Category: Inside Lane

Marrying my husband is one of the smartest things I’ve ever done.

We went out on our first date on January 24, 2002. Valentine’s Day came up quickly–I think it was our 4th date, in fact. I know our 3rd date was a Super Bowl party at Leslieann’s house.

For the big date night, B took me to a little hibachi restaurant, with a detour to a bookstore when we ended up having to wait longer than we’d anticipated. Hours later, we got back to the car, and he went to start it. It only took a few seconds of fumbling for him to figure out that when he had turned on the dome light to read my V-day present to him, he hadn’t turned it off. The battery was dead.

We called AAA, who told us it would be about an hour before they could get to us, so we went for a walk around the square. It was chilly, and I asked B if he needed his jacket. He said no, and threw it in the backseat, locked the doors, and off we went.

Halfway around the square, he went to get something out of his jacket pocket, only to realize he wasn’t wearing it–that something? His car keys.

We walked back to where the car was parked, still waiting on AAA, and updated them to let them know that a) the battery was dead, and b) we had locked the keys in the car.

They said that was fine, and they’d be there soon. So, we wandered into the bar at the corner of the strip, where B excused himself. He came back a few minutes later, red-faced and defeated. As we watched a man fall from a barstool, flat-backed onto the concrete floor (and get up, and repeat his drunken feat), B explained that he had walked into the ladies’ restroom. The occupied ladies room. It wasn’t a great night for him.

As dates go, it was a technical mess. As romance goes, it was a perfect 10. B never once lost his cool. He never got angry. He never showed frustration. He didn’t blame me, or throw a fit, or behave badly toward anyone out of anger at himself. He was just exactly the same guy he had always been, only embarrassed.

I’d already decided I was going to marry him, but it was our first Valentine’s Day date that really showed me his character under pressure. He is a kind, good-tempered man, and I feel very lucky that I was able to trick him into proposing to me.

There are all these articles flying around the internet about mothering. Are you a SAHM? Are you a Working Mom? Get a job! Quit your job! You’re ruining your kids! All of you!

I am a working mother.

Yes, yes, I know all mothers work. All mothering is work. This is a truth. I am a working mother with several jobs, all of which I enjoy for some reason. I find great satisfaction in my day job, in my writing, in graphic arts, and in all the various and sundry things I pick up and put down throughout the year.

Officially, I work 40 hours a week. I write anywhere from 10 to 20 hours a week. I am a wife and mother 168 hours a week*. All those hours I am officially working and writing, or plying my other trades? I’m still being a wife and mother.

I’m still figuring out how to get to the grocery store, what to cook, which notes to write to school, and how much laundry I can get by with doing before Thor’s socks start getting up and walking away. I am getting Thor to school and to bed, trying to teach, model, and cram important life lessons into his little brain. I am trying to be an attractive wife** and considerate partner.

My husband does his fair share of cleaning up, picking up the boy from school, setting him on his daily forced death march getting homework started, and being generally reliable and congenial, and attractive*** while working his 40 or 50 hours a week, and continuing his education.

Where we fall short, grandparents, Molly Maids and Greenling.com, and Minecraft pick up the slack.

Our kid is getting raised. He has decent manners**** and does not exhibit any sociopathic, or psychotic tendencies. He is kind to animals and smaller children, loves Legos, and drawing pictures of robot cars (and atomic bombs, but there’s a good reason for that.)

We take him to museums, and galleries, and to plays, and to the symphony, and drive him around the country whether he likes it, or not. We also pretend not to notice that he gets up at 7AM on Saturdays and watches cartoons/plays Minecraft until the first one of us wanders out of the bedroom mid-morning.

He knows he is loved. He knows we cherish the time we have with him. And, I believe he knows we’ll be okay when he leaves the nest one day. He won’t have to worry about us, as we clearly have interests outside of his darling self*****.

I’m not ever going to be his room mother.
I will probably not ever get to chaperone one of his field trips.
I’m not going to be the mom hosting the awesome events in her backyard.

I’m just going to be his mom. His mom, who has a bunch of different jobs, but whose favorite job is the one she gets to do 168 hours a week–being his father’s wife, and his mother.

