A Winter Circus

I am back after a few days away, and a bout of generalized anxiety that has made it hard to focus on any kind of work. Anxiety, and debilitating conjunctivitis. And did I mention my husband’s surgery? All in all, a perfect back-to-school recipe. But I admit to being mostly anxious about what is going on in the United States right now. I am having a very hard time not thinking about home constantly and not looking at my friends and family back in France with a mix of longing, melancholy, and envy. I know Europe might not be better off in the long run, and I am not one to claim I can predict the future. But the shift we are experiencing here, and the daily dose of chaos and cruelty, if not downright sadism, that we have been served for the past few weeks, makes it hard not to think about escaping. I never intended for this blog to be political. But how could it not be, when all the social structures we relied on unthinkingly, seem to be vanishing by the day? I am no expert in public policy, but life in America feels very tenuous at the moment. I have found it impossible not to be consumed by the news, and to keep going about my business as if nothing unusual was going on.

I do need to go back to my simple motherly preoccupations, however, because for now that is all I can reasonably manage. Aside from calling and emailing various representatives, all I have been able to muster is focusing on my own small world and how I can make sure this tiny structure doesn’t fall apart with the rest of the country. Not to say my family is a haven of peace, far from it. I am perennially exhausted by my children, and it is not about to change, even though they are growing up and things should feel easier. But at least it is chaos I expect and know how to handle. Sort of.

Take last week, for example. We have rarely had so much frustration and yelling in the house. Or, at least, I want to believe that it was unusual. I need to believe it if I am to keep going and not hop on the first flight to Europe by myself. But it felt like madness, from beginning to end. We were in Vermont – again! – for a few days of skiing before dropping off our oldest in Boston for a school-sponsored event. We also had a few college tours folded into the mix, as my son is getting ready to apply to university in the Fall. On paper, everything looked fine, and quite doable. But his little brothers had different ideas of what would be a fun vacation, and walking across college campuses in the freezing cold for several days in a row was not part of them. Doing all this as a family of six turned us into a moving circus. Which concluded, fittingly, at the foot of Tufts University’s elephant mascot, inspired by board member P.T. Barnum’s Jumbo. A true circus, from beginning to end.

As is often the case, it all started in the car. We are past the stage of babies wailing in the back seat and emergency diaper stops on the side of the road. We are also past, it would seem, the “mommy I need a snack RIGHT NOW” phase – but NOT over the “mommy, I need to pee” phase. And we are, very much, deep into the teenagers-fighting-over-music phase. My thirteen-year-old daughter having seemingly graduated from her own (short but intense) Taylor Swift phase, we are now spared her older brother’s snarky comments and ensuing fist-fight conflict in the back of the family vehicle. He knows better than to bring up Kanye West these days. The general contempt for each other’s musical preferences, however, hasn’t quite subsided. And if you add my husband’s former punk-band-drummer point of view into the mix, with a sprinkle of our nine-year-old requesting his old Covid quarantine cowboy playlist, you get an idea of what the simple “could we put on some music” question might trigger. As far as I am concerned, I have pulled myself out of the music equation entirely, and always politely decline stating what my preference is. Or I will just say that my preference is silence. As a mother of four, it is always silence. But it is an aspiration that my sixteen-year-old has only contempt for. This time, when I said I was fine with no music for a while, he plainly told me that I am not a fully formed human being and that I don’t know how to have fun. I wasn’t sure what to answer. Because I will be the first to admit that having five people yelling over each other to impose their soundtrack of choice is not my personal idea of fun.

Nor is sharing a huge hotel room with the same five people, with only one bathroom and toilet. And the same teenager relentlessly complaining about the abominable pull-out bed he needs to share with his younger brother.

I used to find it charming, and yes, fun, sometimes, to be on top of each other in various hotel rooms. Who knows, it might have given me that summer camp feeling I craved as an only child. But I was sharing those rooms with children, and babies. Creatures that were still barely formed, and half of whom did not yet enjoy the gift of speech. What hit me, this time, was that these were ACTUAL PEOPLE I now had to live with. For someone who cherishes nothing more than silence, loneliness, and a book, can you just imagine the shock. I officially share my life with FIVE other people, who each have their opinions, and frustrations, and moods – generally bad – and will not shy away from sharing them with the world. As this vacation told me, dissatisfaction is now the general default mode. Even our six-year-old is done pretending that he is the sweet little baby of the family. Like anybody else, he is entitled to his turn in the bathroom and an endless shower in the morning when it is time to put on the ski boots.

Because, go figure, this year we have kept insisting on going skiing in the most extreme conditions possible. In this case, Stowe, Vermont. Which is lovely and charming and one of my favorite villages in the United States. But also, impossibly cold. So much so that on the second day, this time, the resort shut down all the lifts and cancelled the ski school. After we had spent the early morning running around the hotel room trying to locate two missing gloves, and our daughter’s helmet, which of course turned out to be in the car. After we had skipped breakfast to not be late like the day before. We were so proud of ourselves. We had been proud the first day as well, as we got our rental equipment the night before and we certain that would spare us any chaos in the morning.  But we had NOT anticipated the car accident on the road. On the third day, we were early again, and the ski school was open, but not the grown-up lifts. And upon dropping off our six-year-old, we realized he didn’t’ have his helmet, and goggle, and gloves. They were with my own helmet and goggles, in the hotel room. Thirty minutes away. And the temperature was still 0°F/ - 18° C (yes MINUS 18, you read that right for you Europeans out there), with a “real feel” of -25°C. And my oldest dropped his neck warmer, which billowed into the icy wind, never to be found again. And the general children’s mood and tolerance for frustration threshold, was frankly quite low.

At that point, I will freely admit that my own threshold was also rather low. And my commitment to being a calm, patient mother had gone with the wind, alongside the cherished neck warmer. I was ready for Boston. Ready for a reprieve from this rather unfortunate polar adventure, and from my teenage son. At least in Boston we would have two separate rooms, and soon after, we’d be home, and he’d be free to dump his foul mood onto his friends – which of course he wouldn’t do because those moods are only for mothers, sometimes fathers, when they are around.        

What I had not anticipated, however, was that as soon as he left to meet with his school group, I would collapse like an old sack at the thought that he was going to be in college in a handful of months. And that soon after, my daughter would be gone, leaving us with just our two boys in the house. As I stepped into the car after saying goodbye– a moment I had eagerly anticipated a few hours before, - it hit me with full force. My children, gone? How could that even be possible? How would I be expected to survive? What would I do with myself all day? What would I do on vacation? In a quiet room? With no one complaining (although I’m sure my husband will take care of that, as will I). The thought was just unbearable, and I spent the drive back home trying to fight back tears.

The world is changing in so many different ways, and I am not sure I am ready for it. A circus at home, a circus in Washington D.C. and beyond, my child getting ready to leave the house, my family back in France and my still vivid desire to go back home within the next couple of years, with no guarantee that it will be possible.      The ground seems to be shifting from beneath our feet, and as far as our little binational family is concerned, we have no idea where this is all going. For now, I guess I will keep trying to be the least incompetent circus master I can be, and hope that a path will be found, for my son, who will be launched into a rather uncertain world. And for all the young people of his generation.