I’m turning 34 tomorrow. I know, I know. I’m a baby.

Unless you’re under the age of 25, in which case I’m used up with one foot in the grave and should probably just throw in the ol’ towel now while I still have some dignity left.

Whatever.

To be honest, I get a little freaked out about my birthdays, not because I’m upset about getting old and therefore less hot (um, “less hot” is a condition I’ve grown rather accustomed to, thankyouverymuch) and more saggy (tits to knees, for the win!), or because I’m afraid to face my own mortality (I’m kinda happy just to be here).

But rather because I get a little irritated that I’m not “further along” in my existence – like I should be more or better or someplace else, you know, more “accomplished,” “advanced,” SUCCESSFUL. Whatever the fuck that means. I don’t know. I’m happy where I am. At least I think I am. I have you people. I like that.

But my birthdays are always accompanied by a vague irritation, a little stick in my side, a lil bastard sitting on my shoulder whispering in my ear: “Janelle, you really should be more by now. You’re kinduva loser.”

I think this irritation is significantly increased by the fact that I spent a good portion of my adult life drunk, running around and around (and around and around) in tiny little circles (which felt very important at the time, FYI) – going nowhere, as they say, very, very fast.

So really, I’ve only been a grown up since 2009, but considering where I was then, it’s safe to say I’ve come a long way, and, once again, have nothing to complain about.

So that’s rad: When you set the bar really freaking low, you can totally be satisfied with minimally awesome conditions.

Wow, that sounds like a lot parenthood.

Anyhoo, as usual, since (as you know) I’m a radiant beam of positivity, I thought I would make up a list of all the things that suck worse than turning 34.

This is my version of “positive self-talk.”

I think you’ll agree with many of them.

Things that Suck More than Turning 34:

1. Being a crack head.
2. Eating lunch with Poppy Harlow.
3. Being Poppy Harlow’s son.
4. Growing up in Westboro Baptist Church.
5. Being born a female in Afghanistan.
6. Running a day care.
7. Finding yourself locked in a room with other people’s offspring. (Oh wait. That’s number 6.)
8. Finding yourself locked in a room with your own children. (Yes, that’s better.)
9. Tattooing small nautical stars all over your face whilst drunk.
10. Realizing you miscalculated and you’re actually 35. (Whatever bitch, I was born in 1979!)
11. Failing your Master’s Degree comprehensive exam. (Somebody hold me.)
12. Being born a male in Afghanistan.
13. Weighing 400 pounds.
14. Having 11 kids.
15. Driving home from the beach with sand in your bathing suit. (Seriously, do you remember that?)
16. Owning a yellow Labrador retriever who runs away from you at a softball game, breaking his collar, at precisely the moment your 2-year-old bolts off in the other direction and you realize you’re alone and totally and completely screwed because OMG the dog and OMG the child. So you start asking strangers to help you (because they’re all standing there motionless with a face like “Wow. Look at this unique unfolding of events.”) until an angel from on high comes over and says “I’ll get the kid. You get the dog.” And you run off and tackle the motherfucking Labrador like a ninja WWF wrestler. (Not that this happened to me last night.)
17. A world without the Grateful Dead.
18. Bigots.
19. A world without Tyler Durden, Jane Austen, Bill Murray, and/or my husband. (Um, that was a odd list.)
20. All things that hurt people.
21. Over-zealous baseball coaches.
22. And their evil parental cohorts.
23. Expressions like “the miracle of motherhood” and “I’m playing catch up,” and “at the end of the day” and “we need a paradigm shift” and…
24. BabyCenter forums discussing circumcision or sleep training.
25. Little girl shirts that say “Step Aside, Barbie.”
26. Implying that your child is a replacement for an emaciated plastic doll.
27. Making up cute, catchy new words, such as “brutiful.” (Sorry, Glennon, but REALLY? Have a little mercy.)
28. Peeing for the first time after giving birth.
29. The expectation that because I’m a mother I should give a shit about seasonal cupcakes and yoga pants.
30. Cleaning up dog diarrhea from the back seat of your car in a Safeway parking lot while the offending canine vomits at your feet while simultaneously trying to eat it.
31. Listening to people try to defend the conclusion that marriage equality is a bad idea.
32. The moment you realized you sneezed um, too hard.
33. PTA meetings.
34. Administrative staff meetings.
35. Okay pretty much any meeting.

