How to Be Perfect Like Me

INTRODUCTION

This above all: to thine own self be true.

—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Lord, what fools these mortals be!

—SAME GUY

It took a wedding, two babies, and a funeral to help me understand that I needed to get sober. And I survived parenting those same two babies while in recovery.

But, as I found, being in recovery has little to do with not drinking.

How I survive being me is another story.

I am standing in the same classroom where I completely fell apart six years ago. It’s the classroom where I tried to teach seventh graders not to use an exclamation mark after each sentence when they write! The falling apart happened because I drank too much, not because of all those exclamation marks! Although—who knows!? Perhaps this whole thing started because of willy-nilly punctuation!

Back when I was drinking, I often behaved like a seventh grader—tons of drama and a lot of exclamation marks all over the place, usually in ways that didn’t make much sense. I think there were a couple of times I tried to break up with my husband via text.

And now I am back at ground zero, staring around my old classroom like I’m at an art exhibit and my life is on display. My classroom used to be cute, but it has been taken over by a football coach, and there are no Scentsy warmers or soft lighting. The room smells like pencil erasers and stale Fruit Roll-Ups. Later, when the class piles in, fresh from PE, it will smell much worse. I don’t mind.

This time around, I am a substitute teacher. When I was teaching full time, I thought substitute teaching was a sort of Walmart-greeter no-man’s-land with one job: to smile, wave, and feebly say welcome as the throngs pass by. You are a door holder until the real teacher returns.

But, as the universe would have it, my subbing days have been rather wonderful. I swoop in, mess with a teacher’s lesson plans, and then swoop out again. I subbed for a kindergarten class and sang We’re So Glad You’re Here. Their enthusiasm was on a par with an American Idol audition, and the cuteness nearly brought tears to my eyes. In another classroom with fourth graders, I taught long division to a kid who had decided long division was going to break him. Not on my watch, kid, I growled. "Let’s do this." And by God, we did long division.

I administer Band-Aids, play four square at recess, and flit in and out of the schools in my little town with reckless, poorly paid abandon. The job is not linked to any big and important thing that I have to do. It’s just fun. How can you not have fun when your day involves reading How to Eat Fried Worms to third graders and then talking about King Tut? Shouldn’t everyone live like this?

But on this day, I have been assigned a gig back in my old school. So far, I have only worked at the elementary school because they have Teddy Grahams snacks, and I can still play the Mom Card. Plus, they have a therapy dog. She walks along with her owner, a big dog smile on her face, and all the little hands reach out and touch her fur as they walk past, single file.

The middle school has no therapy dog. This is odd, because if anyone needs a therapy dog, it’s preteens and their teachers. But the middle school called and asked if I could come in, and, dog or not, here I am. I wonder, should I be messed up about this? Should I be sad? Does anyone smell the layers of alcohol in the walls that wafted off me here? Is there any sort of sign that I ever was in this room, in a different life? In a different mind?

Where is that therapy dog when you need her?

All I can smell is a whole lot of Axe layered on seventh-grade boys. If that’s not going to drive you to drink, I don’t know what is.

However, it didn’t.

Because I’m Dana . . . and I’m an alcoholic . . . and I don’t drink anymore.

But, as always, there is more to the story.

PART ONE

less

Take some more tea, the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly.

I’ve had nothing yet, Alice replied in an offended tone, so I can’t take more.

You mean you can’t take less, said the Hatter; it’s very easy to take more than nothing.

Nobody asked your opinion, said Alice.

—LEWIS CARROLL

CHAPTER ONE

HOW TO

be perfect

What’s wrong? my husband asked, standing next to me. He seemed perturbed. He was also holding a garish fluff of cotton candy about the size of a small toddler. It’s kind of tough to look irritated when holding pink cotton candy, but that was how the day had gone. We were at the citywide fair, and generally this was a happy place. Cotton candy. A Ferris wheel. The salty tang of popcorn.

However, on this day my son Henry was losing his mind.

