Hand-me-down pick-me-ups

"What an adorable sweater," my mom remarked as Munchkin barreled around my sister's living room, chasing the dog. "You get her such adorable clothes!"

"That's a hand-me-down from [friend]'s daughter ... and, actually, the pants are from [cousin]!" I answered.

"You don't have to say that," my mom snapped back, chiding me for seeming to demur from the compliment, or for oversharing about money.

But I love hand me downs, and I talk about the multilayered geneology of Munchkin's clothes whenever anyone gives me half a chance. Because hand-me-downs, you see, mean that someone cares about my daughter, about me and Pynchon, about our family. Nothing on earth makes me feel more secure that my family is part of a bigger family of friends and relatives, a community of parents and children supporting one another, than watching yet another giant shopping bag / Rubbermaid tub / cardboard box drop onto the floor of the vestibule or into the trunk of my car.

When you bring me your daughter's clothes, I benefit from the care you took in selecting and buying and laundering and saving them. What's more, I have a window into your family life, your preference for track pants and zip-sweaters, or for tights and embroidered dresses. There is a trust and an intimacy in the exchange of these items. When Munchkin wears these clothes, you and your daughter are in my thoughts, our families linked.

I'm sharing the joy with Munchkin: look at this beautiful ruffle skirt! Did you know that this beautiful skirt used to belong to Naomie until she got too big, and now she is going to share it with you? Her eyes light up. "I'm a lucky girl, Mom!" She will march around telling people which friend used to wear that beautiful sweater, but then she'll tell you just as proudly that her mom bought her this other sweater "because she loves me."

Hand-me-downs for children seem an anachronism in our disposable and cheap Wal-Mart culture: can't everyone afford new clothes, now? Maybe. But it's not about money. Participating in this give-and-take informal economy of children's clothes has been one of the most meaningful set of social connections that parenthood has offered me. Receiving and giving out clothes in turn has bonded me more intimately with family members, old friends, and new friends. Skirts and hoodies and splash pants and snowsuits pull us all closer to one another, a tacit lesson learned that raising a kid benefits from looking beyond your own front porch.

As my attic fills in its turn with Rubbermaid tubs full of clothes that Munchkin has outgrown, I eagerly look for friends to share them with--not because I lack the room to store them, but because I want to see those little outfits again, in a new context, under a different smiling baby face. By sharing out Munchkin's clothes--and her high chair, and her crib, and her Bumbo chair--I feel a part of so many more babyhoods than I would otherwise have any right to lay claim to. My friend J just brought her 12 week old baby for a visit, and as she picked through the 3-6 month bucket, I sniffed the crown of that little wee girl's head for all it was worth, casting side glances at clothes I hadn't seen for three years, reliving again those days when my big girl wore sleepers and overalls.

We're not having any more kids. I guess I could start selling the big-money items on Craigslist or wherever, but I don't want to. I want to send bits of my intimate family life into the families of the people I care about. So it is that I'm going to mail away my Medela Pump-n-Style to Amy, just as soon as I sort out her address. I hope she'll find use of it, but really, the gift is more for myself, a tangible link to her soon-to-arrive little boy, a link in the chain of a friendship begun in the lobby bar at the W in Chicago. A smile and a hug sent through the mail.

Happy almost-baby, Amy! May the hand-me-downs you give and receive weave you into the warmth of families, supporting one another.

Something old, something new: someone loved

(The theme for this week is, apparently, maudlin memorializing in the midst of mundanity. I'm trying to get it out of my system. Sorry.)

The Wheels on the Bus

The wheels on the bus go round and round, and like the wheel of life, their inexorable turning is both circular, and forward-driven. The wheel spins round and round and round on its axel even as the bus and everyone in move into ... well, the bus depot.

I took the bus home tonight. It was raining, and I had a stack of exams. I was giddy with the freedom of it.

The bus and I go way back. When I lived in Toronto, commutes to York took an hour and twenty minutes there, and often two hours back. In Guelph, all the buses seemed to have been built in 1957, and they all gathered , at the same time, in the town square. All of them. Not such a big city, Guelph! Edmonton buses demonstrated the idiosyncracies of winter light in the Northern latitudes: one December day, sitting in the very back row of the bus, a blaze of midday sun through the windshield hit me right in the eyes.

I've never owned a car until we moved to Small City. I was enthralled by driverdom then: we didn't have to drive often or far, but let's just say that if I never have to get a week's worth of groceries home on the bus in the sleet in a hiking backpack? I will be happy. Vroom-vroom forever! Goodbye bus!

But having a car and a kid is something else again. Driving is a lot less about free will and a lot more about monster shopping runs and complicated dropoff / pickup routines from daycare.

