18 december 2006
You made your bed, now make it again!
by Linda Breitag
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My daughter and I are having growing pains. When I look in the mirror closely (which is becoming rarer, both because I'm not sure I want to look and because, honestly, I can't focus too well anymore at that distance) I see curious new wrinkles, sometimes crisscrossing the older wrinkles. I see that interesting thinness of skin starting on my neck. Sometimes, if I look quickly, I see my mother.
If that were all, I think I could manage. I mean, it's not like I was such a hot number before. It's been a long time since I hoped buying an entire "skin care line" might stave off loneliness, aging and death. No, what really hurts is that insidious fear that I've made my bed in life, and now I have to lie in it. And I don't want this bed!
This lumpy bed with its tangle of sheets that should have been washed weeks ago or, rather, replaced with something newer, bolder, something with a more commanding thread count. This bed with no headboard, this bed that slides away from the wall, causing important things to slip down and be lost, almost but not quite forgotten. On the occasions when I pluck up my courage to kneel down and look for them, I see my priorities, dreams, and goals scoot past my peripheral vision like mice caught in the act, or even worse, I catch them rolling aimlessly around in thick but weightless clots, like the dust rhinos that migrate periodically through my real bedroom. And look at this bedside table! Cluttered with unimportant flotsam and unfinished jetsam. This is not the metaphorical nightstand of someone who knows she won't live forever and is doing something about it.
And my daughter's bed? Well, let's start with her literal bed. She wants nothing to do with it; she no longer wants to sleep in her own room. She wants to sleep in a puppy pile in our shrinking double bed. She doesn't want to sleep next to us, she wants to sleep on us, almost in us. And forget telling her about the special nature of adult partnership. She's an only child, remember? To her, we're the Three Musketeers, and it's supremely unfair that she should have to go to sleep before we do, have her computer time limited when ours isn't, or not have free and total access to her bulging Halloween sack.
So, after trying several other ideas, we've put her on a cot in our room for the time being. At first she loved this; it was like camping, or staying at Mormor and Grandpa's. But soon she grew sensitive to her second-class status. What kind of parents would sleep on a nice bed and make their precious child, their third Musketeer, sleep on a cot?
This is just one of the many injustices in her tortured life. Other sufferings include: occasionally being asked to pick up the toys/books/doll clothes/art projects she's left around the house, occasionally being asked to wipe the table after dinner, occasionally being asked to show some sign that she's actually heard us speak to her. Things like that.
She's perfected several responses to our unreasonable requests. These include but are not limited to: the stone face, the sneer, the eye-roll, the sustained tongue-poke, the savage wordless scream, and the furiously yelled rejoinder, along the lines of "I hate you/you're so mean/I want you and Papi to get a divorce so I can go live with him." Situation-specific variations may also occur, such as the sudden in-my-face bow thrust during violin practice.
In the interest of fairness, I must also tell you that my daughter has never been more interesting, delightful, loving, and in love with life than she is right now, on a daily basis. I truly believe she is growing into a fascinating, beautiful, caring person. That is, when she's not doing the stone face, the sneer, and so on…
And in the further interest of fairness, though it pains me to say this, I must add that I have not in every instance responded to her vitriolic outbursts with the alabaster calm of a Zen master coming off a two-month silent retreat. At times, I am stunned by the limited spectrum of profane vocabulary available to parents of a child turning nine. Almost as stunned as I am to hear myself exercising this vocabulary on a frequent basis. And not always under my breath, either.
A calmer, more web-savvy friend asked her parenting chat group, or whatever you call those meetings of typed thoughts in cyberspace, whether they had any ideas for me. Their responses reminded me of something I'd heard before. The ninth year, or thereabouts, is a Big Deal. A child at nine is slipping into the chasm between the fantasy-wrapped, imitative, bouncy, and trusting young child of seven and the fact-filled, emotion-heavy, awkward-limbed twelve-year-old girding her loins (and I do mean loins) for the epic journey into adulthood.
A child at this age, in this culture, is pinballing between believing her parents know everything to suspecting they know nothing. If she's going to accept my authority over her these days, I'd better have a darn good reason for it, with plenty of leeway built in. There's no room for arbitrary rules or any lack of adherence in my own life to the things I say are important for her. She is entering a whole new consciousness of her separate identity in the world. (And it may be a long while before she travels back to the deeper realization of her true oneness with creation, but there I go again with the lotus flowers and the lotus position. Or what my daughter, who has some acquaintance with yoga, once called—knowing it didn't sound quite right--the Pocahontas position.) This total upheaval is scary, confusing, and it would make anyone mad. It would make anyone argue, and criticize, and lash out, and beg to be cuddled. No wonder she doesn't want to sleep alone.
So these days find us ping-ponging between belting out "Singing in the Rain" on dog walks and me being furiously elbowed in the ribs for laughing too loud, as she hisses between clenched teeth, "Mom! YEM!!!" (Y.E.M. being our new code for "you're embarrassing me!" It's another mark of the fractured nature of our communication that half the time she uses YEM in dead seriousness, and the other half as a big joke between us. Guess who gets in trouble if she doesn't guess which sort of YEM is happening at any given moment…) My daughter plows determinedly through the water at her swim lessons, then clings to the teacher in the deep end, baby-talking and baby-giggling. Her hair is either an I-don't-care rat's nest or tucked into her version of a sleek chignon which I'm not allowed to fuss with, even if there's a lump sticking out somewhere. She wants to drink out of a sippy cup, then dresses for her recital with great care in understated elegance, smiling indulgently at the "little girls" in their flouncy princess dresses. "I look like I'm fifteen, Mom," she says with pleasure. And, oh my God, she does.
And what kind of bed is she making for herself to lie in? Oh, she's so far from even thinking about buying her bed, let alone choosing sheets and deciding if she wants hospital corners or a hamster nest. For now, she lives in a palace of a thousand rooms, and she can change beds every night if she wants to.
As for me, this aging princess isn't sleeping too well, and she can't blame anyone but herself for the pea under her mattress. (Not that she hasn't tried, mind you.) But she's very slowly taking in the idea that perhaps blame isn't the most useful concept just now. More useful might be remembering that often children stir up deep stuff from our own childhoods as they pass through their different ages.
Here's a photo: me, age nine. I'm wearing a dress with flared sleeves, orange with little yellow flowers. My mom made it for me, from fabric I chose. I'm standing next to a birthday cake, my arm bent to show off my brand-new watch. I'm poised on a threshold: between timeless fairyland and a world where five minutes can make a big difference. It's a big step. I want a big life. I want to make a gorgeous big bed, and then jump on it, laughing my head off.
Hmm. I think I'll go upstairs with my next five minutes, and kneel down by that bed I'm still making. And ask that elusive circling energy to please help me be gentle with this little/big, shoving/clinging, lotus/volcano I am so privileged to be mothering. And please help me believe it's not too late for me to get some new sheets. |
