Taking the Love Away (Babble)

On a good day Mona is our easiest child.  She is the only who does what you ask the first time you ask with any reliability.  She is up and dressed usually before breakfast is served.  She is adorable, funny, energetic and most days she is delightful.  She amazes me with her creativity, hard work, and kindness.  Mona shines brightly.

But then there are the other days.  The days where Ian and I refer to her as our feral child.  The dark side of Mona’s personality when she gets angry is really hard to deal with.  She reverts to a pre-verbal state where she growls and glares at me.  I never know how to react to it.  She tests us in ways that leave me doubting my parenting abilities.

She doesn’t take criticism well, or even simple instruction for that matter.  When people ask why I don’t give my children violin lessons myself I think about how hard it is just sitting in the room with Mona as she practices, and shudder at the thought of trying to actually teach her something.  I can do it, but it takes a deft touch.  When I manage to correct a fingering or convince her to change her bow direction it feels like a feat akin to snake charming.  It’s dangerous and draining.

And I never know which Mona I’m going to get.


Her moods turn faster and with greater ferocity than the moods of her siblings.  Aden and Quinn are sensitive, and there are circumstances where they can get frustrated or upset easily.  If they think they have disappointed me they are devastated.  But they are seldom angry with me, and when they are the causes are clear.  Mona is a different strain of our DNA altogether, and she works at keeping her motivations murky.  She doesn’t always want to be understood, or at least, that’s the way she comes across.

There was an evening last week where everything was fine until I told Mona she needed a bath or shower before bed.  I was matter of fact about it, but Mona got mad.  She got very quiet and glared at me.  She got in the tub and silently radiated unhappiness.  Then I washed her hair and that was the last straw as far as Mona was concerned.  She didn’t scream or resist, but she made it clear that I was on the outs.

After she was in her pajamas and ready for bed she came to my room the way she usually does for midnight snuggle, but announced to me darkly that there would be no midnight snuggle that night.  I told her that made me sad, but it was up to her.  Apparently that was not enough of a reaction because she came back in a moment later and said there would be no midnight snuggle the next night either.  I repeated that I was disappointed and left it at that.  She came in one more time to tell me there would be no midnight snuggle ever.  I accepted that which deepened her frown.  Before leaving the room she made a small decisive gesture with her hand and said, “I’m taking my love away.”

By the next morning she was still mad and wouldn’t speak to me and I got annoyed.  I told her to please get moving because we were late for school and she pulled a passive aggressive stunt of shuffling quickly with small steps that didn’t actually move her forward.  I placed my hand on her back as I was trying to pass her in order to make her move already, and in her socks she wound up falling forward.  This was humiliating and upsetting for Mona and I was wracked with guilt.  I hadn’t meant to push her down, and I spent all morning beating myself up in my mind for not taking into account my strength and the slickness of the hardwood floors….  It made for a depressing day, but a friend assured me that by after school Mona would be fine again and she was right.  Mona came to me all smiles when I got home from work and said she wasn’t mad anymore.  I even got the reverse gesture with her hand and she informed me that her love was back!  Just like that, love restored.

Mona was mad at me again last night but this time I have even less idea why.  She sat on her bed with her back to me and her arms folded when I tried to ask her what was wrong.  I decided I wasn’t going to let her get a reaction from me, so she pulled out the big guns and turned to face me long enough to say, “I hate you.”  She ended up doing violin practice with her dad instead of me, and rather than listen to her tell me she was canceling midnight snuggle I left the house to run an errand and let Ian put everyone to bed.

I got an “I hate you” out of Aden once a few years ago when I was being firm about a consequence she was deeply unhappy with.  It was in a flurry of tears and anger and she was verbally flailing for ways to hurt me so I would know how she felt.  I didn’t take it personally and she came to me later and said how sorry she was, that she didn’t mean it.  It’s hard for me to imagine Quinn (who would spend his entire life in my lap if I let him) ever saying such a thing to me, but he says it about his dad which hurts in a different way.  (Ian takes it in stride far better than I could and I admire him for it.)