And…the Number ONE thing that sucks worse than turning 34…yeah that’s right you guessed it…

NOT TURNING 34.

Because that would mean I didn’t make it past 33. And who wants that?

Really, it’s funny, right? That this is what we all want and don’t want: Getting older. It sucks. But the alternative sucks more.

So this is it, I guess. We just keep moving on and on and on until we aren’t moving on anymore, and every year we get a little closer to that moment, trying like hell to live in this one (Make it count! It may be all you’ve got! (no pressure, though)) — even when it’s a little grayer than expected, a little less glamorous and interesting and bright. Though in some ways, it’s way more so.

It’s the accumulation of all that I’ve ever been and the stuff my future is made of. Here is where it ends, and begins, the life I’ve got, the only one.

So I guess I’ll just say fuck it, and welcome, 34.

To be honest, I’m just happy to be here.

Also happy I’m not having lunch with Poppy Harlow. Because really, at the end of the day, we all just have to look on the bright side and enjoy the fucking miracle of motherhood. A paradigm shift, people. That’s what we’re going for.

Let us also not forget I’m way less fat than I used to be. WINNING!

There are some seriously messed-up expectations in motherhood – you know, tummy time, extra-curricular activities, the Wiggles – but by far the most twisted, torturous and baffling (in my opinion) is the idea that I’m supposed to adopt some sort of “parenting philosophy,” — like there should be some voice inside my soul guiding my every move as a mother, allowing me to feel all confident and right in my decisions, so I can hop on parenting forums and websites to proudly announce (as we all bow our heads in reverence): My Approach.

“I practice attachment parenting!”

“I’m a cry-it-out supporter!”

“I exclusively breastfeed!”

“I think breastfeeding is the end of female independence!”

“I’m a VBAC, no Vax, CD, EBF, CS, SAHM mom!”

“I have 2 nannies and wear Chanel and see my kids on Fridays!”

(Ok I realize some of those are ridiculous, but have you read Twitter bios?)

And I’m supposed to stand behind this approach, totally and completely, because I believe in it and shit, and I get all smug when people don’t agree, and I hang out with “like-minded” mothers because they support me in my well-researched, educated, enlightened methodology.

Or not.

With my first two kids, I guess I practiced “attachment parenting.” They exclusively breastfed, on demand, co-slept from birth til 3 or 4 years old, and I picked them up whenever they cried, carrying them in slings and carriers and such.

However, I didn’t do it because I thought it was “the best way.”

I didn’t do it because Mothering magazine told me so, and I sure as hell didn’t do it because all my friends were doing it (um, I was 22 – all my friends were playing pool and drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon).

I didn’t do it because I was pressured by family members or the community (I had a Play Boy bunny diaper bag to piss off the yuppie moms in my SUPER YUPPIE town), and I didn’t do it because my husband told me I should (see above re: Pabst Blue Ribbon).

You know why I did it?

Because it felt right. It worked for me.

No, really. That’s it. That’s as deep as it goes.

I’m selfish. I’m not going to suffer through some mothering hell because the ubiquitous “they” tell me I’m supposed to. Ya feel me?

I breastfed because it seemed WAY EASIER than making bottles all the time, and I did it on demand because I couldn’t handle listening to a baby wail. Of course, it helped that my mom was a La Leche League educator who taught me Dr. Spock is an asshole. I co-slept because it was the only way I could get any sleep, and I liked having my babies near me, and felt more comfortable knowing they were right there. I wore them in slings because I found out right away that I could get way more done if I stuck them in there – they were happier for longer, my hands were free, and by breastfeeding and baby-wearing I could leave the house with very little gear, which was less to remember, and I liked that.

Why didn’t I wean my kids? Because I never wanted to. I wrote about that here.

You know why I used cloth diapers? Because I thought they were cute.

I warned you: not deep.

