Life Lessons in the Seafood Section

It's been 33 days since my mother-in-law passed away.

Today was the first kind-of-normal day I've had in a long time.

There was the funeral, and the trip back from Boston. There were weeks of family visits and pleasantly chaotic routine-upheaval. And then the house was quiet. We were on our own again. I finally felt normal enough to get up before the kids, take a shower, put on something that resembled an actual outfit. You, know, with accessories and shoes that weren't UGGs. And lip gloss.

I made breakfast, made lunches, made coffee. Dropped E off at school, left Baby N with my babysitter. Took my laptop to Starbucks for a few hours, worked on my book proposal, listened to Bollywood music for inspiration. Drank more coffee.

Instead of crawling to the couch during naptime and lying there--staring at the ceiling, too empty and broken to do anything else--I cleaned. A lot. Opened the three-foot high pile of mail next to the door. Hauled out several bags of trash. Made vegetable soup for lunch, from scratch. Paid some bills.

And, even better than kind-of-normal, J was working in the LA office today. Which meant he was coming home tonight. Which meant I got to cook an actual family meal, instead of feeding the kids whatever from the freezer something tasty and nutritious and grilling a turkey burger on the Foreman for myself.

So, to celebrate, the kids and I made a pilgrimage to Whole Foods to buy ingredients for a special family dinner. E and I browsed through some cookbooks and my Kindle apps and settled on "Citrus Tilapia" from Epicurious. Which meant a visit to the fish counter. Which should have been just another kind-of-normal activity in our kind-of-normal day.

"Mom?"


"Yes?"


"Do the fish miss their families?"


"Huh?"


"The fish. They aren't swimming in the ocean anymore. Do they miss their families?"


I had ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA how to answer this question. Was this about Grammy dying? Was E projecting her own sense of loss onto the slabs of iced marine flesh behind the glass? I wasn't prepared for this. None of the books or articles I'd read on parenting through grief mentioned anything about seafood.


So I did what any good mom would do in the situation: I tried to distract her with food.

"Mmm, look, E...raspberries! Should we get some for breakfast tomorrow?"


"MOM. How do the fish get here? From the ocean?"


"Um, I think they use nets."


"Who does?"


"The fishermen. Fisherpeople. The ones who catch the fish."


"Are the fishes left in the sea sad when members of their family go into the nets?"


When did parenting get so complicated? When did she put the pieces together to realize that the fish on her plate tonight was intrinsically different than the quinoa and green beans that would also be there?

Everything feels like it's about death these days. When our afternoon call with Baba got cut off, I said--off-handedly, not thinking--that his phone had died. E's eyes grew wide and liquid as little blue oceans.

"OH NO, Mommy! We'll never be able to talk to him on the phone again if it died!"


God, I'm bad at this.

How do I explain a fish's journey from the sea to the seafood section at Whole Foods without using the words "killed" and "dead"? Do I start talking about the food chain? About the differences between a human brain and a fish brain? About Pixar, and how Nemo and Dorrie are smarter (and cuter) than your average farm-raised tilapia? That real fish families don't miss each other when they're gone? Nemo's dad went to the ends of the ocean looking for him; there's no way E's buying that.

My head started to spin, right there in front of the seafood counter with the Whole Foods guy staring at me, waiting for me to finish telling him how many deceased, beloved fish family member fillets I wanted.

Flustered, I failed her. I just didn't answer. I burst into a rousing rendition of There's a Dinosaur Knocking at My Door. Busied myself picking lemons from a bin, bribed her and Baby N with an overpriced organic toddler snack so I could browse the shampoo aisle for a minute. Jabbered away about how much fun we were going to have cooking, how excited Daddy would be with his surprise dinner, and how if she was really good I'd let her use the lemon zester all by herself.

I, the die-hard, vegetarianism-is-a-deal-breaker, make-mine-rare carnivore, considered going vegan just so we'd never ever ever have to have this conversation again.


But we did, of course. Digging her fork around in her tilapia, E's wise little mind returned to the problem at hand.

"Daddy, do the fish miss their families when they're on the plate?"


"Huh?"


"The fishies. When the fisherpeople catch them in nets and bring them to the store and we make recipes with them. The tilapia. Do they miss their families?"

J didn't miss a beat. He shoved another forkful in his mouth, swallowed, smiled.

"Nope. Because they like going straight into our tummies for dinner."

Why is this parenting thing always easier for him?

Because at 3AM tonight, he'll be asleep.

And I'll be up lying awake, staring at the ceiling, wondering if giving up sushi...and bacon...and cheeseburgers...might be worth never having to serve E "Citrus Nemo" with a side of quinoa for family dinner again.

The Snow Globe

When I came home from BlogHerWriters last October, I brought E a snow globe from New York.

I bought it in the airport, rushing to catch my flight. My 48 hours in Manhattan had been an absolute whirlwind; I'd barely had time to eat or sleep, let alone shop for souvenirs. But I knew exactly what I wanted, and sure enough the Hudson News next to my departure gate had a small display of snow globes next to the candy rack.

It had a pink base and inside, tiny snowflakes swirled around tiny New York things: the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, a yellow taxicab.

She loved it. I loved it almost as much as she did.

"It's delicate," I whispered as she dipped it upside down again and again to watch the swirling flakes.

"I know," she whispered back. "I'll keep it safe, Mommy, I promise. I love it so much."

She must have sensed how much I loved the snow globe too--a reminder of the city I love more than any other. I've never told E that my soul lives forever in New York City...but sometimes she understands things way bigger than she should be able to just by looking at my face.

