September 6, 2017

This first blog entry was meant to be a confession, introducing myself and my less than socially acceptable thoughts about motherhood. It was meant to be irreverent and just blasphemous enough that you might allow yourself to silently nod your head yes and maybe even smile.

But, as is so often the case, the plan is interrupted by the now, and while my feelings about the now are decidedly un-wry and un-funny, and deliver none of the liberating pleasure that I envisioned in writing this thing, if you and I are to embark on this relationship, you as reader and I as flawed mother providing an espresso shot of catharsis with my less than Carol Brady thoughts, then honesty is the only policy and I must write about the present.

But first a brief and bleak backstory of early days with my husband Dennis’s and my little boy, Dash.

Dash was born a tiny baby.  He came home weighing only four pounds after a mundanely harrowing birth in St. Luke’s Roosevelt hospital. Despite his size, he was term and amazingly strong though he had no eyebrows, eyelashes or hair atop his head.  He was the size of a free range, hormone and antibiotic free organic chicken. He looked much like the figure at the end of the first Encounters Close movie— unfinished… a crustacean without its shell. As my mom would say, “He was no beauty.”

He was healthy, alert, and one hundred percent committed to embarking on his new adventure.  I was serotonin–deprived, deeply depressed, and ambivalent (on a good day) about my new identity as a mother.  I dreamt of being admitted to a mental ward where I could just sleep for days, or had the more outrageous fantasy of taking a Greyhound bus somewhere and assuming a new identity and life.

How we all muddled through those first 8 months is a story for another time. But today that long dormant wish to flee the scene, fueled by those thoughts from close to seven years ago of “I’m not good for him; he’d be better without me,” and “Dennis knows what to do; I’m making everything worse,” reawakened in my coward’s heart.

My vision of removing myself in mind, spirit and body from our current situation resembles my former fantasy of renaming myself Juanita and working in a diner in New Mexico in that it is: a) an absurd idea that my feelings of being burdened by my kid’s suffering would ever melt away and, b) far from what I’d wish for were I to conjure an alternative life (I’d much rather be Ira Glass).

If only someone could just “fix it,” the way Martin Sheen used to say to Toby or CJ on West Wing when a nuclear bomb was soaring toward North Korea.

But I neither want suggestions on how to “fix it” nor someone to step in and take over. And I’m going to take a leap of faith and assume that you’re reading this because you too have signed up for making motherhood even harder— by realizing there are no easy fixes for helping our children through filthy rotten miserable chapters in their lives.

Our filthy rotten miserable phase is based in the reality of living on the Lower East Side in New York City.

Since early July, after seeing a brutal fight on a basketball court and then being frightened by wacked-out street people expressing their craziness in a variety of ways, Dash doesn’t want to go outside ….doesn’t want to play soccer (until recently an obsession of his), doesn’t want to see his friends at the playground, panics when he’s outside having to wait for a subway, bus, or even to cross the street.  He’s terrified of what he may see and doesn’t want to frequent the restaurant where he once, to celebrate its third-year anniversary, danced and sang on the bar. Out and about he’s a changed child from the effusive gregarious curious person he was months ago. Inside he vacillates between being his old self and being furious with the world and us. He wishes he were a baby again.

Formerly our life was in the neighborhood, on the street, bumping into people, joining pickup games, and having spontaneous encounters out and about. Our social life and community lie on the streets of the East Village, and only more so in summer.

After a week of conceiving of every strategy to both get Dash outside and then to cope with whatever came up once we were out, my sadness, frustration, and irritation reached a pinnacle Friday. When Dennis took over and I finally got out alone, unencumbered by Dash’s fears and my reaction to them, it was only then when the old feelings of flight flooded in.