shredded wheat hair: 11 things i thought were gone for good

My hair. On a good day.

One year ago I got the biggest (and best) bombshell of my life with a surprise pregnancy.

You know that old saying about trying to make plans and God having a good long laugh at your sad sack expense? Well, that’s sorta what happened to us. Except we got the last laugh, because out of the bombshell came a sweet little guy. And our family is already more complete in ways we never knew that it wasn’t. If that makes any sense whatsoever.  

(If it doesn’t, I’m sorry. I slept for four hours last night and I’m on my eighth latte.)

With the arrival of said sweet little guy, I now find myself often walking a fog of déjà vu-ness, as I repeat certain baby experiences that I thought were behind me for good.

Here are a some examples:

1. Making a crucial game time decision in the precious moments that I have in the shower each day (or every few days, but who’s counting?) on what deserves the most attention. Should I hack through the tropical rainforest on my legs or wash the ragged wad of shredded wheat on my head?

2. Getting all worked up over the purchase of a tricked out new stroller that has enough gadgets and features to put my hybrid car to shame. These things have seriously evolved since my I hauled my now-10-year-old around as a baby in a $20 beater from Target.

3. Riding the wave of dignity, pride, and embarrassment as I fumble with public breastfeeding.

4. Suffering engorged breasts in the early morning hours. Ouch!

5. Feeling joyful about engorged breasts during the early morning hours because it means baby has slept through one or more feedings. Remember those days, parents of big kids?

6. Mopping up nuclear poop explosions that cause me and the kid to both need an emergency shampoo (see #1).

7. Singing lyrics to Hall and Oates or the Eagles at the top of my lungs while parallel parking on Valencia Street because the baby is screaming REALLY loud and will only chill the eff out to certain melodies.

8. Freaking out about getting work done while baby is asleep. And once he goes down it’s like I’m on amphetamines for two hours. I’m the fastest, most productive worker in the continental U.S. during nap time, yo.

9. Sitting up all night while a sick baby sleeps on my chest. (Sad face.)

10. Fighting the nearly overwhelming urge to tell a meddling older woman where to shove it when she scolds me for taking my baby out without a hat. Settling for the evil eye and lots of righteous indignation.

11. Feeling so mushy gushy with love that I can’t even watch this video without my mascara running down my cheeks. Because it’s funny and because it’s precious and because I love little babies. Even other people’s babies get my hormones all whackadoodle these days.

I could go on and on but the baby is asleep and I have to work. Or wash my hair.

in a weird way this sort of made my day

The other day I was head sucker, I mean counselor, on duty at Mom Camp. We were at the California Academy of Sciences, fooling around, waiting to go up on the neato living roof and blind the crap out of our eyes trying to see the Transit of Venus by pushing the tourists wearing $65 San Francisco fleeces out of our way.

It was a warm June day, by San Francisco standards. The kids were in shorts. I actually carried my hoodie in my giant mom-purse instead of burrowing inside of its warm hoodiness. The tourists didn’t need the fleeces. But I understand why they were chilly. I’m from Texas where the temperature is fifty degrees warmer so I get it.

this is how it’s done in the SF on warm days…

I know I digress, but it’s okay. The relative warmness of the day is essential to this story.

Since it was a delightfully balmy 62 degree day, I forced the kids to stop gawking at all of the crusty old taxidermified animals, and I put them outside to tear it up in the sunshine. We had some lunch. Chilled out a little with some nice kid chatter: “what would happen if a real earthquake happened while we were in the fake earthquake exhibit?” and “did you know that my friend was on the toilet during an earthquake and the toilet broke?”

The little girls soon ran off to play “Family” by climbing around on the sea lion sculptures and hollering at each other over who gets to be the big sister first.

The big kids dutifully sprayed on some sunscreen to protect their translucent Northern California flesh from the rigors of a rare sunny day. They launched into the sort of creative free fall that earnest progressive white parents lust over: a complicated plot involving submarines and being stranded on an island and earthquakes and flesh-eating crabs. Totally awesome.

I lurked near the older children, eavesdropping and playing with my phone, wishing I had remembered to bring a Chelsea Handler book or at least a douchey magazine. But I still felt at peace. The kids were happy. Venus was about to slither her way across the face of Mr. Sun. The warm air felt good on my own translucent skin. And it was actually a nice day in the summer in San Francisco for crying out loud. I smiled into the sky and closed my eyes for a minute.

And then a shadow fell across me.

I opened my eyes to see a woman in a long skirt with wild curly hair (I’ll admit, not unlike my own shredded wheat-ish mess) standing in front of me and one of the big girls in my group. A limp ergo baby carrier hung from the woman’s waist.

She stared at the big girl and back at me, a crooked, expectant smile parting her nude lips.

“I can still smell that sunscreen,” she said directly to the big girl. Then the woman turned and cocked her head at me, looking for my reaction.

Still in my stupid haze of sunny day joy, I nodded my head and smiled, thinking that the hippie mom was just making small talk.

Hippie Mom hovered over us like she was waiting for something. I kept grinning like a geek. For some reason I felt like saying, “Far out.”

“It was very intense,” she finally said. And folded her arms and scowled at the ten-year-old child to let us know she meant business about the scent of the sunscreen.

It suddenly dawned on me that the woman had gone out of her way, crossing the open yard outside the museum, to fuss at a little girl about chemical sensitivity. Seriously? Seriously.

I sat up straight and pondered how to respond to this. A few choice words crossed my mind: Like asking her if the Tibetian prayer flags outside her house in Berkeley were what led her to try and shame a little girl. Like does she go about her whole life marching up to strangers in judgment? Like who the hell does she think she is?

