What Do You Do?

I've been traveling a lot lately--as in, in the last six weeks, I've been to Texas twice, North Carolina, Virginia, and California--which has given me a lot of time to think about my life. There's something about distance from home that throws me into an introspective fit of pondering. It's a really good thing I'm not single. I'd spend my whole life in my head, and even though I really like my head, it's no place to live.

So after a few plane trips with strangers, I've noticed a couple of things: First, people are willing to share really personal information with a total stranger when both people are stuck on a pressurized aluminum tube hurtling through air six miles above the earth's surface. Second, those strangers, after spilling their guts, often ask what I do. It goes something like this:

"...so that's how I ended up selling human organs on the black market. What do YOU do?"

For a very long time--at least 20 years--I've dreamed of answering that question this way: "I'm a writer." And now I can.

Except that's not entirely true. I mean, it's true that I write for a living. Right now, people pay me to write a lot. (I write a lot. They don't necessarily pay me a lot.) And while I'm not exactly Margaret Atwood or Joyce Carol Oates or Wallace Stegner (my newest literary crush), I'm finding my way, and I am a writer.

But I don't feel like my "what do you do" is properly wrapped up in being a writer. So my answered have evolved from the first:

"I'm a writer. And a mom. To a toddler. A girl. She's amazing."

to:

"I'm a mom and a writer."

It feels right to say it that way, to put the mom part first, and here's how I know: When I crawl into a big empty bed in another town and know that I won't be awoken by Hadley calling, "Mommy, are you? Hadley's bed" (as if she has to remind me where to find her), I feel a pang in my heart that isn't soothed by the fact that I get to sleep without being awoken in the night by Hadley talking in her sleep or Jason snoring. I don't have to spring out of bed, try to focus my eyes enough to get the milk poured into the sippy cup, and haul 27 pounds of toddler to my bed for five more minutes of rest. And believe me, there are mornings at home when I wish I could just open my eyes when my body decided to wake up--not when the body in the next bedroom decided to wake up.

But when I'm gone from this home and my family, I long for them more than I've ever longed to be a "real" writer. So I know: I am a mama first, a writer second.

I read this blog often, and just a few days ago, she had a post about travel in the age of postmodern motherhood. And aside from the fact that I hate the adjective "postmodern" because too many people use it as a pseudo-intellectual, aren't-I-so-smart trope, I totally dug the essay, especially the part where she admits that she's lucky to have a husband who's able and will to be the Parent In Charge (love that term) while she travels do to work she loves. And then she says, "That luck is kind of complicated."

I nearly cried. Then I almost did my best reporter work to track her down so I could call her on the phone and say, "Yes! I get it! Sing it, sister! Want to be friends?" But you'll be glad to know that I didn't. (Or maybe you're not glad. Maybe you really wished that I had called her because that story would be far more interesting than this one. Whatever.)

This luck--I'd be more inclined to call it a blessing--is complicated. This life is not simple. I would be so, so, so unhappy if I couldn't write, if I didn't feel like I had at least one project that felt meaningful and challenging. But working on this meaningful, challenging project means leaving the people I love most and stepping out of the story of their daily lives. It means choosing one over the other--at least for a few days--and that's hard, really hard.

But it's also good. (See? This is the complicated part.) I think there's some value in having a place to reflect on motherhood; otherwise, I think it's easy to plug along without considering how or why--or at least, it would be easy for me to plug along. Instead, I get to long for the too-early wake-ups and Hadley's ever-stronger will and the living room strewn with toys. I see life without them (for a day or two), and I choose life with them over and over and over again.

I love to come home, to stop ruminating about motherhood from a strange hotel room a thousand miles away and instead, to wake up abruptly on a Tuesday morning when Hadley yells, "Mommy, are you?"

Right here, baby girl. Right here.

Cue the Laugh Track

Ok, enough of the serious stuff. You'd think I spend my time worrying about a sick child or ruminating on the profound responsibility of motherhood.

The truth is that most of the time, I just laugh.

Because my baby? She's f-u-n-n-y.

Behold:

At some point in our diligent efforts to teach Hadley to share, she learned the word "turn." So now when she wants her daddy or me to do something, she yells with glee, "Daddy's turn!" or "Mommy's turn!" It's her not-very-subtle way of trying to boss us around.

