Birthing Beautiful Ideas

Once upon a time, there was a little boy who asked his mommy to draw him a picture of a cow.

His mommy, who loved her little boy dearly, was more than happy to pick up a crayon and a fresh sheet of construction paper and draw for him her very best bovine creation.

Upon receiving his mother’s heartfelt gift, the little boy held the drawing at arm’s length, examined it, and stated, “Well, it sorta looks like a cow.” 

He was only two.

And, as you may have guessed, he was (and is) my son, M.

And I was (and am) the artistically-challenged mother in the story.

It should come as little-to-no-surprise, then, that after testing out my priming and painting skills in our new kitchen, I realized that it would be a very good idea if Tim and I could hire someone to paint the house.

You know, just so that no one would say ever anything like, “Well, it sorta looks like you didn’t fingerpaint the place!” 

(You may be wondering how anyone could make priming and painting look that bad, but HELLO, did you not read the above anecdote?!  A two-year-old can even spot my poor skills from a mile away.  Or at least an arm’s length away.)

So, with some hefty generosity coming our way, Tim and were able to hire James.  Or “Super-James,” as I call him.

(Super) James is a local independent contractor who is not only painting our house but has also installed new bathtubs and has agreed to install new lighting in the kitchen.  He’s spectacular and amazing and extremely kind and efficient and totally reasonable, so if you’re looking for a spectacular, amazing, etc. contractor in the Central Ohio region, please send me an email and I can send you James’s contact information.

In any case, while the house is far from completely finished, I thought that I would share a few before-and-after teaser shots.  With the love and hard work not only of Tim and me but also of my parents, my uncle, my brother-in-law, my sister, and yes, the spectacular, amazing, etc. James, our house has come a long way since we bought it–i.e. back on closing day when we found a dog turd in the dining room, the unmistakable black streaks of ghosting on the walls, unidentifiable orange grease-goo on the kitchen ceilings, blood stains underneath the carpet, and ORANGE-FLAVORED KY JELLY LEFT IN THE DRAWER OF THE ONE PIECE OF FURNITURE REMAINING IN THE HOUSE oh-my-lord-there’s-nothing-so-gross-as-finding-a-disgusting-and-filthy-stranger’s-KY-jelly.

(Now you may be wondering, “Why in the HELL did you purchase this house?!”  But just wait and see.  Oh just wait and see.)

Dining Room - BEFORE

Please note: nasty carpet (which is GONE and shall be replaced in just one week) and the black-stained walls, which are cleaned and partially painted and now look like this:

Dining Room - AFTER

Sweet mother of cleanliness!  And you can take that quite literally–my mom and I both scrubbed the ceilings and walls for hours.

Kitchen - BEFORE

This is what the kitchen looked like when the previous owners lived there.  (I won’t even show you the close-up photos I took of the aforementioned unidentifiable orange goo on the ceiling and walls.)

This is what the kitchen looks like with a deep cleaning, some work on the cabinets, and a fresh coat of paint from, you guessed it, Super-James.

Kitchen - AFTER

So the moral of the story?

Next time one of my kids asks me to draw a picture, I’ll say, “Are you sure you don’t want me to hire someone like, say, Super-James to do that?  I mean, I can clean up your crap (literally) like it’s nobody’s business, and, oh yeah, I can install a toilet, little dudes, but I’m not so sure you want me drawing.  Or painting.  Or doing anything that requires an iota of artistic skill.”

My parents–my wonderfully kind and generous parents–have allowed Tim and the kids and I to live in their house for the past five months so as to ease our transition from New York to Ohio.  It’s been marvelous, what with my mom’s cooking and the extra help with the kids and the fact that my own grandparents live under the same roof.  So a toast to them and their wonderfulness and kindness and generosity and marvelous-ness!

But…

… it’s high time that my family mosey on out of here sometime soon.

And here’s why.

