I’ve been feeling kind of guilty about the way I write (and thus feel) about my mom sometimes. I’ve been thinking it would do me some good to write extensively about my relationship with her, all the emotional twists and curves, because that would be really original for a daughter to do that.

The thing is, blogging about it is so much cheaper than therapy. Jesse’s been using all the time with her shrink on her own issues, so there’s nothing left for me. Grumpy.

Since mom’s stroke a little over 2 years ago, I’ve been grumpy about her. My brothers say she actually seems pretty happy so I shouldn’t worry too much. They live closer and see Mom much more than I do, so I should trust that. But I suffer from the common conceit of daughters, which is that I know (or knew) my mother better than my brothers. Because girl power, right?

Mom had an acute stroke in the thalamic region of her brain, which is right in the middle between the big lobes. It’s like the brain’s switchboard, apparently. She would not wake up one morning. She was taken to the hospital, where she still did not wake up. Her BP was crazy high so they gave her meds for that, and she continued to sleep. She was decidedly not in a coma, but no one could wake her up. I remember speaking with my brothers. Mark told me, “she just looks like she’s sleeping.” Ted told me, “she looks really peaceful.” Everyone was mystified. I was in Wisconsin, taking care of my children and unable to do anything, when I should have been at my mom’s side in California and unable to do anything.

Mom slept for several days and then she woke up. She was goofy from the stroke, of course, but in the weeks that followed she quickly regained her physical skills. Her body suffered no paralysis or lost functioning. She didn’t lose many memories, and she’s not especially confused about basics. She struggles with language and word retrieval a bit but she does okay. By all superficial measures, Mom had a spectacular recovery. But to my eye, the stroke was an energy-sucker that cratered out Mom’s personality.

I can hardly think of anyone who made me as angry as her through the years. Mom was full of rage, bile, and cruel (honest?) insights. She could enter a word fight like a cornered alley cat, mean and clean on the attack, but also crazy. When the siren song of my screaming-banshee-mama routine calls, the voice I hear singing is Mom’s. Mom also had an incredibly silly and witty sense of humor. When I needed to share a gut laugh with someone over something stupid, I knew who to call. Mom had one of the best, raucous gut laughs ever. She could laugh so freely and fully that her eyes cried and her stomach hurt. This is the lady who taught me to bark the command “EAT IT!” after issuing a mighty fart. In Korean it sounds something like, “Moh-goh-rha!” Even better, she would trap her farts under a blanket when she was lazing on the sofa and, giggling like a sneaky little kid, flap them free onto us as we walked by.

So I see what I’m saying now. Boiled down to the essence of things, my mom taught me to scream at my kids and make fart jokes.

I have to admit, I don’t miss her screaming rages and irritable moods. That’s all gone, thanks to the stroke. Mom is easy-going now. A lot of wrinkles in her brow are gone, and she doesn’t make the upside-down-smile grimace of stress and misery anymore. She seems peaceful. I also can’t remember having a good laugh with her since the stroke. I try sometimes to tell her some silly story about the kids. She just doesn’t seem to think anything is especially funny anymore, or else she has trouble following the flow of my words. I can’t figure it out. So I miss that part of her, very much.

Instead of crying about it, like I am now, maybe next time I see her I’ll try farting on her just the way she taught me, and see how that goes.

Those long foam noodles are so much fun in a pool. You can relax on one stuck between your legs or under your pits, tie them around a waist and keep a kid afloat, whack someone over the head without imparting too much pain, drag a kid around on one, and — if you’re not grossed out about germs — put your mouth to the end of a hollow-core noodle and blow a fountain all over someone who’s staying dry poolside.

All that is great unless you’ve got a noodle that’s been at the JCC pool for several months, in which case it’s gross with moldy stuff and heaven knows how much fecal matter has embedded itself in those foamy pores. My OCD meter hits emergency red when I have to deal with public-use pool noodles.

