When I Became A Man I Put Away Childish Things

I craved childhood this week. Not for me, but for my husband. On Tuesday afternoon, after being blindsided by cancer only six months earlier, his mother passed away. He was with her, holding her hand and telling her she could go, that he and his two younger brothers would be OK. She needed to hear it I think, a mother first and foremost until the end.

He’d spent much of the past two weeks in her bedroom, talking softly to her, holding her hand and stroking her hair, giving her water. He helped ease her out of the world doing the same things that she’d done after bringing him into it.

After she’d gone, the men of the family pulled out boxes and boxes of old family photos, becoming engrossed in better days. The scrawny blond boys in those photos mercifully have no idea what’s coming in too few years. It was all Star Wars and Saturday morning cartoons and bike riding under the south Texas sun, then later, goofy sunglasses and pretty prom dates. I wanted it back for them.

As the week unfolded, my husband and his brothers tackled a long list of sad tasks. They went together and picked out her casket (the three Texas A&M alums swearing it was coincidence that it was a deep maroon — not that the former Hays County Aggie Moms president would have minded). They pulled their wives to them as we fell into tears. They spooned out yogurt and entertained children too young to grasp what was happening. They held their father, knowing when to talk and when not to say anything.

When their mom was taken away, these sons became even stronger men. But I just wished they could slip back into boyhood.

If You Read Only One Piece of Journalism Today…

Make it this one. Or else.

“To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die.”

Out of mental self-preservation we spend every day pretending that what we love in life is permanent. Then we’re reminded in the ugliest of ways that it is not.

Last year my mother-in-law was traveling and vivacious. Three weeks ago, she was sitting having Christmas Eve dinner, slowed by illness but still laughing at the table at old family stories and giving out hugs. Now we are talking about the time she has left in terms of a few weeks.

This past fall, after suffering fevers and tiredness for a few weeks, she was diagnosed with cancer. At the time of the diagnosis it was already at stage IV and inoperable.

Terminal illness makes you realize that hating people for say, their political views is ridiculous. There are bigger things to hate. Like cancer. And I do. I want to scream at it and kick it off the edge of a cliff like some avenging heroine in an action movie.

I want to do a lot of entirely unproductive things that my mother-in-law has not done, because she has faced this illness with a preternatural calm. She is smiling still, even in a darkening hour. Because that’s how Susie is.

As a young woman, she had the looks and sparkle of a Texas debutante but went on to live a life of substance and intellectual curiosity that proved she was more than an exceedingly pretty face. If you wanted to know the best way to spend an afternoon in London or Dublin, she was the one who would point you to the eclectic, off-the-beaten-path museum that would become your favorite memory of the trip. She’d demonstrate the most effective way to iron a shirt while also describing a Puccini opera. She could teach more about spirituality by patiently coaxing the sound from a Tibetan singing bowl than a priest could in an hour-long sermon.

I will have to tell my daughter all of this. She will not experience it herself. Grandma Susie will live in stories told around the table and in 8mm footage in which the beautiful, smiling blond with the perfect gams outshines all every time she’s in frame.

Grappling with the full weight of this in recent weeks has made me realize that the term heartbreaking is not always hyperbole. You can feel your heart actually aching at the thought of a little girl’s grandmother being stolen from her. Likewise, of a grandmother being robbed of time with her pack of four wriggling, giggling grandchildren who adore her.

Praying for a miracle now is feckless, so I pray for continued calm and painlessness for my mother-in-law. I thank God that my daughter inherited her blond hair and features so similar that it’s sometimes uncanny. And I pray, against the odds, that her first memory will be of Grandma Susie singing her “Bah, Bah Black Sheep” while she rocks her to sleep.

Kids Say the Darndest Things When Their Dads Are Being Shmücks

I celebrated Martin Luther King Day in as respectful and fitting a manner as one handling solo parenting for the day with a toddler can: I took her to IKEA! (Hey, Dr. King won a Nobel Prize and Alfred Nobel was Swedish, ergo…)

Anyhoo, I’m standing in the play area watching Sabine and a girl of about three play at the same efficiently yet whimsically designed and affordably priced Flöorgenvørgen table when the three-year-old starts elbowing in on Sabine’s territory. Her father is standing right there but apparently he’s not seeing too clearly after the meatball and lingonberry lunch he just loaded up on because this happens:

* Three-year-old starts hulking in on toy with which Sabine was playing.

