Uncomfortable February Began in January

I’m presently laying in bed, having spent last night sleepless, partly from throwing up, partly from managing the dog’s endless need to be both let in and let out of the house.

My sister has just sent a text — not to acknowledge the stack of previous unanswered messages I’ve sent her — but to relay that our brother called her at 2:45a. She didn’t answer. He didn’t leave a message. She texted him. He did not reply.

He’s never called her in the middle of the night before. And when he called on me last month, to send him money in the middle of the night, that was also a first.

We fear our brother’s end, we empathize with his addiction, and we can do little more than gape at his endless despair.

The text exchange is a momentary reprieve from my sister’s otherwise long-standing emotional freeze on me. I think maybe she wants to touch her pain to mine, to feel for herself, that our connection, while threadbare, is still alive. This is what it means to me, anyway.

Last month, after I received that spate of terrifying and awful messages from our brother, my husband said, rather flatly, “there aren’t many forty-year-old heroin addicts.” And I have not recovered from that sad knowing since.

Still now laying in bed, I think, in very general terms, I may be starting to lift myself out of the depression that fell over me just before my birthday.

Yesterday, for instance, I bought a vintage Woolrich jacket for $30. I suspect this purchase is evidence of my trying to build excitement for the future.

But seriously, what is it about 90’s mom-wear that has captured my attention? Is it nostalgia for a 90’s I never knew? Why do I badly want to play in that 90’s palette? I crave to live in those cozy, over-sized, under-sexualized, high waisted jeans and brightly colored jackets. I want to be the 90’s mom who eats Grapenuts for breakfast, always has time for hiking, reads three novels a month, and truly loves parenting.

Tragically, to that end, I’ve wasted most of this day in bed looking online at clothes.

I did manage to shower — which is to say I laid in the bathtub with the shower running— and it was then and there that I decided to give looking at clothes a break.

My bent towards consumerism — this interest in scrolling used clothing sites— is demoralizing, primarily in how obvious a coping mechanism it is. It’s too obvious really, to be interesting. I just haven’t found much else to match the dopamine hit that once came from just thinking about a glass of red wine.

But let’s go back to January, before I knew just how uncomfortable February was going to be, when I sat down in the most comfortable chair in our living area. And I did this before the kids had been put to sleep, before every dish had been cleaned, before every surface had been wiped, before tea was brewed.

I had been impatient with the kids that day in late January — still reeling from the pain of my brother’s angry insistence that I give him money, still holding myself to a standard of parenting I fall short of, still striving to be a person who isn’t grieving, who isn’t flawed, who isn’t suffering. Still pretending I wasn’t disappointed by all these feelings of inadequacy washing over me on the eve of turning forty.

I needed to sit down.

And it was here, from the vantage of eye-level with my daughter, I saw an opportunity to make up a little ground with her.

I call to Norah to bring me her iPad so we could listen together to her favorite artist, a pop singer/songwriter called Olivia Rodrigo.

Norah is thrilled to take me beyond the one track we’d been playing on repeat since the summer.

The album isn’t exactly appropriate for Norah’s age, but it honestly doesn’t suck, and for that I’m relieved.

I’m hanging on every word, in fact, when an explicit lyric is delivered with punctuating effect. Olivia, who is herself only 18, “still fucking loves” someone. The entire album, song after song, in fact, seems to be inspired by a very emotional breakup.

Norah shoots a look my way to see if I approve — to see if she has permission to enjoy this too. She does. It’s cool. I remind her of our family rule: The only bad words are the words that hurt people.

Now she and I have found our flow, and I tell myself I’m doing the repair work to make up for the day’s ruptures — those moments when I overreacted and betrayed everyone’s best interests by letting my kids in on the secret that mommy is very irritable and in fact, very annoyed, by the deluge of questions and needs they never cease to have.

I call over to John, who is standing nearby at the computer desk, and I ask him to see if Olivia is touring.

Olivia is touring! She’s going to be in Nashville, performing at the Grand Ole Opry, and none of us can believe it, but this show coincides with our upcoming family trip to Nashville!

John says the tickets are nearly $300. We exchange wide eyeballs. Really? Are we really going to drop this kind of money on a pop concert?

We don’t need to discuss this privately, we both know the answer is yes. But we do concede that only one parent can go.

Because it’s this, right here, what’s happening in our living room at this moment — and the future moments promised by this first concert — that is precisely the kind of parenting magic we dreamt of when we decided to have kids. It’s precisely the kind of parenting that rarely occurs.

So I’m flying high — I must be — because I allow myself to believe it’ll be me Norah picks.

It has been me, after all, investing in these lyrics with her. And it’s been me, for months now, playing the same song, over and over, at her request. It’s been me who has learned the words along with her. And when I haven’t sung, it’s been me who has luxuriated in listening to her expertly nail every note.

Norah is interested in firming up the details immediately, so I assure her there’s no wrong choice. She will absolutely have fun with whomever parent she chooses — and I actually think I mean what I’m saying.

She says, “Mom, can you wear a wig to the concert?”

And for a tiny foolish moment I flash an image of me wearing the rainbow bobbed wig she dared me to wear to Walmart on Halloween, and I even go so far as to think: Wow, she really wants to party! I can totally get into this.

Only she quickly adds “…like a long haired wig.”

And I know, because I’m her mom.

But just to be sure, I ask anyway.

“Are you embarrassed by my hair?” And she nods.

And because the knife is already there, and because I’m still the kind of person that’s drawn to the smell of blood, and because I was already suffering, and because I still love to suffer, I ask her, in a lower voice, so John won’t hear me, “Is it my face too?”

She looks anguished — and it’s so fucked up that I would even ask her this — and she nods yes.

I know this feeling. It’s ancient.

A lifetime ago, in a moment of wild optimism, I told myself, that although I can’t change my face — I might be able to influence what the look of my face means to someone else.

I was 24 and drunk and staring in the mirror when I told myself this — when I told myself that if I was ever lucky enough to have a family of my own, my kids would see this same face, only it would be the face of someone they loved. They would see in my face someone good.

Because I am sober, and because I know that 24 year-old me wasn’t wrong, and because I will wake up tomorrow as a forty-year-old woman, and because I know what I say next is important, I lie to Norah.

I say, “It’s okay honey.”

And I hang on to that upbeat tone of the mom I actually am: A mom who would revel in the opportunity to wear a rainbow wig to a pop concert with her daughter; a mom who won’t destroy the rapport with her daughter over hurt feelings; a mom who won’t trade her daughter’s candor for shame.

So I say to Norah: It’s OK, because I love my face! And I love my hair!

And I say it’s totally OKAY if she wants to go to the concert with Daddy. I tell her they’ll have so much fun!

Uncomfortable February, which started in late January, is a real “fake it until you make it” kind of month.