Since I started this blog, more than a year ago, I have published something new almost every Monday, generally in the morning. I’m making a change to accommodate some personal changes. I’m still writing, but I’ll be publishing on Wednesday, instead of Monday.
Thanks to all of you for your support.
Janice
My inability to remember details is really starting to annoy me. Lately, I can’t remember lots of things that I really would like to remember. Like my New Year’s resolution. Completely escaped my mind. I may even have written a post about not being able to remember what my resolution was.
I refuse to call these senior moments. I’m busy; I’m distracted. It could even be my meds. I googled one of them. Apparently, lots of people blame it for their short-term memory loss. One woman wrote: “Yes, this medication causes memory loss with me. (laughing)” What could be funny about memory loss escapes me, but at least she’s got a sense of humor about it. This weekend, I forgot where I put the medication that might be causing my forgetfulness. I begged the pharmacist for enough to keep me sane while I looked for the mother supply. I couldn’t find it. I sent my daughter on the hunt, primarily because I know she will move things in her search, thinking that the lost item might be under something. My son will enter a room, look right, look left and declare, “It’s not in here.” My daughter found the drugs. They were in the medicine cabinet. I did not laugh.
So, I am not surprised that I can’t remember what event why siblings and I were discussing this weekend with my dad. The event was to occur in July, so maybe we were talking about Independence Day. My dad said, “I might not be around for that.” My sister and I froze for a beat.
“Dad,” I said. “You’ll be around. You’re going to fight like hell.”
He looked at me quizzically, clearly thinking I had lost my mind. I knew I was sane as my daughter had found my meds and I hadn’t forgotten to take them.
“I might be on a cruise,” he said, then gave me a “what were you thinking?” look.
I was thinking the same thing my sister was thinking. My dad was recently diagnosed with cancer. We weren’t thinking “not around” like in going on a cruise; we were thinking “not around” like, you know, not around.
I haven’t written about my dad’s diagnosis because it’s not my cancer. Well, and because I haven’t wanted to write about my dad’s cancer. I’ve struggled, too, with how much of my personal life really belongs in my blog. I usually write about funny things and I haven’t found a whole lot that’s funny about cancer. At least not my dad’s. At least not yet.
There are any number of things that have happened in my life that I haven’t written about. My friends, my family (especially my kids), deserve their privacy. I respect my kids wishes regarding which stories I can tell and which ones are theirs to tell or not. I would love to tell you about one involving my son. It’s a riot. It’s really not even just his story. But, I’m not going to write about it. My daughter, on the other hand, reads every post to make sure she’s been mentioned at least once.
I don’t write obscenities, either. If you know me, you know that I have a mouth like a sailor. I worked around sailors for a time, but I can’t blame them. I’ve had a foul mouth for years. Still, I won’t use the “F” word, the “S” word (unless necessary, like when I wrote about the four-year-old who said “Oh, shit” when she realized she’d forgotten to bring something to school), and a number of other “single capital letter” words.
My son would give permission for me to write about the funny things he does and says. Unfortunately, most of them fall under the no obscenities rule. My son is the funniest person I know and he is also the most foul. I’ve read that Bob Sagat (the Full House dad) is a truly dirty comic. He’s credited with telling the dirtiest joke ever written. However filthy that joke is my son has one that’s filthier. It even makes my husband, who generally hides his head in his hands when my son gets his comic mojo on, laugh with glee. Ok, maybe not glee, but he’s laughing, feeling guilty over it, but laughing.
Right now, we’re in the beginning phases of coping with my dad’s illness. My sibs and I each have our ways of handling the stress. My sister wants to get to work. She’s one of those constantly in motion people. I know she naps, but I’m pretty sure she does it so she can go back to being in motion refreshed or because she stayed up too late being in motion. Even a dynamo needs to rest now and then.
My brother deals with the pressure by smoking. While I think that’s a really lousy way of coping, I certainly appreciate it. I smoked for years and it was hard as hell to quit. Took me five serious tries. When they invent a cigarette that doesn’t kill you and/or make you smell terrible, I’ll be sorely tempted.
I cope by running. Unfortunately, I can’t run every day without incurring some injury that keeps me from running at all. My other coping mechanism is laughter. If I can find the humor in something—and I very often do—it isn’t quite as scary.
