No Butter/No Eggs Cake and Things I've Learned: Baby Turns 5 Edition
It’s the end of summer in San Francisco. I would report on the weather, but who fucking knows what the weather is anymore. My baby has been 5 years old for one month. He started kindergarten two weeks ago. He feels “nervous” all day at his new school, a massive K-8 public school in the heart of the Mission, which has a graffiti-covered parklet where unhoused residents sleep in the fetal position, and there’s a human turd in one of the planters (I checked for it this morning — still there).
We chose the school because they use the non-gendered “x” in all Spanish words and have a huge trans flag hanging in the kindergarten hallway. Not to mention they actually endeavor to help the school’s unhoused population by hosting a shelter in the gym. GB is the only white kid in his class, so if he turns out racist it’s not for lack of trying to curate his environment. His teacher is made of sunshine and rainbows and his classroom has papel picado hanging from the ceiling.
Still, it’s a massive fucking change, since GB has spent the last four years in a family day care gluing packing peanuts to colored paper with six to eight other kids in a clean, carpeted living room.
He feels “confused” about where to go at lunchtime. He feels “sad” and “scared.” He doesn’t understand all the Spanish. The first week, he had two crying jags and was completely inconsolable, ostensibly about losing his water bottle. Today he volunteered that he likes school, and that he finally learned the name of the kid at his table. When he wanders in the gates in the morning, he drops my hand and traipses away without looking back, his massive yellow second-hand backpack screaming at me to TAKE HIM HOME AND HIDE UNDER THE BED WITH BACK ISSUES OF HIGH FIVE MAGAZINE AND SLICED APPLE WHO NEEDS MATH AND SOCIAL-EMOTIONAL SKILLS. He’s still himself, still swings his arms unselfconsciously and walks on the balls of his feet. But this is a major life transition, and he’s feeling it.
So is Mommy SO MUCH DRIVING SO MUCH LUNCH-MAKING.
This is what I’ve learned this year:
At some point, your kid will start making sense most of the time. I don’t mean the concepts he comes up with will make sense (they won’t), but all the words coming out of his mouth will be recognizable as words. You’re kind of prepared for the nonsense to disappear, because it’s gradual. You’re also kind of not. Example of nonsense: GB has a stuffed monkey named Kink, because it’s just a word he made up.
Your kid might not be allowed in your bed anymore, since you need eight to 10 hours of uninterrupted sleep without someone laughing in their sleep, crying in their sleep, recounting their dreams at 4:28 a.m., and starfishing around the bed. This doesn’t mean you can’t sleep in THEIR bed (twin, too hot, poor IKEA mattress) because of an equal need to be comforted by the presence of the best decision you ever made, to drown out the sound of the Earth dying and its fascist leaders screaming about critical race theory and mask mandates as everyone else, but mostly Black, Brown, Indigenous, queer, immigrant, immunocompromised, and disabled people, dies from COVID and MPX.
Their innocence never fails to destroy you. I can’t take how open my kid is. When he’s talking his eyebrows are mostly up.
The fact that you have plumb run out of storylines for potty-time tales of “Spider-Man and the Big Hulk” will not deter your child from asking for more over and over.
The fact that you have a “thing” with your kid when it comes to his PB&J’s (he gets the option of having his breakfast sandwich cut into squares, triangles, or “funny shapes,” although I’m not allowed to laugh maniacally while I do it) will make you look into the future when you’re sitting together on a couch under a blanket in front of a fire on some family vacation remembering what a sweet childhood he had because of what a great parent you were.
The lower-belly pooch from childbirth, as it turns out, is permanent.
Everything in middle age gets harder.
But: Your sex drive will creep back. You will sometimes manage to read whole books. If you shut your bedroom door at 8 p.m. and refuse to do anything else, no one will drown, choke, or get run over by a car. If you refuse to cook, no one will starve. Your kid may surprise you by liking to watch cooking shows together. You may reread the Adrian Mole books and order the ones you don’t own from ThriftBooks because apparently a global phenomenon/millions sold isn’t good enough for the American public library system, and also you don’t give a shit about reading “literature” anymore and maybe never will again. You may watch an entire movie in one sitting (“Portrait of a Lady on Fire”). After paying $89.99 for an annual subscription to Craftsy because part of your midlife crisis entailed imagining you would take up quilting, you may realize all you want is to sit in a corner of the couch embroidering so you buy a set of otomi napkin patterns and an embroidery hoop. And you may realize that prioritizing your mental health over everything else is a habit you can keep up and is the best decision you ever made, neck-and-neck with producing the cutest, sweetest, most heartbreaking child the universe has ever seen.
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A couple months ago, my brother was gobsmacked that he didn’t make it into my blog immediately after sharing the news that he seemed to have a brain tumor. Whereas I dealt with my tsunami of grief (of the “Is this really happening"?” variety) that my little brother might drop dead in a hospital in China where I couldn’t get to him by writing a blog post that ignored it completely, Jesse read paragraph after paragraph with increasing incredulity.
