feeling confident? don't get excited, it won't last

Life with kids can be like the opening credits to Sex and the City. You’re walking along, feeling sassy because you finally overcame some hurdle and made it through a difficult parenting life lesson, when all of a sudden you get splashed by sludge from a bus.

Oddly, that image of Carrie Bradshaw getting hosed always resonates whenever I’m feeling sure of my parenting skills. It’s like some higher power – the Goddess of Hubris – sees you get the hang of nursing, figure out a nap schedule or stand up to a school administrator in a way that feels authentic, then all of suddenly she strikes you down as if to say, “Suck it lady, you think you know something? You don’t know crap.”

I had this experience recently when I made it through my son’s first birthday and he was starting to sort of sleep through the night with my older daughter in the same room. I was finally feeling good, like maybe I was beginning to figure out this two-kid thing. I was no longer nervous to take both of them to the playground and didn’t feel dead tired and insane and out of control like I do 95 percent of the time (more like 80 percent – an improvement!)

Then we took a family trip and when we returned home everyone got sick and small people were feverish, lethargic and yelling in the middle of the night for a straight week. It sucked. During those middle-of-the-night fests of woe, holding one or the other while they cried, I cursed myself for feeling cocky the week before.

Ebbs and flows. Ups and downs. We know this about parenting. It was in the brochures. It will be this way for the rest of our lives. Having young kids is the easy part. And all the other things your mom or mother-in-law says when you complain about how hard it is having kids. But I’m convinced it’s the confidence that will kill you every time, especially if you say out loud that you feel like you’ve got it going on.

It’s the keinena hora syndrome. If you’re Jewish you might recognize this Yiddish phrase as something older people, or actors in Woody Allen movies might say, sometimes while spitting to both sides. The idea of keinena hora, which translates to “no evil eye,” it is to protect yourself and your loved ones from, well, evil. And to remind you not be boastful, because the evil eye loves to screw over those boastful people! My grandma Jeanie used to say it whenever she bragged about my sisters and meet: “L. got into Brown (keinena hora), A. just won a medal in gymnastics (keinena hora), M. has such beeyootiful hair (keinena hora).”

I don’t think I’m the kind of parent who brags about my kids explicitly. Too old-school. Obviously they are gorgeous and creative and gifted (keinena hora). But the mechanics of parenting, of taking two kids on the subway, of getting my daughter to say please and thank you, or having the rare weekend day where my husband and I both get to exercise, grocery shop as a family, and the kids are happy at bedtime, I certainly have allowed myself to feel triumphant about those types of days on occasion.

And you know what? I’m never victorious for long because the minute I say to my husband, while snuggling into bed after staying up too late watching television for the first time in months, “Last night was great. I bet M. will sleep through again,” or even, “Z. has been amazing about getting out of the house in the morning ….” Splash. Puddle on the tutu. Keinena hora, baby.

how facebook fills the mommy void

What a weird universe is Facebook. A carefully curated place of likes and dislikes, chosen images and words, contrasted with the most stream of consciousness, walking down the street and thought I’d share it with you kind of randomness. It’s Look at my band, Look at my kid, Look at me in a bikini, Let me tell you what I think about the Middle East. It’s profound, ridiculous, sentimental, political, existential. Nothing and everything. Art and commerce. Hit and miss.

My new parent status dovetailed with my embrace of social networking, and I wonder sometimes what life with young children would be like without Facebook. In some of the darker and duller moments of parenting, connecting with people online was the most I could hope for. And, some days, it was much more satisfying than the awkward playground chatter that so often left me underwhelmed.

My kids have enriched my life in ways I can’t list, but I’ve also felt a loss since becoming a parent. I’ve felt sucked dry of the brain space I used to engage to think about art and culture; a lack of intellectual or creative spark I’ve traded in for the rewards of raising rugrats. I’m almost embarrassed to say it, but Facebook has helped to fill this space again. I’ve craved a way to read and write and discuss, and Facebook has given me an unexpected community of people who feel the same way.

I used to think it was odd or embarrassing when people constantly posted pictures or details about their kids with so little self-awareness. Or, for example, when they’d post their sonogram pictures . I would internally rant, sounding like Andy Rooney on 60 Minutes: “What ever happened to intimacy or privacy?”

Recently a relative of mine lost her newborn son and posted the details on Facebook. It seems like such an intimate thing shared in such an unprivate way. But it made so much sense for her and her husband and their community, who embraced her posts about the loss with prayers, love and beautiful support. It was really moving! And it made me realize that there is no inappropriate etiquette in this evolving social media land. Just as in real life, Facebook and Twitter can be messy, awkward and jarring, as well as helpful, connecting and surprising.

In his “Facebook Sonnet,” recently published in The New Yorker, Sherman Alexie describes Facebook as a bizarre repository of lonely people typing away toward recreating their childhoods. Here’s a sample verse:

“Welcome to the endless high school

Reunion. Welcome to past friends

And lovers, however cruel or kind.”

I think Sherman Alexie must have just joined Facebook and he’s having that initial freakout people have when faced with the oddness and inanity of seeing names from deep in our histories. Plus he’s a busy (and famous) novelist, screenwriter and poet, so he probably hates himself for wasting time hanging out there. Maybe he’ll get over it. Clearly its giving him material.

