Maternal Dementia

He was wearing seersucker Bermuda shorts. He’d already kicked off his white boat shoes, they were laying on the floor in front of my seat. He wore a light charcoal colored T-shirt betrayed (or enhanced) by the stains of a long backpacker tour. His Justin Bieber hairdo was greasy, like the shirt. His muscled thighs were thick and he sat low in his seat so his knees fanned out to the sides, encroaching on the woman next to him, his young girlfriend who didn’t seem to mind, and on me on the other side, not so thrilled about sharing my airspace with him. He never once looked at me nor spoke to me; he only grunted when I asked if he might move his shoes, and his knee, to make a bit of legroom for me.

This is just the guy that keeps me up at night. I see him, when I’m walking Short-pants and Buddy-roo home from school. We pass by a lycée, its clumps of teenagers spilling out into the middle of the street. The girls look ridiculous, awkwardly pinching their cigarettes between superficial puffs. The boys shout vulgarities at each other across the street, the mating-call of the adolescent male. They shake their haircuts into place and wave their arms in the air, revealing five inches of black boxer shorts above the top of their jeans. I realize this is the current fashion – as a teenager I was slave to such timely styles, too – but still I constantly fight the urge to go grab their belt-loops on each side and hike those low-rider pants up until they fall correctly on the hips. Either that or give them the full wedgie they appear to be begging for.

This was that guy. He had the look, the bad-boy cool, which is really just a mask for his lack of confidence. Adolescent girls are easily blinded to this fact, which is why they always fall for him, with disappointing results. Even that I can take: teenage heartbreak is a part of growing up. But he’s the one that messes, purposely, with your daughter’s self-esteem. He kisses and tells, doesn’t-kiss-but-tells-he-did-anyway, callously adds her to his list of cavalier conquests. I knew this guy in high school, and in college. That’s why I can smell him a mile away.

At least I was on the aisle seat, so I leaned left and studied my Sudoku puzzle while the airplane taxied down the runway. Except on the other side of me there were two young American women, maybe just 20-years-old, swapping stories about their travels. Their conversation was loud, one of them in particular insisted upon broadcasting to a wide radius around her seat. I’d already turned on my noise-reducing earphones but I could still hear her clear as a bell. I was impressed with her capacity to incorporate the word like a minimum of three times in every sentence. Plus, you couldn’t help notice that rather than sharing her thoughtful insights about traveling, she was, like, showing-off, how, like, in-the-know she’d become.

I knew this girl, too. I was once her. Over-inflated, full of myself because finally I was out in the world, doing all the grown-up on-your-own things I’d dreamed of doing. I’m sure I spoke with the same overzealous disclosure, a would-be reflection on my experiences that was really just a chance to boast. But hopefully, at least, I did it with a little less volume, so only my immediate seat-mates were compelled to roll their eyes, not the entire cabin of the plane.

What saved me was that my in-flight entertainment screen wouldn’t work, even after two re-boots, so I was moved to another aisle seat further back, amongst sleeping, movie-viewing people who had no desire to impose or impress.

Sitting in the dark, in the rear of the plane, I wondered what it was that summoned my harsh judgments against these two young people. I worry about that type of guy preying on my daughters, that despite all the seeds I’ve already planted and all the prescient mother-daughter conversations yet to come, that they won’t recognize and steer clear of him. And I’m afraid that despite all the reminders about using their inside voice or any tips on art of conversation that I would hope to impart along the way, they will become that girl, that nearly intolerable it’s-all-about-me airplane conversationalist.

But there’s nothing I can do about it. They will meet that guy. They will encounter that girl, too, whether it’s in their circle of friends or in the mirror in front of them. They’ll meet bullies who torment them, friends who flip on them, humorless teachers who squelch their spirit. I can’t protect them. Even if I could, I shouldn’t. So much of life is what you figure out on your own.

When they’re little babies, there are compelling reasons to protect them. Now, as they grow, too much protection is helicoptering. I don’t want to do that. I want them to grow up fully, with the benefit of their own realizations and experiences. I want to help them to be free-range kids. I want to let them fail, at least a little, and figure out, on their own, how to recover. That’s how I learned to smell danger a mile away, that’s how they will, too.

Still, the urge is there. To warn them. To make them wiser. To help them skip the awkward phases of maturing and get through it faster, easier, better than I did. I know I can’t control what they choose to do in their lives, but I hope I can at least teach them how to make good choices. But how much longer do I have? They’re growing up fast.

On my way home from New Zealand, I stopped midway, in Los Angeles, to visit some friends. They have two teenaged children who look you in the eye, ask if they can help, share interesting, relevant facts about themselves when asked, and possess a sense of humor that is intelligent and thoughtful. This gives me much hope that when Short-pants and Buddy-roo are teens that they could be palatable individuals. I suppose part of that comes from steering them the right direction, and the other part, maybe, from holding your breath, crossing your fingers and just getting out of their way.

Shout Quietly Please is a painting by Dan Walker.

At dinner that night I glanced down at my watch to see that it was nearly half-eight. That’s 8:30 in the morning home in Paris. I’d meant to call the girls during their breakfast, to catch up in general but especially to wish Short-pants well for her viola recital that evening. I leapt up from the dinner table and rushed to the meeting room, where I’d left my computer. I punched the phone number into Skype, counting each hollow ring, one after the other, until our message machine picked up. I tried the babysitter’s number, too, her phone providing the same lonely sound with no answer either. She was probably already walking them to school.

