Where Oh Where is my Baby Girl?

I want to hurt her. OK, not hurt her. Maybe just dig my nails into the underside of her upper arm to shut her up. Was I ever this bad? Wait, don’t answer that, Mom. I was totally capable of downright disdainful, dismissive, and I had “disgusted” down pat. She is a teenager. And she is still capable of small moments of kindness, usually when my credit card is involved. This is adolescence. “We” are perpetually exhausted, run down, pooped, beat, dead. Everything always hurts or aches. “I’m tired,” she says, and she collapses into me; all long coltish bones and lovely curves. “I’m soooooo tired,” she says again for emphasis. “What about me?” I want to scream. “I rose at 5:00 a.m. to walk the damned dogs, packed lunches, started laundry and scheduled your ortho appointment. And that’s on top of my job.” But of course I don’t say anything of the kind. That would send her skittering in the other direction, eyes rolling like dropped marbles. She’ll find out soon enough when she is tending a flock of her own. “Keep it tender,” I think. “Make a false move and she will bolt like a fawn.” She is at least out of her room now, down in the public areas of the house, lured by the smell of a roast chicken dinner. When I ask her a question in my chirpy, Doris Day voice, she responds in a monotone, like those zombies in “Night of the Living Dead.” She couldn’t be less animated. Unless we are shopping. Is it wrong to dislike your child sometimes? Are we allowed to admit that? I know she is under there somewhere, like a kid hiding beneath a blanket, I’m waiting for my real daughter to crawl back out. This is the kid who had a joker-sized smile as a baby; wide and open as a boulevard. I can still see it sometimes, the echo of that little baby girl. I can see it when she finds something humorous, giggles, or decides to engage with me in a joke, something at the expense of her father or sisters. It is there in the flash of her eyes, a glance or an expression. We are colluding in those moments, co-conspirators, and it feels good. Like the old times. And then, abruptly, just when I think we are on that terra firma again, she pulls her head into her shell. “How did you sleep?” I ask in my most unctuous voice on school mornings . “Unnnnnggghhhhhhhhhhssssssss.” Is that an animal noise? Vegetable? Mineral gas? Does that even qualify as a response? I wonder, blinking my eyes like a cow. “I’m so tiiiiiiiiirrrrrrrrred.” She slumps onto the kitchen counter, refusing breakfast, eyes fluttering dramatically. Really? I want to say. You are? That’s a new one. But snarky aint going to get me anywhere. Naturally, I hold my tongue and quietly slip a banana into her backpack. I can wait this out. I can play “the teen whisperer,” biding my time until she has to appear for food. In these moments there is hope that I might be able to slip a noose over her neck and lure her into spilling one clue that gives me an insight into her psyche these days. I took Psych 101 in college. Darn tootin’. OK. OK. I’ll be the first to admit that the morning IS my time. I’m overly caffeinated and happy and I’ll talk to you about anything. I have enough energy to tackle America’s healthcare agenda in the morning, but ask me anything around 9:00 PM that requires a brain wave and I might chew your arm off at the elbow. I am a Type A obnoxious morning person. Everyone in the family knows this, and I forgive the others who aren’t. I really do. But just once I want her to stand up tall and say, “I had a great sleep. I feel terrific!” Perhaps I am being a bit harsh here. She is never the kid who asks for too much. On balance she is pretty good to her sisters. She’ll occasionally spend her own babysitting money on clothes without being told. She is a loyal and generous friend, has never come home drunk and doesn’t doesn’t do drugs (that I know of anyway). She is dutiful and self- motivated when it comes to school work and commitments. And she is sweet. Deep down underneath that teenaged veneer she is sweet as all get-up. I’ve decided that being a mother to teens is similar to being a Tibetan monk; waiting, patiently, for that one crucial moment when the Dalai Lama passes by in the procession to grace you with his presence and blessing. As a monk, you don’t get to just hang out with the Lama. You don’t get to make yak butter with him or bust out yoga moves and circle chant. You wait for the Dalai Lama to make his appearance. It’s not that he’s too good for you or too exalted or too…… Lama-ish. It’s just that he has really important stuff to do, like focus on World Peace and human rights. And I figure those monks understand that they can’t get his undivided attention. That’s just the way it is so they go out and do what monks do. So that’s me. I’m the monk. I’m waiting by the sidelines for the times that the Lama and his entourage pass by with the holy water or prayer shawls or however the Dalai Lama moves through his town offering blessings and eternal goodness. I figure it’s got to be worth it—waiting for the Lama to smile at you. It’s worth it because in that occasional smile my daughter throws out are a thousand sparkling suns. In her heart, so absorbed now with the stress of SATs and next year’s college applications and who might ask her to the prom, and a bundle of other unarticulated adolescent dreams and disappointments that she doesn’t realize I understand; in that teenaged heart still beats the very essence of my baby girl. And she will emerge again. It may not be tomorrow. Or next year. Or even until she experiences motherhood for herself, if that’s what she chooses. But I’m a monk. I hold my tongue and I prostrate myself. I wait for those moments of grace. Because in those moments, motherhood is all worth it.

