Never Second-Best

Mary Claire and me, sharing first place.

I’m the second-oldest child in our family, so my sister Mary Claire had 20 months of only child status.  On my mom’s side, Mary Claire was even the only grandchild and quickly became the focal point of McGrath family gatherings.  When my parents would plan a trip home for the holidays, my mom’s siblings would ask, “When are the Mary Claires getting here?” 

When my mom and dad discovered that I was on the way, they were thrilled.  My mom’s one of six kids and my dad’s one of nine, so they had definitely been planning on a large-ish family of their own.  But there’s a story my mom tells about being pregnant with me.  Mary Claire was just so wonderful, so perfect, so incredible, so special, and my mother loved her so entirely – how could she ever hope to love the second baby as much?  After months of worry and sleepless nights, my mother simply decided that she would never let on.  No matter what her true feelings were, she would never let the second baby suspect that Mary Claire was the favorite.  She buckled down and prepared to like the second-best kid.

When she tells this story, my mom always laughs here.  Apparently, after I made my way into the family officially, she discovered that her fears were moot.  Her love for Baby 2 was different, sure, but just as powerful and just as complete.  (And how could it not be.  Have you met me??) 

Now, Tim and I have our own Baby 2 issue to contemplate.  As we anticipate our second baby (in production for release on or around May 11), I feel lucky to already have my mom’s Baby 2 story firmly in place in my awareness.  Because Charlie is absolutely our be-all and end-all.  If you’ll indulge me for a moment:  The kid is a paragon of childish beauty, with a love of reading that demonstrates an unparalleled intellect, a gentleness of spirit that rivals the saints, and the comic timing of a person at least twice his age.  I can’t count the number of times in the past 16 months that I’ve turned to Tim and asked, “Look at him.  Isn’t he perfect?” Tim nods soberly and says, “I feel sad for other parents who think their babies are perfect, because they’ll never know how this really feels.”   

It would be so easy to worry that my heart might not be big enough to accommodate another little Maxwell.  But I know better.  I know from first-hand experience that my mom and dad, so anxious about loving a second baby equally, not only accomplished that but went on to pull three more babies into their love lasso.  There’s never been any question in our family that my parents love us all with the same degree of devotion, despite – or maybe thanks to – our differences in personality, talents, and accomplishments. 

So any time I look at Charlie and think, “How could anyone ever be as marvelous as you are?”, I think of the tiny little kicker in my uterus and I know that somehow, he or she is going to do it.  Then I get overwhelmed by hormones and emotion and I tear up a little bit (in fact, I’m crying right now) before becoming really impatient and wishing that Baby 2 would just get here already, and let us start in on our new Q&A:

Meg: “Look at them.  Aren’t they incredible?”
Tim: “It’s an everlasting tragedy that other parents will only ever feel a shadow of the pride we have in our children, who are equally, if individually, peerless.”

So Cool it Burns

Recently, my husband Tim and I were talking about our stroller, and strollers in general, and he had a brainstorm. 

“Why don’t they have really cool strollers?  Like, for tough guys.  I’m thinking leather with studs.”

“Well, that’s probably not practical,” I answered.  “You wouldn’t want to take your nice leather stroller out in the rain.”

But my response fell on the deaf ears of a man whose imagination had been ignited. 

“Come to think of it,” Tim said, “why not invent a stroller that shoots fire?”

I raised my eyebrows.  “Tell me more,” I said.

“Like, if you could push a button on the handle console and have it shoot fire.  I bet there’s a market for that.”

“Where would it shoot fire from?” I asked.

Tim thought about that one for a couple seconds.  “Probably the sides.  That would be safest.”

Indeed.  Safety first, I always say, when it comes to fire-shooting, leather strollers with metal studs.  Expect our prototype in Spring 2012.

Oh, sure. I'm the crazy one.

 Spotting a dachshund.

It’s 90 degrees out today and so humid that you could bottle the air. On the phone this afternoon, I told my mom that I had taken Charlie for a run in the jogging stroller, and before I even finished my sentence, she said, “You’re nuts.” I made sure she knew that I’d coated the baby in three tubes of zinc-based, non-toxic sunscreen, and that I’d run down the shadiest streets I could find, into the breeze when possible so that Charlie could feel the wind in his curls. “Oh, good,” she responded. “You’re nuts.”

