After the hellish world of suck, I still had to pick up Billie from school and go grocery shopping.
Grocery shopping with a hyperactive 4 year old is like trying to bottle lightening.
Anyways, while in the store, she sees a princess Tiana costume.
….Now, Billie already has costumes. Loads of ’em. That child lives her life in costumes. But I have never seen her eyes go so big or her smile get so wide.
“MOMMY! SHE LOOKS LIKE ME! THAT COSTUME IS FOR ME!! She has curly hair like mine, mommy!! She’s pretty like me. And she’s a princess!! Mommy. I have never seen anything more beautiful. Have you seen anything so beautiful?”
There were four other people around us at the time. Two women with a kid, and an older, middle-aged, white guy with glasses. The women with the kid gave me an understanding smile, but it was when the man with the glasses made eye contact with me that I realized he was about to cry.
He said, “if you don’t get her that costume, I am buying it for her.”
So now, in addition to all the others, we have a new costume. But this one feels particularly special to me.
I made the mistake of leaving the room while the T.V. was on this morning.
Billie’s program ended in my absence and was replaced by some sci – fi movie where some dude takes another dude’s eyes out with a pencil.
I only know this happened because Billie calmly walked into the kitchen and informed me, “Mom. I just saw a man get his eyeball ripped out of his head.”
I tried to tell her it was pretend. I tried to explain that it was make believe. And that mommy would be more careful with trusting daytime television programming. Of course, none of that logic stopped her from telling everyone in the world that her mommy put a bad T.V. show on and scarred her for life.
“Daddy, did you know that mommy put on a bad show and I saw a man stab a man in the eyeball with a pencil and RIIIIPPPP it all the way out of him? ALL THE WAY OUT, DADDY.”
It has persisted into bedtime. She’s currently in her room with her covers up over her head wishing away the evil eyeball snatchers of the world. Occasionally I hear her saying things like, “But I have beautiful eyes. I like my eyeeeesss” before shivering back under her comforter.
This is the problem with imaginations, folks. They make what you saw so much worse. They amplify and magnify every crazy, scary, beautiful thing and propel it into a realm of psychotic proportions. And it does not shock me that some of us lose our imaginations as we grow older. Who can blame us? Every nerve, every synapse, every iota of you gets completely wrapped up in a reality that only exists to you. And sometimes it is so beautiful and fragile, like a bubble garden made entirely of blown sugar, that one small step, or unkind word shatters the whole thing. Other times it can be so consuming and devastating that you feel trapped inside it with no escape. It brings you to the best parts of yourself and holds a mirror up to your greatest fears.
What a fucking weight to carry.
But I can’t help but admire it. I can’t help but want to foster it and hold her in these dark times just to show her that she can conquer this. She can wrangle it and learn to use it in powerful ways that no one has even dreamed of yet. She comes to me constantly with pictures of winged serpents fighting ferocious dragons and giant squids battling sharks and I think she already knows this. She knows enough about the frightening things to want to identify with them and tell their stories. She sees the fear. She processes it. Then she headbutts it with an artistic fervor that I can’t help but be awed by.
The squid battling the sharks
And, again, here we are at that super cheesy revelation that inevitably comes as I write these things: She’s helping me. Don’t get me wrong- my imagination is pretty on point and always has been. But I think she’s showing me how to process the fearful parts.
You lean in.
With blind hope, faith, and sometimes unapologetic rage. You handle the squids and the sharks and the creepy eyeball stealers in your nightmares, then your dreams, then on paper. And, slowly… eventually… they become as fragile as the page you drew them on. They become characters that no longer frighten you. You begin to realize that, even in your imagination, only you can frighten you.
Cuisine Du Billie (complete with translations):
“Chocolate sandwich” = Nutella and toast
“Pancakes with square pockets for extra syrup” = Waffles
“Soup pasgetti (spaghetti)” = Pho
I just walked in on Billie on her hands and knees with a bag of ice in her mouth, tearing her face back and forth vigorously.
“Um. Whatcha doin, love?”
Her mouth goes slack and the bag of ice drops to the floor. She looks at me disapprovingly before saying, “Don’t you remember I’m a badger? Badgers don’t talk.”
She sighed as if exhausted by my lack of intellect, picked up the bag of ice with her teeth, and went back to shaking it ferociously; growling and drooling all the while.
Before this month we had never really met the three year old boy in the apartment above us. He’s lived there for over a year but, despite our many efforts to set up a play date, we very rarely saw him.
Then, three weeks ago, his father passed away.
The mother and grandmother asked us for help so, for the last 3 weeks we’ve been watching him a couple days out of the week, 5-8 hours each time.
In all that time, he’s said 3 words to me. He refused to speak or look me in the eyes. I rarely saw him smile.
But today we had a breakthrough. He hugged me. He told me jokes. We chased squirrels together. He accidentally called me “mommy.”
Billie noticed the change, too. She said, “Wow. You’re smiling now and you have so many words!”
He responded, “Yea. My smile is getting fixed slowly. I have words now.”
I’m doing everything I can not to bubble snot cry on this here playground. That kid just showed me that it’s possible for the heart to shatter and heal at the same time.
Someone once told me: “You should not become a teacher unless you are prepared to get your heart shattered every day.”
I truly believe that advice. It’s one of the reasons I stopped teaching, because I had had my heart shattered twice by what my students were going through and that was enough for me. I just wasn’t strong enough.
…But no one told me that the same held true for parenting.
That there would be moments when my heart would get so wrecked that I wouldn’t even be able to breathe.
And some of it is bittersweet and some of it is devastating but all of it is incredibly painful.
And I am glad that nobody told me how painful it was going to be. I’m glad that they left these moments as a surprise. Because, as devastating as they are, they are also the most rich and beautiful moments I could’ve ever imagined. They completely engulf and enflame you until you’re unable to accept any reality other than the one your child is living in. They connect you to a pain so simultaneously punishing and affirming that it actually breathes life into every embrace and makes every touch, every kiss, every giggle that much more crucial to your existence.
It’s the kind of pain that torches your gut and tickles your skin.
It’s a pain born of love. Of selflessness. Of complete and utter insanity.
“Look, daddy, everybody’s mad at you. And no one is gunna talk to you. And you’re gunna cry like a little baby!!!
Now you’re gunna go to time out, ok? And you’re gunna be really sad, ok? And I’m gunna laugh, OK?!?!”
This is what happens when we try to get billie to eat her dinner. Instead of saying “no thank you” this is what we get.
And every time she said “ok?” She made him respond in the affirmative before she continued.
Billie's Momma 