Pumpkin pie and perimenopause

It’s November in San Francisco. We’ve had our first rain, a light sprinkling just persistent enough that I moved a socially distanced backyard hang into the garage, where a few wonderful women and I sat six feet apart, wearing masks and drinking tea amid the drizzle, and talked nonstop for two hours. Days later I’m still high on gratitude and good feeling.

Weeks earlier I’d woken to a warm house and the kids playing quietly in the living room. T had turned the heater on for the first time this season and gotten her little brother breakfast (a piece of pumpkin pie). I walked past them to the bathroom, closed the door, and watched the kitten’s little black-and-white paws poke beneath it. Love.

The changing of the seasons always brings a deep sense of nostalgia, of churning. And this is a true season of change this year. Presidential changes. Job changes. Career changes. And this morning, after days of sitting against a heating pad and chalking it up to a new desk chair, I awoke to my period four days early and realized I’m going through FUCKING PERIMENOPAUSE WHAT THE FUCK. I took 500mg of acetaminophen, got back in bed with the heating pad, and cried.

Aging is just weird. You’re used to certain things being up to you. Such as, hey, I’ll spend this tax refund on a vacation instead of, for example, dual gum grafts because of receding gums. Or hey, I’ll take this hot stranger out to the parking lot of this club and have some fun instead of, for example, moaning because my three-year-old head-butted the benign cyst in my boob.

You know you’re aging because a younger person calls you their “mentor” and you’re like WHAT THE FUCK NO I’M NOT SHUT UP. Until recently, I had the bizarre idea that people couldn’t tell I was over forty. This was based on the fact that I didn’t feel “forty,” not to mention “forty-four.” I wear Vans and hoop earrings and have a “cool” haircut and can rap “Electric Relaxation” by A Tribe Called Quest I’M COOL RIGHT?? But photos surprise me: the perma-lines on my forehead and both sides of my mouth and white hair in an impolite halo around my face.

This month, for the first time ever, on the advice of an article in Millie: A New Financial Resource from Real Simple, I took the years off my academic degrees on my résumé. Because age discrimination. Because aging.

And yet, I have a three-year-old. A small person with no wrinkles or cellulite recently came out of this decrepit body, a body that now requires both contact lenses for near-sightedness and reading glasses for far-sightedness.

Sometimes I worry about having taught my son certain words. Two nights ago I was trying to get him out of the tub and realized he was just sitting in the water with a faraway look on his face, his hands between his legs.

"Are you going to just sit there and play with your penis?" I said.

"No," he said. "I'm playing with my balls."

Gargantubaby has been going through his own Big Changes. We only recently brought him back to daycare, after the summertime spike of coronavirus cases in San Francisco went back down. At the same time, we moved him out of our bed and into a second bed in his sister’s room. He reacted with nightmares, bedwetting, and quite a spate of hitting and kicking me, plus — my favorite — telling me I am a “bad mommy” (as if I needed any reminders: See “Curry-poached salmon and the ultimate mom fail: burning your kid!”).

Bedtime goes on for days. I read him a few books and try to leave the room, but he calls me back for a hug. I wrap my arms around him, and he repeats what I assume he has heard from his father: “You're making this worse.” Then, crying: “I don't want to be alone!”

HOW CAN YOU BE STABBING ME AND NOT STABBING ME AT THE SAME TIME.

We’re full steam ahead on race talk. The other morning at breakfast, apropos of nothing, GB said, "Mommy. Anto."

Jenny: (Says nothing because “anto” is not a word)

GB: Wacist.

Jenny: (Aha)

GB: Baby!

Jenny: Anti-racist baby! That's right. Do you know what racist means?

GB: (Blank stare)

We haven’t talked about the word “racist” yet, and I’m not sure how to explain it in a way a three-year-old will understand and that also does not introduce a binary (i.e., “racists” are bad and “antiracists” are good, and “racism” is a single thing rather than a spectrum of structures, thoughts, behaviors, and experiences). Yet, I forge ahead:

Jenny: Sometimes, other people are very nice to people with white skin, but not nice to people with brown skin.

GB: But Kaila loves us.

Jenny: Yes. Kaila is family. Black people are our family, and our friends. So what do we need to do about racism?

GB: (Thinks) We need to dye our skin. So we are Black.

Jenny: (Lets it stand)

In addition to Ibram Kendi’s Antiracist Baby (which is not really a kids’ book — it’s a board book but not age-appropriate for kids younger than at least five or six — it uses words and phrases like “policies,” “grant equal access,” and “knock down the stack of cultural blocks” COME ON), we've been reading The Story of Martin Luther King Jr. — which is a kids’ book, but which GB is starting to hate and in fact has suggested we give to “other kids” because I go really slowly on each page, belaboring the message.

Still, I am committed to being That Mom, so I bring up race All. The. Time. He’s in the bath when I quiz him:

Jenny: Who is Martin Luther King?

GB: He was a man.

Jenny: What did he do?

GB: He told stories (acceptable, because my current explanation of “preacher” is “a person who tells stories about God and is a community leader”).

Jenny: Yes, he was a preacher.

GB (laughing): He was a creature.

Jenny: What did he do? (Quickly realizes we didn’t really cover this part.) He stood up for Black people. Why did he do that?

GB: Because white people.

Exactly, son. Because white people.

I’m still really, really popular as a stepmother. Just crushing it. I took both kids to the skate park and on the way played a Chance the Rapper song.