But right now I’m grumpy about noodles because I took a photo. Jesse is in SUCH a good mood today! I’m just thrilled when a peachy day like this comes along. She was having so much fun playing before her swim lesson, so I snapped a shot of her relaxing on a noodle. But instead of collecting a sweet little memory, this is what I got:

I know, I know, it just looks like a little girl floating on a noodle and I need to wash my dirty mind out with soap. And this cup, which I saw at Target a few years ago, is just a princess cup with a built in straw:

I wonder what these princesses think about.

I’m still shedding my end-of-winter blues. I woke up this morning and stretched, and I felt the tired old blues skin crack a little more, and then I felt myself starting to wriggle out. Either that, or I was actually wriggling because Nick was poking my ass energetically and painfully with his toes to try to get me out of bed. Either way, I felt cheerful and grumpy.  Graaaaahwwaaah. I was humming away in the shower —

Yes! I got to take a shower! Nick didn’t even come into the bathroom and give me the creepy four-year-old love-my-naked-mommy ogle. Instead he watched a Dora-la-explorer DVD that he grabbed at the library last week. I hate watching Dora. I feel like I’m trapped in a null void when I’m forced to see that cheap, bad animation.

So I was humming away happily, soaping up my armpits, and without any provocation my mind slowly filled with a bunch of little things that irritate me. This is a good sign! Tomorrow I’m sure I’ll be annoyed by other stuff, but here are the random pet peeves I chewed on this morning in the shower:

1. Jessica Smith saying to me during that blasted exercise video that’s kicking my ass, “smiling burns more calories!” Bullshit. But thank you for an excellent workout, which sometimes leaves me unable to lower myself onto the toilet without hanging onto something.

2. The fact that I’m using exercise videos off All Fitness TV (Roku!) at all to get fit. What can I say. I’m 47. It’s been a long winter. This may actually go well past pet peeve into the zone of “total humiliation.”

3. Writers who write about writing, including songwriters who write songs about writing songs.

4. Rock stars singing about the hell of touring, it’s just so awful. Pull-lease.

5.  Artists who make art about making art, including self-portraits that depict the artist arting in the medium of his or her choice.

6. Movies about making or acting in movies.

7. Food Network chefs who smile at the camera while they’re chopping onions, and who say “mmmm” like their food always tastes good. I want to see the out-takes.

8. The music video for that song, something about a jar of hearts, by the lady whose name I can’t remember. The song was an okay pop song, but the video ruined it forever because the video is too embarrassing for words (except these). Just, why?

9. The fact that this is looking like a list, and lists are a serious pet peeve of mine. Shit shit shit.

10. Hypocrisy. It’s really hard to be consistent. I’m moving on.

Here’s wishing everyone a wonderful, sunny, grumpy day, full of much head-shaking and embarrassing self-reflection. Cheers!

I went for a morning jog by myself yesterday and it was really nice. I moved at a surprising pace, for me. When it comes to running, decades of experience indicate that my spirit guide is the tortoise, not the hare.

Anthony and I used to run quite a lot in our 20’s. He’s a foot taller and a whole lot more athletic than me, so it was always an easier row for him to hoe. There was a time when we probably averaged about 25 to 30 miles a week, plus extra stuff when we were training up for something. We ran 10K’s with friends, the Army 10-miler, the cherry blossom half-marathon. We lived near DuPont Circle in DC, so our normal routes were quite nice, encompassing paved and dirt trails in Rock Creek park and a variety of pretty neighborhoods, depending on distance and mood.

When we were first starting to run together, a common route rambled along the creek, through the national zoo, and then up a street called Adams Mill Road, about 4 miles into the run. Adams Mill was San Francisco-steep for a span of a couple blocks. It was a tough patch that I really struggled with, always failing and having to stop and walk up.

One day I made up my mind I would just power it up and keep running. With Anthony by my side, I started the arduous trip up Adams Mill Road, mightily shoving one foot ahead of the other up that blasted hillock. I stared firmly at the ground in front of my feet, sweat pouring into my eyes, sucking air in anaerobic exhaustion. I was focused. I was determined. About halfway up, I heard Anthony’s calm voice beside me. “Carla, stop.”

I stayed in my zone. Eyes focused on ground. Running. I panted through the pain, “no no, I’m good, I’m gonna make it.”

