scrambled eggs and clicked my mouse, I told myself not to cling to false hope. Anyone who saw our parking court as his dog’s canvas would not be deterred by a sign.

Then the steel started to bend. I thought about my anger. About how it was disproportionate and irrational, like road rage. Why did I lack the will to fight it, or to think of another approach? Because it’s tedious, painful work to change an attitude.

I pushed myself.

What if the dog owner is elderly?

With that, the poop emerged from a spiritual phone booth in a much more interesting outfit.

What if the owner can’t bend over to pick up the waste? What if his wife died recently, and some loving but misguided relatives gave him a dog to ‘cheer him up’? Now he has the dog, and doesn’t particularly want it, but he hasn’t figured out what to do. In the meantime, the creature has to be walked…

If the piles belonged to that dog, to that owner, well, I could work with that. He could steer the dog’s rear to the curb, and I could package the product and toss it in the trash.

The next day I was late getting everyone out the door for school. Joe was out of town, and I had a presentation to give at nine. From space, the kids and I looked like a slow-moving cyclone of elbows, backpacks, shorts, and black socks. As I turned, I waved to a woman walking down the street. We used to see each other regularly at a local museum. Her grandchildren often collaborated with my kids to dismantle exhibits. As she passed our parking area, I saw that her arm was outstretched. She was being pulled by a dog the size of a Pain Campagne. She continued down the sidewalk, and I remembered that she’s a refugee who doesn’t speak English. During all our encounters when the children were little, we’d used gestures to communicate. A pointed finger meant “your kid ran that way.” A smile said, “hello,” “thank you,” and “see you next time.” Two raised eyebrows meant “sorry the diaper stinks.”

After the kids were loaded into the car, I checked the gravel. Nothing.

Since that morning, the dark piles in our parking court have proved to be just Fall leaves unmoored by Spring winds. Was it wrong for my museum buddy to let her dog loose on our yard? Yes. Was it the huge deal I made it out to be? No. Curbing dogs is the law here, but it may not be a priority on Krypton, or in the remote mountain country she fled. Though it’s been years since the woman and I talked, I thought I recognized an “I’m sorry,” in the bend of her wrist. With any luck, she read “forgiven” in the sway of my fingertips.

A zippy and irritating essay in last Wednesday’s USA Today asks the question: “Where Can I Get a Child to Take to Work?”  In it, Columnist Craig Wilson (who shares that he is childless), laments his poor options for Take Your Child to Work Day. He considers borrowing a child, but decides “it’s not the same as having your own.” Readers like me who have faced infertility can empathize with the “out of the loop” feeling Wilson describes. Though he doesn’t disclose why he never had children, he does note that he wanted to be a father and “is “good with kids.”

It’s hard to maintain empathy as the essay progresses, however. Wilson’s article is brief, but he dedicates a sizeable chunk of its word count to judging parents. Listen up, all you overprotective moms and dads:

“If I had kids…I’d leave them alone to make their own mistakes. Something, of course, that is rarely allowed these days. Yes, I hear the helicopters…”

I remember musing about parenthood before I had kids, too. About how I’d get a ton of work done, for example, when my infant was sleeping. As it turns out, babies will either sleep or not sleep, irrespective of one’s work deliverables. Children also turn up with unexpected medical conditions, phobias, and other issues that are not always evident to the casual observer. Some choppers circle closely because a smudge of peanut butter on a park bench can send their child into anaphylaxis.

Also notable is how Wilson characterizes an acquaintance’s pride in her granddaughter as bragging. Her offense: showing him a photo of a baby and smiling. Does Wilson consider John Grisham a braggart for promoting his new novel on a talk show? Is Yo Yo Ma self-aggrandizing for playing a concert?  There may be a more difficult, rewarding, extended, baffling, triumphant, mysterious and unremunerated career than child-rearing, but I don’t know what it is. Why is it that in America, parenthood is not considered “real work,” but the job performance of mothers and fathers is regular fodder for biting public critique?

