The work of tantrums in the age of digital reproduction

It was a garden variety, dinner-time meltdown. Something about the noodles not staying on her fork, or the refusal of her parents to find her something to eat other than what was on her plate, or a boogery nose, or just the length of the day.

We let her out of her high chair but she stayed right next to the table, so that she could continue to express her displeasure at the world. For an audience. It was funny: who gets mad at their fork and then methodically rips off their clothes in protest?

Oh well. She's two. She has tantrums. It is the wisdom of the ages that two year olds were ever thus. But how often do they turn to the camera and unleash their fury on the hapless photog?



It's like she's a boozy starlet who knows her PR rep is not going to be happy to see this footage on TMZ in the morning.

When did wee little kids become so media-aware (asks the media professor who has been blogging her toddler's life for two years)?

Hope

My middle name is 'Hope', as is Munchkin's. This morning, at breakfast, I taught her how to say 'President Obama'. We looked at the president elect and his family--"Michelle ... and the daughters!"--whom she demanded to see several times again as she ate her morning bran muffin.

To see her pointing at the new American first family, to smile and name them, as though it were the simplest, most natural thing in the world, restored my hope.

I know it's not my country, not my election. I'm having trouble understanding why this new president means as much to me as it does. It does. Hope and promise.

Kicking and Screaming

Last night she woke up in a pool of pee at 2am and was wildly unhappy about it, hollering for "Mommy!" and "Daddy!" in turn. Exhausted but jarred awake, she punched Pynchon right in the face when he lifted her out of her wet bed. Uncomfortable and sticky, she kicked me hard and repeatedly as I stripped her out of her soaked pyjamas. She screamed imprecations, flailed in all directions, demanded snuggles while slapping faces, gripped our arms in desperation while kicking us violently in the groin.

For nearly an hour we struggled to get her back into bed.

Changing the sheets and changing her clothes were, comparatively, easy. The challenge was to ease her temper. And my temper. And Pynchon's temper. Because we are, it must be admitted, an angry family. Short on sleep, long on deadlines, discombulated by the dark, assaulted by lights and noise and blows, none of us are at our best. Finally, she heaved a great sigh and flopped her arms up above her head, tilted her chin towards the wall and consented to be tucked in, still muttering darkly. I returned to my bed. Pynchon reached out a reassuring hand and fell soundly asleep. I tossed and turned and considered, as is my wont.

What I've considered is this: My daughter's rage is my rage. She expresses what I wish I could, awake and angry about it, rage against the fruitless lonely dark. Rage that what she wants, she can't have.

I am, and have always been, quick to temper. My mom tells a story of my infancy aglow with my compliant behaviour, but some of my earliest memories are of frustration and annoyance, cornerstones of my relationship with the world. As I've matured, and particularly since, in these past four years, I've come into my grownup life, I find that I'm sublimating my anger in resentment, quiet bitterness, apathy, and cynicism.

I watch Munchkin rage, and while the violence and noise and frustration of her outbursts can provoke a like response in me, for her, its cleansing. She feels angry? She's rocking it: "Mom, no, I don't WANT and snuggle, I am very ANGRY right. now."

I don't do that. And I don't think I'm any less angry than I've ever been and I don't think I've made peace with the world. In fact, I'm annoyed / resentful / bitter a lot of the time, and I don't want to be.

A couple of weeks ago, on the long long weekend of Thanksgiving, full of visits and cooking and packing and international travel and worry, I snapped. Sleepless again at 6am on Thanksgiving Monday, I tossed off a cynical 'to hell with it' and left the house to stake out a seat for the 8:30 am parade. I put out our chairs in a modest arrangement to take the minimum required space. At 8:15, a women pushed one of my chairs out of the way and sat down in front of it. I freaked out. I told her off. I raised my voice. I called her a name. I wouldn't let it go. It was awful, mostly because that's not who I want to be and I lost control.

