Parenting... Myself? -- Dianne Pearce

 

We pulled into the Starbucks at the bottom of the hill so that I could get some coffee. Then we started up the hill to Idyllwild, California, and she pulled the blanket over her head. I didn't have the radio on, because she prefers not to hear it, and I took it slow, and, as usual, there wasn't much traffic. The scenery is amazing, but she forbade me from saying, "Oh my god you have to see this." And you do have to see it. The landscape is slowly rising hills right up in your face, so close you can park, and hop out, and touch them. This closeness makes them look big. And they are bolder-studded, so they put me in mind of the Houses of the Holy cover. I think that's the cover they put me in mind of anyway. And, just five minutes or so in, you take one of the switchback turns, and there is the valley you just left, terrifyingly far below you already, and there is no guardrail, nope. Go ahead and drive the hell over if you've had enough, Idyllwild and the mountain/hills preceding it don't care. For me, that is a delightful bit of terror, or horror, some sort of thrill. I like imagining the doom and peering over the edge. I like going up and down while driving at a rate that is over the speed limit, like the locals do, because I am a damn good driver and can handle the wheel, and because it is a fully acceptable level of risk and thrill for me, and it makes me feel like I can conquer the world. And it is a really beautiful view, looking up, or down. And she hates that part the most: the last twenty-to-thirty minutes of the drive, 'round and 'round, up and up. And so she puts the blanket over her head, and I crank up the AC because it is hot under that blanket, and I resist saying anything about the journey or anything at all. Her stuffed animal buddy, Mouse, is a silly and irreverent guy who I have been voicing for years. He calls us all bastards, and he is known for his malapropisms, but even Mouse won't help her when her head starts buzzing from the 'round and 'round, so I shut down even that part of my self-aggrandizement, which is tough to do. I am one of those introverts who doesn't want to talk to anyone, thank you very much, but who is always looking for an audience to make myself an ass in front of. And there is no better audience than her when she is not going 'round and 'round, and she tells Mouse, after he has said something ridiculous or profane, how much she loves him, by which, of course, she means me. But now is not the time for an audience of one because, as much as she is happy to be in Idyllwild, she is not happy at all about the journey and what it does to her head and her stomach (and yes, we have the car-sick remedies, and driving up the Idyllwild hill has vanquished them quite expertly, actually). 

And so I am quiet.

I am cold because I am not under the blanket.

I am driving slowly.

I am using the "turnouts" periodically. And the turnouts are places for the slow drivers to pull over to get out of the way of the speedy locals, and I hate using them because I can take the locals in a race, and I like the danger of those curves, but I am pulling into them, so that we get a break from going 'round and 'round for a few minutes.  

And when we finally get to my sister's cabin, my daughter is laying on the sofa, and I am emptying the car. I am unpacking everything. And lastly I am sitting around, twiddling my thumbs, until she, laying on the sofa, finally stops feeling like she is going 'round and 'round, and we can venture out, get some food.

And then, later, I am cooking what she wants for dinner, though I wanted to eat out. I am playing that game I have played already many many times. I am watching the YouTube videos and agreeing that the green-haired mom with the pierced nose is so funny and exactly like me. I am watching adorable videos of adorable animals. I am staying up way later than my early-bird body wants to, and then, after we do go to bed, in the same bed because we're having a mom-daughter weekend and that's what she wants even at fourteen, I am setting the alarm for 5:30 a.m. so that I can get up and finish that editing I owe that Canadian author in a few days, so that when when my daughter wakes up, some six or so hours after me, my work will be all done so that I can pay attention to whatever it is she wants to show me. And I will drink the whole pot of coffee so that I can stay up late again, because teen-aged daughters are all night people, and I am no longer a teen. I wake up easily at 6 a.m., as full of energy as a puppy, and I am hitting the wall, unable to form coherent sentences, by 10 p.m., while she is just hitting her stride: whipping through puzzles and playing games or telling me stories that are long and rambling and have no point except for the person telling them, the teen, to talk and be heard. And I am nodding and making "I am listening with interest" noises sitting next to her on the sofa, but as the small hand on the clock gets more vertical, I get more horizontal, until I am leaning into her like a drunk, and she gives me permission to go to bed.

And this is exactly not how I was raised.

