The Thursday Effect

I love Thursdays.

Here's why:

1. I don't teach on Thursdays.

2. Because I don't teach on Thursdays, I don't usually have to be anywhere, except when I have a meeting or an appointment with a student. (Translation: I can wear yoga pants, a sweatshirt and slippers all day long.)

3. I can catch up on cleaning, errands, laundry, and other miscellaneous household chores I neglect during the rest of the week.

4. I can go to the gym, should I feel like putting on a bra and sneakers.

5. I can go to Target, should I feel like getting bathed and dressed afterward.

6. I can go to Starbucks, should I feel like getting bathed and dressed. (Even if I don't, there's still a drive-thru.)

7. I can write.

After some deep contemplation, we started sending Benjamin to daycare three days a week instead of two last month. We did this for a few reasons. First, I needed the time. I was staying up so late at night and falling behind on my grading and other work. Secondly, after speaking to his teachers, we determined that three consecutive days was actually better for Benjamin. It was a lot easier to ditch the second nap and push what was once his mid-morning nap into an early-afternoon nap at home because he was already doing it three days a week at school. He'll likely be potty-training soon, so the consistency will be better in that department, too.

Not only that, but he's at school for more parties and special events, and I don't always feel like a wayward mom who doesn't really know what's going on. And I realize this sounds insane, but I hated thinking that he maybe felt left out, too. At Thanksgiving, the kids all made handprint turkeys and pilgrim-hat collages out of construction paper, which were displayed on the wall outside the classroom — all of the kids but Benjamin, that is, because he wasn't at school that day.

But the biggest reason was the first one. I was feeling very overwhelmed by my life. I wasn't getting enough sleep, making me quite cranky. I felt suffocated by the stacks of papers I needed to grade and the figurative stacks of e-mails I needed to answer. And I wasn't feeling as if I was really present with Benjamin when I was with him because work was always, always in the back of my mind. You know it's bad when your not-quite-2-year-old tells you, "No phone, Mommy."

Everyone told me that Benjamin needed to go to daycare at least one more day — everyone. Deep down, I knew it, too. I felt like my life was that episode of "I Love Lucy" where Lucy and Ethel can't keep up with the chocolates on the conveyor belt so they start shoving them in their mouths and down their shirts — and not in a way that was at all comical, zany or in the least bit delicious.

But that doesn't mean that I don't feel like complete crap every single Thursday when I do it.

Take today, for example. On this particular Thursday, Benjamin had a crying fit when I dropped him off at school. A full-blown, red-faced, clinging-to-my-legs, screaming and crying Level 5 fit.

Ah, yes. There's nothing quite like hearing "MOOOOMMMMYYYYY!!!!" and your son's wailing as you're walking out the door to make you feel like a truly top-notch parent.

On this particular Thursday, I drove not to Starbucks immediately afterward as I normally do, but to THE GYM. Instead of drowning my guilt in a soy cinnamon latte (which I'm so obsessed with right now, I can't even tell you), I decided to sweat at the gym. I love the gym at this time of the morning. I'm the youngest person there by a long shot. Old ladies are riding the stationary bikes in pastel slacks at this time of the morning. The nice gentleman who opened the door for me actually touched the brim of his baseball cap to me. I mean, who does that anymore?! Between that gesture and my guilt over leaving Benjamin, I nearly burst into tears on the spot.

But like every Thursday, once I got into the day, I was fine — just as Benjamin is fine by the time I get to my car in the daycare parking lot. As I tick off items one by one from my to-do list, I feel more than fine. In fact, I feel pretty good. I call this the Thursday effect. Just one day allows me to get caught up enough and have some time for myself so that the rest of the week runs more smoothly and I feel less stressed. It's like pressing reset.

Thursdays make me feel like I've accomplished something, like I can actually do this insane working-parent thing without losing my whole damn mind.

Thursdays are a day on my own terms, which is refreshing, given that not much in my life is on my own terms anymore.

Thursdays are, as my son is unfortunately so fond of saying, mine.

But as much as I have come to love Thursdays, I still wish I didn't need them. I still wish I was better at balancing and juggling all of this. I still miss my son. It's still not a neat and tidy fix. For now, though, it will do.

And for your viewing pleasure: "Let 'er roll!"

I Know You Are, But What Am I?

When I pick Benjamin up at daycare (or "school," as we call it) two days a week, I’m almost as excited to read the daily Tell-A-Gram that awaits me in his cubby as I am to see him. (Almost.)

Being a mom has meant that my natural propensity for curiosity and desire for details have been cranked up to eleven. When I'm not with Benjamin because I’m at work or at Target for an hour or meeting my girlfriends for Sunday morning coffee, I want a full report of the goings-on that I missed.

It’s not enough for me to know that he’s been fed, diapered, and that he’s slept. I want to know what he ate, when, how much, if he enjoyed it, if he had enough vegetables and if he drank enough water. Did he say any new words? How did he act when he was put down for a nap? Did he play well with the other kids? Did he poop? When? How much? What was the consistency?

This, I’m convinced, is just a symptom of motherhood. The other option is that I've officially lost my mind. My husband is much better at looking at the big picture than I am: Has he been fed? Has his diaper been changed? Is he well rested? Is he happy, safe and healthy? Good. Me? I want to know everything, and as much as I value the role my marriage, my work, my hobbies, my friendships, and my alone time play in my life, I hate missing anything in Benjamin’s.