I don't know how to be angry anymore, about the right things--don't know how to do cleansing, honest, effective anger. So part of what I'm feeling when Munchkin screams and flails and lets rip? Is envy. Huh.

Juxtaposition

I've been busting my behind trying to explain formal terms of literary analysis to my second years lately. Stuff I've known for so long I can't remeber not knowing it. Stuff that's so foreign to them that it takes some truly inventive example-concocting and, occasionally (I'm not proud of this) me standing on the instructor desk flapping my arms and squawking. But I think I've got it now!

Juxtaposition: placing incongruous items adjacent to one another to create new meaning from the comparison that results.

So.

Ready?

Today, I got this email:

Dear Mimi,

I’m writing because I have still not received your completed Office of [Money] cover sheet for your [Big Ole Major Grant Application] that was submitted on October 7, 2008. Please fill out and submit your completed coversheet at your earliest opportunity. http://www.lottabureaucracy.ca/forms/

Best regards,

Pynchon

Pynchon Lastname
Research Coordinator,
Grants and Government Research Contracts (Fancy Agency Names)

Office of [Administration]
[Triangular Building], Room XXXX via 1043
Phone: 519-555-5555 ext. 12345
Fax: 519-555-5555

Okaaaaayyyyy, sure, but I got it from this guy:



It's hard to take a form letter--from your husband!--too, too seriously, when you've just downloaded photos of him with your bra on his head. Caught in that position, naturally, he raised a glass of local microbrew. Of course!

Form letter: meh. Bra head: wtf? And yet? There's something about that combo that seems to exceed the sum of its parts, I think.

So. Juxtaposition. Any questions?

Fall back

I'm not among those who whine and complain and develop conspiracy theories in March, when our clocks 'spring forward' one momentous Saturday night and the whole time zone collectively 'loses' an hour of sleep. I keep my eyes on the prize, and the prize is more daylight, when I need it--which is to say, after supper, rather than at 5am. So I am never really that excited when the clocks 'fall back' in early November: I am, mostly*, just really grateful that we do this now three or four weeks later than we used to, so that the grim months of daycare pickups in the dark are that much shortened.

Still, I have to say: what a great thing it was to drag my sorry self into bed at 10:30 last night, to read a new book for half an hour, and then, just before turning out the light, to roll the digital readout back to 10pm. And then I slept, uninterrupted by dreams or nightmares or babies or husbands or insomnia, until 7am.

If you're counting--and believe me, I am counting--that's 9 hours of sleep, all in a row. Such a bounty of unbroken hours of sleep does not often grace my life. In fact, I write a lot here about not sleeping. What a difference it makes to my day. It is, actually, amazing to me how changed I am--my mood, my reflexes, my outlook on life, my patience, my cognition, my laughs--when I, on these rare occasions, sleep through a whole night.

To whit: today, I had a little reunion with two of my good friends from pregnant-lady-yoga, from three years ago. We used to get together with our wee babies and drink tea while they lay inert on the carpet. Well. Mom #1 has had a second, so she arrived with husband, 2 year old, and 1 year old in tow. Mom #2 has sponsored her husband's children from his first marriage to emigrate to Canada, so she arrived with four children swirling around her like a autumn leaves in a gale: aged 2, 7, 9, 10. If you're counting--and believe me, I am counting--that's seven kids and 5 adults. For a good long while we perched in the attic playroom, distant repository of toys too noisy and annoying for everyday use. Their volume did not dim in the cacophany of 14 kid hands bashing them about.

After they all left? A faint buzz in my ears, as after a rock concert, and a good feeling. I enjoyed it.

Lemme tell you, if it hadn't been for that extra hour, and that gift from the gods of insomnia that let me use it fruitfully, it might have been a different story.

And now, if you don't mind, I'll be falling back into either my bed or big glass of wine, or some sequence of both.
----

* I say 'mostly' because now that it's still Daylight Savings Time until after Halloween? The toddlers have to head out trick-or-treating while it's still daylight, and that's no good at all.