So many times had I said out loud to my colleagues I must call the girls tonight so I reach them at breakfast. How hard can it be to remember one simple promise to myself? Pretty hard, apparently, as the dinner conversation with colleagues and clients – accompanied by a glass of wine – distracted me enough to miss the thin window of opportunity to talk with them. Another example in my list of failed parenting moments.

Except it was about to be Thursday for me, Wednesday for them, the day they get out of school at noon. So I figured I had still had a chance to wish Short-pants luck before her recital if I could just stay up until half-past midnight to call and reach them at lunchtime in Paris. But my eyes were drooping shut by eleven o’clock, I surrendered to sleep fast and heavy – as one does within the wake of jet-lag – but at least I’d set my alarm, which went off shortly before 1 am.

“Mama!” Buddy-roo’s enthusiasm at hearing my voice, instant reassurance that they hadn’t forgotten me.

“Hey,” I said, yawning and groggy. “How are you sweetie?”

“Mama, when are the Fisher Price toys going to get here?”

These old toys of mine were sent with the other things from my mother’s house, a shipment that left the states in October and has not yet cleared European customs. I assured her that I’d filled out all the paperwork and I was just waiting to be given a delivery date.

Her enthusiasm disappeared for the rest of the conversation: How are you doing? Fine. How was school? Good. Did you have fun at the birthday party last weekend? Yes. I opted not to ask about homework, as much of a chore this year as last. We dog her enough about it, that there’s nothing I can do from so far away to move things along. Best not to touch upon a sore subject.

“Can I talk to your sister?”

I heard the phone clunk down on the counter and the footsteps the followed as she ran off to get her sister. I desperately wanted to speak to Short-pants before her concert to let her know I was thinking about her, so that she’d tune her viola knowing that, even from far away, I was rooting for her. Mostly that she’d know she wasn’t forgotten. It’s hard enough, I think, to have an event like this that your parents cannot attend. Worse if it goes by without a crystal clear message that being absent doesn’t mean uninterested.

Short-pants came on the phone.

“Are you ready?”

“Yes, Mama,” she said, “I’ve practiced every night. I know it by heart.”

This conversation an echo of so many exchanges from my childhood. Within it I heard my father’s carefully chosen words to acknowledge preparedness over perfection. And her response, like mine probably was, couched with the intent to please. Add this moment to all the rest – good and bad – where you catch yourself parenting as you were parented.

As a young violist, just about Shortpants’ age, I remember my father once complimented me after an orchestra concert and I told him, with some embarrassment, that I’d actually lost my place during one of the pieces.

“What did you do?” he’d asked.

I told him how I’d faked it until I could find my place in the music and rejoin the rest of the orchestra. I remember his long fingers, pushing his glasses up on the bridge of his nose to adjust them as he summoned his thoughtful response.

“It’s not the fall,” he said, nodding, “it’s the recovery.”

This advice I’ve passed on to others, but I seem to forget to apply to myself.

Despite all the self-talk about how the kids are fine, they’re better adjusted because we’re not hovering over them all the time, how seeing us go away and return is good for their self-esteem, how they’ll be more independent as a result, the truth is I feel like shit about missing this recital. It was her first one ever, and I wasn’t there. I wish I could have beamed myself home, and that it wasn’t the babysitter and her family who’d be there clapping in the audience, but me and De-facto amongst the other proud parents.

I could hear Buddy-roo crying in the background, asking to have the phone back. I reminded Short-pants how much I love her and told her to break a leg, an odd turn of phrase to use, given that her broken leg at age four had its own complications. But she knew what I meant.

“Why do you have to be gone so long?” Buddy-roo asked, through tears. I told her it was because I had to go so far away. It was hard to console her, knowing I had still another full week before I could even say I’ll be home soon.

“When you get back home,” she said, “then will the Fisher Price toys come?”

I assured her they would.

“Okay,” she said, composing herself. I may have fallen from her good graces for being gone so long, but I think I know just how to make a full recovery.

It wasn’t as bad as usual, this time. I even spent a few hours, the day before leaving, no less, wandering through the brocante on the rue de Bretagne with De-facto and the girls. We combed through the stalls of faux-antiques, furniture and junk in search of bookshelves and a dresser for the girls’ bedrooms, stopping midway for a chocolate chaud before hunting some more and heading home without a bookshelf or a chest-of-drawers, but instead with a desk for Buddy-roo that we hope will inspire her to do her homework.

Such a leisurely, familial break could have set me back, but it didn’t. I managed, somehow, to be packed and in bed with the (most of) the list checked-off by midnight. This is highly unusual. There were also fewer incidents of dragging my hands through my hair with the exasperated how will I ever get it all done? that too often accompanies my preparations for a journey. I’m a chronic sufferer of departure stress, but for this trip it was less torturous than usual.

Not that there was a total absence of angst. I lamented out loud, more than once, what was I thinking? I must have lost my sanity to agree to these projects that would take me away from Paris for such an extended period of time, and just before Christmas. I’ve been traveling too much, I moaned to De-facto, I can’t do it like this anymore.

