Monday’s child is fair of face,
Tuesday’s child is full of grace,
Wednesday’s child is full of woe,
Thursday’s child has far to go,
Friday’s child is loving and giving,
Saturday’s child works hard for his living,
And the child that is born on the Sabbath day
Is bonny and blithe, and good and gay.
The first time I saw Kimberly was in a dream. It was the night that I conceived her. I remember being handed this perfect little baby with a round beautiful face and black hair. I heard someone (I don’t know who) say, “Here’s your little girl, Elisa or Elissa.” Nine months later, after being in false labor three times in July, on Friday, August 1st, after Dr. Kliot and Karen, the midwife, shouted, “It’s a girl!”, they placed the exact same baby in my arms as in that dream. This is the absolute truth and I stand behind it 100%. The only thing is that I didn’t name her Elisa or Elissa. At first we named her Cassandra and were going to call her Cassie, but then we changed her name to Kimberly and ended up calling her Kimmy. She calls herself Kim.
Kimberly, Kimmy, Kim. My baby. The prettiest baby I ever saw. Even Dr. Kliot said, “She’s a pretty little thing.” Friday’s child- as the poem says…Friday’s child is loving and giving. That would definitely describe Kimberly, now. She is a very compassionate person. She has the ability to understand the pain anyone else is going through. She is also very sensitive and takes everything to heart.
I very intentionally decided not to have a third child because I didn’t want Kim to have “middle child syndrome” like I had, or thought I had. I wanted her to be special and always feel special. That was particularly hard for Kimberly who had to live in the shadow of a very overpowering older sister, one whom she adored when she was very little, but grew to become very frustrated with many times as she was growing up.
I had the opportunity to be a stay-at-home mom when Kimberly was born. For two years. They were probably two of the most rewarding years of my life. Having a second child, you tend to pay more attention to the significance and magnificence of motherhood. You’re not so afraid of every little hiccup or bump on the head. You get to enjoy your baby much more because you’re a “pro”, sort of. Lindsay would go off to school and I would stay home and enjoy my little baby. I had arrived as a young mother; I was part of Mahjong games and carpools. As Kimmy got older, at the end of the day, we would wait for Lindsay to be dropped off from the carpool and she would be giddy with excitement every single time her sister would walk up the stairs to our second floor apartment on East 98th Street in Canarsie, Brooklyn. “Sister, sister!!” she would call out with delight and they would hug as if they hadn’t seen each other in months. It was the highlight of my day- my two little girls whom I adored, adoring each other.
Naturally, much of the adoration turned to the typical sibling rivalry, as Kimberly realized that she was being upstaged, most of the time, by a sister who always had to be the center of attention. And as loving and giving as Kimmy was, there was also another side to her….the “dark side” as we used to call it. The side that emerged, just as a glimmer when she was just an infant, when she would cry for no apparent reason, except to scream her lungs out…for about 45 minutes, nonstop. That screaming would eventually turn to temper tantrums where she would literally throw herself on the floor, even if it was a concrete sidewalk and bang her head on the ground. People would ask me how she could do that without causing her own concussion and I would just respond with, “I guess she has a very hard head.” Actually, she was literally and figuratively hard headed. I have home movies to prove this if Kimberly ever refutes it, one very memorable one at Sesame Place, when she was two. The head banging thankfully stopped, but tantrums and outbursts continued and would ultimately land her into her room for a “time-out”, when I would close her door and tell her to calm down. However, before she would calm down, she would take out the rest of her anger by throwing all the clothes out of her drawers, pulling the lovely purple comforter and all the sheets off her bed, including the mattress pad, and destroy a toy or two. When she was done, I would go into her room, and very calmly, but firmly ask, “Are you finished?” and she would mutter, exhaustedly…”Yes, mommy.” And I would say, “You know what you have to do now?” “Yes, mommy. I have to clean my room up,” she would answer, defeated. And she did. Every time. Until, at some point, she must have realized she could have been doing much more productive and fun things than destroying her room and then cleaning it up.
When Kimberly was still a toddler, she also used to be a little too aggressive, as well. Bees have stingers, porcupines have their quills, Kimberly had a special defense weapon. Her prey- mostly little toddler boys and occasionally, her sister. It was a little scary. Some kids are biters; Kimmy was a twist-pincher. Many of my friends at the time who had toddler boys were afraid to let Kimberly play with their sons because she would hurt them, badly, with twist pinches that would leave behind ugly red marks and many tears. This behavior almost got her expelled from nursery school, too. It also got her to spend much of the day in school in the “punishment chair”. I was exasperated with trying to control her outbursts and feared she would never have any friends. I would take her away from the situation and she would cry, “I am “being haved” Mommy!”-her interpretation of “behaved”. Finally, I bribed her with candy. I would promise her a walk to the candy store- in those days we still had candy stores- and let her pick out one thing that she wanted if she was good in school. When the bus arrived to drop her off, immediately as she was getting off, she would say, “I was a good girl today, Mommy, can we go to the store for candy, now?” And as promised, we would walk up East 98th Street and cross over Seaview Avenue to the candy store and she would usually pick out M&Ms. I remember one time, while she was eating her M&Ms, I asked her what she did at school that day and she replied, “I played with Evan with blocks and sang songs and I sat in the punishment chair…” Then she stopped, realizing what she just said and her eyes looked a little to the right and I took away her M&Ms. Years later, though, she told me that she was put in the punishment chair that time for talking (really telling another child to be quiet while the teacher was talking). Much to my relief, the twist pinching did stop and so did the tantrums. So, it was sweets that made my Friday child live up to being “loving and giving”. Maybe some child psychologists or even Dr. Phil would disagree with my approach; but it worked for us.