And so it is that today I get on the bus--the smelly, crowded, steamy-with-rain bus--and I felt light and free. Believe me, it wasn't very often I felt light and free fighting for a spot on the York Express at Downsview station in -30 weather at 8am. No.

So it's the same old bus. But a whole different bus too, you know? And the wheels go round and round.

Happy Halloween!

If you were wondering where the lions are, they were at my house last night:


Munchkin was the picture of adorable (as you can see) and it was Pynchon's year to tour her up to the end of the block and back, after which she stood in our own front door, hollering at the top of her lungs with excitement whenever she saw another kid coming. She ate a ton of candy, and then, bathed and full of milk and sugar, she conked out cold while we entertained some friends who live on a farm and thus don't get their own Halloween.

They told us that our street is right off a movie set, blowing yellow leaves rattling down a narrow street in between the feet of decorated toddlers and school kids, parents bringing up the rear with flashlights and greetings. Tall trees make a canopy of bare branches that rustle in the wind. Jack-o-lanterns glow from all the wide porches. It's pretty nice, for sure, and we feel a little more settled this year, for sure, our second kick at the pumpkin here.

Nice.


I remember last year being really stressed about all the sugar sugar sugar! But this year I have realized that Halloween candy has so much redeeming value as a learning material: you can sort it into piles by colour, by type, by bulk. You can count it. You can learn to divide piles into equal shares for little girls and their My Little Ponies. Or you can make up hilarious songs about it:

The Self-Regard Project

I'm blowdrying my hair for social change.

Remember in August, how people dropping spoons were making me burst into tears? I was stressed and unhappy and sleepless and on edge. It seemed that no matter how hard I tried, life didn't get any less chaotic--generally my response to this kind of situation is to try yet harder. More home-cooked meals? Leave work a little early. Need to get more time at the office? Get up a little earlier. Everyone running late? Drive them all in, skip the shower, throw on some jeans. Mornings a disastrous rush? Get a low-maintenance haircut. Develop a uniform of wash-and-wear jeans and tees. Pynchon has to work two full time jobs at once? Take two (or three) weeks of vacation time to mop up the extra on the home front. Lot of expenses for the house this month? Cut back my own spending .

Trying harder wasn't working. All the sacrifices of my own time and effort and resources weren't making anyone any happier, healthier, more productive, or less stressed, least of all me. So, with Pynchon's very strong encouragement, I pushed back at life. I started what I am calling the 'Self-Regard Project.'

The Self-Regard Project is pretty simple, but its effects have been profound. I found me again, and even if life is still largely a disastrous chaos, I am much more firmly rooted in my own strengths. Here's what I did: I stopped martyring myself, and devoted some of all that energy I was expending trying to smooth everyone else's life into things that were important for me. Currently, the Self-Regard Project is proceeding on three fronts that maybe don't seem to be related, but are: fashion and beauty, exercise, and saying no at work.

Fashion and Beauty:

I got a high-maintenance haircut, a glossy and stylish angled bob that suits my face and my aesthetic. I didn't think it suited my lifestyle: it requires daily washing, daily moussing, daily blow-drying, and just a touch of straight-iron. And do you know what? For eight weeks in a row, I've blow-dried my hair every damn day. It takes 10 minutes, but I walk out of that bathroom feeling attractive and polished. There is a spring in my step. Every day, too, I do my makeup. It takes about five minutes, but that five minutes brightens my eyes, evens out my skin tone, makes me feel well-rested because I look well-rested. In eight weeks of school, also, I've not worn the same outfit twice. Many of the same pieces, yes, but in different combinations. During the day, or in the shower, or at night in bed, I idly run through my wardrobe in my head, combining and recombining pieces. I feel creative. I feel connected to the world. I feel attractive and competent and engaged.

Exercise:

I walk home from work nearly every day. I have had to sort out the child-care pickup/dropoff routine with Pynchon, but he is happy to support me in this. We just have to plan it. I walk with my colleagues, chatting. I walk by myself, listening to podcasts. I take the time to smell the fresh air, watch the leaves fall, splash in puddles in my boots, feel the sun on my face. I go to yoga twice a week. I've moved into the intermediate class and I find that as we are doing more complex poses with more integrity and learning yogic thinking, I am calming down and getting strong all at once. Yoga is in the early evenings, and I leave Pynchon and Munchkin at the dinner table. "Have a good yoga, Mom!" Munchkin hollers, smiling. I'm home to put her to bed, and she hasn't missed me at all.

