Restraint Collapse

 A New YorkTimes headline caught my attention: "End of day meltdowns are not just for kids: but there are ways to avoid them." I clicked immediately, recognizing myself after barely making it to 6pm on Friday before snapping at the dinner table and retreating to a dark room to binge-watch "Scandal."

The article discusses "after-school restraint collapse"—something any parent will instantly recognize from those afternoons when children arrived home emotionally spent from behaving throughout their school day. I remember many days when my kids needed snacks and an hour of quiet time before they could start homework or tell me about their day. If I rushed that process, I paid for it with sharp words and pent up frustration.

During those years of raising young children, I often faced my own nightly meltdowns. But it's been a while since I've experienced restraint collapse this intensely. Last week marked my first seven-day stretch at home in months, packed with work training, cleaning up after William's move, and supporting all three kids through major life transitions. Add three early morning workouts and oppressive heat, and the breakdown was inevitable.

My outburst—something along the lines of "You never listen to me! I'm not even important to this family!"—felt justified in the moment. I blamed the heat, menopause, early mornings, everything except my failure to recognize the warning signs. I should have listened to my body's cues and set boundaries much earlier. A nap, some quiet time, or simply saying no to one activity could have prevented the explosion.

The timing of the dinner table was particularly painful. These rare evenings when Rob and I are both home feel precious, with both of us managing constant demands on our time and energy. I don't want to fill this time with my personal restraint collapse. Perhaps I'll have mastered this balance of self-care and parenting by the time we have grandchildren. I certainly hope so—I don't want the grandkids putting me in timeout.

After years of helping others manage their emotions, I'm still learning to tend to my own with the same care and attention.

Holy Now

 "This mornin' outside I stood / I saw a little red wing bird / Shining like a burning bush / And singing like a scripture verse. It made me want to bow my head / I remember when church let out. / How things have changed since then / Everything is holy now."

- Excerpt from song lyrics to "Holy Now" by Peter Mayer

Burning bushes glow fire engine red at peak season, and are highly visible now in the West due to our warm and sunshiney October. When I was in Montana last week with Mom, we saw a few burning bushes as well as maple trees and highlighter yellow larches. On my walks I did not see any red wing birds, but we had a family of deer rest each day in the shadow of the house, just outside of the basement windows and easily observable from the living room. My sister calls it "deer day care."

My favorite vista was Mama deer sitting a cautious distance from her three little ones, back turned to them and huge long ears on a swivel to catch any possible danger. The youngsters sat with an eye on Mama, turning their heads to stare at us whenever they heard foot falls or voices from inside the house. Mama wasn't too worried about us but she did jump to high alert when shots were fired across the bay. The echo of their hunting-season clarion call carried, and Mama eventually sat under the rose bushes against the house while her babies retreated to shelter under the buck brush. 

The Mama deer, with her combination of devotion and "leave me alone" attitude, resonated with me. I remember the days with little ones, days full of miracles and minutiae, when I wanted to gaze at my children with awe but also to escape for an hour or two. I wrote a blog post headed by Peter Mayer's "Holy Now" when the kids were in elementary school. The beautiful lyrics capture how we can see everything as miracle, and the song lyrics reached out and grabbed me in the car yesterday, tying those early days with young children to this special time with my Mom.

Spending long, quiet minutes with people you love, with space to appreciate our shared existence, always feels miraculous to me now. I loved the time with Mom, soaking in histories, laughter, jokes, walks. On our last walk we saw the deer family out in another yard, and one little guy came close to check us out. We got a photo of her head lowered in our direction, bright black eyes staring unblinkingly as her soft ears twitched. Then a noise spooked her and her thin legs and shiny hooves scrambled for purchase in the landscaping as she bounded away.

It was hard to say goodbye to Mom, to the special quiet moments. I had to leave her in the Missoula airport, water bottle at her side and cane in hand, to wait for my brother. I wanted to ask the TSA agents to look after her, just as I asked them to watch over Aden on her first solo flight. Time and the people we love are precious and fragile, and every time together seems like a miracle.

Going with the Flow

Long summer days leave more time for early morning walks with friends and girls' nights out on back patios. Sleep can be elusive but the sunrises and sunsets are spectacular and moments with friends who have been cocooned by work and weather throughout the winter and spring can make up for lost Zzzz's.

At several recent gatherings we have chatted about being "Mom" to teenagers and adults, how often we're the butt of their jokes or their teasing, especially since we bear the load of planning and prepping for major activities.

My family laughs at my need for plans and schedules, the lack of spontaneity that causes me to freeze when some brand-new chore or event lands like a bomb in my carefully plotted calendar. My husband joins the kids in teasing me about my need for advance warning and they all ganged up on me at a dinner in Rome. I joined the joke on myself at first, mellowed by a glass of wine, but eventually grew tired of the sting and threatened to walk home alone.

When I relayed the story to friends, they all had similar examples of being the butt of the joke. "That's just part of a Mom's job," one said.