But, so far, my dad’s cancer isn’t very funny. I’m still running, taking it easy so I can keep it up. Maybe I’ll plan on running an American Cancer Society-sponsored race. I look pretty funny after a run and my kids assure me that I smell pretty funny, too. I might even find another pressure release outlet. I hear yoga is good for that. I tend to fall over when I do yoga so that can be pretty amusing. I’ll probably forget where I put my yoga mat, though.
Last year, I noted that I don’t really make New Year’s resolutions. This year, I decided they weren’t such a bad thing after all. My quibble with NYRs isn’t that I fear commitment, but that one can—and probably should—resolve to improve oneself throughout the year. If the Jews, the Muslims, the Chinese and the Europeans can’t agree on when each year actually begins, does it really matter when you make your resolutions? Plus, I needed fodder for my Naperville Patch column.
So, I made a resolution and made my family resolve as well. My husband resolved to eat carrot sticks. My daughter resolved to put away her clothes every night. I am pretty sure she thinks putting them in the laundry hamper counts. My son resolved to do his Chinese homework. Actually, he was pretty squishy about it, noting that he couldn’t promise promise because you never know what might happen and “really, Mom, I have ADHD, so the best I can do is try.” I was going to say that Justin Timberlake and Michael Phelps both have ADHD, but I have no idea if they did their Chinese homework.
I would tell you what my resolution is, but I can’t remember it.
So, having forgotten my resolution, I am establishing a tradition with my second annual letter to people who’ve annoyed the crap out of me in the past year.
To the “Merry Christmas” cranks: I got the “Xmas” thing and I agreed with you. Definitely, let’s put the “Christ” back in there. But, do we have to keep reminding you to have a merry Christmas? Will you really forget to have fun on December 25 unless you are reminded multiple times in the four weeks preceding?
To the prayer people: Kids can pray in school. Honestly. I’m pretty sure they can cross themselves before hand, too. They just can’t be made to pray. Frankly, I’m thinking a fervent personal prayer has a lot more meaning than a rote recital of a generic devotion lead by the school principal, but that’s just me.
To the Pledge people: Yup. Kids can say the Pledge of Allegiance, too. Happens every morning in schools all over the United States with exceptions I am too uninterested to research. See above comment about rote recital.
To my husband: there is a reason office parties are called office parties. They are for people in your office. They are not for people who live 38 miles away and must drive through rush hour to get to them. I like the people you work with and am pleased that my frustration at driving two freaking hours to see them gave them such pleasure. Next year, they can freaking well find someone else to freaking laugh about. Except your boss. He can laugh at me all he wants.
To my children: I do not put vegetables in your food as a test of your manual dexterity. I swear they are edible.
To the man—it must be a man—who designed the white porcelain sink: every day my sink sees grease, coffee grinds and tiny bits of vegetable my children refused to eat. Please come over and tell me how to clean it without using toxins.
To the biodegradable, compostable everything people: stop telling me how wonderful your biodegradable plastic bag and compostable carryout container are. Both of them are going in the trash until we’ve got municipal waste composting facilities.
To the woman who wondered if the pockets on her jeans made her butt look big: yes.
To the Boomer-hating generations that followed mine: who do you think put organic food in your mouth, saved for your college education and made it ok for moms to work? We gave you Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Led Zeppelin. Now will you get off our backs and go make up for John Mayer and that Chocolate Rain guy?
Speaking of Bill Gates. . .
To the people circulating his “Rules”: he didn’t write them. Charles Sykes wrote them. It is an amusing list full of wit and wisdom. Let’s give Mr. Sykes credit.
To the people who insist on using less when they mean fewer: I have less and less patience with you. Let’s go over this again: if you can count the things, you have fewer; if you cannot count them, you have less. Let’s suppose I made many cookies for Christmas and that they were delicious. At the same time, let’s suppose that I pulled a calf muscle, which hampered my ability to run. So, I ate more cookies and ran less. I do not say I ran fewer over winter break. That sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? Next year, I will make fewer cookies and run more. Right now, I will go throw away all of the cookies so that fewer will go into my body and I will have less weight to lose.
