The Necessary Action

I'm on "vacation" this weekend with C and his family at their beach house.  His parents hadn't seen Eliza in a while and I thought I could make it through a weekend without any dramatics.  I should know better.  I start work tomorrow and didn't want to send Eliza off with C to his folks without me.  I thought I could be a grown-up and make it through one weekend.

Unfortunately, I am such a screw-up that I didn't.  I realize I am only human and my relationship with C is so unfortunately bad, of course I'm going to mess up.  It's impossible to pretend in close quarters that he and I get along.  His parents love Eliza and she is having a fantastic time here.  I don't belong here, I'm not really wanted here, I shouldn't be here.

C's mother has been perfectly welcoming to me.  She has her agenda with Eliza, and though I don't agree with a lot of what she does, she is Eliza's grandmother and she loves her.  She is much healthier than my mother, she tries to make us all happy and she wants to have a relationship with her granddaughter.  The beach house is beautiful in a wonderful town with a boardwalk and rides.  It's a little paradise for Eliza.  I wanted to come here and enjoy my daughter at the beach.  C's mother also wants to enjoy Eliza at the beach--the problem is, she wants me to go away.

Now I have to preface this by saying, she doesn't want me gone all the time.  She just wants her moments with Eliza and she doesn't want me to interrupt.  The problem is; I love being with Eliza so much I do interrupt.  We all went to the beach on Friday and I gave Eliza some time alone with her grandmother by the waves.  But she was having so much fun, I had to finally approach them to be a part of it.  I'd already told C's mother they'd babysit Eliza the following night and they could take her for to the bookstore in the morning.  I figured we could all enjoy her together on the beach.  For the most part we did but if Eliza and I were playing in the sand, his mother would come up with a toy and say, "Come over here."  Little things, manageable things really, but it feels like a competition.

So yesterday rolled around and C started to act like a jerk.  His parents took Eliza into town and C spent the morning with his brother and brother's girlfriend.  I worked while everyone else was out having a good time.  C's parents brought Eliza back for her nap and I'd hoped to take her to a local water park for the afternoon.  She didn't want to go.  C had been nasty to me all day and finally I exploded and told his mother we didn't need them to babysit after all.  I know this was stupid and wrong for me to do.  I don't want to put her in the middle of our shit.  But I didn't want to spend the evening with C.  

Eliza decided she wanted to go to the beach with C and her uncle and "aunt" and the three of them took off for the beach, leaving me with C's mother.  She was in every way kind to me, didn't bring up my outburst and helped me get out a bike.  I had a great bike ride but I missed my daughter.  I knew she was having a great time at the beach and I longed to see her.   I enjoyed the ride and tried to make the most of my time without her.  

When C returned, his mother encouraged him to include me in his plans with his brother.  I refused, saying I wanted to spend the evening with Eliza.  His parents were taking her to the boardwalk rides and even though I knew they wanted to do this without me, I'd be happy to be the third wheel, watching my daughter have fun from afar.  I don't have a good time with C.  I don't enjoy his company.  I know it's awkward and it makes his family uncomfortable.  I know my presence now makes everyone unhappy because C and I don't get along.  This is his family.  We are not married.  

C finally convinced me to go out with him by saying I'm so on top of Eliza, I deny everyone else the chance to have a relationship with her.  This is not entirely untrue.  It's not that I don't want others to have time with her, I just enjoy her so much.  This is part of the reason I'm returning to work.  I know I have to get a life in order to allow her to have one.  

His mother was thrilled to have Eliza all to herself.  She said repeatedly how much she has to have time with Eliza without C or myself around.  This is a bit of an alien concept to me.  We don't act like this in my family.  While I'm sure both my parent relish time alone with Eliza, it is not forced upon me whenever I'm with them.  I am extremely close to my grandmother and we saw her once a year.  I don't even think she and I did things alone together until I was older.  My family would never say, as C's mother has said to me, that Eliza acts differently towards them when I'm not around so I have to give Eliza time with her alone.  I don't have a problem with this if I've got something important to do.  However, on my last weekend with her before I return to work, it's hard to let go.

And this is the necessary action, letting go of my daughter.  I went out with C and we had an okay night.  His mood swung back in the wanting to please me mood.  Whatever had been bothering him before had disappeared.  I am not blameless--I freak out about his mother and her eccentricities when I should not complain about them to C.  She's not going to change and as much as he defends her it probably bothers him too.  But I would have much rather been on the boardwalk watching my daughter smile and wave from the rides then with him.  

