Dalai Mama Dishes

by Catherine Newman

Catherine Newman cooks for the family

Dalai Mama Dishes

Catherine Newman cooks for the family

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Pasta and Fear

Posted September 07, 2007
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Years and years ago, Anna Quindlen wrote a piece for the New York Times about gender -- about the dreaded likelihood that her own daughter, a then-toddler brimming with life, would ultimately suffer the squelching of her curiosity and intelligence by a culture that still fosters such squelching. But what's in my head right now is not the gender issue in its entirety but one line from that piece, which I wrote down on a scrap of paper: "My daughter is ready to leap into the world, as though life were chicken soup and she a delighted noodle."

Quindlen was evoking this delight in anticipation of its loss, but I've always thought of that as a perfect description of Birdy: Birdy the delighted noodle; Birdy the happy rubber ball bouncing through our house; Birdy the orange helium balloon bapping eagerly against the ceiling. And now, suddenly, Birdy's an anxious noodle, and the soup's too hot or too salty or she's worried about getting broth up her nose, about drowning. She is, in a word, afraid.

Michael reminds me that this happened to Ben too at this age: the sudden tide of fears, with their undertow and the sand abrading tender skin, and which have ebbed only gradually over the last few years. I know he's right. "You wrote a whole essay about it," he says, in fact, and this is also true: Ben was afraid of garbage trucks, drains, lions, and death, among many, many other things. He wouldn't walk alone into an empty room; he dreaded nightfall; he leapt into my arms if a dog barked anywhere within our zip code. And now? The only thing I know he's afraid of, and only because he told me, is that a parent will need to "speak to" him about something when he's on a play date. As I child, I feared this very thing. In fact, a friend's mother still teases me about how forlorn I was for years after she once chastised me about running into the street, and even her mentioning this to me now makes me forlorn all over again. I regret that Ben has inherited my compulsive good-kidism.

Birdy is probably actually less fearful than Ben was at her age, but still -- maybe it's because I wish especially for fearless girls, or because she has always been such a little fusilli of happiness, I find myself nostalgic for the tough cookie of a few months ago; now she's a piece of crumbling shortbread. She wavers at the top of every staircase, yelps, "Carry me down, Mama! I'm afraid!" She shrieks and grabs onto my leg when an ant the size of a printed colon strolls invisibly by. When we're out for sushi, I hold a piece of seaweed out to her in my chopsticks, and she actually screams. "Jeez, Birdy," Ben says. "You could just say, 'No thank you.'" One evening before bed I tell the kids not to kiss me on the mouth because I've put a yucky kind of lip balm on -- and Birdy won't kiss me at all for days after. "I'm afraid of your yucky lips!" she says, and cranes her neck comically sideways when she even hugs me.

She's afraid of monsters and also that adults will grab at her when she walks by. Oddly, as if picking this exact moment to be a jerk, a snake slithers over her sandals near the school parking lot, and this really doesn't help matters. We are all humiliatedly phobic about snakes around here, and this new fear is one Birdy comes by naturally. A few days later, we see a large pair mating energetically next to the bike path, like a jerking tangle of bicycle tires, and I go weak in the knees. Birdy will not fall for the effort of my enthusiasm -- "Come and see these amazing snakes!" I squeak -- and stays far away and full of fear.

And then I think about how she's afraid of climbing now, this Birdy who lived the first four years of her life as agile and upside-down as a spider. And I think about how I'm afraid of her climbing -- how my fear that the babies would choke has morphed into a fear that the children will fall and break their necks -- and I worry about the connection between her fear and mine. I worry that I'm a Nervous Nelly with Neurotic Nelly offspring. I worry that I block the light of fun and imagination with my own doomy shadow. I worry that the kids will kill themselves skateboarding, and I worry that they'll never try skateboarding because they'll be too worried. I worry that if I stop worrying then my children won't be safe -- that my worry actually, magically keeps them safe -- and then I worry that it's my very worrying that will pull danger towards us.

But I'm still a delighted noodle too. I swear.

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Pasta and Fear

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About Catherine Newman

Catherine Newman is the author of the memoir, Waiting for Birdy: A Year of Frantic Tedium, Neurotic Angst, and the Wild Magic of Growing a Family, available online and in bookstores nationwide.

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