Which is a load of crap, because I love to travel, it’s my drug of choice. I like to be on the road. I am most invigorated standing on a train platform with my valise beside me, or dragging my suitcase through a long airport corridor. Standing in a long queue at passport control can indeed be frustrating, but it can also breed a fierce anticipation of the adventures ahead. It’s all how you look at it. This trait I inherited from my mother, who in turn learned it from hers.

The problem is my obsession to put things doubly in order (also inherited). There’s the preparation to go away: packing, assembling supplies and the fairly mindless yet remarkably time-consuming task of booking tickets and checking-in on line. Then there’s the preparation to be gone for such a long time: paying bills, leaving notes and cash for the cleaner, anticipating babysitter coverage for the complicated moments in the girls’ schedules. It doesn’t help that De-facto has his own week-long trip during my three week absence, so a detailed calendar is required for the two babysitters who manage the girls days and nights when we’re both gone, including pick-up from two different birthday parties and dropping Buddy-roo with one of her friends while Short-pants goes to her music lesson. This is not just organization; it’s choreography.

I catch myself whinging about it and I think of the longing moments I spent on my back porch, growing up, dreaming of traveling in the manner that I do now, and I want to slap myself across the face and shout snap out of it! Because once I’m on the plane – or even before, once I’ve cleared security and I’m in duty-free land – and there’s nothing else to attend to and only the voyage ahead, I’m in a state of bliss. Two long-haul flights to get to New Zealand? No problem. That’s a full day of absolutely uninterruptable time, which can also be described as several movies, two New Yorkers, a novel and still plenty of sleep. I’ll wake up as the plane landed in a far-away place with the familiar tickle: who knows what adventures are ahead?

Guilt is part of it. Even though De-facto is super about taking on the kids and never once complained (to me) about the duration of this trip, I know what it’s like to be the sole parent at home – I do it for him when he travels. The girls don’t like it when I’m gone; their sweet pleading voices tug at me. Worse, I’m missing several important events-of-the-season: the school marché de Noël, the Christmas carol concert and Short-pants’ first viola recital. I know how it meant so much to me that my parents sat through all my orchestra and chorus performances. I feel a bit guilty to be missing theirs.

But guilt is part of parenting. A constant stream of media and societal messages harp on us about how to parent; it’s easy to get caught up in it. I’m always unwinding myself from this tangle, remembering that I don’t have to be the perfect parent, I just have to be a good one. Being true to myself is part of that recipe; mothering by example.

Now I am halfway around the world after 24 tranquil flight-hours of travel that followed 24 hours of frenzied preparation. I do miss my family, but without drama. I also know that this is an important part of me: to be on a trip with a grip, and I can’t deny it. Traveling may seem like a hassle when managing a life around kids, but if I didn’t get to do it at all, I’d shrivel up.

So I endure the pain of preparing to go away, and I find a reasonably sized receptacle in which to place my guilt about being gone. I focus not on the morning cuddles that I’m missing, but on those that will be all the more succulent when I return. And I hope that when it’s time for Short-pants and Buddy-roo to go out and grab the world, they’ll know just how to do it: without stress, without guilt, instead with a wide-angle view on the horizon, and all it has to offer.

The rain is falling steadily now. This morning’s eerie silence, the calm before the storm that has now, after so much talk, finally reached land. We are still a whole day away from the stormiest part of Irene, which will pass over us or possibly just to the west, depending on which track it takes or which weather service you believe. However it turns, we’ll get a lot of wet wind, so we’re hunkerin’ down, bracing ourselves for the storm.

It felt counter-intuitive, yesterday, to be driving toward the storm’s intended path instead of away from it, but we’d sent Short-pants and Buddy-roo to Boston with De-facto‘s brother’s family while we went elsewhere to work for a week, and as news of the storm grew fiercer, so did my desire to be reunited with my children. I don’t think there’s going to be any catastrophe where we are, but still, the tight grips of last night’s i-missed-you-so-much hugs felt especially reassuring. I wouldn’t want this storm to hit while we were separated.

Earlier this week, in the midst of a workshop, the participants in our group stood up and walked out the door and went outside, right in the middle of an exercise. I hadn’t felt a thing, but the swaying chandeliers were enough proof until the news reports confirmed an unusual east coast earthquake. Its impact was slight, but disconcerting. It feels like the planet is rumbling at us.

Living in Paris, we don’t experience these kinds of natural disasters. The occasional mid-summer canicule stirs up a lot of press; I remember the summer I was pregnant for Buddy-roo and nearly 15,000 people died from the heatwave. But most of the disasters in France are inconveniences of human origin, like transport strikes, terrorist attacks and disgruntled instances of customer service.

With the exception of one year when I lived in quake-prone San Francisco, I have always managed to make my home in places where tornadoes, hurricanes and earthquakes are rare, something that happens elsewhere. Although I could note that the last (and only) time I witnessed a hurricane was when I was living in Boston, and Gloria drove up the east coast and battened us down. I spent most of that storm at the radio station where I worked at the time, listening to Van Morrison or The Doors, again and again.

“There’s a hurricane coming and I’m scared!” Buddy-roo’s first words as we got out of the car, stretching our stiff, cramped legs from the long drive.

“You can be scared if you want,” I told her, “but better to be smart.”