Henry, in general, is an affable fellow. I have a lot of cute pictures to prove this in which he is smiling: in his bouncy seat, wearing spaghetti, or riding the dog. (Note: Dog was not smiling.) But when Henry gets upset, he gets Chernobyl upset: the initial blowup is catastrophic, there’s no reversal of the effects, and nobody ever wants to go back there and revisit the carnage. Then, as the mushroom cloud erupts from Henry, you can hear some Russian being spoken.

"I THREW MY BALLS AT THE TARGET AND GOT NOTHING, NOTTA ONE THING, NOT AT ALL ANNNNNNNND CHARLIE HAS A PURPLE LION AND I DON’T IT’S NOT FAIRRRRRR DO SVIDANIYA!"

When presented with a child who is wailing because he did not win a purple lion made in Pakistan, I go for calm and mystical.

I bent down, gently placing both hands on either side of his tear-streaked cheeks, and said, Henry. Let’s go. I see McDonald’s in your future.

Meanwhile, Charlie, the owner of the purple lion breaking Henry’s heart, started slowly waving Mr. Cheapo Lion up and down because Charlie is a straight-up dream crusher. This made Henry dial up his amperage. Even the carnival workers looked alarmed, and I assumed those folks already had a pretty high tolerance for that sort of thing.

IT’S NOT FAIR HE HAS A LION I WANNA TRY FOR THE LION THE LIONNN I WANT ONE AND THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV!

The fair was supposed to be a fun family event. You know the ones. There are balloons and fried food and a lot of walking. Sometimes there’s tinkly calliope music involved. Fun family events are . . . fun. At least, that is what we parents expected when we signed up for this gig. But, as most parents will tell you, children are the stone-cold killers of expectations.

Granted, the day was hot, and both boys had been in the bouncy castle long enough to rattle their soft little brains into mush. But still, this fun family event was not supposed to end with one kid sobbing so hard he shot cotton candy out of his nose. As God is my witness, I will never be able to get that visual out of my head: Henry’s snot suddenly turning electric pink. That kind of memory stays.

This is what kids do. We offer an Easter egg hunt, and they eat too many chocolate eggs and puke on their brother. We set up a gigantic, battery-eating Thomas the Train set for Christmas morning, and they throw Thomas at their brother, slicing his forehead and killing Thomas, as well as any hopes of a photogenic moment for the next hour.

These are the tapes that parents play. It’s automatic, this search for the happy family moment. We drive past a diner and, without thinking, we say, Hey, kids! How’d you like to go get an ice cream cone?

They eye you in the rearview mirror and coolly make a counteroffer. "What, no banana split sundae? Because I want that. Not the gruel you just mentioned. Basically, I’m an ungrateful child and I exist to take the wind out of your parenting sails every day. Yep. That’s my job."

When I got married, my dad told me to have no expectations. I mean literally, as we walked down the aisle, me in my gown and veil, all glowy and excited. He was doing a Vulcan death grip on my elbow and urgently whispered, No expectations. Remember that. It seemed like a funny time to offer this counsel. I was confused. This was one of those special moments between a father and a daughter, yet he was giving me really depressing advice.

Based on my informal scientific research, the more depressing the advice is, the more likely it is to be spot-on. And my dad’s no expectations comment stands. If we humans could actually do the whole no-expectations thing, we might be a whole lot happier. If you’re asked to think about why you were put here on this earth, often you will try to drum up some really great reasons. To serve others, you say. To keep the earth clean, you add. Oh, and to sell a lot of stuff to make money! And from there on, it’s a free-for-all. To have a lot of sex! To keep up with the Kardashians! And Lord, once and for all, to fold a fitted sheet!

If we are really honest with ourselves, it sounds super nice to be all Eagle Scout about it and serve others, but really? What do we really, really want? To paraphrase the lyrical musings of the Spice Girls, what we want, what we really, really want is to be happy.

Happiness is possible if we are able to have absolutely no expectations of anyone. Unfortunately, this is impossible. We can’t help ourselves. We expect people to use their blinkers when they change lanes. We expect them to not post pictures of their mole removal. We expect them to be on time and wear deodorant.

Starting with the blinker thing, people don’t ever do what we want.