“Carla, just stop.”

“Shut up, I’m fine, I can make it.”

He became insistent. “Carla. Stop.”

I finally looked over at him as I kept moving, ready to do some cussing, because c’mon, he was messing with my hardcore runner mojo. I observed Anthony walking patiently beside me.

No, that’s not right. He was ambling.

It was humiliating. I stopped. Anthony is awesome because he respected my effort and didn’t exactly make fun of me, even though he made fun of me. He mostly felt bad for me. So that’s when he finally taught me how to run hills, and I eventually conquered the very short stretch of Adams Mill hill.

But I also know I’ll always suck at hills.

Yesterday, on my very first jog of the spring, I remembered those days. I carefully selected a short route with no hills to surmount, however diminutive they might be. It felt good.

One of the great joys of parenthood is hanging really awful art on the living room walls. When your four-year-old brings you a family portrait she’s worked hard on, you frame it and put it somewhere special, even if it looks like this:

There are some elements that don’t make sense. Jesse’s and Anthony’s mouths are above their noses, and Nick doesn’t even have a nose. On the other hand, Jesse did draw Nick smaller than the rest of us; I have the biggest round head; and Anthony’s head is long and skinny. So I do think Jesse captured some essential aspect of our physical properties. Not bad.

At around the same age, this is what Nick was drawing:

It was with great pride, which you can see all over his face, that he presented to me this “spiky angry bird,” which he slaved over. He’s got a thing for angry birds. I’ve got a thing for googly eyes, so it was a win win.

It’s really my own fault that the kids aren’t better with a stylus-like instrument. I’ve been told using scissors helps improve pencil grip strength, and early ed peeps have always urged me to let Jesse and Nick practice with scissors at home. But have you ever met my children? I don’t encourage them to use scissors in the house. Ever. They can catch up later on this fine motor skill, at school or some other place where they can’t use tiny cutting devices to trash things like my curtains, my clothing, and my life.

And anyway, if Nick had better pencil skills, he could never have drawn a cute animal like this at his nature preschool:

The teacher added a caption, “still life turkey.” Do you see it? I totally do. It’s a long-legged turkey, native to Wisconsin of course.

Jesse and Nick painted a couple canvases last weekend with the babysitter, while Anthony and I were having a playdate at a local bar.

I have no idea what Nick’s abstract piece is showing us, but I was told he was making footprints or something like that. I like the colors and brush strokes. To my mommy eye, the painting perfectly captures Nick’s current personality — chaotic, fun, wild — and therefore it’s a terrific emotional piece of work. Jesse painted a wild horse, and over the top of it is a “painted mountain,” as she put it. It only took a second for me to realize she was depicting the painted canyons of Theodore Roosevelt National Park, where we saw many wild horses last summer. I love the way the pony is prancing. I can almost feel it moving, and it evokes a lot of magic memories from our camping trip — in particular our encounters with the wild horses. As such, it too is a terrific emotional piece of work.

These pieces aren’t especially impressive in any objective sense, and they’ll never hang in a museum, but they’re priceless treasures to me. I hope when I’m a tired old lady, sliding through the end of my days, I’ll look up at a wall near my chair and still find them hanging there.

A few days ago a parent told me I’m the definition of TMI. This passing comment (I suppose I hope it was jocular and not judgmental) connected itself immediately in my mind to a recent comment from another friend about a behavior disorder her child struggles with, which she mentioned had a lot of “stigma” associated with it. Ever since, I’ve been having racing thoughts about these things: TMI, Tourette’s, stigma.

Jesse is back on behavior charts at school, after folks there finally told me she’s been pulling some classic Tourette’s moves in her math switcheroo group. Among other physical tics, she’s been blurting dirty words – or at least what passes for them in second grade. “Penis! Girly parts! Poopoo! Peepee! Fart! Butthole! Fat!” Instead of a Little Einstein, I spawned a Little George Carlin.

