The Cute Curse

Older population: "Cute as a button!"

My husband when we were first dating: "Cutie-patootee!"

Women peers: "You are just the cutest thing!"

I'm annoyed.

I got my maternal grandmother's hopelessly short genes, the ceiling of her ancestry height maxing out at a tad over 5 ft. I definitely fudge on all formal paperwork that I am a proper 5'1'' and convince myself that rounding up is mathematically correct. I'm pretty sure at 5 and a third of an inch, math would argue I'm 5 ft flat.

My paternal grandparents are from where the round cheeks and button nose descend. My dad's nickname in college was "Babyface," and I could order off of the kids menu well after I started shaving my legs.

I'm not annoyed that I look young. I'll take it.

I'm annoyed that I get treated differently as a result. That at times I am seen as a mini person with mini ideas and mini offerings and a mini presence. "Cute" feels incompatible with the work of purposeful living, a death wish for the me who seeks Bigness . Cute = light, playful, carefree - all of which I am. But Cute also = for show, powerless, childlike, not to be taken seriously, sometimes fully foolish.

Here's the reason, though, I have no case to be annoyed:

I've exploited it.

The very descriptor I detest is one whose shoes I've so masterfully filled. For years - many, many years - I've been experiencing the cognitive dissension of bad mouthing the outer world's response to me as "cute" while playing up its edges like a pro, always cunningly looking for how it can work to my advantage.

Cute wins me things. Cute wins me compliments, cute wins me favors. Cute strategically played up wins quick forgiveness and a turned head to flaws.

Cute also works for men. Cute is not the same as flirting, but the line is dang thin. Isn't it cute that I argue there is a distinction?

The truth: I might like to victimize what "cute" does to me, but I'm winning, laughing all the cotton-picking way to the bank of favor.

The question: Am I willing to stop playing the cute role at the risk of losing a little more?

The quandary: Am I the one selling myself short? (Yes, DAMN IT: pun intended)

Two Deep.

I learned in Taco Bell my mom was going to die. For once, she and Dad chose words that were not coated in hope and partial truths. A fast food dining room was a fitting setting, both the plastic, fast-food booth and the news unforgiving. The melanoma skin cancer that had existed as a barreling train on the tracks of Mom’s life for five years, always behind her but never upfront about how far back nor how fast it was gaining, was going to get her: she had less than two years remaining.

I learned that my son was going to die on the night he died, but my husband and I got the first news of his congenital heart condition while I was on my back, watching the ultra sound technician squint and stumble over her buttons in an effort to get a closer look at Baby B’s disfigured beating heart.

These two bits of grave information landed on me very close together.

Too close.

I did not know how to lose my mom. I did not know how to house twins, one with a broken heart that would need multiple surgeries to fix once he came out, one whose body would eventually grow too weak to keep up the fight. I did not know how to say goodbye to a cherished life a generation above me at the same time I was bringing one so precarious into the world a generation below me.

What I did know was that I could not handle these deeply emotional journeys – my mother dying and my son sick– concurrently. When pain hits two deep, I learned that there is only so much space for it.

Is your pain two deep? Three, four deep?

May I nudge you: house one pain at a time. Let each one do what it wants with you, fully taking you over – but only one at a time. Let one pain fill you like a water feature with a ceaseless stream cascading into a bucket. Let it fill you until you yield with the weight and gush out – in your bed, in the shower, over your journal pages. Then, back upright, let it fill you once more.

Listen for the other pain, meanwhile, for when it is louder or stronger or more white water. Then, consciously break from housing your first pain and commit fully to the second. First Pain will not feel cheated or slighted; it will be there for when your bucket is available for it again.

I would take breaks from the knowledge that I had a very high risk pregnancy and a very sick child on the way. I would cry then only as a daughter losing her mom… like that was the only thing in the world to weep over. My tears were not split. One bucket.

Then, I’d return to the pain of my son’s broken body, the medical trouble he faced, we faced. More tears. One bucket.

Sometimes the change-over would happen after days, weeks. Sometimes a handful of times in the same hour. But always I forced my pain, two deep, to take turns.

Like a toddler wanting your attention, give one pain at a time all of it.

My Engine

Even my can opener isn't working. Sorta like my brain.

I'm standing in my kitchen in a moment of alone, all children in the care of others, school, or a crib. Prepping dinner seems the responsible use of this time, even though it feels wrong to me. Wrong and heavy and burdensome and demanding... another weight.

Last night I shot up from my pillow, erect, unable to take my pounding heart anymore. Husband says, "Bad dream?"

I think, "This would be a good dream, for it to be a bad dream." There's no way to wake from my quickened breathing, racing heartbeat, sweats, anxious thoughts; they are ceaseless. I settle for, "Something is not right. I'm not supposed to feel this way." Husband settles for holding me while I swirl.

