All the bad, none of the good.
On my way home, feeling miserable and tired beyond belief, and having a face (it seems) that always conveys dissatisfaction or discontent (this really is the only face I have... I wish I could peel it back... but more on this in a bit). I was already imagining the release of sitting down and writing it all, metallic keys under my fingers, uninhibited due to lack of finger-nails.
Why I am an awful mother (being one right now, as I write and ignore Isabella's doleful petition for cold water with icy...)
I know in my conscious mind that she is exhausted and only behaving this way because I have dragged her from party to party, waking her from her in-car doze for the first party (at professor's house) only to stifle her creativity and desire for exploration so as to not bother all the catedráticos that were happily (and several decades away from me) schmoozing.
I even invented a horrible lie, that the "duendes" would bite her if we went up the path that lead to who-knows-where winding up the side of the mont, she, of course, didn't believe me, and the turth is, I only lied because I didn't want to leave the conversation I was having...
I am exploding, I can't deal with my personal space being invaded today... perhaps it is the lack of sleep... I can't respond sweetly, but instead with brusque and pushing rejection (I am evil, evil:( )of her prodding and pulling hands, her frigid feet, seeking warmth nestled between my legs.
She is so tired and well behaved, and yet, I want more. I want self-sufficiency (just five minutes, please!) from a four-year-old. I realize that I am being psychotic. After several hours of good behaviour and good-eating we left party one and arrived at party two. she had fallen asleep in the car (around 11) and stayed sleeping, wrapped in my shawl, unconscious of the light in the bedroom that people kept switching on, the flow of people into the bathroom, the amplified music...
---"You said you wouldn't be grumpy" accusatory interjection, as I can't stop from growling at her, as she continues to "just try to get comfortable" (I continue to be evil, I should be shot)---
Somewhere around 1 am, after we had been playing for a few hours, she wakens and wanders sleepily into the middle of the dancing mass, she lifts her arms and I continue to dance, (hips are wonderfully useful tools) and sing as she buries her face in the crook of my shoulder. Michelle comes and rescues me, and Isabella reaches for her "friend that is a girl" (she has several) who steals her away to another bedroom. She doesn't sleep yet, and watches a bit of "Lord of the Rings".
Meanwhile, I grow tired too, and feel guilty, though I was digging the groove of the young Brazilian saxophonist, and the raw rub of our voices. I realize that my voice hurts from the smoke, and the sustained volume, and so, I take just one shot of tequila to feel the warmth run down and cradle my strained vocal chords.
I lay down next to her, but the light is bothersome (at least to me, preferring absolute pitch black for sleep to come) and she cannot get comfortable. I allow her to slip her hand between my breasts, if only so that she will suck herself into sweet oblivion, but am again annoyed and unfairly, too harshly remove her hand again. It is 3:30 on the clock when we get home. I can't sleep yet and I am freezing, so I turn on the heater and huddle, shivering on the bathroom floor, with my (subversive) reading material.
It is 8:30, and I am up again, bathing us both, getting us ready and out the door... forcing her to wear a dress (really there are no other options because I have neglected the laundry for two weekends now.) She doesn't want to and I tell her I don't care what she wants. A battle of wills, mine wins because I am eternally crueler, telling her that I will just leave her behind if she doesn't hurry... (my obsession with punctuality will be the ruin of me or of her). This, of course, is not true being that I have no one to babysit even if I wanted to leave her behind, which I don't... I remind her that this is a grown-up conference (no, not a halloween conference) and that she needs to be absolutely silent. She agrees.
