Sister Stress

I am the oldest of four children, spread over 14 years. The third of us, my baby sister, is 10 years younger than I am, at 22. She was born with renal artery stenosis, which means that the renal artery was too narrow and her kidneys could not function. She spent much of her first year of life at a children’s hospital. Until she was a toddler, she was fed largely through a feeding tube snaking in her nose and down her esophagus. She also was hooked up to a dialysis machine every night. At 16 months old, she underwent a kidney transplant, using a kidney donated by my mother. After that, we had a brief respite from medical problems. Unfortunately, the dozens of daily pills that she has had to take since toddlerhood to avoid rejection of her new kidney have caused her poor body to be wracked with medical issues. She has weak bones, which has led to scoliosis and 2 major back surgeries to insert a great deal of titanium to support her spine. She’s had a few different kinds of thankfully early detected cancers. During her last back surgery, she also suffered a stroke and lost her sight, thankfully temporarily.

She went to the hospital yesterday with what is believed to be an infected gallbladder. Of course, with my sister, nothing is ever simple. No. You go to bed thinking she’s doing okay, and she always, always, always deteriorates overnight. Overnight when I was 9 months pregnant with my youngest, she went from feeling better after her back surgery to having a stroke by the time I woke up. Last night, apparently, she went from chatting with me at bedtime to pulmonary edema and not being able to breathe and oxygen by the time I woke up.

My baby sister is in a hospital a state away. I get frustratingly infrequent updates. I need to deal with everything at home for the family, which keeps me busy, but my sister will be always in my thoughts today while I am the daughter who makes sure shit gets covered. I will do what I need to do, but I’ll be fighting tears.

It’s one of THOSE days

Last night, I had trouble sleeping. I did not fall asleep until quite late for me. This morning, when my 2 year old bounced into my room, I could barely open my eyes. Thankfully, she consented to climb in and just chatter rather than making me get immediately out of bed. About 5 minutes later, my four year old started broadcasting her wakefulness by shouting, repeatedly, “Mommy! Mama! Mommy! Mama! I’m up!”.

To my four year old, the Christmas season is like her caffeine. As soon as she woke up, she needed to bound downstairs and find Alice, the Elf on the Shelf. I have a love/hate relationship with that freaking elf. Yes, it makes my children excited for Christmas and extends the joy of the season, blah, blah, blah. It also requires planning and execution (which I mainly leave up to my wife). It also means no cuddles in the morning from my warm, sleepy little girls. Up and at ’em! Alice is here! We’ve got to see what she’s gotten up to in the middle of the night!

So, today, I’m crabby. I’m tired, my children aren’t listening, and the day stretches ahead of us like a black hole. We have no plans today. None. Unless I come up with something fast, it will be me and two children stuck in this house all day. And today, teacher wife has a meeting after school, which means that she left before 7am and she won’t be back until around 5:30. That’s 11 hours of me and the girls and the dogs. I’m just not up for this shit today.

Therapy +

So, I recently switched from going to therapy every week to going every other week. This is mainly a function of not having a baby-sitter for every Thursday. So, now I go on Wednesdays, when my girls are in school. Only my wonderful therapist only had an every other week slot open on Wednesdays. So now that’s what I do. That seems like a lot of explanation for a simple concept.

Anyway, we’ve decided to now add in couples therapy to help us work through some of our communication issues. You wouldn’t think there would be communication issues when you’ve known someone intimately for half of your 33 years, but there it is. We also have some other issues to work on, and I (and my therapist) think it would be good to have an impartial person in the room so we don’t escalate into a screaming match every other time we try to discuss something important. All of this sounds good.

The current issue is: TIME! I have two preschoolers and now I’ll have to find an evening babysitter for them at least twice a month. That may not sound like a big deal, but we have never hired an outside-the-family babysitter before, except for the girls’ lovely preschool that they attend once each week. We rely on our parents, siblings, aunts, etc. to provide the occasional (read: biannual) night out.

I feel kind of torn. I want to address the issues in our relationship, yet it requires dealing with a hassle, being away from the girls, and learning to trust and confide in yet another therapist. I kind of wish that I could just cook a good dinner, put on my sexiest sweats, and solve the marital issues myself. Alas!

Back to work?

Today I’m thinking that I should go back to work full-time. I think that my relationship with my kids is actually suffering from me being home with them so much. It sounds antithetical, but we are at odds almost very day and it’s really bringing me down. When I worked all day, they would be so happy when I came home. I’d get hugs and cuddles and loving. Now, I am with them all the time and they could not care less. I am the one who needs to enforce the doing of chores, the learning time, brushing their teeth, etc. Everything that they don’t want to do, essentially. I also keep them from doing things that they are used to being allowed to do with their grandma, like watching lots of TV and having lots of snacks. News flash: Mommy has rules. I was a teacher. Structure is essential.

An example from today:
Me: “Girls, you need to pick up the toys and books from the living room floor and put them where they belong.”
Girls (in a whiny voice): “I just want my Mama (That’s the other mom. Not me.)! I don’t like you! I’m moving to France so I don’t have to listen to you anymore!”