And so I’m going happily on my way, parenting the way I feel like it, when I come across Mothering magazine and I’m all “Wait a hot minute! There’s a name for this? ‘Attachment Parenting?’”

Golly gee I thought it was just called “parenting.”

And though I always felt a little attachment-parent-deficient because we couldn’t afford Waldorf schools or Amish toys, I’ll admit I got a little carried away, a little confident in my “approach.” I subscribed to the right blogs and magazines and read it religiously and felt a bit smug and true and right in my philosophy.

Ah, but then I had Georgia.

My third.

UH OH.

I should have known, given the nature of her birth, that she would always have her own plans, but alas, I’m a bit of a dumbass, and clearly (as evidenced by my 3 kids), I don’t learn very quickly.

Anyway, after using two cribs as stuffed-animal holders, we didn’t even buy a crib or co-sleeper or anything for the third. Obviously she would sleep with us. OBVIOUSLY.

Not gonna lie, I felt like some sort of attachment-parenting ninja having not even purchased a crib.

I should have known then I’d get my smug ass handed to me on a pretty little platter by a ten-pound bundle of crazy.

You see, this kid hardly slept at all next to me. She would like shift her body and twist and turn all night, as if she were irritated, bothered. She didn’t settle against my breast all happy; she nursed and flung herself away from me, as if to say “Thanks woman, now leave me the hell alone.” She woke up frequently and none of us got any sleep.

After about 3 months of this I finally admitted to myself and my husband: “Um, I don’t think she likes being touched while she sleeps.” We bought a $60 crib from Ikea, stuck it in our room and put her in it. She snuggled in and crashed, with a look on her face that said “Aw, FINALLY.”

And to this day, she sleeps in her crib, only coming into our bed occasionally when she’s sick or going through some phase.

As if that weren’t enough to shatter my delusions of grandeur, after about 3 months of pumping two or three times a day at work, to ensure my baby was exclusively breastfed, I found that I just couldn’t take it anymore, and, I guess because I’m selfish once again, I (you might want to shield your eyes) started giving my baby formula as well as breast milk.

Oh, the guilt! The irreversible pain!

I’m joking. It was totally fine.

Pumping every 3 hours and dealing with milk transportation and refrigeration and ALL THE SUPPLIES every day with three kids and grad school and work and babysitters was ruining my life. The formula supplement thing worked way better. Done.

And I used one of those baby carrier stroller things (a mini-version, but still) in addition to slings, because it worked better in some situations with my older kids.

And I let her watch TV occasionally.

And she quit breastfeeding around two years old, but she still takes a bottle. HORRORS!

So I guess all this makes me, what, a practitioner of “detachment parenting?”

WHATEVER.

Check it out. I have an idea. I vote that we all stop analyzing our parenting decisions in terms of whether or not they adhere to some over-arching philosophy we’ve read or heard is The Best.

I vote that we stop comparing our approaches to some magazine or blog or whatever the fuck, and trust that we know how to parent the child that exited our own vaginas, and we are smart enough and strong enough and aware enough (Stuart Smalley, anyone?) to respond to the ever-changing realities of our lives in a way that will meet our own needs and the needs of our kids.

I know, radical shit up in here.

But I mean it. We can be doctors and lawyers and brilliant homemakers and farmers but somehow we need complete strangers to tell us how to raise the kids we know better than anybody else?

It’s crazy when you think about it, right?

So here’s what I think we should do. When we’re faced with some big ass parenting decision (or even the small ones, really) and hear those voices start chattering (“this is wrong, this is right, this violates ____ belief! They say this behavior causes this one horrible thing”)…we just ask ourselves:

IS THIS WORKING?

And if the answer is “no,” we change something – even if it means we practice some whacked-0ut version of “Detached Attachment Parenting.”

Or, as I like to call it, parenting.

I’ll come out when my mom adopts a parenting approach.

Look, I get it. You’re fucking old. You have old people problems. [And judging from some of the creams I recall in my grandma’s medicine cabinet, I imagine some of those can get pretty intense.]

Clearly, you’re a little pissed. Maybe it sucks to be old. I only FEEL old on occasion, like when I go to class, or hear teenagers speaking, or wake up in the morning, but I know I’m not REALLY old, so I have very little perspective on this topic.