I missed her so intensely while I smiled through dinner.  Usually I enjoy going out, having an adult night but I'd hardly spent any time with her during the day and let's fact it, C doesn't really want me around.  And even if he did, we're past the point of saving this now.  I don't belong here.  And yet I came so I could be with her before I returned to work.  I came so she could have the wonderful weekend she's having and I could be a part of it.  

I know I have to leave and I know that I will.  But how will I handle entire weekends without her?  Weekends where she's happily jumping in the waves with her grandmother and father while they all rejoice in my absence?  What kind of life will I be able to give her alone?  She doesn't have beach houses and siblings and healthy grandparents in my life.  I'm afraid she'll go for a weekend and decide she doesn't ever want to come back to her crappy life with Mama.  And then there's the other issue of how much I'll miss her because I don't have a life.  

I have wanted things to work with C for so long for this reason--my inability to spend blocks of time without her.  This is the way it is for split and divorced parents; they shuttle the kids back and forth.  C will go on to have a new girlfriend, one whom Eliza might relate to and love.  I am 40, in a terrible career, virtually ignored by many of my friends because people fall into busy lives.  

This weekend proves that I can't stay with him.  I can't put his family in the middle.  He is their son, they love him and see him as faultless.  To be honest, I find it shocking that his mother is so open about time with Eliza without her own son around.  My father used to say how much he wanted time alone with Eliza when she was littler and didn't respond to him.  Now that she's more into him, he seems to really enjoy the times that we're all together.  As my stepmother said recently, "Your father is your father first.  When he saw Eliza hit you, he was really upset."  So I don't really know how to take C's mother being that she's so different from my own family.   Tonight as we left, C's mother was in the driveway with Eliza saying "Who are you going to go on the ferris wheel with first?"  When Eliza didn't answer, she asked again and again.  Finally, she offered the response she wanted.  "You'll go one the ride with Grandma."  Eliza repeated this statement and C's mother hugged her, elated.  It's no big deal, but I find it funny and a little bit creepy.   I think her heart is in the right place but it does take some getting used to.

Like I said, I need to get a life so my daughter can have one.  I need to do something with myself so when she's happily enjoying her time on the ferris wheel with people who don't love me, I'll live.

The Off Switch I So Desperately Need

My mother has told me that I need an off switch for my brain and she's right.  I think too much.  I don't have the ability to enjoy life.  My father asked me recently if I was ever happy.  My job starts on Monday at 6:30 am and I don't want to do it.  With such an early start on Monday, it's quite possible I won't see Eliza at all during that week.  Five days without seeing my daughter is not a life I want.

I really want to work.  My mother started to work full-time when she and my father split.  I became acutely aware of how much happier my mother seemed as a working woman.  Her job provided her with a real sense of personal accomplishment.  She was a reporter for a local newspaper.  Growing up, I dreamed of being a writer as well though I thought I would do better than a local newspaper.

Now I'd happily take a local newspaper job but I can't seem to make anything happen with my writing.  On one hand, I haven't tried as hard as I could but as I get older, the chances of anything happening with my writer grow slimmer and slimmer.  I took a magazine writing course earlier this year and wrote a wonderful essay about my three miscarriages.  It has since been rejected or ignored by every magazine I've sent it to.  At More Magazine, they sent a kind personal rejection which would indicate that it will get published somewhere but my follow-up with a different story idea was ignored.  

I continue to write for my freebie magazine and hope it will pay off in some sense.  So far, I've only managed to accrue one good clip.  They'll publish a personal essay if I write one they like so I've got to get on that.  

I want Eliza to know a happy Mama, not this odd basket case that I've been for the past two years.  Part of what was missing when I was home with her was the working me.  I don't mind my job as a script supervisor, I simply don't want to do the hours anymore.  It feels great to be in demand, even after close to three years out of the loop.  It also is flattering that they're willing to let me job share with a great friend.  What other kind of job offers some one two weeks off a month?

But being completely unavailable to my daughter for five days in a row is not the kind of mother I want to be.  Although my mother worked, she was always there for me.  I could call her, in an emergency she could be home for me in an absolute emergency.  She only worked 15 minutes away.  