The Top 10 Reasons Why I’m Ready to Move into My New Home that Tim and I Have Officially Owned for over One Month:

1. I’m ready to start taking on doula clients, but I can’t do that until I know for sure that I will be living in the same town as my clients.  (We currently live one hour away from our new home.)

2. Tim has a 1 hour and 45 minute commute to and from work every day.  The gas is bad for the environment, and the added time away from the kids makes our co-parenting arrangements somewhat tenuous.  (Okay, and I’ll admit–I may be a bit spoiled compared to some other folks out there, but my tender grey matter just can’t take thirteen hour days with the kids.  JUST.  CAN’T.  TAKE.  IT.)

3. We have this neighbor at the new house who gives us really nasty looks each time she comes home from work.  She has made no effort to be nice or to introduce herself and only interacts with us by shooting us catty little comments on her way from the car to the door.  Comments like, “The lawn looks so much nicer now that it’s mowed, doesn’t it?” *insert sarcastic tone* or, “It’ll be nice when that house hasn’t been sitting empty for so long, won’t it?” *insert cup o’ bitchiness.*   And I just want to move in and give her a reason to quit it with the catty comments.  In fact, I’ve wanted to say to her, “Oh, great!  Are you offering to help us clean the vomit off of the wall upstairs?!  Or perhaps to pull up the carpet in the basement?!  AWESOME!  Here, let me give you a rag and a bucket of bleach solution!”  But I don’t.  Because she’s seven months pregnant.  And I fear that the cleaning-solution fumes may exacerbate the a-hole-itis that the baby’s mother may be bequeathing to him/her.

4. Although  a bitchy neighbor isn’t really a reason to move in, both of our already-super-cool next-door neighbors are reasons enough to move in.  Case in point: they have mowed our lawn and removed a dead tree from the backyard.  And they have responsible college-age children who have already offered to babysit the kids on their breaks from school.  To them I say: YOU’RE HIRED!

5. We will live within two miles of a Jeni’s Ice Cream store.  So if you ever see me in real life, please don’t ask me “when I’m due.”  Just smile and nod knowingly at my Thai Chili ice cream baby bump and keep your words to yourself.

6. The novelty of having sex in the bedroom where I grew up has worn off.  Now it’s just the room where boxes of our crap are piled up and have nowhere to go until we move into that new house that we have owned for over a month.  And that ain’t exactly sexy.

7. I can’t get my poor grandmother to remember that the Cartoon Network is not an appropriate television channel for young children.  She means no harm, but she can’t seem to rid herself of the ideas that 1. kids need television 24-7 and 2. if it’s a cartoon, then it must be for kids.  And so I get a completely whacked-out three-year-old whose brain is spazzing after having watched just five minutes of cartoons with Great-Grandma.  (But I completely forgive her, because she is nearly 80, because she feeds my kids cantaloupe and homemade chicken and noodles about a thousand times a week, and because my kids have the gift of being able to know and love their great-grandmother.)

8. I find it very difficult to suppress my angsty high school self now that I’m living in the same house where I last left my angsty high school self.  It’s as if I’ll have what should be an adult disagreement with my parents and then I’m suddenly drowning in a pool of hormonal tears and blubbering, “But you guys just don’t UNDERSTAND me!!!!”  Oh god, will someone get that girl her copies of On the Road and Quadrophenia already?!

9. But my books and CDs and vinyl are all packed away in a storage locker, so I can’t revisit my hormonal-teenage-tantrum remedies until we’ve moved into the new house.

10. We are only a paint job and a tub-replacement and a carpet installation away from moving into the house.  We’re this close.  Okay, maybe it’s more like   t     h     i     s   close.  But it’s close enough that I’m downright obsessed with planning our move-in strategy.  Not because my parents aren’t marvelous.  Not because I haven’t loved sharing this time with them.

But because my family is ready for a space of our own.

And for weekly visits to Jeni’s Ice Cream.