I have no problem letting my mommy freak flag fly with Scott when he stays home with Benjamin. (I like to think he married me because of, not in spite of, it.) But I realize that if I ask all of the questions that I really want to of my son’s daycare teachers, they will think I am crazy, high-maintenance, or both. Because I do not wish to be labeled as That Mom and because I like and respect Benjamin’s teachers enough not to be That Mom, I stifle my curiosity, ask a few general questions about his demeanor and behavior and then leave it to the Tell-A-Gram to fill in the rest.

Along one side of the Tell-A-Gram is a list of adjectives that his teachers check off according to his mood and behavior that day, including Happy, Defiant, Friendly and Not Myself. Every day, Benjamin’s teachers check the boxes for Happy and Friendly, with an occasional Energetic thrown in. Happy Friendly, Happy Friendly, Happy Friendly — every single day.

Until one fateful Friday, he wasn’t. Benjamin had been de-Friendlyed.

I first noticed it in the parking lot of the daycare center. I’d loaded Benjamin and his belongings into the back seat to make the drive home. As I slid into the driver's seat, I glanced at the Tell-A-Gram in my hand. There it was, in dark blue ink: a checkmark in the Friendly box that had been scribbled out.

So, had he been friendly for a while and then was unfriendly? Had it been a stray pen mark that went too far?

I was taken aback. I looked in the rearview mirror at Benjamin babbling into his toy cell phone (I know, I know) and flipping through a board book of animal photographs. He was multitasking — chatting up the imaginary recipient of his imaginary phone call while jabbing the picture of the monkey in the book with his index finger, and grinning a wide, drooly smile.

I turned around to face him. “How could anyone think you’re not friendly?” I asked out loud.

When I heard the words exit my lips, I realized what had just happened. I had transformed into the character of Jerry’s mother on Seinfeld: “How could anyone not like you?

Seriously, I thought to myself, how could anyone not think this kid is friendly? And then I started listing: He says hello and waves to everything that he sees: man, woman, child, dog, dump truck. He smiles all the time. He laughs constantly in a full-body chortle that puts that famous YouTube baby to shame. He says “please” and “thank you” (sometimes). He plants kisses on demand. He hugs the dog, for Pete’s sake. He’s the very definition of friendly! 

I thought I heard a squeak — the sound of my mommy freak flag slowly making its ascent.

When I regrouped, I was shocked by how defensive I got, how quick I was to come to my son’s rescue, if only in my mind. And it worried me.

When I was pregnant, I thought a lot about the type of parent I wanted to be. Trying to imagine that was a lot like trying to guess what I’d be when I grew up when I was in middle school — a foggy, amorphous blob of a daydream that never fully formed until I actually did grow up.

Instead, it was easier for me to envision the kind of parent I did not want to be. At the top of the list was the Helicopter Mom, the kind of parent that intervened at every turn and never let her kid fall down, scrape his proverbial knees, win some without help and lose some without intervention.

Right now, I hover because I have to—he's far too young and unsteady on his feet to be left alone for even a minute. But I know that one day soon, there will come a time when I will have to back up instead of reach out. And it will kill me, but I'll do it anyway because I love him that much.

In the months when I waited for Benjamin to be born, I tried to anticipate how things were going to change. Sure, there would be the clear changes — the most obvious being that we would now have a baby living with us — but I wondered about the deeper ones below the surface. Would my personality change? Would my identity change? Would I recognize myself? Would I feel that sense of completeness people talk about? What if I liked myself less, or more?

I was certain that my identity would become at least slightly informed by my son. I would embark on uncharted personal territory as I assumed my new role as a mother. For his first few years of life, he would rely on his dad and me for pretty much everything, so how could it not?

What surprised me has been just how much who I am and what I do has become entangled with my son. I still wonder what it will be like in a few months and years from now — how things will change, how they will stay the same, and if I will do a good enough job as a parent.

That Friday night, after the De-Friendlying, we fed Benjamin his dinner, gave him a bath, read Goodnight Moon, and put him to bed with his stuffed elephant, as we do every night. Afterward, I vented to my husband, had a cocktail, and did some good, old-fashioned obsessing. I came to a few conclusions:

(1) Let’s just assume Benjamin had been unfriendly. Of course I much prefer Mommy’s Little Angel to Mommy’s Little Monster, but I’m in for a dose of both — though I can still try like the dickens to make sure it’s more of the former than the latter.

(2) My son’s behavior reflects on me — or at least I think it does. When people smile or tell me how cute, happy, friendly and well-behaved Benjamin is, it feels as if they’re complimenting me. When he’s not being particularly pleasant, I sometimes feel like I’m doing something wrong. The reality is, his mood has much more to do with a full belly, a clean diaper, and a decent nap than it does with any grand parenting prowess I may (or may not) possess.

(3) My son has a lot of years ahead of him, and, therefore, a lot of opportunities for both good and bad behavior, as well as plenty of triumphs and disappointments. My husband and I can do our very best, but he will inevitably make a few bad choices.

And right now, at almost 17 months, he’s going to whine, fuss, not share his toys, ignore his loving mother when she says “no” not one but two dozen times, cry, bite, spit out his milk, and dump his plate of dinner on top of the dog instead of eating it like a good boy.

Does all of that make me a bad parent? No. It makes me the parent of a toddler.