Lift - Kelly Corrigan [9]
“Jesus,” I said. We spent a while talking about Terry, his wife, his family, that horrendous day, and then I brought it back to hang gliding. “So, why would you ever go near turbulence?”
“Turbulence is the only way to get altitude, to get lift. Without turbulence, the sky is just a big blue hole. Without turbulence, you sink.”
I understood what he was saying.
“I just think,” I said, “I mean, the expense alone—then you layer onto that all the work involved. Then the danger…”
But you know what Tom said?
“I’m really careful and I love it. I mean, I’m flying.”
People rarely rave about their childhoods and it’s no wonder. So many mistakes are made.
I see how that happens now, how we all create future work for our kids by checking our cell phones while you are mid-story or sticking you in the basement to watch a movie because we love you but we don’t really want to be with you anymore that day, or coming unhinged over all manner of spilt milk—wet towels, unflushed toilets, lost brand-new! whatevers.
Almost every day I yell at one of you so loudly that my throat hurts afterward. That’s why I keep lozenges in practically every drawer in the house. I hold it together and hold it together and then, when the bickering picks up again, I just detonate. Like yesterday, Claire, when I listened to you whine through two rounds of some card game called Egyptian War. Finally, it was Georgia’s turn to go first, and you said you couldn’t play anymore because your armpits were sore. “That’s stupid,” Georgia said, and you cried, “Stupid is a mean word!” and smacked Georgia with your open palm as I watched. “GO TO YOUR ROOM RIGHT NOW, MISSY!” I hollered. “It was an accident; I fell into her on accident!” You both froze and I got to my feet and I leaned down into your faces and ranted at you through set teeth, like the heartless tyrannical caretakers in movies about orphans. I was so disgusted with both of you, your impatient overreactions, your loss of self-control—then I turned right around and disgusted myself.
If John Lennon was right that life is what happens when you’re making other plans, parenthood is what happens when everything is flipped over and spilling everywhere and you can’t find a towel or a sponge or your “inside” voice. But if my temper has made you hesitant or tentative, is there any atoning for that?
In a parent-teacher conference last year, Ms. Tunney said, with obvious hesitation, “Sometimes—sometimes, your daughter has a bit of an edge, a way of snapping that makes the other kids pull back.” I cried when I left the classroom. I knew.
There are other mistakes, less obvious. I don’t mirror your emotions enough, though I can’t say why because when I do, it seems to calm you down. I forget to praise your effort instead of your achievement, I discipline by carrot and stick instead of reason, and I ignore the indisputable research about the benefits of family dinner. I’m a zero when it comes to the culinary arts—everything tastes like ground shoelaces, except my salads, which you are years away from appreciating. Until then, we go over to Beth’s house and trade wine for dinner. It’s a brilliant solution but sometimes, on the way home, when you go on and on about how Beth is such a good cook and then Dad adds his accolades about Beth’s homemade red sauce and roasted broccolini and how you ate every bite, my mom-ego twitches and cramps, and by the time we get home I’m practically convulsing with animus.
I used to be “pretty chill,” as I once heard Dad say to his friend Graham when I turned down a Corona at a two-year-old’s birthday party. For instance, before I was your mom, I didn’t have one of those plastic dividers for my silverware. I’d just take the basket out of the dishwasher and dump all the knives, forks, and spoons right