We started a list of all the things we needed to have on hand: flashlights, batteries, candles, food supplies and extra water for drinking and flushing. She tired of the task, so after she left we added the real necessities: wine, beer and playing cards.

This morning after shopping runs to the store, the lawn was mowed and cleared of all chairs and outdoor toys, the porch furniture was put away, the house secured. We are not close to water and mostly uphill within this suburban neighborhood so any serious flooding is unlikely. The hardest part of enduring this storm, for us, might be a few falling tree limbs and internet-interrupting power outages. I worry about the people who aren’t as sheltered as we are, and hope that they will weather the storm.

All we can do is cozy in for the evening. Good friends who live near will brave the rain to come over for what has been transformed into an indoor barbecue. A gaggle of kids that would otherwise run wild in the yard until dark may be forced to congregate around a DVD-inspired television in the family room while the adults tell stories and laugh in the kitchen. The rain outside will pound steadily through the night and we’ll sleep fitfully, dreaming about the eye of the storm until we wake up to tomorrow’s windy alarm.

There’s a storm-a-brewin’, all right. Let’s see what it brings.

“Don’t worry, it’s locked from the inside.” I heard Buddy-roo from behind the closed door. “No-one can come in. Our secret will be safe.”

The authority in her voice quieted her sister and her cousin, both girls older than her, but in this case, entirely compliant. I stepped to the side so I wouldn’t be visible through the crack beneath the door.

Were they doing something forbidden? Should I hover and try to hear what they’re up to? Should I knock and make my presence known and see if their response is a welcoming invitation or the sounds of scurrying about to hide something? If their secret involved some kind of contraband, it would likely be something evil only to their teeth, like sugar packets or stolen cookies. I couldn’t imagine a dangerous secret being harbored behind that closed door, so I let the girls have their little private moment. I continued up the stairs of this enormous, several-storied and multi-decked rental house that’s ours for the week, and said nothing about it, not to De-facto nor to anyone in his family who’s here with us. (Later I was told, unsolicited, how they’d been initiating their cousin into the secret fairy circle, affirming my hunch.)

In a few years, when they are outright teenagers, I could make the very same call and pass by that closed door only to miss the fact that they are piercing their own bellybuttons or cutting lines of cocaine on a mirror. I wasn’t much older than them when I went through a phase of smoking cigarette butts under the bathroom fan. Who knows what mischief is ahead for them – and what headaches for me – and whether I’ll choose to knock on the door and intervene, or walk on by.

~ ~ ~

The jet lag means I wake earlier than the rest of the household, so while De-facto’s family sleeps, I rise and turn on the coffee pot that my mother-in-love set up as good-to-go the night before. I write in my journal, catch up on some blog reading, attend to email, all before 7 am. Short-pants was up early this morning, too, so we walked down to the beach and took a stroll along the shoreline, pressing our bare feet into the wet sand just at the point where the sea water stretches its webbed fingers before it ebbing back into the ocean. We held hands and said nothing, partially because it’s hard to hear each other over the sound of the surf, partially because we had nothing to say.

Not far from the steep wooden stairs that lead to and from the beach, we found several empty canvas chairs left out in front of one of the beachfront homes. Since we were not yet ready to return to our house and the people who by now would be up and about making more coffee and eating cereal, we sat in them and watched the surf. Short-pants carved shapes in the sand with her nimble toes.

“What are you thinking about in your mind?” This is something my father used to say to me, just to make conversation.

“Nothing,” she said.

This is not her typical response. She usually volunteers some tidbit of information: a joke she made up, a poem she’s writing, a counting game she’s playing in her head.

I didn’t press her. The question is slightly impertinent and I never really expect an answer. Only now that I hadn’t been given one, I wondered if this is possibly the beginning of the unraveling that will occur between us, part of the necessary uncoupling of mother and child. The tell-all intimacy I’ve enjoyed up until now will take a hiatus for those teenage years, still far away but snarling at me from the future, like a secret behind a closed door.

~ ~ ~

Don’t we all have the right to some private thoughts? Our secrets, benign or malevolent, are the things that keep us company in our isolated moments. The private thoughts we keep to ourselves contribute to the richness of our inner lives. I cannot know everything my daughters are thinking and feeling, as curious as I am. Just as I have a need for my own private thoughts, they must, too. This is all part of letting go the reins, the walking the talk part of meaning it when I say, and I often do, that they’re just guests in my house.

I had a number of secrets from my mother. Maybe not deliberately hidden secrets, but things that never seemed necessary to mention. Not because I didn’t love her or trust her, not that I didn’t want her to know who I was. When I was a grown woman I tried to tell her more than she wanted to know. (She was expert at changing the subject.) But during the delicate sequence of tender teen years, and up to and through college, I cherished my secrets. They separated me from her, distinguished me within my family. They were rarely of any consequence: some boy I’d dated, some recreational drug I’d tried but didn’t care to use again, a class I’d opted to take pass/fail. Driving down to this beach house (we’re at the Outer Banks) I recalled a spring break where my friends and I did a drive-away to deliver a car in Florida without any inkling of how we might get actually get back to school in Rhode Island. (We ended up, miraculously, running into some classmates we vaguely knew and they let us make the 24-hour return-trip in the back of their station wagon.) My parents never knew about this.

