I never really thought about it much before, but I’m a gross person. I absentmindedly bite the skin around my cuticles when I’m reading or watching TV, I don’t wear deodorant, and when I don’t think my husband can see me, I drink milk directly from the jug like a sitcom bachelor and put it back in the fridge.
Yesterday, Desi asked me, “Why is it ok to eat food that falls on the floor at home but it’s not ok at school?” Ah, busted. “Well, kids wear their shoes indoors at school, and our shoes are dirty,” I said, utterly full of shit.
Back in my bike commuting days, my coworkers would spot my helmet on my desk and want to chat me up about logistics. “So do you shower at the gym or..” and I would have to watch the arc of microexpressions on their face as they came to understand that no I did not shower at the gym, I came directly to this cubicle and parked my ass on this here ergonomic mesh without so much as changing into different clothes.
A certain fellowship with griminess, an indifference to germs. It’s always been my vibe.
Desi did not seem convinced by my explanation. “Um, but you know what, with this sickness that’s going around, maybe we shouldn’t eat food that falls on the floor at home.” He looked satisfied. Maybe, if we’re lucky, our kids socialize themselves in spite of us!
I hope that this period of our lives is brief but I am feeling unnerved watching Desi’s preoccupation with hand-washing grow. He’s not an anxious kid but he is applying a preschooler’s single-mindedness to the task. “Maybe I should wash my hands…..500 times a day!”
I told him that was too much but he pushed back. Why wouldn’t that be better? Wouldn’t that kill more germs? There’s nothing to be gained from prognosticating about it now but we might have some counterprogramming in our future. Obsessive hygiene GENERALLY has nothing to do with being able to go see friends at school or visit mema and papa. GENERALLY it’s fine to be a little grimy. (Like your ol’ ma.)
I wonder if I will be more cleanliness-conscious after this. I wonder if I will see the mom at the grocery store who has her child in one of those cloth condoms you stretch over the front of the buggy and not inwardly smirk like a jackass. Maybe I will have nice hands, fingernails that aren’t ragged, cuticles that aren’t torn.
A note on one-year-olds: if anyone reading this is at home right now with a child aged 10 months - 24 months, and it’s your first/only kid, I want to say to you: you are right that this is a particularly exasperating age to be doing whatever it is we’re all doing!
My four-year-old is having a very uhhh whine-forward moment right now in his development, and he does venial shit on purpose like ram into me with his cannonball of a skull, but he can occupy himself in short bursts. He can ask for what he wants. He can watch TV! He can watch a feature-length film! I can send him out into the yard!
But one-year-olds just patrol the joint from dusk until dawn in pursuit of toilet water baptisms and drawers they shut on their little cocktail weenie fingers. Maybe there is a version of this age range that will sit in a gated area with a pile of toys and respectfully gum them while you rearrange JIRA cards on your laptop. I have never been able to personally grow this type of kid though. I have to believe they are the capital-E exception and not the rule.
I don’t know if it helps, one-year-old parents, to hear that you are indeed playing the game on the hardest setting! Maybe that makes you want to walk into the nearest, coldest lake. But maybe it helps to hear from someone who is a few years ahead of you on this path: what you’re doing feels impossible because it is impossible!!!
Before I get too deep maligning the reputation of the one-year-olds among us, there are some perks. They are so luscious, still babies, they retain some of that baby smell if you really jam your nose deep enough into their neck folds. I have not spent this much time with Jane since my maternity leave / babies don’t keep / other creepy regressive mottos that I both understand and resent. She is probably the last baby in this house.
Sometimes, that seems really sad to me. This week, it did not seem very sad at all. This week, I was glad I went out and bought emergency contraception the previous week instead of rolling the dice on an early-cycle-whoops.
Don’t get it twisted, I am absolutely not telling you to cherish this time. In fact, if you cherish it, you might be a cop. I think we can all do our best without “making the best of it.” For now, I’m trying not to guess the future (“borrow problems” my grandmother called it) because when I do it fills me with dread. How long, how expensive, how how how how will we ever do this.
“All I see is the day in front of us,” they sing in the Land Before Time series theme (YouTube). “It’s such a good feeling to know you’re alive,” Fred Rogers sings in the closing sequence of Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood (Prime). When you hear it 300 times a day, it almost sinks in.
yr mate,
Evie
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