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 Dalai Mama Weekly BlogCatherine Newman chronicles life parenting Ben, 8, and Birdy, 5
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August 14, 2006
Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
 We're not even two miles into a long car trip when the children's voices seem to become replaced by stuck records of their own numbing urgency. It starts at the drive-through ATM — the same "drive through" ATM where I always have to actually open the car door and get out of the car after first doing my impersonation of a bumbling stub-tentacled octopus. Ben wants me to get him a deposit envelope. A relatively minor request, sure, but I ("I" being a euphemism for "Michael") have just cleaned out the floor of the car — a shin-deep sludge of string cheese wrappers, plastic spoons, Cheerios, marker caps, wipes (ew), popsicle sticks, sandy almonds, miscellaneous dirt, and a kajillion smudged and crumply deposit envelopes, give or take a zillion. "Oh honey," I sigh. "Let's not keep wasting all those envelopes." Because I'm hanging out the car window now, trying to reach my cash without doing a cumbersome impression of Carol Burnett reaching for her cash in a skit on the Carol Burnett Show, I offer him only an abridged lecture on trees and the environment. Maybe we should make bracelets that say "WWTLD." What Would The Lorax Do? But he wants the envelope for a particular reason, he argues — as a tent for the small and shelterless stuffed Sealy — and so I agree to get one. Only as we're pulling out of the bank does Birdy pipe up: "I want one too!" "You can have a turn with Ben's," I say, and she's so in love with her big brother that this plan thrills her almost as much as her indignation over the unfairness of it all. "I don't have an envelope, so Benny has to share his with me," she clarifies. "That's right, honey." "If Benny didn't have an envelope, then I would have to share mine with him." "Mmm hmm." "If you didn't have an envelope, then Daddy would have to share his with you!" Birdy hasn't learned the silently implied "etc." that keeps you from having to lug every conversational thread off into the numbing blue yonder where everybody scoops out their own eardrums with a grapefruit spoon. "I suppose so." "And if Daddy didn't have an envelope, then you would have to share yours with him!" How did my life become an Eric Carle book? It's exactly why kids love them, I realize — the comfort of repetition, every sentence uttered and reuttered on page after page after page. But really. Michael and I once had the pleasure of watching a little documentary about Eric Carle, and he's this jolly, creative genius, of course. But I couldn't help feeling a little bit smug — a little bit Amen — when, four or so pages into reading aloud from his own The Grouchy Ladybug, after he'd already recited the mantra-like "Wanna fight?" sequence about a two dozen times in three minutes, he grimaced, closed the book, waved his hand in the air, and summarized, complete with German accent, "And so it goes on like zis for some time." Exactly. It's the literary equivalent of retrieving the sippy cup from the car floor every fifteen seconds. Of squealing "peekaboo" every single one of the thousand times in a row you pull the fleece baby blanket off your own head. Of rolling a ball back and forth on the floor, your baby as smiling and serene as the Buddha himself while your own mind stirs and races and finally starts to compost damply between your ears. Just last week I watched Ben throw a stick into the water for Frankie, a friend's dog, and it was like a little film clip set to loop over and over: Ben flinging the stick into the air; Frankie leaping to get it; the two of them grinning at each other before starting again. I thought about an iced latte for the first ten minutes and a beer for the second, and then I just finally relaxed and enjoyed them — their joy. The way they didn't need to be onto the next new thing right away. Or ever. In the car now, further into the trip, Birdy is saying, "I spy with my little eye something that's pink." "Birdy," Ben shakes his head. "Birdy," he reminds her, "you have to pick it out before we start guessing." "I know," she says. "I did." "Is it Mama's shirt?" "Um. No." "Is it that sticker?" "Which sticker? Um. Yes. I mean no." "Is it that car that's kind of pinky-red?" "No." She sighs. "Oh Ben, I don't know what it is!" "Okay Birdy," he says gently. "You pick something out first, and then I'll try guessing." Ben is as patient as a dung beetle rolling its giant ball of dung uphill, tumbling with it to the bottom, and setting out again. "Okay Ben. I spy with my little eye something that's pink." In the movie version of this scene, Birdy would be played by herself, Ben by a young Julie Andrews, and me by Christopher Walken: I wouldn't have a speaking role, but there would be occasional close-ups of my sweaty, gnashing face. "Birdy, you have to pick it out first." "I did Ben," Birdy shrieks, and then quietly, "Oh wait. I didn't." I look over at Michael and he pantomimes activating the sound barrier that would separate the front and back seats of the car. "Zhhhhh," he says, and presses an imaginary button, and I laugh. And you know what? He's made this same joke at least daily since we've had kids. And I think it's funny every single time.   
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. Post a comment
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