How do I get to where I want to be?  With a decent job, a home for myself and Eliza and the ability to have dinner with my daughter most nights?  I feel like such a failure.  I'm 40 years old and this is the best I can do.  A career where I make less money than I did when I started, work longer hours and will never get promoted.  It can be fun, there's still elements that I love about being on set but who else would work 80 hours a week for entire seasons and never get promoted.  And the skills I've acquired on this job aren't translating into another position.  

So I made an extremely bad career choice, now how do I fix it?

Photos from that day on the beach in Tel Aviv

Gifted

I had a bad Mama day on Friday but made up for it with a perfectly wonderful day on Saturday.  We had a lovely day together with a morning spent at the playground, lunch at a nearby bagel place and then a wonderful afternoon and evening together.  C and Harry were around in the evening and Eliza enjoyed her time with all of us.  Then it was time for bed and she only wanted Mama.

I wonder what it will be like to not put her to bed for two straight weeks.  I worry about what that will do to our relationship but I have to keep it all in perspective.  I need money, I was offered a job.  I'm doing what I have to do and these two plus years at home have to count for something.

I want to travel back to a wonderful day in Israel.  After a week in Ramat Bet Shemesh, I felt pretty trapped.  I think I started to have a bit of a nervous breakdown.  It really started to hit me how gone my friends are, how little I'll see them from now on.  I had also put down a security deposit on an apartment and here I was in a foreign country, pretending all was well with C.  I felt incredibly guilty.  We'd been staying in a city where women covered themselves from head to toe by choice!  I heard more Hebrew than English.  Our first bus experience didn't make me confident about traveling alone.  

On Monday, three days after C arrived, he rented a car.  We'd planned to head to Masada that day but by the time he'd picked up the car and we found a map, it was well after noon.  We chose to head into Tel Aviv, about 45 minutes away.  I can't say I was excited about visiting the city.  I wanted to see history, not a city that sounded like Miami in the guidebook.

The Mediterranean Sea is more beautiful then I realized.  While Tel Aviv certainly felt like Miami, the Med cast it's spell.  Still I felt discombobulated.  Though I pretended to be in a better mood, I felt very depressed.  As we climbed the hill into Jaffa, the historic port adjacent to Tel Aviv, the Sea and the landscape was overwhelmingly gorgeous.  

We parked the car and posed for the obligatory photos in front of a stone wall that overlooked the Mediterranean.  The water was a clear and aqua blue.  Eliza saw the water and begged to go swimming.  We'd packed swimsuits and towels and made for the beach.  

C chattered cheerfully as we walked down to the shore.  I smiled, nodded, went through the motions.  Eliza wiggled and screeched as I spackled her with sunscreen.  We passed a cafe/bar on the water that looked incredibly inviting.  I longed to sit there with a glass of wine and watch the world go by.  Eliza rushed ahead, reminding me that such places are no longer possible.

I changed Eliza into her swimsuit on the beach.  C changed hidden by a stack of towels.  He and Eliza ran for the water but it was too cold and Eliza quickly rushed in the other direction.  He wanted to swim and left me to chase her up and down the steps of an abandoned lifeguard station.  

I didn't feel like being on the beach, no matter how gorgeous it was.  I was stuck in a foreign place with no ability to find my way out of the situation alone.  C said that I'm the sort of person who is easily overwhelmed once I step out of my comfort zone.  That's true in a way but I went to Italy by myself a number of times and greatly enjoyed the experience.  

I am fiercely independent.  Strip me of the ability to rely completely on myself and I'm lost.  I'd even managed to travel to a foreign country, rent an apartment and live alone.  Yes, I had a friend there to pick me up at the airport, to take me to the grocery store but ultimately, I could have stayed indefinitely in Ramat Bet Shemesh with Eliza.  I felt trapped because of the lack of transportation but I'd managed to enjoy the time we'd had alone together.  

But I couldn't be adventurous with her.  I couldn't sit at cafes and write for hours.  I couldn't spend two hours on a bus to the Dead Sea.  I was sitting on a beach, totally dependent on some one else to provide me with a ride home.  I didn't even have a cell phone should C and I some how get separated.  

And while he swam, I was stuck chasing Eliza up and down a set of rickety steps.  I wanted to put on my swimsuit and jump into the Sea.  

I looked at Eliza, and thought "I don't want to be a mother anymore."

C returned from the Sea and took Eliza on a walk along the shore.  I sat in the sand and watched them walk away, thinking how much I'd like to go home alone.  I wondered if I even loved her anymore.  All I wanted in those moments was my freedom.  I didn't want to be dependent anymore.  I wanted to be completely reliant on me.