So, not only do I get to handle everything all day long by myself for two girls, two dogs, and a house, but now I get crap from preschoolers. Even though there’s much more time, there’s way less hugging, cuddling, and love going on around here. I wonder if it’s really worth it. I have been telling myself that the being poor and the stress were all worth it because I would have a closer relationship with my children. But, if that’s not the case, then shouldn’t I just start looking for a full-time job so that I can at least remedy the poor-ness? Plus, maybe the girls would be happier at daycare and school and with their grandma.

I’m officially done being thankful

I’m done being thankful now. Well, you know what I mean. Life may recommence sucking.

For some reason, this week my 4 year old decided she hates the world and everyone in it except for Grandma. Grandma is always exempt because she lets the girls watch tons of television and eat tons of junk food. She especially hates her parents. I did not know about this stage of development. Or, more accurately, I was under the impression that this stage of development would come around the time of her first period and not around the time of her 5th birthday. She’s taken to throwing herself on the floor, full out, very dramatically, and making pronouncements like, “I’m moving to France so I never have to see you again.”

Conversely, my 2 year old has decided to finish up with the terrible 2’s and be delightful. I’m glad they’re taking turns being dreadful, at the very least. However, this means that the 2 year old has become a target of the 4 year old’s rage at the world. This morning, she went to tell her sister not to go downstairs without a mom “’cause it not safe, sissy!” and was full-body tackled to the floor. My 4 year old may have a future in the NFL.

Then there’s my always dreadful sex life. I am coming to the conclusion that as much as we love each other, my wife and I are just not sexually compatible. Which sucks. A lot. We (read: the bank) own a home, have two children together, and are intricately entangled in each others’ lives. There’s no untangling that could be done without tearing the fabric of our family, perhaps permanently, even if I wanted to. But, I love my wife very much. I don’t want to untangle, particularly. I also hear bikini waxing is a thing that single people do. I’d like to avoid that. I just don’t know what to do about it. Platonic partners? Awkward and unfulfilling sex? Sex therapist (shudder!)?

OH! And my former best friend came into town from halfway across the country and didn’t call me. Which I get, but kind of sucks anyway.

On the plus side, at this moment I’m listening to music and cuddling on the couch with my dog.

The more we read together….

Today, I would like to express my thanks for my once and future boss and fabulous library director, S. Not only am I thankful to her for hiring me with only a few months of library experience back when I was 23 years old and giving me an amazing opportunity to learn everything and work in the best little library I’ve ever seen, but I am thankful to her for being an incredible role model as a mom, as well.

Over the course of our 3 years working together, S had two children. Before I knew S, I had been around a lot of children, since my family procreates like the Catholics they are. They were mostly from my own family, though, and were all raised in the same general way. S did things differently. The first thing was the breastfeeding. She took it seriously. She was determined to nurse for a year, she pumped every few hours at work, she had her husband bring the babies in when she needed to be at the library for extended periods of time. It was important to her and I saw the effect that it had on her and the babies. In my family, sometimes moms nursed, but usually for a short time and it wasn’t considered essential. This was my first glimpse of a “crunchier” way of raising children and I liked it.

Another big difference was the way she interacted with the kids, when they were babies and when they got older. In my family, we yelled. We yelled, but often loud enough that no one’s feelings got hurt because we never really heard each other. There were so many of us. I believe when friends came to parties, they often left flabbergasted by the amount of noise and chaos. S spoke softly to her children. She explained things to them like they were people capable of understanding, no matter what the question was or how busy she was. She limited television, read books constantly, and really talked to them.

My parenting style is a result of having grown up in my family. There were good things there. Lots of love, lots of cuddles, lots of companionship. I kept those things. I try very hard to not include the yelling, the occasional smacking, the television as babysitter, the noise and chaos. Instead, I subbed in some of S’s parenting techniques. I breastfed my children, one for 12 months and one for 16 months, despite the criticism that I was nursing for too long. I explain things to the girls as best I can. If I don’t have a good explanation for something, I look it up and then explain it to them. I take the time to be with them, to really talk to them, and to make sure that they know they’re important.

I thank S for showing me a different way of doing things.

I

Sometimes it’s hard

Sometimes it is hard to be thankful. On days when you spent most of the night dissecting the future of your marriage and making your wife cry, it’s hard to be thankful. On days when you wake up to news articles that say, “A grand jury of 9 whites and 3 blacks”, when you doubt that this world has made any progress at all, when black children are killed so much more frequently, when you worry that you won’t know how to show your children the awful unfairness of the world in which we live or how to show them how to be empathetic or how to show them that the racial divide that they seemingly benefit from hurts us all. On days when you struggle to get off of the couch because you’re depressed and exhausted and just can’t imagine making your way through the day, it is hard to be thankful.