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Lost Dogs and Mom & Pop Shops

We lost our dog the other day. He just never came back. It was completely traumatic, even for a non-dog person like me. But nothing will make you realize faster just how much of a dog person you have become than losing your dog.

That unconditional love gets under your skin.

We let Woody out the door in the morning for a simple pee; just like he has done every morning for the past two years. An hour later, Woody still wasn’t home.

“He’ll come home,” I said to my husband, who was frustrated and talking through his teeth because he needed to get to work. “He always does.” I had already left for the airport, confident that Woody would show up momentarily. And it’s true. If our other dog, Tucker, is a mama’s boy who sticks right near my ankles, Woody has the soul of a wanderer. He likes to take his own route. He is mellow and not a very good listener. He might turn when you call his name. He might not. He is a dog on his own time, and he likes to sniff and lick and check stuff out. My sister calls him aloof. If he was a human, he’d probably smoke lots of pot.

Hours later, Woody still hadn’t returned. Panic set in. But still, I assured my children, who had been out tearfully searching for him with the babysitter, that I was hopeful. I reminded them that well meaning neighbors had returned him on occasion when he was sniffing across the street at the school, or too close to the road. He isn’t the brightest pup in the dog house when it comes to cars.

Across our town, neighbors began to mobilize in that way neighbors do when wagons need to be circled and there is action that can be taken. My kids made posters with “big reward” and stapled them to telephone poles. Three of my girlfriends went to delis, the pharmacy and restaurants, places of business on the edges of our village to sound the alarm. Another friend took off to the town golf course with her dog, calling Woody’s name. How far could a little fluffy white dog get?

By nightfall my kids were panicked and I was in Nashville, ready to speak at a conference. Their pain was physically hurting me. My husband had left work early to drive the streets around our home. The groomer called, concerned. The kids called me crying. Alone in my hotel room I felt helpless and small. Unspoken between us all was the fact that there were frequently coyote sightings in our town. Woody was appetizer-size. When I closed my eyes to sleep I envisioned them circling, licking their chops with yellow eyes like the hyenas in “The Lion King” movie.

By day two, everyone was on the look out for the little white dog. But we had all come up empty. Coming back home from Nashville and walking into our one-dog house was sad. The kids were sad. The one dog was sad. We all tried to imagine what Woody was doing. How had he made it through the cold night? Had he?

At 6:30 the next morning when the phone rang, I just knew. He was found. A kind man had seen him chugging along on a highway overpass and stopped his truck to retrieve him. He’d wandered 8.6 miles away. As I sobbed into the phone and scribbled down the man’s information, I silently said a prayer of thanks. Woody’s good outcome would help shape my kid’s world view. It would mean that my words to them, about hope and about keeping the faith, which sounded so hollow yesterday, had proven me to be right. They could tell this story to their own kids some day, or use it to comfort another friend whose dog was lost.

Our journey to find Woody, however, had another interesting consequence. It reaffirmed my commitment to the importance of neighborhood; of supporting the local stores and merchants and businesses who make up a town.

My friend Karen, who had given up a morning to go into the businesses in the surrounding area, reported to me just how concerned the local shopkeepers were.

“Did they find the little white dog?” they’d ask her as she did her shopping or picked up a prescription. And the patrons would all look up hopefully, connected, for the moment, by one family’s overarching loss.

But here was the thing. When she went to the family-owned pharmacy and the paint store, the bagel shop, the book store and the deli, all of them eagerly encouraged her to post the notices.

In the giant chain stores, however, the big marquee pharmacy, the local Starbucks, the office store, there were “policies” in place about these notices. Sorry as the managers were to tell her no, and Karen could see it in their eyes, they had to stick to the rules.

I tend to shop local. I try to buy from the family store whenever I can. I’m willing to pay a few extra bucks to keep the small town stores and businesses alive in the face of so much national cookie cutter competition.

I like the fact that my local pharmacy has a salesman who always wants to talk to me about a homeopathic option, or that they will order anything for me—or ask if I want generic. I love the fact that my local bookstore owner, Patrick, knows when my book readings are and recommends an upcoming book he thinks I might like.

Losing Woody was scary and sad. But everything has an upside if you tip it just right. The way that my town and the shopkeepers in particular pulled together and offered their windows to help, it just renewed my conviction to community.

As I just put the polishing touches on this piece, the phone rang and the pharmacy was calling. “Was Woody found?” the lady at the other side of the line asked. “We’ve all been so worried.” It really does take a village.

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