Changes, Changes

The first book I ever read, a tattered paperback picture book called “Changes, Changes”, now sits on Mihiretu’s bookshelf.  It has no words so that made the reading easy.

Every picture is made of colored building blocks, different sizes, shapes and colors.  You know, early seventies, you make a wobbly tower and then knock it down.

The book begins with a man and a woman, both made of blocks, standing facing the reader.  The next page they begin to build a house with more blocks.  Soon they’re living in the house then, whoops, the next page a fire has started.  They take blocks from the house and build a fire engine and hose, which they use to extinguish the fire in what remains of the house.  But, oh no, too much water, soon they’ve created a sea.  No worries, they use their blocks to build a boat.  And on and on.

So now I’m imagining my life in blocks.  I start as a small block person but add blocks to become a grown-up.  I build a stage set and take my place in front of it.  Then Ben, made of blocks, enters stage right and together we build a little house. We add a little block baby, then another.  We take the blocks from the little house and make a bigger house in which the four of us live.  Then we build an airplane, fly to Africa, and build a jumping, running, soccer-ball-kicking Mihiretu.  And so it goes, one thing building to the next, always changing.

The last few years would find the block Ben and the block Liz back-to-back tending block children.  Then maybe eye-to-eye, one block finger raised, one block hand on hip.  Then, finally, after many pages, the two disassembling part of the big house, Liz carrying blocks away, making a smaller house.

I’m here in that smaller house now.  I moved on New Year’s Day - fitting, I suppose.  We are separated, Ben and I.  We are, each of us, all five of us, taking the blocks we have and building something new.  These changes, sometimes they’re a fire, sometimes they’re a sea.  But you keep on building.  You take what you’ve got and keep on going, making whatever you can.

Type

Mae is 11 years old, wears size 10 shoes, stands five feet four and weighs the same as me (she has Capron cow bones, I have Lavoie bird bones).  She is easy in her changing body and Jennifer Lawrence gorgeous.  If you looked up lovely in the dictionary you’d find her hooded Eskimo eyes and Mona Lisa smile.

The kids are in three different schools with three different calendars.  This Thanksgiving week, Mae and Mihiretu were off school, Lana in.  That made for a couple of Mae-Mihiretu-Mom days.

We went to the mall on Monday and while Mae was selecting jeans and Mihiretu was riding the escalators shrieking like a pterodactyl, something struck me. 

“You know who’s really going to tease you when you get a boyfriend?” I asked, handing Mae a pair of size 27s.

“Who?” Mihiretu asked as he skidded into Mae.

I nested a hand in his curls.  “Mihiretu Capron, that’s who.”

Mae groaned and gave me a half-concealed smile.  Mihiretu hopped from foot to foot in delight, thrilled with anticipation.

The next day Mihiretu and I (and Sunny the Dog) walked Mae to a friend’s house in the neighborhood.  Coming towards us down our wooded lane hobbled an elderly man, his neck frozen into a permanent stoop.  He walked a small, long-haired dog.

“Is that a cat?” asked Mihiretu in his version of sotto voce (not sotto at all).

“That’s a dog.”

We passed the man.  He gave us a friendly nod as Sunny lost her mind barking at his cat.  Just as I was pulling her back into line, giving her my “I’m the boss, not you” lecture, Mihiretu said, again in his “quiet” voice, “Hey, Mae.”

“What?” she said, looking at him sideways, already knowing some mischief was coming her way.

“Dat guy yo’ type.”  His eyes sparkled, he wore a Cheshire grin.

“He is not my type!”  She flailed her arms in indignation but she, too, was grinning.

“Oh yeah, Mae, he yo’ type.”

Where did he hear about types?  Probably the same place he heard about “upper cut punch” (I gonna give you an uppa cut PUNCH!).  No matter, the kid’s got a killer instinct for what makes people tick.

And, Mae, bless her, laughed along with us, adolescent though she may be, far more poised than I ever remember being at that age, room in her heart for a small ridiculous boy.  As for her type?  I’m thinking he’s going to be pretty cool.

1 2 3, Magic

As I’ve reported again and again, this last school year was a challenging one for us.  By summer, we were all a wreck.  Enforcing discipline with Mihiretu had become nearly impossible; the smallest correction would send him into hysterics.  And because we couldn’t realistically discipline Mihiretu, we really couldn’t apply different rules to the girls.  Home was chaos.

