Melissa Anne Cohen

Julie hated baths.  When I say that she hated baths, I mean that she cried like I was ripping her appendages off while I tried to wash her.  When she wasn’t screaming in agony, she was just sobbing because she could not understand why I hated her so much as to force her to get naked and wet a few times a week.  It was heartbreaking and awful – and I responded by bathing her as rarely as I could get away with it.  She got a lot of sponge baths.  When I did have to scrub her up in a tub, it was standing up in the sink and miserable and awful for both of us.

But then, wonder of all wonders, the pool down the street opened up.  And with it, came the realization that water play was fun.  It wasn’t torment, it was actually kind of…dare I say it?  NICE to get all wet and play with water.  And today, for the first time, I put her in the big girl tub and she played.  Tipped her head back to get her hair washed, so I didn’t feel like I was waterboarding her while I washed the soap out.  Actually, voluntarily put soap on her body and is now silky smooth and sweet smelling.

She actually cried when it was time to get out.

Today, my son is six.  And amazing.  He’s smart and funny and the sweetest little boy I’ve ever known.  Every child is different, and I have a unique and separate relationship with each one.    Sam was, in many ways, really in all measurable ones, my most challenging baby.  His birth was the hardest, and he had colic and reflux.  Sam taught (and continues to teach) me so much about motherhood, about men and little boys.  About myself.  Sam is simply one of the best things that’s ever happened to me.

With Sam, I learned patience.  I learned devotion.  I learned to dig deeper, to try harder.  His needs were so huge, his need for ME was so huge.  He simply was miserable when I wasn’t holding/nursing him.  He came out of the womb with separation anxiety, and he’s still pretty sure that the only good place to be is at my side.  I never planned on nursing a toddler, I was firmly convinced that once a child could walk and talk, nursing wasn’t just unnecessary, it was sort of gross.  But it wasn’t.  It was what he needed, and standing up to everyone in the world who thought I was insane made me a stronger mother, a stronger person.   Meeting his needs, and seeing the person he’s becoming – it’s one of the most rewarding aspects of my life.

At six years old, Sam is still the kindest, sweetest little boy.  He’s so tender and full of love – but still so incredibly MALE, all guns and battles and superheros and army guys.   He’s got huge eyes with a hue that defies description.  Sometimes it’s brown, sometimes grey, sometimes green-ish.  He’s brave and bold, willing to climb higher and go farther than I thought he would.  He’s a wonderful friend, creative and fun, and loves spending time with his besties, Jordyn and Harrison.  He’s a fantastic older brother to Julianna – who worships “my boy.”  When he’s not making Jessie crazy, he can be so sweet and solicitous of her, and he’s still a card carrying member of Team Bum Bum with his big sister Sarah.  He looks up his biggest sister Lilli so much.  He’s his father’s best friend and my best boy.

Happy birthday Samilicious Boy.  I absolutely adore you, and thank God for the blessing of being your mother.

“Do you think you might be pregnant?”  The question came out of nowhere.  I didn’t feel right, I was queasy, everything smelled bad.  And when my aunt asked, my immediate reaction was no.  Of course I wasn’t pregnant.  I had only been dating him for a few weeks.  I would had to have gotten pregnant that very first night.  Of course I wasn’t.  Accidental pregnancies didn’t happen to me.  Only… it was the March 1, and I knew that I’d had my period towards the end of January.  Only… oh my God, I was late.  By days.  I was days late.

I was falling in love.  It was brand new and wonderful.  He was smart and funny and cute and adored me.  This was magic like I’d never experienced it and oh my God, I might actually be pregnant.   After two weeks.  I took the test, and spent the rest of the day crying.

I was pregnant, I was going to have a baby, and I was so humbled and awed and terrified and thrilled, all at once.  I was going to ruin his life, he was newly divorced, with two small children already.  He didn’t want a baby.  How could he want a baby?  But I was having it, from the moment I knew I might be pregnant, I wanted to be desperately.   I wanted that baby.  I was going to ruin his life.  I knew that. I even felt badly about it, but there wasn’t a chance that I’d abort this baby.  I knew that by getting pregnant and having this baby, I was killing the potential between us.  I was ending that long, slow, lovely slide into a relationship.    I was going to be the girl he knocked up and had to deal with now.   I didn’t cry just because I was scared of having a baby, it wasn’t just because I was awed and thrilled.  Part of my tears were mourning the loss of this beautiful thing that was growing between us.  It wouldn’t be simple anymore.  It wouldn’t be just fun and flowers and spending time getting to know each other.  It was going to get really serious, really fast, and it was probably going to be contentious.  Because I knew that he didn’t have any choice whatsoever in this.  I was having a baby, and was going to ruin his life, and there wasn’t any way for me to change that.