Facebook is like a giant bar, where everyone you know is hanging out. Some folks are always there. Some are noncommittal. Some you haven’t seen for 20 years and don’t necessarily need to talk to. You can initiate conversations, chime in to others or get cornered by someone who wants to talk about their juice fast or show you a million pictures of their new couch. But usually you have a good time, realize it was good to get out, and remember that the world is made up mostly of people who want to connect. And if the reality of our lives means it has to happen in front of a keyboard, I just can’t get bent out of shape about that. I’ll take what I can get.

one mom’s quest for order – at the container store

Forget yoga, acupuncture, meditation or medication. When I’m in need of something to really take the edge off, I visitThe Container Store. It is a most wonderful and joyous place. For those of you unfamiliar, or unlucky to not have one where you live, it’s a home/office organization store devoted to selling boxes and bins of all shapes and sizes to put your crap into. You walk in, and with the help of the least attitudinal salespeople to have ever worked in Manhattan, you can organize your life down to the tiniest, junkiest, scariest drawer in your home. There is a container, or a hook, or a dry erase board, or a filing box that is sure to suit your needs and make you feel as if your life is absolutely not spinning out of control.

The ethos behind The Container Store is either genius or diabolical, depending on where you fall on spending yourself out of a problem.  These days, I’m pretty much for it.

Sometimes I go there just to breathe the lavender and cedar scented air in the extensive closet department, where I can ponder the potential of all wooden hangers in my perfectly edited, sorted-by-color-and-style dream closet (no wire hangers for Mommy!).  I wander the aisles, wide-eyed, present, and pulsing with the desire to de-clutter, snatching random crap that I know will make my life better and make me a super awesome parent and all around person to be envied: gift wrap and tape to always have on hand; shelf dividers so I can see all the snacks in the cavern that is our snack shelf; sensible, dishwasher-safe reusable baggies for school lunches my 4-year-old daughter won’t eat; atchotchke to gather the wires under my desk into a beautiful little bundle.

I even found the tiniest (and cheapest) container in the place: one-inch-square Lucite boxes in an assortment of rainbow colors, which totally delighted my daughter (39 cents!).  But I can’t be sure that my almost 1-year-old son didn’t eat the hot pink one, as I saw him gumming enthusiastically it the other day and haven’t seen it since.

When I was pregnant last summer with my second kid, I was nesting like a meshuganah.  Always a lover of containers, I became frighteningly obsessive, dragging home bins on a weekly basis (and I mean dragging – nine months pregnant and hoisting things home on the subway like a cavewoman dragging home her kill).  The desire to purge and fold and stack was physical, like I could somehow alleviate the anxiety of parenthood by sorting and saving and labeling with my label maker: things to pass on to friends, things to keep for the baby, things to go to storage. My husband joked that he was worried to go to sleep for fear of waking up in a man-shaped bin. I was certainly tempted.

I had then, and still have now, an intense need to put things into things. Bins and shelves and the promise of an orderly exterior somehow make me feel like I can do it, I can handle the intensity of raising these children. I was not always like this! I could let things go – not do dishes immediately or throw things in a heap until later. But now that I’ve talked about it with other parents, I know so many mothers and fathers who crave order in this same somewhat obsessive way. There are so many things to think about that we cannot control, that sometimes it feels safe to fixate about things we can.  Like bins.

I am aware that buying things will not lead to happiness in the long run. But sometimes it seems like if you have theright things, carefully chosen and perfectly curated – like if Martha Stewart were walking beside you in The Container Store, making recommendations on filing systems or giving you tips on the right hamper to fit into your tiny little closet – then maybe, just maybe, you’ll be okay.

We all have our stuff, both metaphorical and physical. No matter how organized that stuff is, or where we put it, it will always be ours.

musings on a past life, pre-kids

I have these moments of intense nostalgia, usually triggered by one of my senses. A summer camp smell, certain songs by Phish, or a glimpse of The Breakfast Club on cable can recall a time and a place when I was a different person. So pure in their ability to create longing for a past life, these moments feel like the impetus for an artistic epiphany or something – like I’m supposed to do something tangible with these powerful memories. But I can’t paint or sculpt or write a song or make a film. I wish I knew how. Or had the time.

Recently I was waiting for my husband to meet me in Chelsea for a friend’s art opening. It was a Thursday, late afternoon, early summer, and the kids were home in Brooklyn with a sitter. I planned to walk around and check out some galleries, since I never do that kind of aimless cultural wandering anymore, but I was thirsty and ducked into an Irish pub instead. I sat at the bar and drank two beers and got kind of buzzed as the place started to fill with people. As I listened to conversations around me, couples and clusters of friends having their first drinks of the night, getting ready to go to a show, a party, a restaurant, I felt a pang of envy for my younger self. There was a time where I regularly sat in bars like this one, alone, sipping a whiskey, reading a magazine and waiting for a friend or a boyfriend. There was nothing this twenty-something unencumbered self had to accomplish, short of getting to my job and doing my laundry. Go to the gym, maybe.

A night like this — the first warm one of summer — would be languid, anticipatory, pulsing with potential. Maybe I’d meet someone hilarious or make out with a stranger. New York, and the world, was open to me. I didn’t know where I would be in ten years. Looking back now, my only anxiety was: who and where do I want to be and how in the hell do I get there?

I wouldn’t have guilt about leaving the kids. Or worry about ruffling a babysitter’s feelings by staying out too late. Or wasting money on a stupid night out. Wondering if I bicker too much with my husband. Or if my kids will be as lucky as I was to enjoy a mostly happy childhood.

I likely know where I’ll be for the next ten years, and most days I feel incredibly lucky. But now I have the worry of staying lucky, not screwing up. Being an example. Keeping my marriage strong. Being a good mom. Trying to enjoy my blessings without the crushing anxiety that can go along with having them. Because at a certain point all that languid, pulsing-with-potential business begins to get tired, and you start looking for the next thing, which begets the next, and the next thing you know you have a mortgage, two kids and four kinds of insurance (health, life, condominium, auto).

So sitting in a bar every once in a while is a definitely a good thing. It’s just a very different thing if you don’t get to do it with regularity.