Allison Slater Tate

Several weeks ago, I was driving my kids to the weekly tennis lesson when my kindergartner piped up from the backseat, “Mom, how old do you have to be to die?”

I paused. I made a split-second decision.

“People of all ages die, buddy,” I answered matter-of-factly, holding my breath.

“What?” he asked, as if he hadn’t heard me correctly.

“Anybody can die,” I said. “Even babies.”

I could see in my rear-view mirror that this stopped him. His brow furrowed. I continued, “Usually, most people don’t die until they are very old. But sometimes, younger people do die. You don’t need to worry about it.”

I could see him thinking, looking out the window. “No, Mom. Really. How old do you have to be to die?”

***

I’m completely numb after yesterday’s bomb attacks at the Boston Marathon. I had friends running, and I had friends living and working nearby. I know Boston, and I know the area affected. But even without those connections, my heart would be broken. I’m still not healed from December. I’m still raw from losing so many children. The thought that we lost another child, the thought that children and runners and bystanders lost limbs and mothers sustained brain injuries and a 29-year-old woman with so much ahead of her lost her life… I’m just numb. I’m so sad. I’m worried about the world I am handing my children. I am tired of having to explain to them that yet another person did something very, very bad. I’m angry that I still find myself actively seeking out exits in movie theaters, vigilant of people around me. I am reminded every time I go to my children’s school and have to remember that oh yeah, only one of the front doors is open now, and their classrooms are locked. I’m afraid that now there won’t be finish lines at races with fans and families surrounding them; that once again, we’ll have to take measures to try and protect ourselves from crazy, evil people.

All I know is this: we are not safe. Not ever. Not really. But the longer our country stays so very polarized, at odds with each other, embracing anger and hatred for the Other Side, the weaker and more vulnerable we are to terrorists both foreign and domestic. The longer we tolerate a government that will not compromise, that refuses to work together to create a better place for us and for our children to live — to LIVE and not to DIE — we open ourselves even more to attack. We are united in our grief. We need to be united in our determination to make this work. History has proven that a divided nation cannot stand. I am tired of living in fear. We need to come together.

We owe it to Martin Richard, because 8 years old is not old enough to die.

A rare moment of cooperation among the four little people.

Years ago, when I was still trying to decide whether or not to add a third child to our family (never mind a fourth), I attended the wedding of two dear friends in Chicago. The bride was the baby of her large family, the groom the middle of three brothers. It was the speeches that got to me that thick summer night in a museum gallery in downtown Chicago, particularly those of the groomsmen: the brothers roasted the groom with love and laughter, using the language and the memories only three brothers could know. As they spoke, I could feel strings of family and love pulled taut throughout the room, and they moved me. I wanted that for my boys, then only ages four and two. I wanted them to be entwined with family, to know private jokes, to have each other’s backs, to share a common language. The following fall, we conceived our third son.

Yeah. Well. That pretty picture is not exactly the scene I see every day in my home. I still have hope that someday, my kids will have that camaraderie I saw at my friends’ wedding, but most days, it’s nowhere to be found. I have three boys with three very distinct, often conflicting, personalities. Instead of having each other’s backs, my boys often sport scratches and bruises courtesy of each other. They throw video game controllers at each other. They say mean, hurtful things to each other — reckless, calculated words that I know cut to their cores and leave marks on their hearts. They fight over food, over video games, over favorite spots on the couch. It’s less like The Cosby Show around here and more like WWF. The fighting can be miserable; this morning, one brother pried a piece of turkey bacon from another’s mouth. (Brothers, I have found, fight over food. A lot. As if we didn’t have, oh, twenty more pieces of turkey bacon at the ready.)

I don’t want to push my kids to love each other. I don’t believe that closeness can be manufactured. Instead, I try to foster it through shared experiences. But I come from a family of two children, as does my husband, and we are winging it (big time) when it comes to raising four children in one household. We don’t always know how to perfectly execute “fair” when there are so many competing needs and wants simultaneously. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I will never be able to make everyone happy all of the time. Also, that my kids will likely need therapy.

One day this week, we had a crazy afternoon. My oldest had to complete a big math project and a mound of other homework. He went to flag football practice at 5 PM. My second boy had flag football practice at 5:30 PM in a different park. After I dropped him off, I took my younger two kids to the grocery store — my THIRD grocery trip that day, if I was keeping count, and I was. I waded through the store with a hungry 5 year old and a stick-a-fork-in-her done baby, and then I rushed home to drop the groceries in the kitchen before hopping back in the car to pick up my oldest from practice. We ended up parked outside the park where my second boy was finishing his practice. Everyone was exhausted, hungry, sweaty, and dirt-streaked, including me.