Attaining happiness means, really, that everyone and everything around us must be perfect. We would never admit this because it sounds demanding and kind of crazy, like we decided to swim in Lake Me for a little too long and came out all prune-y and unable to adult.

It’s true.

Really.

Think about it. Our whole lives have been spent under the false pretense that happiness, or at least a medium sense of well-being, is something that bubbles up from the inside. Yet I would hazard to guess that even the most random moments of chill occur when someone comes by and offers us a jelly doughnut. Maybe happiness isn’t some sort of internal spring. Maybe it’s a symptom of all the people, places, and oh-so-many things around us. And if you want to contest my theory and tell me that your version of happiness is not influenced by others—good for you—go walk on water somewhere else.

I know. It makes me sound shallow. The thing is, I thought I had this whole lower your expectations thing figured out when I got married. It was annoying, at times, to realize my husband was never going to behave exactly as I had planned, but I saw him for about six hours a day, and half of that time we were eating or watching television, so I was allowed breaks. But then, I had children. Children don’t do breaks. They have it written in their contract that they will hover around you for as long as you let them—and even when you don’t—with the sole purpose of messing with you. Plus, Brian and I had met when we were adults, but I know for a fact I have been with both my boys since birth, so shouldn’t they be totally molded and formed and perfected by moi?

As one who has witnessed a son burp so hard it actually made him shoot back from the table, I can officially say my children don’t do perfect.

I don’t really know what I was thinking when I had children, and afterward, for quite some time, I thought there must have been a mistake. At the actual blessed event, I remember thinking, This totally hurts. If they roll me over again on this table like a whale with wires attached, I’m gonna puke on someone, and I have never done that before. My prediction was spot-on: I actually did puke on my husband while in the middle of contractions that attacked only one side of my body—due to an epidural that went rogue—so that memory is forever with us.

When I had Charlie, the universe visited and cooed at the baby for a minute, and then it smacked me on the back with a smirk and said, Good luck with this one. He’s going to have colic and weird skin stuff, and there will be fluids, so many fluids. Oh, and when he hits five, he will start on his four-year plan to take over the world. Bon voyage! And then, the universe sauntered off.

How can we be happy and perfect, all at the same time? We have to accomplish the impossible task of making sure that everything and everyone around us, even those beloved little grimy children, are on board with perfection, too.

If you have ever watched your child attempt to clean up his own mess, you’ve seen the colossally imperfect in action—a living, breathing metaphor about life’s failings, standing right in front of you, wiping so listlessly at the smashed corn flakes on the table, he might as well sculpt them into some artwork on his place mat and call it good. You’ve seen him achieve a master’s and a doctorate in imperfection within minutes of handing him a washcloth because that’s when his hand loses all gripping power, and he has forgotten how to speak English. If this creature has been attached to your hip for days on end, then there is simply NO WAY perfection can happen. And thus, happiness is off the table, too. But not the smashed and solidified corn flakes. Those corn flakes are forever.

For those of you who don’t have children yet and believe you are immune, there are two problems with this thinking: (1) Adults often act like toddlers—and they are at your workplace right now—so you are still screwed. (2) There is a direct correlation between any sort of superior, parental attitude and how totally inept your kid will be once he or she comes barreling out of you. If you dare think, "Well, my kid will clean up, blah, blah, blah," you’ll get socked with a kid who won’t with such skill you’ll think you’ve given birth to a baby sloth. You’ll even catch yourself checking under his arms for moss.

Initially, after my kids came along, trying for order and control seemed so hard that I gave up. I shrugged and decided to wade into imperfection with an I’m just gonna let it all hang out attitude on overdrive. It was a really slow-moving, hazards-flashing, mediocre overdrive, but still. This apathy lasted long enough for me to kind of go crazy. I think it happened the day I found half a mini-Snickers in my couch, under some cushions, and I looked at it long and hard before I decided to throw it out. There was gray fluff all over it, and I was turning it around in my hands like some sort of chocolate-covered artifact that might be edible. I wasn’t even hungry. Oh, no. Slow-moving, lumpy mothers don’t get hungry. We’re