Authors: Ariella Papa
Momfriends
MOMFRIENDS
Ariella Papa
Copyright 2010
To Rocco and Fiamma--for giving every day so many favorite parts.
Table of Contents
CLAUDIA
I worry.
I worry that I am messing it all up with these kids.
I worry that other people know that.
I worry that I will never have enough time.
I worry that the time I have I’m not using right at all.
I worry that the house will never ever be clean enough.
I worry that someday one of us will lose our job and we won’t be able to afford day care.
I worry that if I had all the money in the world and could stay home with my kids, I would hate it.
I worry that they love the day care teachers more than me.
I worry that my mother is right when she says, “I didn’t worry about that when I had you.”
I worry that my mother did a better job, and if that’s a better job, sheesh, these kids are really screwed.
I worry about Emily being too bossy and Jacob being too unfocused to get into a good preschool and then they will be forever on a path of destruction.
I worry that I think those words to describe my kids.
I worry that everyone is judging me constantly all the time.
I worry that I should have breast-fed longer.
I worry that no matter how closely I scrutinized my food when I was pregnant, gave up caffeine, alcohol and soft cheeses, there was something I ate or did that will someday be revealed in a study to cause something horribly wrong with my kids.
I worry that I waited too long–until I was 36–to even think about getting pregnant and now I’ll be one of those old moms and my kids’ friend’s moms will be MILFs.
I worry that my kids won’t get into a good preschool and then they won’t get into a good real school and then they won’t get into a good college and that would be catastrophic.
I worry that my husband notices that I haven’t given him oral sex in seventeen months.
I worry that he doesn’t.
I worry that he notices how disgusting my breasts are.
I worry that he is looking at, fantasizing about or touching someone else’s breasts.
I worry that he will divorce me.
I worry that a divorce bothers me in a practical sense more than a romantic one.
I worry that being a mother is going to be the first thing I ever fail.
And most of all, I lay in bed at night worrying that there is something I forgot to worry about. And that in the end, it will be thing I wasn’t even thinking about that will be my downfall.
KIRSTEN
We used to sleep late.
We used to wake up when we wanted to and lie around in bed with the paper and coffee and the occasional cigarette and talk about what we were going to do with our day.
We used to have sex whenever and wherever we wanted to.
We used to create art.
We used to talk about the art we made.
We used to collaborate.
We used to touch each other’s faces and not just to get something one of the kids put there off.
We used plan for the future and fantasize about being famous and being written about in the
New York Times.
We used to talk about how we weren’t very popular in high school and how now all those assholes could suck it because we had each other and they were frustrated losers.
We used to listen to music, just sit and listen to music.
We used to read: books, magazines, and almost every section of the Sunday
Times
.
We used to read to ourselves and if we did read aloud it was quietly to each other and not in some weird loud singsongy voice.
We used to go to the movies and stop on the street afterward to talk about them.
We used to waste time.
We used to have nothing but time.
We used to talk about how great we were as a couple, how lucky we were to have found each other.
We used to get an idea and execute it within the hour.
We used to make plans and cancel them without worrying about disappointing any little people.
We used to be quiet.
We used to seriously think we could take off and live in Paris or New Mexico or Alaska for a year.
We used to never ever worry about money.
We used to take car trips without rest stops.
We used to not have insurance.
We used to eat whenever we felt like it.
We used to never worry about anyone else’s poop.
We used to be man and woman and not Mommy and Daddy.
RUTH
I wish I didn’t feel this way.
I wish I didn’t think it was all a horrible mistake.
I wish that getting pregnant had come easy the normal way, like it does for countless teen mothers, Britney Spears and, really, it seems, just about everyone.
I wish I could find my sense of humor, the one that I kept going strong throughout all the pills and injections and methods of conception that lacked any modicum of intimacy.
I wish that I felt completely confident when my son came out five weeks ago, instead of feeling totally overwhelmed.
I wish I could go back to the hospital, so I could have the baby in the nursery. Why didn’t I have him in the nursery more? What was so great about rooming in? Why didn’t I get more sleep?
I wish I didn’t miss the postnatal nurses. Even though at times they were cranky and some of them didn’t speak English all that well, I miss them being the push of a small red button away.
I wish that I could feel grateful that I actually have a baby after all the trouble I went through to get him instead of being so bitter at his constant crying.
I wish that I wasn’t totally unworthy of the sweet sounds Abe makes when he actually finally does fall asleep.
I wish I were a better breast-feeder after a month.
I wish breast-feeding was natural and relaxing the way it was supposed to be.
I wish it didn’t feel weird and painful every time he latches on.
I wish I could find the time to change out of my milk-stained sweatshirt and wash my hair and put my contacts in every day.
I wish I had the energy to answer the phone calls, emails and texts my (childless) best friend, Liz, sends me every few days.
I wish my husband, Steve, didn’t have to deal with not knowing which me he is going to get on a minute-to-minute basis.
I wish Steve had wanted kids to begin with because now it all seems to suck so much.
I wish I could go on vacation.
I wish I had Kelly Ripa’s life and abs.
