Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Monsters

Jill at Scary Mommy is running a contest right now, looking for the Scariest Mommy of them all. If you want to hear just what a "Scary Mommy" is, go here:

Now there are times when I'm plenty scary. Times when I let my kids eat mac and cheese 3 meals a day. Times when I lean down and hiss in Miss D.'s face, "if you touch your sister one more time today you are OVER, get it?" Times when I feel so overwhelmed, angry, out-to-sea lost that I have to lock myself in the laundry room for a while.

Guilty.

But this is my Entry. The Scary Mommy most like me.

Monsters

Three weeks before her third birthday, Miss D. starts seeing monsters. My fierce warrior child, who fears nothing, now cowers in corners and under covers. Monsters usually appear around 3am. I wake with my heart pounding in my throat, hot with the strength of her scream.

"Monsters! Help me Mommy! I scared!"

I fumble for lights, footing and child simultaneously in the night and realize that I'm just as scared as she is.

**

I was almost in my third trimester with Miss D. when the newspaper was late. This drives my part-German self crazy. I need coffee and the paper to make me human in the morning; without them I am foul. Sourly, I resorted to the television. Mornings suck hard enough without some perky anchor with teeth too good to be true telling you what traffic's like Out There.

I flicked the screen on just in time to see the second tower of The World Trade Center descend into rubble and smoke.

I thought it was a joke at first, or some weird movie stunt. Everybody did. You just don't believe things like that can happen, particularly if you're my age and have missed most of the good tragedies like JFK and World Wars and even Lennon, who I was too little to know.

I spent the rest of September 11 like most Americans did, grotesquely tuned-in. I channel-surfed maniacally, looking for answers or truth or the latest horrible picture, but it was a one-handed quest. The other hand was glued to my swollen belly,and I remember looking down at it and and thinking, "What on Earth have I done?"

**

My friend Tamar, an Israeli Jew, taught at Hebrew University. Her son, Yarden, was born ten days before Miss D. She has lived in Jerusalem, and then Tel Aviv, and has seen unspeakable things in both.

She watched when a bomb destroyed her favorite cafe; watched when the student union blew up in her workplace--minutes before she arrived at the U. She learned to avoid crowds, buses, open-air marketplaces. She grew accustomed to having her car searched by young men in uniforms.

"It's sad, so sad, what's going on in Israel, and yet still, I feel it is my home," she wrote after yet another bombing near her neighborhood. "It's part of our life here. We live with it and we go on."

She is stronger than anyone I know and holds tight to her faith, even when horrible things happen. She sends me pictures during poppy season, her son beaming through an endless kaliedescope of orange.

I have seldom seen her rattled, but not long after Yarden's first birthday, she wrote: I had to get Yarden a gas mask today. They require every child at the daycare to have one. I haven't even bought my son a pair of real tennis shoes yet. But he has a gas mask.

She and her family now live in Chicago, and she convinces herself that she feels safe. When I ask her, she says she dreams in orange.

**

My sister, who used to be beautiful, has cataracts in both eyes. One more blow to either of them and she could be blinded. Her left eye is smaller and hangs lower in its socket, part of the occipital bone poking out at an awkward angle. She's lost several front teeth and dresses in long sleeves. Her husband has a temper.

We grew up side by side, camped in the backyard, had parents who loved us and spoiled us and told us we had good brains.

The last time she was hospitalized, my father offered to pay for her divorce.

"I know you don't approve, but I love him," she said. "Some people just aren't strong." She looked out the window. "I've never had any luck."

**

There's an old gentleman, a relative of mine, who my mother never lets me be alone in a room with--never has. He's in his 80's now, small and wizened like a bad grape. He's a God loving Baptist, has gone to church every Sunday for generations, gives hundreds of dollars to charity, is a pinnacle of the community. All the women in the family call him Papa.

When my mother was nine, Papa stuck his hands down her shirt in a dark cinema.

She ran all the way home, hysterical, and told her mother what had happened. My grandmother said, "Oh my goodness, is he still doing that?" and continued frying chicken.

**

I fumble for lights and words and my quivering daughter at 3am. She's sweaty and she's peed herself and she claws at my neck, burrowing her nose into my hair.

"It's okay, baby. It's okay, Mommy's here," I say, rubbing her back.