But when I told him, later that night, when I took a big deep breath and closed my eyes and blurted out “I’m pregnant”, he didn’t panic.  He didn’t freak out.  He just put his arms around me, pulled me down to him, and said “Thank God, I thought it was something awful.”  That pregnancy resulted in a twin miscarriage, but going through that with him made us a family.  That loss, as horrific as it was, led to this, my incredibly happy marriage, my two beautiful daughters and my amazing son.

I’m linking up this week with www.yeahwrite.me – it’s a great writer’s blog for discovering new writers and improving your own work.

I know – it’s that she’s two, and two is when they start putting it all together.  I remember thinking this with both the older two.   But Julie really does seem to be uncommonly bright.  She’s memorized the Llama Llama Misses Mama and recites it as she flips thru books.  She’s got an unlimited vocabulary, with six and seven word sentences all the time.   She just started playing with her “cards.”  Sam’s recently gotten into Pokemon cards, and in a half hearted attempt to keep her from stealing them, I gave her his flashcards that I had bought a while ago.  The’re sight words, and alphabet cards, and SHE KNEW WHAT THEY WERE.  I realized that she could actually be quizzed and identify all of these things.  Am now convinced that she’s a genius.

In other news – we’re having a perfectly delightful summer.  Continuing our tradition of being the house everyone comes too, I’ve had kids here more often than not.  Friends of Jessie, friends of Sam, we try to shake it up and vary it, but my favorites are days when each kid has a buddy to cut down on the battles.  Tomorrow we’re off to the beach – and I already checked to make sure that there’s a lifeguard there 🙂

I hesitate to blog about this, simply because my  mind is really avoiding going there, but the facts are that yesterday, we came within in minutes of Sam drowning.  We were at a lake in one of the surrounding towns (don’t know which one, because I wasn’t driving).  There was no lifeguard, but it was a quiet little pond.  There were two beaches, separated by a bridge.  I’m crap at estimating, but I’d guess fifty feet wide.  Maybe a hundred?  It wasn’t big.  And we were there with a bunch of other families, and there were lots of little kids running around.

Sam and his buddy Harrison had gone across the bridge (with permission) and were playing on the opposite side from where we were sitting.  I was watching them, and they were wading in the water, throwing mud at each other.  It was idyllic, all these kids running and playing.  I looked away for just a minute.  I was checking the girls or talking to someone, I don’t even remember, I just know that I had been watching and then I wasn’t.  In that period of time, Sam went too far in and lost his footing and started to flounder in the water.

Someone pulled him out, and I didn’t see him struggling in the water, I just saw her pull him out.  So I didn’t have that moment of realizing that he might die, I had the moment of realizing that he almost had.  And I’ll never be able to not know that now.  I’ve never come that close before and as I type, I’m crying all over again.  Because it happened so fast, and so without warning.  And in that moment, I could have lost him.  I could have lost him, and I can’t even wrap my mind around that.

I just know that I’ll never, never, never go swimming anywhere without a zillion lifeguards again.  I’ll never, never, never let myself relax when my kids are near water.  I’m going to do my best to not terrify them, Sam was okay, and eventually even asked if he could go back down and play in the water.  I don’t want to scar him and make him afraid – but I’ll never be not terrified of taking kids to the water again.

I’m posting this week on the hangout grid at www.yeahwrite.me – it’s a great place to discover new blogs.