Saying no at work:

We all work too much, you know? Checking our email at home, bringing the paperwork to the dinner table after the dishes are cleared away, sneaking a couple of hours at the office on the weekends, tackling a pile of grading at 4:30 am, just because. I say no. I won't do it. I need the rest and I deserve it. If I put in a full day at the office, there is absolutely no reason on earth I should be emailing about policy or grades with colleagues or students after supper, on the weekend. And I am getting better at enforcing this boundary.

"Set your foundation with strength and integrity," counsels my yoga teacher. We line up in well-formed mountain pose--push down from all four corners of your feet, hug muscle onto bone, set your shoulders and lift your heart toward the sky--and as she walks around the room pushing down on our shoulders as hard as she can, we don't move. We don't feel it. A strong foundation greatly increases the loads you can bear, and bear more easily than before.

Women, generally, are bearing a lot of loads in their 30s--work, family, life. If I could reduce these loads, I would. I'm still an insomniac, Pynchon still works a lot of overtime, Munchkin still does her best to stay awake in her bed until 11pm so that she is a screechy overtired mess at 7:30am. As it turns out, martying myself doesn't change any of this things. What I can change is me. And I'm marvelling at what a change my sense of self, my life, have undergone simply by committing to blow-dry my hair every day.

The Self-Regard Project has me setting my foundation with strength and integrity. I feel better; I look better; I'm stronger; I smile more.

Do you have a Self-Regard Project?

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Exercise, most of us can agree, is usually an unalloyed Good Thing. Fancy hair and unique outfits and daily makeup might look more like the Beauty Myth, but for me it's about acknowledging that it's okay to take time for myself. That I deserve it. Similarly, there is a strong cultural narrative that proposes that 'flexible' work time gives us more freedom to schedule ourselves, but I've found instead that perpetual connectivity means I never have any time I can fully devote to myself of my family, and so for me a strict 9-5 is much more freeing, and healthy. Your self-regard project might look different.

Last night, an Arrowroot cookie saved my life

Okay it was this morning, and it wasn't, I guess, my life as much as my sanity.

For the past two weeks, our mornings have been a dream. Pynchon and I take turns in the shower; he gets to shave in peace, and I get to blow dry my hair and put on makeup. In the background, you might hear Munchkin singing songs to and about her My Little Ponies, or maybe the thump of her feet as she chases the cat around the house.

What you don't hear is screaming: you don't hear her screaming, you don't hear me yelling, you don't hear Pynchon slamming doors in frustration. You don't hear tantrums, screechy non-compliance, refusals to get out of bed / go pee / get dressed / come downstairs / eat breakfast / put shoes and coat on / leave the house / get in the car. You do hear playing and laughing. You hear songs. You hear reasonable conversations, accomodations and compromises on the theme of "three more minutes of 'bolleyball' and then we will put our shoes on" or "once you make your pee-pee, then I'll read you the book."

Our out of control toddler and our out of control parenting? Is suddenly ... not an issue. We are just enjoying our time together in the mornings now, and when we're late for work, it's because one of us lingered too long over playtime or family breakfast, not willing to walk away to brush our teeth or pack a lunch.

The solution?

Two Arrowroot cookies and a glass of milk.

When we pad into Munchkin's room in the morning, cooing soft greetings just like we always did, we hand her the cookies and milk. She sits on a cushion on her floor, a little groggy, and eats. Drinks. There have been no morning tantrums in the two weeks we've been doing this.

It's a miracle. A miraculous change in our day that no amount of Dr. Google's or Dr. Sears' or Dr. Karp's advice could bring about. It wasn't about discipline or routine or attachment or consequences. It was about blood sugar.

Munchkin, recall, turned three in June. She weighs 42 pounds and her size four pants are now riding up above her ankles. She's a big kid, growing like crazy since the moment she was conceived and I guess she's just really, really hungry. We missed out on this obvious point maybe because she was always throwing tantrums about NOT wanting to eat breakfast, but I think (now) that this was an artifact of desperately low blood-sugar: by the time we asked about breakfast, she was already in a frenzy that didn't feel like hunger, that felt like rage and sadness.

We are agog at the change, at the possibility 60 calories worth of baked flour offers for family harmony, for joy. After preschool, if she suddenly gets unreasonable and moody? Cookie. Saturday morning after two hours of playing picnic with plastic food, angry that the blanket won't fold right? Cookie. It's not that we're bribing her with food. It's that she's hungry. The change in her behaviour is always immediate and remarkable. Probably, the moment of calm and refocusing offered by the 2 minutes of sitting still in the kitchen to munch her snack helps too, but really. Who could have imagined the humble Arrowroot to have such awesome properties?

Not me, that's for sure.

So if your kid is an awful wreck and you've tried everything you know? Try two Arrowroot cookies and a glass of milk. There's probably a hug in it for you--I know there always is for me.

Amazing.

I'm big, and very hungry.