my little demons

http://www.majordojo.com/GoTheFtoSleep.pdf à this book for parents inspired me to write about kids. I talk about them a lot. I post pictures with them. I’ve worked with them in one way or another almost my whole life. Oh, and yes, that small detail of having 2 nephews and 2 nieces.

My friend recently said that this one time when I was telling her one of my children-related tales on a bus (in my normal manner of a too-loud voice tone and weird semi-Italian hand gestures) half of the bus was apparently terrified by my tale. But I’m sorry if I don’t feel the need to sugarcoat everything that’s related to children. No wonder I’m so used to calling my sister’s children “my four little demons”. Yeah, so if you want a cotton-candy kind of tale – better stop reading now or you’ll never look at me the same again.

I was 13 when Augustas was born. Oh, I should begin with telling you that my sister told me she’s pregnant in a horrible market drenched with the wonders of Russian legacy. And that’s how she kept on announcing all of her pregnancies – completely randomly until I started thinking that it is a strategy to drive me to a heart attack. Truly, you can’t even imagine.

So Augustas was born after a C-section and I don’t even remember the circumstances of the decision, but what happened later changed my life in so many ways that it’s often hard to wrap my head around. Somehow it was decided that I will be spending one half of the day with my sister in the hospital – to help her get by (her husband would be with her the other half). To me the most exciting part at the time was the fact that I would skip school for a week. Yippy! Yeah, I didn’t really realize that school will be substituted by dirty diapers and loud, very loud, never ending sessions of head blowing cries. And it’s not just the babies I’m talking about.

In the hospital they still have the tradition of collecting all the babies from moms (if they wish to give them) with these trolleys and the nurses feed them and keep them while they sleep and stuff. The part I find very amusing is when they deliver the babies back – I always feel a bit excited – maybe I’ll get one today! It’s a bit like those kebab sales people on the beach – anyone a baby? Yes? Which one’s yours? My sister was accommodated in a two-bed room but she was the only one in it. But since there was one bed free – I’d be usually laying on it. So this one time when they were “delivering” the babies to mothers and they entered our room the nurse looked at me and was like – which one’s yours? I’m thirteen for chirst’s sake!

So I learnt to pick a two-day-old baby up. Stick him in the sink. Wash him with elements of advanced juggling since you can’t wet the huge snapped bellybutton. I asked endless questions of the joys of being in labor for uncountable hours and saw all there was to see firsthand. It seemed like an exciting journey, a role I got to play for a week. And then you wipe your hands and carry on with your life and only sometimes are struck by the thought of what it would be like if your role was to never end – what if it was for life? That thought still petrifies me. And I still want to compulsively hit people when they say babies are all cute.

First of all, they’re not all cute. There are ugly babies. My sister would at this point throw me a horrified look. Ok, but ugly babies are not the issue.

I remember being 14, wondering the streets of Moscow – sounds like the beginning of a Dostoyevsky novel but wait for iiit… - with the babybjorn carrier and the second of my nephews, Vilhelmas, dangling his 4-month-old feet in it. My sister was auditing private Moscow schools and I was playing nanny. He’d be calmest when walking so I must have walked around the world and back in those 10 days or so. It was 30 degrees and the humidity seemed to intensify the horrible Moscow smog. Vilhelmas was about 8 kilos at the time so by the end of the trip my shoulders where blistered and bruised by the carrier – that’s a workout I certainly recommend! I’d wonder into shops and try to try something on. Put Vilhelmas on a chair with the whole babybjorn, support him with my knees, try a shirt on, quick glimpse to the mirror – nope, the colors don’t match with the baby carrier. Quite the problems of a 14-year-old.

Vilhelmas had a thing for food and since my sister was still breastfeeding and didn’t believe in pacifiers I’d have to bring the baby to her the moment he would open his eyes (cause about 5 seconds later he would be screaming louder than a country’s war siren). That was a problem – my sister was working. This one time he opened his eyes when we were in the hotel room and my sister was working 9 floors below me in a conference room. I sang all my songs and danced all my funny dances and jumped up and down with the baby in my arms for about 30 minutes but he just kept getting louder and louder. I realized I have no time to waste so I ran across the 4 star hotel barefoot, in my pajamas and with a screaming baby in my arms. I almost threw him into my sister’s arms when I got to her and started sobbing for the first time in that trip inconsolably. Everyone in the conference room gathered around me trying to calm me down… 10 years later I still struggle trying to tell it as a funny story ;]

I can still remember a specific kind of look on my sister’s face when she was pregnant with her third, my precious Morta. We were in California at that time and I would just see her face change color in about 2 seconds and I’d know that the next 30 seconds are crucial in finding the nearest puke vortex or I’d be the one covered in it. She was a trooper – never complained although literally barely could keep any food down. I would have become Gorgon and turned everyone around me into stone.