To myself: is it really necessary to call yourself an idiot when you forget something, lazy when you take a break or mean when you curse the cat? People your age forget things all the time, especially things like where they put their glasses. Unless you’re going to get one of those granny-looking glasses leashes, suck it up. Lazy? Even your son, who never compliments you on anything, says you’re the opposite of lazy. The cat? Ok, you’re mean to the cat, but he deserves it.
So, I guess I’ll resolve to be kinder to myself. I’ll make fewer cookies and try to be less annoyed by people. I’ll let go of the fantasy that my children will one day love vegetables and, given a year of recovery, might even consider going to my husband’s office party.
Thank you for your support. It’s been a terrific year for my blogging adventure. May the cosmos be kind to us all this year.
I have no idea why today is called Boxing Day, but I’m willing to take it as a reason for a day off. Many of you know that, in addition to writing this blog, I write a parenting column for Naperville Patch, an online newspaper that covers my city. Now, the idea of me as a fountain of parenting wisdom is pretty amusing and should be amusing to many who know me. Here, then, is a link to my column for this week: http://naperville.patch.com/articles/hanukkah-rebellion-smells-like-teen-spirit
Enjoy and Happy Seventh Night of Hanukkah.
Janice
Many of you know that WordPress, the service that manages my blog, recently featured my blog on its homepage. For those in the know, I was “Freshly Pressed.” For those in the don’t know, WordPress is the place on the Internet where I post my blog. Every day, WordPress, the biggest hosting service out there, picks the best of that day’s posts. They say they wade through more than 650,000 posts and who am I to argue.
The Monday before Thanksgiving, WordPress picked my post on gratitude. Now, WordPress promises that they will let you know if they pick your post for Freshly Pressed. WordPress lied to me. I found out I was Freshly Pressed when I checked email that day and saw I had, oh, say 100 emails from strangers commenting on my blog. I was shocked, amazed, astounded and all of those other words I tell my students to use instead of “surprised.”
I did not count how many people hit the like button or made some nice comment about that post. WordPress kept track of the activity on my blog, though. Over the course of two days, I had 3,450 views on my blog. A typical Monday prior to that, I would get about 3,400 fewer.
At the same time . . .
Many of you also know that we are broke. One of the expenses we’ve put off is veterinary care. That same Monday, my daughter was playing with her Littlest Pet Shop figures. “Mom,” she said, looking at something lying on the floor, “is that one of Pogo’s teeth?” It was, indeed, one of our dog’s teeth. Our dog can’t eat soft food without diarrh—oh, I mean—dire circumstances. His teeth are, therefore, tremendously important to me. I checked the checkbook and called the vet.
Vet expenses are one of those things that you think are going to be affordable in the “we can probably pay for it if we eat vegan for a month” category, but always wind up in the “we can only pay for this if we eat hay for a year” category. I never have to have a blood test before getting my teeth cleaned, but my dog does. So, blood test. His rabies vaccine had also expired, so rabies vaccine. Fortunately, he pooped on the waiting room floor, so I was spared following him around with a little plastic spoon to collect fresh turd. So, fecal test. Total: $500.
I got Pogo home and went to my office, where I responded to probably 60 more comments.
At the same time . . .
It was Thanksgiving week. Thanksgiving is at my house. My house was trashed.
At the same time . . .
I’d been training for my first 5K. I needed to find time to run.
Comments answered, I went to the kitchen for a tea refill. Pogo’s face had swelled to the point that his tiny Papillon snout was nearly buried in bulging fur-covered flesh. We went to the vet. Injection to counter allergic reaction: $100 and we still hadn’t done the dental work.
I deal really well with crises; I keep calm. I took my dog to the vet. I responded to the comments. I made the pecan pie. I trained for the run. No, crises don’t faze me. It’s the letdown afterward that’s a bitch.
I woke at 5 am Thanksgiving morning with a migraine. I took a thermonuclear pain pill and went to bed. I skipped the run. The turkey was great.
At the same time . . .
Things were still hoppin’ on my blog. In addition to the humbling praise, I received awards from two other bloggers:
the Versatile Blogger Award
and
the Liebster Award.
Both have strings attached.
Requirements:
• Thank the bloggers who nominated me for the award. Totally up on that; a Southern woman raised me. I’m hoping it’s ok to combine the two. So, thanks to The Waiting, Nevercontrary, Katy Stuff and Aprillbrandon for the Versatile Award and CrudMyKidsSay for the Liebster.
