"Are You Crazy?": From the Mouth of My Babe

 My baby, Chrissy turns thirty today. In honor of her birthday, I post a piece I wrote about her when I was thirty and when she was just as impish as her daughter Adella. Hard to believe it has been three decades.

"Mommy," my two-and-a-half-year-old Chrissy asks in her inquisitive voice.

"Yes, honey," I reply, my cheeriness reflecting a rare eight hours of sleep the night before. This of all mornings of motherhood past and future, I am determined to be a perfect mother. I give her my full attention.

"Mommy," comes her lilting voice again. "Are you crazy?"

I choke over my cereal, then direct a few dagger looks towards my husband. His lips scrunch tightly to contain his laughter. Then he innocently hunches his shoulders as if to say, "Don't ask me where she gets such absurd ideas."

I look back at her, slurping her Raisin Bran, the only cereal she will eat, from her special breakfast bowl, the only bowl from which she will eat. Why has she interrupted her morning breakfast ritual with such a question, I wonder. And why on the day I have determined to be perfect. Defensive, I am tempted to question, "Just why do you ask?" Instead, I sweetly reply, "Are you being silly?"

"Yes," she giggles and dives her spoon back into her bowl.

She does not even understand what crazy is, I assure myself. It has no more meaning for her than the word yesterday, which signifies all past time from the era of Danny's Dinosaur until seven-thirty last night when I unjustly sent her to bed. Chrissy is a child who, after a glance at her watch, declares it is twenty-nine o'clock. A child who stuffs her size nine right foot into a size four left sneaker just to see if it fits. Chrissy does not understand time and space. How could she ever perceive a fracture in my psyche? I will yet have my perfect morning.

Chrissy's fingers probe among the milky bran flakes and she delicately plucks out a raising between her thumb and forefinger. Holding it high above her head, she carefully examines each wrinkle and then zooms it to her gaping mouth. Then she grins and asks again, "Mommy, are you crazy?"

"No, silly," I answer, hoping my jocular tone does not betray my sudden lack of confidence.

Of course, Tim, my husband's colleague, might agree with Chrissy. I certainly looked the part the other afternoon when he stopped by to deliver a crucial document. Chrissy had just finished doing my hair. With seven "ponies" topped with bright yellow, blue, red, and purple kiddie barrettes, I answered the door. As he eyed these ponytails flopping around my face, he very slowly and very simply explained that I must be very careful and not lose the document before my husband returned home.

More than likely my neighbors must think I act crazy. I am a thirty-year-old woman who sits in the neighborhood sand pool, building castles and cooking sand soup. I slide down slides, swing in swings, and scale spaceships. And on warm summer days with Chrissy's help, I embark on long dandelion safaris. On hands and knees we stalk the long park grass in search of dandelions ripe for blowing.

When I am driving and stop at intersections, I get strange looks from the passengers in neighboring cars. Is it that I am off-key when I belt out our "Green and Red Light"song? Or do I sound crazy? At crosswalks fellow pedestrians look the other way while we wait for the light enthusiastically singling "Stop, Look, and Listen." And I must admit we sing our favorites, "Ba, Ba, Black Sheep," and "Old MacDonald," wherever whim strikes--grocery stores, playgrounds, airports, or museums. Normal adults have passed that stage, I suppose.

I know for a fact that my mother thinks I am crazy for indulging my daughter. One car trip rife with Chrissy's rituals convinced her. Waiting while Chrissy struggled to open the car door and then played tug-of-war with the backseat seatbelts, trying to strap in Big Bear, Little Bear, Catty and her kitten Koko, all the while repeating with as much energy as the little engine, "I think I can, I think I can" was more than Mom could take. "This is enough to drive a saint with the patience of Mother Theresa to madness," she mumbled under her breath.

My husband kindly does not think I am crazy. Or so he says. He has spent too many hours with Chrissy. But in the back of his mind, perhaps he ponders the same question as Chrissy. Sane people live orderly lives in orderly homes and hold coherent conversations. Maybe he has taken my shrieks that welcome him home from a hard day's work too seriously. Perhaps both he and Chrissy have heard me complain that I am going crazy once too often.

But I do not really think I am going crazy. That is, until I remember the milk. Just last week I lost a gallon of milk somewhere in my house. I used to be a meticulous woman with a photographic memory. I could recall names and conversations from years ago, construct grocery lists from recipes I had not cooked in years, and give an instantaneous report on each item in our well-stocked pantry. But I could not find that milk. I searched the cupboards, the bedrooms, the bathroom, the closets. No one in her right mind loses an entire gallon of milk. Furthermore, no sane woman looks behind shower curtains and under beds for a lost gallon of milk.

"Mommy, are you crazy?" Chrissy asks a third time. Quests are a game for her. But I think she also senses her question unnerves me. Is this child sent to me as Lear's fool, I wonder. Maybe, just maybe, I am crazy.

Tired of the question, I ask, "Chrissy, what do you think?"

"Yes," she giggles.

And I guess I am. Part of motherhood is being crazy, I conclude, beginning my less than perfect day.