So Jason and I take turns doing all sorts of stuff, like cutting apples into slices and helping her put on her red rain boots so she can stomp around the house. But it's almost always "Mommy's turn" when it comes time to change a stinky diaper.

Today, the conversation went like this:

Jason: "Hadley, do you have poo-poos?"

Hadley: "Nope."

Jason: "Hadley?" (With his best serious daddy face.)

Hadley: "Yup." Pause. She spinned toward me, threw open her arms, and yelled: "Mommy's turn!" Like I've just won the lottery. Jason puts a dime in her piggy bank every time it happens. She's going to be able to afford Harvard by the time she's 10. Too bad I'd never let her enroll there.

When she's not assigning "turns," she's maneuvering for "treats." Jason and I were chatting about the grocery list the other day while Hadley sat nearby, and he said to me, "Do you need anything else?" Just as I was getting ready to say no, Hadley piped up:

"Oh! Daddy?" She poked her first finger in the air, like a tiny British professor. "Treats. Yiddle." (That's "little" for those of you not living with an almost-two-year-old.) Jason laughed so hard, he nearly fell over--which just encourages her, of course. He came home with sorbet. Sucker.

From the annals of Rather Embarrassing, she calls men "guys" and identifies what they're doing, always prefaced by a little, almost inaudible "oh," as if she's mildly offended. Yesterday at the park, she pointed and said, "Oh, guy. Walking." At the grocery store, it was "Oh, guy. Talking. Phone." At the mall, "Oh, guy. Eating."

Of course, all women are mommies, and Hadley likes to review exactly who is a girl and who is a boy. "Daddy. Boy. Mommy. Girl. Hadley. GIRL!" (She's very excited about that one.) Then she goes through Mumsie and Granddaddy, Papa and Grandma, Auntie and Graham, and everyone else in her little world. She almost always gets them all right. How did she learn that?

I'm blown away by how quickly her imagination is growing. Her new favorite game is "lions coming." (Hadley so dubbed it.) As you might guess, we pretend that lions are coming to get us, so we have to run around the house like total maniacs and then hide in Mommy's bed or under a blanket on the couch. Then we have to go find the lions, tell them "no, no, lions," and then run away again. She absolutely must hide her toes from the lions. I thinks that's probably a good strategy and shows that she's a fabulous problem-solver. (How would you run away from lions if you didn't have toes?)

She sings all the time. Last night before bed, she was stuck on "Old MacDonald," which goes like this: "Oma Donut had a farm, E-I-E-I-O. On a farm, had some cows. Moo-moo here. Moo-moo here." Repeat. Forty-eight times. We know she's done when she yells, "Yea!" Then we have to clap.

I could regale you with 20 more tales of Hadley-isms. They happen faster than I can record them. (Seriously. Does any mother have time to record her child's early years in a baby book? If you're one of those moms, you're officially banished from this blog.)

I'm grateful for her quirky sense of humor and brilliant imagination. It is good to laugh because the stakes of motherhood are high. I do spend a lot of time thinking about how Hadley is growing and whether we're doing the right things, and what if she gets another infection, and when she says her eyes are itchy, does that mean the infection has spread, and why won't she eat meat or green beans, and will she ever stop hating having her hair washed, and what if something really awful happened to one of us? Because the stakes are high--so, so high. Motherhood is serious business.

Until we have to run away from the lions. Then, it's just plain fun.

Why We Appreciate Ordinary Days

I can't figure out where to start. I keep typing and deleting, trying to find the place to tell you about our scary hospital visit, which are filed in the annals of "worst days of my life." I cannot find an easy way in, so I'll just jump.

Hadley had been sick with a cold for a couple of weeks when Jason left town last Wednesday afternoon. He had meetings in Orlando until Saturday night. I hate when he leaves, but now that I'm not working full-time, it's much easier to be a single mommy for a few days.

Thursday night, Hadley was up four or five times, crying out in her sleep and rolling around in her crib. I broke the cardinal sleeping rule and tucked her in bed with me around 5:30 Friday morning. We both slept a few more hours.

