Discipline

The door swings open and the sing song way of Turner’s voice indicates he is speaking as if Mabel, “ . . . say to Mommy, ‘I couldn’t follow directions.’” I’m in the kitchen lining up dinner ingredients on the countertop.

“Oh that girl is terrible at taking directions.” And she is. Mabel runs into the kitchen, her face overtaken by the largest smile.

Turner takes off his shoes, moving the small mound of chard and basil one hand to the other as he loosens his straps. “Well, “ he says as though out of breath. They’ve been outside for approximately three minutes, snipping herbs for dinner. Maybe three minutes and twenty seconds. “First,” he stands, “she wouldn’t hold my hand stepping off the porch, just took off while I had the scissors in my hand.” As though reminded, he opens the front door and grabs scissors from somewhere.

“Oh” I nod, pulling Mabel to my arms. She says my name again, and puts her forehead to my cheek. I can feel her lashes sweep across my skin as she blinks. I snag blueberries from the fridge, as well as gouda cheese that’s moldy on one side only, and the last bit of manchego.

“She’s not scared of scissors.” He puts them in the top drawer, a place that Mabel is now tall enough to reach, but we haven’t yet found a better storage place. “So once we get to the chard,” Turner comes four or five steps into the kitchen and suddenly throws his bounty into the air with a shout, most of the herbs landing on the floor and some in the sink. He turns to look at me, calm, “Sorry. Spider.” It's these kinds of moments that folks without kids overlook as time consuming. The cleaning up in order to make dirty again.

“Pick ‘em up and wash them.” He moves to this work.

“So, like I was saying . . . And, second, Mabel kept touching the plants and saying, ‘flowers’ to all of them.”

“Yeah, she does that.”

“Yeah!” He makes eye contact, as though he needs to drive home this point, “and she isn’t gentle with them. At all.”

“I just try to remind her." Feel as though I might capitalize on the moment a bit, "Sometimes you tell little people things many, many times before they begin to listen.” Turner keeps the water running even as he begins to dry the herbs.

“Hey buddy, you hear that water running?” 

“Whoops.” He quickly shuts it off.

“Mmmhmmm. Peel the garlic.” He sets to that task and picks his story back up.

“So, I’m trying to snip the chard—with the scissors—and she keeps grabbing the plant and just flipping it all around. Like it’s a fan. Over and over I told her to stop it.” I now recall having heard his small voice shouting at her. “S-T-O-P Mabel” through the open windows. We spell it for emphasis.

“I hope you were mindful not to raise your voice to her.” Mabel, now on the floor in the kitchen, swipes the dried basil from the countertop. It has a screw top.

“Well, you know Mom, it’s hard to stay calm when she’s basically murdering your plants.” We work in silence a bit, and it takes more than a few minutes for us to note the silence. Just as I lean to my left to drop freshly chopped garlic into the warming olive oil, my socked foot slips out from under me. I don’t fall, but I drop garlic on Mabel’s head. She looks up at me, and I see she is holding the now open dried basil container. She gives it one last shake before I swipe it from her fingers. Turner and I are both within two inches of this child, and somehow we took zero notice of the silence. Basil is mounded in little piles in front of the stove and sprinkled across the entire kitchen floor. “Mabel!” I say more gruffly than I would again, and then I make eye contact with Turner who is, clearly, smirking. I instruct Mabel to shake and Turner to retrieve the broom. Ten minutes later, we return to making pizza sauce.

Turner’s story begins again just as I begin pouring tomato paste into the browning garlic and oregano. “So I had to tell Mabel that if she couldn’t follow directions, then I’d have to make her come back inside.” I stir, while he makes a large glass of ice water, allowing Mabel to select some of his ice cubes.

“And I bet she kept touching the chard.”

“Yep, and I had made threats so I thought I had to, you know, do it."

"Discipline?"

"Yep. Had to." The discipline, of course, was making Mabel come inside. Well, and, yelling I suppose. "We can’t have nice things if everybody can’t help take care of them.” Turner has just taken some ownership of the chard.

“Very true.” I shred the chard and basil, putting them as the first ingredients on the pizza, to be masked by sauce and cheese so that our eleven year old can later say he enjoyed chard.

Turner makes his way to the shoes he left at the front door. “So I’m not taking her back outside. She’s yours now.” I thank him for his help and Mabel runs to the door so that she can whine after him. A moment later, she pauses in the monotone sound and giggles, and I assume Turner is on the porch making faces at her through the glass. “Brother!” and she laughs again.

