Last week we went to Florida to visit Jacob’s mom, aka Nana. Ada made it known to everyone during the week leading up to the trip that she would be missing a day of school. She told her friends, teachers, strangers on the subway. She wrote it on her homework. She mentioned it to the guy at checkout at Walgreens. Her excitement continued as we made our way from home to the Lyft at pre-dawn, then through security and to the terminal. Florida is a place with palm trees. Florida is hot and sunny. What could be bad about Florida?
On the plane she tells Julian how we’re going to drink from coconuts on this trip. (We’re not). She tells him we’re going to have the coconuts by a pool with a lazy river. (We’re also not). She’s singing Florida!!! on the plane and she’s singing Florida!!! while we walk through the overheating parking lot housing our car rental. She tells everyone in Florida that we are, in fact, in Florida. Jacob and I are schlepping everything and sweating. We have been up since 4 am. It is extremely bright.
The godsend of this trip is that Nana has two cats and a dog. The dog is the most anticipated aspect of the trip for Ada, who you may have seen in any number of neighborhoods of Brooklyn stopping to pet dogs, kiss dogs, and offer to walk your dogs, while shouting “MY PARENTS WON’T LET ME GET A DOG!” Ironically, her dog acquisition campaign is mostly a way to convince us we should get a cat because she knows that the distance between desire and possibility is much shorter for a cat than a dog.
“You barely have to do anything except feed and pet them,” she claims when we start the discussion around responsibilities. I ask about the litter box, where it’s going to go, and who is going to clean it. Jacob and I have had three cats between us in the last 15 years, which, in addition to the cuteness and cuddling, included kidney failure, territorial pooping, and anxious cat-on-Prozac issues. She describes putting the litter box under our bathroom vanity because “cats don’t need much space to pee.” I ask her who will take care of the cat when we go out of town? I ask her about who takes the cat to the vet? She says that we can get a cat sitter and she “knows some who are a really great deal.” (LOL).
This, of course, is based on never having had a cat, so in the presence of two living, breathing cats, she selectively validates to make her case. “Can’t you see how much Betsy loves me? She cries for me.” She diligently feeds and pets the cats and gives them treats. She is also, admittedly, more willing to walk the dog in the “feels like 105” heat 3x a day than she has been to do literally any other responsibility-requiring task in her life. I ask her what we’re going to do when friends are allergic to cats and want to come over. “We can board her,” she says matter of factly and then challenges me to give her “more situations” as proof that she’s thought of it all.
Julian backs her up on all these fronts even though he’s far more trepidatious around the animals. Unlike his sister, who reads any sign of animal affection towards her as an indication of being the Chosen One, Julian eyes Betsy from a distance and says, in his matter-of-fact way: “Yeah. She’s pretty cool. She’s my favorite cat I’ve ever known.” In the car, however, he speculates that he might have asthma. It might be caused by the cats. He almost certainly does not have asthma, but as 2024 parents we validate him and ask why he thinks this and what it feels like. “It feels like someone is playing a card game or tag in my neck,” he says. We laugh because the description is perfectly poetic.
Ada cannot handle how much we’re enjoying this and suddenly has a competing rash on her legs. She’s flailing and her whole body is suddenly itchy. But it’s definitely not from the cats. Maybe it’s the mysterious tropical black berry she found in the yard and decided to peel and slather all over her hands. (Likely). Maybe it’s some kind of tropical plant pollen in the air. (Unlikely). Maybe it’s her deeply competitive attention-seeking streak emerging as hives on her legs. (Most likely). She begs me to put my cool hands on her thighs in a precise pulsing motion that seems to soothe the itching. I am sitting in the back with the kids and massaging her legs. She is frantically itching and wailing. It’s getting worse. It’s getting better. In the midst of the chaos Julian’s “asthma” recedes. Obviously. It always does.
This dynamic is the real reason we’re not getting a cat, but there’s no way to really explain this. I’ve already made the mistake of implying that it’s somehow about responsibility. It’s not not about responsibility. It’s hard to explain how if you intentionally lean into your brother’s airspace in the car, that this is an act of aggression. That when you “have to” place your arm in the exact resting place as your sister’s, and you’re both screaming about who is the bigger idiot, and if idiot is a curse word, and then arguing about if there is an “I” word, and in which context it’s actually ok to say the word penis, that your parents will actually lose their minds, slowly, and then all at once. How many arguments have been had over the backseat middle car rest? Many, I presume. And they are all extremely pointless.
