S3:E21 // How can this be? 

FEBRUARY 10, 2022


Episode description: This week, we’re doing something a little different. Something a little more playful. Something that can be summed up in one word: Mattéa.

Show notes:


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Transcript

Laura: A few episodes ago, I shared my new year’s resolutions for 2022. There were only two: find creative solutions when the work piles up, and play more—or at least approach life with a bit more playfulness whenever I can.

Today, I’m doing a bit of both, and after a month of our family getting sick with COVID, kids being home from school, and life not slowing down one little bit, I need it. Maybe you do too.

That voice you heard just now was my youngest daughter Mattéa, who some of you might recognize from past episodes and a few choice outtakes. It was Mattéa who made things temporarily tense with our neighbors when she peed in our neighbors’ bushes uninvited. Mattéa who never misses a chance to let the world know she’s here. Even as a baby, I remember standing in the grocery store checkout line with her in the kid backpack, the only place she was happy since seeing the world—and being seen—was extremely important to her even at the tender age of one. She’d say hello to everyone we passed, charm the socks off the checkout worker, and on the rare occasion that someone didn’t notice her, she’d say, “hi!” even louder to make sure they didn’t miss this amazing opportunity to behold her cuteness. When I hear the word “playful,” it’s Mattéa who comes to mind.

So this week, as the COVID brain fog and fatigue lingers and our little girl turns five, we’re mixing up the usual episodes and instead devoting an entire episode to playfulness personified.

Nate: That’s right, Mattéa. Today’s episode is all about you—because hey, that’s how you see the world right now. Since you’re turning 5—and you’re really good at counting—we want to share 5 qualities we see in you that all of us can learn from. 

{Mattéa clip}


Laura: Number one: let’s get dirty.


For someone who never misses an opportunity to get fancy, who thinks that the frilly Christmas dress with the red satin sash is the perfect attire to go for a bike ride, or help Daddy with yard work, or fry bacon (we’ll get to that later), you are equally enthusiastic about trashing that beautiful dress as soon as there is an opportunity to get dirty.

Is it that you are in too much of a rush to pursue life’s next adventure that you can’t be bothered to change into more sensible clothing? Clothing that some might see as “normal?” Or that you see footwear as an injustice that your feet must be freed from on a daily basis?

 
Whatever your reasons, you embrace life’s muddiness with vigor that leaves us awestruck—and yes, also irritated when you track mud into our shoes-off house, mud onto the trampoline, to say nothing of the inevitable trashed tights and socks since in your mind, shoes are optional, but socks are not.

As much as I wish you’d learn to follow basic footwear etiquette, I also recognize the metaphor when it pokes holes in those dirty stockings. 


Because life is full of chances to get dirty. Some we choose, while others choose us. I may think that I’d like my life to be perfectly ordered and sanitized of all discomforts and disappointments, but when I am able to embrace those messier moments of living, I’m almost always glad. Because often there’s an adventure to be found in the path those muddy tights tread. There are new skills or experiences or relationships to be found while we’re trashing that beautiful dress. 


Are there grease spots and paint splatters and Sharpie stains on almost every item of clothing you have? Yes. Did you earn those badges of honor painting the back porch or raking leaves or helping Daddy operate power tools? Absolutely. Will this set you up well for a future as an artist or plumber or chef or childcare provider or mom? 100% You remind us that getting our hands dirty and not being afraid of hard work often go hand in hand, and we’re proud of you. 


Now if you could just either take your socks off or put your shoes on when you go outside for about the next 13 years, that’d be great. 


{Mattéa sound clip}


Nate: Number two. The joy of cooking.


Laura: I’ll never forget the morning about a year ago when we were in our little Massachusetts apartment and I had gotten up at 5 a.m. to work. It was winter, so it was dark outside for the first couple of hours I was up. 


At some point I heard rustling in the kitchen and so I went over to see who was up. It was you, standing there cracking eggs into a metal mixing bowl and then adding a bit of milk, salt, and pepper. You’d been interested in “helping” in the kitchen since you were old enough to walk, but this moment sticks out in my memory because it was clear that you’d actually learned something. Yes, there were a few eggshells in your scramble, and there may have been a touch too much salt. But there was no doubt about it: you were making scrambled eggs as a not-yet-four-year-old, and you actually knew what you were doing!


Nate: I’ve mostly taken over breakfast these past two years since we’ve realized the mornings are Laura’s best time to write, and more often than not, Mattea is there with me. Since she’s still not even as tall as the countertop, she pulls up the stool, starts cracking eggs or stirring oatmeal, and eagerly adds seasonings.