Slowly they returned and as they approached I snapped photos.  I will post them later, these lovely photos of Eliza in her pink swimsuit, walking towards me with blue sky behind her head.  She smiled with a smile I hadn't seen before.  

"Mama," she said and held out her hand.  I opened my palm and she softly pressed down a handful of shells.  Her little fingers wrapped around mine.

"See Mama?"

I looked at the shells in my hand.  They were small, nondescript, white.  Utterly unremarkable.  Eliza smiled at me proudly and pressed her head against my chest.  Her hair was damp and I hugged her.  She looked at me again, smiling and seemingly waiting for something.

  

"Oh they're so beautiful!" I raved.  "You found such beautiful shells!  Eliza, these are wonderful!"  

Little kids and shells, I thought.  They collect them and think they're getting something special when shells are just as common as seagulls.  Shells sit in small boxes on dresser tops and fill up drawers for years, forgotten after only a few days.  Once you visit beaches on a regular basis, you learn there's nothing special about shells at all.

Eliza grinned, overjoyed by my false enthusiasm.  She ran back to her father and said, "Mama likes them, Daddy.  Mama likes the shells."

Only then did I realize, Eliza had given me the shells as a gift.  I'd thought she'd handed them to me to show me what she'd found.  I hadn't realized that her little mind would want to gift me with something.  Something small and round and white and beautiful.  Imagine how beautiful shells are to a child.  Imagine that child collecting them so she could give them to her Mama.

I snapped back to life in that moment, amazed by the thoughtfulness and generosity exhibited by my wonderful daughter.  I wondered how I could have created such a magical child.  The rest of the day was perfect.

I wish I could say the rest of the trip went well but it didn't.  I think I lost it completely on Tuesday night.  Again it boils down to everything that was going through my mind: the fear of being in a country that feels a little unstable, the bad food, the uniformity of the people in the town we stayed in, the lack of ability to get around the country by myself.

The joy of spending time with Meredith and her family again.  When would we all be together again?

But not once during the trip did I feel I didn't want to be a mother again.  I still have those shells in a pocket of the diaper bag I took to Israel.  I take them out and touch them from time to time.  I will keep them and treasure them.  I will never forget where they came from and the happy little girl who presented them to me, with a look of overwhelming pride.

Exhausted Ramblings of a Failed Mother

Tonight I feel like a complete failure as a mother.  I worked yesterday, the first day on my new job.  It was one day of reshoots for the show's pilot.  The day only went 13 hours, not too bad.  I even made it home in time to put Eliza to bed.  

I looked forward to spending the day with her today but somehow everything got a bit out of hand.  After C left for work, I realized we were out of toilet paper.  I also desperately need to go to the grocery store.  I had an interview scheduled for my freebie writing thing for the magazine in the morning and a get together with Catherine, the woman I'll be job-sharing with on the TV show in the afternoon.  Since the woman I interviewed for the magazine is a friendly aquaintance with a son close to Eliza age, I said yes when she suggested I bring Eliza and her nanny could watch both kids while us Moms did the interview.  

Bad move.  Getting out the door with Eliza in tow isn't a good idea when I don't have a lot of time.  At first, Eliza refused to play with my friend's son and the interview was interrupted several times.  The TV seemed to unite the kids in ways I'd never imagined (my friend's suggestion) and when it was time to leave, Eliza refused.  Eventually I coaxed her into the stroller but didn't get home in time to hit the grocery store.  With virtually nothing to offer her for lunch but yogurt, I quickly plunked her to bed for her nap and made one quick phone call.  

Catherine arrived and we went over some stuff for the job.  Eliza woke up and Catherine and I sat at the computer, creating forms we'd need for the show.  We went for a walk but I realized not shortly after leaving that Eliza had taken a massive dump and I hadn't brought diapers.  Catherine left and I was stuck carrying Eliza home.  It was a messy poop that managed to get all over my shirt and skirt.  The night just went downhill from there.  I got dinner on the table too late, she barely ate it, C walked in the door just as I was putting her to bed, wondering where dinner was which is often the case.  I never know when he'll be home.  I am so tired of his strutting in the door at 8:30 and wondering if we've had dinner yet.  It's his passive aggressive way of saying, "I'm home, feed me."