When she woke up, she was weepy. She kept saying, "Mommy, mommy, hold you." Hadley is usually Captain Action in the mornings--barely stopping to eat breakfast--but Friday morning, she was clingy and lethargic and pale. She had a 102-degree fever. I took her to the doctor's office in the afternoon, and the doc said all of Hadley's symptoms were consistent with an ear infection, but her eyes weren't infected. Her diagnosis: another virus.

By Saturday morning, the right side of Hadley's face was puffy. I thought she had slept strangely, but when the puffiness wasn't better after her nap, I called the pediatrician. I remember thinking, "This is probably nothing. I'm sure she'll tell me it's nothing."

Instead, the doctor asked me a few questions and then said, "I don't want to scare you, but you need to get Hadley to the ER. What you're describing sounds consistent with a skin infection around her eye and in her cheek, and depending on the type of bacteria, it could spread very fast."

Still, I didn't panic. I thought, "Okay, well, it'll be good for someone to examine her."

As we drove to the hospital, I started to wish there was some way to let Hadley know what was coming--that it wouldn't be fun, but that it would be all right. We barely walked through the ER doors when Hadley began to cry. My mom and dad met us there, and I remember thinking, "Oh, this is probably overkill. Certainly we don't need three adults for one child." Silly me.

The next four hours were awful. The ER pediatrician was good, but the first nurse assigned to us was a gruff, miserable woman who didn't know a thing about children. She spent 45 minutes prepping to draw Hadley's blood--touching her arm, wrapping the board they used to keep Hadley's arm straight, putting needles and other medical supplies on the bed beside us--it was enough to freak out even a grown-up. Hadley was completely overwrought; all she could do was cry and scream, "Mommy! Mommy!"

Cue Mumsie and Granddaddy. When the nurse pulled Hadley out of my arms (after I asked her if she could please hurry up finding a vein, as she was really upsetting Hadley), they hopped up and found the doctor as I grabbed Hadley back from the nurse. Another nurse came in and gently dismissed Attila the Hun. But the damage was done. Hadley was a wreck, and I could actually feel my heart shattering into dozens of splinters.

The only thing that seemed to make Hadley feel better was hearing me sing, so I sang. She likes a song she calls "Chicken." It's actually "The Riddle Song" and dates back to the 15th century. Anyway, there's a line in it that says, "The story that I love you, it has no end," and I couldn't sing it. Every time I tried, I started to cry. And then Hadley would ask for the chicken song again, and I'd try once more.

The second nurse managed to draw Hadley's blood; we waited an hour for the results, which showed that she did, in fact, have an infection. The doc gave her IV antibiotics and released us with instructions to bring her back on Sunday so they could test her blood again to see if the antibiotics worked.

Just as we were ending our visit, Jason called to let me know that he had landed. "We're fine," I said. "But we're in the ER." I could hear him take a deep breath. Even though I told him to drive carefully, he was home in record time.

We had a fitful night; Hadley slept in our bed with me, waking up every three hours crying and saying her face hurt, or just pleading with me: "Mommy, Mommy, Mommy." I held her for hours that night, praying that the medicine would work, praying against the fear she would feel on Sunday when we schlepped her back to the hospital for more tests.

Jason and I decided to take her back to the ER after her nap on Sunday to give her a little time to play at home and relax. I'm glad we waited, even though I was so tense at the thought of subjecting her to more needles and scary strangers, I could barely breathe. I tried to nap while she napped, but all I could think about was holding her as she screamed while the nurses pricked her arm. Did she think I let them hurt her? Did she wonder why her mommy would let anyone hurt her? Would she trust me ever again?

She began crying before we even pulled up to the hospital. How do parents of chronically ill children manage without just falling over from broken hearts? I hope I never know. But even though I wanted to cry and grab Hadley and run home, I didn't. I scooped her up and marched into the ER.

The second round of blood tests showed that Hadley's infection hadn't changed much. I remember when the ER doc walked into our little room and said, "I think it would be best to admit her, so we can administer a stronger antibiotic via IV." Admit her? I thought. Does she mean we have to stay here? Immediately, I ached for home--for our little house where we play and sing and take baths and give hugs and laugh. I really had to fight the impulse to take Hadley and run.

