The Boy-ification of Milo

"So yesterday Milo took my lipstick and pretended to put it on his lips."

"Uh huh."

"I didn't know what to do. I didn't want to say 'lipstick is only for girls.'"

"Really? You actually stopped and thought about that one?"

"Well, yes. What if he's a boy who wants to wear lipstick? I don't want him to think that there's something wrong with that."

"So you'd rather he find out by getting the shit beaten out of him when he wears lipstick to his first day at Kindergarten?"

"No. That's why I didn't know what to do."

"I think it's okay to tell him that lipstick is for girls."

"Okay. That's your job, then. You're responsible for his boyification."

"Okay."

Pause.

"He needs a toolbelt. And a bat. Also a better soccer ball. I have a whole list."

"Sounds good. Go Y-chromosomes."

Park Slope = New Jersey?

A few months ago I ran into a guy I used to work with, back when I worked for other people. We were both department heads at the company, although this was in 2000 when you could be 24 and a department head just because you'd seen a website once. The company met a slow, tedious and somewhat bloody demise, and everyone who worked there got flung into different industries or stuck on unemployment insurance and living in their parents' basement. The few remaining people who soldiered on in the Internet industry are still working in it today, and sometimes I encounter them on projects. This was the first time I ran into someone on the street, though.

I was unloading Milo from the car after a shopping trip to Fairway, when I saw a guy walking down the street who looked sort of familiar. I didn't have too much time to figure out who he was because I was mostly involved in trying to convince Milo not to fling himself up the stairs to our apartment building. But he'd apparently seen me too.

"Hana?" he asked.

I smiled, spent a few seconds trying to remember his name and where I knew him from, and then said hi back.

"Wow,'" he said, pointing at Milo. "I see things have changed for you." He said it in a way that made me think he'd previously viewed me as someone not only unlikely to reproduce, but maybe even someone who shouldn't reproduce. But given how I'd been back then, that was probably the vibe I'd given off. The last time I'd seen this guy Steven and I were dating, I was living in the East Village, and frequently had trouble making it into work by 10:30. Also I had hair that someone in the office (a straight man, amazingly) had once referred to as "New-York-fabulous."

And now I had on no makeup, hair pulled back in a ponytail held with a clip that only minutes before Milo had been chewing on, and ... um ... I think stretch yoga pants.

But back to this guy. He is a father. I know this because he was a father back when we worked together, which was unusual because most people in the Internet world in those days were swinging single people sleeping with their cubicle-mates. He had pictures of his kids up in his office, and he never went out with us for drinks. Also, he didn't live in Manhattan. From what I remembered, he lived in New Jersey.

"Do you live here?" I asked him while trying to wrangle a flailing Milo.

"Yes, just up the block." He motioned to an apartment building a few doors down from my own.

"Have you always lived here?" I asked.

"Yes," he said. "For about ten years now."

Which is to say, in my previous life when we'd worked together, this guy had lived in Park Slope and I had mentally filed it under "New Jersey." In other words, suburbia. Boring-land. Place where stupid people with stupid kids live with their stupid minivans.

"Well," I said. "I guess I'll see you around the neighborhood." Then I unloaded the groceries, got in the car, drove myself to Ecuador and moved in with a nomadic Grateful Dead tribute band. No I didn't. I took the groceries inside while my husband parked the car. I put my son down for a nap. Then I probably paid some bills and ordered stuff online from Target.

I've seen this guy around the neighborhood several times by now. I run into him at the park a lot. Sometimes at the playground. Sometimes hanging out at the Tea Lounge. We both have kids, you see. And so I have become my worst nightmare. So it goes.

The Worst Good Swimmer

For most of my life I have thought of myself as a very slow swimmer. I swam on teams throughout my childhood, and while I was fast enough to qualify for the teams, I never won a meet. I had a sort of love-hate relationship with the pool. I loved being in the pool, but I hated doing laps. So I did them slowly. Which didn't win me any love from my swim coaches.

When I was 14 I quit the swim team just to see if I could do it. I'd been on a swim team since I was 5; I think I thought that the world might just implode if a season passed without my participation on a team. To my surprise, the world went right on without me. The swim team went to meets and I went to Intramural Fitness, which was where everyone at school who hadn't made a team went. I don't remember a lot of fitness being accomplished there. I think mostly we sat around pretending to stretch.

Fourteen years later I joined another swim team, this one a Masters team because at that point I was too old for anything else. I didn't know anyone in New York, and had just broken up with my boyfriend. We'd joined the team together because he wanted to train for the swim around Manhattan (yes, there really is such a thing). When we broke up I got the swim team. He left and joined another team that swam fifteen blocks south. He went on to compete in the Manhattan Island Swim, which gave him a serious upper respiratory infection. And I went on to swim with the team for four seasons. Still, I was as slow as a wounded jellyfish. I missed qualifying for nationals by one-tenth of a second. This sounds impressive, but it's not. I think most people qualify for nationals.

Then last week I found my milieu when I joined the Park Slope YMCA. Milo is taking swim classes there, so I thought it would be a good opportunity for me to get back in the pool - I could go half an hour before Milo's class, swim laps, and then get back in the pool with Milo. Also, that way Milo would see me swimming, and thus might come to understand that the point of being in the pool is to swim, not to stand around and sing London Bridge (which is what he might assume from his swim class).

The first day I got in the pool I wasn't sure which lane to choose. There are three: slow, medium and fast. There were three people in the slow lane, all of whom looked like they were one step away from drowning, so I went with the medium lane. There was one guy in there doing laps. I got in and in a matter of moments I'd passed him. I switched to breast stroke, which is a lot slower than crawl. I passed him again.