What am I saying? I’m saying every mom is different, and all that really matters is who she is to her child. It doesn’t matter to me if you are a SAHM, or a Corporate Ladder Mom, or a Tiger Mom, or a Leaning In Mom, or an Opting Out Mom because I am clearly very busy being all the different things I am in addition to being Thor’s Mom. My business isn’t what’s best for your child. How would I know?

My business is making sure my kid has clean socks, a full belly, and enough sleep to make it through a day of 3rd grade math, and making sure his mother is happy enough with her life, that she can help him learn to be happy with his. I feel like I’m really knocking that one out of the park, and I don’t mind saying so.

Whatever kind of mother you are, hang in there. Everyone has opinions about us. Everyone has advice for us. But only we know what works for our families. Take care of you, and take care of your kiddos, and we’ll all be fine.

*Just to be clear, there are only 168 hours a week.
**This is the one I fail at most often. Yoga pants and ponytails are my undoing.
***It is so much easier for a man to be attractive.
****We were out at dinner the other night, and Thor had his elbows on the table, working to eat a piece of bread. B told him to get his elbows off the table, so he raised up just enough to have about an inch of space between the table and his joints, and continued eating in exactly the same posture. I snort laughed and ruined the Table Manner Etiquette Moment. That’s my boy.
*****Can you imagine me with nothing to do other than Thor? He would be so warped.

No one would ever accuse me of having been a quiet child. No one would ever accuse me of having been a mellow child. I have, and have always had FEELINGS. ALL OF THE FEELINGS!

When I found out I was having a boy child, I expected that he would be more temperamentally matched to his father–his father being a boy and all. I did not expect to find myself staring down at myself as I, in tiny boy form, tried to explain the weight, and the heft, and the width, and the breadth of my FEELS.

Darice, Irene and I were emailing today, and I remembered one of my favorite Baby Thor stories.

When he was 2, he ran up against the same separation anxiety a lot of toddlers face. Daycare was a necessity for us, so every day I would drop him off, and every day we would go through a ritual of goodbyes. But somewhere around 2.25, he’d had enough of that.

After a display of histrionics that would win an Oscar, I managed to get away from him and run out the front door.

Now, a lot of the children in his class would run to the front window of the school and cry for their mothers. It was just a thing. And, that day, it became his thing (and remained his thing for several months.) But, where other children would stand there and cry, or stand there and wail for their mothers, mine ran to the window, slapped both palms flat against the glass and howled, “WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME? WHY? WHY??? WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO MEEEEEEEE?”

I mean, Nancy Kerrigan didn’t set up such a cry.

So. I want you to picture this sweet face:

And I want you to picture it pressed up against a window, wailing so loudly that I can hear him clearly–and hear him all the way to my car. “MAMAAAAAA! WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME? WHY? WHY? WHY?”

And I dare you not to laugh. Because I laughed.

To this day, I have no idea where he came up with that phrase. It’s not something anyone in our family says. Lightning McQueen never said it, and Curious George couldn’t speak English.

All I can guess is that somewhere in his genetic makeup, there is a chromosome marked for drama that generates its own dialog.

When he’s old enough, I’m teaching him lines from The Merchant of Venice.

I’d like to set a timeline for you. I’d like you to read this and tell me if the timeline sits well with you, and if it does, why?

Somewhere between 1971–1973 a child is born. There is no record of her birth, but bone scans done in 1978 place her somewhere between the ages of 5 and 7. 1972 is chosen for her birth year.

1978: Little girl is adopted from her native Korea, into an American home around the age of 6

1979: Girl’s adoptive mother and father divorce, around girl’s age of 7

1980: Girl’s mother begins long-term relationship with a new man, around girl’s age of 8

1987: Girl’s mother has biological baby with same man, with whom she has also adopted two other children, around girls age of 15

1992: Girl’s mother finds nude photos that her partner (same guy she’s been with since 1980) has taken of the Girl when she was around the age of 18–discovery is made around the girl’s age of 20

Just react to that.

React to that because that is fact. Fact that Woody Allen has not only agreed and admitted to, but reveled in. He called his long-term partner, and mother of his children finding pornographic photos he had taken of another child they raised together, “just one of the fortuitous events, one of the great pieces of luck in my life.”

