The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

Posted February 26, 2008

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Photo of Ben and Birdy

^{Ever wonder what Catherine sounds like?}^{Listen to her read this blog entry.}

On the weekends, I'm all about board games and family walks, sewing doll dresses, and kid-filled dinner parties and quality time with a capital K. But during the week, my children spend hours and hours playing by themselves, and mostly I think it's great. I believe in unstructured games for kids, in empty stretches of time that fill organically with imaginary sandwich shops and doll parties and the complicated sketching out of the children's stuffed-animal family trees (Are Junior Beaver and Pengy cousins or siblings?) or the impromptu surrealist drawing of a vase full of carnations. The fact that this philosophy happens to suit my particular style of employment -- where I am often home and working at the same time-- is no coincidence. If Michael and I both worked out of the house and our children had full-time care, I would surely be singing the praises of that situation instead: "It's so much better that they're with adults who can actually pay attention to them," I'd say. And I'd probably be right.

But I love our life when it works: the feeling of being busy at my writing, but with an ear craned to where the kids are. Like Birdy. Ben's at school still, but even as I'm writing this, I can hear her talking softly to all her dolls and animals about a carnival ride. When I peek out, I see everyone lined up on the floor, and the ride itself in action: each doll and animal in turn gets wedged into a rainbow-hued plastic Slinky and boinged up and down for a count of 10. "I know," she's saying consolingly to The Biggest Tea Party in the World, who is one of her My Pretty Ponies. "It's hard to be done with your turn. You'll get another. Okay, who's next? Good job waiting so patiently!"

Still later I hear her singing at the top of her lungs both parts of some kind of operatic duet about sharing: "They both were such good choices that I really had a hard time choooooosing! But that's the one I choosed because it was really my choice!"

I'm self-conscious, though, about how much she sounds like one of those brave abandoned urchins in a chapter book -- one of those enterprising orphans with her magical, compensatory adventures, the kind who slips through the medicine cabinet mirror into a green and beautiful world while the terrible step-parents are too busy playing canasta on the screen porch to notice.

For instance, now. I'm still writing this and it's hours later and Ben's home. I had wanted to be finished working by late afternoon, but I'm not (because I was looking-- I'm not kidding-- at the IKEA catalogue. Doh!). So I'm here, doing this, and listening to them argue:

"Benny, did I say, 'Oh Judy, I like-a your earlies?' "

"No, Birdy. That was something I said when I was a baby, and I couldn't say earrings."

"No, I mean did I say it like earlies or eelies?"

"Birdy, you didn't say it at all. That's a story about me from when I was little."

"No, Benny! Now! Just now, HOW DID I SAY IT?"

"I can't talk about this for ONE MORE SECOND!"

Or last week, when I was writing in the bedroom so that I could keep an ear on them in the tub. We have this mom-and-baby penguin bath toy and when you spin it, either the beaks line up and the penguins kiss or they don't. Every time they didn't, Ben said, "Oh, sorry-- Mama can't kiss you. She's too busy working." On bad days, I feel like I'm in a remake of some latchkey-kid after-school special from the '80s, only in this version the mom is actually home the whole time.

Sometimes I feel bad, and often I feel frantic, obsessively checking the calendar where we keep track of our schedules and who's supposed to pick up who when. Michael has more and more massage work, which is a blessing and also a complicated piece of the puzzle of our life -- like it's one of those big foam floor tiles, and we're trying to wedge it into a little 25-piece scene of Maisy's Day on the Farm.

But then, it's hard to describe our happiness -- this love affair that goes on and on. When Michael and I were first together -- and I mean, like, the first 10 or so years -- I used to spend all day with this little tucked-away joyful certainty that, come nightfall, whatever the day had been or brought, I would be climbing into bed with him. I still have that feeling about Michael, I realize, writing this -- the way our nighttime life together twinkles through my day like a guiding star. But I also have it about the kids --the joyful certainty that, come the end of even a crazy day, I will stop what I'm doing to brush their teeth and rub cream on Ben's chapped hands and tape up Birdy's wart. It doesn't sound very romantic, listed like that (Oh the flossing! The lovely, lovely wiping!), but the tenderness of this tending moves me. Then Michael and I will read them their chapter books and lie down with each of them in turn to cuddle and look together at the shifting lights of night sky and whisper our great love to one another. And I will rest my hand on their sturdy ribcages, as I have been for eight years now, and thrill to the wild magic of their beating hearts.

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The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

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by Catherine Newman

Catherine Newman cooks for the family

Dalai Mama Dishes

Catherine Newman cooks for the family

The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

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