Park Slope Reader

Nicole Kear

WHAT HAPPENS IN THE SPRINKLERS . . .

By Filed Under: Dispatches From Babyville Tagged With: , ,

When I think “summer in the city,” I think “sprinklers.”

I know Memorial Day is the official start of summer, but in my mind, it’s the day they turn the sprinklers on at our local playground.

[pullquote]The sprinklers are like kiddie Las Vegas. What happens in the sprinklers stays in the sprinklers. [/pullquote]Sprinklers, like bubbles, are the kind of thing that hold children in thrall, but hold absolutely no appeal for adults. It’s not just young children that delight in sprinklers, either; even kids dancing on the precipice of adolescence get into them. I can’t decide if it’s the sort of thing you genuinely lose the taste for, like Pop Rocks, or if we grown-ups don’t see the appeal because we don’t partake. Maybe if I gave the sprinklers a whirl, I’d find myself shrieking with delight too.

My kids clock a lot of time in the sprinklers in the summer; we pop by for a soak nearly every day. Which makes it somewhat inconceivable that every time we arrive, I am not prepared. I never have any gear.

It’s as if the sprinklers are a total surprise, every time. Like, “Oh wow, look at that. Wish I would’ve known. I would’ve brought our stuff!”

If I were the sort to invoke expressions like, “There are two kinds of parents in the world,” I might do so now. I might suggest there’s one kind who always comes equipped with bathing suits and towels and even, yes — how do they do it? — water shoes. And then there’s the kind that just lets the kids get soaked while fully dressed.

That would be reductive, of course. There are infinitely more kinds of parents. I, myself, am the kind that, with huge, even excessive effort, manages to bring our sprinkler gear to the playground 2 to 4 times before finding that the whole proposition is, let’s be honest, destined to fail, and thus, destined to make me feel terrible. So about a week into summer, I decide we’ll just abandon the ambitious plans and be content, again, to get wet while clothed.

The trouble is, once you forgo gear, you enter a hazy and perplexing landscape filled with questions. The Rules of Sprinkler Conduct are far from clear . . . or instinctive.
Questions abound.

Regarding sprinkler apparel:

If your child is young, is it ok for him or her to go in the sprinkler in their diaper? Or underwear? Is the graduation to underwear an indication that your child is too old to be half-naked in the sprinkler?

Also, footwear.
Do they really need shoes in the sprinkler? How long do tetanus shots last for anyway?

And then, water toys.
If you rinse it out thoroughly, is an abandoned Italian ice squeezey cup an acceptable replacement for a water pail?

In point of fact, there is only one thing I know for sure about the sprinkler, one golden inviolable rule that must never, ever be broken.

That rule is:

Do not drink the sprinkler water.

DO NOT DRINK THE SPRINKLER WATER.

“Why not?” asked my four-year-old daughter, when I bellowed these words at her one afternoon. She was in her underwear and a T shirt, barefooted, splashing happily in a gargantuan sprinkler puddle at our playground. It’s never been clear to me whether these puddles are intentional, a purposeful part of the “natural landscape” aesthetic, or accidental, the result of unspeakably gross things clogging the drain. Either way, it’s not the sort of puddle you want your child to submerge herself in. So, my skin was crawling when she plopped down right in the middle of it, as if she was in an infinity pool in the Bahamas. But when she lowered her mouth to the surface of the puddle and readied to take a big slurp, I jumped to action.

“No! Stop! DO NOT DRINK THAT WATER!”

And she asked, “Why not?”

“It’s dirty,” I told her. Stupidly. Like a rookie.

“No it’s not,” she retorted, lowering her head again. I guess her thinking was that because she could still see through the water, it was clean enough to consume.

“It’s full of COXSACKIE!” I told her urgently. “You don’t want to get coxsackie, do you? Again?”

When the going gets tough, the tough invoke coxsackie.

I’ve been parenting for over 12 years, and in that time, we’ve had our fsir share of inconvenient illnesses. We had emergency appendicitis on the eve of an international trip. We’ve had Scarlet fever on a trans-continental flight. We’ve had the All-Family Stomach Bug on Valentine’s Day. But the time my youngest daughter developed coxsackie on our 12-hour drive to North Carolina, well, that will live in infamy. It wasn’t something any of us would like to repeat.

I have no evidence that my daughter contracted coxsackie from the sprinkler. I’m not an infectious disease expert. I can barely even spell coxsackie. But I know the bodily excretions through which the virus is transmitted and considering how many kids I’ve seen relieve themselves directly into the sprinklers, it seems likely there’s other evacuations happening in that vicinity too.

The sprinklers are like kiddie Las Vegas. What happens in the sprinklers stays in the sprinklers. Unless it’s coxsackie. That, you take with you.

So, there will be no drinking of sprinkler water. And besides that, well, really anything goes.

After all, it’s triple digits and this is what we city folk have for splish-n-splash fun. This is our seashore. This is our water park. It gets the job done, cooling kids off, and it keeps them busy too. Whether they’re in swimsuits and water shoes or just barefooted and dripping like sewer rats. Either way.

 

Nicole C. Kear is the author of Have No Fear! and Sticks and Stones, the first two books in The Fix-It Friends, a chapter book series for children. You can find our more at nicolekear.com.

Lovely illustration by Heather Heckel

THE FIX-IT FRIENDS: HAVE NO FEAR

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This season’s dispatch from Babyville goes straight out to the kids! Here’s a sneak peek into my new chapter book series, The Fix-It Friends, published this May by Macmillan Kids’ Imprint.

 

The idea for this series came from years of watching my kids and their pals wrestle with challenges, both big and small. I thought it would be awesome, and fun, and helpful to write a series of books which showed smart, tough, kind kids working together to solve real problems. So I did. And here’s a little glimpse for you!

 


Chapter 1
My name’s Veronica Conti and I’m seven. That means I’ve had seven whole years to learn things. Here’s what I’ve figured out so far:

1. Everything tastes better when you put whipped cream on it. Even peas. Even—blegh! ugh! mercy!—broccoli.

2. When your big brother is acting super annoying, just pretend that a UFO is about to touch down any second and steal him. It makes you feel a lot better.

3. Everyone has problems.

Even worms have problems. I learned that when I tried to give my pet worm Walter a suntan. I left him on a big rock for a few hours, and when I came back, he was as dead as a doornail.

Grown-ups think kids don’t have problems. They think just because you’re a kid, your life is easy-peasy, all butterflies and rainbows and whipped cream for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Ha!

