The Rituals of Children

When you're a parent, you spend a lot of time hoping your baby is "normal"-- whatever "normal" is. There are articles and books out there dedicated to every childhood disorder, disease and condition and you watch and you wait and you hold your breath hoping that this little cough or that little facial tic isn't the sign of something bigger, scarier.

Being an older mother when my children were born (42 for the first, 44 for the second), I am hypersensitive to the idea of "normal." When strangers feel compelled to ask you while you're pregnant if you're worried about Down Syndrome or autism because of, well your age, you become sensitive. You rub your large watermelon-sized belly and you try to be polite even while you want to slap them silly for being so insensitive and downright cruel. Or maybe that's just me.

Rituals are the things of day-to-day life. The weekday rituals, the weekend rituals, the holiday rituals, the home rituals, the work rituals. They happen without thought. They are not truly rituals with a capital R, steeped in mysticism and profound significance; they are routines-- small r-- just a part of normal life. But what is routine and what is ritual? What is normal and what is abnormal? What is healthy and what is pathological?

I watch my two year old-- he's almost 29 months now, so nearly 2 and 1/2-- and how he processes household routines. He is at the age where he wants to do everything we do even though he doesn't always understand why we do things. He knows his dirty clothes go in the hamper and he puts them there each morning, but he doesn't know why he can't dig his favorite shirt out of the hamper and wear it again tomorrow. He knows the wrapper from his favorite cheese snack goes in the trash, but he doesn't understand why he can't pull something else out of the trash can and play with it. He understands that he has to share his toys with his little brother, but doesn't understand why he can't also share all of his food, too.

My son is trying to fit into the world-- our little world-- and make sense of the things that his young mind haven't quite figured out yet. At the same time, I'm trying to understand his garbled requests and the must-be-fulfilled rituals that aren't just delaying nap time or bedtime, but are crucial to his sense of order. And I wonder if this or that is "normal" or if it's a sign of something else. And then I wonder why "normal" is so narrow and rigid when it's clear that he is a beautiful, healthy, happy boy no matter what he does.

He lines his Hot Wheels cars up on the edge of his toddler bed each night before I tuck him in. A dozen or so cars are assigned sentry posts against the railing, the rest of the crate of cars tucked at the foot of the bed. He carries his Big Monkey around the house and on outings in the truck, his comfort toy, his "lovey." He changes seats at the kitchen table for various things. Dinner is in his own chair with the booster seat. Pre-bedtime fruit cup is in my chair. Breakfast is in the chair next to his brother. Three or four times a week, he drags the condiments out of the refrigerator and lines them up on the table-- ketchup, mustard, barbecue sauce, mayonnaise-- even if we're not having anything that requires condiments. Often, he will asks for dollops of each to be placed on his plate with his meal. Even if it's spaghetti, even if it's a bagel. He prefers his orange socks over all other color socks. He must find just the right CD for bedtime (lately, it's Matchbox 20) and turn on his star turtle. He much watch "video-video-video" on my iPhone; he is fascinated by videos of himself and will wave and hold up various Hot Wheels cars to show his video-twin. He must always push the button to open the garage door to let me leave.

And so it goes. Some routines/rituals fade away and are replaced by new ones. Some cause me a moment's pause-- is it normal for a child to line things up the way he does or to run full force at the wall again and again and then laugh hysterically when he crashes into it? Is it normal the way he repeats a word three times? Some of his antics just make me shake my head. He is a toddler, after all. A two year old trying to understand our adult rituals and making up a few of his own. Trying to learn the language so he can communicate what he needs instead of pat-pat-patting the refrigerator for more "joosh-joosh-joosh" or the floor so I will sit next to him. Trying to fit in and be a part of his community, even though his community so far doesn't extend beyond our house.

Rituals serve the purpose of helping us cope with life, fit in with our peers and live in our community. We wear blue and gold to honor our favorite sports team, we put on costumes to celebrate a holiday, we blow out candles to mark another year of life. We have rituals that are just our own-- a favorite color socks when you're two might be you're lucky color socks when you're twenty.

I'm rediscovering the importance of little rituals through the eyes of my son. The ritual of singing "Itsy Bitsy Spider" at bedtime or when he's hurt. The rituals of cheek kisses and high-fives and head-butts before I leave the house. The little things that make his world feel safe and secure-- the little things that make my world feel safe and secure, too. His brother isn't quite eight months old yet and is already showing preferences for toys and patting the table and making screeching noises to communicate. His rituals will form soon, the things that make him feel safe and secure. And because I've already gone through so much with his brother, I will worry less about what is normal and spend more time enjoying the individualism of his necessary rituals.  Yes-yes-yes, I will.