Jesse: I read it thinking, what the fuck do I have to do to get into this fucking blog? It was hilarious, by the way. The thing about GB saying, why is this beach so pointy. But I kept reading and being like, OK, THIS paragraph will have something about it. But no!
The night Jesse went into the hospital (the first time), having had a second episode of suddenly losing the ability to form words, the doctors would not confirm whether or not he would live through the night. Jesse’s partner, the incomparable Lin Xiao Chun, known to her friends as Agua, translated with the doctors, and at one point Jesse watched from down the hall as his wife, in conversation with a white coat, burst into tears.
Jesse: Sooooo, that’s not what you want to see.
After coming out of the hospital (the first time), and after weeks of consultations, Jesse did end up having brain surgery, but now he’s, like, fine? And his hair has already grown over the incision? And he’s just ironing shirts waiting for the school year to start, when he’ll be head of his English department? So thanks for the heart attack, benign, operable cavernous malformation, you can seriously jump off a bridge now?
I love my brother second in line after my son, so I’m glad he’s not dying. (Look at the ears on that guy!)
Before.
After.
Jesse circa 1987, age 9 or so, in Wales wearing Wellingtons and surrounded by cows in the field across from our house.
Jesse on his wedding day with my sister-in-law, who looks beautiful and demure and in no way telegraphs how hilarious and raw and effusive she is, what an amazing hip-hop dancer and skateboarder and department head, since these two are both the HEADS OF THEIR DEPARTMENTS and sweet and funny and kind.
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In the morning, as we’re trying to get out the door, GB seems to be kneeling on the carpet so I can’t open the security gate.
Jenny (exasperated): GB, what are you doing?
GB: I’m just kneeling to you, queen!
*
GB, to Jenny: You’re way too cute to be real.
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A sweet friend in Truckee gave me a long-sleeved T-shirt that says “Tahoe Activist” on the front. At the time, I blurted out, “I can’t wear that! I’m not an activist in Tahoe.”
“Well, you bought the shirt,” she argued, although of course she had bought it and then gave it to me. I relented because the shirt was cute.
I wore it ONE TIME to Heron’s Head Park on my morning walk. This is what happened.
A stone’s throw from the parking lot:
Woman sitting on a bench with her friend: Are you an activist?
Jenny: Um! Well! Not in Tahoe? But, like, my friend bought this shirt and NONSENSE NONSENSE AWKWARD WAY MORE INFORMATION THAN SHE WAS LOOKING FOR CONSIDERING I’M JUST WALKING PAST.
Woman: It’s a good thing to be an activist!
Jenny: Yes! It’s not that I’m not, or that I don’t think it’s important to keep Lake Tahoe blue, but …
LITERALLY ONE MINUTE LATER.
Another woman, walking by with her friend: Tahoe activist! Yes!
Jenny (pumps fist): Keep it blue!
Jenny (to SJ at home): I can’t wear this shirt again.
*
GB: Mommy? When people say “baby” and there’s no babies around, and they say it to a girl, it means they’re on a date.
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I said "bite your tongue" and then had to explain it. GB interpreted it to mean that whenever I say anything he doesn't like, he can say "bite your tongue."
Jenny: No, honey, we’re not going to have dessert tonight.
GB: Bite your tongue!
*
Jenny: What does love feel like?
GB: Love feels like water. Warm water.
*
GB: (Uses the phrase “security guard.”)
Jenny: How do you know what a security guard is?
GB: Do you even know anything about security?
Jenny: Yes, I do. A security guard is someone who protects you.
GB: You always protect me. So you're my security guard.
*
SJ: How many actors does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Jenny: I don't know.
SJ: One. The actor holds the light bulb, and the world revolves around them.
Jenny: Oh, I like that one. You can fill in the blank for "actor." The joke has flexibility.
SJ: Yeah, like you could use Michael Douglas or something.
Jenny: … Michael Douglas?
SJ: What's wrong?
Jenny (sputtering): Michael Douglas is, like, the most irrelevant social reference ever.
SJ: I'm not going to know cultural references! Chris Pratt?
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I’m not going to share the recipe for this cake, because you know why? It tasted exactly the way it sounds. It had no butter or eggs, and it was fun to make together on a day we could make a cake with what we had, but it tasted like white vinegar (an ingredient) and was thick and chewy not in a good way.
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After I read this blog post out loud to SJ, he said he needed to “clarify the conversation about Michael Douglas.”
Jenny: Conversation? What conversation? I thought it was a joke.
SJ: What I meant was, you could put Michael Douglas into the joke. Like I was using an example.
Jenny: Yeah, I got that. But Michael Douglas was the first thing that came to your mind (wiping tears).
SJ: OK, fine.
Jenny: I have to add this to the blog post (laughing, typing).
SJ: Great. What are you typing? This probably isn’t going to be true, either.
Jenny: Where are you going?