There are probably hundreds of little stories like this – not bad, not good, just things I knew that they didn’t. There was never any real reason to tell them.

~ ~ ~

In the taxi on the way from Paris to the airport, the driver, a chocolate skinned man with an elegant West African accent, watched in his rear view mirror as I conversed with the girls. They had asked me a question about the riots in London and I attempted to answer in a way that gave them enough information to address their question but didn’t over-explain. Later he said, “Your children listen very attentively to you. You must tell them all that you really want them to know, now, while their ears are still open. Then it will remain firmly inside them, in the coming years, when they cease to listen to you so closely.”

I’ve been thinking a lot about this little gem of advice, how it could be that there is a window of time to plant the words and ideas that might reinforce their future character and the decisions they make. They still listen to me now, but soon enough they’ll stop, just as they’ll stop talking and telling me things, too. And before you know it, they’ll grow into young women with secrets of their own, possibly with rich inner lives, and hopefully a few good stories to tell.

I hesitated to put Flat Stanley in her bag, he was supposed to accompany Buddy-roo so we could snap photos of him adventuring with us during our vacation. He’d been an end-of-school project for the English section, and the notice that came with him stated very clearly: DO NOT LOSE FLAT STANLEY, there will be a ‘part two’ to this project in the fall. Her summer assignment: to keep a journal of all that Flat Stanley does with us while on we’re on vacation.

In case you don’t know Flat Stanley, he’s the protagonist in the book that bears his name in which large bulletin board falls off his wall while he’s sleeping and flattens him. He manages to survive without any injury, except that he’s flat-as-a-pancake. But in this condition, he has all sorts of adventures: saving his mother’s prized ring after it falls down a grate, being flown like a kite, traveling via the postal service to visit a friend in California. It so happens that Flat Stanley and I go way back: Short-pants already had her own summer holiday adventures to orchestrate with him and we’ve been the recipient of a few of our friends’ Flat Stanleys who wanted to travel around the world. Paris is, of course, a place Stanley loves to visit.

I remember rushing around that morning, the mother-in-love was packing a lunch for their drive to the country house, while I put the girls’ pillows, blankets, colored pens, books and papers in little bags and backpacks, keeping with my father’s car-packing rule of nothing without a handle. I thought better of slipping Flat Stanley into one of those bags. My children are not so skilled at holding on to things. Shortpants’ eyeglasses go missing at least once a week, I’m constantly finding Buddy-roo’s most cherished possessions in places where if I didn’t know better, I’d throw them out and they’d be lost forever. (Sometimes, alas, this happens.) De-facto has many talents, but remembering where he has put something isn’t his strong suit. Not that I’m without my memory lapses, but when it comes to locating whatever-it-is-that’s-missing-around-here, I still manage to have the best radar.

I contemplated taking Flat Stanley to Pamplona with me. I’d keep him safe in my suitcase and we could start his journal mid-July when I rejoined the family at the country house. Or I could let him have a little fiesta fun, and snap a picture of him at the bullfight, or leaning over our balcony watching the encierro, or dancing with us at the Ham Bar. That’d spice up his summer adventures. But Flat Stanley is her project after all, and I knew he probably should go to the country house in her care. Since he’s used to traveling in envelopes, I found a big white one and wrote Flat Stanley on it and slid his wafer-thin laminated figure into it.

“You won’t want to lose Flat Stanley.”
I attempted my stern-but-tender voice. “Each time you’re done playing with him, you should put him back in this envelope and then back into your back-pack and then you’ll always know where to find him.”

Buddy-roo agreed readily but I knew the chances of that kind of organization were slimmer than Flat Stanley himself. I looked over at my mother-in-love and gave her a pleading you-know-what-I-mean look. She reciprocated with a sympathetic I-know-what-you-mean look and I knew Flat Stanley would be safe, at least for the duration of her visit, which unfortunately was only for a few more days.

~ ~ ~

“He’s not in the envelope?” Buddy-roo looked up at me tearful and confused, “But I always put him back!” I’d returned from Pamplona and inquired about Flat Stanley’s whereabouts. She’d cavalierly produced the envelope, and we’d left it on a shelf, agreeing to take a walk and snap some photos that afternoon. I peeked in it later, and discovered that the envelope was empty. Despite a full search of every corner of the country house, Stanley was M-I-A. Trying to get Buddy-roo to remember when she’d last seen or played with him was like an investigation at a congressional hearing. She had no clear recollection.

Days went by with fruitless searching, scrupulous cleaning of closets and shelves and yet there was no sign of our flat friend. Subsequent detective work revealed that after my mother-in-love left, Flat Stanley made a long drive to Germany to see De-facto’s brother and had been accidentally left behind. One would think, then, that he could simply be returned via his favorite mode of travel, the post. Except De-facto’s brother is moving his family, coincidentally, to California, and Flat Stanley somehow ended up in boxes that are, at this moment, in a container traversing the ocean. The chances of him being returned in time to do her summer assignment, once again: slim.

Buddy-roo’s tears had more to do with losing her paper-doll friend than getting behind on her assignment, but I wasn’t about to give her any excuse to slack off on her summer homework. I found a picture we’d snapped of Flat Stanley before his disappearance – he’s totally visible except for his left foot – and with a little Photoshop magic, his image was successfully cropped, enlarged, enhanced, sharpened, and printed, so it could be cut-out and laminated, looking just like his old self.