One Night in Heaven

by Kristina Wright

On Tuesday night, I spent my first night away from baby #2. I had not been away from baby #1 since last August, when I was hugely pregnant with #2, so this night away was a long time coming. Last August, husband and I went away for one night, followed by one night on my own. It was relaxing and peaceful, but since I had the constant reminder of baby #2 kicking me in the ribs or dancing on my bladder, it was also exhausting. I hardly slept, never able to get comfortable or stay asleep for long. I still enjoyed it, just as I had enjoyed other nights away, but I have been longing for a good night's sleep and a day/night to myself for months. Finally, on Tuesday, it happened.

It's hard to explain to someone who doesn't understand how important it is for me to get my alone time. Prior to the arrival of baby #1 in December 2009, I had an abundance of alone time. With a military spouse who was deployed several times and whose schedule when home often involved long hours and duty days (overnights on the ship), I was often alone. And I loved it-- most of the time. Then my best friend came to stay with me in November prior to baby #1 and then baby #1 arrived and then... I was never alone. Ever. Even with my husband deployed, I still had an infant in the house.

It was August of 2010 before I went off for a night alone. It was a deliberate and conscious effort to separate the "me" from the "mama"-- a night in a hotel just twenty minutes from my house. A night for my husband to be alone with the baby, a night for me to relax. It didn't go well. I didn't sleep, I was out of sorts, I felt strange and guilty. The second time I went away, I went far, far away-- to Portland, Oregon-- for five days. That was semi-work related, I had readings and events scheduled and hung out with writer friends, which I could justify as work-related. But, really, it was another attempt at getting myself back, getting the alone time I needed. Four nights in the beautiful Heathman Hotel, my body rested, my brain fed with new sights and wonderful conversations, I came home refreshed and rejuvenated. Baby #1 was ten months old and I felt like I could conquer the world as a writer, partner, mother. I was determined to go away a few times a year, to refill the well, so to speak. To feed my soul...

And then, two months after I got back from Portland, I got pregnant again. My goal to get away regularly evaporated as I faced another pregnancy and all the fun stuff that goes along with it. I did go away a couple of times for more work-related stuff-- readings in Richmond (two hours away), Baltimore (four hours away) and the Williamsburg weekend with my husband-- all with mixed results. Being pregnant and hormonal, I was physically and mentally exhausted most of the time and any time away involved dealing with other people's needs, as well. With the exception of that last night in Williamsburg, I didn't ever feel like I was truly getting what I needed for myself. Then baby #2 arrived September 1, 2011 and once again any thoughts of getting away disappeared into the fog as infant care (and toddler care) took precedence over my needs.

This time after the baby was born, even though I was making promises to go to this conference or that event, I wasn't sure if I'd ever be able to get away again. Two kids are more work than one kid, especially when they're less than two years apart in age, and I didn't want to put that on my husband even if he was willing to do it. But the nature of my job means doing at least some very basic promotion and event attendance and so I've had to commit to a few things, including an event at a bookstore in Richmond on Tuesday night. And so, while I was sort of reluctant to go because it involved my husband taking off work and a rather dull two-hour drive, once I was there... I felt like myself again. Checking into a hotel alone, spreading my belongings around a hotel room and bathroom, having nowhere to be until 6:30 PM and the ability to wander the neighborhood unencumbered by babies and strollers and diaper bags. Oh, it was lovely. So lovely. That was me-- that was my life-- for so very long and oh, how I've missed it.

I had 29 hours alone, from 11:30 AM when I left my house Tuesday morning until 4:30 PM when I arrived home Wednesday afternoon. Of those 29 hours, I spent 11 of them in bed, 5 of them in the company of other people (which was lovely, too) and 13 blessed hours completely and utterly alone. You cannot imagine what that is like. I know I couldn't have imagined, pre-kids, how much of a gift it would feel like to be given a day or night to myself. I wasn't in denial about parenthood-- if anything, it's turned out to be easier than I expected (I expected the Apocalypse-- anything less would be easier). But I underestimated my need for solitude. I thought it would be enough to have twenty hours a week in the coffee shop to do my work and the hours after the babies went to bed. But while those times are nice-- and necessary, if I'm going to do my job at all-- my mind is always on the clock. What time I have to be home, what time I need to go to bed in order to get any kind of sleep to prepare me for the rigors of two energetic boys. Being able to go away and not even look at the time, to wander into a coffee shop and sit there for two hours reading and daydreaming, to wake up in the morning, roll over and go back to sleep, to take the scenic road home even though I'm not familiar with it and might get lost... these are things I took for granted before I had children. And they were the things that fed my creative soul.