* Sabine gives her a “the hell?” look.

* Three-year-old’s father says, “[Name], don’t take that; she’s smaller than you.” He pauses, and adds, “even if she did snatch it.”

* I give him a “the hell?” look. Seriously, he can’t just own that his kid was being the noodge without having to blame it unfairly on a toddler?

* Three-year-old, also looking confused, says in her beautiful little lispy choirgirl voice of unwavering honesty, “Thee didn’t thnatch it from me.”

* Father turns beet red.

* Three-year-old gilds the lily by sharing with Sabine the toy she was holding, clearly as a peace offering.

And that kids, was the Martin Luther King Day in which IKEA was the scene of someone speaking truth to power, helping me keep my vow of non-violence.

Photo: Piotr Redlinski for The New York Times

It’s Why the Terrorists Hate Us Friday!

Item: Renovated Toddler Kitchens
Price: It doesn’t matter. It’s the principle of the thing.

A co-worker recently accused me of just wanting everything to be pretty. Guilty as charged. But even I draw the line at a new trend I’m observing. (New York Times Sunday Styles section rules: It happens once, it’s an isolated incident. It happens twice, it’s a trend.) That trend is people preemptively renovating their kids’ play kitchens for aesthetic reasons.

We learn from OhDeeDoh.com that the renovator of the kitchen at right, “approached getting a play kitchen the way one might evaluate a kitchen in a prospective home – does it have good bones?” So she repainted most of its surfaces, added wallpaper, etc. Another renovator says on Flickr that she swapped in new hardware and added a backsplash, apparently forgetting that her child won’t actually be cooking food in it.

Santa brought our daughter a play kitchen this Christmas. And yes, we requested that he get one that was somewhat understated as it would be in our own dining room for a few years. But at no point did weSanta look at it as a vexing interior design matter. Someone should call HGTV and tell them they’ve got a new demographic to mine — 3-year-olds whose kitchens are simply dreadful.

Things I Love About Prince George’s County

Sure the homicide rate is through the roof, but whaddyagonnado? Yes, I love my new home. And here’s reason No. 1: In Prince George’s County they call the bus what it is: The Bus.

No fancy monikers or acronyms for this workingman’s county. You can have your Metros, your BARTs, your MARTAs. Because PG County people know what they’re riding. They’re riding the bus. It says so right on the back.

What this county lacks in keeping people unmurdered it more than makes up for in transportation naming.

Productivity Redefined

A few weeks ago, my friend K posted a harmless and chuckle-inducing Facebook status update:

“Fantastic brunch had; Christmas shopping done; presents wrapped; coffee toffee, gingerbread chocolate chunk cookies, peanut butter balls, chili, and a million iced sugar cookies made; laundry and dishes done. Sunday, I own you.”

That status update was my girl from Ipanema. Each day when she walks to the sea, she looks straight ahead not at me.

I used to have weekends like that. I’d wake up Saturday morning with a list that included going for a run, baking, working on whatever project I was puttering with at the time, squeezing in a movie, laundry, cleaning, etc. By Sunday night I’d fall into bed tired, satisfied, supremely happy. My husband’s nickname for me was Busy Bee.

This does not happen anymore. Months pass without me finding the time to tackle a single task beyond feeding the bambina, entertaining her, and getting her to sleep. Entire weekends pass and I find myself wondering how the hours evaporated. For six months a stack of photos have sat waiting to be hung on the wall. They buttress the jungle wallpaper rolls that have been waiting to take their place in the nursery for seven months. Back in the pre-baby day both of those projects would have been done in a weekend, and it likely would have been the same weekend.

Christmas decorating? Forget about it. The lights went out on a third of the tree and I never fixed them. Our tree sat like that for the entire season, a two-thirds-lighted reminder of how life’s changed.

This post isn’t heading toward some saccharine, “Oh, but my life is so much more fulfilling now,” conclusion. The fact is, for an anal retentive nest featherer like myself this devolution is painful. I felt an actual pang when I read about K’s weekend. More than my former waistline and the ability to sleep late, I miss productivity. Because I used to be Miss Productivity.