I like this whole parenting thing.  I do.  I generally believe that my kids are cooler and cuter and just way more awesome than other kids, and am very, very happy that Marc and I are able to have me home full time with them.  That being said, sometimes they infuriate me.  I have moments when I’m ready to strangle someone and fantasize about an entire day and night where nobody, nobody touches me or wants anything from me.  My kids bicker and fight and squabble.  Jessie can be super sarcastic and mean to her brother, Sam has developed an odd love of just bugging the heck out of either sister, alternating so at least one of them is screaming at him almost all the time, and my adorable little Julianna, when she’s not achingly adorable and all, is undeniably controlling and firmly believes that screaming until she gets her way is the best way to handle conflict.

Last night, Jessie and Sam decided they wanted ice cream.  I have a relatively firm no dessert after dinner rule (I’d rather give them ice cream for breakfast than load them up with sugar before bed) and when they bounced over to me and asked, I just pointed over at Marc wordlessly.  It had been a challenging day, filled with temper tantrums and tears and arguing.  I’d been home with kids all day, and quite honestly, felt as though it was his turn to deal with the inevitable arguing and whining that was guaranteed when we said no.  Instead they both said “okay” (or in Julie’s case, “Otay”) and sauntered back into the living room.  Are you kidding me?  Just walking away when getting the expected no response?  I KNOW for a fact that if I had responded when they asked me, I would have gotten a lot more pushback.

I announced that I was taking a break – I was done with children for the day.  For at least the next little while.  Sure, they’re cute and I love them and stuff, but that was it.  I took my book, headed into the bedroom, and shut the door.  It was blissful and quiet and cool, for about three minutes.  Because then Jessie came in and laid down next to me.  Her stomach hurt.  And since I don’t get a lot of cuddle time with my oldest girl, and she was at least pretending to be sick (because I know she wasn’t), I wrapped my arm around her and rubbed her back while continuing to read.  About five minutes later, the younger two rolled in.  Not doing anything in particular, just came into hang with me.  No television, no toys, they just knew that’s where I was and that’s where they needed to be.  Despite the fact that I was clearly in NO mood for parental duties, despite the fact that they have toy filled rooms, a television brimming over with recorded shows for them to watch and a kitchen full of snacks – they just wanted to hang with me.

And the odd thing was – they somehow understood that I was on break.  I was reading.  So they didn’t talk to me, they just chatted with each other, rolled around on the bed and in general, we spent the loveliest little half hour or so, just hanging out and being together.  Before Sam started teasing Jessie and Jessie started snapping at Sam and Julie started screaming at everyone to let her watch another godforsaken episode of Doc McStuffins…. we were able to have this quiet little time when I was achingly aware of why I really do love this whole parenting thing.  Because I get these awesome kids and sometimes, lots of times, their whole idea of happiness is to just be in the same room with me.

I’ve got a minivan.  Like most moms of five (and for the purposes of this blog post, I’ve got five – the odd thing about being a stepparent is that sometimes I’ve got five and sometimes I’ve got three).  So three kids sit in the way back and two in the middle.  We call it “Little Butt Cohens in the Back” because Jessie and Sam are both still relatively tiny enough and can fit on either side of Julianna’s big car seat comfortably.  That means that my three are the farthest away from me, with Julie in the middle spot and Jess and Sam on either side.  Then Lilli and Sarah sit in the middle spot.  It’s cramped and crowded, and because I’ve got a zillion kids, my car is constantly a mess, filled with books and snacks and sippie cups and sporting equipment and jackets and whatever else we manage to drag out to the van.

So I’m driving home last night from a cookout at my in-laws house.  Actually, and it’s important for this story, I wasn’t driving, but rather was in the passenger seat with a book in my lap.  Marc was driving along, and oddly enough, Marc is impervious to noise.  Just doesn’t bother him even a little bit.  If pointed out, he’ll just grin and say that they’re having fun.  Which they were.  Because all five kids were screaming.  I mean, full out, no holds barred screaming at the top of their lungs, for no real reason that I could decipher.  My stepdaughters were half heartedly bickering, not actually fighting but teasing each other to make the other one scream, and they were also half still playing a game that they had been playing at the cookout.  My three were screaming in the back but because they were farther away, I can’t tell exactly what they were yelling about.  From what I could tell (and believe me, I really didn’t explore this too much, as the volume was off-putting), they were pretending to be secret agents and holling into water bottles with code words and hysteria.