They moved us to a room in the children's wing. Hadley was clearly puzzled, but as long as Jason and I were there, she seemed willing to accept that she had to stay--or maybe she was too tired to care. Hadley and I snuggled into bed with an IV drip attached to her arm, and Jason slept on the other twin bed. Hadley slept. I think I was awake all night. The nurse came in every two or three hours to check the IV, take Hadley's temperature, or reload the antibiotics. I was so worried about making sure Hadley slept, I couldn't relax.

I watched her sleep. She laid there, and I cried, wondering what she must think, trusting her daddy and me to make the right decisions, even though we know nothing. Parenting is a crazy paradigm: All we have is some common sense and this knock-the-wind-out-of-us love for Hadley. I know a whole lot more about Shakespeare and French geography and English grammar and contemporary art than I do about being a mom. And yet none of those things matters a whit compared to how much Hadley matters to me.

Nobody teaches you what to do if your child comes down with cellulitis. Nobody tells you how to prepare her for the moment you drag her into the ER and strange people touch her in white-sterile rooms while her mama tries to sing her favorite chicken song. So I just watched her sleep and touched her forehead and tried to think about happy days.

In the morning, we saw Hadley's pediatrician, who said he was planning to call the infectious disease specialist at the children's hospital. He seemed to think it was possible we'd head home at the end of the day if Hadley's next round of blood work showed signs of improvement. I was hopeful.

Another round of blood tests, another round of holding my screaming, kicking, panicked child while strangers drew her blood. But then we pretty much hung out in the hospital room, Hadley eating popsicles and watching Elmo, me wandering around the ward in my pajama pants and unwashed hair. Not my finest hour, but who cared? Not me.

Hadley and I snuggled in for a nap around 12:30 (after our dear friends Lauren and Jenny came for a visit--bless them!), and by the time we woke up a couple of hours later, Jason had good news: The doc said her blood tests showed enough positive signs that we could go home at the end of the day.

Just then, I started breathing again.

Around 6:30 Monday night, as we pulled away from the hospital, Hadley said very quietly, "Thank you, doctors." I don't know if she was thanking them for curing her or for letting her go home, but I almost cried hearing her tiny voice acknowledge some measure of what we had been through.

We came home to a clean house, thanks to Mumsie and Granddaddy. We all had clean sheets; Hadley had a totally clean crib; her toys were cleaned, and Granddaddy even ironed a fresh tablecloth for our dining table. Hadley was thrilled and exhausted. Check that. We were ALL thrilled and exhausted.

A week ago, we were in a hospital room. Tonight, we have a healthy baby asleep in her crib. I've even finished almost all of the laundry. I couldn't see beyond the next hour a week ago, and tonight, we're looking forward to a week of zoo visits, book reading, music classes, and even some mundane stuff, like dish washing and dinner making and floor sweeping. And we'll do those things gladly, realizing that it's a blessing to have days that are not notable, except for the fact that we share them with Hadley.

Mama Said There'd Be Days Like This...

Truth be told, I'm debating about whether to keep up this blog--which is more like a monthly column for as much as I write here. Maybe it's because 1) figuring out how to express this great and challenging and life-altering love I feel for Hadley is tough or 2) I write for a living, so writing in my free time seems a little redundant or 3) I'm tired because I'm the mama of a toddler.

But for now, I'm here. Jason is on his way home from the airport, and Hadley is in bed. I like alone time. I love my family, and I love being with them, and I often mourn the minutes I don't get to spend with them. But alone time is good.

All I need is a hot bath.

[Cue ironic background music that tells you that hot baths are not in my future tonight.]

Let me preface the complaining I'm about to do with a little caveat: I know I'm blessed. I know there are more good things in my life than I can count. I know that there are mamas out there tonight whose babies are sick--very sick--and who would cry with joy if someone gave them the option to trade their problems for mine. I'm still trying to figure out this crazy imbalance of goodness in the world.

A hot bath would be a very appropriate place to contemplate such things.

But our hot water heater broke. Leaked all over the basement floor. I discovered it last night, five minutes after said goodbye to Jason (who was in Orlando) and told him that I was going to bed because I was exhausted. I decided to run one bundle of retired toys downstairs because I knew if Hadley saw them, she'd want to play with them, and my sorting would be wasted.