Here’s what qualifies Wilson as an expert: hanging out with nieces and nephews “for hours” at Christmastime, and spraying neighborhood kids with a hose. Does he also judge cardiologists on stent procedures because he attended their group’s holiday office party? Wilson is a textbook “fun czar” when it comes to kids, to use Dahila Lithwick‘s term. In other words, he’s all levity and brevity. No decades of round-the-clock responsibility and guilt-soaked foibles to temper his sense of omniscience. Parenting is nothing if not humbling, and humility is all about accepting the limits of your understanding.

But back to Wilson’s original query. Where can he get a kid to take to work? The answer has to start with another question: why, for pity’s sake, is this event held during the school year? In about six weeks, millions of American children will begin summer vacation. They’ll need something to do for 75-100 days. If that entire season doesn’t suit, Wilson can book a kid during Spring Break. Or Winter Break. Or during the four-to-seven national holidays observed by most school districts. Then there are teacher workdays, snow days, and sick days. And that’s just for the kids between the ages of five and eighteen. Children under five years of age can accompany him to the office year-round because there’s no public preschool option for the majority of American families.

The “out of the loop” feeling Wilson confronts once a year plagues parents every week as they struggle with conflicting career and family obligations in a country with unenlightened work policies. They do so with fewer benefits at the office, fewer teachers in the classroom, and fewer family members and neighbors available to pinch-hit. Before next April rolls around, Wilson might stop by the cubicle of a co-worker with kids. If she arrived at the office a little late, her babysitter might have flaked. If he looks exhausted, he might have been up all night with a vomiting child. For the 364 days a year that it’s not Take Your Child to Work Day, it’s You Can’t Take Your Child To Work Day. Which for Wilson means, it’s Take Your Co-Worker to Lunch Day.

A beautiful Spring day draws out the cyclists.  As I cruise through town in my rolling dumpster, I watch riders emerge from backyard sheds and cellars with their bikes. The first cyclists out are the serious types, the ones who hover-balance at stoplights. On their feet are tricked-out shoes that click into stubs where pedals should be. The riders sport yellow jerseys and tight shorts. People say that dog owners and dogs often resemble one another. Well, the same goes for cyclists and their bikes. With their cool Euro logos and slender frames, it’s hard to tell man from machine, or to resist hoisting them over your head.

By contrast, it’s easy to resist hoisting up another type of cyclist. No need to wait for Spring, he and his buds are out year-round. In the Tour de France, they’re called Team DUI. Actually, they’re called that everywhere. You know the ones..the guys with no helmets, chain-chomped pant cuffs, and Sealtest crates carrying their stuff. Bob Roll is their leader. As part of their rigorous training regimen, they regularly hump-it down sidewalk curbs in order to run red lights. Sometimes the heavy thud of the back wheel launches a treasure out of the crate…a sock, a pretzel, a toddler. If they notice, they’ll yell “Hey!” and keep going.

Now don’t hate on the Coconut Girl for speaking the truth. I’m all about sharing the road. I didn’t even own a car until I was thirty. I’m allowed to make these observations because I’m one of you. (Or I should say “them,” if you’re not one of us.) As with most areas in my life, when it comes to cycling, I’m a monstrous hybrid of two extremes. I embrace both butt-hugger shorts, and the racked back wheel. The Specialized water bottle, and the squealing brakes.

Wherever riders fall on the cycling spectrum, they face the same friends and foes. Wait, are there truly any friends to cyclists? Respectful drivers are rare, and even in bike stores, the shaved employees make you feel like a chump. “So…just the reflective cuff strap, then?”  Cyclists most definitely share foes: the pothole, the trolley track, the car door, the wet stripe up the back of the pants, the rabid dog. Then there are the insults. “Whore!!!!” a guy yelled at me once as he passed me in his pickup truck. Must have been my suggestive sweat pants. My husband, who also rides, once had a quarter thrown in his face by a motorist. In college, a clever prankster came upon my parked bike and bejeweled the seat with a slice of cheese pizza. Face-down.

It’s all right, though. As long as there are warm days and sobriety checkpoints, cyclists will endure. While I shuttle my kids from school to sports practices in our station wagon, I’ll keep my quarters and pizza to myself. Before I know it, the kids will be driving, and I’ll be back in the saddle again.

A man stands at a street corner with his partner, waiting for the light to change. He notices a flyer stapled to phone pole.

“Awesome! The HoneyWagon Music Fest is this weekend!”

The partner steps around the phone pole, and sees a flyer, too.