I have a whole bunch of problems:

1. My big brother, Jude, who is nine.

2. Homework.

3. My dad’s allergic to dogs, so I can’t have one even though I really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really want one.

4. Did I mention Jude?

Thankfully, I’m pretty great at solving problems. Which is why I decided to start the Fix-It Friends. Maya was my first client. In fact, Maya was sort of the whole reason I started the group to begin with.

I met Maya on the first day of second grade. At recess, which is my favorite part of school. The rest of school can be pretty boring.

“It can’t be all boring!” my mom always says, as cheery and bright as a big yellow sunflower.

“Oh yes, it can.”

“What about writing workshop?”

“Writing makes my hand hurt.”

“Or reading?”

“Reading too much gives me a headache.”

“Or math?”

“Are you kidding?” I say. “I’d rather eat a bathtub full of broccoli than do subtraction.”

“Broccoli is very high in calcium,” my mom says.

“Not the point, Mom,” I remind her.

“What about recess?

”

She’s got me there. Recess is the super-supreme best. It’s when I get to see all my friends and turn cartwheels and jump rope and play tag, which is my all-time favorite! These are the people I play tag with almost every day:

1. Cora, who is my best friend. She has naturally curly hair, which is red, and freckles on her cheeks. If she were a dog, she would be a poodle. Sometimes I get jealous of her because I have always wanted red hair and curly hair and freckles and she has all three, which kind of isn’t fair. She says she is sometimes jealous of my hair, which is straight and blond, but I think she is just being polite. Cora is always polite. She loves school, even the most boring parts like practicing penmanship.

2. Camille, who is Cora’s twin sister. They’re identical. The really weird thing is that they have two five-year-old brothers named Bo and Lou who are twins, too! I am not even kidding. Camille has curly red hair just like Cora’s, but her hair is always cut short, and it’s a lot messier. Sometimes I find bits of twigs and leaves in her hair, and once there was even a big acorn in there! Camille is a whiz with balls, especially basketballs. She can spin one on her fingertip like a pro! If she were a dog, I think she’d be a cocker spaniel.

3. Minerva, who everyone calls Minnie for short. Her grandma is from Puerto Rico, so she taught Minnie how to speak Spanish, and Minnie can say absolutely anything. She has taught me how to say important stuff in Spanish, like “No brócoli para mí gracias. Si me lo como, yo podria morir ,” which means “No broccoli for me, thanks. If I eat it, I could die.”

 

Minnie can play the piano with both hands at the same time. In fact, she is so good at the piano that she can sometimes play without even looking at her hands! She has silky black hair, which she wears in two braids, and she is very tall and skinny, just like a greyhound.

4. Noah, who is the shortest boy in the second grade and also the fastest runner. He reminds me of a beagle because of his enormous brown eyes and floppy brown hair. Noah is the quiet type, which is my favorite type for a boy to be. He is kind of mysterious, but I do know a few things about him. He absolutely hates when people talk about him being short, and he absolutely loves playing soccer. He wears a soccer jersey to school every single day. I think it’s because of his dad, who used to be a famous soccer star in Brazil. Now his dad has his own sports show named after him, called The Rafael Rocha Radio Hour, so I think he is still kind of famous . . . or his voice is, anyway.

So that’s my tag group, and we have been playing together since first grade. Sometimes other kids join our tag game, and sometimes Jude comes over with his best friend, Ezra, and they teach us new kinds of tag like Air Tag and Backwards Tag and Dog Tag. Whenever we play Dog Tag, I’m a golden retriever because if I were a dog, that’s the breed I would be. Guess what kind Jude pretends to be? None! He is always the dogcatcher.

Usually, though, it’s just the five of us who play. Except if one of us is sick or injured. If you are really sick or injured, you go to the nurse, but if you are just a tad hurt, you sit on top of your lunch box by the fence.

I feel so sorry for the people who have to do that. It happened to me once, when I knocked my head into Camille’s head and we both had to spend the rest of recess sitting by the fence. It was pure torture, I tell you!

So there I was, on the first day of second grade, at recess with the tag group. Except Minerva was missing.

“Hey, where’s Minnie?” I asked.

“She has a headache, so Miss Tibbs told her to sit by the fence,” squeaked Cora.

Cora has a super-squeaky voice. I can imitate her voice, and it always cracks her up. She sort of sounds like she’s a mouse trapped in a girl’s body. What makes it extra funny is that Camille’s voice is real low and raspy, like a crocodile’s.

“Minnie is by the fence?” I asked.

Cora nodded.

I gasped. Gasping is my favorite sound effect. It makes people sit up and pay attention.

“Then what are we WAITING FOR?” I shouted. “Our friend needs us!!

”

I dashed over to the fence. Sure enough, there was Minnie. Her hair was in two neat braids as usual, and she was wearing a beautiful red headband, too. Minnie looked tired. She was leaning her chin on her hand.

“HERE I AM, MINNIE!!” I shouted.

She winced.

“Oh NO!” I yelled. “What can I DO?”

“Well, maybe you could talk a little quieter?” she asked with a smile.

“Oh yes, of course!” I whispered. “Hey, maybe you have a headache from that headband. It might be pinching your brain.” I love headbands, but I can never wear them for more than two minutes because they make me feel like a giant is squeezing my head in his fist.

The other kids ran up and asked Minnie questions, like had someone been using a jackhammer too close to her, or had she eaten extra cold ice cream too fast? But I wasn’t listening, because that’s when I noticed Maya.

 

HAVE NO FEAR!
By Nicole C. Kear
Illustrated by Tracy Dockray

 

Want to read more of Have No Fear!, and the second book in The Fix-It Friends series, Sticks and Stones? Look for them at your local bookstore or library! To find out more about the series, and play cool games, visit fixitfriendsbooks.com

Holiday Post-Mortem

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Now that the holidays are behind us, and I have the benefit of hindsight, I find it an ideal time to conduct a postmortem, in order to assess the main causes contributing to the one-of-a-kind stress that rolls around every December. By Nicole Caccavo Kear, Art by Heather Heckel

I wish I could pen an article about how to reduce holiday stress, because I think that would be a very useful piece that might improve your quality of life in some small but important way.

Regrettably, I’m unqualified to write such an article. If this last Christmas has taught me anything, it’s that I am terrible at stress reduction. I am, however, excellent at stress amplification. And, also, sarcasm. And so I offer you . . .