Another chimed in with a story her next-door neighbor told. "She was at dinner with her adult kids and they teased her for her routines and her long lists. They told her to 'just go with the flow' and she got so angry she shouted 'I AM the f***ing flow!!'"

We chuckled as we strode along the greenbelt, sounding out those words in our head, on our tongues. The rightness struck me at that moment, how my schedules and signups, my plans shaped the daily lives of the kids until now, when they plan their own work and social events. I was the flow, and easy for them to say 'take a break' or 'let it go' when I've been paddling the boat for almost 20 years. Now they will start to understand why it can be difficult to drop plans or miss events, lurch from the plan to the unknown. It will still be easier for them to do as they're each only planning for themselves, but maybe someday they'll understand the plan and love it - as I do - when the plan comes together. They can be their own flow, and I can lay back on the lifeboat and take a rest.

Family Flu

Bodies were strewn across the upper hallway, sails of sheets caught wind on the clothesline, and the one healthy member of our family cautiously picked her way around prone figures to find the stairway. A scene from "Contagion"? No, only one memory of the great Dravenstott Flu Pandemic of 2011. Four out of the five of us went down with high fever, chills, and stomach upset on Friday night, and all four were still home recovering on Monday.

I would never recommend being sick at the same time as your husband and children, though in some cases it cannot be controlled. I was still the main caregiver, though Rob did help with drug store runs and laundry, and the chip on my shoulder was so large I could hardly stand up. I had all three kids in my room on Friday night (even the healthy one!) and was up every hour on the hour to escort someone to the bathroom. Saturday was a repeat, as Rob slept in the office again, except that my fever was so bad I awoke to dripping clothes which made the bathroom trip a cold and hazy journey each time I was summoned there by my bad-tempered son.

Daniel hated being sick, and his disgust and anger and frustration equaled mine. Five am on Saturday: he was on the toilet, shouting with anger and pain while I sat on the tub facing him. I stage-whispered something extremely unsympathetic and angry in return. Not a Florence Nightengale moment. Sunday morning was an even lower point for me: I announced to my husband that I would never recover on such little sleep and that I would probably "just die." I kept threatening to go live in the basement or find a hotel, too, though I could not summon the energy to actually make my escape.

A few scenes, though, already make me laugh: the Saturday afternoon where Daniel and I fell asleep in the upper hallway, traumatizing my daughter as she attempted to move down the stairs. Sitting on the porch Saturday afternoon, all four of us staring at the birds in the yard and attempting to choke down more Gatorade or flat soda, when the mailman came to the door with an oversized delivery. Normally, one of the kids runs to get the package but as we all sat and stared dully I explained, "we are all really sick." The mailman's eyes widened, he placed the mail on the ground, and retreated as quickly as he could. "Thanks for letting me know!" he hollered on his way out.

On Sunday night we were partially recovered but still went to bed early. My daughter pleaded with my husband and I to stay up just a while so that she could read and not be the last person standing. "I am lonely!" she told us, tired of being the only functioning individual in the household. "I don't want to be the only one awake!" We couldn't help her much as our exhaustion rendered us useless . . .we left the light burning for five more minutes and then hollered down the hallway, "lights out!" It felt like lights out for the Dravenstotts for about forty-eight hours last weekend, but thanks to the miracle of time - and Ibuprofen - we're back among the living again.

Replacing Marmee

Marmee: “You think your temper is the worst in the world, but mine used to be just like it.”
“Yours, Mother, why you are never angry!” And for the moment Jo forgot remorse in surprise.
“I’ve been trying to cure it for forty years, and have only succeeded in controlling it. I am angry nearly every day of my life, Jo; but I have learned not to show it, and I still hope to learn not to feel it, though it may take me another forty years to do so.” (Little Women, Louisa May Alcott. Nelson Doubleday: New York, pp 65-66).
*******

“When asked for an example of a Good Mother, the women I polled came up with June Cleaver and Marmee, from Little Women. Both of whom are by necessity, not coincidence, fictional characters.” (Bad Mother, Ayelet Waldman. Anchor Books, 2010: p 11)

I first read Little Women at the tender age of nine or ten, an age at which analytical thought is not yet developed. From the time I read the book, I loved it. I – like many girls – identified strongly with Jo, and also loved the figure of Marmee, whose image I carefully extracted from the book to place on my mental trophy shelf as the prototype mother figure. As my own mother joyfully sacrificed for the five of us and rarely lost her temper (at least in the years after I developed my long-term memory), the actions of my real mother supported my election of Marmee as model. Though the book is so moral that even Louisa May Alcott failed to love it upon first reading, and all of the characters are idealized to some extent, it did not dawn on me to ever critique Marmee. I never saw a word against this beloved figure until reading one of Ayelet Waldman’s books. I cannot recall which book it was, but the heroine’s mother said something to the effect of, “Oh that Marmee, I just couldn’t stand her!” After nearly falling out of my chair in shock, I had to admit that it was a relief to read that someone did not like Margaret March.