We make do with what we have. We find ways to create without the things we crave. We do. We have to. At least, I have to. And so I do. But that doesn't mean my soul craves it any less. And so I have to carve out those times, even if it is a hassle to plan around the childcare, even if there is maternal guilt over leaving my children and spousal guilt for putting the parenting duties fully on my husband for a time. I'm lucky that I have not only a flexible job but one that gives me opportunities to go away, as much or as little as I want or can. I will probably never go away alone more than a few nights a year, for both financial and emotional reasons, but knowing that I can again-- knowing that I have a trip coming up, that I will get a few days here and there to recharge and plan and plot and create and connect with other writers... that's my idea of heaven. That's what feeds my writer's soul.

Coming home to my family after just one night away, I felt like I'd found my center once again. I felt refreshed, more like myself. I missed my babies, even for one day, and I came home earlier than I needed to just to be there when they went to bed and to spend a couple of quiet hours with my husband. I might run away, but I'll never run far or for long. I'm a free spirit with wanderlust in my soul, caught between the family life I adore and the solitude I crave, always searching for that elusive balance between the two that will keep my domestic and creative selves happy. This week, I found it.

A Long and Winding Road

by Kristina Wright

If I had been my mother's daughter, I would never have been a writer. My mother's talent was in art and music-- she did not read and, with an 9th grade education, she did not write. She did not understand my love of books, of words, of storytelling. She didn't understand how I could sit in my room all day, all alone, reading a book.

My mother did not like sitting still, she did not like being alone and the only books I can remember seeing her read were cookbooks (rarely) and the Bible (which I don't recall seeing her read until she went through some sort of mid-life finding religion experience). Oh, and when I was around 12, I remember finding a tattered copy of Peyton Place tucked in her nightstand. I never read the book, but I suspected it was something "dirty" that I wasn't going to be allowed to read anyway. I was often in trouble for reading "dirty" books like Judy Blume's Forever and Wifey, and romance novels with open bodices and shirtless men on the covers.

If I had been my mother's daughter, I would have chosen a different path. As far as personality goes, I turned out as opposite from my mother as two people could be-- and I honestly think a lot of my early decisions were based on what my mother would certainly not do. Not necessarily the best way to go through life. But once I moved away from home and started seeing the world for what it was-- or at least how I perceived it-- rather than for the scary, intimidating place my mother told me it was, I realized all of my mother's choices were based on fear-- fear of being alone, of strangers, of new places, of being as poor as she'd been as a child, of being abandoned, of dying. It took me a couple of decades to realize that's no way to live.

When I was in my formative teenage years, my fantasy future was the polar opposite of my mother's life: I never wanted to get married, I didn't want to settle in one place or live in the same house for two decades, I didn't want to have children. I wanted to be a writer, I wanted to travel, I wanted as many educational degrees as I could get. I wanted to date a lot of people, I wanted to have a lot of sex, I wanted to spend my money on sports cars and books and trips to Europe. I wanted to run away-- far, far away from my ugly South Florida house with the palm trees and swimming pool-- and find myself. It's a cliche, but that was my fantasy life.

My reality is uncomfortably closer to my mother's life than I would've liked at 16. I got married, I've moved a few times, but I've been living in the same house for 11 years now, I have one child and another one the way. But I did become a writer, and I have been a lot of places (though not as many as I would like) and I have a couple of degrees (though 'd like a couple more). I've dated my share of boys and girls (though not as many as I thought I would because I'm a romantic at heart) and had enough sex that I don't have a very long list of things I haven't done. I bought that sports car I dreamed of, though now it's 19 years old and I'm looking at something more practical (though I'll never get rid of my baby), and I am in the process of trimming my book collection because it has grown unwieldy over the years. I've been to Europe a few times-- enough for London to get in my blood and to whet my appetite for more trips with and without my family.

I did run away from my ugly house in South Florida-- and I never looked back. I haven't visited the house I grew up in since 1991. I Googled the street view once-- it was such a strange sense of deja vu to see something at once so familiar and so foreign. It was then that it hit me-- I hadn't been running away from the ugly house or the Florida heat or the familiar, I was running away from the unhappiness that thrived in that house like mold thrives in humidity. I was running from my mother's paranoid fears and irrational behavior, from my father's alcoholism and my brother's drug problem and violent mood swings. I was running from the life I grew up with and looking for a new life. I was looking for happiness.

The path I chose is not completely foreign from the one I imagined as an unhappy kid in a dysfunctional family. That fantasy path of adventure and exploration and excitement curves and winds its way through the path I'm on now-- a path that is, in many respects, a traditional path of marriage and family and home in the suburbs. But it's also a path that veers pretty deeply into the territory that my mother feared so much that she managed to instill-- for a time-- that fear in me. From the outside looking in, my life parallels my mother's in many ways-- but scratch the surface and it's a jungle in here. A wild adventure of meshing a suburban lifestyle with a free spirit's fantasy.