Flat Stanley has been cloned.

Just in time. We have but a few weeks of summer adventures left to document, and this time, Buddy-roo vows she won’t lose sight of her Flat Stanley. But just in case (and don’t tell her) I printed a few extra copies. This has me thinking about part two of the assignment, in the fall, when she’ll probably have to send him in the mail to visit a friend or relative far away. We just might find that Flat Stanley really gets around.

We arrived on Day 5. The fiesta of San Fermin is not arranged by the day of the week; people don’t say Thursday or Monday; they speak of calendar days. It starts on Day 6 and ends at midnight on Day 14. This is how the bullfight tickets are numbered, it’s how we talk about when we’ve arrived and when we’ll depart. When you have a reservation at a restaurant, you have a compromiso for lunch at 2:30 on Day 11. That is, if you even dare to make a plan because inevitably the moment you must go in order to keep an appointment, you are in the middle of some other spontaneous moment you don’t want to leave.

Our habit is to arrive the day before the fiesta begins. We meet our landlord in a favorite bar across the street from our piso and buy him a drink. While sipping this first glass of rosado, we keep an eye out for a couple of strapping Aussies to entice to haul our bags up to the sixth floor in exchange for an invitation to return one morning later in the week to watch the encierro from our balcony. We’ve made a few friends that way, and given a few first-time-at-the-fiesta-boys a chance to see the run before they try. Most important, we’ve preserved our backs for the days of bar-standing and wild-dancing ahead.

There is a bullfight the night before the fiesta starts: the novillada for young matadors just coming of age. Our gang of early-arrivers gathers and greet and go to the bullring. It’s odd to see each other in regular colored clothing; it’s not until the next day at noon, during the opening Chupinazo, when the gun goes off that an entire city dressed in white ties red pañuelos around their necks, raises a glass or a bottle and the fiesta begins. The back balcony of the opening party we usually attend looks out at a cathedral with an enormous bell that rings only a few occasions during the year, this being one of them. After the noon gun, we race back to the back balcony to hear it toll. The sun is high in the sky, the Navarran hills peak in the distance, the fiesta has started but all of it is still before me: days of dance, drink and delight.

Later that evening, if we’re privileged enough to have a ticket to the bullfight, we migrate with the masses toward the corrida. There is kind of an electric buzz as everyone enters the arena, their white clothes still clean and pressed as hugs and kisses are passed around, warm salutations for those seated in the nearby seats, fiesta friends not seen since this time last year. The habitual questions: When did you arrive? When will you leave? Some people surprised that I can stay so long, until Day 12. Others, more seasoned, dismayed that I must leave before the fiesta is finished. Each year it pains me to leave early, but Short-pants celebrates her birthday on Day 13, and I refuse to dampen her party by not appearing. But now is not the time to think of my departure. I scan the bullring, a marvel of white and red, I think about the week ahead, a stretch of six days and nights with revelry and music and laughing still in front of me, it seems like plenty of time, the end of the fiesta for me is ages away.

The days of the fiesta pass. Some rituals are strictly observed and others spontaneously abandoned. Many fiesta friends, it seems, were celebrating milestone anniversaries this year. Mother Theresa, close friend and part of the cuadrilla I run with fêted her 10th year of attending the fiesta. A good friend was honored several times because this was his 50th consecutive year at San Fermín. Another counted this as his 40th anniversary. Then there were new friends who joined the debauchery this year for the first time, falling into our circle and marking (hopefully) the first of what might turn into their long run of fiestas.

Each day of the fiesta is intense, living a week’s worth of emotions in 24 hours, the highs and lows like a giant sine wave. I had moments of pure alegria: listening to those cathedral bells ring with friends on that back balcony after the opening gun; one afternoon happening upon a few people lying in the grass with their feet raised in the air against a fence, joining them and then, surprised to hear their voices raise together in Basque folksongs; dancing wildly until 3 am, or all the night and sleeping through breakfast; doubling in hysterics at jokes I didn’t even understand – something about the Bronze Age – just because the laughter of my friends was too contagious not to join them. The lows, of course, as crushing as the highs were exhilarating: a misunderstanding with a friend, a missed lunch invitation, a wave of fatigue so fierce that leaving the fun of the fiesta to sleep for a while is the only recourse.

Before I know it, it’s Day 11. At breakfast, I look up and down the table of friends and consider that soon I will have to leave them. All that nonsense about ages to go before my departure vanishes, in what feels like the single wave of a matador’s capote, the week has flashed by and I’m already saying my goodbyes. Polite nods to neighbors at the bullring, hugs across the bar to barmen who’ve served me well all week, tears and long embraces with friends I won’t see for another year. The sound of my suitcase wheels on the stones as I roll it down the street away from the fiesta while it rages behind me – this is the saddest ballad I sing every year.

A taxi ride to the frontier and a train ride to France is just long enough for two catnaps that allow a reasonably cheerful arrival. De-facto, who’s survived two weeks as a single parent, folds me into his arms. I get the run-and-hug-and-cling welcome from my daughters, who seem notably taller than when I saw them last. I return to the quiet of the country house, lingering morning cuddles in bed with the girls, the smell of a baking birthday cake in the oven. The boom-boom-boom of the fiesta seems far away, and it is, I suppose, until next year, when those six days will once again stretch ahead of me with all their promise, and the end of the fiesta will feel, once again, ages away.