And she maintains an attentive silence for the first 35 minutes, only whispering observations and questions "¿qué es la huella materna? I think she may be paying better attention than me, or any of the other conference-goers, for that matter. I hold her close to me and then silently, she begins to play, not a peep, but moving in and out from underneath my billowing silk skirt, tickling, inadvertently, my inner thighs, utterly inappropriate thoughts for this setting are sparked, but strangely everything seems to be speaking to me, to the same end. We really only hear the things that we want to, or maybe we just extract from all communication the essence that will best serve our immediate purposes. The stories of the deconstruction of love, the voyeuristic isolation of the "modern" couple, the surprise encounters and dis-encounters... We slip out the door, to finish setting up the PA and "stage", the guitar wire that I forgot in my dazed stupor the night before having been replaced. Glares and silence. I return alone, only to have her be lead back to me 20 minutes later, by a stranger - the site manager, it would seem- tears drying on her face, still maintaining her promised code of silence, not interrupting the solemn occasion, but parodying my facial gestures distorted by... rage? (god, is that the angry shushing face I make?) she puffs up her cheeks, apeing me, feigning anger as she puts a finger up to her lips... whispers, "do I have to tell you one more time?", cocks her head and angles an open palm as if to threaten a spank... A crystal-clear reflection of the unpleasant mother, the mother that I never want to be, but that I am finding myself more and more. Then she cracks a smile, and begins wiggling on my lap, as I desperately try to listen to what is being expounded upon, she initiates a game of footsy with the woman sitting on the creaky wooden floor, in the aisle to the left of me. She giggles silently, another section of the conference ends and we slip out once more, now to wait, to help organize the food, to be useful. She sits down with a new friend to discuss how boring it is inside. The queen is again holding court.
We begin to play, as a sort of closing to the event, as people mingle and eat. Takes the pressure off, not having an actively attentive audience. We make no embarrasing mistakes (in fact we sound very good), but Isabella is volleyed away with unyielding hands, I bounce her backwards, too forcefully. "No you may not sing today" Repressive fascist authoritarian figure am I. (Evil, I insist.)
It is over, food and instruments are packed away, and we are driving around, we pass a playground and I don't insist on stopping the car despite her exclamations. We decide that it doesn't make sense for us to go home just so he can turn around and come back down-town for work... anti-ecological, too. Suddenly, we hear the pulsing bass of Reggae and stop the car. Hempfest (pathetically mundane) at the courthouse. I want to dance and dance, to lose myself, but Isabella is tired and feeling ignored and stepping on my skirt. I keep making the unpleasant faces at her as she is playing too near the speaker stands. She begins a race towards me, pushing back, swatting at me, the agression turned back upon me, her frustration. She is not enjoying this, but as I whisk her into my arms and twirl her, she laughs, and wants to repeat it over and over, running at me. Stop!!! I finally am at the end of my rope, "You are hurting mommy's back Isabella. Don't run at me!" Glare, bullish pawing of the ground. I decide not to catch her and she slams into my knee-cap, in her upper thigh. It had to hurt. She cries but lets me comfort her. "I don't like you mommy! (I don't like myself today, either) I just love you a little bit. Not very much - just up to the moon, but not back... If you were nice I would love you a lot." (Would that the same offer be available in other areas of life)
Two more hours of waiting at the shelter. She and I make ourselves scarce, slouched together in an arm-chair, trying to find a suitable program on TV. Praise be! I don't have one of these useless cable boxes in my house. There is nothing mutually satisfying and so I let her watch a "kids" show, banal and mindless, we switch to home decorating. Home envy. I will probably never own a home, not in CA anyway... oh well. I switch off. I am feeling caged now, so is she. We come out of the private cave... duty is almost over, we wait, not demurely, she fidgets with everything. I bark like a drill-sergeant. "Stop touching everything!" We go to the car to wait, crying. "I want to snuggle, if you would snuggle with me I wouldn't cry!" "No, I don't want to." "Then I want to leave you" "Ok" "No! mommy, " more buzzing whine, more me being mean. I feel like my brain is being rattled. "Please just _shut up_" Horrid words, you don't say that to a child and yet, I just _did_, and it felt like my only option. I can't take this...
Next stop. Ok, come snuggle, she climbs from her car-seat and cradles herself against me in the front passenger seat, reclining, feeling anxious and ambivalent and tired. Ok. We can do this, if I can just make it home and write... I can stop this feeling...
Well, I got home (here I am) and re-read myself, et.al, and felt pleased again (briefly), safe, my heart racing and then relaxing, breathing as I write, to purge this negativity. I guess all mothers have some bad days... But I hate being the worst.
Post Script... If I wasn't bad enough...
This morning she wakes up, looks at me and says. I love you mommymom, and I say, I love you babybabe and she says you are so sweet, sweet, sweet. and I give her a quizzical look? Am I? She responds, "well, I will always tell you I love you no matter what, even if you are being grumpy." Unconditional love. Yes, there is a reason that we breed after all, and I don't care what anyone says, pets just don't cut it.