Call Mom.

Ok so maybe you've heard Turner is growing: up and down, here and there, left and right, all around solid, tall and thick, and I'm supposed to act "normal" and to "stop being nostalgic." Today, he calls from baseball camp, at the high school, where he is from 8-ish to 4:30-ish everyday. It's a long day out in the sun. When he comes home Monday, he is manly. He smells loud. His face is brushed with dirt. He's tired. He doesn't engage much. His posture somehow widen his shoulders. His voice even seems deeper, probably dehydration. After his shower and our dinner and a slow warming back up to the family, Turner scoots his body right next to mine on the couch and leans his head against the front of my shoulder. I take the chance to stretch my arm around his shoulder and tell him I love him. "Mom. Let's just be close, okay?" No need to draw attention to the snuggle-fest happening. I get it.

Tuesday, I get a phone call from an unfamiliar number and by some miracle I see the phone ringing and answer it.

"Mom?" There, right there, that voice is a five year old Turner who has asked his teacher if he can call me. We'd forgotten a lunchbox, perhaps. I remember how impressed Ms. Cipolla was that he knew the area code plus the number. I realize that my mind has transported me back eleven years and just as I gather my voice, he says it again. "Mahmm." This time, a little deeper and less frightened, though retaining the nasally middle vowel and the elongated "m" at the end.

"Yes. Ah, yes Turner. What's going on?"

"Uhm. The wire in my braces is poking out." I have no idea how to respond to this. Is it poking a hole in your mouth? Is the wire hanging out? Did it get caught on something? Were you eating? It is about lunch time . . . "Uh hello?" He's waiting for me to check into this conversation.

"I can come pick you up? Do you want me to come pick you up?"

"No." His tone says how absurd my suggestion is.

"Ok. Well, what should I do?"

"Nothing." He sits quiet and I know I'm supposed to be saying something else.

"I love you."

He shouts, "Mom!" I smile. Surely I'm not on speakerphone.

"Ok. I'll tell Dad. I bet he can get the wire fixed for you."

An exasperated sigh and "thank you" and the line breaks.

Doggy Pushed You.

With Turner, we had routines. We walked out on the front porch first thing, and then we had breakfast. After breakfast we cleaned our plates and dressed. We gym-ed it at certain times on certain days, and we storytime-d it at other times on other days. We brushed our teeth together and lotion'd together and took walks after dinner and read books every night. Our routines revolved around a 2:00 pm nap time. . . two or more hours of blissful quiet in the afternoon when I could write. Nap time was a rather inflexible container for creative energies and, looking back, I'm glad I valued my work enough to actually create space for it.

Mabel's life is less conducive to schedules, something I've mentioned before. Mabel naps everyday, and will nap for two hours under some pretty narrow conditions, and unlike her brother, she couldn't care less when the nap actually starts or ends. She doesn't really lose it at any point, though she does become quite resistant to discipline and her energy level spikes at points, forcing her to squeal loudly with delight. This summer, I'm trying to be more intentional to build small routines with Mabel and, thus far, this includes watering the flowers or taking a walk after she wakes up from her nap. Last night, we took a walk after dinner and watched a turtle navigate the gravel road and brush near the road for quite a bit. This was after investigating ants at various points.

Last week, Mabel woke up from her nap and the two of us went outside to water the flowers. While we were working, the neighbor's dog came over to visit. Jake is a puppy that has grown six inches in the last two weeks. No joke. He is going to be a big dog someday soon. On this particular day, though, he remains clumsy and unconscious of his size. Mabel calls him over, as usual, by screaming "Doggy" as loudly as she can. I'm watering flowers and just as I sit the hose down to supervise Jake's visit, the dog is up on two feet and the other two paws touch on Mabel's chest then her head. Mabel's hands start rowing a boat to shore, and her arms makes big circles as she tries to hang on to her balance. She falls just as I grasp a fingertip, and I save her head from hitting the concrete. She does not cry and the dog is instantly in our faces licking. "Get!" I shout, Jake's caretaker (who is actually a painter working next door) sits on his tailgate on the other side of the fence. At the sound of voice, he asks "He jumping on her?"

"Yeah. He did. Knocked her to the pavement." I'm brushing the dirt off Mabel's backside and inspecting her parts. On her ankle is a bloody scrape. "Oh Mabel. Are you okay?" She isn't crying but she won't talk either. She mouths a weak uh huh and puts her head on my shoulder. "Poor baby. Did the doggy push you?" She rocks her head on my shoulder, nodding yes and saying "uh huh" again.