“Mama,” she whispered, “in that sugar-morning voice, “Can I watch Gulli before school?”

I’m not super keen on the cartoon channel and I dislike the noise of the television so early in the morning, but she’d asked me so nicely. The night before she’d done all her homework without complaint, and I had a lot to do to get ready to get out the door at the same time as the girls, so I acquiesced. “If you get dressed and get your cartable together, then yes.”

De-facto walked into the living room and saw her forking her scrambled eggs without removing her eyes from the screen. “What’s this?”

It’s usually De-facto who’s slightly more liberal about TV permissions, though he has taken to making Buddy-roo earn minutes in front of her coveted kids channel based on the number of words for her dictée that she can spell correctly.

“It’s a special equation,” said Buddy-roo, “Mama said I could.”

Thirty minutes later we were walking down the stairs en famille, Buddy-roo giggling with glee because both her mom and dad were walking her and her sister to school, something that usually happens only on the first day of the school year.

“It really is a special equation!” Buddy-roo repeated.

“Occasion,” Short-pants corrected her, “and it is a special occasion. It’s mama’s birthday!” She parroted something she’s heard me say more than once in the last few weeks: “it’s her very first 49th birthday.” I suppose that qualifies as a special equation.

The girls started singing happy birthday, again. We’d celebrated as a family the night before and I’d done my best “how lovely!” shtick after opening Buddy-roo’s gift, a wooden box she’d painted – part of an arts & crafts kit she’d gotten for her birthday – wrapped in an Air France baby blanket left over from one of their first trans-Atlantic voyages and now used for swaddling their dolls. I remember that, as a child, the not-quite-panicked-but-urgent press to give a gift but having no means or money to obtain one. I’d scan my bedroom for something I liked enough but wouldn’t mind not having anymore and present it with hopes that it would please. I think the best “Oh, this is lovely” performance was by my sister, who once made an enormously satisfying fuss over a piece of cotton in a small white box.

Modeling such graciousness is key, how else will they learn to accept all gifts with tact, focusing on the gesture and not just the gizmo? Not that it’s always easy (that’s another post, someday) but one must at least try.

Getting to school on time was slightly more complicated since De-facto and I were pushing bikes with us. The plan, unveiled to me in its semi-entirety only that morning, was that after dropping the kids at school I would be whisked away on an overnight to celebrate. The first stop: Gare de Lyon, the train station for the southeast gate of Paris. There we bulldogged our bikes onto the train that took us out of the city, to Fountainbleau, where we rode for a bit through the forest before stopping to tour the chateau there, a venerable museum of secret doors and French royal history. Then a picnic in the gardens there before we set out for the final destination, which turned out to be a 2-hour bike ride away, to a many-starred luxury hotel, Chateau d’Augerville.

The trip wasn’t a total surprise. De-facto had been watching my Google calendar to be sure I didn’t have anything scheduled, although we have differing accounts of when he informed me of the excursion and how much preparatory information was relayed. He’d arranged a patchwork plan that was part-babysitter-part-neighbor to cover child-care, though I felt compelled to intervene just a little to make sure all bases were covered, getting little people to and from rehearsals and recitals that made being out of town on this particular day slightly more complicated. But there have been enough butchered birthdays in the past for me to appreciate the complex level of scheming and planning he’d gone to just to assure that I felt celebrated on my birthday. That in itself is the best gift.

Though there were moments that I wondered whether the birthday trip was more for him than for me. Like when the hill I was pedaling up grew steeper and steeper and just when you thought it would crest it kept going and I wondered why I was on the 3-speed city bike with two of our three packs and he was on the mountain bike (albeit aging) with 15 gears. We’d borrowed bicyles from neighbors and friends – I don’t own one anymore because I Velib’ around Paris and the bike I gave him for his birthday last year is still a coupon in his desk drawer, despite my occasional nagging to redeem it – and he somehow ended up on the lighter more suitable-for-countryside-hills model. This was probably the lowest moment of my birthday and I let loose a few snarling expletives under my breath so that when he circled back to check on me I was able to keep the promise I’d made to myself to be appreciative at all costs.

Once we switched bikes, I sped by him while his gangly knees pumped up and down on the front-basketed Elvira-Gulch bicycle and my mood improved instantly.

Like every bike trip, there were highs and lows. Pedaling carefree along forested lanes, there’s nothing like the weee! of being on a bike in motion or happening upon the haunting ruins of an old cathedral, open to the sky. But also those typical rough moments: the one kilometer you’re obliged to travel (with a head wind) on a route nationale with 18-wheelers rushing past and nearly topping you off the shoulder, or the I-think-we-took-a-wrong-turn and that means we have to ride back up that hill we just raced down in a full weee! state of mind. Or the plan to stop at a café in the next village except the next three villages don’t have a café and your water bottle is empty and you’re parched but saving that orange in your pack for a real emergency. But if you know this about bike trips, you ride it out – pun intended – and in the end, when you pull into an elegant chateau and sit on the terrace with a cold draught beer, looking forward to a nap, a shower and a gastronomic dinner, well, then it’s all worth it. It makes for a very very special equation, no matter how you’re counting your birthdays.