Letting Mattéa join us in the kitchen isn’t always easy. It takes a lot longer to make something when you’re teaching it as you go. We’ve choked down more than a few extra salty bowls of oatmeal because I turned my back long enough for her to add her own Mattéa flair. It can be dangerous to have her in the kitchen, especially because the more she cooks with us, the more she feels confident to cook on her own. 


Should she be using a real paring knife to slice up apples for afternoon snack? She doesn’t like the kiddie plastic one because it doesn’t cut as straight—and really, I can’t blame her. I feel the same way. So I tell her to take it slow. 


Laura: A few weeks ago you cut your finger for the first time while you were chopping something. It was just a tiny sliver and it barely even bled, but your reaction to the injury was classic Mattéa. You eagerly requested a tiny bandaid, breathed deeply when I told you it would help the pain, and then for the rest of the day bragged to your siblings about how you’d cut your finger cooking.


As I washed your wound and then wrapped it with a tiny bandaid, I told you that it was important to be very careful with knives—and also that this probably wouldn’t be the last time you cut yourself. I’ve been cooking since I was Mattéa’s age, first with my mom and my grandma, and then on my own, and finally for my own family. I love cooking when I have time for it, and I’ve been known to tackle complicated dishes like Peking duck and pork belly confit. But I still cut myself sometimes. In college when I was learning to fry fish, I had to drive myself to the emergency room when grease splattered my face and neck. I have a few scars from my cooking mishaps. There’s a place below my second knuckle that still tingles because I cut it so deep two decades ago.

Life, like cooking, will burn and cut us if we expose ourselves to the elements. Yes, we can be careful—and we should be in most cases. But the only way to not get hurt is to not cook, to not live. Cooking can usher us into new experiences and binds us to the people around us. We never get to discover the sweet and nutty magic of brown butter or the otherworldly beauty of a thinly sliced chioga beet if we don’t take the risk of learning to embrace something new. Without those risks we miss out on the way making a meal—or a life—with your mother or your grandpa or your sibling or your friend, can bring us closer together. How the way a person flips a pancake or carefully measures a cup of flour can tell you a lot about who they are and what’s important to them. How the act of creation itself can be a joy.


Nate: Mattéa, we hope that you will keep cooking—and living fully—for many years to come, that the cuts and burns will be just big enough to teach you something, but not so bad that they stop you from creating. Oh, and watch the salt!


{Mattéa sound clip}


Laura: Three. Hair adventures.


I’ll confess that I’m surprised it took me until kid #3 for this one. Look back at my baby and toddler pictures and it’s clear that the obsession with cutting my own hair started early. My hair has always been fine and wispy, not much there to work with, and my poor mother had even less to work with when I cut my entire head of hair close to the scalp days before she’d scheduled a photo shoot at the local mall. You might think that I would have outgrown my fascination with scissors, but no! I was old enough to remember when I decided my little brother needed a few bald patches to make his own 3-year-old haircut complete. Just last week I was getting bored of my hair and so I pulled out the scissors and cut off an inch or two.


I couldn’t be too mad at you when you cut your own hair down to the scalp right above your forehead the first time. Or the second time. Or when you decided your friend Greta needed a haircut too. Those of you who have heard our audio holiday card, Tres Corazones, have heard about that one already. We’re very grateful that Greta—and her parents—have found it in their hearts to forgive us.


Nate: The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree—or in this case—the orchard. I’m a repeat offender in the mullet department, which Laura has bemoaned in our episode titled #COVIDcut. My haircuts have included long and shaggy, shaved head, topknot, and pretty much everything in between. 


Most people blame not going to get their hair cut by a professional on the pandemic. But I bought clippers years ago, and will never go back. Even as an adult, there’s something transgressive about cutting your own hair — and a not-so-secret pride when you get a compliment on your home-grown fauxhawk. 


Laura: Your response to your hair misadventures is once again telling. When you cut your bangs down to the scalp the first time, it took us a week to notice because you also started wearing an elastic headband with a giant bow strategically placed on top of the stubby hair. Only when you whipped it off to take a bath did we notice the toddler mullet. We were so surprised that we all started cracking up, but even then you were undeterred. You stood by your fashion statement, and not once have I seen a trace of regret as you rock that business-in-front-party-in-the-back look that won’t be hidden.


It’s taken me until my forties to have a trace of the kind of confidence and self-assurance that I see you embody every single day. You simply do not care what other people think about you. So what if mullets and leopard-print clothing and cowboy boots are typically only found together in Tiger King? It’s how you’ve decided to show up in the world today, and the rest of us could learn a thing or two by watching .


