A Good Little House

The time has finally come, dear readers. We are moving on Monday. In between overwhelming waves of sheer panic, trying to schedule the movers, the closing, the repair of a cracked sidewalk slab (Really town inspector? Really?) and finish packing, I have been fighting the deep, deep sadness I feel leaving our little house.

It feels like yesterday I was puling up in front of it, in our red Jetta, with a three month old #1 in the back seat and my dad riding shotgun to come see the house we would be living in gratis while Hubby and I rode out an ill-timed stint of unemployment. We had been planning on moving to the suburbs and renting while we saved for a house anyway, since I was realizing quickly hauling a baby up and down the four flights of stairs to our walk-up apartment in Hoboken was going to kill me, or turn me into Quadzilla, in short order. So when our luck took a turn for the worse and Pop, H’s grandfather, went into a nursing home, it seemed like the solution to everyone’s problems.

Then I walked in. Before I begin to describe my reaction to the house, let me explain that Pop was in his nineties, and up until months before, had been living on his own since his wife passed away ten years earlier. The house I walked into was exactly what you would expect of a man left to his own devices. No serious improvements had been made in years, I’m sure Mama loved her home the way it was, when she was keeping it. As we all know, most men, when on their own, will eventually come close to going feral, so as you would expect, getting new carpeting or giving the walls a fresh coat of paint to spruce things up did not even pass through his mind. He loved his yard and the Yankees and his house was just fine for him.

But not for me. Between the fifties bathroom that Pop really hadn’t done a great job of keeping clean (as his Y chromosome would dictate) and the cracked, orange linoleum floor in the kitchen with the seventies oak cabinetry, I was overwhelmed. After viewing my future home, I walked up to the park up the street with my father where I sat on a bench and sobbed, “I can’t live here!”*. I had no choice though, we were broke and it was free thanks to my father in-law’s generosity. So move in, we did.

Thus began what would be, unbeknownst to us, our seven year stay. We began making over the house bit by bit as money would allow. We ripped out the old carpeting, H choking on thirty years of dust, we painted the Brady Bunch-espque cabinets a bright white and replaced the hardware and laid a black and white checkered floor over that blindness-inducing linoleum and we painted rooms and stripped wallpaper. When our financial situation improved, we actually bought the house from my father in-law, as sadly, Pop had passed away shortly after our move in. We found money to redo the bathroom and finish the basement, making more room for our growing family.

As the house evolved over the years, so did we. We moved into our three bedroom bungalow, making the two other bedrooms an office and a nursery for #1. Then, when #2 unexpectedly came along, we essentially had two nurseries. And now, we have one nursery and a big girls room complete with bunk beds and Hannah Montana paraphernalia. And we changed as people. The day H and I moved into that house we were a young couple with a baby, now we are a family. We were a professionally frustrated young father and shell-shocked, struggling new mother trying to figure out if she could survive without a career. And now H is so happy, and doing well, at his job, and while I don’t claim to have all the answers, I have come to trust myself as a parent and I know the days when I can think about having a professional life are just around the corner.

Monday will be a day of reflection for both H and I. When I walk around the empty house I will be envisioning all the things, good and bad, that have taken place under this roof. This is the house where all of my children took their first steps. All those life changing moments, new jobs, first words, positive pregnancy tests, happened in this house. This tiny house was like my den, where I lived for seven sleep-deprived, milk-sodden years, surrounded by my babies, all of us on top of each other, but, most times, happy to be so. Now we move on to a bigger house to create new memories, but while I am happy about all the new space, I will miss this closeness.

When we close the door for the last time on Monday, it’s like we are closing a door on the chapter of our lives titled “The Early Years”. We leave our baby days behind us. While Little Man is still young, the floors in the new house will never be scratched by the dragging of a baby-laden Exersaucer across them. The glider isn’t even making the cut in his new big boy room and we are leaving his blue and white gingham curtains for the new owners. And my girls, they will both be in elementary school, away from me, in the real world. And we moved forward.

So to our house I say, I will miss you. We walked in your door so unsure, and we leave much the same way, but certain in our strength as a couple and as a family. While some times were tough, our memories of them are wonderful, as memories of hard times survived are. You will live on in our memory forever as the house where we became a family. You were, and still are, a good, good little house.