I wish I had been content with having a cat.
I wish the cat could forgive my betrayal.
I wish Abe wasn’t crying again.
I wish I didn’t have to go get him.
I wish I didn’t think he was never ever going to be happy or anything.
I wish this would someday get better.
I wish I believed that it would.
I wish I could do this, but I really don’t think that I can.
Chapter 1
Kirsten Fights the Good Fight
The playground was a battle zone and I was walking into an ambush.
My three-year-old son, Sage, was strutting around the playground in his sister’s bikini and he looked happier than I have ever looked in anything I have ever worn.
I told myself it was a phase. I didn’t need to dress my boy in blue and my girls in pink. I tried not to embrace these stupid gender issues. It was other people’s problem. David, my partner, said that not everyone was as enlightened as we were.
But there was no denying that Sage with his crew cut and tiny testicles bouncing beneath fuchsia stripes was getting some attention as he ran under the sprinkler. He was so happy. It was a super warm spring day in May. It was the first day the water was turned on.
“Is that a boy or a girl? I heard one of the girls on the swing next to me say to another. I guessed she was four. There was nothing worse than a four-year-old girl. Don’t get me wrong, my daughter, Julissa, remained bossy at barely five, but as bad as it gets I thanked the universe every day that she was no longer four.
“I don’t know,” her friend answered and they giggled. I considered pushing them off the swing, but I was nursing the baby and I tried to think peaceful thoughts when I breastfed.
I looked over at Sage and waved. He waved back, grinning. His sweetness made my heart ache. He ran over to the slide and slid down once. He looked for me when he got down, to make sure I saw him. I waved and smiled brightly. An older nanny in the bench near the slide said something to him. I’m mostly deaf in one ear so I read lips pretty well and I could tell, even with her accent that she was asking him what he was doing wearing a girl’s bathing suit.
Sage knew not to talk to strangers and rushed over to me. I opened my arms up to him and glanced over at the nanny.
“He’s okay,” I said as if she had apologized for being insensitive. I smiled my best dumb smile and hoped she didn’t decide to talk to me. There was nothing I hated more than making small talk at the playground. It was never as innocent as it should have been. People always had a theory on how you should be raising your kids or what you were doing wrong. Nothing like a playground encounter to make you feel like shit.
Sage scrambled into my lap, momentarily displacing Naomi. She started to fuss. I readjusted Naomi to make room for Sage.
“Remember to be gentle around the baby,” I reminded him. “She’s a lot littler than you are.”
He grabbed her closed fist gently, but I kept an eye on him, knowing that soon he would start to squeeze.
“What did that lady say to you?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. I believed him. Kids tended to miss the things that they shouldn’t understand. But still he was aware that something was off because of the nanny and not sure how to process it. It made him confused and he started to squeeze Naomi’s hand.
“Gentle, Sage,” I said, quietly. He dropped it immediately and put his hand in my hair and buried his face in my shoulder. “Mmmm, that’s okay sweetheart.”
I felt uneasy. I never should have come to the playground after this morning, but a three-year-old needed to burn energy. We had to be out of the house by nine otherwise he would bounce off the walls.
This morning had left a bitter taste in my mouth. As usual, it started with someone on me. There was always someone on me. Some little person was always tugging, climbing or sucking on Mama. Even when I was by myself, I stood in ways to accommodate any one of my three kids.
And so this morning, I was asleep with Naomi not really nursing, but comfort latched onto my breast and David was talking to me. Unfortunately, it was David who got the raw end of the deal when it came to my attention. But I was pretty much always game for having some sleepy sex, if he wanted to. After almost ten years together, I was still insanely attracted to him.
He was an artist, a sculptor, but to make ends meet he worked for his father. He got up early to supervise the bakers at the warehouse bakery his family owned near the Gowanus Canal, but he hadn’t woken me up for sex in a long time. He was sitting on the edge of the bed asking me a question.
“Did you see the flyer for the moms group in The Ground Floor?”
“Maybe,” I mumbled.
“Are you going to go?”
“Mmmmmaybe,” I said, already falling back to sleep. Awakened by David, Naomi began to nurse for real. I snuggled her against me, happy that this would give me a little more time in bed.
“Kir, I think you should check it out. It’s Saturday mornings at 11, there at the cafe. You can bring Naomi and Sage and I’ll watch Jules.”
“I think I did that kind of thing when Julissa was born. I don’t need any new mom support. I think I got it down the third time around.” I wasn’t really paying that much attention to what he was saying, I was desperate for a little more sleep before the other kids got up.
“But you need to meet new moms. Right? That’s where they go. New moms need photographs. You can tell them that you are a photographer. That’s how you network.”
I was awake now and I rolled over as much as Naomi would allow. I wanted to hear this conversation with my good ear.
“Did you just say network?”
“Yeah, network. The rent is not going to pay itself, baby. And it wouldn’t hurt to put up a flyer in The Ground Floor. You need to get back into the swing. Remember how well you did after Sage was born.”
“Yeah, remember all the times we needed your mom to babysit for us and how that drove us nuts.”