There are many things I have no idea how to do – use the timer on my oven, for instance, or change the security settings on my Iphone. But if there is one thing I’m excellent at, it is maximizing stress. Choosing the most ambitious, complicated and anxiety-orovoking way to do things. When it comes to Holiday Stress, I’m the nonpareil.

 

Anatomy of Holiday Stress

 

1. The Making of Holiday Cards

The way so many of us kick off our season of stress! It’s unnecessary, vaguely eco-hostile, budget-sucking and, let’s face it, kind of an imposition on the people you send to, who have to find a festive way to deal with the card onslaught.

Stress is maximized when and if you use the cheapest photo card company, with the least user-friendly design platform. This will ensure it takes at least three hours to make a crappy card with lousy fonts you don’t even like.

For extra agida, don’t get around to making the card until mid- December, matters are exacerbated, as you will stress every day the package fails to arrive in the mail. This will also necessitate that you rush like a deranged person to address the envelopes as soon as they arrive.

Pro tip: Lowball your order so you end up with too few cards and have to agonize over who will get a card and who will not. This will cause long-term stress, too, as you’ll wonder for weeks, months, or even years if one of the people who didn’t make the cut is bearing a grudge against you.

2. A Trip to Santaland

Nothing kicks holiday stress into high gear like a trip to Santaland at Macy’s. Maximum unpleasantness can be achieved if you go without your spouse, and take all your kids, even the middle schooler who hasn’t believed in Santa in half a decade. In fact, that child will lay the foundation for Santaland stress by constant referencing Santaland’s “blatant consumerism.” The middle child elevates who has zero tolerance for standing still or waiting in line. And whatever you do, take your four year-old because not only is she the one most likely to be terrified of Santa and beg to leave just as you’ve gotten to the front of the line but nothing says Stressed Out at Christmas as much as your preschooler disappearing into massive mobs at Macy’s.

Pro tip: Use your time-tested, fail-proof, secret Santaland shortcut– it won’t work and your stress will be exacerbated by the fact that it takes you by surprise.

3. Buying a Christmas Tree

A real one, naturally. This will require you to re-invent the wheel every year, and also feel guilt at the small part you played in de-forestation. Then, too, there’s the trouble of cleaning up hundreds of little needles, watering the tree and constantly worrying about it catching your apartment on fire. Let your children trim the tree, ideally with precious and fragile heirlooms.

Pro tip: Make a big deal about the great honor of placing the star atop the tree. That way, your three kids can argue about who gets to do it, and two thirds of them will be disgruntled.

4. The Making of Christmas Cookies with Your Kids

You may be tempted to pick a simple cookie, but if you really want to burn out, choose the Industry Standard for Stressful Baking With Children – the sugar cookie. This baking process has four different phases– mixing dough, cutting shapes, baking, and decorating – but appears deceptively simple, thus robbing you of the recognition for your great labor.

Pro Tip: Make icing by sifting confectioner’s sugar into boiling water. This variety of icing gives you a window of approximately three minutes to apply before it hardens, and is rendered useless. If there’s one thing more stressful than baking with small children, it’s baking with small children, fast!

5. Travel

Here is where maximizing stress gets tricky. Different modes of transportation offer different kinds of stress, and it’s hard to tell which is worse. On the one hand, driving all day in the close quarters of a clown car, with the near-guarantee of traffic, and the high probability of hazardous winter weather – that’s classic holiday stress. On the other hand, there are stressors that only air travel can offer: the total lack of control, huge delays and last-minute cancellations, turbulence, dealing with overworked and irritable airport staff, and, of course, the other passengers on the plane, who might, at any moment, freak out for any number of reasons and derail your whole holiday.

Pro tip: Don’t bring a change of clothes for your little one who is one hundred percent guaranteed to spill the complimentary beverage all over herself and probably you, too.

6. Believing in Santa

Santa means stress for the whole family. The kids can worry about ending up on the naughty list, to say nothing of having a fat old guy watching them while they sleep. Your stress as parents is both practical and emotional. Perpetuating the myth of Santa requires you to wait until as late as possible before stuffing the stockings and putting the gifts under the tree, and you will worry all the while that one of the kids will stumble in, Cindy-Lou-Who-style, and catch you red-handed. But that’s not all! You also get to worry, every Christmas, that this is the year they’ll ask whether Santa is real and you will have to break their hopeful little hearts by telling them the truth. It doesn’t get more stressful than that.

 

Nicole C. Kear is the author of the forthcoming chapter books for children, Have No Fear! and Sticks and Stones, the first two books in a series entitled The Fix-It Friends (Imprint, May 2017).

The Perfect Party

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Madonna dance-off. Limbo contest. Cannoli cream cake. 

Year after year of my childhood, that was the formula for my birthday party, which took place in the basement of my Staten Island home. It was a three-prong party plan that worked. Well, four prongs, really. Just before the cake was served, came the Chaplin-esque birthday cake pratfall, courtesy of my father. He’d walk down the stairs to the basement, carefully holding the cake box aloft, only to stumble at the bottom, throwing himself down the last few steps and tossing the box extravagantly into the air. The crowd would gasp, and he’d jump to his feet, open the box and reveal that IT WAS EMPTY! Ha! Ha HA! No need to worry, the cannoli cream cake was intact, upstairs.

So:

Madonna dance-off.
Limbo contest.
Father pratfall.
Cannoli cream cake.

After the age of 11, I could have done without the pratfall, but generally speaking, it was a good party. The formula worked. I am reminded of this as I enter the winter, also known as Kear Family Birthday Season. Three kids. Three birthdays. Lots of headaches.

I’m not the sort of parent prone to observing wistfully, “Things were so much simpler when we were kids.” First of all, of course things were simpler. We were kids.  Really, though, I’m just not terribly interested in adjudicating which time period was better/ easier/ simpler/ less stressful. The circumstances of our lives and our world are too fluid to make it a satisfying enterprise. Besides, since I’m not the proud owner of a time machine, there’s not much I can do about it anyway.

If I were that sort, though, I’d definitely observe that birthday celebrations were simpler when I was a kid. Of course, it might just be that birthday celebrations were, and are, simpler when you inhabit a living space in which more than 260 square feet is allocated to each family member (yes, I’ve done the math).