Strangely, the things we read, hear, or see in childhood help to shape our world despite the obvious flaws which could be discerned from even a haphazard critical analysis. We are just not suited to perform such analysis in childhood, and by the time we reach our teen years and develop a healthy skepticism and/or cynicism, it is usually directed at events, persons and authority figures of that time, not our earlier years. At least that is how it went with me . . . whose believe in the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus outlasted that of all my peers. Perhaps we just don’t want to be critical of our beloved constructs.

In case you have not made Marmee’s acquaintance through Alcott’s books, here is a quick summary of her character from the (not-so-analytical) experts at Shmoop.com:

““"Marmee" is the affectionate name that the March girls use for their mother, Mrs. March, whose real first name, like her eldest daughter, is Margaret. Mrs. March is essentially the perfect mother: she works hard but is never too busy to console and counsel her daughters; she cheerfully does charitable work and helps out with the war effort; she's an ideal housekeeper, a loving mother, and a highly principled woman. She never loses her temper, she never misses anything, and she protects her children while still allowing them to make mistakes and learn their own lessons. “
(http://www.shmoop.com/little-women/marmee-mrs-march.html)

You can see how a mother operating under that blueprint might occasionally get a bit down on herself. In a recent fit of Google-mania I searched high and low for criticism of Marmee. I got many positive and simplistic character analyses like the one above, feminist criticism warmly noting Marmee’s strength as a woman in a virtually single-parent home who had a strong educational influence over her girls, and a note about the “realism” of Alcott’s books, which were ostensibly ahead of their time by twenty or so years. When I searched specifically under the key words ”criticism of Marmee” I had only typed the capital M before I saw “criticism of Mother Teresa” but when I finished my original thought I had exactly zero hits. So either I am alone in my past reverence of Marmee or there truly has been very little written about the negative influence she has had on modern-day motherhood.

To wit: I can recite nearly word for word the dialogue between Jo and her mother about losing their temper. I have even borrowed the phrasing, telling folks that I try to hide my temper and “hope not to feel it” in another forty years. Now that I have nearly reached forty, and fail remarkably at hiding my temper every day, it seems that I finally have to admit that I am not as perfect as Marmee. This is a bitter pill to swallow. Instead of trying to attain her level, I will have to try to replace Marmee as my image of perfection. Roseanne Barr, anyone?

Have Fun!

“Busy-ness does not make us happy. Muller reminds us that the Chinese symbol for busy is composed of two characters: heart and killing.“

-From ‘The Trouble With Motherhood,’ by Christine Carter, PhD. April 26, 2010, http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/raising_happiness/post/the_trouble_with_motherhood.

That just about sums up my mother’s day message: busy-ness kills our hearts. I read Christine Carter’s blog entry over the weekend and it shocked my eyes wide open. Of course I already knew that preoccupation with daily chores, errands and classes sucks the life out of a person – don’t we all know that? But I did not know that someone made a study out of it, and proved that people can only live without fun for two days before they start to fall apart with anxiety disorder, headaches, sleeplessness, etc (see her article above for details about this experiment, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, as described in his book Flow.)

It is both hilarious and horrifying to me that many moms are willing to live their lives as a sort of experiment in productivity without diversion. Purposefulness without playfulness apparently robs us of our mental and physical health, which of course takes away from our effectiveness in all areas of our life. The best part of Carter’s article tells us that life does not have to be this way; if we take time to insert non-productive fun in our schedule, our happiness level will increase (and probably our productivity, too, but at this point who cares?).

I often feel that fun activities are those I enjoy by myself. For example, I just finished a 12-mile bike ride on this sunny, windy day – startled periodically by delirious woodpeckers and sunbathing prairie dogs. (Two of the prairie dogs were sprawled out on the trail – I thought they were dead until they jumped up and scurried for cover. They looked just like my friends and I when we baked as teenagers – even down to the body types!) Now that was fun . . . as my four-year- old would say, “Wahoo Daddo!”

But I also had a fantabulous time over the weekend on a mother-daughter campout at the zoo. Eleven girls and their moms got to spend an evening (including dinner and zoo walk), conspiratorial night of little sleep, and morning together. The girls’ electric chatter and wide-eyed wonder spread contagiously even to us yawny moms. You would think the lights of Colorado Springs, spread out below us, were fireworks on the Seine. A monkey zonked out overhead in a swing, a snoring gorilla, and a raucous peacock squawking from high in a tree; all these were sources of giggles and rapid-fire questions. We even fed giraffes: great, tall beautiful animals that clustered around us looking for crackers, their long black tongues snaking around all the bars of their enclosure, and the girls’ hair when they dared place crackers on their heads.

So much fun to be had . . .I am, in fact, going to put “have fun” on my list of 5-year goals. At the moment this list has items like: “be patient,” “be calm,” “be peaceful,” which all frankly sound good but boring. I think fun should be – if not first – at least prominently listed. To quote my little guy again, without fun, “you be in the trouble, mommo.” Have fun on Mother’s Day, everyone!