“Oh.”

It’s time for a good cry!

Who’s in?

The rule: cry as long as you like, and for any reason: sadness, fear, loneliness, boredom, nostalgia, frustration, anger, happiness, disappointment. No judgement, tears are tears!

Informal Survey:

1. If you have kids, do you cry in front of them?

2. If you have a pets, do they offer their own brand of comfort?

3. Who’s the best celebrity crier, Tammy Faye Bakker, or Ricky Schroeder in “The Champ” ?

Please reflect on a memorable encounter with a crying person. Sample memory: When I was ten, I knew a lady who wore sunglasses inside the house—at night—to hide that she’d been crying. Standing at the kitchen counter, she’d pack lunches for the next day, and nonchalantly answer our questions or yell “Stop running in the house!” It was all pretty normal except that 1) she was wearing sunglasses, and 2) we were supposed to pretend we didn’t notice she was wearing sunglasses.

One terrible place to cry is at work. The best thing to do is to use the hall bathroom on another floor of the building and snivel in a stall. If that’s not an option, tell co-workers you’re going out to grab a coffee, then hit a restaurant with a multi-stall bathroom. (Starbucks is out; there’s usually just one can and you’ll feel pressured to wrap up.) The good news is that people are pretty chill in public bathrooms. Restrooms are like mini nasty utopias of live-and-let-live. Patrons will barely take note of you at all. If there’s a Coconut Girl in there using a breast pump, everyone will be too busy empathizing-pitying her to dwell on your sobs.  In case you’re really cracking plaster and even the Medela can’t drown you out, try flushing for audio camouflage. But don’t waste too much water being embarrassed. Instead, take a moment to collect yourself. Have a look at the floor. Notice whether it’s tile or terrazzo. If you’re lucky, you might spy the Cadillac of floor drains: a brass JOSAM.  JOSAM spelled backwards is MASOJ, which sounds like “massage.”  The thought of this may improve or worsen your crying, depending on how frigging long it’s been since you had one.

Kids, like adults, have many reasons for crying. Except they’re way better at executing. If there were a Cry-Off, any kid would beat any adult (so I guess I just answered #3 above). I admire the emotional authenticity of children. When they’re sad, they cry (or fake-cry, when they want something). For the National Championship though, any baby would beat any kid. And for the World Title, a colicky newborn would not only dust everyone, but he’d also skip the awards ceremony so he could get back to crying.

I recently realized that even while kids are still young, a shift happens, and they become self-conscious about showing sadness. Specifically, they learn to suppress it. Families have tense days from time to time, and one day last week, it was our turn. Everyone was tired and cross.  I saw one of my children go into the bathroom. A strange feeling crept up my shoulders as she closed the door. There was no flush, no sound of washing hands, just quiet. When she came out five minutes later, she was blinking more than usual, and her nose was red. “You okay?”, I asked. “Uh-huh,” she said in an upbeat tone, looking the other way and speeding past me.

I saw my sunglasses on the counter, and cried.

Sleep deprivation is something you’d never wish on a person, but it has a humbling, equalizing effect. People who’ve raised newborns or puppies understand the dread when a cry or bark pierces through REM sleep. They know how the body catapults into care-taking before the mind is awake. Nights grind into weeks, and new parents crave sleep like zombies crave brains. Out in the world, parents look at adults with older kids and aren’t fooled by their normal appearance. Inside, they know, they’re decaying, too.

Newborn-parent-zombies don’t excel at reading comprehension. This is a special pisser because they tend to slurp down books, ravenous for baby sleep solutions. The more complicated the books’ instructions, the more likely they are to be botched. For example, flip through Marc Weissbluth’s directive-dense Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child, and it’s instantly clear he never read his own book while tending a newborn.

Then there’s Secrets of the Baby Whisperer by Tracy Hogg. She advocates establishing a consistent routine for infants. The idea is to engender cues for feedings and diaper changes that will lead to a predictable, diurnal schedule. She also says to narrate everything you do with your child, much like the voice-over in a Ken Burns documentary: “I’m pulling a wet wipe out of the box, and it’s getting caught on that round, plastic, shark-toothed thingy.”