I was sitting in the front seat of my minivan, holding the baby and trying to keep her entertained for the last ten minutes before we could grab the final child and go home for dinner. My oldest sat in the third row sulking because he couldn’t BELIEVE he was being made to wait for someone else, especially his little brother. My littlest boy was leaning out the middle window, using the outside of my van as a drum set. It became background noise to the point where I barely even noticed it.

Thump-thump-thump. Thump-thump-thump.

Thump-thump-thump. Thump-thump-thump.

He kept beating, rhythmically, staring out into the dusky sky, while I watched the baby manically pull and push buttons and knobs on my dashboard, setting the windshield wipers on, activating my turn signal.

Suddenly, I noticed that the drumbeat had an answer.

Thwack-thwack-thwack. Thwack-thwack-thwack.

What in the world? I turned my head over my shoulder, and beyond my youngest boy, I saw my middle son walking toward the car, a water bottle in one hand, his mouthguard dripping out of his smiling mouth. He beat the bottle into his hand:

Thwack-thwack-thwack. Thwack-thwack-thwack.

I saw the boys’ eyes meet, and a smile turned up the corners of my youngest boy’s mouth. He opened the door for his brother, who lumbered in, sweat glistening around his eyes, and dropped himself in the third row. We were ready to go.

It was a small moment, but I felt it completely. These boys don’t often cough up love for one another, but when I catch these fleeting gestures — one boy calls, the other answers — I feel the strings pull taut. I think that maybe, just maybe, I’ve managed to give them a family. In the next breath, one might throw a cleat at the other’s head or blow up his house on Minecraft, it’s true. But I have hope that while each boy definitely marches to his own drumbeat, once in a while, they might march side by side. They might even sometimes answer the other’s call, in a language they will know from their shared childhoods. One day, I hope they find refuge and reassurance, strength and love, there. For now, I’ll take the fact that they all laugh at the same potty jokes as a good sign.

Playing it cool, but bursting with excitement at his first concert.

I read a newspaper article once that analyzed why, in a world run by evolution and survival of the fittest, musicians survived. After all, in the time of cavemen, survival depended upon physical strength and the ability to feed yourself and others, not the ability to play “Piano Man” to a group of swooning cavewomen. How, the article asked, did the musical ability gene survive and why, if it didn’t actually aid in survival? Why are musicians often considered so attractive? What are the implications about music, dance, and the arts and their necessity to human survival above and beyond the basic needs of food and shelter? In short, why is Adam Levine so freaking hot when we all know he couldn’t wrestle a tiger for us and come out alive?

Recently, I went to two concerts. The first was the Indigo Girls, whom I have loved for a very long time and whose songs speak to my heart in its native tongue. Seeing them was like seeing old friends or finding an old flannel shirt from college (as yes, I did come of age smelling like teen spirit). My friend and I stood in what seemed to be a gathering of seriously every single lesbian our city could muster — which was kind of an awesome break from Homogeneous Soccer Mom Suburbia — and we sang ourselves hoarse along with Amy and Emily.

But I was taken off guard when the band left the stage and Amy and Emily announced they were going to sing a request. The familiar opening notes began, and I was immediately fighting tears.

Thought I knew my mind like the back of my hand…

The Indigo Girls’ song “Watershed” was a personal anthem for me many years ago, when I went through what was by far the most difficult time in my life. I could have hoped for them to sing it to me, but I never imagined it would actually happen. And as my lips formed the words silently while tears sprang from the corners of my eyes despite my best efforts, I felt the rush of the emotion that I used to feel when I sang that song every single morning in my car on the way to work. I played it over and over on my morning commute, giving myself a cartharsis, letting myself sob it all out until my eyes were puffy and my cheeks flushed. By the time I reached my office, I was spent, emotionally bled out, but somehow this allowed me to go about the rest of my day without bursting into tears at work. That song both brought me to my knees and buoyed me in my darkest hour. Hearing it again, and watching them actually sing it to me (and, okay, hundreds of others), was almost a spiritual moment.

Just four days later, I had a last-minute opportunity to snag two tickets to the Maroon 5 concert. It was Spring Break, and most of my friends were elsewhere, so I decided to take my 10 year old to his first concert. It was, of course, a different kind of spiritual experience (see above re: hot Adam Levine). The concert was sold out, and the crowd was very different. Instead of standing room only at the House of Blues, it was tens of thousands of people screaming in a huge arena. But I felt the energy of the crowd, and the way the music surged through people and lifted them. It wasn’t the same as the Indigo Girls, but it was still real. Watching my son experience live music for the first time, and the way a crowd reacts to the performers and sings their words back to them, I felt like I was giving him a different kind of education. I was passing down a love. My first real concert was Michael Jackson’s Thriller tour when I was a child, but my first concert as a child old enough to listen to music of her own choice was INXS, and I still remember it.