It was loud.  I mean, really, really loud.  We stopped to get air in my tire, and I saw the look on the woman walking back to her car.  She glanced over at my rocking mini-van, filled with screaming, delighted, LOUD children and had a look on her face that was possibly pity.  It’s probable that, not knowing that they weren’t screaming out of frustration, they were just screaming with the sheer joy of being together on a beautiful night, that I would have looked with pity at the spectacle.   Because from the outside, it looked unpleasant.  Poor, tired (because it had been a LONG weekend, and I was exhausted) mom, trapped in an old battered minivan with hordes of SCREAMING children.

I grew up as the oldest of four (or six, depending, have to love stepfamilies), and learned at an early age to just tune out noise as well.  As long as I’ve got a book in my lap, I can concentrate on that, and for the most part, the noise didn’t really bother me.   I knew that they weren’t angry or frustrated, I could pick out each individual voice, and even Julianna was back there screaming along happily.

The odd thing was, it was kind of awesome.  I mean, I’ve got these five kids.  All healthy, all gorgeous, and all completely delighted to be with each other.  And who knows how many more times that’ll happen?  My oldest stepdaughter is thirteen, she’s not going to think it’s fun to scream with her younger siblings forever.  How many more summer nights do I have when I can cram my van full and drive around with five kids absolutely thrilled to be there?  They’re all growing up so fast, and it really does go by in a flash.  So what if they’re loud?  So what if the car is a mess, and the tire needs air, and I’m exhausted and still have to do baths for the grubby toddler and five year old?  This, right now, this moment was awesome.  And now that I think back, maybe it wasn’t pity on the woman’s face.  Maybe it was envy – because what I have is amazing.

(I’m linking up with http://yeahwrite.me/62-open-challenge/ this week – an awesome writer’s blog, really great for finding new blogs)

Father’s Day is traditionally hard for me.  For a whole host of reasons, but mainly because I didn’t grow up with a father.  Not really.  I had my grandfather, who was amazing and awesome, and he loved me and I loved him.  But he wasn’t my father.  And I had my stepdad, who’s also amazing and awesome, and he loved me and I loved him, but he wasn’t my father either.  I had a father and he left.  So having a day to celebrate his role was always confusing to me.  Some years, I’d throw myself into celebrating the “dad-like” men in my life, but it wasn’t the same.  Some years, I’d get a card and present for my mother, but that wasn’t right either.  And some years, I’d just chill out, it wasn’t a day I had to do anything in particular.  The only bonus to NOT having a dad around was that I didn’t have to worry about what to do on that day.  The only hitch was that it still kind of was a day when I knew that I should be doing something, and his absence was always that much more difficult on that day.

My father recently moved back into the area, and is tentatively trying to rebuild relationships.  It’s not going well.  It’s hard, at the age of 38 (on a side note, am I really 38?), to add “my father’s daughter” onto the labels I usually attach to myself.  I’m good with being my mother’s daughter, she and I have always been exceptionally close, and our relationship has grown up with me.  With us.  But my father has no experience with the me of now.  He’s missed my childhood, he missed my teen years.  He never saw my first apartment, never met any of my boyfriends.  He didn’t attend my high school graduation or help me decide between working full time or going to college.  He wasn’t at my wedding.  He wasn’t there when my first baby was born.  He wasn’t there at my son’s bris.  And I don’t think he’d remember my baby’s name without being prompted.   He doesn’t know who I am anymore, if he ever did.   I can’t be his daughter, how can I be his daughter when he’s missed everything about me?  And yet I am.  I know that.  I wish I could run away from that reality, I really do.  But I can’t.