The snow globe moved around. Sometimes E wanted it to live on her bookshelf. Sometimes, she carried it to my desk "So we can both love it, Mommy." Sometimes I'd find it in the kitchen next to her latest bunch of wildflowers. I reminded her constantly to be careful with it. That it was fragile, made of glass. That if she was too rough with her snow globe, it would break.

This morning, I heard a loud crash while I was upstairs getting dressed.

"E, what was that?" I called down.

Silence.

Then, "It was just...something, Mom."

More silence.

And then hysterics.

I came down and there it was, her New York snow globe, in pieces on the floor. E was inconsolable, kneeling above it as though if she stayed there and cried hard enough, it would piece itself together and float back into her palm.

My first instinct was to reprimand her. How many times had I told her to be careful? Shouldn't this be a teaching moment, a lesson in taking care of belongings? Shouldn't I just clean up the mess and let her mourn the result of her actions? Remind her that things are just things and tell her she should be lucky she's healthy with a roof over her head and plenty of other toys to play with?

But as she sobbed, my mind flashed back to another moment, just weeks ago, when I sobbed because I lost something precious to me. Something irreplaceable. Something that I should have been more careful with. She had crawled into my lap that day, wrapped her skinny arms around my neck, and said "I'm sorry you lost your ring, Mommy. It was a really beautiful ring."

And then I had one of those moments--those what kind of mother do I want to be? moments. Where I stood at a crossroads of actions to choose.

She looked at me, afraid, waiting for my angry words, sorrow transforming her face into one I barely recognized.

The broken snow globe lay on the floor between us.

I swallowed the I told you sos and the You need to be more carefuls on my lips. I pulled her into my lap and held her tight. I wrapped my arms around her neck.

"I know you didn't mean to break it," I said into her sweet dark hair.

"I just...want...it...back," she cried, her body shuddering.  She looked at the shards of glass, the bits of fake snow swimming in a pool of water on the living room floor, and broke down again. "I want to hold it again. Please, Mommy, I want to hold it again."

Oh, baby girl, I know you do. I know just how it feels to want something back that badly. The desperate desire to reverse time until it's the moment right before the bad thing happened. To have all the broken pieces be back together again.

My life, and my parenting, is all about gratitude. Yes, we should be grateful for our lives, and our health, and the people we love. We should understand that things are just things. 


But sometimes we love things anyway. And it hurts like hell when we lose them.

Even if it was our fault. Even if we should have been more careful.

Today it was a snow globe.

But.

Sometimes, things that don't seem so fragile will still shatter. Things that aren't things, at all.

Sometimes, without meaning to, we break what matters most:
Friendships. Relationships. Dreams.

In those after moments, when we're on our knees wishing we could go back in time and undo what we've done, the best thing we can hope for is that someone will wrap their arms around us, and hold on tight, and help us pick up the broken pieces.

And understand.

Kissing Dolphins

Last week in Hawaii, E and I went swimming with dolphins.

It had been an emotional couple of days, and a "super-fun awesome adventure," as E likes to say, seemed to be in order as prescriptive therapy for all of us. When I spotted a "dolphin experience" package that 3-year-olds could participate in, I was sold. (As an added bonus, this discovery helped heal E's still-raw wounds after needing to be 4 in order to ride the "horsey ride" at Legoland...)

I've always wanted to meet a dolphin.
E's animal-obsessed.
We couldn't wait.

E sat patiently on my hip in the water, frail and shivering in her too-large life jacket, eyes fixed on the dolphin trainer as she explained about the dolphin's anatomy ("Dolphins have belly buttons TOO, Mommy!") and how they learned to communicate with humans. I was so proud of E for listening carefully, paying attention, following instructions not to splash or kick (the noise hurts the dolphin's ears.)

After demonstrating the proper hand signals to kiss, hug and dance with the dolphin, the trainer asked for volunteers.

E raised her hand.

She didn't say a word. She didn't look at me for approval. She didn't show one shred of hesitation.

She just raised her hand high in the air, confident and calm.
And smiled with pleasure when the dolphin swam to her.

When I found out I was having a daughter, I promised myself I'd never compare myself to her. I wanted to give her an absolutely blank slate to form herself upon, a free pass to learn and explore and form her own opinions without fear of judgement or disappointment from me. If I had to make one wish for her, it's that she'll grow up braver and happier, smarter and prettier and wiser than me.

Because I want her to have everything I do...times a million.

But in that moment, I couldn't help flashing back to my own childhood. When I lived in fear of being picked first for anything. I rarely raised my hand in class, even if I knew the answer. I spent hours trying to shrink into the scenery during kickball games and school dances and field trips to the aquarium.

I never volunteered.

Even right that minute, I was quaking in my bikini at the thought of needing to volunteer for dolphin face time for E and me. Even though I'd signed us up. Even though kissing dolphins was why we were standing here, freezing in a waist-high ocean water tank, waiting our once-in-a-lifetime turn to meet Flipper's long lost cousin.

I never could have raised my hand like that. Not even as the fearless-Mommy adult I'm supposed to have become.

But E did. And it was the proudest moment of my life.

Sweet E, I'll spare you the comparisons, the stories about my own too-shy childhood. I will only say this:

You amaze me.

Your bravery, your quiet confidence, your sweet, gentle disposition that makes you a natural for kissing dolphins--all of that inspires me.

"I think he likes me," you whispered as the dolphin nuzzled your cheeks and nose. When he kissed your lips I could swear he was smiling.

But not as big as I was.