You’re not wrong. Point to any great leader, innovator, artist, or inventor and you’ll see a long trail of experiments, ideas that others condemned to failure, or just didn’t think were appropriate for the time. It takes a tremendous amount of courage to not give up when your experiments go badly, or when the world tells you that you should just give up. 


We hope that we can foster that adventurous spirit and spunky confidence. And also, we’re keeping the scissors out of reach for a little while longer. 


{Mattéa sound clip}


Nate: Four: she knows how to help herself . . . to pretty much everything.


Laura: Almost every day before Grace and Gabe leave for school, Grace turns on her heel and pleads, “PLEASE don’t let Mattéa get into my stuff!”


Because even though there’s only about a half-hour gap between when Grace leaves and Mattéa heads off to preschool, given the chance, she’ll use those precious few minutes to get into mischief of her own making.


A few classic examples? Mattéa standing on the kitchen counter to reach Mommy and Daddy’s not-so-secret stash of Oreos on the top shelf. Mattéa standing on the desk to pull a clean sheet of paper from the printer because all of the other ones already have a unicorn or mermaid drawn on them. Mattéa standing on a stool with the fridge door wide open, helping herself to a snack. Mattéa with a spoon and the canister of brown sugar, shoveling that stuff into her mouth as fast as she can. 


Nate: It’s almost like a spoof horror movie: “In a little two-bedroom bungalow in Oakland, California, there roamed a fearsome marauder. She prowled. She climbed. She explored. Cookies and costume jewelry would vanish without a trace. Nothing was safe . . . from Mattéa!” 


Maybe this is a youngest child thing, to fend for yourself whenever possible. I guess that’s what happens when you have two older siblings to observe and two parents who are often too tired to notice you sneaking around helping yourself to the bag of tortilla chips or your sixth clementine.


Laura is a third kid too, and she said she used to do the same thing. She’d climb up on top of cupboards to eat sugar by the spoonful or help herself to the marshmallows when no one was looking. That quality of helping yourself and taking initiative keeps us on our toes as parents, but I can already see how it’ll serve Mattéa well in life. For decades I’ve watched Laura adapt and problem solve seemingly impossible situations. I can sometimes glimpse that third child in her who feels frustrated by things out of her reach, but then almost immediately adjusts to figure out how to shift her perspective or find some new way of getting to the thing she’s after.


Mattéa, may your problem-solving skills serve you well. May they keep you resilient and creative. May they bring opportunities your way that the rest of us would pass by or give up on. Keep it up, our little explorer! Just ask first. 


{Mattéa sound clip}


Laura: Which brings us to five: negotiating. 


Nate: Our dear Mattéa. If I put five baby carrots in her lunch, she says, “how about three?”

Laura: If I offer her the super cute shoes that look like two mice, she shakes her head and instead finds the ones Aunt Jane got her that light up when you walk (which, fair). 


Nate: If we ask her to help her siblings fold the laundry, seconds later she’ll announce “I’m done!” and hope we won’t notice the clothes covering every square inch of the floor.

No doubt child development experts would reassure us that this is age-appropriate (especially with two older siblings who have no shortage of their own opinions). But when every single interaction involves cajoling, arguing, convincing, discussion, argument, debate, subterfuge, and rhetoric, it really wears us down. Sometimes I wish she would just say “yes Daddy,” and call it a day.


Laura: And yet even in this, there’s a gift to be found if we’re looking for it. 


“Never accept the first offer” is the cardinal rule of negotiations. It’s what we tell every single one of our Kasama Collective trainees whenever they’ve been offered a new job. We’ve celebrated every time one of them has succeeded in getting a higher salary or better benefits or more vacation as a result.


It’s taken me most of my adult life to understand that that advice isn’t greedy; it’s what we have to do as women if we don’t want people to take advantage of us. I’ve left money on the table many times in professional situations where I realized only when it was too late that I could’ve asked for more. It’s awkward to push back. Growing up I can remember all kinds of situations where I was painfully aware of being too strong, or too opinionated, or not agreeable and compliant enough. In professional situations where I was often the only woman in the room, I learned to keep my mouth shut and my emotions locked up tight.


I’m incredibly grateful that the world is changing, that my girls are growing up in a culture where being strong isn’t a bad thing. I hope we can help you hold onto that belief that your opinions matter, that you don’t just have to accept the first thing offered. And also, when we’re asking you to help with chores or pick up your toys? It’s fine to just say, “yes, Mommy.”

So happy birthday, my sock-dirtying, egg scrambling, hair-cutting, self-helping, top notch negotiating five-year-old! We love you so much, and we’re proud of the girl you’re becoming. 

We’re ending this episode today by sharing some of our favorite Mattéa moments in the outtakes, so as always, listen to the very end so you don’t miss them.

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