I suppose it's a good thing because if it had leaked all night, the whole basement would have been flooded. But as it turned out, I called my dad (because that's what I always do when I'm in a real bind), and he came over to drain the water tanks. Until 1:00 a.m.

So there was no hot water for us today. And I am tired. I realized today just how much I rely on Jason for help problem-solving. We're a good team--a very good team--and I didn't just miss him because calling plumbers isn't really my strong suit. But it's really not. See?

ME: "Um, hi. My name is Hilary, and I have a baby at home. I mean, she's a toddler, 20 months. So she's not really a baby, I guess. My friend Megan referred me to you. You worked at her house a few weeks ago. Maybe a month. I don't really know when, actually."

Pause. At this point, the plumber is wondering if I've mistaken him for a baby-sitting service or a free counseling center for crazy moms.

ME again: "Anyway, our water heater broke. So I'm calling to see if you have one. You know, to sell. To me. To us. I have a husband. He's just out of town."

Then I'm thinking, "Oh, crap. You just told a strange man that your husband is out of town and you have a young child at home. Didn't you read those books about stranger danger? You are Mother of the Year."

ME again: "And when could you come install it? I need you to come tomorrow. [Trying to sound really firm.] And how much would you charge me? Us. Because, you know, I have a husband who is coming home very soon."

The plumber is thinking, "Man, I wish I had another job booked tomorrow so I didn't have to go to the crazy lady's house." He says, "I can come in the morning. 9:30." He gives me a bid that feels totally irrelevant to me because I never buy hot water heaters, and I tell him I have to call him back. I ask my dad his opinion. He says the bid sounds fine. I wait another 30 minutes to call the plumber back because I'm trying to play it cool, make him sweat it out a little bit. Now I realize that he was probably happier in those 30 minutes, imagining that I wouldn't call him back, than he was when I called to hire him.

So I did it. We were having such a great week, Hadley and me. I was feeling such lightness at not having to juggle a full-time job and my life at home, and then--kablooey--fat, mushy puddles in the basement deflated me.

But even in the midst of this chaos, I can choose thankfulness. For my daddy, who proves that you never stop being a parent, even when your oldest child is 32 years old and raising her own child. For Hadley, who was a great dinner date tonight (I did what any sane mother would do and took her out for pizza). For the resources to buy a new hot water heater, though I would have preferred to spend that money on a weekend in Jackson Hole. For a home where a hot water heater can break. And for a husband who just walked in the door.

G'night. (Oh, but before I go, here's a shot of the Hadster at the beach in Florida. More on that soon.)

And Then One Day, She Became a Little Girl

Sometimes I forget and still call her a baby. But she's not. She's a little girl.

I don't remember when it happened, but when I look at Hadley, I only see a faint hint of the baby she was. She tells jokes. She teases us. She expresses her opinion. She has enough hair for pigtails, for heaven's sake.

She chooses her own pajamas (from two options) every night, and she prefers any jammies that have monkeys on them. (This reminds me of a short but serious time in my childhood when I desperately wanted a monkey for a pet. I planned to put a diaper on him and carry him around like a baby. I think I was about six. Good thing nobody gave me that monkey.) She remembers her friends--asks for them, even, when she misses them--and calls people (mainly Papa, Mumsie and her friend Harper) on her pretend phones.

Hadley, the little girl. When I was pregnant and thinking about being a mom, I knew I was ready because I didn't just dream of having a baby. I also dreamed of having a toddler with a quirky sense of humor (check!), a kindergartener with an affinity for crafts (so I hope), a fifth-grader who wanted help with her homework, even a teenager--I dreamed of the whole child.

But I never guessed how much fun it would be to see a person grow up, to get to be so intimately involved in her life every day.

Tonight, for example, she wanted me to get up from the dinner table and play with her while I was still eating. She said, "Mama, play." I said, "No, Hadley, I'm finishing my dinner. I'll play when I'm all done." So she walked right up, put her little arms around my waist and tried to lift me out of my seat. She even grunted to show just how taxing it was. Thanks, Had.

And even when she's not being cute or funny, even when she's fussy or tired or sad, I love helping her grow, being the mama to this little girl who is growing up with spunk and humor and grace, in her own little girl way.