I was always saying that I’d be the godmother of the first girl or, eventually, the third child, so when Morta was born I, once again skipped classes and ran straight to the hospital. They didn’t want to let me in, but you can imagine what that means with my determination. Yeah, I almost got kicked out of the hospital cause I used all my curse words on a few nurses.

Morta was a baby like no other – she lived on her own schedule and by her own rules. Had a huge gingery mohawk and an attitude like no other kid I’ve known. I’d spend hours going back and forth with her stroller inside a room (she’d fall asleep only in the stroller at a certain time) – sweat dripping down my back and repeating the words from the book that I’ve posted at the beginning of the post – please, darling, go the fuck to sleep.

The most fun I’ve had was her 3-year-old crisis. Oh, that was one hell of a ride. She’d never give you her hand. NEVER let you help her put her shoes on (and you can imagine how much fun that is when you’re in a hurry and a three-year-old is trying to tie her own laces). This one time I decided to take her to sit in the audience of a live TV show for children – thought it could be a lot of fun for her to see the process and just the places where I spent half of my childhood.

The TV studio gets really crowded, so everyone’s supposed to be sitting real tight. Meanwhile Morta decides that I have cuddies or what not and she should keep a quarantine distance of 1 meter. So we’re sitting in the front row, the happy TV host asks us to sing and clap and smile at the camera. My little sweet precious Morta looks straight into the camera – dead look in her eyes, not even a blink, lips tight, arms crossed on her chest. I was only silently praying that she wouldn’t stand up and leave across the studio forcing me to run after her apologetically waving at the camera.

Ah, Gertruda. The fourth one. When my sister announced she was having another baby it was pretty much as if she would have stated she had gotten a new dress. Oh no, wait; I would have been more surprised of that. This time, for the first time in those 10 years that my sister was either pregnant, breastfeeding or giving birth – I wasn’t there, cause it happened in Brussels.

But we came to visit a week or two later, by car, so we arrived at night. I went into my sister’s bedroom, picked up the girl and took her to change the diaper. The next day my sister told me she’s never seen anyone (apart from her and her husband) to handle her babies so effortlessly. And yes, it is effortless for me, because I’ve done it over and over – practice makes perfect. I sometimes joke that when mine’s gonna pop out I’m just gonna be like “oh, another one”.

I remember sometime later I was putting Gertruda to sleep so I put on an Elvis Presley CD and danced and sang with her in my arms. It was one of those miraculous didn’t-even-notice-how-she-fell-asleep times and at that moment I had a thought that, finally, I’ve grown up. I don’t find it hard anymore. Tiring? Yes. But not something I couldn’t cope with.

And if there were times when I felt overwhelmed and I had to burry the urge to curse all the gods of Olympus, I remembered the way sunshine lit Augustas’ golden locks this one time at my uncle’s summer house. Or those instances when Vilhelmas would ask to tickle him and laugh although it would be quite obvious that he’s not ticklish. Or when Morta wiped a tear after she got her first ear pierced, pressed her little lips together and bravely nodded her head to get the second piercing – sweat was running in rivers down my back and I felt faint – as if she were my baby. Or when Gertruda learnt to say “I love you” and would repeat it ten times a day, just to make sure that you really get what she’s saying. Or when Augustas was getting his first stitches after falling off a tree and the nurses wouldn’t let me be there with him – I hated them with such fierce anger that I couldn’t think it possible to hate anyone more. Or when Vilhelmas brings me hands full of lizards and frogs – overwhelmed by the wonders of nature – and reminds me so much of myself. Or when Morta used to ask to stroke her back to help her fall asleep – I could always feel how much she misses mommy and daddy and how stoically she fights the tears away and presses my hand in her little palm. Or how Gertruda gets this completely crazy look in her eyes and you know that she’s gonna do something mischievous but instead of trying to stop her you just sit back and watch – like this period when she denied any clothing on her body 24/7.

Or those millions and millions of other little glimpses that are etched in my heart and mind for eternity and nothing else matters – they may love me or hate me, not see me for years and not talk to me, but they are ever-present to me and always will be.

And let my epilogue be the words of Tina Fey (as if I haven't written enough already): http://melodygodfred.com/2011/04/15/a-mothers-prayer-for-its-child-by-tina-fey/