In the Clear

“So…at what point in your pregnancies did you stop worrying about, you know…”
“Miscarriage?”
“Yeah. When did you feel like you were in the clear?”

I have a close friend whose pregnancy is brand spanking new, and of course, her mind is filled with the totally irrational but ultra-normal fears of miscarriage, complications, etc. Listening to her on the phone yesterday, my mind wandered back to the 7th week of my first pregnancy, when I had the Birth Center administrator on the phone and I was pleading with her to give me an ultrasound just to “make sure everything is okay.” I began to cry when it became apparent that she wasn’t going to budge. (I have since discovered that telling your midwife or OB that you have been spotting and/or cramping is almost a sure-fire way to get an extra ultrasound, but you didn’t hear it from me.)

The administrator thought she was calming my fears when she said that I would be reassured when I could hear the baby’s heartbeat. True, I did feel relieved to hear the sound of tiny galloping horses out of the Doppler at 10 weeks. And seeing the baby move in utero during the 20 week ultrasound helped me relax as well. Of course, when Grace was born and given a clean bill of health, I felt even better.

But what I didn’t have the heart to tell my friend on the phone yesterday was that you never stop having irrational (but totally normal) fears for your children. Instead of miscarriage, I now worry that they will fall out of the window if they run into the screen. Or that they will spontaneously stop breathing in their sleep. I worry that something will happen to my husband, or to me. I worry about being evacuated from our home during a natural (or unnatural) disaster and not having enough food for them. What if I don’t have access to food and water and can’t produce milk for Natalie? When they are 13, I will worry that some jerk will be careless with their heart. It won’t stop there. My mom still worries when I travel or that I’m not getting enough sleep. Heartache and hardship will haunt our children at various stages of their lives, and there’s not a damn thing we can do about it but to give them a strong sense of self and to pray for them.

So that’s what I told my friend—that I prayed for a sense of peace to wash over her in these first worrisome days of parenthood.

"Yours, Mine, and Ours"

This is the title of a bulletin board group on Babycenter.com. I frequent a few of the other boards, like "Attachment Parenting," "Progressive Christian Families," and "Extended Breastfeeing," and I always saw the title to "Yours, Mine, and Ours" and assumed it was a board about teaching your child to share. It turns out it is a board for "blended" families, but my assumption reveals the struggles of our household recently.

Grace has begun taking toys away from Natalie, who has begun grabbing every toy within 2 feet of her as though her life depended on it, and so it is a bad combination. When friends come over, Grace doesn't want them to play with "her" toys. "Mine" is a word heard often in our home. I thought it would be different with my kids. I thought my loving, warm, sharing approach to parenting would give them a sense of security and would prevent them from looking for identity in material things. Pipe dream, my friends.

My friend Shawna and I have discussed trying to raise our kids where they don't feel that anything is actually theirs--that the things in our home are communal and that we are stewards of them. Then my mom reminded me that developmentally, people need to understand possession before they can understand sharing. So we are doing the "your turn for one minute, then it's Natalie's turn" thing with some modest success.

Then all of the sudden, the other night I was reminded that sharing is about so much more than your turn and my turn. A shared experience can deepen the happy effect of that experience simply because you were not the only witness.

We were walking out of Target at 7:00 pm (yes, I know, I am one of those bad moms who brings her kids at melt-down hour to the store, filling them full of goldfish to keep them from screaming while I dash madly down the isles looking for toilet bowl cleaner). As we walked out of the store, a storm was brewing in the air. The clouds were streaked with pink and magenta bands as the sun was setting, but it was breezy and humid at the same time. I saw the setting sun lighting up Saddleback Mountain, and pointed to it, saying, "Look, Grace! Our mountain is lit up!" She looked up and her eyes widened as she smiled and gasped. There was a huge rainbow in the sky--bigger and brighter and longer than any I had every seen. It sprang up out of the mountain, hooked over the parking lot, and descended to the ground somewhere south of us. "Wain-bow!" Grace shouted at the 14 year-old hipster kid walking 10 feet in front of her mother as they left the store. The eye-liner and low-waisted jeans-clad 14 year old cracked her sullen expression long enough to make a face of wonder eerily like my own 2 year old's. She turned to her mother and said, "Look, Mom," and pointed to the sky. A Target employee points south and says "Lightening!" Sure enough, we hear the thunder a few seconds later and then see more flashing--right underneath the rainbow.

God shares beauty with me; I share it with Grace, Grace shares with the too-cool 14 year-old, who shares something amazing with her own mom who she probably hasn't shared anything with in 12 months. Somewhat of an eclectic spiritual community began to form in the Target parking lot that evening, everyone ooh-ing and aah-ing and sharing their wonder with others walking up to the store on their cell phones who had to say "Hang on...you wouldn't believe this rainbow!" to the person on the other end of the line.

