Why Am I Doing This? - Issue No. 14
NURSING ON A BOAT
Around my daughter’s first birthday, we bought a boat. To some, this was as naive as when we adopted a puppy when I was five months pregnant. And sure, maybe I had been following a viral Instagram account (#theoandbeau) and had developed some preconceived unrealistic expectations about my puppy and baby having daily snuggle nap sessions together. I’m sure the older, more seasoned parents in our life might have thought, what the heck are they thinking? Nevertheless, all of our parents were kind enough to at least not express this sentiment to our faces. And truth be told, we are mostly just making it up as we go as is, I think, the case with becoming a parent for anyone. We figured, if we have a puppy and a baby together, they won’t know life without each other. And, similarly, if we get a boat when our daughter is so young, then being “boat people” is just a facet of our family’s identity. So, we bought a boat and all of the accompanying watersport toys from a couple who were selling the majority of their possessions to embark on motorhome-life as the first chapter of their third act, post-retirement.
And just like that, Big Barracuda, our 27-year-old Malibu boat, became an integral part of handling the Atlanta heat and spending wind-lashed time as a family. A few things about our boat: In archetypal form, the boat’s pronouns are (she/her). When we got her, she had a slightly beat-up, maroon-striped interior and an unseemly tramp-stamp, the removal of which was one of our few cosmetic upgrades. Her sound system doesn’t work, so our tiny bluetooth speaker is an integral part of our outings. And, similar to a torrid love affair, my feelings for her fluctuate between adoration and animosity. In the same vein as devouring a large cheese plate and then feeling overcome with lethargy and regret, there are moments when I think “why are we doing this?” Since we don’t live on a lake, the boat takes up what would be my car’s space in our garage, which sits beneath my daughter’s bedroom. A boat beneath a bedroom also seems like a hazard. In order to tow the boat, my husband drives a gas-guzzling truck instead of the environmentally-conscious, economically-sound vehicle we might otherwise own. In order to keep the boat running, my husband, who is peculiarly handy and knowledgeable about random repairs, has to spend time working on the boat while I continue doing what I’ve done all week by watching our children without him. The boat wears us out, even if we don’t do a single water sport. So, there are times when we return home having burnt zero calories, but still feel like sleeping all afternoon. We never get back as early as we think we will, which usually messes up what is otherwise sacred nap time for our son. And, I often have a little pervading voice in my head questioning whether our children are being exposed to flesh-eating bacteria as they frolic around in the warm lake water.
And then, there’s the watersports, otherwise known as one of the few opportunities to endure a concussion and a recreational enema simultaneously. I married into a family of water sports enthusiasts. When we’re visiting my in-laws’ lakehouse, watersports are the focal point of the day; the more times we can do them, the better. Every summer, my husband, sister-in-law and brother-in-law have new toys, new ambitions, and renewed enthusiasm for jumping, surfing, and falling on their faces behind a boat. Don’t get me wrong, some of my favorite memories with my in-laws have been during these times. I don’t even mind all of the talk of ballasts, which part of your foot needs a bit more pressure, or where in the crest of the wave you’ll get most air if you jump. But I also am very happy keeping my skill at mediocre level. For me, the 7am wakeup to get on the lake while it’s still like glass is rarely a compelling proposition. And sometimes I feel more excited by the Goldfish snacks than by watching someone gyrate their hips on a foilboard. Not to mention, being asked to tow my husband while he does watersports, fills me with a sense of dread. He grew up driving boats, so my novice operating sense often leaves room for critique, which I rarely want to hear. But most importantly, it feels like I am fighting every mom/partner-instinct when he encourages me to hit the gas and thus expose him to danger while our children look on at their father gliding in and out of the wake. One of my favorite comedians, Nate Bergatze, has a funny bit about boating that totally resonates with me: “I could be getting older but I don’t like lakes. I want a pontoon or like a boat that doesn’t move. [In my sister’s] boat, [for] like five hours you just sit in the back of it…[obnoxious boat sounds] no one can talk, it’s just chaos. I mean stuff is flying everywhere. I’m sore for a month. Just like, is that from the boat? There’s no rules on the lake, it’s just the Wild West. Everybody drives as fast as they want. There’s only sudden turns made out there. Everybody driving the boat is either drunk or eleven. No one is a normal person.”
