limbo

04May09

A cup of coffee. Actually, a chai latte with a shot of espresso is what I drink. A dirty chai. I carry it down the second half of the avenue to my subway stop waiting for it to cool. At the top of the subway steps, the sun is shining on the panhandler rattling his own coffee cup filled with a few nickels. Enough money to make some music and scatter the pixie dust that’s floating in the hard morning light. My coffee captures some of the dust particles through the lozenge shaped opening of the plastic lid. I imagine that I’m carrying some of the homeless guy’s plight with me in my grown up sippy cup.

Boarding the train, a young woman bumps my coffee when she rushes past me to get in. I wonder if her long hair touched the lid. I pretend that it didn’t and that I’m not germophobic so I can take a sip. I imagine that I’m now carrying her haste in my overly sweet, manageably hot coffee cup.

Landing topside outside of my office, the construction workers relaying the concrete pavers are sending up a spray of water. I cover the lid, and take a sip once I think I’m far enough away from the threat of dirty water in my under caffeinated, overpriced drink. I start to fill with a mild dread the closer I get to my building.

Taking the elevator up, I’m at the bottom of my dirty chai and I imagine that my unease has permeated the white paper and hovers above the little bit that sloshes silently as I step off. I’m starting to feel slightly nauseous and the funky unidentifiable smell of 400 architects makes me want to head back out to the fresh air. I leave my almost empty, wax-lined cup on my desk, not wanting to throw away something filled with a half an inch of polluted sorrow and hasty disregard, but I’m already late, and I want to log in before I walk to the pantry to empty the lukewarm dregs.

Hours later, I look down and the cup is still on my desk, waiting for me to knock it over and fry my keyboard or destroy some piece of paper that is monumentally unimportant. The foo has just turned three and I think about the conversation I had over the weekend with the Manhattan transplant in the backyard of my in-laws deep in suburbia. She was describing a certain kind of mom who extravagantly overspends for a five year old’s birthday party and then advertises loudly to everyone how much she has just paid to rent out a disco blah blah. I nodded in agreement that 2500 was too much to spend on a kid’s birthday party, but then felt like the asshole for spending more on maxie’s parties than the figure she guessed, splutter splutter, the disco mom spent on her five year old.

Max, my extravagantly feted child, is not growing. If we lived “out there”, I imagine that my son would grow taller. I would probably cook for him too. Theoretically, it is a simpler life anywhere but here. Not having paid any attention to the percentile figures that used to be one of the main pieces of information I took away with me after a visit with the pediatrician, Max’s latest visit surprised us with how little he actually is. His height in the 10th percentile and weight in the 50th, is a little disconcerting. I keep thinking that I should figure out what better foods to feed him. My husband and the nanny usually feed him various pasta dishes… and broccoli.

Instead of grocery shopping, I buy him shoes. I hunted down a pair of shell toed Adidas for this kid so he’d have a proper pair of soccer shoes for the Saturday classes that he seems to despise. What the hell is wrong with me? I also buy the rest of his clothes, make sure he’s seen by doctors and dentists, enrolled in classes, groomed. Ok. So there’s not that much wrong with me. I just don’t personally feed him properly. I read five books to him every night and read anything regarding his development. I’m a good mom. Why do I always feel like a bad mom?

I’ve stopped using the *f word, my favorite word, so I’d stop saying it around my kids. I am the one on poop duty every night while Max has his “midnight” poo. He makes me sit with him while he grunts and wiggles and jokes around, “all. mohst.” We’ve had some fun pooping in the dark. I’m a good mom. I know this, but the fact that Max has a Caribbean accent makes me feel like I’m failing him. He’s not supposed to take his speech cues from the nanny. I’m the one who’s supposed to teach him everything he knows dammit. I’m not supposed to be trying to catch up to the nanny.

We’ve been in this frozen state for so long, not knowing if we’ll ever move to a home that’s big enough to contain us without stifling us. Not knowing if we’ll have to go into deep hibernation mode if I lose my job. It seems like Max is not growing because we’re in limbo. Nothing is changing like I thought it would. Life is just kind of dripping into my coffee cup and I can’t manage to throw out the last negative inch.

I’m starved for good news, happy stories, anything that could mean the end of the worst of it.

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