Whisper Me This(50)
When I arrive at the kitchen table, she’s already there. In front of her, geometrically arranged, is a notepad and a pen, two glasses of water, a calendar she’s unearthed from somewhere, and both of our phones. Phones are useful during these planning sessions, since they hold our calendars, our address books, and all the other apps that make life both easier and more complicated all at once.
“Ready,” she says. “I suggest we do a Maslow.”
In case I’d forgotten that Elle is way too bright, this is a reminder. Of course, Maslow is partly my fault. I mentioned him once when she was four, talking to myself, really.
I’d been contemplating taking a college class, had actually signed up and everything, all in a quest for self-actualization. Meanwhile, there was barely enough food in the refrigerator to get us through the week, and I was a month behind on the rent.
“Who’s Maslow?” Elle had asked, plunking her sturdy, warm little body down in my lap and staring at my computer screen. “Is he a computer game?”
I’d pictured Maslow traveling around like Pac-Man, snarfing up self-actualization diamonds. First I thought it was ridiculous. Then I thought maybe it was genius. Probably an idea that somebody will come up with in the future and use to make a shit ton of money.
“Maslow is dead,” I’d told my daughter, completely unprepared for dewy eyelashes and a trembling lip.
“Like Goldwing?”
“Yes, like Goldwing.” Elle’s very first goldfish had passed just the week before, and her grasp of the permanent reality of death had been immediate and thorough, leading to a spate of nightmares that had just begun to taper off.
“Did somebody flush him?”
“What? No. No, he was buried. Long before you were born. In California, far, far from here.”
“Did you know him?” She was all curiosity, which was infinitely preferable to inconsolable child grief, so I told her about Abraham Maslow and his hierarchy of needs.
“He was famous,” I told her, “for figuring out something that is actually pretty simple. We need food and shelter first, before we need anything else, because without those things we will die. Then we need people to love. Once we have people to love, then we can learn to love ourselves and start working toward the things we are good at, the things that make us happy.”
“I love you,” she’d announced, kissing me on the nose. “And you love me. So now we can go do happy things.” And then she’d run off singing to play some invented game involving all her stuffed animals and a box of Legos.
Ever since then, though, we’ve engaged in what she calls “doing a Maslow” every time we have a problem to solve.
“Food,” she says, writing it down in neat block letters. “We are all going to starve if we do not get some food in this house.”
“The fridge is full of casseroles. Or you could eat oatmeal. I saw some in the pantry.”
Elle makes gagging noises, sticks out her tongue, and lets her head drop over onto her shoulder like she’s dead. “Lentils, Mom. And I swear one of them is tofu.”
I should insist on casserole as nourishment. They were a kind gift; the least we could do is eat them. But I also had a peek in the refrigerator and was equally uninspired by lentils and another dish with pale, nondescript chunks that jiggled when I pulled the pan out for a better look.
“Your point is made. Number one task is buy groceries. Got it. Next up—a roof over our heads. And that’s not going to be quite so easy, Elle Belle.”
“What’s hard? We live here. With Grandpa. Roof. Done.”
“Sweetheart.”
“Mom, don’t you dare even start.”
And here we are, already, right at the heart of the difficulty. Maslow had it all wrong with his neat little pyramid, because the levels are all kinds of mixed up and interwoven. In this case, shelter is all tied up in love and belonging, meaning the tug-of-war between me and Greg over Elle.
“You have school. Even smart kids can’t just skip out indefinitely.”
“School is out in, like, a week.”
“This might be a forever thing, Elle. He could be sick for a very long time.”
“Then I can go to school here. Or—I know what! You can homeschool me.” Her face lights up as she says this, glowing like a mini sun. She’s been after me to homeschool her ever since she discovered, all the way back in first grade, that she already knew most of the curriculum.
It’s not that I’m opposed to homeschooling. It’s that I’m opposed to the ridiculous concept of me as anybody’s teacher. Plus, I would have had to do battle with Greg, who has been pushing for the gifted program. At his urging, I went to one informational meeting, which was full of zealous mothers who reminded me too much of my own, and point-blank refused.
Greg has acquiesced, for now, as long as I’ve kept up my end of what he calls enrichment and I call having fun with my daughter. We take adventurous trips to museums. Run small chemistry experiments. Bake cookies, which totally counts as math. Visit the zoo and talk to the zoo staff. We’ve watched caterpillars turn into butterflies, raised praying mantises and pollywogs, and even dissected a cow heart obtained from the butcher shop.
Maybe I would be better at homeschooling than I’ve given myself credit for, but I shake my head. “There won’t be time. I’m going to need to find a job, Elle. Add that to the list as part of shelter.”