It wasn’t the first time I’d heard that message today, either. In the middle of our jog, my friend Erin slowed to a stop in her air-conditioned car and rolled down the window. We trotted up to the driver’s side and I said, “Hey, Erin!” She smiled and said, “You’re nuts.” About three blocks later, a guy at a stop sign shook his head at me and made the “crazy” sign (i.e., point at head, trace a small circle in the air). Very slowly, he mouthed the words, “Yoooou’re nuuuts.”

Then, off in the distance, I spotted a woman coming toward us with her stroller. At last! A compatriot! “This’ll be great!” I thought. “We’ll have a nice bonding moment. Maybe one of us will say, ‘Nice day for a run,’ and the other will laugh a little.” I trudged along, buoyed by the anticipation of a few steps of companionship.

And then, we were upon them and I made several realizations all at once. One: The lady wasn’t running. Two: In her cushy stroller, the lady was pushing a small, froufy dog. Three: Clipped onto the sunshade and directed at the dog were two small, battery-powered fans.

As Charlie kicked his legs and cooed, the dog stared at us and let out one quick yip. “Yeah, yeah,” I said under my breath. “I’m nuts.”

A Holy Pain

I woke up this morning with a terrible crick in my neck that no amount of stretching could touch.  As I poured my first cup of coffee and tried to shake it out, I had an instantaneous flashback to 1989, to the first time I recall feeling the equivalent of a hatchet wound in my cervical spine—a memory I haven’t considered in decades.  I saw myself at age 12, lying on the floor of my bedroom in a dress.  My parents were having some kind of open house or party or something – an opportunity for other grown-ups to walk through our house, peering into our rooms while eating delicious hors d’ouvres.  And there I was for several hours arranged on the floor, moving only enough to keep all my limbs from falling asleep, my head arced at a strange angle, conspicuously reading the Bible.

Why, you may ask, did I choose that particular pastime?  Was I working on an assignment for my religion teacher at our parochial elementary school?  Had I exhausted our family library except for the Good Book?  Was I looking up a clue for a crossword puzzle?  None of the above.  I’ll tell you what I was doing: The night before, I had woken up out of a deep sleep to the revelation that reading the Bible would be a very interesting, very unique, and probably very impressive thing for a young girl to be doing when a group of adults wandered by.       

I don’t recall why I decided to sprawl across the floor, but I am certain that it was a conscious decision.  Probably I didn’t want to risk people thinking I was reading a Sweet Valley High book, and the floor seemed most likely to showcase my King James edition.  I chose my outfit carefully with a mind to non-wrinkling comfort and settled on a cotton dress, as similar to the wardrobe of a character out of an L. M. Montgomery book as possible.    

I daydreamed as I dressed, imagining how things would go.

“Hello, Meg,” a grown-up would say, and I would turn my angelic smile upward. 

“What are you reading, dear?” the guest would ask, and I would say oh-so-serenely, “The Bible.”  Then I would turn my attention back to the passage at hand, likely a parable. 

The adult would raise his or her eyebrows and say one of the following: 1.) “A noble pursuit!” 2.) “She puts me to shame!” 3.) “What an interesting, unique, impressive young girl!” 

Word would spread quietly through the party that Mary and Terry’s daughter Meg was a serious, pious, near-perfect child who exhibited uncanny similarities to Julie Andrews as Maria Von Trapp in The Sound of Music. 

“Someone should write a book about her,” someone would say.

“A book?  Someone should write a series about her!  And then someone else should turn the series into a Broadway musical, a movie, and a successful TV comedy/drama, airing immediately after Doogie Howser!”

I couldn’t wait.  I found a spot where the sun shone down on my open Bible and experimented with a accessories.  To underline with a pencil, highlight with a highlighter, or neither?  Maybe a pencil would be just the right touch, while a highlighter would be over the top.  Ultimately, I decided to have the pencil handy in case the spirit moved me or the audience seemed to demand it.

And finally the guests arrived!  I could hear them making small talk downstairs, so I made sure I was ready.  Dress spread artistically across the floor?  Check.  Legs crossed daintily at the ankle?  Check.  Holy look on face?  Check.  Bring on the adults!