But seriously, old people, it kind of creeps me out when you’re mean to my toddler.

I MEAN SHIT. You’re OLD, and she’s REALLY FUCKING CUTE.

YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO BE NICE. Grandmotherly. Warm. A little maybe?

I’m getting ahead of myself.

Maybe you’ve gathered that I have a slightly insane socialite toddler who insists on engaging with pretty much every passer-by in her line of sight. She’s like the Queen of England in her float or chariot or whatever the hell they use over there, smiling and waving at everybody, absolutely SURE they’re all there to see her.

I mean duh.

Obviously.

And 99% of the time, when she toddles up to some table o’ strangers, grins and says “HI!”, their faces brighten and seem to say “holy shit you’re a cute little bandit, aren’t ya?”, which is, of course, the response we’re all lookin’ for.

Occasionally she walks up to people in restaurants and they give her this polite “hello” but then look at me like “yeah, she’s cute, but so is my fettuccini. Somoveitalong.”

And we do.

At music festivals involving blankets and grass (the kind that grows on the ground, people! Get your heads outta the gutter!), she tends to have excellent luck, probably cause half the people are drunk and the other half are stoned, but all are hanging out at a damn hippie show (meaning they’d look really bad giving the shaft to a little toddler).

Or maybe it’s the way she plays it, sidling up and just sitting down beside them, like they’re old friends, staring at their vegan black beans as if she’s never eaten before (until they actually OFFER her some and you’re like “I swear we feed her” and they’re like “yes sure of course, that totally explains why she’s begging strangers for legumes.”).

And as you know, her socialite tendencies have resulted in some pretty remarkable situations.

But check it out. There’s always that one lady.

The mean one.

The one that looks at her like she’s some sort of varmint poking its head out of its grotto as she attempts to sip tea in her drawing room (what’s with the British theme? And what the hell is a “drawing room?”).

(By the way, I say “lady” because I can only recall women giving her the ol’ middle finger, which is even creepier, right, because of all those gender stereotypes demanding women to be all maternal and shit, and old people to be nice?)

But I digress. Again.

Though it just happened the other day, which of course is why I had to write about it. We were in Walmart (I still die a little inside writing that), and Georgia was sitting in the cart. A woman of about 75 walks up next to us and of course Georgia starts her usual “Hi!” or “Hi friend!” or “hello!” but she’s not responding. My mama bear instincts sniff mean old person syndrome, so I start trying to distract Queen Georgie from her routine, but there’s no stopping royalty.

She just gets louder and leans into it this time, with this gigantic smile on her face (which was like the cutest damn thing I’d ever seen), absolutely determined to get this woman’s attention, being so forward the woman can’t possibly ignore her, until she finally looks Georgia right in the face, scowls (and I mean SCOWLS with a death-dagger glare that would wither marigolds), and looks away, visibly hating her, and us.

So of course I’m like “Hey, lady. Are you fucking SENILE? Don’t you see that this adorable piece of humanity just said ‘hello’ to you? I know you’re old, but I’m not above kickin’ your ass right here in the goddamn toilet paper aisle.” (I’m sure weirder things have happened in Walmart anyway.)

But I keep all that inside, cause I realize that would be weird to say aloud, and I may get arrested.

So I look away, a little embarrassed for my baby (which is totally freaking weird, but let’s move on) and try to distract the toddler, who has of course no idea she’s getting the cold shoulder, and keeps trying to say hello. After we leave, the other kids process the whole thing, asking me like nineteen thousand times various formations of the same question: “Why was that lady so mean?”

And pretty soon we’re all ready to throw down.

Cause you don’t fuck with Georgia.

Yes, that would be the Georgia who has completely forgotten the whole thing, having moved on to saying “hello” to the new people in her path, a couple teenagers in the check-out line, who have fallen victim to the toddler and are defiling all coolness by playing a game of peek-a-boo.

But I always think about people like that for a little while after, wondering what it must take to transform a person into that condition. Maybe it was just a bad day, but I doubt it. A bad day doesn’t make you hard against a child.

