Those of you who know me have heard me talk about Paddy. I call him The World’s Most Irish Man, but he’s actually my contractor, my can-fix-or-build-anything, filth-talking, manic, fiercely loyal, and endlessly entertaining friend. With three coffees and a full strength Coke on board, he’s unstoppable. Last month his car was stolen, possibly by joy-riding teens, leaving him without transportation or his tools. I asked Father Mike and Zealot Sister for prayers and find no coincidence in the fact that Paddy’s car was located a few days later with minor damage and all of his equipment. But in aftermath of the theft, when the outlook was bleak, we lent our SUV to Paddy, who almost immediately wrecked it. In retrospect, I’m happy he hit the curb instead of the pedestrian backlit with sun glare. In the moment, I couldn’t understand a thing that was happening because voice-to-text cannot translate brogue. Even in person, a caffeinated, pissy, excited, happy, or most often joke-telling Paddy needs subtitles.
“Paddy, my friend Nicole needs help with something.”
“Ya, Monahan? Happy to help a fellow sun-dodger.” (Insert your best accent)
With my car in the shop, and the building permit finally signed by the architect, we’ve embarked on an expensive entryway redesign. Should I be worried that bad things happen in threes and there is something skulking in the shadows after a stolen car and a crashed one? I am. But Paddy assures me that it’s all right and good and the house will look like “the cat’s ass” when completed. Apparently this is an enviable outcome.
Meanwhile, back at the Cape, the boys and I are enjoying days that still feel long. And by “boys” I mean a tangled mess of teenagers that varies from my own 2 up to 8 each night. Because I have known and cooked for them for nearly a decade, possibly because I used to be a doctor type of person and still carry antibiotic ointment and Tegaderms in my beach bag, and mostly because I’ve spent a billion hours with them at this point, they tell me (almost) everything. One of my favorite kids, who could always charm the Dickens out of any minivan mom, has convinced some pretty little thing his own age to be his one and only. In their world of SnapChatting Instagramming nonsense, it’s refreshing to hear that stomach butterflies and actual, in person dates with park walking and car kissing can still be attained.
Watching them grow up and begin dating themselves makes us (ok, just me) ridiculously nostalgic, and this week I recalled the first time I had to make my sort of secret but definitely official relationship with Bernie public. As a 4th year medical student, it wasn’t exactly kosher for the Chief Resident to be dating me. Maybe. We didn’t ask, and back then human resources didn’t bother themselves with the shenanigans of surgical trainees. But one late night on call in the ICU, the very pretty and super smart intern confessed to me that she had a major crush on the boy I would be engaged to 6 months later. My boys and their friends (and oodles of you) have heard the story of how I met Bernie many times, so you already know how goddamn charming Dr. Lee is on the job. I wasn’t surprised when Sarah asked,
“Do you think he’s dating anyone?”
Umm, yeah. Sarah was tall, gorgeous, everyone’s favorite intern, and liked my boyfriend. A more normal person might have felt a bit intimidated. Or jealous. But I’ve always been me, and frankly, it just made me like Bernie more (if that was possible). Sarah manned the guest book at our wedding.
“Wait. So Bernie is dating YOU and this hot doctor girl is into him? We gotta start talking to Bernie more.”
That was Markie’s take from the teen peanut gallery. He’s not wrong. It’s just that if you’ve met Bernie, you know he doesn’t talk. Throngs of friends and patients and teachers and students and residents and neighbors probably feel like they’ve talked to Bernie, like, had an actual discussion with him. But Bernie is a genius of facial expressions and well timed hand gestures. He’ll pour you a drink, but have me tell the story. If you’ve had a heart to heart with Bernie, you’re in a small circle. He’s not giving up trade secrets.
Like Paddy, Bernie needs subtitles… for everyone but me.
Is being around all of these teenagers with their obsession with Love Island and hardly guarded gawking at physically perfect bikini beach teens throwing me into soupy sappy appreciation for my own husband of nearly two decades? Yup. And it’s the cat’s ass.
Happy still summer, friends.
Blooms and Bubbles 
A decade ago, when I was largely alone all day with tiny, parasitic Bernie clones, I might have written something like Mrs. Rowe’s fed-up-to-here, open letter to her husband. In the moment, those feelings seem funny/true, but when read with a decade of hindsight (and larger children who don’t need pooping assistance), rants like this make me… sad. I want the whole family to race past these brutal years that inspire a meant-to-be-funny, but still quite public flogging of The Husband. I might have greatly benefitted from some part time help (and meds) as a Stay At Home Mom in those early years. Swapping a beeper and a real, outside-the-house job for never-ending days with crying children and Dawson’s Creek reruns led to a social, emotional, and intellectual whiplash for which I was unprepared. Because texting, blogging, Facebook, Twitter, and all myriad outlets that keep us intimately tied to each other’s weird little worlds weren’t in existence, I did what you do when you’re at your wit’s end with small children and never-home husband. I called my big sister.
