This is how I start my day.

I wake up and consider a concept for a novel. I have no plan to write it, but I am thinking about it. I listen as my husband struggles to get the kids out of bed. 

Notice me not rushing to help him.

I finally get up, forced by hunger. I am in the kitchen and my daughter, who is almost nine, confronts me. “Mom, do you know what I’m tired of? I’m tired of 1. Magic diamonds cereal 2. Apples for snack 3. Cheese toast for afternoons.”  She counts off each one with a finger slapped into her palm.

I look at her, hair unbrushed, jeans too baggy, and little freckles on her nose. I say, with a hint of mockery, “I am not surprised you are tired of those foods. They are all you eat.”

Undaunted, she counts down her list again slapping those fingers into her palm for each item, and stands there, chin up, hands on hips as if it were my fault she won’t eat anything. We agree she might be willing to try a new snack bar.

“The one with chocolate chips,” she says. Then she puts her school snack—an apple—in her sweatshirt pocket and leaps into an Arabesque in the kitchen.  “Laaa!” she sings off key and heads off to start her day.

Then my fuzzy headed son comes in. He crashes into me, knocking me back a step, buries his face into my stomach, and clutches my sweater sleeves.

“Mmm” he says. “Hi Mama.”  It is pretty hard to get mad at anyone who says hi like that. 

“Hi bunny,” I say, “Are you dressed?” He is clearly not dressed, still wearing his pajamas, holding his blanket (a bright orange square of fleece) and two or three sleeping buddies.

“I want YOU to get me dressed,” he says, poking me in the belly.  I point out that I have not eaten. He says he doesn’t care. I say that I need to eat first before I do anything, or else I might be tempted to -- “Eat my children!”

I tickle him and nuzzle his head. He has more hair than God, and it usually sticks straight out. He squeals and runs off.

After I eat, I stand at the door and watch my children scamper away. My long-legged daughter lopes next to her father, same lanky body type.  My son skips to catch up with them, I notice his arms are sticking out of his sleeves, and his pants are too short. Well, that’s what happens when you marry a tall skinny guy, I guess.

I have good kids, I think appreciatively.

Then I start the rest of my day.

By Lianna McSwain

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A friend called me a “three-quarter girl.” 

“What?!?” I said. “What does that even mean?”

“It means,” she said, drinking a sip of water, “that you get almost all the way done with your writing assignments and then walk away from them.” She took a breath as if it had taken her some courage to say this, and then her eyes flashed and she smiled at me as if daring me to say otherwise.  “I see it. I got your number.”

I thought for a minute.  Any casual observer would not call me a three-quarter girl. I have a string of accomplishments, and I am often rigidly compunctual in order NOT to leave things undone.  But I know the truth. I know how panic sets in when I pass the halfway mark. I know how I have to talk myself through the finish line as if I were in a control tower guiding an airplane flown by a sixteen-year old pilot to a forced landing on a foreign runway in the dark.

Where does this anxiety come from? 

I have had it all my life.

In college I wrote a poem called “The Mediocre Midwife,” in which I bemoan my lack of diligence and attention to my own creative process.  The work I bring to life is only half done, and I, the midwife, am to blame for not persisting through the whole birthing process.  

There is a stanza in which I compare myself to an alchemist:

 

                        I am a half-ass alchemist,

                        an alky,

                        who falls back,

                        bloated.

                        Ready to retire

                        as the first glimmer of gold

                        emerges

                        from the lumps of clay and fire.

 Looking back, I think the poem is not bad -- but I never finished it.

 “You have to finish things," my friend went on. "Just to learn how to do them.”

 I am so scared as she is talking that I can barely breathe.

I have noticed that when something I write starts to please me, I begin to think that every line has to be better than the one before it. 

I grind to a halt.

I tell my friend that.

She listens. “It’s going to suck?” she said.

“What is?” 

“Everything! The writing. The ending. The fact that nothing is as good as you think it's going to be. And then one day -- something is. And the next day -- it isn’t again.”

She went on.