After sprinting down the stairs and turning the corner, Short-pants stubbed her toe on the step into the living room and exploded into screeching tears. I was careful not to run to her too swiftly – I hate to fuel the crisis with more panic – but still, a young girl’s throbbing toe deserves a little sympathy. I kissed her dirty toenail (only a mother would do this) and offered the standard, reassuring words before turning back to finish unpacking the suitcase from our weekend trip.

“No, there’s something else.” Tears were dripping down her cheeks like open faucets. “It’s Mother’s Day. I just saw it on my calendar. And we didn’t do anything for you!”

Of course this was not news to me. I’d deleted scores of Mother’s Day promotional emails that fell into my inbox because of the various mom-blog newsletters I read. But since we don’t consume a lot of media in our home, let alone American media, the over-marketed Mother’s Day messaging somehow didn’t reach anyone else in my family. I am perfectly capable of hinting at it, “You know what I’d like to do for Mother’s Day is…” and in the past I have. But sometimes it just feels akward to be pointing it out.

I’d pretty much put it aside. Who wants to be held emotional hostage by a Hallmark holiday? Though if anybody deserves an extra day of appreciation – even if it is the commercial idea of a greedy greeting card company – it surely is your mother, often the most taken-for-granted person in the family.

My brother did call to wish me a happy Mother’s Day, inquiring if I’d been celebrated sufficiently. “Look at it this way,” he said, “you didn’t have to pretend to enjoy that burnt-toast breakfast and wax enthusiastically about the handmade cards.” He had a point.

~ ~ ~

De-facto had reason to be in the UK last week, and another project scheduled there again early this week, so instead of him doing a back-and-forth, we decided I’d bring the Short-pants and Buddy-roo across the channel and we’d play London tourists for a weekend. We have some new colleagues-turned-friends who generously offered us accommodation, tackling the hardest part of being a tourist in London: the cost of hotels. With a little bit of juggling schedules, training in and out of the city and making use of the left-luggage service at the station, we choreographed a busy weekend: the London Eye, the British Museum, Westminster Abbey, and a matinee show of Wicked, the story of the Wizard of Oz before and after Dorothy lands in Munchkinland. Both De-Facto and I had seen it on a kid-free London theatre weekend a few years ago, so we labored a bit over the decision. Both of us wanted to see something that we’d not been to before, but in the end I pressed for Wicked knowing the girls would love it. Besides, they’re both stars in the Wizard of Oz school play, so this was relevant backstory. (Shouldn’t “parenting travel” be tax-deductable?)

One of the cool parts about being a mom (or a parent, for that matter) is introducing your children to culture. It’s not the first time we’ve taken them to the theatre, they’ve seen stage performances of On the Town, Les Misérables and The Sound of Music in Paris at the Chatelet Theatre, which is pretty special. But nobody does theatre like the West End. And we had brilliant seats that were just-the-right-amount close to the stage. I spent as much time admiring my children’s open-jawed, concentrated-awe as I did watching the actors performing their story.
My favorite moment: at a climatic point in which Elphaba, who was good-hearted and thoughtful before becoming the Wicked Witch of the West, stood on stage with Glinda, who’d been vain and self-centered before growing into the more gentle-hearted Witch of the North, and they sang to each other about the important exchange their friendship had yielded. In one song, an ambiguous complexity of life expressed: how circumstances can turn someone good into someone wicked, and inspire someone wicked to do something good. Short-pants moved her hand on top of mine, and I turned to see a tear sliding slowly down her cheek.

“It’s sad,” she said, “but it’s also happy.”

Much like the sappy scene in Pretty Woman when Julia Roberts’ character goes to the opera and gets it, not only did Short-pants love the staging and the magic of the performance, she also understood the poignancy of this moment in the play. To witness how this moved her, well, I suppose that’s right up there with the coolest Mother’s Day presents you can get.

~ ~ ~

She sobbed in my arms. I’m sorry maman, we should have done something for you today. I didn’t even make you a card.”

Here’s what you’re supposed to read next: “and in that moment, I realized this was the joy of motherhood, and the only acknowledgment I needed.” But I’d be lying if I reported to you that in an instant I relinquished any residual, though mild, disappointment I’d been harboring.

I’m a little more wicked than that. It took me a few more breaths, a couple of my own tears at being forgotten (except of course I know I’m not) and a short visit to the memory bank. I’d spent a fair amount of time, on this Mother’s Day, thinking about (and missing) my own mother, whom I took entirely for granted as a child, and whom I treated with the typical disdain of a teenager. I grew to admire her, and then (especially) to appreciate her after becoming a mother myself, when I began to understand what kind of a sacrifice is required to be a mom, and how she’d done it so elegantly. I never knew if it had been hard for her or not.

Then, okay, I could get there, to see the message in this beautiful expression, this whole-bodied apology – how my little girl’s heart was breaking because she was afraid she’d broken mine. So when I said that “this hug is the best gift you could give me for Mother’s Day,” I really meant it.

We embraced for a long time. Buddy-roo even came over and put her arms around the two of us and joined the love-in.

“But wait,” Short-pants said, lifting her head, “we still have French Mother’s Day to celebrate.” Her eyes lit up with an idea. “I’ll make you breakfast in bed!”