I waited and waited and waited some more.  Oh, it’s not that people didn’t walk by—they did, and they did say hello to me.  It’s just that no one—not one curious person—inquired after my reading material.  An hour in, I had a terrible crick in my neck and I’d read the same passage 15 times.  Then the foot traffic dried up, and my ray of sun dissipated.  “Don’t give up,” I told myself and stuck it out for another hour. 

I don’t know exactly how long I stayed there, but it was long enough to write a poem in the margin of Mark’s Gospel about a girl who heard the call of God but succumbed tragically to consumption before she could attain martyrdom.

My Bible-In ended in the least picturesque of ways.  My older sister Mary Claire strode into the room, stepping over me on her way to toss her bag onto her bed.  Then she turned around and left with just as much authority, pausing only to glance at my torso.

“Get off my side of the room,” she said. 

By the time I had peeled myself off the floor, I knew that my elbows would retain the imprint of the rug for a week at least.  And my neck … oh, my neck!  It smarted like you wouldn’t believe.   So much for piety being my avenue to stardom.

This morning, sipping my coffee and tipping my head from side to side, I mourned a missed opportunity.  Then I packed my Bible in the diaper bag in case Charlie and I found ourselves with a moment to read in the park.  The kid’s got a future in novels, series, film, and TV.  All he needs is an interesting, unique, impressive hook … 

Get out your tap shoes, Frances! Julian Marsh is doing a show!

That's me in the teal hat on the risers behind the leads.
Don't I look happy?

Last Thursday, I picked up a copy of Artvoice, Buffalo’s independent newsweekly, and casually paged to the audition notices. Theatre hiring interns, show choir needs gospel singers, Christian production company seeks people who look like Jesus … wait, what’s this? The Kavinoky Theatre seeks strong tappers and singers for their fall production of 42nd Street? My heart fluttered, I started humming, and I began to salivate out of control while experiencing spontaneous IBS. It was that old familiar, extremely unpleasant, violently-ill feeling: The stage was calling!

I rushed home to call for an audition appointment, and left an eloquent message in my most theatrical voice (deep, throaty, irresistible). I got a call back not an hour later and found myself blithely telling the caller that yes, I was a tapper, and yes, I couldn’t wait to learn a combination! It was only after I’d hung up the phone that I realized the enormity of the exaggeration I’d just made.

Some backstory: As a child, I believed that I was the next Cyd Charisse. I taught myself the basic ballet positions from a book I got out of the school library. After watching Singin’ in the Rain, I nearly dislocated my shoulder attempting to swing my body gracefully around the maple tree in our front yard. In my aspirations toward Broadway greatness, I secretly considered myself a triple threat. The hitch was that by the time I reached high school I had exactly two years of formal dance lessons under my belt, both in beginner-level ballet.

With the announcement that the 1993 Orchard Park High School musical would be 42nd Street came the tandem announcement that Mr. Jack “Sir” Greenan, the legendary OPHS choreographer, would be holding free beginner tap classes in the auditorium for anyone who wanted to strap on Teletones and learn their time steps. “Bliss!” my heart cried. “Rapture!” my feet answered. “ Be careful to tastefully accessorize your leotard!” cautioned my brain.

Every day of Sir’s tap clinic, I’d struggle with fa-laps and chugs and the rest of the mysterious, complicated language of tap. Every evening, my sister Mary Claire and I would retreat to the basement for intense, sweaty practice that was, I am certain, music to absolutely nobody’s ears. And by the time auditions came around, I was ready. I executed my military time step and my Buffalo steps with enough aplomb to earn a slot as a general, all-purpose, background tapper. I, the top-secret successor to Debbie Reynolds, had pulled it off! My mom made me some fantastic tap shorts and a matching sailor collar, and the rest is glorious, back-row-second-from-the-left history.

And aside from a brief and beautiful detour through Mr. Joel Seger’s wonderful world of tap in 2006-2007 (at CCS Dance in Massachusetts, where I took ballet and tap with some hilarious, funny, fantastic women), that pretty much brings us to the present. A several-week tap clinic in 1993 and a handful of performances of 42nd Street formed the basis for my telephone claim to be a strong tapper. No one ever said I wasn’t confident.