Jenny: Do you like gospel music? Or, have you ever heard gospel music?

T (age 11): No.

Jenny: This is pretty much gospel music.

T: (Pauses) Sometimes I wonder how we’re related. Then I remember, we’re not.

WHAT DID I DO. SERIOUSLY. WHAT DID I DO THIS TIME.

I hear myself repeated back to me more and more often. I leave GB by himself for a few minutes to water the plants. When I come back, the kitchen table is a mess, with a plant and a picture frame knocked over and Sharpie all over a dry erase board and the table.

Jenny: (Gesturing to the plant and the picture) Who did this?

GB: (Shrugs) I don’t know.

Jenny: Was it you or the cat?

GB: (Another shrug)

GB doesn’t really lie yet, unless I ask if he’s washed his hands after he goes to the bathroom. But I can’t figure out a). how he knocked over a plant and a picture frame in five minutes when he was obviously committed to drawing on the table with a Sharpie, b). who else could have done it, since the cat is nowhere to be seen. GB knows I’m upset, and generally when I get upset, instead of cowering in fear and apologizing (must work on that), he acts upset, too. He watches me right the picture frame and turn back to him. Immediately, it crashes down again, leading me to believe the picture and plant are not his fault. But GB is not over it and decides to reflect behavior I have modeled in the past:

GB: If I hear that noise again, I will freak out!

We don’t know where GB got it, but at random times he will hold onto the towel rack in the bathroom and kneel up and down and say, “I got to do my exercises. To keep my strength up.”

Jenny: Gargantubaby! Don't kick the cat!

GB: (Holds up a finger to correct me) I kicked the cat gently.

He's been going through a phase of saying "I just do not know" or "I just do not know that."

Jenny: GB, what did Mommy say she wants you to do right now?

GB: I just do not know.

He stomps around the house calling out random things he’s heard us say, such as, “The internet’s not working!”

One afternoon he is dissatisfied with the quality of the bubbles he’s blowing. “These bubbles are a joke,” he says unhappily.

One morning he forces his way into the bathroom where I am pooping, puts his hands on my thighs, and tells me, “Concentrate.”

We take a road trip and for hours he keeps dumping Starbucks drinks and water all over himself and his sister and the floor of the van, then assuring everyone, “I’m OK!“

I’ve been doing a lot of home projects. SJ, my love, claims his look is “shabby chic,” then corrects himself to “shabby cluttered,” which is more accurate. He does contribute to the home, though. About a month ago he came into the bedroom holding GB’s toothbrush.

SJ: I just wanted to tell you that this is not GB’s toothbrush anymore. This is a cat brush, for brushing off fleas.

Jenny: What are you talking about? How long has it been a cat brush?

SJ: Three days.

Jenny: (Gives him a look of … horror? Rage? Loathing?)

SJ: (Defensively) It hasn’t been back in the bathroom.

Jenny: Yes it has, because every time I see that you’ve left it out, I put it back where it’s supposed to go, which is in the toothbrush holder in the bathroom.

SJ: Well, I’m telling you now that it’s a cat brush.

Jenny: SJ, when I see something left out in this house, I assume it hasn’t been put back where it goes, not that it’s changed its function.

SJ: Well, I’m telling you now. This is his toothbrush. (He holds up another toothbrush.)

Jenny: Why did we get married?

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At least this motherfucker makes pumpkin pie. He’s made five so far. He roasts a pumpkin and then puts the flesh in a blender with eggs, milk, sugar, vanilla, and ground nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, and ginger and pours the whole shebang in a crust, which he also makes himself. I wish I could tell you how he makes it, but he doesn’t know either, yet they turn out amazing, albeit slightly different, every time.

SJ: Do you want the pumpkin pie recipe? Or is that enough?

Jenny: Oh, OK. Fine.

You need:

Exactly 2 cups of pumpkin

Somewhere between 3/4 and 1 1/4 cups of milk

Jenny: What kind of milk?

SJ: I guess whole milk. The original recipe called for cream, but I never used it.

Jenny: You used a recipe?

SJ: The first time.

Jenny: When was that?

SJ: Mmm ‘98. But I forgot how much milk was in the recipe. So I keep changing it.

3 eggs

A teaspoon of cinnamon

Half a teaspoon of vanilla, ginger, and nutmeg

A quarter teaspoon of ground cloves

Half a cup of sugar. Half brown, half white.

Jenny: So a quarter cup of brown sugar and a quarter cup of white sugar?

SJ: Yeah. And just put all the ingredients in a blender.

Jenny: Whose blender?

SJ: Whoever’s blender wasn’t forced to be given away. Naked-bake the crust. Blind-bake? I think it’s called blind-bake.

Jenny: What does that mean?

SJ: You just bake it without anything in it. So you put the crust in a pie pan, bake it with something weighting it down.

Jenny: What do you use?

SJ: A saucer.

Jenny: Which saucer?

SJ: One of those little Ikea plates.

Jenny: The blue ones?

SJ: The Ikea plates. The little kid ones. Small enough to fit in the bottom of a pie pan. Put the crust in the oven for ten minutes.

Jenny: But what temperature?

SJ: 350. Check it after five minutes to make sure the crust isn’t falling down the pie pan.

Jenny: This is getting boring. Is there anything else that’s important?

SJ: Nope. But, just bake it for thirty to forty minutes.