I try in different ways to convey to the kids that it’s about listening, less disagreements, not bickering about piano or homework or putting on pants. It’s putting on the sunscreen when we ask them to, helping around the house, not touching, not poking, not pinching, not being so extra all the time. But I sympathize with my kids in this moment. It seems like their parents are just being extremely cagey in answering a straightforward question and I remember—as a kid—getting un-satisfyingly vague answers to what I perceived as straightforward questions. The idea that there isn’t always a clear way to explain how you get from Point A (no cat) to point B (cat) makes it seem like the only rational explanation is that their parents are either A) unreasonable or B) mean.
Later that day, I see this on Instagram and laugh out loud while screenshotting it. I decide I will show the kids the image and they will get it. We’ll laugh together and they’ll finally understand what they need to stop doing to get the cat!
But when I show the kids I get a deeply blank stare. I can’t tell if they get it or don’t get it at all. I can’t tell if they find it funny or confusing. ’Nobody is defensive, but nobody is recognizing themselves in this behavior at all. And of course not — they are 6 and 8, not a 41 year old mom. After a pause, Ada’s only response is a very deadpan: “that’s weird.”
She circles back to the real question: “Soooo…do you think you can decide about the cat by the end of the summer?”
“We’ll see,” I say, for the thirtieth or so time this month. We. Will. See.
Recommendations:
To drink: Shaken tahini cold brew. Oh my god. Drink of summer. I’m ready to be a tahini influencer.
To watch: Loot, the kinda ridiculous but fun show starring Maya Rudolph as the divorcee of a tech bro who walks away with $87
millionbillion and has to figure out what to do with her life.To watch: Also excited to take the kids to Inside Out 2, coming out this Friday, because now my kids now what “ennui” means.
To read: Sandwich by Catherine Newman, a truly perfect book that you can pre-order (comes out next week!). Summertime, family traditions, inter-generational family dynamics, motherhood, secrets, jokes, navigating being decades into marriage. I laughed so much and cried on occasion and have rarely despaired so much that a book was over.
Ada’s reading: The Land of Stories series by Chris Colfer and reports that “these are my favorite books I’ve ever read.”
To listen: Two extremely contrasting interviews with Tavi Gevinson about Fan Fiction, her self-published Taylor Swift zine. First, intimate, funny, insightful conversation with flow on Haley Nahman’s (subscriber-access) podcast of Maybe Baby. Second, a guarded, awkward, uncomfortable conversation on Longform, which I’m mostly sharing because I found the contrast between these convos to be startling-fascinating of how the same interviewee can talk about the same subject and the difference in interviewer can be profound.
To read: I read the incredible Rachel Aviv piece about Lucy Letby, the British nurse found guilty of murdering 7 babies, while having insomnia at 4 a.m. the other night and my god, what a profoundly flawed case.
To get: The other thing I discovered at 4 a.m. with insomnia was this extremely cute Kartell Componibili side table with a smiley face on it at the MoMA Design Store which would be great as a kids’ night table.
Last, but not least! NYC Libraries are at risk of $58.3 million dollars of proposed budget cuts by Mayor Adams. Mid-year cuts have already closed libraries on Sundays. With additional cuts, service may be reduced to 5 days/wk, along with cuts to acquisitions, programming, job services, and much more. Libraries are for everyone and the value of this public resource is impossible to overstated! #nocutstolibraries
I’ll be donating all affiliate revenue from purchases made @kidsbookrecs shop at Bookshop.org for the month of June to the Brooklyn Public Library. I’ve updated the shop with lots of recs, so you can stock up for summer reading or otherwise.
And, please discuss: what’s your approach to kids + reading in the summer. Reading charts? Daily reading time? Utter free-for-all? Curious how you all balance this with camp / trips / maintaining a love of reading, etc.
You have described the past year, at least, with my 8 year old who desperately wants a dog and “feels she can’t be truly happy until we have one.” Right now it just feels like so much on top of everything and it’s hard to have a good answer for her (or her 4 year old sister who is all to happy to help pile on.)
I have never had a pet (and honestly never really wished for one, I’m uncomfortable around all animals) my husband did have dogs growing up but is on my side right now in the feels like a lot camp! Tl;dr solidarity in this sort fight!
oh my gosh, I definitely read it as: the british nurse who murdered 7 babies while she had insomnia at 4am --- I see now after reading that I read incorrectly haha. What a flawed justice system we have.