We just don’t have the space to host a birthday celebration at home. This is the party line.
It is part true and part me playing the NYC No Space Card.
“No space” is the golden excuse that comes free with your exorbitant rent in New York City.  I’d say it’s one of the hidden perks except that I think it’s the only one. Regardless, it’s a goody.
Unwanted house guest angling to crash at your place?
“I wish we could but we just don’t have the space.”
Your spouse planning to purchase some hideous piece of furniture on the level of When Harry Met Sally’s wagon wheel:
“I wish we could but we just don’t have the space.”
Your child begging for a dog, or a baby brother:
“I wish we could but we just don’t have the space.”
The No Space card is so valuable it almost makes up for not having any space.

But the truth is, even if I had all the space in the world, even if I lived in Staten Island, I would try to get out of hosting a kid party. Because of the cleaning.

It’s not that I’m against cleaning. For an adult cocktail party, I’d happily scour my bathroom like Joan Crawford in Mommie Dearest. But tirelessly cleaning my apartment, top to bottom, only to have a horde of children obliterate it again, within minutes, has always seemed to me a task that only a dupe like Sisyphus would take on. The pointlessness demoralizes me.

For these compelling reasons, I’ve avoided hosting parties at our apartment for over a decade. This would have been impossible financially – since paying for a kiddie birthday party in Park Slope costs what weddings do in other parts of the country – except that my grandmother’s apartment building happens to have a party room.

The party room is the hero of this tale. The party room, spacious and clean and practically free, has made it possible to celebrate my children’s birthdays …  not to mention baptisms, first holy communions, Halloweens and whatever random holidays they’ve had a hankering to observe.

We’ve thrown so many birthday parties at the old party room that my husband, the kids and I are nothing short of a well-oiled party machine. We can set up a party in a tight fifteen minutes if need be.

My husband does streamers. It has taken him years to perfect his streaming technique, and to describe it would be to reveal trade secrets I am not at liberty to disclose. Let’s just say his moves are as intricate as a Simone Biles floor routine: double stranding and full twists and three-point-anchoring. It’s not for novices.

The kids are on balloons. Thankfully, they’ve spent their whole lives training their lungs for the task. At least, that’s what I surmise all the yelling was for.

I set up the folding tables with juice and snacks and paper products. I hang up the charming homemade birthday signs. I spread age-appropriate art supplies and activities in key locations around the room.

Then David turns on the music and the party is on.

We’ve perfected the party the way you nail down anything, through trial and error

PInata?

No, oh no, never again.

Karaoke machine?

Yes, indeed, well worth the investment.

Finding the right number of guests has involved a learning curve, too. Instructive, indeed, was the year I let my daughter invite everyone her heart desired and everybody came, creating a level of mayhem not witnessed since the sinking of the Titanic. She ended up hiding under the table, in tears.

Then, only a month later, there was the party for my other daughter, in which we catapulted to the other end of the guest list spectrum. So eager was I not to repeat my over-inviting mistake, that I severely under-invited kids. That’s not exactly accurate. I invited all the kids in her day care class. I just intentionally threw the party at a time when I knew no one would be able to come. It worked. Only two guests made it. The three toddlers ended up overwhelmed in the large room and I couldn’t handle the strain of having to make conversation with the two parents in attendance. My daughter ended up under the table, in tears. I felt like joining her.

Of course, no sooner did we stumble upon the perfect party formula then the kids outgrew it. Now that my older kids are tweens, it’s all about the sleepover birthday party. And sleepovers, I have found, can’t be shot on location. They are not an away game. You can’t outsource sleepovers. You have to have sleepovers at your house.

I have tried to play the No Space card, but my kids are old enough now to play their own cards. The Guilt cards. The Childhood-Is-So-Fleeting-And-Before-You-Know-It-You’ll-Wish-We-Were-Still-Taking-Up-More-Than-Our-Allotted-260-Square Feet Card.

I’ve got nothing that can trump that one.

And so we begin a whole new trial and error process. Which, I guess, Is parenting in a nutshell.

Nicole C. Kear is the author of the memoir Now I See You (St. Martin’s Press, 2014). Her chapter book series for children, The Fix-It Friends, will be published by Macmillan Kids’ Imprint in spring 2017.

Running Free

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When I saw a ball coming towards me as a kid, my first thought was: “run.” Not towards the ball but away from it. If the ball was big enough, I might use it to sit on while reading a book. That was about the extent of my experience with balls. I was the archetypal bookworm, knocking over huge displays of breakfast cereal at the grocery store when I walked right into them while reading. One can certainly be both a bookworm and a sports star, just not if one is me.

Though I didn’t know him at the time, my husband was precisely the same way. He was neither asthmatic nor French, but I do imagine him as a little Proust, scribbling feverishly in a notebook, crying for his mother and lingering over cookies. It’s no surprise then, that our children, aged 11, 9 and 4, are ball-averse story junkies.

In general, I love that my kids share one of my great passions. It allows for easy bonding and there’s always someone to talk to about the latest This American Life podcast. Our shared, sedentary interest is also very convenient on those days when I am thoroughly, ruthlessly exhausted – which is to say, pretty much every day.

When they were young (and still with my preschooler) hypnosis via story-telling was the only way I could distract my kids into doing things they didn’t want to do, such as eating, sleeping, going to the bathroom, walking places, and, occasionally breathing.

The one drawback, though, is that the fine arts of reading, writing, talking and listening do not afford children a ton of physical exercise. And as everyone knows, daily physical exertion is necessary for a healthy lifestyle. Perhaps more importantly, daily physical exertion is necessary for sleep.

This is an important fact when you consider that in addition to being ball-averse, my kids are also sleep-averse. The level of exertion necessary to wear my kids out is extraordinarily high, which is somewhat ironic. It is as though jet fuel courses in their veins instead of blood. Physical romps which cause other children to fall alssep on the subway ride home have no affect whatsoever on my children’s level of alertness. I have no explanation for this. I do, however, have a remedy, namely: Run them ragged.

When you’re trying to think up ways to thoroughly drain the charge out from your kids’ batteries, the first thing you think of is: balls. So, recently, I bought the biggest ball I could find and I dragged my children to a nearby basketball court.

“Play with this ball!” I instructed, like I was a mom from Mars impersonating a human. “Throw it in the basket! It is fun!”

And they did, for two and a half minutes. But they soon tired of the endeavor. Sometimes the ball went in, and sometimes it didn’t and either way it seemed to feel about the same.

So I tried a new game.

“Chase it! Get it!” I instructed, throwing the ball away from my kids. In the dog community, I believe this game is referred to as “Fetch” and it’s a huge hit. It’s less popular well with human children. 