But, despite all of these things, I love our boat. We bought Big Barracuda six months before the Pandemic hit and I found out I was pregnant with my son. And, when so many were feeling cloistered and claustrophobic, our boat became our little lifeline of fresh air and wide-open space. It felt like we had discovered an oasis on the water at a time when life felt confined and enigmatic. When I was pregnant, my son would move his legs around my rib cage as soon as our boat’s engine revved, as if he was stretching into the open space around us. And once he was born, as I had with my daughter, I would nurse him as the boat cut through the water and the wind tousled his hair. Our boat is the only place now in which my kids will nap in my arms. And this feeling is the incarnation of bliss: my nose tangled in their hair, their flopping limbs draped over my tightly wrapped arms, their heads pressed against my chest. These moments are the ones where I look at my family and think “We’ve done it. Just look at us. Look at these little humans who we’ve brought into this vast world. Look how we are together.” And yes, without plentiful snacks, lots of sunscreen, a sandy beach to anchor near, and my husband agreeing to basically handle everything other than our children, these outings wouldn’t be possible. And there are days that I fantasize about a world in which our hair is less tangled and my husband isn’t pushing for another Saturday of trekking up to the lake to spend the morning on the water. I can somehow both wonder why am I doing this? and feel a sense of peaceful surrender that is alike to not wanting it any other way.
PONDERING EMPLOYMENT
WHILE CLEANING UP POOP
Last week I met with one of my former high school teachers, who I have always admired and with whom I have stayed in touch with over the years. He and I were going to get a beer to talk about his upcoming retirement. There has been a part of me that has fantasized about returning to my high school as one of the English teachers who were formative in becoming who I am today. Positions at my alma mater open up very infrequently, so I wanted to see if it was time for me to put my resume in the running.
We were scheduled to grab a beer at 5pm; even the term “grab a beer” sounds low-stakes, with little preparation and effort to make it a reality. However, prior to my leaving the house, my daughter got upset in a failed attempt to convince me that she should be able to eat a second donut since the day had felt so long. She was certain that the donut she had eaten for breakfast must have actually been consumed yesterday. Then she went to the potty in a donut-deprived huff, and proceeded to accidentally spread her poop all over her skin, clothes and the toilet seat. I cleaned her and everything else up, desperate to not get poop on the outfit I had picked out to look like a casually and effortlessly put-together human. Before I finished, she explained that I absolutely could not go to my meeting because we needed to make a bowl of popcorn, a pool and an elevator for the dolls in her dollhouse immediately. Meanwhile, my son, who remains in his hit and run phase, was repeatedly banging his toy car into us and then scampering off as quickly as he had arrived. As I drove away to grab a beer, my daughter and son stood tearfully at the window waving to me, as if I were going on a trip, because that is how rare it is for me to leave both of them, I suppose.
So, in an event that high-school-me could have only daydreamed of, I met my former teacher for and Guinness and a perfect hour of talking about poetry and writing and teaching, and it felt fantastic to be an adult, to reconnect, and to fantasize about reentering the classroom in the future. And then we said our goodbyes and I went home, palmed the contents of an entire box of tissues out of the potty, tried to convince my son and daughter for the one-millionth time not to drink the bathwater after they both peed in it, wrestled pajamas onto my son, ad-libbed another “tooth story” so as to distract my daughter long enough for me to brush her teeth, read all of the books, sang all of the lullabies, kissed all of the stuffies, and then layed on my bed with nothing left. Relieved that I had maintained patience during the predictably circuitous pathway to sleep. The next week, after answering my daughter’s recent questions about heaven (something she’s become very curious about after hearing the plot of Disney’s esteemed-classic Bambi) and helping my son learn to hold his penis down so that his pee doesn’t spray all over our bathroom, after picking up a never-ending-mess of toys and cutting slices of turkey into stars, so as to entice my kids into consuming some protein in their lunchboxes for the following day, I applied for a too-good-to-pass-up writing job at one of my favorite publications. Teaching at my alma mater felt intimidating but perhaps committing all of my time to writing for an esteemed publication wouldn’t? I stayed up till midnight rewriting my resume and cover letter and picking the perfect writing sample, only to be woken up by my daughter at 3am because she had had a nightmare about “mean robots taking all of her stuffies.”
Why am I doing this to myself? I thought. Why try to take on more, when I already feel like I’m at capacity? Why not just soak in this fleeting time and believe that, when I’m ready, I’ll be able to step back into my career? Why feel jealous of my girlfriends making money and moving into positions of power when I’m getting to be with my kids and to write, when that is a choice I made? Why consider becoming an English teacher again, a far from lucrative job that involves a never-ending pile of papers to grade, books to read, and lessons to plan outside of the classroom? Why consider writing for someone else instead of having the creative liberty to write for myself? How can I navigate the internal pull to be impressive, to flex my brain, to prove my potential while also feeling deeply committed to having my own schedule and raising my little ones? How can we be all of the things we want to be? How can we live in the moment and also remember that the moment isn’t all that we are? How can you feel ambitious and settled? How does one ever find the balance?