"Everything's okay, Baby. No Monsters here," I whisper, and choke on the lie.

43 comments:

  1. How very poignant! I never expected it, but reading your entry brought a tear to my eye.

    I went to Israel a couple of years back, and came back totally awed by that country and by those people...

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  2. What a poignant, amazing post. I'm sitting here in awe. Beautiful writing. Thanks for bravely sharing so much of yourself and your life with all of us.

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  3. That was beautiful and wonderfully written...the monsters they worry about and the monsters we worry about sure aren't the same things.

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  4. This makes me cry. Thank God for the strength to tell our babies lies.

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  5. You are such a beautiful writer, my friend. Wow. Just wow.

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  6. I love reading what you write. You put so much of yourself and family into it I just want to thank you for sharing. It really makes you think.

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  7. I wish the monsters of our grown up lives could be banished by turning on the lights.

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  8. Heart-wrenching, with a lump and hard swallow. Scary in Israel with gasmasks versus scary in a US movie theater with molester. I hate the world somedays, and the desensitization that goes along with coping. I also wonder often What The Hell Happened?
    jc

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  9. Your post gave me chills and made me cry!

    My grandfather molested me when I was 12 and from that day on I never let my little sister be alone with him. I made it my job to protect her.

    It's amazing just how much our perception of the world changes once we become mothers. I try not to let fear and worry take over. Some days are easier than others.

    Thank you for this post.

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  10. No Scary Mama! But what a heart-felt post on the monsters out there! Sounds like Mama is a place of security and refuge! That's our job! Thanks for sharing and bringing home the difference a mama can make about those monsters out there!

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  11. You could have written pages and pages and pages more and I would've kept on reading.

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  12. You blow me away again in your way with words. Touching, moving, incredible.

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  14. Ahem...regrouping here...

    Ungourmet: there are more of us out there than you think. Legions, I would guess. I'm sorry, but I am also glad you aren't silent...those people count on that...

    And thank you, from this cold black heart, to my bloggy friends who somehow manage to touch me in ways I couldn't imagine, even though I know you only on the page. But actually, I'm less of an Asshole on the page, so this is good.

    bluecottonmemory, San, and Jennifer, thanks for stopping by and reading. Bluecotton: I think I'm Scary Mommy because I lie to my kids. Because it's easier. It makes me feel better. And because my girls will never, ever, sleep over at someone's house other than my immediate family. Because Scary Mommy takes her own personal shit and dictates it to her kids because of Baggage. And they will hate me for that.

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  15. Well said dear friend I can't tell you how I did the same thing on September 11th. What was I doing bringing a baby into this world? And you know how protected my girls are and why. Well said!

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  16. Oh, man, KW, this is sad and beautiful and terrifying. it's so terrible to realize the world we live in, and to still have days where we want our healthy children who are wonderful to shut the hell up.
    You didn't lie to say there are no monsters. She needs to think there aren't story book monsters. There aren't. Hope she doesn't know for YEARS that there are human monsters, who look like everyone else, who lie and hurt people and make us scared to even let our kids be kids. Ugh.
    Beautiful post. Thank you.

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  17. Gosh. Wow. This is amazing. No wait...YOU are amazing.

    I hope you win the contest, but you are the furthest from a scary mommy. You a REAL mommy. Not to mention a fantastic writer.

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  18. I meant you ARE a real mommy.

    I'm such a dork.

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  19. This is beautiful, my dear friend. I've read it and reread it a few times already, and each time I cry.

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  20. Love you, Tamar. You made me cry so many times those first years, when everything you knew and loved went up in smoke. And you woke up, made breakfast, and carried on.

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  21. I wept inside...on the very last line. Beautifully written.

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  22. What an EPIC post. Wow! I am sitting here stunned into silence Wow!

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  23. Wow...goosebumps...absolute goosebumps. Really, really good writing! You should be proud of this - and a great set of stories too. The world is a wicked place. You only need to pick up a newspaper to quickly see that. I do worry about having children for that reason. However, there is a lot of good too and a lot of angels out there willing to help and protect - like you protect your daughter. We can only battle on and hope we are heading some place better...right now, with global warming and terror threats it would seem that the future is rather murky...but you've got to have hope...we can't let these monsters win xxx

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  24. This post gave me chills.