Tim and I spent several hours at the house yesterday, and “all” I had to show for it was a nearly-entirely-primed kitchen.

Lesson learned?

Priming takes a long time, especially when one is attempting to cover up lavender trim, “ghosted” walls, and grease-stained ceilings.

But at least the streaky primed walls look better than they did before.  (And that’s a sad and sorry testament to just how bad they looked when we closed on the house.)

In any case, after all that priming–and after an ice cream treat at our favorite local shop–something funny happened on the way back home.

I don’t know if it was the effect of an hours-long subjection to paint fumes or of the utterly splendid cup of cherry lambic sorbet that I ate at Jeni’s Ice Cream, but I had what one might call an “epiphany” about my parenting skills.

And that epiphany left me thinking that I am doing well at this whole mothering thing.

While this in and of itself would not constitute an epiphany for most, it is a big one for me.  And I will be the first to admit that I am hopelessly neurotic about the looming question of “whether or not I am a good mom.”  I am (perhaps to the point of narcissism) constantly concerned about what others think of my parenting skills.  It’s as if I think that any time the kids or I do something that can’t be construed as “parental/child perfection” the words “BAD MOM” are suddenly scrawled across my forehead.

I yell when instead I should take a deep breath and step back a minute?  I’m a BAD MOM!

The kids sometimes whine and scream and throw giant fits?  They must have a BAD MOM!

I don’t practice all of the same methods or techniques that all those other seemingly serene and good-choice-making parents make?  BAD FREAKIN’ MOM!

It’s irrational and silly, I know.  It’s actually beyond irrational and silly.

But as Tim and I were making the journey back from our new house to the house where we currently reside (i.e. Chez My Parents), we started talking about a few of the especially cute things that the kids had done in recent weeks, and I began to recognize just how irrational and silly my bad-mom worries were.

Because I realized that I had been holding an unattainably broad conception of “good parenting.”

For the past three-and-almost-four years, I have been thinking that if I do not excel in every aspect of my parenting, then I am somehow deserving of that dreaded “bad mom” moniker.  That if my kid whines more than the next kid, then I am doing a bad job of meeting his needs.  That if I don’t organize “enough” play dates or read “enough” books to my kids or make sure that they get “enough” vegetables each day, then I am shirking my parental duties.  That if I do not instill the perfect forms and levels of justice and peace and tolerance and respect and love in my children, then I am an absolute failure as a mother.

That if I am not a perfect mother, then I am not a good mother.

And my conversation with Tim last night made me realize that one parent’s version of “good parenting” need not be the standard-bearer of parental success for me.  That it is more than acceptable for me to narrow my focus on a handful of hopes and dreams that I have for my children in order to determine whether or not I’m a “good mom.”

That a lack of perfection need not imply a lack of good parenting.

So what actually gave me that epiphany?

Tim and I were talking about how when M (our 3-year-old) was crying earlier in the day, A (our 16-month-old) stopped dead in his tracks, walked over to M, and wrapped his chubby arms around his brother’s neck.

And then about how when M was not even two, he had comforted a crying friend (a two-year-old girl who had recently moved from Serbia to the U.S. and who was not only unfamiliar with the English language but also partially deaf) by performing a finger puppet show for her.  (He even had his elephant puppet proclaim, “It’s alright, Tara, your mommy will be home soon!”)

And then about the many times that our children have offered up consoling hugs and “it’s okays” and “I love yous” and other kind words to others who have been hurt or sad.  And all without any prodding on our part.  And all (at least presumably) springing forth from the love and kindness and compassion that Tim and I have helped to instill in them.

And reflecting upon all of these events finally told me that one of the primary parenting hopes and goals that I have tried to realize in raising my children–to raise kind and compassionate and loving people–is in the process of being actualized.

And that made me think that I may be an alright mom after all.