It began to rain and everyone dashed to their cars, the moment gone. As I pulled into the driveway of our home minutes later, Scott ran out to meet us. We were 30 minutes late getting home and he had begun to worry, especially since we had company coming and it was bed time and it was weird that I wasn't already home. Perhaps the storm was getting to him, too. We tried to tell him about the rainbow. Grace appropriately parroted my conclusion, saying, "God gave us a wain-bow, Daddy!" Scott said, “Really? That’s great. Help me unload the car, Grace.” Scott was impressed, but distracted with the reality of our friends coming over and bedtime looming. Plus there was that pouring rain and lightening making us all on edge. I felt a sense of sadness that he hadn’t seen it and couldn’t share it with us.

It wasn't until an hour later, our friends Kathy and Seth happily ensconced in our kitchen window seat sipping Chardonnay, Scott chopping cauliflower, and me marinating the salmon that I mentioned the rainbow again, excitedly telling them how beautiful it was. Kathy exclaimed, "You saw it too? You saw our rainbow? Seth and I couldn't believe how beautiful it was, with the lightening..." I turned back to the salmon as she told her own description of seeing the vision from highway 5 and watching other drivers crane their necks to see it too. It seems this gift from God was "yours, mine, and ours," after all.

Things We Believe (Parenting Edition)

Natalie, you're new here, so I thought it might help curb your stress level to know a few things about how we Robies operate. We have come to some of these conclusions on instinct, some on anecdotal observation of friends, and some on scientific research. Here is the start of an occasional list of Things We Believe in the Roby Family:

We believe babies seek communion with mom, dad, and other kids.

We believe babies develop better communication skills if we respond to their vocal and non-vocal efforts to "talk" to us.

We believe there is plenty of time for babies to develop independence; that although there are sacrifices that need to be made, it is more important to nurture babies and children through needy times than to force independence on them (as though you could force it anyway).

We hope to God that slinging the second baby will help make up for the reality that life is often more catered to the first child right now.

We believe that a little but of residual caffeine in breast milk is no biggie, but that soda and undiluted juice represent Satan.

We are (obviously) okay with a few hypocritical stances and double standards, but we aim to reduce these as much as possible.

We believe that almost without exception, the moms and dads we see in public love their children very much, even though they might be making parenting decisions that we might view as "unhealthy" or "god-awful crazy."

We believe in teaching by example, that only on rare occasions does it actually feel okay to deny our babies something that we are eating ourselves. The reality is, if it isn't good for a 2 year old, it might not be good for a 28 year old either. Of course, this doesn't apply to lattes or beer.

We believe that Other Loving Adults (OLA's) are essential to raising a well-adjusted child, and we seek time with OLA's constantly.

We believe in wearing your baby, comforting children to sleep, exclusively breastfeeding for 6 months, child-led weaning, setting few but firm boundaries with our kids, clearly communicating age-appropriate consequences and enforcing them, whole grain instead of white, learning real names for private body parts like vagina and penis, modeling a prayer life for our children, "please" and "thank you" are attitudes, not words; that marriage requires time away from children for more than just physical intimacy, that children can be allowed to cry in an OLA's arms when parents need that time away, that first and second year birthday parties should not involve sponge bob or Dora the explorer but that an occasional pinata is okay, that our kids will not become walking advertisements by wearing clothes with the company name in big letters across the front, that TV is bad for your health, that it is our responsibility to prevent ourselves and our children from developing adult onset diabetes, and that children are inherently spiritual, artistic beings who require nourishment but not dictatorship in these areas.

We believe in a parent staying home with children (and by staying home, I mean, taking them to the mall, the carousel, the zoo, the park, down the street to the neighbor's house, on a snail hunt, to the bagel shop, to grandma's, to the pool, to the library, to La Leche League meetings, to Bible studies, to daddy's work for lunch, to the gym day care, etc.).

We believe it is more powerful to ask, "How did you do that?" in an excited tone than to exclaim, "That is the best drawing I've ever seen!"

We believe boys and girls are inherently different but that our society exaggerates, romanticizes, and sexualizes these differences as much as possible. Therefore, we believe in neutralizing society's effect of gender polarization but strengthening our daughters' natural leanings towards gender identity.

We believe we were blessed with intelligent, responsive, affectionate, and disciplined children and we acknowledge our parenting strategies would not work for every child out there.

We believe that blogging during nap time is unbelievably healthy for the intellectual development of whichever parent stays home, even though the prospect of 2 hours' sleep is awfully tempting.

"I climbed a mountain and I turned around."

Our beloved horses playground is gone.

Early this morning, I asked Grace if she wanted to go to the store, and she answered, "Coffee shop, Bagels and Brew, horses, horses playground. Sounds good." She is, of course, referring to our daily routine of walking 30 minutes to the horse stables, then another 5 to Bagels and Brew Coffee shop, and finally back to the horses playground, a 30 year old wooden tree house-like fort nestled in the trees below the stables.

When I first saw this playground, I groaned. Like all Stay-at-home-moms, my life sometimes seems to revolve around cool toddler places that are within walking distance from our house. Not only was this park at least 30 minutes away, but it was old, monochromatic, splintery, and dirty. I guessed it was as old as I was and later found out it was even older. But at Serrano Creek Park ("horses playground"), there is more than meets the eye.