“But you have to keep going through it. It’s a numbers game. You have to write your one-hundred crappy essays to learn how to write a single good one.”

I think for a minute about the piano. I am learning as an adult, at almost 40, to play. I am teaching myself. 

I suck.

I am no musical genius. But I love it, and I will sit down at the piano for HOURS just to learn how to move my fingers that way. 

I will never be famous, and my friends listen to me for about five minutes before they start talking amongst themselves.

So why do I practice over and over?  Why am I drawn daily to the piano, working on sight-reading, beat, rhythm, chords? 

Because I will never be brilliant at it so it does not scare me.

I wonder how good my writing would be if I devoted even half the time to it that I spend on the piano.

Do I really think I am a brilliant writer?  Some days, I think I could be. Except for the small matter that I am not. 

It is that interplay between the possible and the real that catches me every time. It’s conceivable a piece might be remarkable. Oh, please. Please don’t let it not be. I couldn’t bear the disappointment.

Maybe I better walk away before my heart breaks from yearning.

By Lianna McSwain

Labels: Lianna McSwain, piano

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I was cleaning out the hall closet the other day, and I came across a red winter jacket I bought for my daughter when she was two. I bought it at an outlet store for $18, so I didn’t mind that it was three sizes too large.

When she first put it on, the jacket came down to her ankles, and the sleeves covered her hands. The hood came up over her forehead, and almost covered her eyes. She beamed at me in her too-large jacket and she looked so sweet and happy that I couldn’t bear to put it away until next year.

It was so big, it looked like a stadium coat—the kind that people wear to football games at night, and winter outdoor concerts. That image did not fit my wide-eyed girl, so I told her it looked like a fire chief jacket and that became its name.

She wore that jacket in every kind of weather, but the most fun she had with it was jumping in puddles during a rainstorm. The winter that she was three, I bought her red ladybug boots to match the jacket and she splashed in the gutter almost every day.

If I think back very hard, I can remember kicking my feet through the gutters as a kid and making huge sprays of water almost like a work of art—the water arching through the air in sheets and globes. I remember how badly I wanted to catch a globe and keep it, but I never could.

My daughter however, preferred stomping. She started with a small puddle, not too deep, and she would step on it hard—squashing it—giggling to see the water squirt out the sides of her feet. She would move cautiously and analytically to find the next biggest puddle and she would do it again. Pretty soon, she felt confident enough to tackle the big ones, the ones that needed two feet and a running jump.

One day I actually had my camera with me. It took some practice to figure out how to time the shot, and I finally realized that I had to push the button before she left the ground or else I would miss the photo entirely. In the end, I got several photos of my daughter completely airborne in her red jacket, staring down gleefully at the water below her, her boots lined up for a perfect landing. The look of anticipation on her face is priceless.

I stood there in the hallway, staring at the now too-small red winter jacket, remembering the joy it had brought, and I could not bear to give it away.

Not yet.

By Lianna McSwain

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I have this neighbor friend who I meet on the sidewalk for a quick chat every couple of days or so.

She is petite with a theatrical flair, and a wicked sense of humor. She has two kids younger than mine, but just as demanding—smart, high energy, creative. I love hearing her stories because it makes me happy that my kids have outgrown that phase. She loves hearing mine, because it reassures her to know there is an end—there is life on the other side.

Today we were talking about how our parents were clueless. Most of my generation feels this way. We are, all of us, aggrieved that our parents were not better at it.

“That’s why there are so many parenting books out now,” said Hillary in her striped poncho.

“Because our parents punted?” I asked.

“Well, because we knew that they weren’t doing it right, but we have no idea how to do it differently,” Hillary replied.

I thought it was because our generation and our culture were obsessed with doing it all correctly. Also, because we are reacting to our parent’s obsession with sucking it up.

I mentioned this to Hillary, and she had a brain storm. Standing in the gutter, pulled sideways by her dog on her leash, she started waving her arms.

“Oh, Oh! I had the best moment of parent revenge ever! I thought the day would never come!”

