Tuesdays

My kids are huge suddenly.

Nora eats more, has a stomach and needs her sleep. She cracks jokes, has moods, and when she tries to cuddle it can be awkward, because she is so physically big. We barely both fit in the overstuffed chair. She doesn’t fit under my downward dog the way she used to; now it feels like another adult has rudely climbed under me, knocked me off balance. My lips are in her hair; I’ve got nowhere to put my arms.

And my boy now has a  smart mouth. He must be constantly be told to watch it. He can’t fit under my downward dog, either, though we can still sit in the over-stuffed chair. Only because he’s skinny. I can get a hand around his skinny thigh, but it’s no longer a little kid’s thigh. It’s a big kid’s thigh, a boy’s thigh. He still loves to strip down to his underwear as soon as he gets home but if the doorbell rings, he dives for cover. It’s less appropriate now. We’re all suddenly obsessed with appropriate. Song lyrics. Opening the door on someone in the bathroom. Spying. None of that is appropriate. Even I use that dreaded, prissy word. Spanking each other, aggressive tickling, and wedgies are all off limits. And then there was the halftime show. Wildly inappropriate. It embarrassed us to watch those glorified hookers. All that knee spreading. What happened to Beyonce? She used to be such a nice kid, in that girl band.

But I don’t really have to ask. I know what happened to her: she grew up. And watching that show, it didn’t matter how good the singing was; we were dumbfounded.

I knew this was coming. I knew it, but I guess I couldn’t have predicted how physical it would be. At the heart of it is actually size. How stupid. How inane! The idea that I want to pick them up, that they used to fit, literally, in my arms. Wasn’t that true with all the dogs I’ve raised, too, who used to sleep on me but then just got too heavy? That never seemed tragic. Yet I can’t deny that the attachment I feel is affected by the ability, or inability, to pick them up. It feels somehow wrong.  Messed up. Like a betrayal.

My boy doesn’t give me my kisses any more, either. How I used to moan inside when he said, “Time for your kisses!” They were a transparent stall tactic at bedtime, at least eight of them, one for each cheek, forehead, chin, neck, nose, each ear, and then the lips, after which he’d giggle and squeal, “We got married!” It doesn’t occur to him anymore, and it really is like that kid, the one I could carry, is gone. As in, absent. I feel like Elmer Fudd, scratching my head, thinking, Now where’d that wascal get to? I like this boy I see before me. He’s okay to live with, sure. He’s funny as hell, and cute, wants to grow his hair long. But what did become of that little guy I so adored? Where o’ where has he gone?

As for dogs, well. I go hours without thinking of mine. Generally, as a people, we leave them behind, often in a small crate, for several hours. They cast no shadow on large chunks of the day. I’m ever so happy to see mine when I get home, and she holds no grudge for not being thought of, which is a beautiful thing. No recriminating looks, just pure devotion. And since it’s always the present for them, they cannot be swallowed by the future, or frozen in the past.

This isn’t nostalgia so much as panic. I’m waving the red distress flag. We are a family in distress. Nobody, I don’t care how noble you are, sets out to have a family in anticipation of this juncture, this moment when everybody’s getting too big to wrestle, nobody can be picked up, tears are a serious, hot, angry business, and bodies barely fit in cars.  Personalities emerge; opinions fly. On the way home from school last week, my boy held my hand, a rare treat.  “When I get married,” he asked, “will I have to leave you? Will I move away? Do I have to?” Something in me withered. Of course he doesn’t have to. He can stay forever. But he won’t want to. He’ll keep getting bigger; his wants will get bigger, his sorrows, what irritates him and what elevates him will need their own space. He won’t want to stay.

I’ve always said that my parents never recovered from us leaving, from all of it ending. I don’t think many parents do. How could we? How could we possibly? Once you’ve done this thing, gone this route, there’s no reverse. On the other hand, maybe we don’t want our parents to recover. It wouldn’t surprise me, ours being an essentially growth stunted culture. We put all our faith, our warmth,our hope in the young. Our gaze is forever fixed there. Our old—as in, over fifty—are ignored and invisible. Unknown. The political divide here is one thing, but how about the gaping maw of age? The two are veritably hostile towards one another. No wonder parents are so terrified when their kids get older–we are not allowed to recover. We’re supposed to stay stuck here forever, mooning over what used to be. If you  head off into your middle age with a healthy sense of adventure, leaving your kids behind, you’re thought to be heartless, even a bit perverse.  Your peers, and certainly the young, find you to be an anomaly, charming at best, at worst, perverse. Think of the old guy in the youth  hostel bunk. The white-haired student. Youth keeps us interesting–you hear that all the time. It’s true that kids give us somewhere to be, places to drive, tasks and responsibilities; they get us up on weekends, prevent us from settling into a PBS series every Sunday night. But when you think about it, courage isn’t something we even begin to understand until we’re well past forty years old.

When my daughter dreads growing up, puberty, dating, and the adult world, I’m appalled to admit that I struggle to console her. I’m dismayed that her gym teacher presented it like this, a terrible shitstorm to be dreaded. Mostly because this is exactly how it was presented to me 30 some years ago.  I remember those fears too. Though I’m convinced that she needn’t fear these things, mostly I feel shame, because deep down I think, Shit, she’s right. It does suck. It’s hell out here.

Is it? Must it be? Must childhood be this bubble dome of happiness, finally unlocked by the body, that nasty beast called the Pituitary Gland? Once that switch is flipped, the door opens, we are strapped to  the ejector seat and sent flying out into The Land of Awareness. No no no! Isn’t this just our creation myth, one creation story, one that happens to promote an obsession with youth, innocence, ignorance, the frivolity of it all? Must Eden be so perfect? More importantly, must everything outside of Eden  be so bad and scary?

Maybe so. That’s kind of the point.

I do wonder, about the cultural thing. Does the French fifty year old feel invisible? Are they over there wringing their hands over lost children and lost youth? How about the Italians? Or, leaving the Judeo-Christian world, India? The native cultures on our own continent? How about Africa, the average fifty-year-old in, say, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia? The idea that fifty is old over there and and we all live so long here in the first world, all feels like a dodge to me, even if it’s true. It doesn’t answer the question of purpose.

Perhaps I’m only trying to console myself. Of course I am. Definitely. I’m terrified. There is a strange feeling in our house these days, a whiff of desperation. A brink awaits us. We are teetering, all of us. With the possible exception of the dog. She is only terrified on Tuesdays, that being the day both the trash truck and the recycling truck prowl the alleys of our neighborhood, horrible beasts peering over fences with squeaking brakes and intermittent blasts of hot foul breath.