I did not, however, give up. I took the dog game one step further, unleashing our family’s ace in the hole –imagination.

“Let’s pretend the ball is a dog who’s running away from us!” I told my four-year-old, bouncing the ball away from her. “Fido, you naughty little doggie! Come back here!” And, lo and behold, she ran after it, chortling with glee. But ten minutes later, the novelty had worn off.

“Run, run, run!” I exhorted the kids.

“Why?” they asked.

“You’re kids!” I reminded them. “You don’t need a reason to run! It’s supposed to be what you do. A wolf howls. A bird flies. Children run.”

And that’s when my 11-year-old said: “Let’s play tag.”

As a child, I was not a huge fan of tag. I was too busy inventing soap operas for my Barbies to enact, and gossiping with my imaginary friends.

I wasn’t a big fan of tag as a child but I am a big fan now. It involves constant, ceaseless running, which dovetails nicely with my maternal agenda. It is a game that both an 11-year-old and a 4-year-old can enjoy. And it requires no equipment, making it totally free.

But the real reason I love tag is that it’s one of those games you can only truly enjoy in childhood. You reach a certain age, and the appeal just evaporates. I like a good chase scene . . . but only if I’m watching it in a blockbuster while sitting down and shoving popcorn in my mouth. The kids, though, want to be the stars of the chase scene. It’s exciting. It’s invigorating. It’s high stakes.

I sat on a bench at the park and watched the kids play tag. It was a stunning early summer morning – the sun warming but not yet oppressive. There was a delicious breeze that rustled the leaves and almost made me feel as if I lived in the countryside. My kids each bent down on one knee and stuck their feet together.

“Bubble gum bubble gum in a dish, how many pieces do you wish?” my son began – but my littlest one interrupted him. She is wont to pipe up whenever the opportunity presents itself and frequently even when it doesn’t.

“Let me do it! Let ME say the words!” she insisted. And then: ”Daffy Daffy duck eating apple pie. He sat on a rock and he cried because it hurt his butt! You’re it!”

This last bit was directed to my nine-year-old, who accepted the mantle of “It.”

And they were off.

I sit on the bench and watch them run, their matching golden manes glinting in the sun. Their feet – big and little – pounding the pavement hard. Their arms pumping.

“I’m gonna get you!” my daughter, “It,” shrieks, panting
and laughing.

“Ahhhhhh!” shriek the others, looking over the shoulders, a thrilled grin stretching taut the muscles of their mouths.

They laugh as they run. And I laugh too, from a vicarious exhilaration. They’re alive and ignited and just so free.

And also because they’ll sleep come nighttime.

Nicole C. Kear is the author of the memoir Now I See You (St. Martin’s Press, 2014). Her chapter book series for children, The Fix-It Friends, will be published by Macmillan Kids’ Imprint in spring 2017.

THE MOTHER’S DAY MINDFIELD

By Filed Under: Dispatches From Babyville Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

In my first few years as a mother, I totally fell for the Mother’s Day hype. It’s very name, and the Kay jewelers commercials that run constantly, led one to believe that it’s a day in which those who constantly cater to the needs of others finally have their needs catered to, the one day among the other 364 in which mothers are given their due, honored for the terrific martyrs they are.

Awesome idea. Stellar. Too bad it’s a load of malarkey. I should clarify here that I’m a holiday person. I make homemade costumes for Halloween and throw elaborate themed birthday parties for my kids. I hurtle myself headlong into Christmas, like a moony teenager falling in love for the first time. Once, when my kids and I boarded a bus only to discover the meter was broken and no fare required, I declared it “Free Bus Day” and we sang jubilant songs on the theme, on and off all day.

I like celebrations. And I especially like celebrations in which the person being celebrated is me.

I respect, but do not understood, folks who try to ignore their birthdays, people who forbid their spouses and co-workers to make a big deal. David, my husband, is one such person, and it caused some arguments in our early years together.

[pullquote]

I’VE RECONCILED MYSELF TO THE FACT THAT I WILL NEVER GET A WHOLE DAY OF HUGS AND KISSES AND GRATITUDE.  BUT I CAN GET FIVE TO TEN MINUTES. 

[/pullquote]He has a particularly strong aversion to surprise parties, which I discovered when I threw him one for his twenty-third birthday in our living room. I convinced him to take a nap, and while he was sleeping, I hung streamers, sneaked out the German Chocolate Cake I’d spent two hours baking according to his mother’s recipe, and ushered in the guests. When everything was ready, I woke him from a dead sleep by crying: “The kitchen sink! It’s flooding! Come quick!” Still half asleep, he stumbled into the living room in his boxers and T-shirt and when everyone yelled “Surprise!” he about-faced with nary a word and marched right back into the bedroom.

Looking back, my surprise party plan was not as well-conceived as I’d thought. I nailed the surprise part—the party part, not so much.

Of course, in marriages we give our partners what we want. I have been waiting patiently for several decades for someone to throw me a surprise party—for my birthday, Mother’s Day, International Women’s Day, even Free Bus Day, I’m not picky.

Sometimes, I wonder if maybe David has been planning a surprise party all this time, and he’s just playing a long game, so that I’ll be absolutely flabbergasted when it happens. It’ll be Mother’s Day in my seventy-sixth year of life and David will contrive for me to play mah jong with my girlfriends (by that time, I will have started playing mah jong and calling my ladies “girlfriends”). But when I arrive, instead of being greeted just by Ethel and Martha and Frances (my friends’ names will age along with them), I’ll be greeted by a room packed full of friends, my children, my grandchildren, maybe even the barista of my favorite coffee joint, who’s always thought of me as a mother figure. The mayor might swing by for a minute, say a few words.

There will be not only a chocolate fountain but a prosecco fountain and a marble bust in the exact likeness of me. This will all be possible because one of my three kids will have become a billionaire, having invented the cure for the common cold. After everyone yells “Surprise!” David will turn to face me, leaning on his walker, and he will say: “All these years, you thought we were slacking off, but we were really planning this. Happy Mother’s Day “

And I will finally feel satisfied on Mother’s Day. I will finally feel adequately honored.

It is no surprise that on a recent Mother’s Day, David’s card to me read: “I love you. I hope you have a great day. Just manage your expectations.”

For my part, I think my needs are fairly simple. While I would certainly enjoy a ticker tape parade, I don’t expect one. All I want are heartfelt, homemade cards from each of my children, some kind of dessert with so many calories it’s illegal in some states, and the privilege of choosing the afternoon’s activity.