The next morning, after a lovely slumber, Mabel wakes up and calls out to me. I retrieve her from her bed and pull her to my chest. Usually, she settles right in but on this morning she is contorting herself in order to touch her ankle. When I figure this out, I stretch out her leg and gaze upon the ouchie. "That your ouchie, Mabel?"

"Uh huh. Doggy push you."

"Oh, did the doggy push you?"

"Uh huh. Doggy push you."

"Mabel, I think the doggy pushed me. Not me."

She looks a bit perplexed, puts her head on my shoulder again, and says, "Uh huh. Doggy push you."

For the last seven days, Mabel's first thing said in the morning and after nap and just about anytime when we are riding around in the car or when she gets bored or meets new people, Mabel points to her ankle and says, "Doggy push you." Sometimes she'll repeat "me" once corrected.  What's so funny about this story, though, is that somewhere along the way, doggy started sounding an awful lot like daddy. One night, she was adamantly telling Andy about the doggy and the push and accidentally said, "Daddy pushed me." We laughed, of course, though Andy's feelings were clearly wounded. Now, when Andy is around, she says "Daddy pushed me" and points to her scratched up ankle, but she tells others it was the doggy.

Making Pie.

Both of my grandmothers were good cooks, and even my father will admit that his mother-in-law could do some magical things in the kitchen with food that even his own mother couldn't. I learned to bake at the elbow of Grandma Bow, and I learned to slam nutritious meals together in a jiffy at the coattails of my mother. When Andy and I married, pregnant on our first anniversary, I was a dreamy housewife in terms of hot meals and dessert. Once or twice a week, we enjoyed something from scratch: white chocolate cheesecake, marshmallow fudge frosted cookies, angel food cake, shortbreads, layer cakes. I kept up the good fight in Tucson for awhile, but I also had for the first time in my life the luxury of baker friends. Elise and Crystal were generally eager to share left overs, and the bakery trade went both ways.

Father's Day is tomorrow, and Andy requested a day at the pool. Perfect. But, this means the preparatory baking happens today. Chocolate pie, of course, though it took him a few days to commit. Since I'm already making one pie crust, why not slip a little peach cobbler prep into the action?

Yes Ma'am.

We've habituated Mabel to saying "Yes, ma'am." She's adorable as she says it. At first she was most prone to say it when prompted. Generally in desire of a sweet or something to be opened / closed, picked up / put down. Over the course of two weeks, though, the manners have appeared more regularly and unprompted. "Yes ma'am" coming out of a tiny two year old face gets noticed.

When Andy and I first started hanging out, the "ma'am" to ladies felt respectful, but when he called his mother that, it seemed cold and too distanced. Andy considered these terms of endearment and respect. When Turner emerged into our lives, I did not encourage him ma'am-ing me, but Andy was persistent. Turner ma'am'd and sir'd more than he didn't, and it became clear how much people took this habit as a mark of fine parenting. When Turner went to public school and I met other children and talked with his teachers, I finally *got* the importance (and rarity) of this habit starting at home.

Mabel, much like her brother, is a quick learner. Though, she resists gendering language. Where is the English version of "vous" by the way? "Yes ma'am" is her respectful phrase used with everyone, men and women, adults and children. Tonight Andy asks Mabel ten different questions at various points between making dinner (fish tacos) and putting her to bed. At each point she responds with her sweet voice and eyelashes, "Yes, ma'am."  When she misgenders Andy, we respond with "yes, sir" and generally she'll repeat it. This same scenario played out with calling us both Mommy. For months. From my arms she would look across the room to Andy, hold out her arms and whine, "Mommy." We'd sit next to one another and practice saying Daddy and Mommy, pointing to each of us, and she'd giggle as she pointed to us both and said Mommy. She knew Daddy had another name. As I think back, this coincided with weaning. Andy took over putting Mabel to bed at night since I got to snuggle with her at nap time (sharing is caring). Perhaps she associated that comfort with the nighttime physical sensations of full belly and soft songs and book stories that Mommy could offer more for the first year. I also think that Andy does all the same things for Mabel that I do, so why wouldn't she think we should be called the same thing? For now, we continue to correct her. Perhaps someday the English language will develop a "vous" equivalent that names respect and sees gender as less relevant.