With every day of summer vacation, Mihiretu relaxed.  With no institutional triggers, remnants of the orphanage, he was no longer in fight-or-flight.  By July, we saw our opening.

While I’m an ardent reader – I carry books with me everywhere, to meals, to brush my teeth, to bed – I hate self-help books.  I buy them, particularly child-rearing books, read a few pages and then they join the pile on my bedside table, never to be touched again.  The reasons for this are two-fold; my reading time is my pleasure time – I don’t want to be working - and I hate being told what to do (even if it’s what I need to hear).

That said, this summer Ben and I read a book called “1, 2, 3, Magic!”  Exclamation point aside, the title is accurate.  It is magic.

The basic premise is this: you sit  your kids down and reiterate the rules of the house.  Then you explain that the first time they break a rule, a parent will call “One”.  No explanation, no discussion.  The second time, “Two”.  And, the third time, you guessed it, “Three”.  At this point the child takes a time-out in their room – for as many minutes as years they are old.  When they come out, everyone moves on, no discussion, no guilt.  Very simple, too simple, it seems.  But, like I said, magic.  Within a week of implementing the plan, we were living a different – and far more peaceful – life.  There is no more arguing, no more screaming, no more teasing, no more bloody scratches etched on small faces.  The kids abide by the rules and everyone’s happier for it, particularly the kids.

Mihiretu runs down the hall, shrieking, really just to hear himself shriek.  “Mihiretu, that’s one.”  Ten minutes later, Mihiretu chases the dog.  “Mihiretu, that’s two.”  Five minutes after that, Mihiretu climbs over the couch.  “Mihiretu, that’s three.  Here’s the timer.  Go to your room.”  No parental yelling, and then, beautiful thing, I have six minutes of silence.

It’s a bit baffling.  When we tried time-outs before, Mihiretu would – I’m not kidding - climb out his window, run around the side of the house and make faces at us through the glass door.  This time around, maybe because the consequences are clear, and we’re so even in the delivery of those consequences, he goes to his room and he stays there.

My favorite part, I have to say, are the howls of frustration when the kids are counted into a metaphorical corner.  Lana sasses me – “Lana, that’s one.”  “But, Mom, I was only –“   “Lana, that’s two for arguing.”   “This counting rule is so stupid!”  “That’s three, take nine in your room.”  “Aaaargh!” as she stomps down the hall.  Extremely satisfying.

Now when Mihiretu knows he’s broken a rule he’ll look at me out of the corner of his eye to see if I’ve spotted the infraction.  If I count him, he’ll wave his open palms and say, “Oh, sawwy, Mama, sawwy” and skitter away.  This is the kid who when we’d ask him to stop (screaming, slapping, swearing, spitting), he’d yell “Or what?”  We’ve found our what.

I enjoy being with my kids now – something I couldn’t honestly say when we were deep in the pit of despair last year.  We’re having so much more fun because we’re not spending our time arguing, redefining our boundaries at every turn.  Ben and I are Charles-in-Charge and it feels so good.

Next book down on the dusty stack by my bedside? “Cesar’s Way”.  Watch your back, Sunny, watch your back. 

The Utility Room

Our lives this past year haven’t been easy.  Mihiretu had a terrible time in kindergarten at the public school, ergo Mae and Lana had a terrible time at said school.  Your brother throwing himself to the black-top in screaming terror during an all-school fire drill isn’t a recipe for social success it turns out.  Therapy all the way around.

This year we find ourselves in three different schools.  Mae started at the public middle school last week.  Lana found a safe spot among some key friends at a small private school in Fairfax.  And Mihiretu is at a Steiner-inspired school in Sausalito; calming colors, no bells.  While this has proved to be logistically difficult (three kids, three start times, three end times, with miles between them), they seem infinitely happier.  They each have space to be themselves in an environment that suits them.

I started a business in June.  A bit counterintuitive, I realize.  Three young kids, one of whom has suffered trauma, therapy appointments to coordinate.  But I’m finding this work is giving me a little space of my own.