After the concert, we bought Mason a ridiculously overpriced souvenir T-shirt, because that is part of the whole experience. As we sat in the car listening to songs we had just heard live, waiting for the bazillion cars in front of us to get out of the way so we could get home, I thought of that newspaper article I read. Why does the musical gene survive when it doesn’t feed our bodies and help us survive in the wild? Are the arts essential to human survival? I think the answer is clear. Musicians might not feed our bodies, but they feed our souls. Seeing my child grow into this realization has been one of those milestones that make my heart swell, like the first time I caught him reading a book with a flashlight in bed or  talking about math with a friend outside of a classroom.

I wonder what songs will speak to his heart in its native tongue? What musicians will make him cry, and why?

If you stayed in the Spring Break/Easter/Passover picture too, be sure to hashtag your picture on Instagram or Twitter with #themomstaysinthepicture so I can find them. I love seeing everyone’s pictures! You can post photos to my Facebook page as well.

Congratulations, Kaitlin Boles! You won the Thirty-One Gifts Thermal Tote in the URU brushstroke pink pattern. Carolyn Petagno will be contacting you to claim your prize.

Today marks the end of the Worst Spring Break Ever. It included a lot of barf, a lot of diarrhea, and even some blood, courtesy of brotherly not-love. We went to the beach, but it was too cold to play or swim. We watched a lot of movies. Kid movies. Animated movies. Today, I cried while wiping down a toilet with Clorox wipes and I paid a carpet cleaner $200 to remove pasta barf from one kid’s bedroom carpet.

I’m ready for this to be over.

Thanks to everyone who participated in the giveaway. Don’t forget to click the ad in my sidebar to scope out the new Thirty-One catalog, or join Carolyn’s Facebook page for updates. Carolyn’s my first blog sponsor. She’s helping me “lean in” to writing. I appreciate her support!

Hope all of you are having a much better Spring Break/Passover/Easter week than I am. Here’s to getting through our annual spring stomach virus without our usual hospital visit! (Hey, I’m an optimist.)

I know it might make me sound materialistic or shallow or like some awful stereotype, but I love to shop. I come from a long line of shoppers, both men and women, so it’s probably some kind of genetic defect or something. I don’t drink a whole lot, I don’t smoke, I’m even cutting way back on my Diet Coke consumption (most days — not yesterday, when I was hanging by a thread after a long week full of PTA and school obligations). I need to allow myself some indulgences, so give me this one.

I have been probably too excited to buy Easter outfits for my kids this year. I have been dressing the boys in the cutest stuff I could find for so many years, but now I get to add in the challenge of a baby girl dress too! After a lot of window shopping both virtual and real, I finally found the perfect ensemble — lavender gingham button-downs for the boys and a green gingham smocked bishop with lavender details for the baby. I have been waiting for a very long time to have a little girl to wear a smocked bishop dress, people. I am excited.

I even found a lavender seersucker shift dress that coordinates with everything for myself, which is true shopping success. But here is where my story turns. I tried it on today, and it doesn’t fit. I’m too big for it.

I still need to lose almost all of my baby weight. I am still breastfeeding. I have been going to the gym pretty dutifully. I am trying to make better eating choices. I know what I have to do. And yet, I haven’t done it yet. So I am too big for the dress.

I’m very sad and angry with myself. I don’t want to wear black to our Easter brunch and egg hunts. I want to wear a dress and feel pretty and springy and like I am somewhat together. I really want that. I’ll still make sure I am in the pictures, but I have to confess that my size makes me feel like I am not yet completely in the actual picture. My size makes me feel invisible. I still feel like I am wearing a fat suit, not showing my real self, only halfway here.

I don’t want to feel like this anymore.

So I am making this resolution. I don’t have a specific weight or size goal, but I do have a goal: I want to look like my real self. I want every day to be a stepping stone toward that goal. I do not want to eat mindlessly, or to sabotage myself, or to put myself last on my priority list. I would not want my children treat themselves with such disregard. My real self will never be a size 2, will never wear a bikini (and never did, really), will never have a flat tummy. But it’s not this size either.

I wish I could say I had nobler reasons, but the truth is, I am human and I am vain, and I want to wear cute clothes. I want to feel confident. I want to look in the mirror and recognize the image I see as myself.  I want to feel like I am not just putting junk into my body and that I am modeling good choices for my kids. But, yes, okay, I really do want those cute clothes. I want to fit into the coordinating Easter dress. I am vowing now to make that happen.

I once thought I controlled everything. Then I had a baby.

I had a baby that cried for hours. For weeks. Then months.

I found myself a year later having not slept a whole six or seven hours straight in over a year, haggard and pale and disheveled and very much not in control of anything. I had a toddler who nursed every hour on the hour throughout the night and demanded to sleep only in my armpit for both the nights and his naps. He, in fact, controlled everything.