Mona is different.  She seldom rants and flies off the handle.  Her rage is quiet and deep and not generally for show.  I know she didn’t mean it, but “I hate you” has a harsher impact when it comes from a more calculated place rather than a burst of uncontrollable emotion.  Before I left the house I told Mona to be careful about the words she chooses.  Some of them are harder to recover from than others.  By this morning Mona was my sweetie again.  She brightly says she loves me now and I’m relieved.

I’m trying lately to remain calm when Mona is angry.  I think she wants a big reaction, some drama, some reflection back at her of what she’s feeling, but I don’t want to indulge that.  In the past she’s managed to get me angry back, when I was so tired and stressed that I took the bait and showed her what anger could really look like.  I’ve reacted with an intensity and volume that frightened her to tears, but at least in those cases everything got resolved quickly.  On occasion I’ve tried being visibly hurt and sad when Mona gets angry, and this sometimes causes her to break her concentration on her mood and look surprised or amused or worried.  But I don’t want to lose it, and I don’t want to seem vulnerable to a point where she’s the one in a position of power because that doesn’t do either of us any good.  Being the cool, collected grownup stretches the situation out over days instead of minutes, but I can live with myself better.  I try to talk to her and let her know her feelings are valid even if she’s not expressing them nicely, but often it’s safer to walk away.  The truth remains that I have no idea what the proper response should be.

And to be perfectly honest, as much as her anger upsets me, part of me is impressed by her strength and fire in those moments.  My mom used to repeat to herself about me when I was hard to handle that at least one day I would make a great adult.  I think the same about Mona.  If she were all sweetness all the time I would worry about how she will stand up for herself in the world one day.  I’m not too concerned about Mona succumbing to peer pressure or being badgered into doing anything against her will.  (I’m more worried about having any influence over her if she decides to do something unwise on her own.)  She’s sensitive, but she’s fierce.  Good luck to the rest of the world when she gets there.

I do know, however, that on some level bearing the brunt of a certain amount of emotional abuse from your kids means you are doing something right, particularly between mothers and daughters.  Many of the people I’ve known who didn’t yell at their moms when they were girls avoided it because they did not feel safe to do so.  You don’t take risks with love you can’t afford to lose if there is any question about it.  I remember those feelings of frustration and helplessness, of being trapped, of craving freedom and being terrified of the world at the same time, of not knowing what I should be doing but that I should be doing something else.  I see that in Mona.  I used to be Mona.  Part of me still is Mona.  And I am a safe place for her to rant.  I’m glad she is secure enough in my love for her that she knows I will still be there after she has thrown every stone, screamed every insult and stomped loudly up every stair.  Because she’s not really mad at me.  (Or maybe just the parts of me that remind her of the demons she doesn’t want to face.)

I may not know the best way to deal with Mona when she’s angry, but I know enough to take some of her outbursts as a compliment.  She isn’t afraid of losing my love because she knows she can’t.  It’s real and it’s stable.  She knows I am a safe place.   That much, at least, I’ve done right, even if it sometimes gets expressed by her taking the love away.

Three Divided By One-On-One (Babble)

I am glad I have siblings.  My brothers are a connection to my past and to areas of the world beyond my own reach.  I love them more than I can say, but I remember as a child the sense of competition that comes with having siblings.  Many times it was nice to have the attention of my parents diverted by my brothers, and the house was lively and interesting with the children outnumbering the adults. 

But I also remember how complicated things could get the more individuals had to be added into any equation, in terms of sleeping arrangements away from home, what we could eat or how many could fit in the car, etc.  The logistics of living with multiple children is a whole special skill set.  One of the biggest challenges I remember was to eke out time with a parent alone, to not feel overlooked, to feel loved and special apart from the ever present group.

Now I’m experiencing the same issue from the point of view of the parent, and it isn’t any easier.  Lately the need for my undivided attention has led to bruised feelings and frustration.  I’m not sure what to do.  What I need is more time and I don’t know where to find it.