True, it is a long walk there. But that walk became my daily exercise. Yes, it lacked the colorful, modern look of newer playgrounds and was built on dirt, not sand or woodchips. But it became our own little fort in the trees, with plenty of shade and a diverse system of challenges for a 2 year old. Most parks are a boring repetition of "go up the stairs and down the slide, go up the stairs and down the slide." No wonder moms are so bored they spill their guts to stangers. But this play structure required strategy and physical courage, with tall ladders, a very shaky chain link bridge, and a long narrow slide on which Grace has almost fallen off several times. At the top of the structure was a little room from which you can see the stables. Every time Grace climbs up there, she hollers, "Hi horses!!" at the top of her lungs. When they make that sound that horses do--sort of a whinny sound, Grace adds, "Bless you, horses!" And if we are lucky, someone decides to walk their horse through this forest area while we are at the playground, which to Grace is like having a front row seat at the Rose Parade. In short, the whole place was like a hidden treasure.

"Where horses playground are?" asks Grace as we come out of the stables. I look up and am shocked to see the whole playground demolished. I glance at Grace to see if she is okay--to see if she understands what has happened, and it is lucky that they are still in the midst of tearing part of it down since that involves an excavator and Grace is obsessed with diggers. "Digger, Mommy!" she yells, pointing to the bulldozer and excavator. I roll my off-road stroller right over the yellow caution tape to where a worker is standing. "What's going on here? Are they," I stammered, "going to replace it?" I finish lamely. I don't get a straight answer until we come back from the coffee shop and find a Lake Forest City employee, who tells us that they will be building a brand new, state of the art structure over 100 yards away in the Eucalyptus trees. "Building will begin a year from now," he says, as though that solves my problem of having a 2 year old that needs to run around everyday.

We go over to the swing set, which will remain for a few more months, and Grace rides in it, melancholy and reflective. She looks up at me and says, "I'm sad."
"Why, honey?"
"Horses playground gone. Build new one in the trees." She glances back at the ruins of her fort--the place she learned to climb a ladder, the first place that became part of our life since moving here 4 months ago, and reiterates, "Horses playground gone. I'm sad."

While the tragedies of Katrina this week certainly put something like this event in perspective, let’s not diminish these milestones in our own lives. Saying goodbye to this place is like folding up little 0-3 month baby clothes and putting them in the attic once your 2nd daughter is 4 months old and your husband doesn’t want more than two kids. It's like throwing away your old, worn out wallet that you bought the summer after high school from a street vendor in Florence and used all the way through college and your 20-something single years after your new mother-in-law gives you a new one for Christmas. It's like changing your last name when you get married. These places and objects come to represent a time in your life that you will never get back. Regardless of the fact that you might be moving onto a bright new stage, the passing of time and the objects of that time of your life can be bittersweet.

When I was a little girl, I once cried at the end of the school year when I had to throw out my worn-out uniform oxford shoes. I cried because those shoes were like companions to me all year. They endured everything I did--the recess time, the tests, the friendship fights, the waiting on the corner for my mom to pick me up, the walking down the corridor to the lunch room, the assemblies--all of it. They were like witnesses to my life and only those shoes knew as much about what I had gone through all year as I did. The scuffed leather and worn-through soles were testament to their loyalty.

The horses playground is the only thing besides me and newborn Natalie who witnessed Grace coming face to face with the challenge of crossing the chain link bridge and backing down, unwilling to risk it. The horses playground saw Grace's face when she finally decided to cross that bridge, get up on the other side, and yell, "I did it, Mommy!" The horses playground saw Grace learn that just because Natalie was nursing doesn't mean Grace gets to nurse. (How the hell do you nurse two kids at once in a splintery, dusty playground?) I've grown at this park, too. It was here that I learned to relax when things took too long, that an unscheduled day can be full of adventure, that this time with my children, although at times monotonous, tedious, and frustrating, was a gift from God in that I was the one coaching Grace through the chain link bridge challenge; I was the one bursting into laughter when Grace said bless you to the horses; I was the one giving her a high five when she came down the slide all in one piece.

This all makes me think of the time I drove in my old ’88 Toyota Landcruiser from my parents’ house in San Francisco to my new place in Monterey after college. As I left 101 and drove down the foggy stretch of highway 1 late at night, the radio played the Stevie Nicks version of “Landslide.” I cried that night, too—for all the change ahead of me, for the miracle that I got a job at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, for the relief that college was finally over, for the time I would never get back again now that I’d graduated.

Okay, so the horses playground coming down isn’t the end of the world. After all, dry rot can only hold up for so long. But I include my favorite lines from “Landslide” for you anyway.

Oh, mirror in the sky, what is love?
Can the child within my heart rise above?
Can I sail through the changing ocean tides?
Can I handle the seasons of my life?

Well, I’ve been afraid of changing cause i’ve
Built my life around you
But time makes you bolder
Even children get older
And I’m getting older, too.
I'm getting older, too.