one small corner of the universe

If he is in bed by 7:30 we are usually safe. There are never any guarantees for a drama-free morning, but a pre-7:30 bedtime is as close to one as it comes. Between 7:30 and 8 it’s anyone’s guess, a risky coin toss that might just as well be in our favor, as coin tosses go. But if by some circumstance he’s still up walking around the house after 8:00, and assuming the next day is not Saturday or Sunday, there will be rage and devastation before he is even dressed the next day.

This is toddlerhood. Erik Erikson called it “Autonomy vs. Doubt.” Many people refer to it as the “terrible twos,” even though anyone who has ever reared a child knows the real fun peaks around age three. It is the most tumultuous time of a child’s early cognitive and emotional development, because it is intense for everyone involved. More language, social, and emotional advancement takes place during this time than at any other time in a kid’s life, and it is presumably exhausting for the kid. It is definitely exhausting for the rest of us.

We are learning him constantly, as if he’s some stranger from a foreign land (or another planet entirely), and not the boy I birthed just over 2.5 years ago–and in many ways he is a stranger, even to himself. Every day he has to think about something he has literally never thought of before. His response to most things is genuinely unprecedented. And should he find himself in the exact same position tomorrow, or next week, whether he’s being asked to please stay on the potty until I get back with a clean Pull-up, or told not to climb the pet gate, his reaction is not guaranteed to be the same as it was that first time. In fact, I can almost promise it won’t be.

He is beginning to understand what it means to be happy, sad, angry. He is quick to declare how he is feeling, even when his behavior leaves no question. Language accumulates in his brain like lake effect snow in Buffalo in January. We cannot keep up with the speed at which he acquires new words and phrases. Neither can he. He often says things he has heard and filed away, but clearly does not yet understand, and then grows frustrated when we take him at his word.

“I want some water, please.”

(Five seconds later) “Never mind.”

(Five seconds after that, when no one has given him water, assuming he had changed his mind) “I WANT SOME WATER! YOU NO GET MY WATER! I’M MAD!”

He is also not 100% clear on the difference between opposing phrases like “I will/I won’t” and “I do/I don’t.” He uses them interchangeably, and then becomes furious or sad or confused when we act on the one he said but clearly did not mean. We constantly walk a thin, ragged line between trying to understand him and patiently allowing him space to rave like a madman when he is having a moment of frustration or confusion, and attempting to exert some modicum of discipline and control over his bad behavior. I cannot say where we land most days. I can say it is hard. So hard.

There was a time when I had all the answers. I held every solution he craved. I could make him stop crying, satisfy his hunger, rock him to sleep, fascinate and amuse him. Even when it was its own brand of difficult, infancy and very early toddlerhood were infinitely easier to manage than this period in which we all now find ourselves. Nowadays he can tell us to “go away, get out of here!” or “stop it, don’t hug me!” and literally (and frequently) does. It is soul-crushing. We all remind each other constantly that we cannot take anything he says personally, but speaking strictly for myself, I am very bad at this. His dad is “the chosen one” lately, and Sister is second, and even though he is a mere 2 year old child who cannot blow his own nose, I often find myself smarting from the snub.

“I want my daddy,” he will say when I go in to turn on his light each morning. “He’s in the shower,” I tell him. “I want my sissy,” he responds. “She’s still in bed, like you,” I say, and sometimes, with me as his only option, he will look up at me and smile, reach for my hand, but just as often he rolls over, wraps his arms around Gary Moosey, and ignores me. And then sometimes I am the chosen one, and no one else is allowed to even bring him a napkin. There is no predictable pattern, no warning to suggest that you are suddenly off the list, and no reasonable way of knowing how long you might be shunned. It could be a week or five minutes. During those times I find myself longing for that simpler era, when I was the uncontested center of his world. It spins away so quickly that you don’t even know it is happening, until, of course, it has already happened.

Don’t mistake my longing for regret or dislike: I love this boy as he is. He is hilarious, and he knows it, and he uses his humor to crack us up at the dinner table most nights. He is ridiculously polite. He is a sharp observer, and his memory for detail is astounding to me. He sometimes gets up from his breakfast just to give one or of all of us a kiss and a hug; we tell him no, now it is time for eating, even as he slides down the side of his chair, wraps his arms around our legs, kisses us squarely on the thigh, and then asks for help back into his seat. Of course we oblige, making ourselves accessories to his blatant disregard for our silly “breakfast rules,” because who can resist him? He is gorgeous and charming, and even when he isn’t, I will myself to take a breath and remember how hard it must be for him to keep up with what is so easy and normal for us–schedules and rules of engagement, manners and word meanings, and appropriate emotional reactions to not being allowed to start walking down the steps all over again just because one of us dared help him with step number four.

My husband reminds me that there’s a reason the average human memory does not kick into long-term mode until later in childhood, and this is why, this age of the thirty second mood swing, this emotional minefield where our son sometimes happily plays with his construction toys and read books, and sometimes writhes madly on the floor because he doesn’t want it to be dark outside. He will not remember that I left him crying at preschool this morning because I could not be late for work again, and so I could not allow him to stop and put a rock in his pocket every nine inches as we made our way across the parking lot and thus had to carry him screaming into his classroom. He will not remember that one day last week, after what seemed like one long continuous tantrum at the breakfast table, I took him upstairs and sat him in his bed, left him there until he was quietly sniffing, and then gave him a yogurt pouch and some dry cereal to eat on the way to school.  He won’t remember being wrangled into the monkey pajamas, flailing and shouting “NO, NOT DESE ONES! I WANT THE ANOTHER ONES!” repeatedly, because the fire engine pajamas were still wet in the dryer. If we tread carefully, if we walk the line between letting him blow and teaching him to diffuse, if we sometimes say, “Yes, you can go the long way,” and if we sometimes let him be in control of his time, and if we show him how to function in this strange new world, he will come to the time where long term memories begin with nothing more than a vague sense of having been loved and nurtured through the war that is toddlerhood. If we are mindful, even when we’re losing our minds, he will not remember all the times we lost our cool.

And maybe I won’t either. Maybe someday when he is five or seven, or 10 like his sister is now, and we are riding in the car, or he is still letting me tuck him in at bedtime, he will ask me what he was like when he was two or three, and I will remember this: he has just seen me across the playground at pickup time and his face breaks wide open into a smile that breaks me wide open. He is in the backseat and he is pointing out every excavator and backhoe, every garbage truck and car carrier, every cement mixer and crane truck. He is playing with his sister, his beloved, who made him laugh the very first time of his whole life and still makes him laugh better than anyone, and he is so tickled over something she has done that he cannot catch his breath. He is running across the room into my arms, his favorite way to deliver a hug, and when he makes contact he takes hold of my head with his little hands and puts his forehead against mine and kisses me hard on the cheek. He is “riding” his bike with his daddy, slowly and painstakingly down the sidewalk, stopping every few feet to call out, “Watch me, Mommy! I riding my bike!” He is curled in my lap watching Toy Story, or reading a book, or playing a game on his “phome,” and for no reason he looks up and says, “I love you, too, Mommy.”

I will call those moments up for him someday, and I will call them up for myself at difficult moments, maybe as soon as tomorrow if we happen to find ourselves on the bad side of the coin toss, and I will try to keep it together, to smother my own frustration with blankets of love and patience. I will open my arms to him even when he is kicking and screaming and pushing me away. I will make sure he knows I am his first and forever homeland, and even on his hardest day, whether he’s a toddler or a teenager, he will never be a stranger to me.