Of course, I can’t help but hope that, on this one day, my kids will tone down the bickering, or even eliminate it—for one day, how hard is that? I can’t help but dream that they might toss me a moment of gratitude, in the vein of, “Thank you for your joie de vivre and the priceless gift of hope”—that, and maybe pick up their dirty clothes off the bathroom floor.

I always tell my kids that “practice makes perfect—or at least, better” and this is true of Mother’s Day celebrations, as well. Over the past eleven years, David and I have gotten better at hopping around the Mother’s Day minefield, without detonating any explosives.

The primary lesson David had to learn was that it is his job to oversee the children’s card-making. This came as something of a surprise to him. It was a little like watching the sausages get made.

When the kids were in nursery school or Pre K, this was a non-issue because their teachers made the construction of such cards mandatory. Those cards were the best, the Rolls Royce of Mother’s Day cards. Quality materials, like heavy weight card stock and tempera paint, were used. Time was devoted to the enterprise. The cards were both funny and sweet, including phrases like: “Today, I wish for you a donkey!” and “I lov u mame beecaws u ar nis and pretee and giv me candee.”

But when the children were either too young for too old for nursery school, they fell into a dead zone of cardlessness. A two-year-old will not think to make a card for her mother. A six-year-old will think to do it but lack the follow-through to make it happen, hatching extraordinary plans and then getting distracted, permanently, by a stale gummy bear under the couch. Thus, there was one Mother’s Day early on in which I waited and waited for the official Presentation Of the Cards and alas, I waited in vain.

“Why didn’t you have the kids make cards for me?” I asked David.

“That’s their responsibility,” he countered.

Then I let forth a bitter laugh. An “Oh, to be as ignorant as you!” chuckle.

“Why do you think you get Father’s Day cards every year?” I asked. “I stand over them and make sure they do it. And not just a two-second scribble either. I make them go back and revise and give you the good stuff. Acrostics, Haikus. Drawings with verisimilitude.”

So David started overseeing card construction. He doesn’t have the natural ability of a Pre K teacher, and I’ve yet to receive a sonnet, but he gets the job done.

I’ve learned a thing or two myself. I’ve learned to lower my expectations. The lower, the better. If I could bring those expectations to street level, and then pulverize them underfoot, that would be ideal. As it stands, I’ve managed to get them from Sky High to about Fifteen Stories High, which isn’t half bad.

I’ve reconciled myself to the fact that I will never get a whole day of hugs and kisses and gratitude. But I can get five to ten minutes. And the good news is, I don’t just have the chance for these moments on Mother’s Day. Because I’m a mother every day.

Much as I’d like to shout “Action!” and instantly call up Hallmark moments, these moments tend to happen spontaneously, sometimes at the most inconvenient times. I’ve noticed children get very lovey when it’s way past their bedtime or you’re in the middle of talking to someone else about something very important or when you really, really have to go to the bathroom. No matter when they occur, I try to savor the tender moments. I have a whole folder full of heart-melting, no-occasion notes from my kids, as well as drawings of me and them holding hands in a field of flowers and hugging in a room full of cats and smiling while standing next to Frankenstein (mysteriously, I am always wearing a pearl necklace, though I do not own one. Pearl necklace, I’ve learned is the signifier for “Mother”).

That’s to say nothing of the moments we share for which there is no paper trail. The early mornings when my three-year-old clambers into my bed and nuzzles in my shoulder. The bedtimes when my nine-year-old will curl up next to me as I read Little Women aloud. The sporadic, sudden hugs from my eleven-year-old who is so much taller than me that my head nearly rests on his shoulder now.

String these moments together and you get one hell of a Mother’s Day. n

Nicole C. Kear is the author of the memoir Now I See You (St. Martin’s, 2014), and the forthcoming chapter book series for kids, The Fix-It Friends (Imprint, 2017).

Playing House

By Filed Under: Dispatches From Babyville Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

For Christmas last year, my daughters got a dollhouse. By New York City standards, it’s really more of a doll mansion than a house. Four stories, massive terrace on the second floor, private garage, and a charming two-person swing hanging from an attached archway. Every time I look at the dollhouse, I imagine what the doll version of our real apartment would be, an exercise that only depresses and demoralizes me. No parent would buy that doll-apartment—except maybe for New York City parents, because, after all, it would be a space-saver.

My girls love their dollhouse. I love their dollhouse. It fulfills my real estate dreams and allows me to realize my housekeeping aspirations. Because while I don’t have a shot in hell at keeping my real house tidy, I keep an immaculate dollhouse. 

My three children are humans (as far as I know) but their effect on our home is not like that of humans. It is like that of weather. Bad weather. Ruinous weather. Hurricanes. Tornadoes.

The eye of the storm is my three year-old, Terza. Her messes are not just epic, but Homeric. I’d be impressed by their breadth and ambition, if I wasn’t so busy having a nervous breakdown.

Terza is an upender. Before selecting a pair of socks, she needs to upend the entire bin and ponder all of her choices spread out before her. Ditto with the underwear and the pants and the shirts—and the toys. She upends packs of crayons, containers full of ponies, tubs of beads, packs of cards, boxes of blocks. Apparently, it takes so much energy to upend everything that there’s none left to put it all away. I try to get her to clean up, I really do. But being a savvy third child, she knows that more often than not, if she stalls long enough, we’ll eventually have to rush off to pick up or drop off a sibling, and by the time we get home, it’ll be past her bedtime and I’ll be so fried and ready for all three-year-olds to be asleep, that I’ll “put a pin” in her mess which is to say, send her to bed and clean it up myself.

[pullquote]Every night, the dollhouse looks as if it has been ransacked by a gang of thugs or has just hosted five simultaneous frat parties.[/pullquote]

The older kids—my daughter, eight and son, ten—no longer create state-of-emergency messes.  With the big kids, the mess is less a downpour and more a steady, unrelenting drizzle. They move through the place, constantly dropping personal belongings everywhere, like Hansel with his breadcrumbs—only for no good reason. Hairbrushes, socks, markers, books, headbands, and always, everywhere, endless pieces of paper. I’m surprised they have time to get anything else done, so busy are they picking up items and depositing them in a new location.

I’m surprised I have time to get anything done, so busy am I nagging them constantly to “Put this back where you found it!” and “Put your dirty clothes in the hamper!” and “Put these clothes back in your drawer and don’t you dare put them in the hamper because you wore them for five minutes and they are about as dirty as a Mister Rogers episode!”