Today I'm sleepless, aimless, worn down, uncertain, confused, foggy... Overwhelmed. By. Everything. And so I choose, in the only free moments of this day, to unnecessarily labor in my kitchen over dinner prep. Since everything feels do or die, the unexpected misbehavior of my can opener sends me into a complete hysteria. Unopened refried beans = everything falling apart.

Short fused is new. Flying off the handle novel. I watch this unhinged version of myself fling a can opener across the kitchen, blasting into things as it crashes across the island and comes to a halt on the kitchen floor. Startled by my rage, I crumble to the floor. Alone, trembling, scared by what I just did.

Over the months I journal. I yoga. I breathe. I meditate. I therapy. I exercise. I pray. I talk and talk and share and share. I seek medication. I call in for support with my kids, my home, my duties. I improve. I decline. I dig out. I fall in.

I wonder if this is the new me. Above all, this makes my heart race the fastest.

Meanwhile, I watch every other woman I know climb the Motherhood Mountain exhausted and harried, but not - like me - completely broken down.

Someone tells me: What if there is a reason for your overwhelm? I grip to this notion like it's a rainbow, a promise of hope. What if this unfamiliar anxiety is not tied to an emotional battle, a depression? What if what is harassing me is rooted in something plainly explainable?

I learn a metaphor that makes my compassionate self pat my downtrodden self on its worried little head. It is spoken by a specialist who diagnoses learning disabilities and, after testing me, he says this: "You are driving a car with two of its four tires flat. The engine is strong - a fine piece of machinery - but despite this it cannot produce what other cars can. It is overworked."

I realize my engine, my brain during this season, doesn't just run more slowly. It doesn't just grumble against the pull. It fully blows out.

I commit to learning about my learning disability like a ninja.

It takes years. It is not perfect. But I grow to treat my brain like a newborn baby, learning its coos and cries and protests - what is best for it and how and when to rest it.

I give refuge to my taxed engine. I buy a new can opener and more frozen pizzas for dinner. I sleep well again.

What's here + What's gone = Confused

It was June 2012 this last happened. I can remember it hitting me then the same way it hits me this weekend: so much fullness and so much goneness that the only way for them both to exist is to be confused.

People always ask if her birthday brings me sadness. That's an easy one to answer: Nope, it's my mom's death anniversary that gets me. It's the same for my dad - his death anniversary is when I mourn - but usually Father's Day gives me a run for my money, too, especially when it falls the day after Mom's death anniversary.

And that's the way it feels now. Mom died eleven years ago today; tomorrow is the seventh Father's Dad I'll experience without one by my side.

Like six years ago when they were back-to-back, What. A. Weekend.

But it almost seems that there would be sad beauty to the synchronicity, IF I were able to lock myself in my room for the entirety of the weekend and cry or drink from a vodka bottle or take long baths or watch sad movies where loved ones die before their time or journal or all. of. these. things. at. once. Now THAT would be depressingly delectable.

But, no, I can't do that.

I don't want to do that.

Well, maybe I do a little bit, but mostly I can't.

Cuz I have this powerhouse husband who is also a fully kick ass dad to our children. And tomorrow, Father's Dad, is about him, too. There's so much fullness in observing our four darlings spill coffee all over the counter and up the steps in an effort to serve him in bed, in their handmade cards and juicy kisses, in his smiles and misty eyes at the lives he gets to mold and mush around as best he can. I observe all of this with such gratitude and I can hardly believe that I'm missing the other half of Father's Day. I smile. I cry. I smile. I cry.

And today: My mom's death anniversary, one I spent at the pool with my little brood - smearing sunscreen, propelling tooshes upwards that eventuate into cannonball splashes, wrapping a shivering body in a towel for a lap sit, Dairy Queen blizzards at outdoor tables on the way home. Living. Motherhood. Like. A. Boss. And experiencing all the love and irritability and sentiment and short-fusedness and moment-relishing and doubt and warmth that come with living like a mom who cares her ass off. I observe all of this with such gratitude and I can hardly believe that I'm missing my own mother. I smile. I cry. I smile. I cry.

Surely it makes sense that holing up this weekend with my loss, fully honoring that which is gone, would be easier on my mind... I could be singularly unconfused.

But by now I've learned life is rather not-singular. In fact, it almost always overlaps and vacillates and blends and doubles up. It's never This-then-That, rarely Arrival, Departure, Next Arrival. It's almost always, "Here ya go," pouncing you with lots of both fresh and spoiled groceries with no bag and little time to sort the two out so that you are doing a little crazed juggling dance to keep it all in your arms.

I've decided to experience the spoil and the bounty simultaneously.

Which is why today I played at the pool and tomorrow I will spoil my husband. And why today I tear up writing this piece. And why tomorrow I'll record in my Dad journal and eat a BLT, his favorite.

Confusing? Yes. Impossible? No.

I can dance with all of it.

(But a bag to hold it all would be nice.)