“Do you mean the kind where your parents look at you with an evil smirk when your toddler covers the dishes in Vaseline, and they say; ‘Now you know what we went through?’” I said.

“No, that sucks,” she said brushing her long bangs out of her eyes and giggling. “When I was thirteen, and I still remember this! I dropped my double scoop ice cream cone on the ground. AND MY PARENTS WOULDN’T LET ME EAT IT.”

“I know! That happened to me, too! They wouldn’t buy you another one either would they?” I asked gleefully horrified.

“NO!” she howled. “They told me that I had to DEAL with it. It would build character! I still remember!” She was amused and indignant and still shaking her finger even as her dog was pulling her backwards.

“I know! We had to suck it up! We didn’t get any sympathy!” The sun was setting, and the day was a little chilly, but we were having too much fun, standing in the gutter reviling our parents, to go inside.

“Well, Lucy, my three-year old, had an ice cream fall to the ground the other day,” said Hillary, “and do you know what I did?”

“What?”

“I let her eat it.”

We stood there for a moment, allowing it -- that act -- to sink in, and thinking about how we would have felt if our parents had been so kind. I wasn’t sure I could have risen above the scripted response, “You can’t eat that! It’s dirty!” and found a gentler solution.

I was inspired.

I was also thinking logistically how to pick up ice cream while holding your own cone, and the baby and the baby’s cone, while the toddler is screaming, and has thrown herself on the floor, in the pathway of pedestrians while you have only one napkin and maybe a plastic spoon—all this without getting germs.

Hillary said, “That was a great moment. I can now let go of my resentment and move on.” She mimed throwing something away and made a whooshing noise.

“Gone.”

“So doing that for Lucy was like a Band-Aid. Right? You were healing yourself?” We thought about that for a moment.

“Are you healed?” I asked in my best Southern Baptist voice. I know it because my grandmother was a Southern Baptist.

“I am healed,” she said laughing.

“Did you see God?” I whispered, leaning in conspiratorially.

She beamed at me, “I did. And you know what? She was eating ice cream.”

By Liana McSwain

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It all started with some chocolate cake. Crumbs, actually.

My eight-year-old daughter wanted to lick them off the plate, and said, “You’re just like that mom in that book: You’re Driving Me Crazy: Children’s Comments About Their Parents, who said, ‘my mom never lets me lick my plate, even if it’s chocolate sauce!’”

I started to think about chocolate sauce on a plate, and how much I used to love the thick, gooey texture of it. I decided that it would be OK for the kids to use their fingers to scoop up the chocolate frosting and crumbs with their spatula-like digits and lick them clean, but not from the plate. I chose this despite the alarm bells ringing in my head that my mother would definitely NOT approve. I watched them gleefully scraping, and licking and I recalled that this was one of life’s great pleasures.

I also remembered that my mother would be coming to visit soon. So I said to my daughter, “One day, and I will tell you when, you will be too old to lick the chocolate crumbs from your fingers.”

She groaned in complaint. I said, “One day. Not today.” Then I pulled the authority card. “You know, I am the mom.”

She said, “So?!?” She has reached the stage where she thinks a lot about how things get decided. She is not so keen on the authority model of decision making, but this doesn’t bother me, as I was the same way.

I went on. “And since I am the mom, I can decide when you are too old to lick your fingers.”

She groaned again, and then I said, smirking, “You know, I could make that day tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?!” she yelped.

“Tomorrow?!” chimed in her little brother, our five-year-old negotiator. “No you can’t,” he said sticking his chin out.

Well boundary testing is normal, and healthy, and necessary, I think, for people to grow up and respect rules with an understanding of why they are following them. This conversation was in good fun, until I bragged about my authority. Even though I was joking, and smiling, they still understood that I was throwing my weight around unnecessarily. They understood that I had crossed a line.

My son is at the age and of the temperament that he will go the distance for something he believes in, and chocolate frosting was a worthy cause. I cocked my head and looked at him. He looked back. We were gauging each other’s intent.