Then I remembered being a new mom, full of dogmatic indignation that everyone else was doing this whole parenting thing wrong and the even more overwhelming certainty that I was for sure doing this whole parenting thing wrong more than they were. But did I ever march up to a stranger and tell her that her sunscreen offended me? Did I ever hover over a little girl, waiting for an acknowledgment of my overblown sense of righteousness? I don’t think I did, but I’m sure I was a total asshole in some other way.

So I took a deep breath, put on my best fake, I mean compassionate, smile and looked up at the judgmental mommy with the hairy armpits.

“I’m sorry it bothered you,” I said and I forced some dimples. But behind my ginormous sunglasses my eyes squinted up in a glare. And fuck off, they secretly added.

“Thank you,” she gave an earnest nod. “I hope the sunscreen works for you.” She spun around and sang after her toddler, a child with a traditional male name but who wore an all-pink outfit and had longish hair. I’ll let the cliché rest there.

I turned to face the child I was with who had just been targeted by the Hippie Mom’s virtue. Was she upset?

The girl and I faced each other and both of us busted up laughing. I’m sure Hippie Mom heard it but I don’t care.

“Ready to go see the Transit of Venus?” I asked.

“Uh-huh!” she giggled. And a sweet little bond passed between us.

I nodded and shook out my own mess of windblown hair. “Far out.”

I Work, Dammit.

I absolutely detest the media created “Mommy Wars” that allegedly exist between the women who care for kids full-time or work full-time. Women, who are already stressed out and doing the best they can to make the best choices they can for their families, don’t need any more wars. It’s all a total load. As I’ve suspected ever since I entered the complicated fray we call parenthood.

Because, if you have kids, whether you work inside the home, outside the home, part-time, full-time, for pay, not for pay, you still work. And you are still awesome. Moms are awesome. Period. That’s it. If you are a mom, and you are not violent or hostile, you are awesome. And while we’re at it, dads are awesome too.

This is why I nearly had a temper tantrum in a recent PTA meeting. Because a woman said, “I can’t volunteer for that [thingamajig in question] because I work.”

What the eff is this? 1983? Are we still dwelling on whatever wave of feminism it was that gave us Mr. Mom and the novelty of the “working mother?” Because moms who care for kids all day don’t count as “working mothers?”

I totally went off on this poor woman, who just made an off the cuff comment, about how we all work. Every damn parent in the room works in one way or another. And what was even more insulting about her comment was that she somehow didn’t know that I actually have a paid job, since I work from home.

I went on to rant and rave about how I work twenty hours a week for pay with only 7 hours of childcare (including drive time) for my very busy toddler, plus I have another part-time job editing a beautiful literary magazine, plus I’m allegedly writing a novel. Something I never actually get to in all of my luxurious free time.

The poor woman got an earful. And the biggest dis was the fact she assumed I didn’t work for pay and thus didn’t “work.” If I am indeed a full-time caregiving parent, I therefore must have oodles of time on my hands to do some volunteer job that is picked over by those who toil away in offices all day. And anyone who is a full-time stay-at-home parent knows damn well that kid-care-providers have less free time on their hands than most humans on the planet. (And if you didn’t do it you would pay someone an assload to do it for you.)

People who go to offices get lunch breaks and coffee breaks. And if they’re lucky, they can sneak onto Facebook or YouTube in their cubicles. People who care for little kids all day are lucky if the kid naps.

My little freak out was finally quelled by a beautiful woman who interrupted to say, “Okay, let’s all agree that no matter where you answer your phone from during the day, everyone is busy.” Thank you!

But I still felt pissed off and insulted and resentful. And I need to come up with some pat response that can cut people off in the future when they pull that garbage with me. I don’t want to fight. I don’t want to engage in some fake Mommy War.

I don’t buy into the so-called war for one second. I know that parents’ lives are much too complicated to be sorted into tidy little home/work teams where we all take sides and duke it out on some third rate talk show. But I’m still not going to let someone pull rank with the “I work,” excuse.

Because I work too, dammit. We all do.

“If You Love Hats So Much Why Don’t You Marry One?”

Any parent with more than one kid can attest to a universal truth regarding second babies: You are much more chilled.

It’s true. On everything from public meltdowns to eating crumbs off the floor, I’m just more relaxed with my second daughter. When it comes to what other people have to say about how I raise my children, I roll with it even more. No more worries about what friends/in-laws/books/experts might say about our family’s choices.

I was not so calm the first time around. A casual comment from an older woman at the Whole Foods sent me into a spasm of self-doubt that lasted for weeks. Of course, hindsight is 20/20, but I love to imagine that I had summoned the gall to give a snappy retort.

Things I wish I had said to the busybody in Whole Foods who said, “I hope you have a hat for that baby!”

Ignorant. “Hat? What’s that for?”

Ageist. “Hats are for old people. Get with the internet age, crusty!”

Protective lioness. “Back off! And don’t let me catch you staring at my baby with your creepy eyes again, you child-stealing weirdo!”

Buck passing. “If you feel so strongly about it, maybe you should raise her.”

Immigrant. “In my country, we teach children that people who wear hats cannot be trusted.”

Sarcastic. “Thank God! If not for your wise counsel I would have surely let my offspring perish due to sun/wind/cold exposure! I had no idea that I could prevent such a catastrophe! Thank you, thank you, thank you for saving me with your miraculous advice!”

Developmental psychologist. “The application of a constraining containment on the cranium limits bloodflow to the cerebral cortex.”

Adolescent. “Hats have cooties.”

Guilt trip. “When you were a young mother and you doubted every choice you made, did anyone ever publicly challenge your parenting, thereby shaming you into weeks of self-flagellation? Well, that’s what you just did to me.”

What I really said: “Huh? Er…oh…um…okay…”

(Feel free to post a comment with your own snappy comeback!)