*Pop, please in no way think I was ever not grateful to you, but even you have to admit, it was like walking in to a time machine.

No one's making a pilgrmage to see me...

T-minus four days until the move and I am already exhausted. Add to that the world's worst timed case of PMS (thank you hormones!) and you have a recipe for me being short tempered with Hubby and the kids as I limp through a week that includes taking all three kids to the doctor for checkups, staying up until one in the morning wrapping presents and decorating the house for #1's birthday, followed by a day in the city to celebrate at American girl, and a three hour Girl Scout leader training last night during which four of the planet's dumbest women repeatedly asked, "Wait, who do I give this form to?", apparently unable to read a tree diagram.

My impatient behavior over the last week was brought into stark relief this morning as I watched a segment on Amma The Hugging Saint's visit to NYC. This woman travels the world preaching about peace and understanding and at the end of her engagements, offers a healing embrace to those who need one. The footage showed thousands of people lined up before this diminutive Indian woman, with a peaceful smile, who was not give out mere arms-length-greeting-at-a-cocktail-party style hugs, but enveloping embraces where she brought her face over the recipient's shoulder to whisper blessings in their ear with a beatific look on her face. In my progesterone-riddled, sleep-deprived state, it made me tear up and made me want a hug.

How do people like this exist? Were they born perfect? Were they perfect children, sleeping through the night since birth and never having a No-I-don't-want-to-leave-the-park temper tantrum? It made my own behavior seem that much more monstrous by comparison. And I began to wonder, Amma's a woman, does she ever get hormonally bitchy? Does she ever tap her foot impatiently in line behind some old woman taking forever to write a check for cat food at the grocery store? Does she ever almost go blind with rage when she realizes, after driving off with all her kids in the van, that Mobin forgot to put two Splenda in the iced coffee she so desperately needs? Does she ever sit and drink too much wine with her husband and mock the prematurely baldly contestant on The Bachelor? (Kippton, will you accept this Rogaine?) Does she ever obsess about her roots, or her thighs or whether her bindi is on right? I'm guessing no, which is why she's, you know, a saint.

So I switched off the TV, trudged upstairs to take my post-workout shower, and pledged to be nicer to my husband, my children and the world in general today. It didn't last more than ten minutes, of course, as I came into the bathroom to find H's hair products all over the counter and the bath mat soaking wet and I felt my blood pressure go up thirty points. But I guess that's why I don't have thousands of people coming to see me looking to hug it out. I'm not perfect, I'm not a saint. I get pissed, I judge people. I'm human. And if I had to hug some of those grungy looking college kids with dreads I saw in line for Amma, they would have been given a smile, the Heisman, and been told, "Go in peace. And the universe wants you to wash off some of that patchouli."

It's summer, time to get out the boxing gloves...

I am trying to take my own advice from posts-past and take a few minutes to write while Little Man is asleep and the girls are at the pool with my magnificent mother in-law, instead of continuing to orbit around the house, manically throwing things in boxes and wondering how the hell we're going to get all this packing done in the next thirteen days, all the while tripping over piles of unfolded laundry, train tracks and Groovy Girls.

So summer is upon me, and while I mentioned (just a few times) how I am having my ass kicked three ways 'til Sunday, I have actually managed to settle into a groove with the kids and have begun to enjoying all this time with them while they still want to spend it with me, rather than have me drop them three blocks from the town pool. A major part of finding balance this summer is getting into a schedule of outings to keep everyone busy and from unpacking every box I have worked so hard to fill. So if we are spending so much time out and about with other children of varying ages and other parents of varying intelligences, you know what that means. Time for my annual Fight at the Park.

As you will recall from last summer, I am not one to avoid disciplining someone else's kid when the safety of my own is at risk, since I firmly believe we need to harken back to the olden days and participate in communal parenting when sharing the same sandbox. You will also remember, on occasion, I Bronx out when doing so. So I'm not sure if it's something to do with this particular park that I don't frequent that often, but it seems every time I have an unpleasant interaction with some adolescent ape, stumbling about in his testosterone fog, with a sense of entitlement in proportion to the length of his hair (I still do not understand this phenomenon). Again, see last summer's post.