I wonder what kind of life must have been endured, to turn a human heart cold against the irresistible warmth of a baby. To make it impossible to utter a “hello,” to find even one millisecond of joy in the antics of a little girl, throwing her innocence and smile and trust your way, a complete stranger, even for just a moment becoming your child, your friend, your own.

And it reminds me that if you’re gonna put yourself out, by god you’re gonna get the middle finger sometimes, you’re gonna get the shaft. And it’ll sting to the quick of all you’ve got, for a minute or two or years, and you’ll feel your pride sink into your toes, in that familiar anguish of realizing your love isn’t coming back, and you’ve thrown it all out there for nothing, looking like an asshole, a tool. You handed it all over, and they chuckled at the gesture, waved you on with a twitch of an uninterested hand, left you standing there with your open wound of vulnerability, and shame.

Your expectation a mirror to the pathetic naiveté that led you there in the first place.

The boy who says no.

The friend who walks away.

The lies.

The joke you told to become one of them, the faces that made it clear you’ll never be.

The family member who’s gone.

The thing you thought you had that you never had.

Old lady, come to think of it, you’ve got every right to turn away, to shield yourself from whatever it is that threatens you, that bothers you, that pulls something up from your gut that you just can’t fucking stand.

You’re alright, doing your thing, teaching us how it all goes, giving us a chance to watch a toddler handle you with the grace of some sort of Zen monk, giving it all to you in that moment, everything she’s got with total abandon – then letting you walk away, free, detached, having gained nothing and lost nothing, her fire still crackling, looking for the next person, to warm, to do it again.

Always, to do it again.

There’s enough to go around, I guess.

my kids, pretending to be “mean old people”

This week…well, it’s all about Friday, right?

I haven’t been able to write my “week in review” posts for the past two weeks. My first reason involved final exams. My second, most recent reason involved a distinct feeling of having nothing to say.

I read about the tragedy in Connecticut right before leaving for work Friday morning, around 10am. I cried for most of the 20-minute drive. When I arrived, my phone rang and it was my mom, and I knew what she wanted to talk about, and we both cried and she said she wanted to pick the kids up, RIGHT NOW, from school. I was already thinking it, but comforted both of us by telling her it was an early release day, meaning they would be home within two hours.

They would be home within two hours.

Probably the most beautiful words I’ve ever written.

And when these tragedies hit I’m always a little surprised by the way people fly into action. People start announcing and declaring and standing for something. Not that there’s anything wrong with that – just that I can’t relate.

Like gun control. “We need gun control.” Truthfully I don’t know anything about gun control. I know I lived in a country for a year that didn’t have guns (well, you could have a gun if you lived in the boonies and hunted but it had to be visible in your car and you had to be on your way hunting or home and it the whole thing was tightly regulated), and I know I felt safer there, walking through the “bad” areas of Barcelona, worrying (sort of) about getting robbed, maybe at knife-point, but not about getting shot.

A couple times my Spanish friends asked me “Why do children shoot children in schools in America?”

And I recall having no answer.

But guns were never allowed in Spain. I don’t know if it would work here, with all the guns already in existence. It sounds nice in theory, but could we pull it off? I don’t fucking know. These questions feel too big for me, for little old me out here in northern California, trying hard just to grasp my little life, let alone national problems.

And then there’s the mental health people. “We need better services.” This morning, on NPR: “We have a mental health crisis in America.” I’m sure that’s true too. But I don’t know anything about that either. That feels equally huge.

Morgan Freeman was quoted saying that these disturbed people who are going to kill themselves anyway do it in these horrific ways due to the guaranteed media blitz. They become household names. They become that monster who killed rather than some nobody who died in a basement. I’m paraphrasing, but his words made sense, and I believed them, and his argument resonated with me as the most. They want to stick it to the world. They want to show the world that’s “hurt” them, ignored them, wounded them. They want to go out with a bang.

Bang.

You win, you fucking asshole.

But mostly I’ve got no opinions on these big issues, particularly in the immediate wake of these tragedies. Maybe I’m an uneducated American. Maybe I’m lazy. Or maybe I’m just tired.