I have always sewn.  I come from a long line of seamstresses.  My maternal grandmother emigrated from Romania to support her family as a seamstress in the New World.  She ended up having three children in quick succession and succumbing to depression and pneumonia in short order but no matter.  She sewed.  My mother sewed.  I sew.

I make quilts, I make clothes.  Most recently, I’ve gotten into upcycling.  I find old cashmere sweaters at Goodwill, haggle with the cashiers (“There’s a hole here under the arm and it’s quite pilly?  Could you come down from $12?”) and bring the buggers home to wash them, felt them, cut them up and make something new.  Blankets, scarves, hats, sweater-coats.  I find vintage quilt-tops at flea markets.  These are the pieced together beginnings, not yet a blanket, abandoned as much as a century ago.  I clean them up, mend them, then finish the job some long ago granny started.  I layer the top with batting and a back and hand-quilt it.  A labor of love – it takes forever – but I adore it.  I carry a basket with me everywhere and pull out the current quilt to work on at odd moments – playdates, school pick-ups, wherever.  I make messenger bags out of vintage European grain sacks, little girl dresses out of used men’s t-shirts, dog bowl stands out of old wooden fruit crates, summer dresses out of antique German nightdresses.

In May, a store opened in Fairfax, our little town.  It’s called The Garage and it’s a design collective.  Housed in an old Volkswagen repair shop (hence the name), it’s a mélange of different work; handmade jewelry, handcrafted leatherwork, vintage finds salvaged and repaired, on and on.  And now, in the midst of this loveliness, is The Utility Room.  That’d be me.  I work behind the counter a few hours a week but mostly my work is finding and making.  I’m busier than I’ve probably ever been – a typical evening might find me simultaneously packing school lunches, ironing a t-shirt dress and rewiring an old rotary phone for resale.  I’m busy but I’m happy.  The kid’s world changed for the better and so did mine.

I think a lot about Virginia Woolf’s idea of having a room of one’s own.  I don’t actually have that.  I have a high counter the length of my living-room that’s home to my sewing machine, my serger, my computer, my cashmere, my quilt-tops.  I don’t have a physical room but suddenly I have mental room, I have the Utility Room.  I have a thing that’s just mine.  I’m not just the support staff for Ben and the kids.  I love being a mother.  I love it more than anything.  But I also love having work that’s my own.

I got my first paycheck recently since my last acting check in 1999.  I used some of it to buy shop-girl shoes, a pair of bright blue clogs.  Work shoes.  Because, between drop-offs and pick-ups, between Trader Joe’s and laundry, between making beds and making dinner, there’s a little slice of time that’s mine, that’s work. 

Little Surfer, Little Girl

We just got back from two weeks at Stinson Beach.  I’d call it a vacation but Ben, per our agreement, was commuting daily to work and I was, for the most part, on my own with the kids so instead, perhaps, I should call it parenting on location.

I love Stinson.  I grew up on that beach.  Ben and I have corresponding pictures of our childhood selves on those sands, him waving a seagull feather, me clinging to my brother’s back.  When I think “beach”, the muted blues and greys of Stinson are what come to mind.

Our first week at the beach this year was populated with friends.  By the second week, we were ready for surf camp.

That Sunday I walked over to Live Water Surf Shop to sign up.  If you’ve ever seen a bumper-sticker of a shark with a red line through it, that’s Live Water.  It’s a Marin institution and is these days owned by Brenna and Pete Gubbins.

And here’s where we enter the magical, mythical realm of high school.  Pete went to Tam High in Mill Valley with Ben and me.  I spent my twenties in Los Angeles being fairly anonymous and disconnected from my childhood.  I was the present me only.   And though I’ve been back in Marin for well over ten years, I still find the overlay of adolescence and present life confusing and fascinating.  Keep in mind I married someone from high school but Ben and I met at our ten year reunion; we weren’t friends way back when.  He was new to me and old.  A lot like the rest of these people I continue to bump into.

The surf camp, it turns out, is run by a guy named Glenn Whitaker.  A guy I also went to high school with though, like most of these people, probably never talked to.  I was shy, shocking as that may seem now.  I was an excellent student, I was afraid of my father, I was cautious.  Which means that I remember these people way better than they remember me.  I sat back and watched behind a curtain of dishwater blond hair while they led their raucous high school careers.

