Motherhood, Tantrums, and the Refuge of Prospect Park

My middle child, Alma, came on the heels of a miscarriage. Two months after I lost a baby, my daughter appeared on a blurry sonogram screen in a run-down doctor’s office in the heart of Brooklyn. I knew that I would name her Alma, the word for soul in Spanish, the word we say in our home when there’s something deeper than “I love you.” Mi Alma, we say in Spanish, my soul. 

Alma will be five years old in December and she’s having a tough time. Today she is the middle child. She’s right in the middle, two years older than her brother, Mathias, and two years younger than her big sister, Helen. In her short five years she has lived through the death of one grandmother and the grief of a father. She has lived through a pandemic. She has lived through staying inside for a year or two. She has lived through masks, and hand sanitizer. She has lived through a traumatic seizure her little brother had when he was almost two. She has lived. 

On Sunday, Alma’s tantrum was the worst it has been since she was three, when we adopted the comical name “threenager” and were convinced that by five the meltdowns would cease. But this was the first time I feared my own child. It was also the first time I had to remove my other two children, take them into the bedroom, and close the door saying through a crack “when you can calm down, Mami can open the door.” I was afraid of my almost five-year-old, I was afraid of my soul. Mi Alma. 

A child’s behavior is often a two-way street. In a parenting webinar I take out of desperation, the host speaks to me through a screen and says, “the child’s behavior is usually in direct reaction to the adult’s behavior”. This is a complex idea for me, especially because Alma is the child who is most like me in personality and empathy. She’s also my most tactile child, always needing to be close, comforted, hugged, and snuggled. When inside my belly, she carved out a space in my spine and stayed there for much of the final trimester. She found such a cozy spot inside of my womb that I now have three engorged discs in my back that will never go back to normal. With Alma I had sciatica down my left leg, I had gurd, I had so much trouble sleeping, I would sit on the couch and just cry. But when she arrived, she was the sweetest baby in the nursery. My night nurse at the hospital said that every nurse fought to hold Alma because she was so sweet and quiet, a good eater, and a gem to hold. 

On Sunday I hold Alma in my arms on the floor as she wails. “Aaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh,” she screams so loud I fear the other neighbors in my apartment complex might knock on the door to ask what’s going on. And I would have to tell them, “This is a tantrum, my daughter is throwing a tantrum.” The baby starts to cry, Helen starts to cry, and finally, when Alma won’t stop, I start to cry. It’s all just too much sometimes. 

I’m not always a great mother. My friends say that I am and that makes me think I’m like a night villain wearing a cape, pretending to be a normal citizen when really, I feel like a creep most of the time. I get very angry sometimes, annoyed, impatient. When Alma starts to cry because she can’t have what she wants, which is often these days, I get upset, I scold, I leave the room. Sometimes I lose my temper, and this makes me feel like the worst mother on the planet even though I’m human, even though I know mothers lose their tempers, even though I know, I know, I know. But the mother guilt, the mother wound is sometimes stronger than what’s real. Sometimes, as a mother, it’s hard to find the truth in the middle of a tsunami.

“Alma, mi Alma,” I coo in Spanish. “Alma, are you happy?” I ask one day holding my middle child in my arms on my yoga mat after she has stepped in front of my video to cry and scream that someone took her toy.

“Yes,” she nods.

“Alma, mi Alma,” I continue, “did you have a good day at school yesterday?”

“Yes,” she says again. My hands are interlaced with her tiny fingers. I wonder how a child so small can make such a huge fire in the belly.

“Are you angry at Mommy? Are you angry at Papi? Are you angry at Helen? Are you angry at Mathias?”

“No, no, no, no, no.”

“Do you know we love you?”

“Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.” 

A friend suggests I ask simple questions to find out what’s going on. “Ask her to find out, to figure it out,” she says, as if motherhood is that simple, as if there’s always an answer and when we have it everything will go back to normal, as if normal is a place or an award we can achieve. 

After the tears I pack a lunch and get everyone dressed. “Come on you guys,” I smile, my eyes puffy from exhaustion, “let’s go to our tree.”

One of my children’s favorite places is a tree deep in Prospect Park that has fallen over. It’s where Alma feels most free to climb and sit calmly with her siblings. We bring grapes, turkey sandwiches, and little cartons of organic chocolate milk. The air in Brooklyn is crisp. The leaves down Prospect Park West promise a colorful fall, a bright school year. The browns, yellows, blazing oranges lead the way toward a little salvation on the weekends. The children build forts, magical kingdoms where only they can save a village that has been under attack by an evil monster. We sit on the grass and get our jeans muddy from a fallen rain from the night before. A puppy nearby catches a tennis ball in his mouth and brings it back to his owner. Two lovers kiss and embrace under an old oak tree. 

I remember just two years ago when Prospect Park was the only salvation for a city suffering silently with the rest of the world. I remember how we felt: alone, afraid, and unsure of what the universe held in store for us. Perhaps this is how children feel a lot of the time, especially tactile children like Alma who need to be comforted more often, who need to be reassured that, “everything will be alright, shush now, everything will be fine.”

“Mami,” Alma says happier than she has looked all week, “Did you know that a big monster was living in our tree, but he was a friendly monster and now we can climb the tree with him and he gets us candy?”

“Wow, really?” I say, “what a nice monster!”

“Mami,” Alma looks at me the sun glinting off her brown eyes, a strand of hair caught on her cheek.

“Yes, my love?”

“I’m sorry I screamed.” She hugs me.

“Thank you for saying sorry. It’s ok to be angry, right?”

“Yes,” she answers, “but it’s not ok to have a tantrum and hurt people.”

I know we’re learning. I know that together we’re learning. I know this. Deep in my soul, in the depths of my alma, I know. The park’s beauty promises salvation, patience, wonder, and the magic of childhood. At almost five years old, Alma knows this too. 

“Mami, I love it here,” she laughs while running to her tree, because in this moment it’s hers, something all for herself, something that’s big enough for everyone so she doesn’t have to share it. She doesn’t have to squeeze herself in the middle for it. She doesn’t have to throw herself on the floor and beg to be seen. On the heels of winter, the Brooklyn leaves carry her, and by carrying her, they carry me too. They carry all of us forward as we approach the darkest months. And if we look closely enough, we can see that the dark and the cold is really just a hiding place full of brilliant light.