Why I am an awful mother (being one right now, as I write and ignore Isabella's doleful petition for cold water with icy...)
I know in my conscious mind that she is exhausted and only behaving this way because I have dragged her from party to party, waking her from her in-car doze for the first party (at professor's house) only to stifle her creativity and desire for exploration so as to not bother all the catedráticos that were happily (and several decades away from me) schmoozing.
I even invented a horrible lie, that the "duendes" would bite her if we went up the path that lead to who-knows-where winding up the side of the mont, she, of course, didn't believe me, and the turth is, I only lied because I didn't want to leave the conversation I was having...
I am exploding, I can't deal with my personal space being invaded today... perhaps it is the lack of sleep... I can't respond sweetly, but instead with brusque and pushing rejection (I am evil, evil:( )of her prodding and pulling hands, her frigid feet, seeking warmth nestled between my legs.
She is so tired and well behaved, and yet, I want more. I want self-sufficiency (just five minutes, please!) from a four-year-old. I realize that I am being psychotic. After several hours of good behaviour and good-eating we left party one and arrived at party two. she had fallen asleep in the car (around 11) and stayed sleeping, wrapped in my shawl, unconscious of the light in the bedroom that people kept switching on, the flow of people into the bathroom, the amplified music...
---"You said you wouldn't be grumpy" accusatory interjection, as I can't stop from growling at her, as she continues to "just try to get comfortable" (I continue to be evil, I should be shot)---
Somewhere around 1 am, after we had been playing for a few hours, she wakens and wanders sleepily into the middle of the dancing mass, she lifts her arms and I continue to dance, (hips are wonderfully useful tools) and sing as she buries her face in the crook of my shoulder. Michelle comes and rescues me, and Isabella reaches for her "friend that is a girl" (she has several) who steals her away to another bedroom. She doesn't sleep yet, and watches a bit of "Lord of the Rings".
Meanwhile, I grow tired too, and feel guilty, though I was digging the groove of the young Brazilian saxophonist, and the raw rub of our voices. I realize that my voice hurts from the smoke, and the sustained volume, and so, I take just one shot of tequila to feel the warmth run down and cradle my strained vocal chords.
I lay down next to her, but the light is bothersome (at least to me, preferring absolute pitch black for sleep to come) and she cannot get comfortable. I allow her to slip her hand between my breasts, if only so that she will suck herself into sweet oblivion, but am again annoyed and unfairly, too harshly remove her hand again. It is 3:30 on the clock when we get home. I can't sleep yet and I am freezing, so I turn on the heater and huddle, shivering on the bathroom floor, with my (subversive) reading material.
It is 8:30, and I am up again, bathing us both, getting us ready and out the door... forcing her to wear a dress (really there are no other options because I have neglected the laundry for two weekends now.) She doesn't want to and I tell her I don't care what she wants. A battle of wills, mine wins because I am eternally crueler, telling her that I will just leave her behind if she doesn't hurry... (my obsession with punctuality will be the ruin of me or of her). This, of course, is not true being that I have no one to babysit even if I wanted to leave her behind, which I don't... I remind her that this is a grown-up conference (no, not a halloween conference) and that she needs to be absolutely silent. She agrees.
And she maintains an attentive silence for the first 35 minutes, only whispering observations and questions "¿qué es la huella materna? I think she may be paying better attention than me, or any of the other conference-goers, for that matter. I hold her close to me and then silently, she begins to play, not a peep, but moving in and out from underneath my billowing silk skirt, tickling, inadvertently, my inner thighs, utterly inappropriate thoughts for this setting are sparked, but strangely everything seems to be speaking to me, to the same end. We really only hear the things that we want to, or maybe we just extract from all communication the essence that will best serve our immediate purposes. The stories of the deconstruction of love, the voyeuristic isolation of the "modern" couple, the surprise encounters and dis-encounters... We slip out the door, to finish setting up the PA and "stage", the guitar wire that I forgot in my dazed stupor the night before having been replaced. Glares and silence. I return alone, only to have her be lead back to me 20 minutes later, by a stranger - the site manager, it would seem- tears drying on her face, still maintaining her promised code of silence, not interrupting the solemn occasion, but parodying my facial gestures distorted by... rage? (god, is that the angry shushing face I make?) she puffs up her cheeks, apeing me, feigning anger as she puts a finger up to her lips... whispers, "do I have to tell you one more time?", cocks her head and angles an open palm as if to threaten a spank... A crystal-clear reflection of the unpleasant mother, the mother that I never want to be, but that I am finding myself more and more. Then she cracks a smile, and begins wiggling on my lap, as I desperately try to listen to what is being expounded upon, she initiates a game of footsy with the woman sitting on the creaky wooden floor, in the aisle to the left of me. She giggles silently, another section of the conference ends and we slip out once more, now to wait, to help organize the food, to be useful. She sits down with a new friend to discuss how boring it is inside. The queen is again holding court.