Ben, Pete, Glenn, these were all the cool guys.  I don’t think I’ve ever been cool.  Oh, sure, I’ve come into my own, I’m comfortable in my skin, I inhabit myself quite nicely now.  But I don’t know that that’s cool.  It’s just me.  I’ve fully embraced my brainy, confessional, emotive self.  Which is good, but not cool.  “Cool” is just not where my thermostat is set, as much as I would sometimes like it to be.

Surf camp started.  My kids popped up onto their feet by their second or third ride.  I sat on the sand, swathed in sun hat and sarong and watched.  It was hilarious and inspiring, watching these little people catch waves, wipe out.  By Thursday, I wanted to try.

Now here’s where the past bumps up against the present.  I wanted to get in the water, try to stand up on a board, see what it felt like.  I love that quote “Use your body any way you can, don’t be afraid of it or what others may think of it”.  I don’t have a whole lot of shame or fear these days and I do have a whole lot of curiosity.  So that’s the present. 

And then there’s the past.  There’s the getting in the water with the cool guy from high school, undoubtedly failing, undoubtedly exposing my tremendous uncoolness.  If I could ask my fifteen-year-old self if this was a good idea she would say no fucking way.  And then swing her hair back in front of her face.

The present won.  I got in a wet-suit, I hauled a board out into the water.  I spent two days getting absolutely pummeled by waves, by humiliation, while my children sailed by me hanging ten.  My body felt huge, impossible to coordinate.  I was trying to speak Japanese armed only with “Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto”.  But again and again, I manhandled the board back through the white water and gave it another shot.  Eventually I managed to stand up for a total of three seconds.  I’m not sure if I tamed the wave or if it tamed me but it was a sort of victory.

I did all this in front of the cool guy, with the help of the cool guy, who in the end turned out to be quite a cool guy.  And me?  Decidedly not cool.  But a little brave.

Korean Spa

A couple weeks ago, I rearranged therapist appointments and school tours, postponed insurance claim calls, ditched the dishes and the laundry, left the suburbs behind and ventured into San Francisco for something different.

I’m not generally a spa person.  I’ve had about five pedicures in my life, I prefer my massages medicinal, I don’t like the feeling of someone waiting on me in that way, pampering me, simply because I’m paying for it.  Perhaps because I spent my twenties waiting on people because they were paying me for it.  It all makes me highly uncomfortable.

This spa, though, this Korean spa to which I was heading, is, I’d heard, not about pampering.  That theory proved true.

I embarked on this adventure with my friend, Mary.  There are probably only a handful of people with whom I could imagine spending three hours naked and Mary is one of them.  She is six feet tall and the definitive ectomorph.  Tan, blonde, gi-orgeous.  While I’ve often compared myself to Mary physically and found myself wanting (once she chopped her hair short and dyed it brown, almost my exact cut, and I found myself thinking, “Oh, look, it’s me, only taller and thinner”), she is a person who is at home in her body.  Which I suppose I am, too, most days.  Being naked with someone like that is a lot like being naked alone, except you can chat.

We disrobed in the clean, chlorine-scented locker room.  Dressed only in our spa-provided bracelets (Mary’s said “4”, mine “5”), we sank into the hot tub while we waited for our scrub appointments.  As we sloshed from hot tub to cold plunge, we whispered compliments about each other’s breasts (“God, Mary, you look like you’re sixteen.” “Your boobs are so full and nice, Liz.”).  Yes, guys, this is what ladies talk about.

Soon a squat, middle-aged Korean woman uniformed in black granny undies and bra (truly, that’s the uniform) entered the bath area. 

“Four?” she called in heavily accented English.  Mary dutifully followed her, smiling at me over her bare shoulder.

Soon enough, another squat, middle-aged Korean woman in requisite black undies and bra arrived.

“Five?” she asked gruffly.

I followed her into a small curtained annex off the bathing area.  She gestured for me to lie down on a massage table covered in heavy plastic. 

“Down,” she said.  Guessing, I lay face down.  A moment later, I was attacked.  Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of her hand in some kind of glove.  It was a hybrid shower-glove/brillo-pad/oven mitt.  She held me down with one mitt and scrubbed me with the other, exactly how I might imagine her getting a stain out of her living-room carpet.

