Category Archive

Another Friday night, another adventure at the laundromat, with the woman in the fur hat scrounging through the trash retrieving crumpled lottery tickets, the telenovelas blaring above the whirr of the washers and dryers, the little boy racing back and forth between the lollipop machine and his family.

Our clothes and sheets and cloth napkins that at this moment may not be that good for the environment are spinning in six 40-lb. capacity machines. The beauty of arriving at the laundromat at 10pm on a Friday is that you have the whole row of jumbo machines to yourself, and everything seems to have just been tidied.

The pollo place adjacent to the laundromat is still open, although you’re full of slow cooker shredded beef tacos which were an experiment and you thought at first a failed one but they turned out all right and your husband and even your daughter cleaned their plates and declared the tacos delicious.

Perhaps tonight when you get home you will go online and order a new washer and dryer, since the repairman declared your dryer unsalvageable after four visits to your house with two sets of replacement parts. The washer works fine but they are part of one unit so must both be replaced, yet another appliance inconvenience you never considered when you bought the condo a decade ago. It turns out there are only a handful of washer dryer models that will fit into your laundry closet. But at least you have a Home Depot credit card and the promise of six months of interest-free financing. There’s always that.

And you are thankful that your husband is home keeping the kids in bed so you don’t have to chase children here, just sit and watch the laundry spin. And you are thankful that it’s a new year and mechanical inconveniences are just that, and that you have a loving family and a roof over your head and you can plan summer vacations and really you are surrounded by everything you could want. Even though washer 78 is making a terrible racket right now, it’s probably just your son’s overalls, which are very cute if somewhat impractical.

And hey, you found a quarter in washer 76 after you put that load in the dryer. Maybe it was your quarter to begin with, but either way it’s your lucky day.

This is excerpted from an actual conversation I had with Zoe the other night.

Z: “I just want you to know that two of my friends, K____ and M_____, don’t believe in Santa Claus. I’m not saying this is good or bad, I just thought you should know.”

Me: “Well the good thing about our country is that people can believe anything they want to believe as long as they don’t try to hurt other people with their beliefs or force them to believe something they don’t believe.”

Then Zoe mentioned a clarification of something on her Christmas list.

Me: “You’d better write Santa about that.”

Z: “It’s ok, he just heard me.”

Me: “Oh. OK.”

Z: “I know the Easter Bunny must be real because last year he brought me stick-on earrings and I know you would never buy those for me.”

Me: “Oh. OK.”

Z: “And I’m not sure about the Tooth Fairy because I don’t believe in fairies but I kind of think the Tooth Fairy is real. But I’m not sure.”

I explained to her what a contradiction was. I asked if the Tooth Fairy wasn’t real, who was putting the money under her pillow when she lost a tooth.

She pointed toward me.

I said, “Who? Is there someone in the kitchen who brings you money? Is the Tooth Fairy hiding in here?” She laughed.

And we left it at that.

Despite the decade we’ve lived in this neighborhood, we’ve never made close friends here. I have many friends who love their neighbors and live in those close-knit communities that seem like they’re straight out of the movies. But our complex of townhouse condos is small and mostly occupied by childless individuals or couples, or young tenants who come and go every year. I can’t even remember how many groups of people have lived in one house next door to us, although at times I had to call the police or fire department on some of them. Right now that unit is vacant.

Certainly we are on friendly terms with several neighbors. And whether or not you’re close with a neighbor, death is unnerving and sad, sometimes tragic. Within the past six months, three people on our street have died. One was a child, one was elderly, and one middle-aged. One of them committed suicide after struggling with depression for at least half his life. Two of the three died within the past three weeks. I have grieved for the mother, the daughter, the wife who survive. Because I have a son, a mother, and a husband whose deaths I cannot comprehend surviving, although I imagine I would. I can’t bear to think about those things and when I do I feel like my brain is going black.

For many weeks after the child died, even though he didn’t die at home on our street, I felt reluctant to walk by his house when I was out walking my own son at night, trying to get him back to sleep. Somehow I felt like the aura of death or of grief would emerge and engulf us. The other neighbors did die at home, but I cannot pause or be alarmed every time I come and go from home, even steps from where they died. Generally when I come and go I am bringing children, usually carrying a very squirmy one. They are filled with and exuding energetic life, and I don’t think of anything else.