I hadn't had a fun day with Eliza, I wish he'd go to grocery store with a list or unload the dishwasher sometimes.  How about letting me know when he's used the last of the toilet paper and running turning on the dishwasher when his kids have dinner at our place?  Transition days--the days after I've worked are always tough for me.  I'm a little tired and out of sorts and have to adjust back into my role as house slave.  

I didn't have one fun moment with my girl today.  About an hour after I'd put her to bed (abruptly, I'll add, annoyed when she ripped one of her books), I went into her room to apologize for my lack of patience, my anger, the silly things I'd done wrong that day.

"Mama," she said softly, lifting her head.

I touched her cheek and said, "Eliza, I'm so sorry for everything I do wrong."

"Good night Mama," she said.  

I've got a lot on my plate right now and with so little outside help, I realize I'm not always going to be a fun Mom to be around.  But still, days like today are so hard.  Eliza and i didn't have one fun moment, I was simply too busy and too exhausted.  

I went into my room and cried, then read the script for my first episode.  It's good, in a gross way, but very, very tough to shoot.  I won't have as much time off between episodes as I thought because we will have a lot of second unit to shoot.  So I'm going to have transitional days, days like today constantly for the next five months.  I am trying to look at it as a gift, it is a gift to have a job when so many people are struggling these days.  

I'm 40 years old, I don't think I can do the hours anymore.  I don't want to be a tyrant with my girl.

Just because

And just because this is so freakin' cute, I must include this.  I sold my baby bjorn and my baby backpack on craigs list yesterday.  I'm not going to have another baby so I might as well clear some space on my shelves.  Eliza cried as the woman who bought the backpack left our building with her tiny baby on her back.

"I want my ladybug backpack!" Eliza cried.  I am not sure where the ladybug came from.  Earlier that day, when I'd put the backpack on to see if I could remember how it worked, Eliza saw it, shook her head and said "That's too small for Eliza."

Apparently, her feelings changed when I slid another baby onto another mother's back and said good-bye to my daughter's babyhood.  While corresponding with the mother who purchased the backpack, I emailed her this picture.  This is Eliza on C's back in Florence, Italy.  I had to share it with you...

Just because.

Update

Mom went to the doctor today.  Her heart rate is too high and her pulse is through the roof.  They adjusted her medication.  I wish she'd head to acupuncturist or holistic healer at this point but I am not a doctor, I am not qualified to tell her what to do.  It's frustrating, knowing that her heart is not working properly and that she could have a heart attack at any moment.  I tell myself this heart attack thing, it could happen to anyone.  It's not much of a comfort.

The good news: the symptoms of internal bleeding have disappeared.  I am grateful.

Yesterday morning, I accepted the job on the new TV series.  I will be alternating with a good friend.  I will work for two weeks and then be home for about a week and a half.  I am already mourning the loss of my time as a full-time Mom and the life that I saw for Eliza and myself in that apartment away from New York.  I am stuck in New York with C for now.  If the show gets cancelled, I'll move out then.  If the show gets picked up for another season, I'll move out and hire an au pair.  Since I often have to leave for work in the wee hours of the morning, there's no way I can work in my field without a live-in.  I'm only committed to work on the show for five months (even less if the network pulls the plug right away) so I can't seek an apartment or an au pair just yet.  It sucks, frankly.  The very thing I need to make the break is keeping me here longer.

The apartment that I loved that I had to say good-bye had sliding glass doors in the dining room that overlooked a grassy field.  I see Eliza and myself sitting there for dinner and I think, what a nice life that would be.  I know the reality might be very different but this is the life I want.  Dinner with my daughter every night.  A life without him.  

Oh, how I dream of the ability to earn a living doing something else entirely, something that won't demand the kind of time and energy that this TV world requires.  

I took a magazine writing class this winter and hit it off with the teacher.  I thought she could be something of a mentor and have emailed her since the class ended in March.  On June 1st, I mentioned an essay I was writing about how parents in the United States are far more over protective than parents in Israel.  

She sent me a blanket email that she'd sent to several people searching for sources for a story she was writing.  Her story is apparently about today's hyper-parenting culture and how we are overwatching our kids.

Coincidence?  I don't f-ing think so?  Funny?  Not to me, not at first.  Now I find it amusing and realize how I've got to crank this essay and send it out.  It's apparently such a good topic, established writers feel compelled to steal it from me.

Maybe I've got what it takes to make it as a writer after all.