So why was I surprised at yesterday's occurrences? I showed up at the park with all three kids so slathered in sunscreen they looked like understudies for Powder and I immediately knew we were in trouble as I saw dozens of teenagers wearing neon green t-shirts with "STAFF" emblazoned on the back. Ugh. The town "day camp", otherwise known as the cheapest way to not spend time with your kids during the summer while entrusting them to the care of inattentive dimwits. I know much about this having attended one myself (because my parents worked) and because H was a counselor/future Gitmo warden at the one in his town where he spent his summer playing Get Under It with his third grade group*. Today there were dozens of children were wilding around the playground while their counselors sat, in the shade, oblivious, texting. Oh, boy. The hairs were already standing up on the back of my neck.

Our trouble began over by the sandbox, where LM set up shop, and coincidentally, there is a gate down to the baseball field of last summer's fame. Now while I am an attentive mother on most days, when I am out with all three kids in public and therefore, outnumbered, I rely on conveniences like wooden barriers to ensure one of them doesn't wander into traffic while I rescue someone from the top of the jungle gym. So when groups of kids and their wardens started coming and going from the playground and field, would it really have been to much to ask of the hormone bag bringing up the rear to shut the gate behind him? Apparently so. And apparently, once again, it was my job to educate someone. After speaking nicely to a large group of pimple faced child-wranglers who, to be fair, did listen and were closing the gate, I realized there were so many groups coming and going there was no way I could inform them all of proper playground etiquette (and why the town did not, I have no idea), and I sure as hell was not getting up every thirty-five seconds to close the gate, so I just began shouting as groups entered and left, "CLOSE THE GATE!". I thought, as usual, I was making myself into the park pariah, and embarrassing my mom friends who had met up with me (although they should be used to my behavior by now), but after my fifth shouted directive I heard a cry of, "You're awesome!", from a gaggle of mom's by the swings. Go, me.

Then, Little Man grew tired of the sandbox and we moved on to the toddler jungle gym. For those of you unfamiliar with playground equipment, they make specific types of monkey bars for wee ones complete with lower slides and shallower steps. So why, pray tell, was there a gaggle of ten year old boys repeatedly bumping into and almost knocking over my two year old on Lilliputian equipment? Because their asshole counselors were down on the playground below sitting in the fucking shade, that's why!!!! Can you see where this is going? Can you?

After trying ro manage the erratic movements of eight grade school idiots to prevent my child from being trampled to death to no avail, I had had enough. I marched over to the fence and shouted down to the miscreants lounging in the shade, "EXCUSE ME! DO YOU THINK YOU COULD COME UP HERE AND STOP YOUR CAMPERS FROM ACTING LIKE IDIOTS???" Most of them just looked up at me with dazed expression, but the one in the center of this circle jerk actually mastered his powers of speech to say, "What do you want me to do? It's a playground." I swear to God, dear readers, my head almost exploded and it was all I could do to stop myself from grabbing him by his pooka shell necklace and cramming his iPhone down his throat. My response, instead was, "This equipment is for children under six. Are your campers under six?" He answers, "No, but, God, they're just playing." Don't worry, dear readers, I am not writing this post from jail, so I obviously managed to contain my rage long enough to ask him, "Are you seriously arguing with me?", march off and find the director. I took much pleasure at watching him stammer out his explanation while his boss basically told him to shut the hell up and start doing his damn job.

Again, I beg the question, when did the idiots start running the asylum? I will try, once again, to send out a call of action to take back control. I not only highly recommend you take matters into your own hands at the local parks when you see unchecked and child-endangering idiocy, but to think about how we, the parents of the next generation, are raising the camp counselors of the future. We need to instill a sense of humility and respect in our children when faced with legitimate criticism. And I have come up with the perfect catch phrase to help us take our children down a notch when they get their sassy britches on. I'm considering getting t-shirts printed with this phrase to remind us to educate our children, no matter how smart they themselves think they are at fifteen, how little anyone else cares about their opinion. Perhaps you might have heard it before?

JUST WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?

Let it be our battle cry.

*Get Under It consisted of H and his fellow counselors throwing a 24 inch diameter kickball high into the air and screaming at their campers to "Get under it!" so as to watch their little sixty pound bodies be knocked down like bowling pins as the ball came screaming back down to earth.