My mother's world was filled with "don't" and "no" and "be careful" and "you'll regret that." The path I fantasized when I was desperately plotting my escape had none of those cautionary warnings. And that's what it was-- I wasn't planning the road my life should take, I was planning my escape from all the negative things that hung like a black cloud over me. The path I ultimately settled on, the one that still manages to surprise me with unpredictable twists and turns, has the occasional "don't" and "no" and "be careful"-- but there are no regrets. There are no wishes for a different life. And that's how I know it was the road I was meant to take.

Saying Yes to the Impossible

As I sit here writing this, my 17 month old son is sound asleep and my belly is getting in the way of my writing because I’m 24 weeks pregnant. (And this baby boy is going tap-tap-tap.) I feel like I must be a little bit out of my mind to be having a second baby so close to the first—or at all, for that matter. Two babies under two and me 44 years old. Who has time to talk about inspiration when there is laundry to do and a (new) baby’s room to plan?

A friend asked me last week—two days before my 44^th birthday—if I felt like I was more creative this pregnancy than I was with the last one (oh so long ago, back in 2009). At first I said no—I’m tired constantly and I’ve had to turn my back on my best friend caffeine, I’m now spend a good chunk of what used to be my writing time chasing after a toddler instead, I have a thousand things to do to get ready for this baby, etc. I have missed anthology deadlines, I’ve put aside big project ideas because I don’t have time for them, I have half-written stories and essays gathering digital dust on my laptop.

But as the conversation progressed I mentioned two new story sales that week, signing the contract for my newest anthology, being invited to join the OGG blog and being excited about writing nonfiction. It didn’t take me long to realize that I am inspired. Is it this pregnancy, is it the cute toddler who runs me ragged, is it this stage of my life? I don’t know. But I seem to have inspiration coming out my ears. If only I had more hours in the day…

I don’t know if it’s parenthood—or impending motherhood—that inspires me, or if it’s something more. Motherhood brought with it a sense of… I don’t know what to call it… peace? Calm? Something. All I know is that things that once mattered to me no longer seem all that important. I’ve learned to let go of my expectations and in the process I’ve become more productive. In some ways, at least.

In those early months after my baby was born and my husband was deployed, I expected nothing of myself except to take care of the baby and, if there was anytime left, to take care of myself. Granted, that’s about all I was capable of for the first six weeks, but then something miraculous happened: I found my new mommy groove and discovered that routine was my best friend. Suddenly, I had blocks of time—small blocks, but still blocks—where I could do something other than wash bottles and laundry. I could write! Or, if not write, I could daydream and plot and think about writing! It was a good feeling.

I joke that I “conceived” my first anthology the same month I conceived Patrick. I didn’t yet know I was pregnant when I started pitching anthology ideas because—get this—I felt like I wasn’t challenging myself. Suddenly, I was dealing with prenatal appointments while figuring out how to be an editor (and while also doing my own writing). Then I signed a second contract, and a third and fourth… and then I was pregnant again. Suddenly, I’d gone from not feeling challenged to feeling like maybe I had bitten off more than I could chew. A couple of months ago, I didn’t think I had time in my schedule for one more thing—but I’d thought that a year ago, too. And the year before that. What is too much? I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately.

And then I was offered a contract to edit a fifth anthology and I faced a moment of truth: back-to-back anthologies, writing projects and deadlines, a 17 month old, a home, a spouse, a social life I didn’t want to give up… I took a deep breath and I said yes. Yes, I’ll edit another anthology that’s due to my publisher the same week my second baby is due to be born. For that matter, yes, I’ll have a second baby at the age of 44 with a husband whose naval career might have him deployed again in a few years, leaving me alone with two young boys. Yes to all of it—the crazy, sleepless nights with a newborn, the insane deadlines of a writer and editor, the unpredictability of military life, the limitations of a body solidly in middle age despite the youthful-looking baby belly. Yes. More. Yes.

This is the inspiration of parenthood for me—the ability to let go of my expectations of what I can do and what I can’t do and to throw caution to the wind and say yes. Watching my son learn and grow and do everything with a rebel yell has made me braver. I have discovered a new appreciation for my own strength and abilities, both physically and mentally. Parenthood has made me say yes to the possibilities that once seemed impossible. Maybe that’s because I know the grim statistics about women in their 40s being able to have children and I still beat the odds—twice. I no longer believe anything is impossible.

The experience of motherhood has made me feel as if I’ve discovered a new well of creativity. A well grounded in life—the creation of it and the nurturing of it-- and an appreciation for it. A well that bubbles patiently while I care for a toddler or take a nap because pregnancy is exhausting. A well that will be there, fertile and ready to be tapped… whenever I can find the time.