I’m equally struck by these parents who immediately announce these defined “approaches” regarding how they’ll handle the tragedy with their children: they absolutely will not tell their children (to preserve their innocence) or they WILL tell their children (to teach them about whatever issue they feel is important).

As you may have noticed, I don’t really have a clearly defined approach to parenting. I like manners. I dislike whining. I will not tolerate racism, bigotry or hatred. I think gay marriage should be legal.

But aside from that, I pretty much never know “just what to do.” I don’t have some over-arching parenting methodology that governs my decisions. And I never have.

By the time I saw my kids on Friday they already knew. Mac had told them. I don’t know why and I don’t know how, I just know that they knew, and we talked about it a lttle. I kept looking at Rocket because he’s seven, and in first grade, like the babies who died. He said he knew he was safe at his school. I shook my head to cast out the thought of anything less than agreement of his innocent conclusion, and thanked God it’s winter break, so my kids won’t have to go back to school for three weeks.

Then we watched The Hobbit.

On Saturday we drove to my family’s Christmas celebration and on the way we listened to the President’s speech and watched him wipe away tears, and I cried and so did Mac and when I looked back at Ava she had tears streaming down her face.

And I guess I’m glad she knew.

But as usual I had no words of wisdom, no deep insights, no “take-away.” We all just cried, and kept on living our lives, as we must, I suppose.

But Friday night I brought Georgie in our bed and she didn’t go back into hers.

And when I saw this I felt like there would never be another complaint exiting my lips as long as I live, though I know that ain’t true.

And then there was this moment, and I wondered if the mothers of the children who died had already bought their kids’ special holiday outfits.

And when Georgie sat alongside her grandma to sing Christmas carols and Rocket was dancing and Ava singing, I thought “I’ve got the best deal of anybody in the world.” And maybe my heart exploded.

When I was fourteen years old I saw “Shindler’s List” in the movie theater with a couple friends. Afterwards, when I got in the car with my mom, I began weeping. I remember like it was yesterday, trying to wrap my head around the gas chambers, the children and mothers and fathers scratching at the walls and screaming in those rooms, falling into oblivion because, because why? Because they were Jewish. I was in mental turmoil and physically disturbed: I didn’t sleep for days. I felt stripped, abused, violated. My brain refused to process it. It simply could not do it.

I remember the agony of the realization that such a horror occurred. It was real.

But it couldn’t be real.

But it was.

Maybe I wasn’t ready for that truth. Clearly I didn’t have the “tools” to make sense of it.

Then again, maybe that’s right where we’re supposed to be: in the dark grey murk. In the chaos in the hell in the despair, in the place that cries for meaning, for purpose, for just one moment of logic, reason, sanity.

Maybe it’s best that we refuse to turn it into some neatly wrapped package, some approach or theory or “stance;” that we refuse to distill it into a sentence: We need this. We need that.

Not that we lie down and forget it, figuring “what the hell, nothin’ we can do,” but that we face it with the bravery of everything we’ve got, even though we’ve got nothing, fighting until our last breath to find something like an answer. So when it comes, we’ll be ready.

Ready for what? I don’t know.

Change, I guess.

“Be the change you want to see in the world.”

I’m trying, somebody please tell me how.

All I know is my love, for the ones that came home within two hours, and the pain in my soul, the aching truth of our existence, the place where there are no answers, where the Jews died and the children died and there’s me, little old me, hungry for a place to settle my feet, and my mind.

Sure that if I hold on, it will come, and it won’t all be for nothing.

Before I had kids, I used to look at other people’s offspring and think to myself “Why is that kid so annoying? Why don’t they do something to fix it (and by “it,” of course, I was referring to the child in question).

And then I had my first kid, and knew she wasn’t going to be one of the annoying models, because I would nip that shit in the bud and mold her into a well-behaved non-irritating version.