When my husband was deployed my kids had me all the time.  Now that Ian is home and in the role of the stay at home parent, I’m back at work and my kids miss me.  It doesn’t help that recently I’ve had to take a few trips to Michigan without them, which also means more time away from them when I come back because I need to catch up on the work I missed while I was gone.  On a typical school day I don’t see my kids until I get home from work a little after 5:00.  There is dinner, violin practice, reading time, midnight snuggle.…  That’s a lot to cram into not a lot of time before they are all supposed to be in bed with the lights out by 8:00, and they all want time with me alone.


When I’m helping Mona with violin practice she loves that it’s just the two of us, but more often than not Quinn will discover I’m sitting with an unoccupied lap and join us.  This gets on Mona’s nerves, even if all Quinn wants to do is sit there.  Sometimes I tell her to relax, and sometimes I encourage Quinn to wait in the other room.  Either way, someone is unhappy.  When it’s Aden’s turn to practice, Mona then wants to cuddle with me, forgetting completely how annoyed she was moments before when she was the one trying to practice sans siblings.

Sibling interference is complicated enough in our house that we have to have the girls actual violin lessons (with the same teacher) on different days, even though this is inconvenient for us.  The stress put on Mona to do a lesson before or after her sister made her harder to teach.  Now that she has violin on her own day she’s enjoying it much more and improving faster, so it’s worth the effort, but that doesn’t make it less annoying as far as our schedules go.  My children are different when you get them one-on-one instead of as a set, and the violin lessons are one way we are mindful of that.

To help my kids with their reading skills we’ve been reading together in the living room every evening before bed.  Each child reads something to me, and then I read something to each of them.  Mona and I are making our way through the ‘How to Train Your Dragon’ books, and Aden and I are almost done with ‘Little House on the Prairie.’  Mona doesn’t want anyone else around when I read to her because she sees it as her time.  She glares at anyone else who tries to sit down on the couch, too.  Aden won’t read aloud in front of her siblings for some reason, even though she’s reading things they would enjoy.  What should be a nice time for us all together taking turns reading can get contentious.  If I play it just right I can get us all under one blanket and we can read as a group, but often I end up sending some children away so we can read one-on-one, and again, someone is always unhappy.

I get time alone with Quinn probably more often than anyone because he’s only in school for half the day.  Sometimes Ian will bring him to the violin store when I’m working, and on the alternate days when the store is closed I’ll spend the afternoon with him at home when I can.  Aden manages to carve out time with me for help with homework or playing heart and soul on the keyboard.  She also has moments when she needs a hug or a cry and she’ll corner me on the couch and keep me there alone for as long as she can. 

The person most in need of one-on-one time for awhile was Mona, and she’s found ways to solve that herself.  Sometimes she’ll come with me to work for an entire Saturday (even though it’s boring for her, really) just to get me alone.  She also invented midnight snuggle.  She cuddles up and reviews her day and asks me questions and gives me hugs and Eskimo kisses.  It’s lovely. 

But Quinn has been worming his way into it whenever he can.  It bugs Mona to no end that her brother wants to be in the bed too during midnight snuggle time, but I just focus my attention on her and tell her it doesn’t matter, and then I make it up to Quinn later.

Recently I got a note from Aden that she put in my room one morning letting me know that being excluded from midnight snuggle made her sad.  (The note was complete with an illustration of her weeping, just in case I missed the point.)  I talked with her about it, and she said she can hear us talking and giggling from her bed and she feels left out.
It’s hard making time for each girl’s violin practice, and for individual reading, and I can’t do midnight snuggle with each child or we really would be up until midnight to do it.  I told Aden I was really sorry, but that I have three kids, and sometimes that means doing things with one that leaves the others out.  I reminded her of the pottery classes we did together, and how many times we’ve been able to do things just the two of us because she’s the oldest.  I told her she can’t begrudge Mona or Quinn for wanting times like that, too.  She says she understands, but she still doesn’t like it.