Zoe never knew about the child who died, although she knew who the child was. She overheard in passing the news of the elderly neighbor, because her daughter stopped me while Zoe and I were getting in the car. She saw me go over and hug our neighbor, who never previously pronounced my name correctly, and she asked me what was going on once we were in the car. We haven’t told her yet about the third neighbor, but I know we need to, because she’s watched him come and go every day, even though he rarely spoke to us. His wife always does. She once unexpectedly gave Zoe a nativity set. When she told me what happened, she said she was glad we were out of town so Zoe wasn’t home to see the ambulance and commotion. I’m glad too.

It is hard to know the right thing to do. I give hugs. I write cards. I am not much of a casserole maker, but I can rise to the occasion if necessary. I want to be kind and compassionate, but still neighborly. I don’t know their back story. I only know the cursory details. I’ve learned a lot from the obituaries. I’m not a friend or confidante. What I am is a neighbor. And even if they don’t know it, I grieve for them every day.

Yesterday we celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary by going to New York for the day without our children. Every time we spend more than a couple hours apart from our children, which is rare, we quickly remember how much we love each other and how much fun it is to be together! Not that we don’t love each other or have fun when the children are with us, because certainly we have plenty of love and amusement as a family. But when you’re in the thick of parenting sometimes your view of your partner is filtered through a dense fog of toys and macaroni and cheese and dirty laundry. And you can see that he’s a great dad and you appreciate him doing the dishes and you are grateful for his existence, but you can easily forget about the whole him, and just see him as the other responsible adult in the house.

On the train to New York

We are very thankful to my parents and my sister and brother-in-law for minding the kids while we were away. Yay family!

I think we have a great marriage. It’s not perfect, because we’re not perfect, but I think we’re doing all right. Here are my thoughts about why.

Four Secrets to a Successful Marriage–at least ours

1. We pour each other a glass of water every time we pour ourselves one, without asking. We always seem to need water, and it is always nice to know someone else thought to bring you a glass.

2. We know when to keep our mouths shut. At least I do. I can’t speak for Randy, but I realized at some point that one of the most important things to a happy relationship is knowing when NOT to say something you feel like saying but really would not serve any purpose at all but making someone upset. Generally I give Randy credit for always trying to do the right thing. And this is not to say I don’t say or ask annoying things sometimes, because I’m sure I do. But if he makes a mistake and I notice it and it gets on my nerves I try very hard to just move on. I know he must do the same for me because I make plenty of mistakes and he does not criticize.

3. We are usually on the same page. I don’t know if this is just luck, or the result of 10 years together, or part of the core of the connection that drew us together 11 years ago. But we typically have the same idea at the same time about getting dinner from a food cart, or what the kids should or should not be doing, or what we’re going to watch. We have plenty of different interests and tastes, but it doesn’t seem hard to agree on what’s happening next. And sometimes we agree that what we need to do is our own things. These days there’s a lot of divide and conquer, but we’re both using the same map.

4. We are learning more and more to laugh it off. Life is hard. It’s easier when you laugh. We are good at amusing each other. This helps.

Some combination of luck and hard work has brought us to this point, and hopefully will sustain us for decades to come. And someday we will be able to send our children downstairs to watch tv and feed themselves on a Saturday morning and we can sleep in. Here’s hoping.

Now that I am 40 I have a new mantra. I am enough. I am doing everything I can do for my kids, my family, my work, my friends, and the world. Certainly there is more to be done, for everyone, for every cause. There is no shortage of grief or pain, no lack of problems to be solved. But I’m doing what I can do, and that has to be enough.

It is enough that we get food delivered almost as often as we cook. It is enough that I breastfed Zeke for a year, including some formula supplementation, and I am so done now, even though he’s trying to eke out a few more drops. It is enough that I do the best work I can for my clients and don’t always turn it around immediately like I used to but I still get it done when it needs to be done and it’s good. It is enough that I send birthday cards to some people sometimes, and birthday emails other times, and always sympathy cards. It is enough that I contribute what I can to causes I believe in and sign some petitions. I devote all of my writing to helping people and communities. It is enough that when I see someone is in need and there’s a way I can help I will offer. I want to help, even though I cannot and should not try to solve everyone’s problems. Offering what I can, even if it is just to listen–especially if it is just up listen–is enough.