And to be honest, it kind of worked (well, I thought it did. Now I realize kids are who they are and parental guidance is probably not the ultimate determinate of a kid’s behavior. It turns out THEY HAVE PERSONALITIES! (who woulda thunk it?)). At any rate, my oldest kid has always been a level-headed, engaged, poised child. She sits in restaurants, chatting with adults. She generally obeys the first time you ask her to do something. She’s independent, self-motivated, focused , and driven. She does well in school. She remembers to brush her teeth and floss, and write in her journal and write thank-you notes, and she does her homework without being asked, and knows how to keep calm when necessary, hanging out with adults with a grace and confidence we all find immensely appealing. She is the quintessentially not-annoying child. Damn, she makes me look good. She blows my mind on a daily basis.

Ah, but then I had Rocket.

And let’s be honest: Rocket is, on a regular basis, really freaking annoying.

Why lie? He is.

He’s loud, intense, and constantly moving. He’s like a tornado that makes noise. Most of the time, if Rocket is awake, he’s knocking things down and pissing his sisters off. He’s tying things together and rigging up traps and filling the sink with water and forgetting about it. He’s making the most irritating heart-stopping nails-on-chalkboard screeches you’ve ever heard in your life. He’s making sounds no human has ever made before, and should never make again.

He’s banging toys and accidentally breaking things, often.

He’s not brushing his teeth.

He’s ignoring your orders.

He’s drawing on the door of the car rather than opening it.

He’s forgetting his backpack in the backseat, and his lunch on the counter, again.

His shoes are in the bathroom but he can’t find them because by the time he gets down the hall he forgets what he was looking for.

He’s poking and prodding and flailing and flinging himself off the couch. He’s “hi-ya”-ing the folded laundry pile with a stick he brought in from the backyard.

He’s up in your business. He’s right against your body. He doesn’t always know when to quit.

He’s playing too hard, a little too long (and you find yourself saying “Rocket, please stop!” ALL.DAY.LONG.)

It’s a strange moment when you realize you have a kid that irritates people. It’s a piercing reality when you see the look in people’s eyes, saying “This boy, he’s too much.” And you see that The Excessively Uptight pretty much can’t stand being in the presence of your son. Sometimes, they’re mean to him, and you want to break their faces with blunt objects, and grab your boy and fold him up back into your belly, where the assholes don’t exist and he’s safe.

But you know what’s the most amazing feeling in the world? When you realize you don’t give a shit what they think, and you’re set free from the insane notion that your kids should all fit perfectly all the time into society’s idea of a “well-behaved” child.

I have a boy who doesn’t fit. He doesn’t fit in school. (He “makes up Kung-Fu movies in his head” during class.) He’s seven years old and not reading yet. He gets “below basic” marks in every area on his report card.

And you know what? I don’t care. And I’ll tell you why:

The other day he was playing with 9 cubes and he all the sudden said “If I had four groups of these cubes I’d have 36.” And I asked him “Dude, Rocket, how’d you know that?” and he said “I don’t know. I saw it in my head.”

And he’s fascinated with planets and cranes and mechanical devices (he’ll stare at a gadget forever, until he can explain how it works). He builds complex Lego systems and memorizes how to get to places in other cities even though we’ve only been there once.

(He told me when he was five he was “born with maps in his brain.”)

He’ll listen to Jimi Hendrix for hours and after hearing Miles Davis he said “This music seems simple, but it’s actually really complicated. Will you get me some more jazz music?”

His heart’s so big it’s like a constantly exploding star. When he gets upset he looks at me and says “Mama, I LOVE YOU,” as if that’s what’s going to fix it, that’s where his strength comes from, from loving others, and hearing that they love him back.

And I do.

I love him so much my heart breaks sometimes just looking at him, my little son, because I can’t believe I could cherish anything as much as I do that little boy.

And his teachers say he’s doing just fine, when I get worked up and want some answers, about why he isn’t reading yet, and why he just won’t quite fit. They say he’s a natural leader and a joy in class and they love him as much as I do, well, almost.

If I were honest, I’d say “why isn’t he meeting my expectations? Why isn’t he fulfilling MY VISION?”

Because he’s somebody else, doing something else, that maybe I don’t understand.

And yeah, sometimes it’s fucking annoying.

But the rest of the time, I listen for his music, and hear the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard, and I feel more alive myself, watching this kid dance moves I’ve never seen before, feeling my feet start moving right alongside him, knowing if I practice long enough, we’ll be dancing together.