At 5:30pm this past Tuesday, I drove up to the Mullen Sisters School of Dance in Snyder, NY with my tap shoes in my bag and my spirits high. I strode into the studio and handed my headshot to the Kavinoky’s choreographer, who smiled and asked me point-blank, “So, what’s your tap history?” I mumbled something about having tapped in high school, but not much for the past five years or so. I will point out, dear reader, that my statement was technically true.

Minutes later, the other auditioners and I were lined up in front of full-length mirrors learning the show’s opening combination. Within three steps, I was mind-boggling, dizzyingly out of my element. Wing time steps? Traveling what, now? I felt the fleeting desire to simply walk out the studio’s open front and never look back, but I was checked by my dad’s voice in the back of my head saying something like, “Quitter? I didn’t raise you to be a quitter.” (Though I’m pretty sure that philosophy was intended to apply to baseball games and math tests, not foolhardy musical auditions at age 34.)

I stuck it out, thinking it was bound to get better. It got worse. When I was called to perform the combination for the auditors, I mostly just smiled really big and made noise with my feet. On my way out the door, the choreographer’s “Thank you” had a note of pity in it. The accompanist hid his face in the music to avoid my eye. Someone said, “We have your contact information, so we’ll be in touch,” which means, “Don’t call us, we’ll call you,” which means, “PLEASE don’t call us.”

I retreated to the lobby and unbuckled my tap shoes. Considering that I was a patent failure, I was strangely happy. For a half hour, I had worked hard, sweating and straining over a really fun, if too difficult dance. And for that half hour, I had felt a little like a character in a musical. You know … the musical where the underdog tries out for a show and at first, no one sees her potential. Then something amazing happens and our heroine is plucked from obscurity to become a star!

I’ve got the obscurity part down. Now I'm just waiting for my big break.

Three Little Words

One morning when my husband Tim was leaving for work, we went through our standard “goodbye” script: “Bye.  I love you.  Have a good day.”  I happened to be holding our 9-month-old at the time, and I said, “Okay, now tell Charlie you love him.” 

Tim rubbed Charlie’s funny, cowlicky hair and laughed a little.  “He knows, don’t you buddy?” he said. 

“No, tell him,” I insisted.  “If you can’t get in the habit of saying ‘I love you’ to your baby, how are you ever going to be able to say it to your 15-year-old?” 

“Does your dad tell you he loves you?” Tim asked.  Zing.  He got me there.  “And do you know he loves you?”  Zing x2.  If there’s one thing I’m completely certain of in this life, it’s that my dad loves my siblings and me with an unswerving, unceasing, almost pathological devotion.

But I kept at it.  “Come on.  Look at this guy!  He’s waiting to hear that you love him.”  Sure enough, Charlie was gazing at Tim with his enormous eyes wide open and a wide, toothless grin.  Finally, Tim rolled his eyes and raised the tone of his voice to sound like an old British lady and said, “I looooove you, Chaaawlie!”  And he was out the door. 

I don’t know why I’m so intent on establishing a verbal confirmation of love between my son and my husband.  Sure, if you tell my dad you love him, you’re likely to get a response like, “Okay.” But everything I can ever remember him doing indicates how he feels about his brood. Why else would a man learn the rules of women’s lacrosse just because his quasi-athletic (and that’s generous) daughter had joined the team, and then make a fanatical study of passing and running strategy, attending every single game, home and away?  Why would a guy rent a U-Haul and drive the six hours from Buffalo to Manhattan—a big-city area he instinctively mistrusts—in order to load up his 24-year-old daughter’s 32 boxes of books and move her to Rochester on the very next day?  Why else would he call that same daughter whenever he had business in Rochester and treat her to a Portobello mushroom sandwich from his favorite sandwich vendor in the park across from the theatre where she worked?  I can think of no reason, other than paternal love, why a lifelong baseball fan might agree to leave a Phillies game after the seventh inning stretch just because his pregnant daughter was feeling a little peaked, thereby missing the one homer in the otherwise scoreless game.  And I certainly can’t credit anything but love for the Mother’s Day card I got in the mail during the first week of Charlie’s life … in September, four months after the card was purchased.