PHONE ADDICTION
I am addicted to my phone. For years now, when making New Year’s Resolutions, I predictably set an intention to be on my screen less often. And, the fact that I make the resolution annually, should indicate my failure at setting this aspiration into practice. I haven’t found anything that sticks. And yet, I also don’t actually enjoy being on my phone as often as I am. However, it is my clock, my camera, my newspaper, and my weather gauge. Most importantly, as I am now most often home with my children, my phone also often represents my connection to the outside world. However, I fear it also might just be leading to my demise. Recently, I’ve noticed that I get on it any time I have a moment of peace, but it doesn’t actually bring me peace. I regularly will get into a room and forget why I’m there because I was looking at my phone. I’ll be standing in line and realize that I have no idea who is behind me or in front of me because I’ve been so glued to my screen that I haven’t taken enough time to just observe the world around me. My kids will be playing independently, and I’ll be checking emails instead of listening to them. I’ll be mindlessly scrolling Instagram, and realize that I am devoid of thoughts, as if my brain has actually atrophied. Recently, I’ve been wondering if phones are the antithesis to the brain training that is recommended to increase brain health. In other words, since cell phones haven’t been around long enough to collect longitudinal data, what if our phones are destroying our brains?
In part, this question feels a bit like that of a conspiracy theorist, but unlike Flightless Birds and Pizzagate, I think there is a great deal of validity in believing that the overuse of our phones might be dismantling our ability to critically and creatively think. The more life I spend on my phone, the more I feel like it’s not the life I want. I want to be present for my kids and for myself and since a world without cell phones will be as foreign as cassette tapes for my son and daughter, I want to model healthy phone habits now, so that they will have role models in order to be able to do the same. But, when I put my phone down I feel physically anxious and often pulled towards it as if my body needs a fix.
Not surprisingly, I am not alone. Apple recently confirmed that its device users unlock their phones 80 times every day. That's about as much as six to seven times every hour. When you get updates on your phone, like social media updates or text messages, your brain gets a hit of dopamine, a chemical in the brain that makes you feel good. However, this good feeling is fleeting and leaves us craving more. And, when I try to get some space from my phone, I experience nomophobia, a fear of being detached from mobile phone connectivity. This causes my body to release the stress hormone cortisol, because I’ve become conditioned to crave these dopamine hits, and my body is going through a withdrawal of sorts. I experience this every time I try to leave my phone on the counter for an hour. And this is the goal of social media platforms. They are built to be addictive to users.
So, I’ve deleted my social media apps from my phone and forgotten my passwords, so I can only log into them on my computer. I’m trying to put my phone out of reach, despite not getting the pictures I might otherwise capture, so I’m not tempted to pick it up when I don’t need it. My husband and I are coming up with the parameters of when and how far away we should put the devices in the evening. I’ve downloaded the Kindle app, and am trying to default to that, or the New York Times, or even the weather more often. I’m continuously reminding myself that for a good portion of my life, I was not this connected and I was fine, even better perhaps. I do not have the answers and I am yet to be a success story. However, I do recognize that when I’m on my phone and then put it down, I’m often overcome by the feeling of why am I doing this? And that’s not a way to live.
SOMETHING THAT
DID WORK
Recently, I was listening to a Podcast with Gloria Steinem, and in it she talked about the power of laughter, specifically unadulterated laughter. As she explains in her book My Life on The Road, “Laughter is the only free emotion - the only one that can't be compelled....laughter is an orgasm of the mind.” There is nothing I love more than the cleansing, endorphin-filled feeling that follows uninhibited laughter. The other day, my two-year-old son and I were making a dance routine on the swings, something that I’m pretty sure we could take to America’s Got Talent. Every time, I laid on my stomach and did a bow pose while swinging back and forth, he would erupt into the most joyful, uncontrolled laughter. And, despite my fear that I might fall flat on my face, I would have done my swing moves a million more times to hear the golden sound of his giggles. The poet Ross Gay has a perfect poem in which he talks about this feeling called Throwing Children. here is an excerpt:
"you throw her so high she lives up there in the tree for a minute she notices the ants organizing on the bark and a bumblebee carousing the little unripe persimmon in its beret she laughs and laughs as she hovers up there like a bumblebee like a hummingbird up there giggling in the light like a giddy little girl up there the world knows how to love."