Please check them out. They are great bloggers writing clearly and creatively.
• Pass the award on to 15 (5 for the Liebster) other bloggers. Now, this was kind of a problem as I didn’t really read other bloggers. SHAME! I found them though and they’re listed below.
• List seven things about me you may not know. See FAR below. You don’t know these things for a reason, people!
The blogs you will check out and may like as much as I do.
A Clean Surface: sort of Martha Stewart with a life. Check out how to make a gingerbread house.
A Buddhist in the Rust Belt: just discovered this. It takes some . . . guts to be a Buddhist in Montana.
Kpgarcia: poetry and photos.
Boggleton Drive: really cool comic. Check out this gem.
Teachermother: writing about teaching and mothering. Duh.
Violet Sunday Studio: ART!!
People I want to punch in the throat: kind of like my blog only. The post on the Elf on The Shelf is priceless.
(Crap! We’re only at seven!)
Democratic Party of DuPage County: don’t laugh. There really is one. Is it bad to nominate a blog I edit? So what!
Renovating Rita: she’s got a recipe for latkes. What’s not to like?
Scribblechic: sweet musings on motherhood. (Yes, I can appreciate sweetness.)
Philosopher mouse of the hedge: the selling mistletoe story is about one of the best Christmas stories I’ve heard.
You’ve Been Hooked: tales from a bellman. Really. Funny!
(Twelve . . .almost there.)
The Anvil: Colonel Klink for President?
Kvetchmom: doesn’t every mom kvetch?
Huffygirl: a nurse practitioner on life and wellness
Whew! Done.
Now for the seven things:
1. I match my bra and panties. Every day.
2. I hate green peppers.
3. I watched Jersey Shore. Once.
4. I eat Hellman’s out of the jar.
5. My hair turns orange if I color it myself.
6. I don’t care how my alma mater fares in sports.
7. I was a sorority girl.
Thank you all, from the bottom of my heart, for your kindness and support. I’m loving the wild life on my blog and you’re the reason.
Janice
My husband calls me Thor. He does this partly because I am one-fourth Danish but mostly because I will try to do anything myself before asking for help. I move furniture. I haul wood. I reach for things on the top shelf.
I don’t have some “I am an island” complex, but I really would rather do many things myself. I like working hard and it feels good to be independent. Frequently, too, I’ve found the help people want to give doesn’t really feel helpful to me.
When I’m in the middle of making a big-deal dinner, say Thanksgiving, the last thing I want to do is find some job for someone to do. Someone comes at me with a “what can I do to help” while I’m in the middle of trying to strain the gravy and I’m likely to feel more irritated than grateful.
A friend pointed out to me, after asking how she could help with our Passover Seder preparations, that I was delusional. Preparing a seder, even a small one, is a lot of work. I said I did not need help. If my life were a western, this woman would be the rancher’s wife, ready to shoot marauding varmints right between the eyes. She looked at me with a “Puh-leeze” cock of her head and said, “You need help.” I felt her will seep into me and my head nodded in acquiescence. I accepted help. It was painful.
I’ve since developed a strategy that allows the helpful to help and me to keep my sanity. I plan in advance what tasks will be delegated and what things only I can do. Ok, that sounds really arrogant, but when I’m making dinner at my house, I get to decide who’s going to season the sauces and who’s going to set the table.
I helped around the house when I was a kid and I expect my own children to as well. Finding things they can help with that are truly helpful has been a bit of a challenge, though. My daughter believes it’s helpful to run a day spa in the family room on the weekend we’ve planned to decorate the house for Christmas. While my husband, son and I were moving furniture and digging boxes out of the crawlspace, my daughter and her best friend were coercing us into making massage appointments. An hour later, my husband was getting a massage in the family room, while I struggled and cursed to get a tree made of wire and green plastic bristles to look like something other than a tree made of wire and green plastic bristles.
When it comes to getting help, I may have painted myself into a corner with the boy who cried wolf. I’ve been so insistent that I don’t need help that I don’t get it when I truly do. Not too long ago, I was cleaning a particularly heavy and unwieldy fountain pump at the kitchen sink. Every summer, I convince myself that a fountain is exactly what our deck needs and I contrive one out of the variety of pots, tubing and buckets that proliferate in my garage.