The next time I got in the pool I opted for the fast lane. And again, I found myself lapping everyone else in the lane. Clearly, what had been missing from my swimming career was total incompetence. I'd been mistakenly swimming with people who could actually swim. The other people on my Masters team had been former national competitors. The people at the Park Slope YMCA took a swim class once. And with them as my competition, I am finally the fastest swimmer. I'm better than the fastest swimmer. My strokes, compared to the other swimmers, are professional. I look like I know what I'm doing. I can do flip turns. I am, quite simply, awesome.

The Golden Years

A few weeks ago I turned 35. I didn't mention it at the time because it seemed weird to be all Happy birthday to me!, plus we were in the midst of a national tragedy down in Virginia. This is, sadly, a fairly accurate indicator that it must be my birthday, when many innocent people die. Waco, Oklahoma City bombing, Columbine: my 21st birthday, my 23rd birthday, and the day after my 27th birthday.

In any event, it seems that 35 is the cusp of decrepitude, when the cards people give you go from saying things like "Live it up and party all night!" to "You're not THAT old". I've noticed that it has recently started taking me longer to get ready in the morning because of all the maintenance required -- two different lotions to go on my face to prevent wrinkles, extra conditioner for all my grey hair, iron pills, calcium supplements, extra flossing and rinsing of my gums to prevent my teeth from falling out of my head.

But because the modern urban life timeline is all screwed up, I am also in the midst of doing things previously meant for 22-year-olds, like changing diapers and trying to figure out where to take my assorted careers and wanting to buy a house and learning about the early years of marriage.

William Safire had an interesting On Language column this Sunday about the word "middle age" and how it's not really useful any longer, which is something I'd noticed myself in the past week. I was talking to my father and described someone as middle-aged, meaning 60, which of course is only middle age if you're planning on living to 120. For me middle age has always simply been short-hand for "someone around my parents' age," but the truth is that I am a lot closer to middle-age than they are. So I think Safire is right, that we need some new words to describe these ever-shifting life stages. What am I, at 35 but with a toddler and crappy furniture? What are my 60-something-but-nowhere-near-retirement parents?

I'm open to suggestions.

All Me, All The Time - Blog Edition

Rachel Kramer Bussel posted a really wonderful review of AMPU on her site. It's so gratifying when someone really truly gets the book. Makes me want to hurry up and write a hundred more.

Housekeeping at Eighteen Months

Well, we knew it would happen sooner or later, given that you come from a long line of strong-willed, sometimes stubborn, frequently order-issuing people: you have begun telling everyone how things should be, testing out just how far your powers will extend, trying to understand exactly where we will draw the line.

Take this morning, for example. I asked you what you wanted for breakfast and you said "ravioli", which sounds like "evee-ole", but I knew what you meant.

"No ravioli for breakfast," I said. "You can have eggs, waffles, or oatmeal."

"Waffles," you said. Then changed your mind. "Egg! Egg!"

"Okay," I said. "Eggs."

A few minutes later I presented you with a lovely plate of scrambled eggs and a dish of blueberries. A perfectly delicious and acceptable meal by anyone's standards.

"No," you said. "Oatmeal."

"No oatmeal," I said. "Eggs."

"Oatmeal!"

"No. Eggs."

You thought about this for a minute, before switching back to what you really wanted in the first place. "Evee-ole, evee-ole, evee-ole, evee-ole."

"Nope," I said. "You can have ravioli for lunch. This is breakfast and you're having eggs."

You looked at me evenly.

"Nope," you said.

Then you sat there for a minute and we stared at each other, a silent battle of the wills ... who would break first? This much I knew -- I was not making you ravioli for breakfast when I'd just made you eggs. Maybe laziness won. In the end you ate your eggs.

Sometimes you issue orders one after the other, and I'm happy to comply. "Milk!" you yell. Followed by "B-I-N-G-O!" How you learned this nightmarish song I don't know, but you insist that everyone sing it constantly. Midway through B-I-N-G-O you might change your mind and yell for "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" (another song guaranteed to drive the singer to attempt to knock herself unconscious with your Elmo phone just to make it stop).

Also, you cannot be fooled. The other day you demanded "(Cat in the) Hat!" so I started reciting it, because sadly I have now read it to you so many times that I could pretty much say the whole thing even if I were in a coma.

"The sun did not shine, it was too wet to play," I started.

"No," you said. "READ." Reciting would not do. You needed the book read to you and you needed it NOW.

Pretty soon I'm going to hide that book. I just can't read it any more. May this be my biggest failing as a mother, but I can't take it. Couldn't we please, for the love of God, read Ten Minutes Till Bedtime just ONCE? Or how about a lovely retelling of Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus? Or Courderoy, which we used to read so much that your father and I began making up alternate narratives, frequently about how Courderoy was a crack addict and all his friends were coming over to give him presents before he went off to rehab. We probably couldn't do that anymore. You'd probably catch on. Either that or you'd start walking around saying "rehab!".

But as your willfulness grows, so does your affection. Dad told me that yesterday you found a picture of me, looked at it and said, "Mama, kiss!" and then kissed the picture. When I came home a few hours later you gave me a real, honest to goodness hug, with both arms and everything, like you'd noticed I was gone and you were so happy I'd come back.

My favorite thing you've started doing recently is saying the A-B-C's. This morning, after you'd finally agreed to eat your eggs, you started saying "M-N-P-S-W-X-X-X." X is your absolute favorite letter. I think you like how it sounds. Then you said, "B," just to prove you knew some other letters too, I guess.

And it's not just the way the letters sound. You like to point out the letter M wherever you see it, on catalogs and bills and anything else you happen to notice. Colors are another story -- to you everything is still "yekko", indicating that either you don't care that much about color, or you've inherited your father's inability to see anything that isn't electric orange.

It's been a fun month, little chicken. Just eat your eggs, okay?

Love,
Mama