the language of littles

all kinds of reckonings

I keep a running list of some of my favorite things that my kids or their friends have said. Sarah Manguso, on writing her most recent book, said “I had to come to terms with the fact that kids are interesting.” I knew this, but most adults do not, or forget, as time goes on. Look around any restaurant to which kids have been dragged!

The other morning, I was trying to ascertain why the same new pair of shoes that I gave both Rowan and Zoe on the exact same day are ruined by Rowan, a massive hole gaping open at the toes, while Zoe’s are not.

“See, his are completely destroyed, whereas yours are just a little worn in,” I illustrated to Zoe, running my finger along her barely-weathered toe cap.

“Oh, right, because it’s like a warning, if you keep hitting the edge of the shoe, it’s going to get a hole,” she explained, eyes wide.

I clarified that I actually said worn in, not warnin’, and explained what worn in meant. But these things happen all the time, every other day I say something and they try and fit their understanding of the world around the new term. Like when Rowan said Santa Fe must be named so because it was so sandy here. Or when he described something strong as having staminal, presumably because animals have so much strength and power. It’s like watching etymology come alive before my very eyes, my brief foray into Linguistics 101 bright on a technicolor screen in front of me every day, instead of living in the sticky textbook pages that bored me juuuust enough that I never signed up for 102.

Other favorites: “It deserves them right!” (Rowan, a few weeks ago. He also calls things he makes that he’s proud of his “piece of resistance”s which — go off, gen alpha social justice king!)

Zoe calling tombstones gross stones, which, I mean, yeah, true.

My friend’s son mis-using swear words constantly, my favorite of which was “It’s gonna be dammit!”

Rowan’s little first-grade friend, upon learning I was allergic to the cats at a birthday party, ran up to tell me something cute that the cat had done. “Wait a minute,” he said, his eyes narrowing. “You’re not allergic to words about cats, are you?”

Last year, Rowan balked when I kissed him goodnight and made to leave the room.

Wait, why are you leaving cuddle time so early??? he clamored.

Because you’re not SETTLING. I had been trying to shh and calm his body for upwards of ten minutes and it wasn’t working.

Okay, okay, I promise, I’ll settle…hey Mommy? What even is ‘settle,’ anyway?

Zoe humbling Tyler on Father’s Day by intending to write “Editor” but of course instead calling him an Idiot

The delightful aspects of parenting obviously far outweigh the infuriating ones, the exhausting ones, but even considering that, I’ll confess that we’ve really been through it these last few months. The Eaton fire and losing our home/community/school/city unleashed some underlying behavioral issues in one of my kids that has essentially completely taken over our lives for the past 6 months. We have succumbed to a new lifestyle regimen of therapy, revamping our parenting style to something highly un-intuitive but ultimately more effective, and slimming our daily routines down to the barest, most naked calendar, when we’re used to having 1-4 plans a day (the way I like it, the way I feel most alive!).

I don’t know how candid about it all to be because I want to respect my kid’s privacy, but it’s been really, really, really hard. Losing our home and all of our beloved treasures and life artifacts and their school and our community in the Eaton fire was an extraordinarily heartbreaking challenge, obviously, but the emotional fallout from all the resulting upheaval with our children has been much harder.

Through it all, Tyler and I have been trying to decide where to go next, what to do. We have an open road ahead - do we rebuild our beautiful home, or do we cut and run and try and start totally anew elsewhere? In the meantime, do we go back to LA, or do we stay in Santa Fe, or do we move to London, which is the only other place in the world I desperately want to live (again, having lived there while I got my Master’s there when I was 24)? Do we say fuck it and move to a beach in Mexico or an island off Greece for a year? We have the lack of ties, so to speak, to be able to do that now, while the kids are little enough. Our pros and cons lists are dizzying in their specificity and lengths. But the lack of certifiable job prospects abroad and, most of all, the worry that another big and cultural upheaval will completely upend our kids’ sense of balance, plus the reckoning that we really, genuinely, totally miss Los Angeles (thank you for that perspective, Santa Fe!), is seeing us move back there - whatever is left of it while Trump is having his hateful, vile way with it.

what to do, where to go……..

Last month, I was so desperate to finally just make this decision that I hired a psychic (my first time!). She asked me to silently meditate on what I wanted her to explore, so I visualized the fire burning our home, then bringing my family to London, then bringing them to Los Angeles. When I was done visualizing, I said, “Okay, I’m ready.”

She said:

“You’re burning through an extraordinary disappointment right now and you’re trying to choose between two very different places to take your family. One of which, they’ve never been to but you know intimately, and the other where you have many friends and everyone is involved in the kind of work you do.”

…..Oookay????? The fuck?????!!!!!!

Also: burning through a disappointment????? I’ve never heard that turn of phrase before! Obviously contact me if you want her information, because she then unleashed a 28 minute beautifully-worded guidance through what I should do and think about next for the optimal mental health of both me and my family.

All that said, after losing out on yet another house we thought we had in the bag, we just signed a lease on a house in LA for the next year. It’s unfurnished (eeeep!) so will be posting some fun design inspo soon. We leave Santa Fe in a month. I feel like I’ve barely been there the last couple months, having worked in Austin, Miami, LA, Dallas, and now, at this very moment, London, since April, so hoping to really soak up a New Mexico summer before we leave.

We’ll be okay, wherever we go. Here’s a full double rainbow I saw in Santa Fe, I pulled over to the side of the road to stare at it and yell WOW!!!!! a bunch of times.

…also I loved this NY Times article on why and how Finland is consistently rated the Happiest Country on Earth by

The Life and Errors of Molly Young

!

…Oh! And my 5 FUN THINGS recommendation substack coming at you soon!