Time To Hide the Books

I checked a book out from the library this week: "The Explosive Child: A New Approach for Understanding and Parenting Easily Frustrated, 'Chronically Inflexible' Children." While Desmond isn't chronically inflexible, he's absolutely easily frustrated. I picked the book from the shelf on a day when his teacher stopped me in the school hallway. "Oh, good, I was looking for you," she said. 

No need to fill in the details of the conversation. Suffice to say, we talk often.

So, the book.

I started somewhere in the middle, after flipping it open in the library. Once we got home, I got distracted by dinner and bath times and the nightly ritual and set it on the desk by my bed. Upside down. 

The kids had off from school today, so after a trip to the coffee shop to eat treats and play chess, I retreated to my bedroom for some quiet computer time. Desmond wandered in after a spell, stood next to my bed and picked up the book. He gave me a wry smile and said, "I thought you got this about me." 

I smiled. 

"What did you think about the waffle episode?" he asked, laughing.

I didn't know what he was talking about. Turns out, it's the title of the first chapter and describes the story of an 11-year-old girl who flips out when her simple plan to eat three waffles one day and save three for the next is upended by her little brother. 

"I started in the middle," I told him. "I didn't read that part yet."

So, Desmond started to read aloud, from the beginning. He read of oppositional behavior, vapor lock, meltdowns and I cannot tell you how surreal it was to hear him put voice to scenarios that play out weekly in this house. 

"Of course, life isn't always so simple as 'I'm mad' anyway," he read. "If a child says, 'I'm mad,' the world- his parents, teachers, siblings, peers, soccer coaches - is bound to respond in some way. Then the child has some more thinking, feeling, and expressing to do. The trouble is, 'I'm mad' is all about some children can muster in the 'expressing your feelings' department. So if the world asks for clarification or a more sophisticated articulation of 'I'm mad' or demands additional thinking through, these children may become confused, disorganized, overwhelmed, and - you guessed it - frustrated."

The entire time he read, I was emailing Kent things like "Holy crap. This is a mind bend." I helped him sound out words like anxiety and benign, and I asked at intervals what he thought about what he just read.

"I think that children have different minds," he told me. "And they act differently when they get mad." He looked up from the book and smiled. "I don't get as frustrated as easily as the people in this book do."

To wit, he went on to read from a conversation the author has with a father and mother about their son, George. 

"Me: Thinking back, has George ever responded to frustration in the adaptive way?

Father: Now that you mention it, no.

Mother: But it was never this bad.

Me: How do you mean?

Mother: When he was smaller, he didn't swear at us like he does now.

Me: What did he do instead?

Mother: Well, instead of screaming things like 'Fuck you!'"

[AND THAT'S WHEN THE RECORD SCREECHED TO A HALT!]

I closed the book and started laughing.

"What?" Desmond asked.

I laughed uncomfortably because I honestly couldn't think of any better way to respond.

"What does fuck you mean?"

"It's not nice at all. You don't want to say it."

"I didn't say it!" he said. 

Well, right. I scooched him ahead several chapters and restarted him there. He lost interest after a while then went to play in his room where he remains, no doubt busy processing what he's read. I'm still trying to process it all too.

One more thing

Each weekday morning, Kent and I have about 15 minutes together - sometimes more, often less - when we're able to talk without major disruption. The oldest three are off at school and Tobias occupies himself with Legos, blocks, books or all three. 

We hash out workout plans, laugh about something funny we've read or whatever. 

Today, I asked him if he got the point of my yoga post. And, in asking, I realized he probably didn't because I didn't even make the point clear to myself. Here's the thing: the newfound freedom I feel on the yoga mat mirrors the freedom I feel having moved into a new chapter of life that doesn't involve a bevy of children hanging from my every limb. It's the physical suffocation I'm so happy to have moved beyond, the occupation of my body by others, the round-the-clock demands and needs. 

I loved pregnancy, birth and nursing and the pride of being the vessel that carried FOUR beautiful beasts into this world. But I'm done with that part of parenting. It feels glorious and indulgent and delicious to stand on the mat by myself and stretch within my own body. Mine. 

On the Mat

I went to yoga class six days a week last month, then signed up for another six days a week in March. Some days, I sling my mat over my shoulder and leave the house in the dark while everyone sleeps, one night I come home from class after they've all gone to bed. I take off Saturdays to rest my shoulders.

Attending so many classes - day after day after day - may be the single biggest indulgence I've ever given myself. I'm not ashamed. 

I practiced yoga for years: Ashtanga first in a sweatshop of an attic in a neighbor's house in Raleigh, then Iyengar after we moved to Virginia. I dropped the class when we went through our family's third or fourth round of belt-tightenings. The studio was 20 minutes from the house, parking was always tricky, the kids were exhausting and there were other excuses I used to ignore what my body craved.

When the hot yoga studio opened two blocks from home in January, it offered a hard-to-ignore deal of 10 classes for $99. At the time, my back still ached from morning to night and my feet tingled and I could barely touch my toes without bending my knees heavily, but I desperately wanted to do something. To move, to find comfort. So, I bought the package. Then another and another. And, here we are a full two months later and I woke in a toxic mood because the threat of snow forced the cancellation of my morning class. I don't just look forward to my time in the studio, I've come to rely on it. The heat, the solitude, the fun!

We're asked at the start of each class to set an intention. Throughout January, my intentions generally focused on one theme: healing. I asked to remain humble in my practice, not push my body where it didn't want to - or couldn't - go. I asked for calm or peace, anything to settle the spasms that made me weak-kneed throughout the day.

Somewhere along the way, though, I started to find ease in the practice. My back began to heal and my intentions changed. Now, I'm more likely to close my eyes, smile to myself and ask for freedom. I seek the "wild" in my practice. I ask to "fly."

Lately, I can't stop thinking about how grateful I am to have moved into a different phase with the kids. They clear their dishes from the table and fill the dishwasher; they wash and condition their own hair; they help me pick up. Tobias will go to preschool five days a week, four hours at a time next year. I'm on the cusp of something altogether different, sloughing an old story and writing an unfamiliar one. 

A friend recently tweeted the older she gets, "the more I understand the lure of the drunken, slutty mid-life crisis." It struck me immediately that I want the opposite. I'm done mistreating my body, punishing it with stupid decisions that leave me exhausted. I don't know if it's so much a crisis as a crystallization, but I'm ready to celebrate my strength. Tax and test my body, push it physically and find the wild.  

Lego #4

It's all about battles with this one, apparently. Given his loverboy personality, his passion for war seems disjointed. Nonetheless, I present "Battleship." 

"I was thinking of something in 'Star Wars,'" he said. 

Lego #3: Battle Royal

"The good guys are American and the bad guys are British," Tobias told me. "The good guys win!" Because he's still fighting the Revolutionary War, apparently.

Except, he later explained that the battle took place in the 1990s.

"No, I mean the '41s."

Long pause.

"It happened when the dinosaurs were around," he said, then skipped out of the room. 

And there you have it.