Then one morning, he overslept, and I couldn’t leave him in my bed alone, so I missed breakfast. And I felt nauseated.

And I knew.

A day later, my hand shook as I showed my husband a very, very positive pregnancy test, the pink line vibrant, almost neon in its decisiveness. I was pretty sure I would never sleep again.

Charlie came just seven and a half months later. He was an emergency induction and born at just 37 weeks. I was very worried that it was too early, that he would not be ready. He weighed 8 pounds, 9 ounces, and he had a 14.5-inch head. He was ready, ready or not.

Today, that baby boy, our most beloved party crasher, turns nine years old. He is our Ferdinand the Bull. He is our artist, our dreamer, our shower singer, our game-maker. He’s part polar bear and part Blues Brother. He’s particular about his clothes and loves his pleather jacket he received for Christmas after much begging. He’s everyone’s friend. He loves fiercely and he defends the weak. He is braver than I will ever be. He prefers the Everlasting Gobstopper in the original Willy Wonka to the higher tech version in the recent remake, as he told me tonight while giving me a very thorough comparison of the two movies. Make no mistake: a movie about candy and chocolate is bound to be a movie that Charlie pays attention to, because this boy has a sweet tooth like no other.

This weekend, I took Charlie for his first pedicure. He had been asking me for over a month if he could have one after he spotted my newly painted toes one day. When we walked into the nail salon, the older women all turned and stared at us skeptically. He was wearing his shiny athletic shorts, a surfer T shirt, and his New Balance sneakers. We sat in the pedicure spa chairs, and Charlie learned the ways of the pedicure — the hot towels and simmering water, the tingly lotions and the tedious trimmer. Finally, he showed his tech the polish he had picked out: bright bubblegum pink and Meyer lemon yellow. He wanted his toes painted in alternating yellow and pink.

We left the salon with him in orange foam flip-flops, his toes bright and round. My mother scowled at his toes. His brothers giggled. But Charlie liked them. I am not sure where he found his love for pink and yellow, but I figure that if anyone can pull it off, it’s an almost 5-foot tall third grader who wears a size 14 pant. I love that he wanted to try the pedicure, but I love even more that he actually did it; he didn’t shy away even for a second, even with every eye on him. He followed through. I’m so proud of him. I hope he’s never afraid to go after what he wants, even if it’s an unusual want.

The world is not easy for Charlie. He struggles. He works harder for what he wants and needs than his brothers do. I worry about him a lot, but I also worry about him less in some ways. Of all my children, Charlie has shown me a strength and a resilience and a bravery that takes my breath away. He came to me when I didn’t know I needed him. He was strong when I feared he might be weak. And he slept in his own crib and for many hours straight when he was just six weeks old (thank you, thank you, thank you). Charlie was not my first baby, but he taught me so many things about motherhood that I would not have known without him. He might have crashed the party, but in many ways, he repaired and healed me. He is a big part of my heart.

Happy birthday, my 9-year-old second boy. Thank goodness I don’t control everything.

When Lindsey Mead approached me about helping her with an idea she had for a blog series called This is Childhood — a look at the first ten years of childhood, each age written by a different mother — I could not have known it would be exactly this wonderful. It has been a fantastic journey to participate in this series and to get to know each of the other nine writers so much better. The posts have been poignant, sometimes sad, sometimes funny, but always true in some sense for me, at least.

I have my very first 10 year old. It has been an amazing year with him, one that will conclude in just three short months. This summer, we will say goodbye both to the age of 10 and to elementary school. I admit that I am not ready yet. It feels too much like the end of the innocence for us both.

So as I prepare to say goodbye to this golden age, we say goodbye to our blog series. It is so fitting that it is Lindsey that sends us off.

This is TEN.

Comments are closed here today, but please visit Lindsey and tell her than you, both for her words and for her idea. Both have been such a gift.

To see the entire series, please visit my friends and find us at Huffington Post Parents:

Aidan Donnelley Rowley: This is ONE

Kristen Levithan: This is TWO

Nina Badzin: This is THREE

Galit Breen: This is FOUR

My own look at FIVE

Bethany Meyer:  This is SIX

Tracy Morrison: This is SEVEN

Amanda Magee: This is EIGHT

Denise Ullem: This is NINE

Lindsey Mead: This is TEN

Driving in traffic to pick up the dog from his $200+ vet appointment tonight after a day that included a napless baby, a dead car battery, an out of town husband, a lot of PTA, and fighting children:

The 5 year old: “Mom, you never let us eat inside restaurants.”

“Pardon me? What?”

“You never let us eat inside restaurants.Like McDonald’s.” Pause. “It’s so unfair.”

Shaking my head bemusedly, “I love you, buddy.”

“Well, I hate you.”

And… SCENE.