We begin to play, as a sort of closing to the event, as people mingle and eat. Takes the pressure off, not having an actively attentive audience. We make no embarrasing mistakes (in fact we sound very good), but Isabella is volleyed away with unyielding hands, I bounce her backwards, too forcefully. "No you may not sing today" Repressive fascist authoritarian figure am I. (Evil, I insist.)
It is over, food and instruments are packed away, and we are driving around, we pass a playground and I don't insist on stopping the car despite her exclamations. We decide that it doesn't make sense for us to go home just so he can turn around and come back down-town for work... anti-ecological, too. Suddenly, we hear the pulsing bass of Reggae and stop the car. Hempfest (pathetically mundane) at the courthouse. I want to dance and dance, to lose myself, but Isabella is tired and feeling ignored and stepping on my skirt. I keep making the unpleasant faces at her as she is playing too near the speaker stands. She begins a race towards me, pushing back, swatting at me, the agression turned back upon me, her frustration. She is not enjoying this, but as I whisk her into my arms and twirl her, she laughs, and wants to repeat it over and over, running at me. Stop!!! I finally am at the end of my rope, "You are hurting mommy's back Isabella. Don't run at me!" Glare, bullish pawing of the ground. I decide not to catch her and she slams into my knee-cap, in her upper thigh. It had to hurt. She cries but lets me comfort her. "I don't like you mommy! (I don't like myself today, either) I just love you a little bit. Not very much - just up to the moon, but not back... If you were nice I would love you a lot." (Would that the same offer be available in other areas of life)
Two more hours of waiting at the shelter. She and I make ourselves scarce, slouched together in an arm-chair, trying to find a suitable program on TV. Praise be! I don't have one of these useless cable boxes in my house. There is nothing mutually satisfying and so I let her watch a "kids" show, banal and mindless, we switch to home decorating. Home envy. I will probably never own a home, not in CA anyway... oh well. I switch off. I am feeling caged now, so is she. We come out of the private cave... duty is almost over, we wait, not demurely, she fidgets with everything. I bark like a drill-sergeant. "Stop touching everything!" We go to the car to wait, crying. "I want to snuggle, if you would snuggle with me I wouldn't cry!" "No, I don't want to." "Then I want to leave you" "Ok" "No! mommy, " more buzzing whine, more me being mean. I feel like my brain is being rattled. "Please just _shut up_" Horrid words, you don't say that to a child and yet, I just _did_, and it felt like my only option. I can't take this...
Next stop. Ok, come snuggle, she climbs from her car-seat and cradles herself against me in the front passenger seat, reclining, feeling anxious and ambivalent and tired. Ok. We can do this, if I can just make it home and write... I can stop this feeling...
Well, I got home (here I am) and re-read myself, et.al, and felt pleased again (briefly), safe, my heart racing and then relaxing, breathing as I write, to purge this negativity. I guess all mothers have some bad days... But I hate being the worst.
Post Script... If I wasn't bad enough...
This morning she wakes up, looks at me and says. I love you mommymom, and I say, I love you babybabe and she says you are so sweet, sweet, sweet. and I give her a quizzical look? Am I? She responds, "well, I will always tell you I love you no matter what, even if you are being grumpy." Unconditional love. Yes, there is a reason that we breed after all, and I don't care what anyone says, pets just don't cut it.
posted by ilana at 8:38 p.m.
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