    It is heartbreaking raising children in a word with pure evil in it. Evil, sadness and misfortune--- I try and shield my children but won't be able to forever. And that terrifies me.

    Such a beautiful post--- thank you.

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  25. Speechless.....

    Okay maybe not.

    What a scary world we live in today. And to think our moms let us run free in the streets till all hours. Raising children in the world today is certainly challenging. YOU are doing a wonderful job.

    I am so sorry about the Monsters that you and your family have had to slay.

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  26. I often find myself flashing similar thoughts through my mind when I tell my kids that there are "no monsters". I don't know whether to retract or comfort...this is another post that is just squeezing at my insides. I'm not blowing smoke up your ass when I say that you are currently...and have been for some time now...my favorite writer.

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  27. oh wow what a post you can really write its gripping reading your blog I would love for you to do a guest post for me some time, love Rebecca

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  28. What an amazing post. I'm at a loss for words. You did such an incredible job with each story and tied them together in an amazing way. I too was pregnant when 911 happened. You nailed exactly what went through my head as I flipped through the channels that day in an utter panic. Writers, real writers, can do that to us. Transport us in time. Make us recall and remember. Dig up feelings from deep within. Congratulations on doing just that. You already won in my book!

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  29. That was a fantastic post! You did a great job pulling all of the different elements together. I will admit, I thought twice about even having kids after so many bad things happened. but I couldn't let the bad things win.

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  30. Well written! I made the mistake of reading this in a computer lab at school... not the kind of piece to read in front of a bunch of strangers. I love your idea of scary mommy, lying in order to protect her kids. It's a scary world out there!

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  31. Really wonderful, TKW. You a fantastic writer. Thank you for taking the time to write such a great post.

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  32. I meant, You ARE a fantastic writer. Clearly, I can't even write a complete sentence in Standard English.

    You good writer. Me bad English teacher.

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  33. You are an amazing writer, friend, wife and Mommy! This was just an amazing post. Thank you for sharing so much of yourself!

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  34. That was powerful. oh, to be able to protect our babies from the imagined and real monsters out there.

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  35. What everyone else already said. Me too. Me too. Thanks for a wonderful post.

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  36. Keep lying. Sing it like Dori: Just keep lying, just keep lying...
    If anyone deserves to not live in fear, it's these lovely babes that have come into this world. I am guessing that even a good agnostic can appreciate the feeling that WE may make these children and bring them into this world, but there's something in them that was chosen... sent... TO us, FOR us. They heal us of our baggage by simply not having any. They let us remember what it was like to be innocent, and it's a good thing to foster that in them. We can train them away from evil. We can show them what it feels like to be fulfilled and happy, and seek those out that make them feel as we do.
    It is SO hard to hear about your sister. As a mother, I can not IMAGINE what I would feel like if my child lived a life like that. Your mother must be SO strong. I would probably be in jail already... The lesson I could learn here is that I need to let my kids make their decisions and hope that I can be there for them if/when they ask for help.
    You, PG, watching tv with your hand on your belly: an image in my mind, and in my heart, that I'm not able to reconcile right now. I may have to sit with this one for the weekend. "What have I done?" My God, what have we all done??? Sometimes I see Little Daddy sleeping and think of all the hurt that will one day, or through time, come to him, and I get... so. sad.
    shit. tears. now. Dammit, KW!
    wipe, wipe, smear. Chin up. Eat some chocolate, drink some wine, canoodle with that husband, and hug those babies for me. They're already here, now we "just" have to make do and keep bringing them good food and good love!

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  37. Holy crap. That's a long comment. Geeze.

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  38. I love your comment, Goonie. Thanks.

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  39. Kids should not live in fear. Your post was beautiful and heartfelt. I was moved to tears. There are monsters...but I have told my 3 year old that I will never let any into our house.

    She thinks our Doberman is the one who really gets them though, because I am a princess like her!

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  40. How on earth did I miss this post??? I swear, I am vigilant about checking your blog...this was a great post!!

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  41. I am in awe at how good a writer you are in conveying the raw, strong emotions of fear and sadness without being sappy, or falling into any cliche. Not that I don't enjoy a good food/cooking blog, but THIS is one of the best posts I have read on the Interweb. There is nothing more I could say. (And yet I ramble on...) I am leaving a comment to let you know that I am thinking of your sister.

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