Wonderland

It's winter break and I found myself with some unexpected time off from work, so we decided to spend a few days in Lancaster after Christmas. I carefully plotted an itinerary packed with all the things I thought Eli would love — a hotel with an indoor water playground, a train ride, a visit to an amusement park. I packed snacks, the iPad, three different kinds of outerwear (the forecast was wildly variable) and raingear (just in case). I factored in time for naps, meals and driving.

What I forgot to take into account were the wild mood swings of my 3-year-old. The first 24 hours of our trip were, for the most part, pretty fantastic, punctured by a few memorable hair-raising, death-defying tantrums — we're talking running away from Mommy and Daddy down the hallway of a hotel wearing only a wet bathing suit (tantrum level: expert). By the time we were seated for lunch at Good 'N Plenty — an Amish-style restaurant so famous that it has a whole brochure to itself — I felt rather on edge, and it didn't help that (1) Good 'N Plenty was virtually silent and (2) the couple at the table next to us looked exactly like this.

One blessedly peaceful car nap in the Amish countryside later, we found ourselves at Dutch Wonderland (which, for the uninformed, is an amusement park for young children with an unspecified, vaguely medieval castle theme and absolutely no Dutch connection whatsoever). (Side note: While Eli was napping, Phil directed me to drive to a roadside pretzel stand in the middle of farmland. They were closed, but a perusal of Yelp reviews revealed that there is a dude who drives from New York City to Lancaster twice a year just for the pretzels, so how bummed are we that we didn't get to try them? Side note #2, there was literally a sign on the door that said "Temporarily closed; if you need anything, come to the house and we will open for you," and we should have gone to the house and asked for a pretzel!)

The very first thing that happened at Dutch Wonderland was that Eli really wanted to ride the train, but he did not want to wait in the line to ride the train. If you are a parent who has ever anticipated and then tried to head off a public tantrum, you know exactly how this moment felt. All my fight-or-flight instincts started to kick in. It felt like I was in for a long afternoon of reasoning with Eli, of modeling patience, of desperately cooking up little games to play while waiting in line. In short: a long afternoon of acting like an adult. Oh, the humanity!

But by some miracle we were the last riders to make it on to the train. As we started to chug around the park, Eli giggled with genuine glee every time we saw the signal arms clanging down to block the track. And a funny thing happened: I started to have fun. He was so happy, so absolutely loving the ride that I stopped fretting about the next meltdown around the corner and started to enjoy seeing him so happy.

Hours later, we were heading out of "storytime with Princess Brooke" when it suddenly seemed to have grown dark. I suggested to Eli that it might be a fun time to go on the SkyRide, a kind of open-air tram that takes you all the way across the park, to see the lights in the dark from the air. When we realized the ride was one-way only, Phil said he'd meet us at the other end.

As we waited on line, it suddenly started to rain, and as we headed further up the stairs, I realized it was growing chilly. Our jackets were in the stroller with Phil. A guy coming off the ride advised us against it — "The rain hits you in the face and it's really cold out there!" he said — and I tried to convince Eli to skip it. But he was determined: He wanted to ride.

The ride is like a ski lift, in that it doesn't stop when your car comes around. So I hoisted Eli up into the seat and quickly settled in next to him, and off we went.

There was a brief, terrifying moment where I thought about all the tantrums we had endured over the past few days and about how high up in the air we were and how easily it seemed like Eli could slide under the bar. If he loses it in mid-air, we're goners, I thought. But the same thing happened that always happens when I expect the worst out of Eli: He surprises me by being a champ. He was totally unbothered by the chilly wind or the droplets of water beating against our backs or the fact that we were really, really, really high up in the air. He chatted away about the view ("Look at that ride spinning!"), our fellow passengers riding in the opposite direction ("Look, he's all by himself! He looks cold!") and my death grip on his arm ("Mommy, why do you have your arm around me so tight?").

Later, after we reunited with Phil and rushed in from the rain to a memorably awful dining experience known as "Merlin's Buffet," I tried to explain the whole experience to him while Eli nonchalantly munched on his mac and cheese: the rainbow holiday lights twinkling below us, the cool expanse of the dark sky, Eli's enthusiastic ramblings. And as I talked ("It was kind of terrifying, but also kind of magical"), I realized it was sort of a perfect encapsulation of parenting itself. It's holding it together when you're secretly concerned your kid might fall apart. It's preparing yourself to be surprised by your child and sparkling with pride when it happens. It's going on an adventure when logic says you probably shouldn't, knowing you can't stop the ride if you want to get off — and never letting go of your kid's hand.

It's kind of terrifying, but also kind of magical.

I've written before about how I struggled with PPD when Eli was born. And here's a secret: I continue to struggle with it, mostly in the form of guilt about how I didn't enjoy those newborn days like everyone warned me I should. The morning after the SkyRide I had this weird thought (while running on the treadmill at the gym, of all places): When Eli was born I could only see how high up in the air we were, how far we could fall if we slipped. I could only feel how chilly the wind was and how the rain was beating against my back. I only saw the parts of the ride that were the most terrifying, because I didn't yet have Eli to point out how the lights were glowing and the rides were spinning and the music was playing. I needed Eli to help me realize that the cold and the wet and the height wasn't such a big deal. I needed Eli to show me everything that was magical about the wonderland.

