well, that's a first

bullies and freaks

My mom and her boyfriend took my two kids under their wings in Chicago for an entire nine days while Tyler and I stayed behind in Los Angeles. My mom sent my kids to a film animation camp and after two weeks, they had messy and barely coherent stop-motion videos of clay cats and staplers with googly eyes to show for it, but who cares? They were occupied and happy for 6 hours a day until my mom would pick them up and take them on various Chicago adventures all over the city.

During that time, my husband and I saved our marriage in a Palm Springs hotel pool (“We’re good now,” we assured our therapist upon our return from Palm Springs. “...Really…? he gazed at us quizzically.) For nine days, we never turned on the stove or prepared any food at all, but subsisted on takeout containers and toast, only finally running the dishwasher after 5 days because we were out of forks. We slept til 9am every day and threw a big 40th birthday party for Tyler, replete with a close-up magician in a 3-piece suit who blew everyone’s minds and a gorgeous vegetarian summer dip spread from the glorious Zoë Komarin of Zoe Food Party and the most unreal cake by Alana in an homage to Tyler’s favorite board game, Tzolk’in. We played a lot of tennis and we lavished our puppy with attention. It was heaven.

It was also our first time ever being in the house without both kids!!!! No hovering over anyone, barking at them to brush the backs of their teeth, and especially the NEW TEETH that the tooth fairy paid so handsomely for switching out!!!! No waking up to a naked save tiny-underwear’d spectre hovering over me at 2 in the morning, requesting a walk back to their room, then a cuddle, then not to leave, dawn quickly approaching. No deciding between the same 5 bland rotating carbohydrate-based accepted repertoires for dinner. No laundry!!!!!!!!! No cartoons. No moving tiny figurines back into resting places with the other tiny figurines in other rooms. No pretending to patiently listen to both sides of a fight before telling them they were both wrong and then hearing them both wail in dissatisfaction. No telling them they couldn’t have ____ thing in ____ store or that other thing in that other store and then dealing with the whining that ensues. No whining fullstop!!!!! That’s it, that’s a pretty comprehensive list of all the most exasperating aspects of having children, not too many tbh but it was pretty sweet not to experience them for 9 full days (15 for Tyler, a veritable prince on a palm frond).

After 9 days, I flew to Chicago to meet the kids and have 5 fun days playing while Rowan still had a week left of camp and Zoe didn’t. My mom was too exhausted to hang out on my first night - almost like taking care of two kids is hard or something? Not sure.

My kids and I walked to the local playground and there, for the very first time, a kid called me a…. “dumb bitch.”

I had been watching these two kids tousle for what felt like a half hour. One smaller brother trying to swing, the older one refusing to let him by holding onto the swing’s chain, holding it in place, intermittently slapping the younger boy on the face as he got increasingly frustrated, his kid crocs stomping on the padded playground floor in wild helplessness. I looked around for their parents but no one seemed to be particularly interested in their fight, certainly no one was paying as close of attention as I was. My husband had an extremely abusive older brother, and I kept picturing tiny Tyler in this position, no one there to stick up for him, helpless in the face of someone bigger and stronger, towering over him. The younger brother had tears streaming down his face while his sociopathic older brother stood still, swing chain firmly in hand, smirking at him, when I finally stood up for him and all the bullied kids of the world and said:

“Enough!!!!! Would you just let him swing already?”

Then, the 10-ish year old boy began his gaslighting campaign - clearly not his first. “He can swing just fine. I’m not doing anything.”

I hung there, suddenly transformed into one of Trump’s cabinet members, or anyone to whom he’s ever opened his fishy, charlatan mouth. Staring at a blatant lie, the liar standing proud, stupid, calling the sky red, as we all stand under it, cloudless and blue, plain as day. My mouth hung open, unsure what to say or do next, wishing my confrontation inspired a visit from these kids’ parents but no one approached.

“I’ve watched you. You have stopped him from swinging this entire time, and he is crying and clearly upset with how you’re treating him.”

He looked skyward then, shaking his little head slowly. “This dumb little bitch…is trying to tell me what to do.”

My jaw struck the (luckily padded) playground floor then, tiny bits of gravel embedding in my chin. I thought of my aunt, who always knows the perfect most smarting thing to say in every nasty confrontation. What would she say here and now?

“You did NOT just say what I think you just said,” I responded, likely shocking anyone in earshot with that whopper of a response.

“C’mon, mommy, let’s go,” Rowan took my hand, clearly sensing things heating up irrevocably in the verbal sparring department.

We walked away, me shaking my head, still not quite believing what just happened, when the little brother ran up to me. “He called you a really bad name,” he said, his eyes wide.

“Oh, I heard him,” I said.

“Will you tell my dad?”

“Yes, great, where IS your dad?” He gestured over beyond the playground, to the adjacent park. “Augh. Is your mom here?” He shook his head. I sighed, and asked him to take me to his dad. What followed, as you can probably guess, was an extremely unsatisfying encounter with this kid’s father truly not worth even mentioning here. So unsatisfying that as he turned around and walked away from me, I said “Okay?? Bye????” to no one/his back, made to feel like a lame Karen LOSER when I was hoping to be the or at least a butterfly wing that changed the course of this little kid’s future, possibly the final intervention that would get the older brother into some sort of behavioral therapy.

I never know what to do with those encounters, those despicable run-ins with the world’s losers. I try not to let it get me down but unfortunately I carry it around for days, the nastiness echoing in my shoulder blades. At the very least, the encounter was an example for my kids. “You would never, ever behave that way and use those words towards an adult, OR a kid, right?” They shook their heads vehemently.

“The worst I’d say is ‘that’s sus,’ Rowan proffered in solemnity.

The next day, my dad took us to hibachi, where we were both surprised to discover that a restaurant full of tables setting on fire was not the best dinner date idea for a couple of kids whose house and town recently burned down. The first time our table set alight, Rowan screamed and jumped under his chair, weeping. Zoe, practical as ever in the face of Rowan’s emotional longitudes, kept watch. “Four more families just sat down, Rowan. So we’ve got just 4 more fires to go.”

My dad made up for it by then taking us to the circus, where I discovered I am unfortunately still attracted to men in eyeliner. Also, that I cannot emotionally handle watching a Russian refugee hang from a trapeze by his mouth. I also did not love witnessing them giving themselves microscopic signs of the cross in the dark, before the lights came up and they did their tricks, without a landing pad beneath them. Too much for my heart!!! I had to watch them between my fingers.

My must-do’s in Chicago with kids: the Art Institute has a kids art room where they can do their own watercolors. Bobby’s Bike Hike downtown has kids (and adult, obviously, but weirdly most bike rental places don’t offer kid bikes! For example, NONE in London’s major parks???, as far as I could find) bikes to rent out for a beautiful 2-4 hour long ride along the perfect Chicago summer lakefront. Maggie Daly playground and the Crown Fountain splash pad. Sweet Mandy B’s bakery in Lincoln Park for the most unreal kids baked goods. Bang Bang Pie and Biscuits for breakfast. And the Fern Room at Garfield Park Conservatory has tiny toys hidden inside many of the fern tunnels and moss hollows, which can make a room that COULD bore a kid in 3 minutes last upwards of 30. The garden custodian found out Zoe’s favorite animal was an octopus and he somehow magic’d up a tiny octopus figurine, which he gave me in secret for me to hide for her to find. I love u, Thick Chicago Accented Garfield Conservatory Custodian Man!!!!!!

Love u guys too. Lmk what I should’ve said to that kid at the playground in the comments. It’s 7 days later and I’m still thinking about it. :]