When last week began, my “handiest” skills were pretty much limited to hammering nails into walls (sometimes crookedly) and pulling nails out of the walls.  Maybe I’d drill a hole here, tighten a screw there, but I had never really undertaken any serious repair projects.  In fact, I was so tool-and-repair-unsavvy that I accidentally referred to a “saw” as a”sword” just last Monday.

(Is it an indication of irony or sheer stupidity that I nonetheless decided to take on this house rehabbing project?  I dunno.)

But when last week ended, I could proudly–very proudly, and very repeatedly–say that I knew how to repair drywall and how to install a toilet.

Measuring and cutting drywall.  Hammering support boards into the wall.  Patching.  Caulking.  Handsaws, screws, nails, and exacto knives.  Wax rings.  Nasty-ass washers and nuts and bolts from the old toilet.  Hooking up the water line to the new toilet.  Attaching the toilet seat and lid.

REPAIRING DRYWALL AND INSTALLING A TOILET, PEOPLE!!!

Have I already mentioned that I am proud of these newly-acquired skills?

And that I like to repeat my “mastery” of them to anyone within listening range?

And so when some guy from the local newspaper (we’ll call him “Dick”)  arrived on my front porch on the night of my repair-conquests and tried to sell me a newspaper subscription by dishing up a very hefty serving of paternalism and sexism, my feminist sensibilities–which were now attached to a person who could REPAIR DRYWALL AND INSTALL A TOILET–became a wee bit enraged.

Dick approached me as my mother and I were conversing with my new next-door neighbor, Cynthia.  Upon discovering that it was I (and not my mother or Cynthia) who was the new home-owner, he identified himself as a employee of the paper and then immediately asked if I was married.

Already, this question annoyed me.  Did the fact that I was married make me more likely to be a literate person?  Someone more interested in keeping up on world affairs?  Or was this question an attempt to direct the salesman to the MAN OF THE HOUSE?

And this question was quickly answered for me because no sooner had I responded that I was, in fact, married, that Dick asked what my husband did for a living.

Not what I did for a living.  Not even whether or not I worked.  Or read.  But what THE MAN OF THE HOUSE did to bring home the bacon. 

I cringed and offered up a wry, “He’s an attorney.”

Dick seemed almost giddy at this response and went on to gush about what my husband is interested in reading and what my husband needs with his morning coffee and how my husband needs me to lock in these subscription rates right now.

And then I–I, who was a FEMINIST WHO COULD NOW REPAIR DRYWALL AND INSTALL A TOILET–burst forth with a wave of disgust and frustration and asked (this) Dick, “Who are you to tell me what my husband is and isn’t interested in?!  Or what he needs?!  How do you know that I don’t want to read the paper?!  What about what I’m interested in?!”

(In my perfect outburst that I re-created in my mind, I also went on to shout at Dick about how if he’s going to go and get on with his bad sexist self why doesn’t he at least try and assume that the little wifey wants those Sunday coupons–which I do by the way–and how I do work and I do appreciate the newspaper and how even if I didn’t have additional work besides raising the kids I might still want to read the paper because stay-at-home moms care about the news too, you jackass and how I now might want to read the classified ads for power tools because I CAN REPAIR DRYWALL AND INSTALL TOILETS, DID YOU KNOW THAT?!)

Dick looked stunned for a moment and muttered something about how he used to work for AIG, but then you know how that went, and now he’s working for the Dispatch selling papers. 

Was that supposed to excuse his sexist assumptions???

Even if his sob-story did leave me feeling an iota of sadness for him–but HEY, at least he has a job in a state with a 10%+ unemployment rate!!!–that iota of sadness was soon swept away when Dick asked to see my left ring finger in an apparent attempt to size up the MAN OF THE HOUSE’S salary and/or my wifely sense of materialism.

What could that possibly tell you about my need for a newspaper subscription, Dick?!

I can REPAIR DRYWALL AND INSTALL A TOILET, Dick.

What’s more, I have a brain in addition to having boobs and a vagina.

A little bit more respect.  Please.