A beautiful world

Last week, on the advice of an ENT after a neverending sinus infection, I had allergy testing done. I hate needles, and I hate doctor's offices, and I hate medical testing in general, so as I sat there watching my arms begin to swell up and burn I started to feel flushed and lightheaded. I dropped my chin against my chest, willing myself not to pass out.

Then a semi-ridiculous thing happened: I thought about Eli at the doctor's office letting the doctor look in his ears even though he hates it when the doctor looks in his ears. I told myself, "You have to be brave like Eli!" And it worked.

That night at bedtime, I told Eli I had been thinking about him. "I was scared because I didn't want to get the shot," I told him. "But I said, 'I have to be brave like Eli!'"

Eli threw his arms around me like he understood somehow that I was paying him a compliment of the highest order. "You're the best mommy in the whole entire world!" he said.

They say that for everything there's a season, and December seems to be the season for sweetness for Eli; last December, I wrote about a poignant walk to school with Eli where he saw some holiday lights and proclaimed, "Lights! They're beautiful!"

This morning, on the same route to school with my bigger and more verbal kid, Eli gave Phil a king's farewell as Phil headed down the stairs into the subway. Sticking his head through the railing as Phil descended, Eli called after him, "Bye! Love you! See you after school! Love you! See you later!" Then he blew kisses. Hurrying to join me, grinning, he told me, "I gave Daddy kisses for the stairs." Then he looked down thoughtfully. "The subway is under the stairs," he said.

"The subway is underneath us right now," I agreed.

He studied the sidewalk, then looked up, taking in busy Queens Boulevard: the man in a can selling coffee and bagels, the dozen newspaper boxes in a row, the trucks unloading in front of Key Food and CVS. Then he looked up at me.

"This is a beautiful world," he said.

This is such a beautiful world, Eli, and I'm so glad you're in it with me.

Happy holidays.

It isn't a rat race. It isn't a race at all.

Every evening, I sit in my office and watch the clock as the minutes tick forward. When it hits 6 p.m., I grab all my things and race for the door.

It's not because I hate my job. It's because on a good day (and we all know how frequently the MTA has "good days"), it takes me at least an hour to get home. In an ideal world I walk through the door at 7 p.m. and we aim to have Eli in bed by 7:30.

Every evening is a race against time.

I spend that narrow half-hour on the bridge between two worlds, alternately wishing time would speed up and slow down. Usually I'm in such a rush to jump into our bedtime routine that I don't change out of my work clothes, sometimes shedding my tights in the foyer of our apartment and counting down the minutes until I can unhook my bra. (You know you've done it too.) (On some nights Eli has been known to survey me suspiciously and ask: "Why aren't you in your pajamas?")

If he's not already dressed for bed, I hurry Eli into his pajamas and into the bathroom to brush his teeth. If he stalls, I threaten to reduce the number of books we read at bedtime (three is the sacred number). I limit the number of drinks of water he can have and the number of times he can say goodnight to Daddy and the number of minutes I'll hang out in his room.

Then after I've left and am finally, blessedly unhooking my bra, I realize that I miss him.

In the mornings, too, we have plenty of time between when my early bird wakes up and when we have to leave for school, yet we seem to be always rushing. He doesn't want to walk himself to the elevator, or he wants a snack "for the road," or he wants to bring a gigantic fire truck, presumably so that he can refuse to let other kids play with it. I hurry to school, swerving the stroller around puddles and poop and people waiting for the bus, and then I linger in the doorway, wanting to watch him a little longer, not wanting to say goodbye.

I've written before about how challenging it is to be a working parent. (Funnily enough, it was right at this same time of year. I guess December, when the days are short and the holidays are imminent, is an especially tough time of year to be a working parent!) In the year since I wrote that post, there's been a lot in the news about companies offering more parental leave for newborns, but other than that, when it comes to flexibility and work/life balance, not a lot has changed. I still feel guilty racing out the door of my office at 6 p.m. when everyone else is still at their desks as if I don't have a single second to spare (spoiler alert: I don't), and I also still feel guilty racing Eli out the door of our apartment every morning as he casts pitiful glances backwards at all the toys he's leaving behind.

Lately there's also been a nice dash of existential melancholy mixed in, too: What am I doing this for? What's the point of all this? It seems like an apt question that applies whether "this" is "editing the copy on this PDF of this flier for the millionth time" or "snapping Eli's chuggers together, at his request, then waiting patiently as he has a complete meltdown in reaction to the fact that I snapped the chuggers together at his request."

This morning, when we were about three-quarters of the way to school, Eli announced that he had to pee. So I started running. "I see it!" Eli shouted as we neared his school, hopping casually out of his stroller as I panted and wiped the sweat from my neck. It was fitting: These days I feel like I'm always running toward or away from something, constantly in a hurry to get somewhere so that when I get there I can think ahead to being somewhere else.

(For the record, he squeezed out approximately one drop of pee after dancing into his classroom and breezily greeting everyone like he hadn't made me sprint the final quarter-mile to school.)

It's fitting then too that I'm participating in the holiday running streak, running a mile every day between Thanksgiving and New Year's. Because every day this month I've found myself out running, wanting to get it over with while simultaneously wishing it could last longer, not sure where I'm running to or how fast I'm planning to run there, not even sure if it's the best idea to be out running at all.