Given my history, I should be content to come home after a run to find Tim and Charlie crawling around on the living room floor, saying “AAAAAAA!” at the top of their lungs.  It should be enough for me to listen to Tim reading Charlie Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?, using his “Australian” voice (which sounds a little like a South African Crocodile Hunter eating a lollipop) for the purple cat.  I definitely know what Tim’s really saying when he tells Charlie, “You have the world’s biggest head!”, his voice oozing with pride. 

All the same, I’ll keep pressuring Tim to spell out his affection for his son.  And sure, I can foresee a day when Tim’s not the only one resisting the mushy talk.  (Me: “Charlie, tell your dad you love him.”  Charlie: “Mom, I’m 35.  We’ve been over this.”) There’s just something internal that compels me to do it.  After all, I’ve got a mom to emulate. 

Happy 35^th Father’s Day, Pops.  Happy 1^st Father’s Day, Tim.  You’re both … well, you’re okay.  

This Is All I Am

A few weeks ago, I read a Salon.com interview with Laura Miller, a hip, young (childless) gal living in New York, who maintains a blog on tumblr called Too Big for Stroller. She posts surreptitiously-snapped pictures of children who she deems to be … well, too big for their strollers, along with funny (if snarky) comments.

The idea is that kids who are spilling out of their MacLarens should be walking, and that their gangly legs hanging over the restraining bars are illustrative of the epidemic of the overindulgent American parent. I don’t disagree with the basic premise. Seeing an 8-year-old in a stroller would probably make me elbow my husband and ask him why he didn’t bring my adult size umbroller. I can be as snide as the next guy.

But this part of the Salon interview rubbed me the wrong way (the italics are mine):

"I wrote a caption at one that said: 'When I have a kid, it will be strapped to me as an infant, and then walking, no middle ground.' You know, a joke. And someone commented: 'I said the same exact thing and I really meant it. But then my two-year-old started walking and she never walks in the same direction twice. The stroller is necessary.' The blog is all kidding around. I do think that at some point I will have a kid and I will push a stroller but there's still this impractical or immature side of me that thinks there's something fundamentally un-cool about strollers. I mean, you could be the world's best businesswoman, but when you're pushing a stroller it just screams: 'I'm a parent, this is all I am.' I get why strollers are around, I don't hate them, they're appropriate for babies and toddlers. I just think it's funny when kids who are way too big for them are in them."


Maybe I'm hypersensitive thanks to my current stay-at-home-mom status, but implicit in that italicized sentence I read the following equations:

Businesswoman > Parent
World’s best businesswoman + parent = 0

Ms. Miller seems to say that being a parent is far below all life's other accomplishments and, what's more, that becoming a parent nullifies all the things that once made a person interesting.  If I were to take her judgment personally, I’d have to add an equation along the lines of “Meg = Pathetic Nobody.” (But that's bonkers.  I mean, have you met me?)

This past weekend, my mom and I were talking about my unplanned (though likely temporary) transition out of the traditional workplace and she asked me, "Do you ever feel unfulfilled?  Like you're missing out on something?"  I said immediately, "Absolutely not."  She replied, "No, I never did either."  And that makes perfect sense to me.  In the 20-ish years that my mom stayed home with my four siblings and me, she was a seamstress, Girl Scout leader, musician, teacher, mentor, chef, nurse, gardener, artisan and about 40 other job titles. My dad, in addition to working a full-time job, was a coach, handyman, tutor, outdoorsman, athlete, groundskeeper and – again – dozens of other job titles. A statement as ridiculous as "I'm a parent, this is all I am" would never have crossed their minds.  Those are the models I'm working with as I forge ahead in this parenting project, and they're complex,  multi-faceted examples that can't be reduced by the mode of transportation I choose for my child.

So go ahead, childless hipster bloggers, and judge me as you will.  In the meantime, I'll push my stroller, write, cook, bake, clean, read, sing, run, sew and do all the other things I can think of to make myself a better, more well-rounded mom.  And if you ask me what I do, I'll be happy to smile and say, "I'm a parent.  This is all I am."