Tiny Beautiful Things (39 page)

You are at once blameless in this and entirely responsible. You were sort of set up by Triangled and you were also basically a jerk to her. The reason all that other junk came up in your post–Foxy Fellow contemplations—(your ex, your feelings of being eternally punished for having wronged her, your sense
that your friend never trusted you either)—is that, contrary to your claim that you don’t regret what you did, you know you could have done this differently, better, or not at all. What’s at stake here is not only your friendship with Triangled, but also your own integrity. You promised you would not hurt someone you cared for. You hurt her anyway. What do you make of that? What would you like to take forward from this, honey bun? Do you want to throw up your hands and say “Oh well,” or do you dare to allow this experience to alter your view?

We all like to think we’re right about what we believe about ourselves and what we often believe are only the best, most moral things—i.e.,
Of course I would never fuck The Foxy Fellow because that would hurt my friend!
We like to pretend that our generous impulses come naturally. But the reality is we often become our kindest, most ethical selves only by seeing what it feels like to be a selfish jackass first. It’s the reason we have to fight so viciously over the decapitated head of the black-haired plastic princess before we learn how to play nice; the reason we have to get burned before we understand the power of fire; the reason our most meaningful relationships are so often those that continued beyond the very juncture at which they came the closest to ending.

I hope that you’ll do that, dear women, even if it takes you some time to stagger forward. I don’t know if your friendship is built to last a lifetime, but I know the game is worth the candle. I can see you on that ten-years-off porch.

Yours,
Sugar

Dear Sugar
,

I moved to a new city a year ago and in the past few months have been feeling so at home and at ease after various bouts of loneliness. I’ve met some great women here, women I might have seen myself being able to date at some point, or at least sleep with for a while. What is the problem with this? Well, I am finding that I am gravitating toward women more from habit than from necessity. I pursue what is immediately available and then lose interest rapidly—sometimes before it even starts—but because I am a sensitive, sensual person, I have a hard time turning it away
.

I guess what I am asking is, is this biological or emotional? I’m a male in my mid-twenties just starting what looks to be a promising career doing what I love. I feel so much love and gratitude in my life, and just typing that sentence made me feel a bit better. I really, really love women and don’t know if I could ever just turn it off. I also don’t want to end up another distant, difficult, noncommunicative male unsure of his own feelings
.

I think part of the problem might be that I feel like I need physical love to be happy and am less of a person without it. Is it more self-affirmation I need? Do I need to convince myself that I will find someone that I really can love and not just pursue
because they are available for me immediately? Does this have anything to do with my mother?

Anonymous

Dear Anonymous,

Have you ever read that book by P. D. Eastman called
Are You My Mother?
In it, a baby bird hatches while his mother is away from the nest and he decides to go out to find her. He can’t fly yet so he walks. He walks and he walks and he walks on his tiny baby bird feet, constantly asking the question:
Are you my mother
? Each time he asks the question, he’s convinced the answer is yes. But he’s wrong. Nothing is ever his mother. The kitten isn’t his mother. The hen isn’t his mother. The dog isn’t his mother. The cow isn’t his mother. The boat isn’t his mother. The plane isn’t his mother. The steam shovel that he calls a Snort isn’t his mother. But finally, when all hope is lost, the baby bird gets himself back to the nest and along comes his mother.

It’s a children’s book that isn’t really about children. It’s a book about you and me and everyone else who has ever been twentysomething and searching for the thing inside that allows us to feel at home in the world. It’s a story about how impossible it can be to recognize who we are and who we belong to and who belongs to us. It’s a fairly precise tale of the journey you’re on right now, Anonymous, and from it I encourage you to take both heart and heed.

Of course you’ve slept with women you aren’t actually very interested in having a relationship with, honey bunch.
Of course you have!
When you’re single and in your twenties, having sex with whoever comes along is practically your
job
.
It’s biological. It’s emotional. It’s psychological. It’s egomaniacal. And yes, some of those impulses just might have a little something to do with your mom (and your dad too, for that matter).

The conflicted feelings and thoughts you’re having about love and sex and the occasionally contradictory actions you’re taking with women are developmentally appropriate and they’ll teach you something you need to know, so don’t be too hard on yourself, but do take care not to get stuck. Not getting stuck is key to not becoming “another distant, difficult, noncommunicative male unsure of his own feelings” who sleeps with every mildly interesting and interested woman he meets. We learn from experience, but no need to keep learning the same things from the same experiences over and over again, right?

You know what it feels like to say yes to women you don’t ultimately dig, so how about seeing how it feels to say no? What space is filled up by sex with women you aren’t all that into and what fills that space when you don’t fill it with them? If you’d like to become the emotionally evolved man it seems so very clear to me that you are on the brink of becoming, you’re going to have to evolve beyond asking every kitten you meet if she’s your mother.

She isn’t. You are. And once you figure that out, you’re home.