I’ve had a bad case of potty mouth my whole adult life, especially when I’m pissed off. Oops. Sorry. Approximately three and a half of Mr. Carlin’s seven dirty words have come out of my mouth more than once in the presence of my kids’ ears, along with a selection of other choice words. I don’t know why this trash talk isn’t part of Jesse’s blurting. Maybe the words I use just don’t mean anything to her, or she associates them with my anger instead of a taboo. In her mind, the word “stupid” is so naughty that it ought to be written coyly with asterisks. This is among the many reasons I don’t understand children.

But Jesse’s sweet as apple pie, despite the curious curvatures of her brain. A few days ago I pulled a tooth out of Jesse’s mouth. Within seconds, Nick was in jealous whiny tears because the tooth fairy was coming for Jesse but not him. In a flash Jesse was upstairs writing a note to T.F., requesting something extra “for my little brother.” It was classic Jesse – she couldn’t stand to see her baby brother left out.

So should she be more ashamed of the word blurts than she is proud of her generosity? One’s weird for sure, but the other is awesome.

I don’t feel embarrassed about the challenges Jesse faces – the anxiety, the tics, the OCD, the social miscues. She has the power to own these things, but only if she faces them squarely, stares them down, and rams her willpower through them. How can she do that successfully if she’s ashamed of how her brain is wired up? So I’m naked about it, with her and myself, with the world. I know I’m off the norm on this, so go ahead and stigmatize me. I don’t care.

A few months ago a friend asked me for a referral to a therapist for her child. She told me (paraphrasing here) that I was the only person she could think of who goes to a psychologist; other people must, but no one talks about it. I find that so sad. I know I’m going to have to become more conscious of the social stigma problem as Jesse grows older, and maybe learn to be more private, bite my tongue. But I’ll always be more worried about what Jesse and Nick think of themselves than what others think of them. The only reason I would ever care what anyone else thinks is if that anyone else tries to hurt my kids.

I remember a very strange boy in high school. I think he was a few years ahead of me. He wore dorky polyester pants and buttoned shirts cut like 1950’s or 1960’s clothing; his hair was oiled down in an old-fashioned look; he never looked especially clean. Maybe his family was really odd, maybe he had some sort of developmental disorder, who knows. Anyway, as I recall, the cool kids who hung out on picnic tables in the front of the school, strutting around like billy goats, would throw pennies on the ground when he came around so they could watch him pick the pennies up (which he always did) and laugh at him, mock him.

It was textbook social stigmatization. I think folks now would call it bullying, but that seems to imply an individual acting badly, and I prefer to use the broader term because it tells more of the truth — everyone was in on it, even if only a few confidently mean kids were voicing it. As I recall, there was a lot of communal snickering, and I never observed anyone stepping up to advocate for the poor kid.  And it never occurred to me to do that myself with the older kids, which in hindsight is pretty pathetic. I just remember thinking it was really sad. He was strange for sure, but he didn’t bother me. Why would he? But the penny-throwers — I had a serious problem with them. Total, 100% assholes. Dirtbags. Vicious, hollow souls. Jerks. They gave social stigma a bad name.

What would kids like that do to a kid like Jesse? I’m not sure. I hope that by the time we get to high school, she’ll be confident in her skin, comfortable with her unique issues, and reasonably indifferent to social cruelty — or at least empowered enough to fight back hard. And yet I want her to be a little more “normal” too. Sometimes there’s a very fine line between self-loathing and compliance with social rules. Once in a while Jesse says things like, “I don’t want to be weird! I want to be like everyone else!” Part of me is glad that she’s experiencing these feelings; it’s an important motivational step toward controlling her outlier behaviors and meeting some basic social expectations, especially when it comes to other peeps’ personal space. But I hate to see her feeling ashamed of herself. I can’t stop scratching my head about it, and I guess we just have to wind our way through these twisted social paths as we reach them. Too bad Jesse doesn’t have a more socially adept (mainstream?) mama to help her along the way.

But hey, even if I can’t fit into social norms more completely, at least I can use Too Much Information as my social sword. And heaven help the mean kids if I ever find out they’re coming at my sweet Jesse, because I think I’ll probably come down on their heads like a mountain of shit. My ferocity will be backed not only by my feral maternal love, but also by my profound guilt over never having done anything to help that strange young man in high school.