While the fountains are usually charming, they generate copious amounts of algal slime. Cleaning the pump is, therefore, a rather nausea-inducing task. So, I was at the sink, attempting to clean the pump without regurgitating lunch. Pump clean, I transferred it from one hand to another while reaching for a towel. The pump fell on my big toe. It hurt. I have a particular string of profanities that I only utter under extreme duress. I’m pretty sure I uttered them.
Once the initial surge of adrenaline subsided, I assessed the damage. My toenail was crushed, awash in blood. I pushed aside the visions of blood and algae slime and found the calm center of my mom brain. Efficiently but painfully, I washed the wound, bound it with a clean towel and made an ice pack. I hobbled over to the couch to watch Food Network while I iced my toe.
I turned on the TV to find my son had left it in video game mode. Now, I could have hobbled over to the TV, fixed the viewing mode and hobbled back to the couch. No, I thought. There are people in this house, my toe hurts, those people can help me. So I shouted, “Help!” My son, I knew, was in his room listening to music. My daughter was in mine, watching Sponge Bob. I shouted louder. “HELP!” No response. “HELP! HELP! HELP!” I yelled. I yelled for about a minute. Finally, I gave up. I hobbled over to the TV, hobbled back to the couch and iced my toe while watching Paula Deen make something like pork shoulder donuts.
Later, I asked my kids, “Did you hear me yelling for help?”
“You were yelling for help?” my son asked.
“Yes. I was. For quite some time.” I glowered at him.
“My door was shut,” he said.
“You could have heard me,” I said. “I was yelling pretty loud.”
He covered his lack of concern by deflecting guilt to his sister.
“Well, what about her?” he asked and pointed out that the door to my bedroom was open the entire time. My daughter could well have heard me from the very first pitiful cry for help.
“Did you hear Mommy?” She looked at the floor.
“Yes,” she said. “But Mr. Crabbs was yelling at the same time, so I couldn’t be sure.”
“You didn’t think you should come downstairs to make sure Mommy was ok?”
“No,” she said. “I really wanted to see Sponge Bob.”
We had a talk about empathy, thoughtfulness, caring for others and being grounded.
This Thanksgiving, my son actually asked “What can I do to help?” He was serious; I was astounded. My daughter made our signature ground cranberry and orange relish, operating the food grinder by herself.
I’m not confident yet that I’d win out over Sponge Bob, but I’m holding out hope for the future.
It’s not like we weren’t paying attention. In fact, with only one child, paying attention was never an issue for us as parents. He had our full attention and we thought everything he did was amazing and wonderful.
We were so in love with him, in fact, that we had a positive explanation for the range of his eccentric behaviors. Running full tilt into a wall for fun? He needs extra stimulation. Lying in the grass in left field, tossing his mitt in the air and catching it, while his teammates are attempting to win a game? Well, who wouldn’t be bored playing left field? Circling the little boy next to him then taking a bite out of his arm while the teacher reads a book on sharks? He has a vivid imagination.
It wasn’t until we adopted our daughter and were no longer focused solely on our son that it came to our attention that he had a problem with focus. And staying still. And keeping his hands off of things. And blurting out ridiculous statements.
What did we do about it? We tolerated it. We even encouraged some of it. Really, who wouldn’t be amused by a child who blurts out “Chicken!” at random moments throughout the day? While I knew that his tendency to hang on people (their bodies, not their words), was annoying, I figured he’d learn more from the annoyed taking a swat at him than from my constant nagging. Nope.
Then he went to middle school. And he started failing. And failing. And failing. We tried punishments. He continued failing. We tried inducements. He continued failing. We talked to his teachers. He continued failing. We tried a homework completion spreadsheet. He failed to complete it, even when he completed the homework.
He hated writing; he hated reading. His handwriting was so terrible that even if he had the right answer, if the teacher couldn’t read it, what was the point? We coaxed, we cajoled. We checked homework. We reminded. We crossed our fingers. We sacrificed goats. His grades didn’t improve.