There are more things I would like to be able to do, and hopefully someday I can try them. Right now I excuse myself from a lot of things simply because I have a baby who does not sleep on demand. Right now I am enveloped in the dark quiet of the minivan parked in front of our house, where I have escaped in the hopes that my husband can get our son to sleep, because I’ve had had enough. Nursing him when he has a cold is frustrating and unpleasant for both of us and he managed to draw blood from my healing scrape while he was flailing and grabbing me earlier. I know he wasn’t trying to hurt me, and he really just wants desperately to be with me, but I’d had enough.

Now that I’m 40, when I see the neon sign that says ENOUGH flashing in my mind, I will not doubt or ignore or second guess it. I am enough.

Parenting is a series of a million decisions of varying sizes every day, and trying to make peace with those decisions when you’re torn between two imperfect options, and trying not to second guess yourself when the decision leads to unfortunate results.

For example, let cranky baby sleep in the car so he’s less cranky or wake him up so he’s more likely to go to bed sooner rather than later? Few things about parenting are as simple as you might have expected before you have children.

The most important thing our doula, who was otherwise generally useless, said to us while I was in labor with Zoe was, “think of a the things you swear you will never do as a parent or what you’ll always do as a parent, and prepare to break all your own rules.”

Truth.

Despite all the successes, the competence, the celebrations, it is so easy to be undone by the wrong thing going through the washing machine, the loss of that thing you just had and may be still in the house although you cannot find it anywhere, the residue of life piled high on all the furniture, blissfully ignorant of the hours you spent cleaning.

Glennon at Momastery, who I read often and have quoted here before, is starting a new series on her blog. It’s called Sacred Scared. I love what she’s doing and I find it powerful and moving. I encourage you to read it.

Here’s what she writes about it.

Verizon repairman is here to address phones, wifi, and cable that went out yesterday. And I just called the washing machine repair person to deal with the source of the water saturating the carpet around the washing machine.

But I did get a letter today from Brother Francis, my favorite monk. Admittedly, I only know one. He always writes a kind missive on loose leaf paper in response to receiving our Christmas letter.

In today’s letter he wrote, “So when I asked GOD what GOD called the ROSSO family, God said….’MY DELIGHT!'”

So what’s a little appliance malfunction when you know that God is delighted by you?

I remember when Zoe was about three, we went to a barbeque hosted by the family of one of her preschool classmates. Many preschool families were there. I remember watching the younger sibling of one of Zoe’s classmates wander around the courtyard where we were gathered. I’m not sure how old she was, but I’m guessing between 12 and 18 months. She was toddling around reaching her hand into whatever snacks she could find, and investigating anything she cared to investigate, and generally being a healthily curious little girl. And I kept thinking, “why isn’t anyone watching her?” Besides me, of course.

And now I get it.

As the parent of a first grader and a nine-month-old, I just don’t watch my baby every second. I know where he is. I generally know what he’s doing. But he’s a lot to keep up with, and I have to interact with my big kid, and I have to put in another load of laundry, and run the dishwasher, and feed people. And I have a good idea of what he’s up to and can hear him and tell what particular toys he’s playing with or messes he’s making. But I acknowledge that the constant vigilance of the first-time parent is gone. I am not careless or unconcerned. I am also not as panicky or inclined to hover.

One result of this, unintended, is that my first grader has taken on some of the vigilance herself. She is constantly chasing after her brother and dragging him back to where he was 30 seconds earlier. She says “NO, ZEKE!” often. I remind her, sometimes, to reserve the loud no for important things like cords and electricity and imminent danger, and not just for “don’t crawl off the rug where we were playing” or “don’t grab the baby wipes.” I have had to say to Zoe a few times, when she says “will you watch him?” that I am his mother and I am taking care of him and I will not let him get hurt. When he tries to climb the stairs (which he’s done now three times) I always walk right behind him with my hands out to catch him before he plummets to the bottom. When he crawls into the bathroom I retrieve him before he plunges himself or anything else into the toilet. But if he crawls behind the couch and tears up a newspaper ad, that is fine by me. I don’t shop at Macy’s anyway. Even when he makes a grab for the mustard when anyone opens the fridge, it’s not an emergency. What’s the worst that could happen? Spilled mustard, if he could even get the cap open. If he tasted the mustard I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t like it and that would be the end of that.

Aside from the watchfulness standard, the cleanliness standard has pretty much flown out the window. I swear I do the dishes every day. The washer and dryer are running all the time. And yet piles of dishes and laundry materialize as if by magic. The recycling spills out of cardboard boxes from which diapers and toys and baby play yards have been born. But who cares. Those cardboard paper towel rolls and empty juice bottles make excellent toys for a baby to play with.