If some family activity made me ill, or damaged me in some way, like, oh, I don't know, sticking a very white blond child under the hot sun in the middle of day in the middle of summer without sunscreen because the bottle from last year was missing or empty, well, they told me to go in the water then, and not complain. And, in the evening, when the bad burn made it too cold to be walking the boardwalk or sitting in the air conditioned restaurant, and all I wanted to do was be left alone with my pile of books, they snapped at me for being grumpy. When it was time, too early, to go to bed, and I wasn't tired and the sunburn made it too hot to sleep, the literal fear of god, the one with the capital G, and worse, far worse, the fear of mom, the one with the capital M, was put into me, and I forced myself to learn how to lay still, so still, and be quiet, and read the room, not the books.

My daughter is a budding visual artist. and I spend a lot of time thinking about that, and how I can aid and abet the budding.

And I am so freakin' old, and I still feel as if I have not yet budded myself. No one has cared whether or not I have budded. No one ever even wondered if I had any aspiration to bud. And the same can be said for my siblings. Which didn't seem odd to me then. I mean, budding wasn't something people who were not the grownups did in my family. We didn't bud. We read the room.

And our weekend on the mountain passes in this fashion: I wake up early. I do my editing jobs. I drink the coffee. I do my publishing jobs. I drink more coffee. I wake the teen, and when the teen is awake I get into the metaphorical backseat, and I watch; I listen; I carefully encourage and gently praise, because too much backfires worse than one of the old VW Bugs my brother was always trying to get going. I stay vertical until the little hand is almost vertical, and then I start, against all of my conscious will, to tilt toward the horizon until I am told that it is okay for me to sleep, and I am told, with real sincerity, "I love you Mom." 

This time, when the weekend is over, we find an alternate way down the mountain that seems to stay much more level, and involves less hairpin turns, and adds about twenty minutes to the drive, and this time the sea-sick pills seem able to stand-up to the challenge of the route, and though the muscles in my driving ankle and shin are barking and twitching my daughter tells me that the extra twenty minutes of drive is "...totally worth it." And so I try to internally send that message to my right leg and all its attached and complaining ligaments or what-have-yous. 

I remember my grandmother had ligaments that were always giving her trouble, but do we still have ligaments today? I have no freakin' idea.

The new route takes us around the perimeter of the valley, I think it might be Cherry Valley, which sounds like a lovely place, or another place named Hemet, which sounds less lovely, and whichever place it was in actuality, it was verging on desert heat, and we pass so many trailer parks where the signs are all in Spanish, and I know they're probably home to a lot of migrant workers, and folks of all origins who just happen to be low-income, and don't have sisters who own houses on top of the hill.

And so, I think, I am lucky. Yes, when I was a child my jobs were to read the room and not get car-sick or to be in any way the focus of anything, and that was not nurturing for me, and so I feel I have not had my chance to bud. But, I am not living in a trailer in Hemet, you know? 

But I am no longer the child, and I am no longer under any threat of anything with a capital letter at the front, and so I no longer need to read the room in order not to end up in the thick of something unpleasant.

However, I do need to manage my time better, because, were I to do that, I might could get some budding done, late in the season as it may be. I planted zinnias in early May, and they're just starting to poke up now, but it doesn't mean they won't be fantastic.

So this is my plan. And it involves the French, like all good plans.

There is, about a mile away, a French restaurant that is a breakfast and lunch place, and it is a place that I absolutely love and feel very at home in because it strives to be so very French, and I am a Francophone Francophile. At this very large and usually light-to-moderately full restaurant, the hot chocolate comes in swimming-sized bowls, and there are croissants. And the restaurant opens, a quick Google search told me, at 7:30 in the a.m., when the daughter is asleep still, and the dad-der is also still asleep, and I am the not. Not asleep. I am tip-toeing and being quiet.

And so my plan, that I will try to hold myself to, is to take one morning each week to get to the French place and spend two full hours with a bowl of hot chocolate and my laptop, and see what we can do in terms of getting something writing to bud.

And how many hours are in the whole week? Like sixty or something? Probably a couple of extra on top of that?

And I want two of those hours, and money enough for a bowl of hot chocolate.

And enough of a backbone to not read my emails during those two hours. 

What time are you able to give to your writing?

I mean, we haven't picked the best path, deciding to be authors. It requires a lot more time, and resources, just like going the long way through Hemet. And there are a lot of worthy distractions that we probably ought to spend our time on instead of authoring.

And yet we may say, even when faced with all those logical thoughts, that the extra drive is "...totally worth it."

Okey-dokey. I'm going to try it. I'm going to stick myself out there, as far away from obligations as possible, for one two-hour morning each week.

Fingers-crossed I don't get car-sick.