EMILY BURNSTEIN, 16,
STRESSED BEYOND BELIEF
This week cannot end soon enough.
I got off the bus and walked through the school gate. Deep breath, Emily. Keep your head down and push through. Straight to the library through the side door, hide in European History till first bell, front of the class and eyes forward until lunch, back in the library, Comparative Religion this time, no one’s ever there. Two classes after lunch, take the side gate and home by four. Out of town by lunch on Sunday and gone for a week. Plenty long enough for the dust to settle.
Skidding between two classes, I had no option but to take the upstairs hallway, and—because God hates me—the principal, Mrs. Bandin, was coming out of her office. I had literally just crossed the point in the hallway where all other avenues of escape were closed—I would have walked into the janitor’s closet if I could have—so I panicked internally and glided along like nothing was wrong.
She watched me come, smiled at me as I passed, and I’m pretty sure watched me the whole way down the corridor.
I swear to you . . . she knows.
Seven days with my mom, away from here—any other time it could feel like a punishment, but right now it’s the perfect escape.
I walked into the house. It was quiet, unless you count the distant sound of a badly loaded plate gonging in the dishwasher. Emily was still at school, where she’d much rather be than at home with me, and the live-in nanny, Anna, lives a daytime life I know nothing about. I used to think I couldn’t wait for the house to be all mine again, when every surface wouldn’t be covered with crusty baby plates or plastic dogs with impossibly long eyelashes or packs of Costco baby wipes. But of course, silence comes in many flavors.
Let me be clear: I love being a mom, and when Emily was little it was wonderful. She was a fat, round, good-humored baby, like sunshine dipped in butter. When she said her first word, and it was Mom, I felt like I won the lottery. Of course, the word soon became a jabbing spear in my side every time it was uttered, because it was uttered about forty thousand times a day.
“Mom, why . . .”
“Mom, what . . .”
“Mom, who . . .”
And of course, just Mom . . . said in a tone of voice or frequency of repetition that, were it weaponized in some formal way, would probably end all human conflict. One afternoon of solid, endless requests for things that are immediately thrown on the ground or for food that is “made wrong” or for toys that are “not right” would make anyone agree to anything. But you get the hang of it, and the soft hand resting on your arm while you read, the snuffly kisses in the middle of the night, and the running jump when you get home from work are sweet rewards.
Not to mention the development of new, albeit nontransferable skills: the ability to pause like a hare and hear the sound of crayons moving over wallpaper three rooms away. The mastery of pea balancing on a shallow plate so none of them roll into the string cheese (thereby rendering themselves inedible and possibly deadly). And, of course, changing diapers in complete darkness, without waking the baby, while tears of exhaustion drip from your chin. I nailed them all. It’s the world’s most wonderful and most terrible job, and if you do it well enough, you get fired.
After the toddler wars were fought and won, I moved into what was, for me, Peak Kid. Six to twelve. The golden years. Emily loved me, she listened to me, she thought I knew everything. She ate well, she slept well, she laughed at fart jokes, she told fart jokes . . . it was great. When she said Mom it was with love, or with a specific request that could usually be responded to with a sandwich, a tissue, or a firm not in a million years.
As a single parent I didn’t really have the option of staying home, not that it would have worked for me, to be honest, and I’d returned to work once Emily was old enough. I had my mom to help at first, and then I moved to Los Angeles and hired a nanny. I worked long hours, I got promoted, I felt fulfilled personally and professionally, and I managed to balance motherhood and career flawlessly.
No, of course I’m joking. It was occasional sparkling moments of triumph dotted over long stretches of uncertainty and failure. There were days when I felt I’d managed, and days where I knew if I hadn’t had the help of several other women, both at home and at work, I would have dug my own grave and climbed in.
Just when I thought I was finally getting a little better at the balancing act, when Emily was happy at school and work was going well, and I was senior enough to be able to leave at a reasonable hour to eat dinner with my kid, and have weekends free to spend with her, everything changed. She woke up a teenager, and all the skills I’d learned were useless, and all the time I’d fought to have with her was spent waiting for her to come home from hanging out with friends she’d much rather talk to than me.
If I said it was awesome, you’d know I was being sarcastic, right?
That’s what I thought.
I went to the grocery store to pick up dinner, and to ponder whether or not to tell Emily I’d just potentially torpedoed her tuition money.
When I came back, there was a different quality to the silence.
“Em?”
Still nothing, but I noticed her sneakers by the door. She was home, presumably lurking in her dank, bone-strewn lair upstairs. Hopefully packing for the trip.
If my life were a Choose Your Own Adventure book, I’d have two options at this point. One, walk into the kitchen and not check on Emily. Have a cup of coffee and unload the dishwasher. Stare into the middle distance and adjust my underwire. Or two, go upstairs and speak directly to my daughter, because she’s probably got headphones in and can’t hear me calling. That would lead to another fork in the road: She could nod pleasantly, we might exchange a smile, maybe even a hug, and she’d reassure me her packing was all done. Or—and this had a high probability—she’d frown at me as I appeared in her doorway, tug out a single earbud, raise her eyebrows at me, and say, What? in a tone of voice that implied I was interrupting her solving the problem of clean, limitless energy. I’d feel a tiny pang of pain, tempered with irritation at being talked to like that, and ask her about the packing. She’d shrug and say, Of course, as if being unprepared is something alien to her, and implying my lack of trust is hobbling her ability to grow as an individual. Then, two days into the trip, we’d discover she’d forgotten to pack even a single pair of socks and the rest of the week would be spent with I told you so hanging over us like an unacknowledged fart.
My mother didn’t raise no fool. I walked into the kitchen and turned on the kettle.
I checked my list again: seven days of underwear, extra shoes, soap, socks, and sanitary protection . . . check, check, check. Dude, I am so on it.
I paused. Was that Mom? Silence, then distant noises from the kitchen. Guess she didn’t even want to say hello to me. Charming.
I checked my list a second time and threw in another pair of socks. My mom might not have been interested in my life, but she definitely taught me how to pack.