On bad days—snow days, or worse, playdate days —it takes hours to wrestle our house into order again. Even on our best days, it takes a full hour– and even then, it’s not clean enough that I’d invite Child Protective Services—or my mother—over. I can never get our house clean. The most I can hope for is that it appears habitable.

But it takes mere minutes to make the dollhouse immaculate—no matter how anarchic the mess. And it does get anarchic in there.

When my girls play in the dollhouse, their dramas are not your usual “family” fare.  More often than not, they play with animals, many of which are feral. This results in much stampeding and charging and attacking—which wreaks havoc on a domicile. Even when they play with people, their dramas are tragedies of a very physical nature. Doctors are constantly being sent for because characters are inevitably wounded, sometimes fatally. There is also quite a lot of dancing that goes on in the dollhouse—dancing which brings the roof down, literally.

Every night, the dollhouse looks as if it has been ransacked by a gang of thugs or has just hosted five simultaneous frat parties. The furniture isn’t just overturned; it’s overturned in the wrong room. The fridge is in the master bedroom, the bunk beds are in the kitchen, the sofa’s on the terrace. Most disquieting of all, the charming two-person swing is off its hinge and lying on its side a few feet away.

So, every night, I groan and sigh and shake my head. And then, ignoring the mess in my actual home, I kneel down and set about tidying up the dollhouse. I don’t have to clean the dollhouse, but I want to. It calms me the way a glass of wine or evening yoga might calm a less crazy person.

Cleaning the dollhouse takes about three minutes. I return the master bed to the master bedroom, the fridge to the kitchen, the sofa to the living room. I hang the charming two-person swing on the charming archway created for this express purpose. The dollhouse is not just habitable. It is flawless—ready for its flawless family to move in.

I place the dollhouse Mom on the sofa, the dollhouse Dad in the armchair and the dollhouse child in her bed. Sure, it’d be fun to give her a push in the now-functional swing but it’s night and at night—in the dollhouse at least—children sleep. They do not run into the living room at 3 a.m., demanding marshmallows and begging to watch Mickey Mouse.

Cleaning up my dollhouse reminds me of how well I used to parent, before I had kids. I was the absolute best mother when my kids were just figments of my imagination. I was patient and consistent. Fun but firm. I knew the answer to every question and exactly what to do in every situation. When I was a parent only in my day dreams, I never yelled, never caved, never doubted myself.

My imaginary children were paragons of obedience and self-regulation—they always cleaned up after themselves. They never bickered or whined or raised their voices. They watched absolutely no TV and ate absolutely all their vegetables. They always minded their manners and never minded sharing. They did everything I told them to, just like the dolls in the dollhouse.

Of course, my imaginary kids never surprised me. They never caused me to snort with laughter. They never made me feel like I was having a cardiac episode from such intense feeling—joy and terror and gratitude and wonder, all at the same time.

I remind myself of this as I turn my attention from the perfectly-ordered dollhouse to my real living room. I remind myself as I sweep up crushed Cheerios and load the dishwasher. I remind myself as I put dirty shirts in the hamper and fish out clean ones that somehow found their way in there.

I think about how it’s good to have a dollhouse to dream in and a real house to live in. A person needs both.

 

 

Nicole C. Kear is the author of the memoir Now I See You (St. Martin’s Press, 2014) and the forthcoming series for children, The Fix-It Friends, out in early 2017 from Macmillan Kids. 

Picture Book Pitfalls

By Filed Under: Dispatches From Babyville Tagged With: , , ,

Does this scene seem familiar? You’re curled up in bed or snuggled in a rocking chair or sitting on your stoop on a beautiful fall afternoon and you’re reading Bread and Jam for Frances to your child. You are feeling incredibly good about yourself because you know that reading builds a lifelong love of literature and ensures that your child will be adequately attached to you so that they won’t get strung out on heroin or drop out of high school or get ill-advised tats on their ankles.

Your child is leaning against you and it’s wonderful to smell that good, clean kid smell and also wonderful to know you are the best parent that ever existed, so exceptional you may, in fact, win Mother of the Year. Because you could have opted for a shorter book, maybe Sendak or Willems, which would have left you a few minutes to send emails, but you opted for this one because, well, they just grow up so fast.

You are admiring Hoban’s writing style—so simple, yet so satisfying, the literary equivalent of comfort food—and you are feeling delightfully charmed by Frances, who is not only the only badger you’ve ever encountered in children’s literature, but also the best. And then it happens.

Frances sings.

Of course she does. That badger will sing about anything. She will sing about eggs and tea sets and jump rope. Yes, it’s a part of her precocious appeal and yes, the songs are great—funny and smart and pithy. A part of you wishes Taylor Swift would release an album of Frances covers. But the fact remains that they put an undue onus on you, beleaguered mother, who did not get formal songwriting training at Julliard.

There you are, reading happily, until you crash right into those block quotes which instantly kill your buzz and trigger the following inner monologue:

Oh, come on. A song? Really. Now? Did the Hobans bother to give me a clue as to a melody that might work here? Did he insert a helpful footnote, clarifying that if you’ll just sing to the tune of “Oh Susanna,” you’ll be on cruise control? Something like:

“Why are there so many

Songs inside picture books?”*

*sing to the tune of “Rainbow Connection”

No, of course they did not.

I could speak the lyrics, as if it were a poem. That’s perfectly legit. We move the plot forward, we get character development, and without the stress of composing an original soundtrack. Still, I can’t help feeling like I’m giving everyone short shrift here. How hard is it, anyway, to sing a jaunty little tune? It’s not rocket science.

I’ll just pick a very basic melody; say, “The ABCs” or “Row Your Boat.” We’ll give that a shot.

And look at that, it’s a disaster because I’m not a direct descendant of Pete Seeger, and thus, it’s not that easy for me to match Frances’ lyrics about soft-boiled eggs to the tune of “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” It would be easier, really, just to improvise a new melody. You know, like the jazz giants did. Like Coltrane.

It seems like it would be easier, and yet it is not. Because as soon as I’ve sung one line of Francis’ incisive lyrics, I forget the melody I just came up with. You could call it “avant-guard,” if by that you meant “unbearable.”

