The First Rule About Fight Club

Dear Zoey,

This is not one of those vaguely smarmy love letters to you full of sparkle dust and puffy hearts. Nor is it going to be all that funny, though with time maybe I will laugh. But right now nothing is halcyon or golden, magical, nothing glitters, and if anything I think you're being an asshole.
For one, you stopped taking naps. Which is good, I guess, since you start Pre-K in a few weeks and there are no naps in Pre-K (or Fight Club, for that matter). But you suck without naps. When I pick you up from school you are cranky, clumsy. You trip over shadows and cry, whine, snivel, weep. I'm tired! you yell at 5:30pm, but if I put you to bed then the next day will start at 3am. Two hours later it is bedtime, so you scream. I'm not tired! The screech that shriveled a thousand ovaries and crossed as many legs.

Last week a mom friend of mine watched you draw at the table, the quiet of a girl coloring a horse pink. You are so lucky, she said, and I know I am, have been, would be even if you had been born with heartburn and colic and untameable callicks. But you are a gentle child, obedient, my future narc, I like to joke, a good girl who knows how to write her name, the Z never backwards. You get what you can handle, this same mom said later, and she's right, I think, though I am not sure this was a compliment in the least. I could not have handled a difficult child, the kind who slumps screaming in front of the Sour Patch Kids at Target, who runs away when I call her name. Zoey Dimon, I say, and you listen, at least you did until now.

(I do remember once when you were a baby, weeks home from the hospital. You were so tiny, like a Sharpei, and the sounds you made so sharp. I was tired I told myself, tell myself still, and you would not stop with that mewling screaming scrawl over and over, what did you want? Your face screwed up tight and red before you could even produce tears. I hardly knew you so I punched the bed as hard as I could. Just BAM! Like that, a foot from where you lay, both of us new and nothing right.)

Who am I anyway? Mom to a girl who tells on herself, that's who. Lately you cry a lot, stub your toe and wail in a voice that is so Outside I'm surprised to see we are surrounded by walls. What do you want? I ask, what's wrong? Your face mad red, fat tears running down your cheeks. And I feel it, that blunt block wedged in my throat full of hot and fuck and rage. Stop! I say, or Time Out! Shh! Hissed sharp and mean. I'm tired, not used to difficult, and here's the truth of it: I'm the one being an asshole. Not you (though you may want to re-think that whole nap thing). Me. The mom whose girl is good and growing. Because one day we will argue about something else, something more, and you will cry and I still won't know what you want. Are you tired? Are you hungry? Are you hurt? And you won't tell me either because you won't know or you won't want to, because telling me is not your job. Who knows--I will probably cry, too, one of a thousand times that we won't understand each other, using Outside voices for an Inside job. And for this I am sorry, but I promise you now, at 4 without naps, that I can handle this. You. This is who I am: learning to take a deep breath. Whatever walls we build, we are building them together. Because this is our Home, and I am your Mama.

Love,
Me