Yours,
Sugar

Dear Sugar
,

I am a mother of two beautiful little girls, ages four and two. They are my reason for being; I love them more than words can express. I didn’t think I wanted to be a mother and often said I had no affinity with children. But, my God, when my first was born, it was like a 360 spinout. I didn’t know what hit me. I fell in love and was under her spell instantly. I bonded quickly with both girls and would call myself an attachment parent. The three of us are very close and we’re a very affectionate family
.

I’m aware of the importance of respecting my daughters’ feelings and teaching them about expressing their feelings, not suppressing them. But lately I have been losing control of my temper, allowing this demonic THING to come out of me during times of stress. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not flying off the handle over trivial things like not finishing dinner or being rowdy at the supermarket. It’s more of a culmination where I’m tolerating one thing after another and then I explode
.

I should also explain that my husband, who is an adoring father and husband, works long and unpredictable hours. This kills him because he misses being with us, but it’s just the way it is. He is what I call a pure heart. He is the man who saved me, because before I met him I was a compulsive negative thinker. He
is just pure “good” in the way that you don’t see these days. He’s so gentle and fun and loving with our girls and I’m so grateful for that, but he works long hours, so I’m often a single mom and I feel stretched thin. Most days are good, but when I lose it, it’s like gangbusters
.

The thing that frightens me, Sugar, is that I come from a very volatile family background. Not in the sense that my parents were raging alcoholics or freakishly abusive. They unfairly screamed their heads off and intimidated us and hit us a lot. We weren’t allowed to make our own choices and were made to feel very powerless. My mother especially would unleash on my siblings and me, and often it was like negotiating through land mines. You just didn’t know when she’d blow. She would say out loud that she wanted to run away, and on those nights I wouldn’t sleep until she was in bed. I truly did think she was packing her bags. She had major issues that I’ve learned of recently. She comes from a dysfunctional background and other circumstances that will take too long to explain here. I think this caused her to go off on hour-long soliloquies about how her life sucked and her kids sucked, too
.

Okay, so that’s the backstory in a nutshell. I’m a woman with low self-esteem who just gritted her teeth through university, got a pretty good job, married a great guy, have a beautiful family, but now I’m scaring myself because of my temper. I’m doing things that I know are not acceptable. Tonight I grabbed my older girl out of her car seat and threw her onto our front yard. She was lying there in shock and started to cry. The prelude to this was a screaming adult tantrum during the drive home. It’s almost like I can’t come down until I’ve had my hit of rage
.

I feel like I totally suck and don’t deserve to be their mother because I know this is wrong but I can’t stop. Today I asked my
doctor for a referral to a therapist so I can start talking through these deeper issues. I’m just scared that I’ll never be able to change, and this temper and need to explode is hardwired in me
.

Yours,
Helpless Mom

Dear Helpless Mom,

I don’t think you’re helpless. I think you’re a good mom who has on occasion been brought to the edge of her capacities for tolerance and patience and kindness and who needs to learn how to manage her anger and her stress. You’re entirely capable of doing that. The part of your letter in which you state that you believe you may “never be able to change” concerns me more than the part of your letter in which you describe flinging your child onto the lawn in a rage. Given your situation as the primary caregiver of two very young children with little practical support from a partner, it comes as no surprise that you’ve lost it with your beloved kids from time to time. I have, for short stretches, parented my own two young children in circumstances very much like those you describe, and it is without question the most exhausting and maddening work I’ve ever done.

I’ve also behaved in ways toward my children that I regret. Find me a mother who hasn’t.

I don’t say this to let you off the hook, but rather—paradoxically—to place responsibility for change squarely on your shoulders. Parenting is serious business. It brings out the best and the worst in us. It demands that we confront our brightest and darkest selves. Your dear daughters have given you the opportunity to see yourself in full: you are the woman
who has the ability to love more deeply than she ever thought possible and also the woman who has intermittent “screaming adult tantrums” directed at two people under the age of five.

The best thing you can do for your girls is to forgive yourself for what has passed, accept that your rages helped you to understand you have work to do in order to be the mother your children deserve, and then draw on every resource you can—both internal and external—to become her.

Your husband’s job is demanding, but surely he’s around often enough that he can give you regular breaks from the family fray. Does he? Do you take them? I know how hard it can be to pull yourself away, especially when you’re hungry for the rare
we’re-all-together-for-once!
family time, but I encourage you to find space for yourself too, even if you have to struggle to carve it out. It’s amazing what an hour alone can restore, what rages a walk can quell. There are also other venues of support. A babysitting/playdate exchange with other parents; sending your children to a preschool a few mornings or afternoons a week, even if you don’t have a “job” that demands you do so; a membership at a gym that provides child care while you work out or sit in the sauna paging through a magazine—these are all things that helped me through the thick of it, when my very days were vast seas of young children with no grown humans around to help.