But regardless of what’s happened in the past, he’s here now, and I’m perplexed.  Because I believe that when someone loves you, you have an obligation to be kind.  And he does love me.  On some level, and I don’t necessarily think he’s good at it, but he does.  And he wants to have a relationship, so I’m trying.  At least in theory.  But it’s hard.   I don’t know how to do this.  I’m not entirely certain I should be doing this, there’s a whole lot of conflicted emotions going on right now.  Be kind.  If there’s a life philosophy I live by, it’d be that one.  Be kind.  So I will try.  But being kind can be defined a whole bunch of different ways – am I being kind to him?  The father who walked away and is horribly, horribly sorry and wants nothing more than to make up for it?  Or should I be kind to my mother?  The mother who did so much for me, the one who sacrificed and suffered and raised four children on her own?  Is it kind to have her watch him build a relationship with me now?  Or should I be kind to me?  The child who grew up too fast, trying to be that second parent for siblings that didn’t understand any more than I did?  The woman who still has such a tangled messy relationships with those siblings, mainly because I wasn’t really a second parent, and failed in that role.  I don’t think they’ve forgiven me yet.  I’m not certain that I have either.  For well or ill, I tried hard for a long time to be that second parent, and I think I convinced a lot of people, including my siblings and myself that I was.  But I wasn’t, and in the end, chose to sacrifice them for my own life.  Chose to put myself before them, my children ahead of theirs, and our relationships have never recovered.   I’ve lost, for all intent and purpose, two brothers as a result of that choice.

Having my father here is ripping a lot of scabs off of wounds that I would prefer to leave alone.  Should I give myself a break?  I don’t want to deal with battling divorced parents, I don’t want to deal with siblings who have expectations I can’t meet anymore.   I like being who I am now – I’m a wife, a mother, a cousin, a friend.  A sister for my sibling who does still talk to me, a stepsister for my stepsisters (who have no expectations that I’m going to do or be anything other than just me), a daughter to my mother, and a stepdaughter to my stepdad.  I don’t want to be cast in this role, the one of the oldest child trying to make everyone happy.  I did this before, as a child.  I don’t need to relive this part of my life.  And yet… he’s here.  Wanting so much more than I can give, and bringing up painful memories of what things used to be like.

I don’t know what to do, and honestly, having a whole day devoted to celebrating fatherhood seems monstrously excessive, when I think about it.

Here’s a copy of the article that Marc wrote for the local on-line paper that I blog with.  I think it’s freaking fabulous – I wish he’d write more often 🙂

Ways for a Good Father to be a Great Dad

Some of the things that make a man a good father are just the basics: work hard to suport your children, make sure they get to school on time, make sure they go to the doctor and get their vaccinations.  But how do you take it up a notch?  What are the things that help a man tranform from being a father into being a Dad?  My expertise comes entirely from having five children of my own, Lilli is thirteen, Sarah will be eleven at the end of the summer, Jessie is nine, Sam will be six next month and Julianna just turned two.  I thought about some of the lessons I have learned over the years, and written a few of them down here.

1.  Don’t be afraid to be silly.  Make up silly songs.  Use MILDLY inappropriate language.  Act like a clown.  They will laugh, they will love it, and you will love it too.  For example my 2 year old daughter Julie and I have something we call the “Bum-Bum Dance”.  I made up lyrics to a Bum-Bum Song we sing while doing the Bum-Bum Dance.  To see her doing it, she is extremely cute.  But for the other kids to see Daddy get up and sing and dance with her – well, that is about the funniest thing they have ever seen.

2.  Wrestle!  I don’t know why, but my kids have always loved a lot of horseplay with me.  And I give it to them.  For some reason, they all have always felt much more comfortable playing rough with me than they ever would with my wife, and vice versa.  Obviously, you have to be aware of the age and comparative fragility of who you are rough-housing with.  But at one time, this was a real salvation for me.  When my nine-year-old daughter jessica was only 2, we really didn’t have much of a relationship.  I was working a lot, she was home with my wife, and our relationship wasn’t where I felt it needed to be.  My solution?  A new game called “Fight on the Bed”.  We would pose and posture at each other in exagerated imitation of a Bruce Lee movie, then she would scream “DO YOU WANT A PIECE OF ME?” at me, and attack with a bed pillow.  Chaos would ensue.  Today all the kids love to participate, but “Fight on the Bed” will still forever be something I made up especially for Jessie and for our relationship together.  It was the first thing we did together that was just us.

3.  Quantity Time IS Quality Time.  Don’t kid yourself.  Your children need you.  And to “be there” for them, you have to physically “BE THERE”.  And yes, of course there are challenges.  You have to work to earn a living.  Maybe you face the challenge of having children from a previous marriage who don’t live with you full time.  Those obtacles are very real.  But the consequences for your children and yourself of you not doing what you have to do to overcome those obstacles – those are very real, too. And not every minute you spend with your kids has to be ‘doing” something.  Its OK to have a lazy weekend afternoon where the kids play outside in the yard and you sit on the porch keeping an eye on them.  I have taken my kids to a lot of parks, zoos, and science museums.  But we have also spent a lot of time just playing, hanging around, relaxing, and having simple fun.