So, I’ve exhausted all options, which means the only choice now is to imagine WWNNPD—what would non-neurotic people do? They would say: Who cares? It’s not like my daughter will notice. She probably thinks I sound like an angel and am beautiful too, because she is young and innocent in the ways of the world. And I get an A for effort, which still puts me in the running for the Mother of the Year, which, despite the fact that it is a fictional prize I know does not exist, I still have my heart set on. Not quite what non-neurotic people would do, but as close as I can get.

Repeat this monologue at every new mention of a song in a picture book. You get the idea. It’s draining.

It’s not the most pressing problem to plague families today, I’ll admit. Yet you’d think there’d be a hack for this. Or, better yet, an app. Yes, what we really need is an app in which you can search for picture books featuring un-scored lyrics, and then play an original composition for each tune, courtesy of some actual Julliard grad who, no doubt, could use the work.

Anyone?

Nicole Caccavo Kear is the author of the memoir Now I See You (St. Martin’s), now available in paperback. Her children’s series, The Fix-It Friends, comes out in 2017 by Macmillan Kids – and will not feature any original songs.

Dispatches From Babyville: Baby Steps

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The morning after Lorenzo was born, I was lying in my hospital bed, cradling the baby in my arms and gazing at his sleeping face when he suddenly started to choke. On thin air. He hadn’t been nursing or anything, he just went from slumbering in that unreachable, newborn way to gagging.

I lay immobilized for a second or two and then I raced into the hospital hallway, holding Lorenzo and yelling: “Help me! Someone! My baby is choking!”

I was fully aware of how ridiculous this sounded and what a spectacle I was making but my panic overrode any sense of decorum. This was life and death.

A middle-aged nurse strode over. She was solid in her scrubs, and she walked like she meant business. Within a few seconds, she’d grabbed the baby out of my arms like a sack of beans and whacked him on the back, twice, with what seemed like excessive force. I winced as I imagined his spinal column shattering. But he remained in one piece, as erect as a newborn can be, and his gagging was replaced with bawling.

“That’s normal,” the nurse explained, handing the baby back to me and paying precious little attention, I noted, to supporting his head. “He’s just gagging on his amniotic fluid. They do that sometimes.”

She said it casually, like it was supposed to make me feel better. In fact, it had the opposite effect. I’d been prepared to protect my son from all sorts of choking hazards—loose change, hot dogs, paper clips—but later, in a few months, when I’d had a chance to hone my mothering skills. I’d never thought I‘d need to start now, right out of the gate, and that I’d have to also worry about him choking on stuff that was already inside of him. The very stuff that had shielded him from harm for the past nine months.

All of a sudden, the enormity of the enterprise before me slammed down on my shoulders. Holy Mother of God. There’d be things I would fail to protect him from. And not just the stuff I’d already, very diligently, worried about like clipping off his fingertips instead of his fingernails because I couldn’t see details that small. There was a whole world, a whole galaxy, of other stuff that I couldn’t protect him from, stuff that hadn’t even occurred to me, stuff I didn’t even know about. What the hell was I going to do now?

What I was going to do was hang my head and cry, the which I did right there in the hospital hallway, in my no-slip socks and pink polka-dot pajamas.

“You mean he’s going to do it again?” I sobbed, “and there’s nothing I can do to stop it?”

Without missing a beat, the nurse put her hand on my shoulder and ushered me back to my bed. She seemed so unfazed by my sudden crying fit, it gave me the strong suspicion that that hallway had seen far worse mental breakdowns. Working in maternity was probably pretty similar to working in the psych ward, except with bigger maxi pads.

“It’s going to be all right,” she promised, “A little gagging won’t hurt him.”

“But what if—” I sputtered. “What if he chokes so much he can’t breathe?”

“He won’t,” she replied. “I’ve never heard of that.”

That wasn’t sufficient reassurance for me. There was all sorts of shit you never heard about until it happened to you and then it was too late. I’d never heard about retinitis pigmentosa and yet, here I was, unable to see the tissue she was holding out to me until she finally shoved it right in my hand.

I blew my nose and took a deep breath.  Too late to back out now.

“Tell me what to do, exactly, if it happens again,” I pleaded, “Step by step.”

“There’s only one step,” she replied, “Just give him a good old whack on his back.”

“But how will I know for sure that his airway is clear?” I pressed.

The nurse looked over in the direction of my roommate who was buzzing her call button insistently from behind the room’s dividing curtain. I’d been privy to my roommate’s every sound for the last twelve hours and despite the fact that I hadn’t caught a glimpse of her, I’d put together a pretty detailed profile: Polish, first baby, C-section, not much luck nursing, prone to sudden meltdowns herself. From the sound of the call button, there was another breakdown in the works, which meant mine had to be wrapped up.

“Look,” said the nurse, “if the baby’s crying, you know he’s not choking. So I guess if you really wanted to be sure his airway was clear, make him cry. Give his big toe a good squeeze—that’ll aggravate him.”

“OK,” I affirmed, “Got it.” If I have any suspicions that the baby is choking, any at all, I should make him cry.

Which is why I spent the first month of my infant’s life annoying him relentlessly.

I’d look over at the bouncy seat, where Lorenzo lay still, silent, and peaceful. Though this is most mothers’ dream, it was my call–to-arms. Why was the baby so preternaturally still? Clearly, he was not breathing. Likely, it was that damn amniotic fluid causing trouble again. Who knew how long he’d been like this? As I sat pondering, his brain might be losing oxygen! No time to undertake the subtle investigative measures I’d learned in infant CPR class like watching his chest rise and fall; I couldn’t trust myself to see the ever-so-slight movement of his chest anyway, my vision was so poor. No, no, this emergency called for the squeeze-the-toe test, approved by medical professionals as the quickest, most effective way to confirm baby’s respiratory health.

I’d squeeze the toe. He’d scrunch his placid face into a scowl and commence caterwauling. Mission accomplished. The baby was breathing. And, now royally pissed off.

Over and over again in the first weeks of my baby’s life, people were assuring me that if I trusted my mother’s instinct, I’d be fine and over and over again, I was finding that was a load of horse-crap. Maybe other mothers, ones with all their primary senses intact, had functional maternal instincts, but worry and a severe lack of confidence had caused mine to short-circuit. None of this mothering business was coming naturally. I needed a detailed instruction manual to do everything and sometimes, even that didn’t work. It was a classic case of the blind leading the blind.

From Now I See You by Nicole C. Kear. Copyright © 2014 by the author and reprinted by permission of St. Martin’s Press, LLC.

Nicole C. Kear’s memoir, Now I See You (St. Martin’s Press): Order now the book and find more info at nicolekear.com.