I am trying. I am trying to notice the wonderful things in my life that I should be thankful for. So today, I will be thankful that my 4 year old likes to climb into my bed when she wakes up in the morning to cuddle for a few minutes before we get up to face whatever the day may bring.

To Whom It May Concern

Dear Mr. T (not the ones with the chains),

Thank you. I don’t think I told you what an impact you had on me when you were my teacher. It was senior year, and I was pretty much planning to check out and do the minimum to keep my A’s, which wasn’t entirely hard for me to do. I signed up for Composition because I could write and I figured it would be easier than taking another upper-level science class. I really didn’t expect for you to teach me very much at all. You were a blue jeans-wearing, guitar-playing, recent college graduate. You were barely older than me, really.

But you did. You taught me many things. In class and out of class. You treated me like I was different from other students, but not in a bad way. Not in the nerdy way I’d grown accustomed to, but in the sense that I was amazing. You refused to accept my half-assed work, even though it earned A’s, because it wasn’t my best work. You made me edit, rewrite, re-think. You made me work for my eventual A. You called me a writer. You said that you were sure you’d see my work published some day.

Also you were pretty hot (did I mention the snug jeans and the guitar and the being 23?), and I had a major crush that I’m sure you noticed, but you never made me feel foolish. You took me out for coffee, for lunch, talked me through end-of-high-school and beginning-of-college crises. You made me feel smart and special.

On days where I feel like a complete failure in my life, I still remember you and what you said and how you made me feel. Then I feel like it’s not over yet. Maybe I’ll still be a writer, maybe I’ll still publish something great. Then again, maybe I won’t. But, I’ll keep remembering and trying again to give it my all. I’ll keep editing and rewriting and re-thinking until I come up with my best.

So thank you. You made a difference in my life.

A week to be Thankful

Although I am often down, stressed, or otherwise a Negative Nancy, I am incredibly, whole-heartedly thankful for so many things in my life. These are just a few of the most important:

1. My unbelievable wife. We’ve known each other for half of our lives now! She supports me in so many ways and I could literally not live without her.

2. My beautiful, smart, and silly children. My daughters are the best thing I’ve ever done. I am amazed daily by the fact that I actually made them. Everyday, they make me laugh, make me cry, make my heart expand.

3. My parents. They are always willing to help out when we are in a jam. They always seek to make my life more manageable and they love my children nearly as much as I do.

4. My aunt B. She is always happy to take care of my girls when I need a break, to listen to me complain and rant, or to commiserate about the challenges of motherhood. She also is giving me her old Kindle for free.

5. My therapist. I can’t believe sometimes how far I’ve come in the last 8 months. From hospitalization and little hope of a future to a place where I mostly feel like myself. She’s taught me so many valuable life skills and ideas. There has been so much positive change in my life since March and she has guided me down that path.

6. And a little less seriously: caffeine for allowing me to stay awake, melatonin for helping me to fall asleep, Netflix for providing hours of entertainment, Dunkin’ Donuts for their onion bagels, and the lady at Macy’s for fitting me for bras that support the boobs that spent well over 2 years nursing my babies.

Sexual Healing

Lately, the topic of sex has come up a lot. In conversations, in internet forums, on TV. Who is having sex? Who is too tired? Who even cares about sex after they’ve had children? How does one get one’s mojo back? Do lesbians really suffer from “lesbian bed death”? To schedule or not to schedule? Sex therapy? Platonic partnerships? It’s all a little bit much for me.

Sure, sex is important. I’d like to be having it, in theory. And I’m here to tell you LBD is real! We were talking about sex the other day and my wife said, “But we’ve been having sex! We had sex already once this month, two weeks ago!” Folks, it’s the 20th of the month and that seemed reasonable to her. And, really, she’s not alone. If given the choice between sex and sleep, how many of us with small children would choose sleep? For fans of Grey’s Anatomy, remember when Izzie and George were trying to have sex after their drunken encounter and they finally get the time and she starts crying because she’s so exhausted and she only shaved one leg and she just NEEDS sleep? Yes. Like that.

Sometimes I think, “What’s the big deal, anyway? If we love each other and we parent together and hang out and cook and watch TV and have a life together….then does it matter?” Then I think, “HMMM….I could live for another 50 years. Do I really want to go 50 years without sex?” No. No. No, no no no. No, I don’t. Not this girl.

But, god, getting your mojo back is tough! I was pregnant or breastfeeding from 2009-2013. I had a nervous breakdown in 2014. My 2 year old still considers it her job to make sure that we get as little sleep as possible and still fetch her sippy cups of milk. I’ve gained and lost and gained and lost 30 pounds over two pregnancies and frankly, so has my wife. We’re a mess. I don’t think I’m attractive and she doesn’t think she’s attractive and it’s hard for us to imagine that either one of us find the other attractive, even if we do. At the end of most days, once we’ve fed everyone, cleaned up, gotten the girls to bed (fingers crossed!), folded the laundry, and done the dinner dishes, I am perfectly happy to collapse on the couch in my sweatpants and watch The West Wing. So is my wife. Aren’t you?