The Whisperer’s ideas are all well and good, unless you have a rotting brain like I did as a new parent. I rarely had time to read more than a page in one sitting, and even then, I was nervously anticipating the next interruption. I did my best to be Whispery, to make every diaper change exactly the same. This meant at night, I’d flip on the bright nursery lights and describe the play-by-play in detail, down to every p.j. snap and ankle grab. I even got my poor husband in on the act (“Honey, would you say this hue is more Yellow Ochre, or Burnt Sienna?”) Little did I know I was stimulating our baby’s senses so much that she needed forty-five minutes to come down from our Cirque de Soleil.

It took years for me to figure out that quiet and darkness are king when it comes to nighttime infant sleep. During our second child’s late-night diaper changes, we used the tiny light on my travel alarm clock and just wiped the entire lower half of his body for good measure. To communicate with each other, my husband and I developed shadow-charades for messages like “stinky soaked onesie up-the-back blowout” and “this frigging diaper tab just pulled off, I quit!” Finally we’d cracked the Baby Whisperer’s secret code: whispering.

I’d be kidding myself to think my brain is moist and springy again. Almost ten years into parenting, it’s recovering, but there are still signs of spoilage. For instance, sometimes I see brand-new parents and feel sympathy, when really what’s coming up is a mixture of compassion for myself as a struggling new parent, and respect for how hard they’re working. I understand now that the Whisperer wanted me to be Ken Burns mostly to crowd out my thoughts of self-doubt. Do I still find it helpful to narrate everything I do all day? Maybe, especially in the car. If you see me driving and talking to no one, just go with it. Decide I’m a regular zombie parent crooning the new Justin Timberlake hit. I understand that he recently got married, and may be singing my song before long.

“Kids do well when they can.”

A friend said this to me when my children were toddlers, and it set me free. She’d been reading a book about behavioral challenges in children. In addition to some innate physiological predispositions, she learned that some children are especially challenged by certain foods, fatigue, and overstimulation. She was concerned about her son’s behavior, and became more compassionate when she understood that most times, he really was doing his best.

Children also do well in environments designed for their physical scale. If there are low hooks on the wall, kids are more likely to hang up their coats. They’re also able to fix a simple snack if food and utensils are placed within reach. Lately my kids have been leaving the lights on in their rooms when they leave for school. The problem is not forgetfulness; it’s darkness. The no-cord hooks on their toddler-era window shades are out of reach, and out of date. The kids need curtains they can operate themselves so they won’t need lights in the first place.

Recently a dinnertime design stumped me. Every night as a family, we review table manners ad nauseum. We re-re-re-remind: Stay in your chair. Chew with your mouth closed. Use your fork. Put your napkin in your lap. Use an inside voice. Say ‘excuse me’ before getting up.

And this one: return your glass to its spot above your plate.

It’s not that I’m a stickler for place settings, just that I don’t like glass stuck in my foot. We buy IKEA Shråpnel juice glasses by the case because they sail off our table with freakish frequency. The glasses perch on the edge of the table and take flight during dramatic recreations of playground scuffles or game-saving hits.

My dinner design assignment is two-fold:1) teach skills for verbal recounting, not physical re-enactment, and 2) create a visual cue for proper glass placement.

This challenge, and the hundred others that precede it in a given day, are why my brain aches by bedtime. I look across the candles at my earnest kids. Their eyebrows lift and their smiles widen as they share their important news. Their sense that their lives matter, that we want to hear what they have to say, must be safeguarded. Then I think of stand-up comedian Mike Birbiglia, whose sleep disorder causes him to act out what’s happening in his dreams. Once during a nightmare, he ran through a second floor plate-glass window trying to escape a missile. To stay safe at night, he seals himself up in a sleeping bag and wears gloves so he can’t undo the zippers. I wonder: should my family suit up after grace?

For now my imperfect solution is also two-part: 1) I lead by example by recounting events with my arms pinned to my sides like a robot, and 2) I’ve taped a circle to the dining table to show where my son’s glass should go. The paper’s getting a bit skeezy with guacamole and spaghetti sauce, but it beats the grinding clank of glass in the vacuum cleaner at mealtime. To add value, I also tell a story—just to myself—that my dinner design is what inspired modernist glass architect Mies van der Rohe to proclaim, “God is in the details.” (And by God, he meant parenting.)