To me, Ross Gay defines the purity of laughter in his piece. I’ve been thinking a lot about laughter in my life recently. When my dad really laughs, his eyes fill with tears and four deep creases indent the corner of each side of his face. His laughter reaches a higher pitch in his register than he otherwise ever has and to me, more than anyone else, I find it completely and utterly contagious as if in some primal form it is a calling for me to join him. Laughter is our opportunity to momentarily cast our reticence to the wind. My best friend and I share this laughter often. I never feel closer to her than when we can’t lock it up long enough to even squeeze words in between our belly laughs. When we try to articulate what is funny, we can never capture what made us totally disregard our inhibitions and connect with each other through this pure output of joy. Recently during my travels to New Zealand, at a cookout for our friend’s wedding, I said something retrospectively stupid, and in an effort to explain myself, I began to giggle. My eyes filled with tears as I tried to swallow my laughter, but I just couldn’t seem to choke it down. Before long, all of my friends sitting near me were laughing with me, or at me, or some combination of the two. It was a very simple moment and yet one of my favorites from the trip, a moment of bliss. I can’t think of anything that could heal the world and ourselves more than finding our place and our people to cast decorum to the wind and to participate in liberated laughter.
SOMETHING THAT
DIDN’T WORK
The other morning before the sun had risen and our porch light had clicked on, while everyone was still sleeping, I stepped onto my front porch to go work out. There were four shadows in front of me, which I hoped were fallen leaves. But, I clicked on my phone’s flashlight and instead spotlighted four baby birds scattered motionless in front of our doormat. These birds had been in a nest built in the eaves of our wrap-around porch, and I had grown increasingly connected to them since their mother built their nest and their eggs hatched . This was the fourth nest built in this spot and the first one to fail, with the inaugural nest constructed just weeks after we moved into our house. When I think of that time of moving into our home, when my son was breastfeeding so often that I just walked around with one boob out and we were potty training my daughter, so she was also habitually underdressed, I think of that bird nest. Every night before going up to bed, I would take a minute to look at the Mama who after a tireless day of feeding her fledglings, attempted to squeeze herself into the ever-shrinking space that was left for her in the nest.
Heartsick, unsure of what to do, and crunched for time, I left the baby birds, got into my car and drove to the gym. The scene I had left was all I could think about in between medicine ball slams and mountain climbers. Desperate to share my sadness, though not exactly sure why, I told my gym acquaintance about my birds. I explained, “It’s just such a good metaphor for parenthood, ya know? You just give it everything you’ve got and then there’s this whole crazy world out there that you can’t control.” And just like that, I sprinkled a little black cloud over her workout and she feigned sympathy before attempting some pull-ups on a bar.
I returned home and we disposed of the remaining dead baby bird on our porch. I don’t know what happened to the others. I watched from the window of our front door as the mama bird flew to her perch and just looked back and forth for what seemed like an eternity. When I went to the doctor that morning for my physical and was asked if I suffered from depression, I felt moved to tell the story of our birds again, though this time I bit my tongue. I just kept picturing the mother bird, worm gripped tightly in her beak, coming home to the nest she had built and then trying to grasp the disorienting reality that her home and everything that mattered within it was gone. The parallels between this event and something like the barrage of mass shootings feels tragically apt. This world is just wildly unwieldy. In my slightly delusional nightly routine, this mama bird and I would lock eyes as I passed the front door while attempting to corral my kids upstairs for bath time and bedtime, and she and I would agree, “Parenting is tireless work, am I right?” And now, she’s gone and I feel guilty for feeling anything but grateful.
SUSTENANCE SUGGESTIONS
My paternal grandmother used to always have brownies at the ready when we visited her in South Bend. There are three foods I still associate with her: brownies, carrot mold (better than it sounds), and Jello mold (about as good as it sounds). She would sprinkle powdered sugar on top of her brownies and would serve them in a box lined with wax paper. I haven’t had them in over fifteen years now, but I still have vivid memories of them. Two years ago, when we moved into our house, our neighbor brought over brownies to welcome us to the neighborhood. I remember trying to imagine us through her eyes: just barely holding it together, milk-stained, tired, and struggling. At that moment, nothing sounded more appealing than a moment of quiet and the self-indulgence of a good brownie. While I don’t know that I’ll ever be the person to have a plentiful supply of “welcome-brownies,” I do like knowing that I have an excellent recipe in my back pocket if necessary. This surprisingly easy recipe from Cooking Classy fits the bill.