A Whole Bucket of Gratitude--and Questions

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. There's less hype than at Christmas, plenty of food, good company (if you're lucky), and a reminder to pause and give thanks. It feels so simple and lovely and honest.

But to be frank, giving thanks is challenging me these days. That's not quite true. I think I live with a grateful heart. I'm keenly aware that my life is full of really good things: a loving family, wonderful friends who know me and love me well, a good job (which I just quit, but more on that later), a home that's safe and warm, a kitchen full of food, a child who amazes me, the capacity to take care of her...The list is very, very long and includes less obvious things like books by Joyce Carol Oates and Ian McEwan, chocolate-filled peppermint sticks, and the way it feels to sit beside the fireplace on a cold night and talk with Jason for an hour about the funny and wonderful things Hadley did that day.

Therein lies the rub for me right now. I'm wondering about this God who has blessed us so wildly, so abundantly, so lavishly.

During our trip to Chicago a few months ago, we were out walking on Michigan Avenue one night when we passed a woman, sitting on the sidewalk with her two children. One was a young teenager, the other, probably six or seven. The little one had fallen asleep on her mama's lap, facing the tide of tourists shuffling by. I could barely breathe looking at them. Can you imagine putting your baby to bed on your lap in the midst of a group of strangers? And that teenager...It's hard enough to deal with that crazy transition to adulthood without announcing to the world that you have no home. Can you imagine? No privacy, no place to agonize by yourself over zits or boys or the way your ears suddenly seem to be sticking out. No place that feels safe.

The mama-love got me. (My friend Lauren, who is expecting her second child any nanosecond now, told me once: "Being pregnant the second time is different because you already know the mama-love." So I must give her credit for that absolutely perfect phrase.) I started to cry, and we stopped by a store to buy some food. If I'm honest, it wasn't sacrificial giving; we bought the food more for me than for them. I needed to feel better. I couldn't go to sleep knowing that a mom a few blocks from our hotel would wake her children up in the morning and not have a meal to give them.

I still feel the ache in my heart for that little family. Maybe that mom did something terrible to end up begging for money on a busy sidewalk. Maybe she didn't. It doesn't much matter to me. I believe in personal responsibility, but there are plenty of good things in my life that I didn't do a thing to deserve. And the sad corollary to that fact is that people endure bad things they don't deserve either.

So I don't quite understand the blessings imbalance. I believe in a very big God, a very loving God, a God who is powerful and true and kind and just. I suspect that some day, we'll understand why the world is the way it is. But for now, in the midst of feeling more gratitude than I've ever felt, I feel more puzzled than I've ever felt.

I'm hoping I figure this out, reconcile it in my mind, because one day, this person who shares my genes is going to wonder why one mama gets to blog and post funny pictures of her baby online, where a sea of at least five people reads and posts nice things, while another sleeps on the street. What will I tell her?

I don't know, but for now, I will join Hadley in appreciating simple things, like pigtails, Elmo, treats (her new favorite word), twinkly lights and the 24-hour-Christmas-music radio station.

I think it's fabulous that people start out as babies, not yet ready to ask life's biggest questions, because mamas and daddies need time to prepare. For that, I am thankful.

Belated Halloween Photos

Ah! We were so busy buzzing around here, I forgot to post Halloween photos on Halloween weekend. We celebrated on Saturday the 30th at the Children's Museum's Trick or Treat Street.

Hadley rocked her costume all morning long, antennae and all.

And then she saw pumpkins--"pimpims"--which was very exciting, as you can see:

She played games...

...and rode on the choo-choo all by herself--TWICE!

She cracked us up by "steering" the whole time. I'm pretty sure she was thinking, "Man, it's a good thing I showed up to drive this train."

She also waved and yelled "hi" (it's two syllables for Hadley, like she's been raised in the South: "hi-ii) to almost everyone she passed on her choo-choo ride. Maybe she also thought she was in a parade.

She got a few treats in her bag, and she relished a lollipop so enthusiastically that she quickly learned the word "pop." Smart girl.

This photo is one of my favorites. I can just feel her round, soft face in my hand.

Now we're looking forward to Thanksgiving. We're working on the words "turkey" and "pie"; my bet is that she masters "pie" and leaves the turkey to someone else.