It’s not that my kids don’t get along.  For the amount of time they spend together I’m shocked they get along so well, frankly.  But it’s like I’m some rare commodity that throws everything out of balance, and there is only so much we can cram into those couple of evening hours.  We can’t split up the time by doling out some of the reading or violin or midnight snuggle to their dad because that’s not what they want.  They love their dad, but he’s more available in general, and they don’t seek him out for the same activities.  Sometimes everything has been going fine until I get home and then unhappiness and mild chaos ensue.  So every evening I hope for the best and wish for extra time to spend with each of my children.

The irony is when they are old enough to stay up later and we could have a little more time they probably won’t be interested anymore.  And I’ll wonder why I ever thought spending time with my kids was considered a problem.

Long Distance Snuggles (Babble)

I’m back in Michigan this week.  It’s my third trip here this year, which considering it’s only March I think is a new record for me.  My brother, who has been here taking remarkable care of my dad for the past month and a half, was invited to speak at the Smithsonian about cultural entomology and his research about sleep and bees.  He was concerned about going because my dad was starting chemo and needs somebody here.  I cleared my schedule and told him not to worry about it.  (I hope his talks go well!)

In the meantime, it was hard to say goodbye to my husband and kids again, but I’m glad to be able to help my parents.  Helping my dad means keeping track of his constantly misplaced cane, reading to him during chemo, and driving him to and from various appointments at the hospital and physical therapy.  Helping my mom means pulling up episodes of Project Runway to watch together while we drink peach-ginger tea.

It’s very easy to focus on the person with the illness when doling out care, but there are moments when the ‘sick-adjacent’ need help too.  I think mothers in particular can relate to how easy it is to take on responsibilities to another to the detriment of their own needs at times.  My mom may not be going through chemo herself, but it still has a direct impact on her own life.  She’s been through a lot lately, and she has such an overwhelming amount of work to do closing down her business that I worry for her.  There is only so much I can do to help, but I’m making sure we get a little time to hang out and do nothing more taxing than cheer on Tim Gunn as he tells people to make it work.  It’s nice.

My children are being pretty understanding about my absence this week.  At home Mona has developed a recent habit of crawling into bed with me for a cuddle before going off to her own bed to sleep.  She calls it “midnight snuggle” and she’s very serious about it.  I’m not sure what was its inspiration, but it has quickly become one of my favorite parts of the day.  We talk about projects she’s working on and things she’s interested in while we lie with our arms around each other and she gives me intermittent Eskimo kisses.  (The only problem is it’s such a nice time that Quinn wants in on it, and announces he’s there for midnight snuggle, too, which really gets on his sister’s nevers.)

Mona was concerned that my being in Detroit would doom the midnight snuggle, but we’ve been doing it over the phone.  She sits on my bed back in Milwaukee and we chat and hug the receivers.  I can hear her hugs because her footie pajamas make a scrunchy rustling noise when she holds the phone close.  Then she takes the phone around to Aden and Quinn and has them say goodnight too before hanging up.

It’s complicated to be needed in more than one place, but it’s nice to feel needed at all.  I keep thinking about how hard it was for my grandma when she began to really seem old to not be able to help with things.  She was used to being the person who cared for others, and having someone else make the meals or prepare the beds or clean the counters just never sat with her right.  She enjoyed those things because they made her feel useful.  I think I’m at the most responsible, most needed, most useful point in my life so far and much of the time I feel stretched too thin, but I’d rather feel a bit overtaxed and making a difference than bored and unproductive.  Which is good, because it doesn’t look like I’m in danger of getting a break anytime soon.

So I will take my midnight snuggles over the phone for a little longer while being useful in Detroit, but I’m looking forward to the real thing.  (I even kind of miss the claustrophobia inducing ‘pile on’ my kids do when they find me in bed some mornings.  One of them shouts, “Pile on Mama!” and then there is a weighty heap of kids on me and a lot of giggling.  My parents are fun but they don’t do that.)