4.  Be involved.  This is different from spending time with your children.  It means spending time with the people who ALSO spend time with your children.  Go to teachers’ night at school, and get to know the teachers.  Get involved with their sports, their religious school.  Volunteer for the Boy Scout troup.  Help coach the softball team.  Their hobbies are your hobbies now.  Get to know their friends.  And get to know their friends’ parents.

5.  Keep Mom happy.  Sometimes this means your wife.  Sometimes it means your ex-wife.  And sometimes you are lucky enough to have one of each!  Whatever situation you find yourself in, try very hard to maintain peace with the Mom.  Often that will mean setting aside what you want or feel is right.  So be it.

6.  Be the “fun” house.  Be the house your kids want to bring their friends to.  Accept and embrace the chaos.  Keep fun snacks in the cabinet, and make sure there is enough for everyone.  Let the kids set up to fingerpaint.  Give them Playdough,  Give them buckets, access to an outside water faucet, and orders to use dirt and sidwalk chalk to make rainbow-mudpies.  Let them use the rainbow-mudpies to face paint.  Let them use the rainbow-mudpies to face-paint YOU.  Let them take pictures of you with rainbow-mudpie-facepaint on.  Tell their friends’ parents they can drop them off any time, and mean it.  There is no better way to meet their friends and friends’ parents.  There is no better way to keep an eye on your kids.

7.  Foster their relationships with each other.  You are their father.  They are all your children, all brothers and sisters.  Work hard at making them understand that.  And use bribery!  It works wonders.  Tell your kids that you are going to be watching, and every time you catch them doing something nice for each other, you are going to put a quarter in a cup.  When they do something mean, take a quarter out.  Every day, make sure they all see how much money is in the cup.  Make sure they understand that when there is enough money in the cup, you are going to take all of them out for ice cream.

8.  Do the things you loved to do as a child, and do them with your own children.  What did you really like when you were a kid?  Hardy Boys Mysteries?  Boy Scouts?  Baseball?  Whatever it is, tell your kids all about it, and how much fun you had.  And tell them how much it would mean to you if they would do it with you.  And so what if you have girls?  There’s a law against girls playing baseball?  One of the great pleasures of parenting is getting to enjoy all of the things you loved so much as a kid all over again, FOR THE FIRST TIME, because you can enjoy them through the eyes of your children.

9.  Family dinner is important because you MAKE it important.  So look – nobody says you have to do it like this.  But my wife and I are Jewish, and what has worked for us is to follow the ancient jewish tradition of having a special ritual family dinner on Friday night to welcome in the Sabbath.  Part of that tradition is that i take each of my children aside for a special blessing.  If you ask the average American teenager when was the last time your father took you aside, placed his hands on your head, and asked God to bless you and watch over you, and then kissed you and told you he loved you, they would look at you like you were eating raw bugs.  Because yes, it sounds a little corny and old fashioned.  But if you asked my kids, they would say “Duh!  Like, almost every Fiday night.”  And there is value in that.  Your children will learn a lesson about what is important from what YOU decide is important.  If you set that time aside every week, whether its Friday night or Sunday afternoon, and turn off YOUR favorite TV show because it is time for something special together as a family, they will learn from your actions that the family has value, and they have value because they are a part of that family.

10.  Give yourself a break. I knew precisely NONE of this when I was 25.  I learned pretty much ALL of these important lessons by screwing up, and trying hard to learn from my mistakes.

11.  Hug your kids.  Tell them you love them, and that you are proud of them.  Tell them all the time.  There is no such thing as a bad time, and no such thing as too much.

I signed Sam up for swimming lessons at the pool down the street.  Because it’s a state pool, they offer free swimming lessons for kids, but you have to sign up at the crack of dawn and they really don’t publicize it.  But I got up at five thirty and stood in line for two hours to sign him up, and now he’s good to go every morning for a half hour, starting the week after school gets out.