Boy, did I. None of my besties in the area had started breeding, and absolutely no one I knew in the medical field ever quit their life-saving jobs to stay home with non-verbal bundles of sleep-averse, ever-hungry pant-shitters in embroidered onesies. I was lonely, exhausted, and prone to unattractive moods swinging narrowly between irritated and glum. In that moment, my Big Sister–staunch defender of all of my wants, needs, and beliefs, champion of All Things Britt— the Catholic, opinionated, occasionally scary Zealot Sister… sided with Bernie. Gently, and really quite beautifully, Paige refused to sing my Battle Cry Against The Ineffectual Husband. Instead, she shared some excellent advice, recommended a book, and insisted I get some mommy friends.
I was fabulously bad at the mommy friend thing. I scouted out the local playground and attempted to make nice with the ladies who corralled their strollers by the benches. I never got past a few awkward exchanges before I realized they were all wearing long skirts and head scarves and maybe the Orthodox Jewish Mommy Group wasn’t keen to take on a blonde shiska with the whiff of friendless desperation. I tried another park.
Lonely Mom with a small girl who insisted on wrong-footed shoes seemed like a good option. Surely, this was a pick-your-battles kind of mommy who also cozied to the idea of mid-afternoon wine? As it turned out, Lonely Mom picked absolutely no battles and was still breast-feeding her Dorito-munching toddler tyrant while defending the values of the Family Bed. She made me sadder than
her husbandI already was.What I did have, however, was A-Ma. Bernie’s mom raced up to Boston on the Fung Wah any time I called. Honestly, any time. One particularly brutal day, I told her I couldn’t shower without hearing both boys wailing on the baby monitor, that my dreams were exclusively about the sounds of wailing on the baby monitor, that I hadn’t eaten anything but Blow Pops and Hot Pockets for a week, and that I didn’t know if the stains on my clothes were pre- or post-intestinal foods. She arrived that afternoon. A-Ma remembered the unholy, not-cute-at-all daily grind; and with only one foot in the door she’d say, “Go! Go to take nap!” I promised then and there to be that kind of grandma some day. She saved my life (and improved my marriage) more than once.
Perhaps what the author of Five Things You Should Never Say to the Mother of Your Children really needs is a nap and A-Ma. In fact, the first comment after her light-hearted rant against her husband was from the author’s mother:
I quite agreed with her, recalling the advice Paige recommended to me 10 years ago, when I was exasperated with the man I love the most. First, she reminded me that Bernie was no mind reader and that stewing silently and acting the martyr would lead more quickly to marital strife than to any sort of enjoyable co-parenting. She annoyingly insisted I plant myself in his loafers, and made me read The Bastard on the Couch—a fantastic collection of essays written by dads (and written in playful retaliation against The Bitch in the House, which largely described what I was becoming). Where Momma Rowe gets angry that her husband is allowed to poo behind closed doors apart from the toddler audience with demands, I’m now more apt to think, hey, why share the pain? Go ahead and lock the door. Lucky you! This stay-at-home blogger also, with great humor and exaggeration, suggests sex is off the table until the children are big enough to sit at it.
This is where Paige’s big sisterly advice might have sounded supportive:
However, she didn’t offer this as a scatological slam on bathroom door-locking spouses; no, she meant it quite literally. (She also never, ever said this. Well, she said this, but not like this… because she’s classier than I am.) She waxed Catholic: the vows and sacraments and quaint ideas about contracts and promises and vaguely about the baser biological needs of boys in general… and she said all of this without making me throw feminist arguments at her, or throw up in general. In the end, she was really just suggesting that I act with greater kindness and love, and that I find some mommy friends who would understand why sometimes that seemed impossible.
GrandMomma Rowe is adorably protective of her son-in-law… much like Paige was for Bernie back in my days of Days (of Our Lives). Long hours with demanding children and soap operas will make anyone a little nutty. But without an Internet forum for irritated moms to publicly berate their constipated, celibate husbands, we had Big Sisters and A-Mas. The Big Sisters and A-Mas understand you, listen to you, and then tell you to take a nap and to shower and to quit it. They’ll keep reminding you that there is an end to it all, will never (ever!) tell you to “cherish” days of sleepless, messy torture, and they’ll make you feel warm, and loved, and heard.
Then again, having 100 strangers offer thumbs up, preach-it-sister encouragement probably works, too… as long as The Husband is in on the meant-to-be-funny part.
This was ridiculously useful to me… and reminded me why I love boys in general, and my own in particular.