less than one & double
This is the category where I talk about being a parent, an experience I believe constitutes a "borderland" or "in-between" identity, because for me, its meaning is always in flux. The phrase "less than one and double" is a remnant from French feminism that still gets bandied about every once and a while when people want to talk about the experience of the native in the post-colonial world. Which happens a lot more often than you would think--if you're in academia, that is.
I've used the term here not because I want to relive the pretensions of my graduate school experience, but because it is the phrase that best describes my early experiences as a parent. While I was still pregnant, I was quite literally less than one and double. I was no longer the "self" than I had been up until that point: I did not feel the same way, I could not eat or do the same things. But at the same time, I was more than that self had ever been, because inside of me there were two selves--Anna and the baby, whomever he was to turn out to be. My experience as "me" did not count in the same way as it had before, and a whole other world of double opened up where that illusion of a single self had existed before.
I think once you become a mother you are forever after that less than one and double. This is what I know of it, anyway: no longer fully complete on your own, but always more than that, because of the little one before whom flowers never seemed so beautiful, and sugar never tasted so sweet.
Here are some of my favorite posts about being a parent:
Below are the full archives for "less than one and double." Have a look around: I hope my experience adds something to yours.
Mini is blessed child in many ways. He was born into a fair share of privilege and has already evident gifts and talents that extend beyond the average child. We know this.
Having a trick sphincter on your esophagus, though, is not one of them — the kid pukes at the drop of a hat.
It usually starts with coughing, and at present, Mini has the dregs of a respiratory bug, so coughing has been happening more often than usual. This would not be a big deal, if it weren’t for the fact that the kid has an esophagus that apparently goes both ways. He has a bisexual, switch-hitting esophagus that listens to Rod Stewart in its free time. Have I tortured this metaphor enough yet? No? Dude’s esophagus is only supposed to go one way, yet it’s been convincingly linked to both David Bowie and Iggy Pop circa 1970.
So, Mini will be coughing, and often the coughing will start right after he’s eaten or otherwise ingested some kind of substance. It could be anything, but it seems to happen in direct proportion to how disgusing the substance is that he’s ingested when it is regurgitated. Take bacon, for instance — Mini might be eating a piece of bacon, and then he starts coughing. The coughing then might escalate, and then I might start to break out into a cold sweat, because — yep, there’s the puke. So that first bout of puke was really just a cough kind of thing, too much food in the mouth/gullet while he’s trying to eat. But then, he’s seen that he’s puked, and that triggers another, in earnest puke, in the grand tradition of that anecdote from Stand By Me.
But it is not just after eating. It could also be that he’s gotten too upset and is gasping for too much air. Like if we tell him he cannot have something, go somewhere, do something, and he gets upset (like a normal toddler who has been deflected from his desired goals), but if he happens to be tired or hungry at the time of this disappointment, the level of upset will escalate and possibly turn into crying. If this happens, all endeavors must be immediately taken to get him to calm down, or else vomit will be forthcoming. It’s gotten to the point that if Mini’s starting to get upset, I’ll have to say, “Mini, you have got to calm down, or else you’r’e going to throw up.” Which tends to just make things worse.
So, the other day we’re at school and Mini says, “I threw up dragon juice!” in front of one of his teachers. For the record, “dragon juice” is Tylenol in the parlance of the Right-Click household. We had given him some the other night, probably ill-advisedly, because we thought maybe he was sick. It turns out he wasn’t. So now I’m at school, where the only rule about when kids need to stay home is if they’ve had a fever, which Mini most definitely does not have, but the teacher’s looking at me because first of all what the hell is dragon juice? Oh, it’s Tylenol is it? And your kid is throwing it up? And you’re saying he’s not sick?
So then I feel like I’m lying to the preschool teacher, and I’m the scumbag trying to pawn off a vomiting kid with a fever masked by Tylenol on her, because clearly I’m the worst mother in the world, and I’d rather have my dragon juice vomiting kid at school than have to deal with him myself. But really, it was all just a misunderstanding. And a trick esophagus.
Mr. Right-Click finally convinced Mini to wear the pair of Superman pajamas we bought for him a year ago by informing Mini that Superman is the greatest of all superheroes. Mini has always been a child that celebrates achievement, and so this fact about the supremacy of Superman piqued his interest enough for him to put the pajamas on, and run into our bedroom shrieking, “I a super hero to the rescue! Super hero to rescue!” Still, when Mr. Right-Click tried to confirm that Mini was a superhero, Mini said, “Yes, I’m a superhero. I’m a baby superhero.”
Mini’s invention of a Baby Superhero is one of those little metaphors you stumble across every once in a while that somehow perfectly captures a moment in time. In this case, it perfectly encapsulates Mini’s stage of development: he wants to grow up, but he doesn’t. He wants to be a big boy, but he doesn’t. He wants Mommy to coddle him, but he doesn’t. It can all be very confusing, and it can (and does) turn on a dime. The fact that Mini is completely fluent now only complicates things, because we no longer have the luxury of kidding ourselves that he doesn’t understand things, or underestimating the depth of the emotions he feels, or ignoring the gentleness of the soul that lurks beneath those big blue eyes.
And so we are back into a stage in which my heart gets ripped out of my chest and smashed into a billion pieces each morning when I take Mini to school. Mini’s teacher says that the reason that school dropoffs have become difficult again for Mini is that he is growing up. She says he is torn between the lure of becoming more independent from me, but at the same time he is terrified by the change that this suggests. She says that two year olds struggle with transitions.
So this is how it goes: each morning we get into the car, and on the way to school I will pull out every last trick in my bag to assuage Mini’s fears and anxieties about the forthcoming separation. I will do the fast-food rule, I will point out the snow on the mountains (yes, this happens sometimes, even here), I will ask him to count trucks or school buses with me. I will tell him what we’re going to do in the afternoon, I will say, “I understand,” when he says he wants to go home. I will even pretend to let Bruin Bear drive the car on occasion to get his mind off things. Usually, by the time we get to school he is nearing something like excited to be there, and this lasts for as long as I stay there, playing with him and his little preschool friends. In recent months the time in between us arriving at school and me leaving has become longer incrementally, something I did not notice until I realized some of the other preschoolers had taken to referring to me as “Mini’s Mom,” as in, “Mini’s Mom, will you move that bike out of the way?” or “Mini’s mom, come play with cars!”
At length, it will be time to go, and Mini, sensing this, will grab onto me and, under the pretense of “walking [me] to the gate,” he’ll take both my hands. Then he’ll say, “I want to climb on you,” and uses my hands as grappling hooks so he can climb up the side of my legs, so now he’s perpendicular to me, and it’s impossible that I move even an inch, much less actually leave the school premises, or else he will crash to the ground. [And it’s moments like those when I really don’t get those people who complain about bloggers talking about their kids, because was there ever an experience more ripe with writing prompts than a small child and his negotiation of the world? Because sometimes it feels like the sky above the preschool is constantly raining metaphors, and all we have to do is gather them up and spit them out on a page.]
Inevitably, a teacher will come over to us to “help [Mini] say goodbye,” much is made of giving lots of kisses, and just one more, and just one big one more, until finally there is that moment in which I have to just rip off the bandaid already, and I say, “Good bye, buddy! See you in a few hours,” and I hear the wails for “Momma! I want my Momma back! I want my momma back!” as I walk out the gate and run to the parking lot, get into my car, and drive away before I can even think about going back.
Transitions are no fucking picnic for 36-year-olds, either.
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