"I wanted drama, but not that much."

reflection on raising kids with feelings

I heard Maya singing a long mournful song in Stella’s room, but didn’t think too much of it. I had boxes to unpack and dinner to make. My dad and I had a nearly perfect lunchtime dance party to “Let’s Hear It For the Boy” from the Footloose soundtrack, so I was feeling hopeful. Dementia has only enhanced his love of music and his playfulness when it’s playing. It’s such a delight.

Later as I was lying in bed with Stella, she revealed the truth about her day. She had not, as she had said at dinner, had a good day at camp. That was a lie. In fact it was a terrible day because she made only one friend and the mean camp counselors only let them swim for two hours. She was considering not even wearing pajamas to pajama day the next day, nor bringing a stuffy — as was the invitation — just to make clear how terrible the camp really was. Also, the mournful song was a funeral dirge. Maya had killed off one of her favorite characters. Of her play-mobile game with her big sister she said, “I wanted drama, but not that much.”

All I could think was: girl, I know how you feel.

The very dramatic funeral.

I was under no delusion that becoming a mother wouldn’t involve a lot of feelings—my own, my kids’, my husband’s. But I vastly underestimated what a massive job it would be to understand the emotional nature of my two very different daughters.

Stella is obsessed with feelings. For her birthday, I bought her a classroom kit of feelings posters, meant for teachers, and she adores them. She loves talking about her emotions and everyone else’s. In fact, I have often felt like I was watching a reality show recap about the “The Real Second Graders of Oakland, Season 1.” When one of her friend’s parents got a divorce, that friend got to go to therapy. Then another friend got to go to therapy because her mom had cancer. Notice my wording here - “got to.” Stella wants, more than anything, to go to therapy. She also wants to be a therapist. On Sunday I was sad and overwhelmed, and told her as much. She said, “I really understand what you’re going through. Maybe I can give you a therapy session tomorrow.”

When I said, “I thought you wanted to go to therapy, not be a therapist,” she answered, as if I were dumber than a box of rocks, “Mom, even therapists have to go to therapy.”

Can she have it all?

Big emotions move through her like hurricanes. My mom, who we are now living with, has gotten the girls hooked on America’s Got Talent, which they refer to as “AGT.” Last night, Stella decided she had to try out for the show and started rehearsing. She would say, “Hello, my name is Stella and I’m 8-years-old and this is a song I wrote myself,” and then start singing the same two lines over and over again: “I woke up in the morning and I thought of you. Then I went to the gym in the afternoon.”

When I mentioned that she might want to expand the lyrics and keep practicing before we send in the audition video, she was devastated. This is the only thing I want right now! She wailed. This is the thing I want more than anything! I held her and encouraged her to go to bed, explained that she was probably pretty tired, and she reluctantly agreed. Two seconds later she was snoring and I crept out of her room.

Maya, my 10-year-old, is—in so many ways—Stella’s emotional opposite. She is self-contained, stoic, and perfectionist. She will hold on to an emotion for a century. I would imagine her talking about them in therapy as an adult, except she would hate therapy. She spends hours arranging little tween still life scenes in her room—LOL dolls, Calico Critters, decorative candles, tiny Boba stores she has assembled from an expensive kit she bought with her own money. She cares about order and beauty. She cares about what is right and wrong and deeply wants to do right. She doesn’t love to talk about feelings; she loves to talk about how misunderstood sharks are, the latest double standard she weathered in her 4th grade classroom (the person “in charge” is often failing my eldest daughter), and yes, of course the number and color palette of Taylor Swift magazines she audited at Barnes & Nobles. Maya probably could be on AGT, but she would never do it unless she had practiced a thousand hours, designed the perfect outfit, and sewn it herself.

So, here I am—swimming in the raging rapids and ice flows of these two beautiful humans and hoping that I not only stay above water myself, but help guide them to do the same in the long run.

Emotions, as it turns out, are wildly complex, notoriously confusing, and profoundly powerful. They will shape, they are shaping, the lives of my daughters. They are lodging in, passing through, and shaping their very bodies. Understood and mindfully harnessed, they can be their fuel for beauty, pleasure, and goodness—not just for them, but for those they love, their communities, the whole damn planet. When we misunderstand our emotions and let ourselves be driven unconsciously by them, they can lead to the worst kinds of very human experiences—anomie and addiction. And, of course, it is never so binary. We all ride waves of understanding and misunderstanding, harnessing and flailing, consciousness and unconsciousness. What a thing to be a person with feelings. Holy hell.

Really wishing this lady had a legit pillow.

One of the only things I have real and true clarity about in the midst of all of this is this: we humans do better, emotionally, when we feel like someone else has fully registered our feelings. So when Stella is sobbing about the fact that she will not be able to send in her AGT video right this minute, I hold her and get her a Kleenex and say, “You really want to send in that video. You really want to be on that show.”

It doesn’t actually teach her anything sophisticated about her emotional life, or perseverance, or reality television, or any of a number of things I’m sure it is my job to teach her. But it does teach her the most core thing I know how to teach: I see you. I see you. I see you.

And, of course, this is not just what my daughters need. It is what my husband needs. What my dad needs. What my friends need. What my neighbors need. What I need.

The other thing I have real and true clarity about is this: humans have to laugh at ourselves if we are going to survive all these feelings. We have to stay playful and right-sized and admit how silly it all really is.

Maya confirmed that it was the Play-mobile sister, Flora, who died. When I asked how, she said, “Confidential, bro.” She now calls both me, and her grandmother horrifyingly, “bro,” as if we are junior varsity scrubs and she is the varsity quarterback of this rag tag team of jokers. Stella went to camp and she even wore her jammies. Maybe it wasn’t so terrible after all. But it might be more fun to pretend that it was. That’s the thing about feelings — they make for great material.

May your day be filled with as much love as these two lambs kissing feel.