This went on for at least a half hour, her furious scrubbing.  Once she’d finished a body part, she’d dump a bucket of water on it.  There was no talking as we didn’t share a language, only her hands flipping me over and scrubbing.  Legs, back, belly, breasts, arm, armpits, everything.  I was a little concerned she was taking off more than the desired one layer of skin.  I was silently saying farewell to my nipples.  And I was laughing.  Forty-two year-old white suburban mom naked on a plastic sheet, totally at the mercy of a determined Asian woman in black underwear.

Upon release by my Brillo-mitted captor, I reunited with a dazed and pink Mary.  Then, again, two more Korean ladies entered the bath.  “Four?” one said.  “Five?” said the other.  Mary and I had time for one shared eyebrow raise before we were ushered into separate, tiny massage rooms. 

This Korean lady, my masseuse, was younger, smaller and infinitely more smiley than my scrubber.  She gestured for me to lie down on yet another massage table, this one, happily, covered with a sheet – cotton not plastic.

I closed my eyes and listened to the plink-plonk of the music coming from a small boom-box by my head.  And then I was attacked again.

Somehow, this sweet little lady had massive, super-human hands.  She kneaded my thighs and my calves with such force that I worried that my kneecaps would splinter. 

“You walk?” she asked.

“Um,” I squeaked, “Yeah.  I run.  In the hills.”

“Maybe no walk,” she said.  “Tight.”

It wasn’t until she got to my upper back and I felt the air forced from my lungs that I realized that what I had taken for hands were actually feet.  I listened over the sound of my wheezing breath and could hear her hands sliding on metal, what would later prove to be a horizontal pole above us.  She was walking on me.

After thirty minutes, she finally jumped off the table and switched to her hands.  I fell immediately asleep.  Or maybe I passed out.

When I came to and exchanged smiling nods with the Walker, I found Mary in the hall.  She looked about how I felt, beaten and raw.

We found a ramen shop next door for lunch and we toasted our shared Sapporo, grateful for our intact bones.  Mary confessed that her rib might be out.

I felt exorcised.  If the purpose of a massage, of a spa, is stress relief, this was mission accomplished.  I drove back over the Golden Gate skinned and mellow.  Maybe it was the scrubbing, maybe it was the walking, maybe it was just the laughing.  Whatever it was, I needed it.

The Crab

I am a person who is rarely still.  I’m industrious, I’m a multi-tasker; I’m the mother of three children.  In the rare moments I’m sitting, I’m eating and reading or eating and talking or sewing and listening to NPR or folding laundry and watching trash TV; there is always something being accomplished.

The exception to this rule is the first half-hour of my day.  That, ideally, is spent on my back, gazing through the skylight, watching the sunlight creep down the trees, sorting through my dreams.  My dreams are vivid and they are many.  Lately I’ve spent a lot of the night apartment-hunting in LA until I realize, whoops, I’m married, have three kids, three cats and a dog - a studio apartment is probably not going to do the trick.  When I finally emerge into consciousness, I am exceedingly vulnerable; if I’m down this is when I’ll feel it, if something is bothering me, this is when it’ll come up.  I am, as Ben says, a crab without its shell.

If I start my day in first gear, Mihiretu starts his in fifth.  From the moment he opens his eyes, he is running, he is talking, he is shouting, he is asking questions and making demands. This morning, he asked me in quick succession if I loved him more than Sunny, if it was the weekend, if I had any dreams, if we were going to walk to school, if we were having tacos for dinner, and if I loved him more than the IPad.  Sometimes, if he’s not in a great mood, he might call the sleeping dog onto the bed (where she is forbidden to go), he might shriek just to shriek and when asked to stop because his sisters are sleeping, shriek some more.  If Lana makes it to my bed first, they will fight over my hands – who gets to hold which one.  For someone who’s hardest moment of the day is leaving her bed, this kind of energy is a lot for me to handle.  I am the raw, shell-less crab and he is a sharp stick.

For as early as I rise, I guess I’m not a morning person.  If I had my way, the kids would wake up two hours later than I do – by that time, armed with coffee and warmed blood, I’d have the fortitude to face them.  I love them, these children, I love the fresh day, I love this life of mine but sometimes all I want to do is sleep – escape down the dark, velvety tunnel of my subconscious, float there, dream.