Say what you will about Dylan Farrow’s allegations of sexual abuse at Woody Allen’s hand, say her memories were imagined, or implanted, or just plain lies. All you have there is her word against his. You just have the word of a little girl against the word of a grown man. I won’t blame you for believing, or dismissing.

But, I would ask you to hold Allen’s own words up against his behavior. Of his inappropriate relationship with his then-partner’s daughter, a child he had known and help to raise since she was eight-years-old, he famously said, “The heart wants what it wants.”

What if the heart wanted a seven-year-old?

Woody Allen has been anathema to me since 1992, and as actors and actresses coo and fawn over him, I tick them off my list of people to invite to that imaginary dinner party we’re all so eager to have.

This is a man, who helped to raise a child, who groomed that child into a sexual relationship, who used the children in his family as hunting ground for sexual partnership, and who preyed on at least one of those children with open admission and delight. That isn’t romantic. It’s sick. Which is the further stretch? That he might also have abused another child, or that Dylan Farrow’s allegations are “a story engineered by a vengeful lover”?

Either way, the damage was done.

***

Phillip Seymour Hoffman was a fantastic actor. I’d heard and read rumors that he’d been losing his battle with addiction, for the past year or so.

I always tell Thor that the reason he shouldn’t do drugs is because drugs impair your ability to make good decisions, and often lead you to make bad ones. Bad decisions can kill you.

When you are taking drugs, you can’t make good decisions about whether, or not TO take them, much less good decisions about dosages. Last year, I got some really fun hydrocodone cough syrup and accidentally took too much of it. I felt gooooooood. I will tell you without shame that I felt so good, I wouldn’t have minded coming home to that every night. Of course, that feeling alone was enough to scare me away from the rest of that bottle (which I took in smaller than prescribed dosages until my cough was gone.) No one wakes up in the morning and goes, “I want to be a junkie!” They wake up and go, “I want to feel that way again!” Until the drug owns them.

No one wants to be addicted to heroin.

Hoffman battled his demons for decades before relapsing.

Addiction is a disease. It isn’t a mark of character. I’m sorry for anyone battling a habit, and for their families and friends. I’m sorry for everyone who has lost.

Don’t do drugs, kids. There is too much to lose.

So, if you look at all my scores from every “type” test I’ve ever taken, I land right slap at the crossroads of Introvert and Extrovert. Some have scored me a socialized extrovert, meaning I’m naturally introverted, but have learned to fake it. Others have scored me an extrovert who is unusually into her own navel. If you ask me, I’m just a Me-trovert.

That is, I want to do what I want to do, when I want to do it, regardless of the number of people attached to whatever that thing is.

I want to go to a movie. No one else does? Fine by me. I’m going to a movie.

I want to go to dinner. No one else does? That’s why god made books and salt shakers to rest them against.

I want to go dancing. No one else does? There’s a club full of people out there just waiting for me.

You want to go to a movie/dinner/dancing and I don’t? Have fun. I’ll be here at home and later we can talk about what an awesome time you had. Not going to hurt my feelings if you go without me.

I can hang either way. I’m good in groups and one-on-one…if I like you. If I don’t? Well, I’ll pretend to be good, but I’m really clocking the exits and planning my escape. It’s got nothing to do with quantity, and everything to do with quality of people.

I can be whatever is necessary for the moment. I don’t think I am any more exhausted or energized by crowds. I am exhausted by exhausting people in ones and tens equally, and energized by energizing people in whatever their numbers. I mean, would you rather be stuck in a room with 40 interesting, awesome people you love, or 1 person you can’t stand?

Then, I also have no problem going and sitting down quietly in the middle of a party. The only issue with that is misplaced pity from people who think I’m shy, sad, or too introverted to have a good time. I’m having a good time. I’m just having it sitting down over here because I got tired of standing by the punch bowl, wondering what to do with my hands.

The worst is when you go to a party and it’s a 50/50 split of people you like, and don’t. You know the guy who is telling you jokes, and you want to just smile and nod, while you are picking up cauliflower from the crudite tray and stuffing them in your ear canals? I don’t like getting stuck talking to that guy. Worse is when you realize you ARE that guy. You’re just talking, talking, and you realize the person facing you is looking around wildly, clocking the exits.

I’ve been on both sides of that coin, more times than I care to say. It’s a good thing I can enjoy my own company, for all those times when no one else can.