Was this going to be a fight?

I thought about what I was trying to do here. I was attempting to help them understand that rules are not always black and white: that some privileges have expiration dates. I was also trying to establish that as the mom, I would be the best judge of when something was no longer appropriate -- but I made a mistake in implying that I could do it because I had authority, as opposed to good judgment.

My son took my attitude of, “I can make you” and threw it right back at me. He does this with almost every stance I take with him.

We call him the boomerang.

I knew I didn’t want to press the authoritarian, and I did not want to back down. So I employed that famously useful parenting tool.

I changed the subject.

As I was staring at him, and he at me, I said, holding back a laugh, “You know, I can sit on you.”

He cracked up and said, “I can sit on you, too.”

“No, you can’t.”

“Yes, I can.”

Then I thought -- technically he was capable of sitting on me. So I said, “You’re right. You’re actually right. You could sit on me.”

He beamed, and that was that. No more fighting because I had given him something to be right about.

Oh, this parenting thing, it is a daredevil’s sport.

By Lianna McSwain

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My husband seems to have a direct line for understanding our three-year old son that annoys me.

I say this because I am a much better parent than he is; at least I put more effort into it than he does.

I certainly read more about it and lose more sleep over it than he seems to. Nothing seems to interfere with his sleep, and this is another thing that annoys me. Ever since the kids were born, I have not been able to sleep through the night. He snores, steals the covers and wiggles the mattress, while I wake up and poke him as he rolls over and stops whatever offended me.

This happens a dozen times a night and in the morning when I am bleary-eyed, I ask him how he slept and he says, “Great!” with that chipper, cutesy smile that used to make me woozy when we were dating, and that annoys me now.

Recently, my three-year old was getting ready to take swim classes without mom or dad in the pool with him, and he was a little anxious. I bought him new orange goggles and a hooded towel with shark fins and teeth, and explained that his class would be called The Jellyfish.

My six-year old girl was enthralled with the name and she started to dance around the room pretending to float, so my son joined in chanting and marching, and we had a little sea creature parade.

Then my son stopped and stared at me electrified with some marvelous idea. He poked out his index finger and said wide-eyed and lisping, “Do I get to sting people?”

He looked very fragile, as if I might say no. I stared back at his great black, vulnerable, tender, impish boy eyes and said, “Well of course you do, you’re a jellyfish!”

So then he and my daughter stuck out their stingers and bzzz, bzzz, buzzed each other and anything that came near them for the next week until class started.

The class went fine, much to my surprise, since he usually takes a while to adapt, but the teacher was giggly and dimply, and the other two kids were perky and confident in the water so he jumped right in.

After class they all went into the hot tub. My son was alert and pleased, and he chatted happily to the teacher whose name was Erin, and whom he called, “Errand.”

After class he skipped with me to the locker room where I stripped him down and threw him in the shower. As soon as he stepped into the water he started to howl and wail. He threw himself on the floor crying and screaming, and my heart stopped.

Was the water too hot? Did he step on glass on the floor? Had he bitten his tongue? I could not calm him down, and I went through every possible explanation in my head. Was it epilepsy? A spider bite? Maybe I had done something in the wrong order?

Finally, I calmed him down and he sobbed, grief stricken: “I forgot to sting people!! I fo-or-r-or-go-o-o-t!!” Choking back my laughter and hugely relieved, I cleaned him up and we walked back out and buzzed his teacher who said my son was “adorable!” and he said, “You are dorable, too.”

When I told my husband this story, and I got to the part about Collin screaming on the floor of the shower room, he said, “Oh, he forgot to sting people. Right? He wasn’t sick. He was angry.”

And I just stopped and stared at him shocked.

I was stuck between being amazed that he understood so quickly, and being annoyed that he had stolen my punch line. Finally, I decided that I am so frequently annoyed at my husband, that JUST THIS ONCE, I could overlook it and be amazed. So I looked at him appreciatively, and said, “Wow. You really understand little boys, huh?”

That was a real adult moment for me.

By Lianna McSwain

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