Eventually, he was referred to an interventionist. At this point, I need to make sure you understand that he hated writing, couldn’t remember his assignments and, if he did his assignments, couldn’t remember to hand them in. We’ll ignore for a moment the fact that he was still blurting out things like “I like pie” and hanging on people.
RTI, response to intervention, is all the rage in schools these days, the goal being to intervene before the child fails. Obviously, we got to it a little late. Still, I was thrilled that our son would be getting help.
First recommendation from the interventionist was to have him practice writing to a prompt as soon as he came home from school. Second recommendation from the interventionist was to have him track everything he did every half hour from the time he came home until he went to bed.
There is no witty way to describe my reaction to these recommendations. I believe I said something to my husband like, “Are they freaking crazy?” Still, we tried the tracking thing. It worked if I followed him around and badgered him into filling in the little half-hour blocks. Most of them had notes like, “Argued with Mom.” This, I told myself, is insane. Actually, I probably used the past participle of an “F” word.
And my son continued to fail. Abandoning the little half-hour blocks and the afterschool writing torture, we sought the advice of other experts. Eventually, thousands of dollars and four professionals later, we had a diagnosis: ADHD.
Well, duh, you say.
Yeah, duh, I say. I spent a lot of time kicking myself for turning over every stone looking for solutions while ignoring the big one in the middle of the path. I’m still kicking myself but at least now I’m doing it while I’m learning everything I can about ADHD.
While it’s a relief to know what we’re up against, we’re up against a pretty formidable foe. Routines and habits are essential coping mechanisms. Tell that to a teen. I’m not even going near the nutrition suggestions yet. He needs all the calories he can get to counter the weight-loss that accompanies his medication routine. Down the road a little, we’ll have to worry about driving. He’s not pushing it and neither are we. Kids with ADHD get more tickets and have more accidents. They are also more likely to abuse drugs and alcohol. We’ll cross those bridges when we get to them, but we’re looking ahead so we’ll be prepared.
In the meantime, I’ve learned that people can be pretty goofy about ADHD. Some people think it’s over-diagnosed. That may be the case, but after resisting the appellation for more than five years, I’m pretty sure we’re finally barking up the right tree. Other people make jokes about it, blaming their day-to-day forgetfulness and distractibility on the disorder.
ADHD jokes don’t really bother me all that much, but I wondered what my son felt about them. So I asked.
“I don’t care,” he said, then mentioned a friend who calls it “ADSO.”
“ADSO?” I asked.
“Yeah. Attention Deficit. . .Shiny Object!” he said. “But mostly I tell my own jokes.”
“Really?” I asked. “What are some of your ADHD jokes?”
“You think I remember?” he said.
“You’re mean, Daddy!” my daughter shouted as we walked into the house from the garage. I had just picked her up at a birthday party.
“Why?” he asked, understandably perplexed at being accused of meanery when he hadn’t seen the child in nearly two hours.
“You thought you were supposed to pick me up at 5 and you were supposed to get me at 4:30, so I was the last one there!” She bounded up the stairs with her party goodie bag, no longer angry since she’d laid her grievance at her father’s feet.
“We failed,” I said to my husband in that “what else is new tone” we’ve developed for discussing our parental deficiencies.
“Again!” our daughter yelled from her room at the top of the steps.
Of course, she’s right. My husband and I have failed numerous times in our parenting escapades. I have a friend who insists that you don’t have to be a good parent; you just have to be a good enough parent. Intellectually, I know she’s right. Childishly, I think, “Yeah, she doesn’t have any kids!”
My son likes to remind me of the time I left him in the car on a hot summer day while my daughter and I went shopping. It’s not as bad as it sounds. He was 13 and it really wasn’t all that hot. And it is every bit as bad as it sounds. I forgot he was in the car.
We had gone to the library, the three of us. My son chose to stay in the car while my daughter and I returned our books and got new ones. We had a good time picking out our books. We were having such a good time that I thought we could extend it with a little shoe shopping, as my daughter needed shoes. So, we left the library, holding hands.
We went to the shoe store; she picked out two pairs. The afternoon was so nice and sunny, we decided to top it off with a trip to the candy store. Ours is a real, old-fashioned candy store where they make their own fudge and caramel corn. We picked our treats and started back to the car. I was in one of those mellow moods you get when you’re with your child and everything is peaceful and calm. Then we reached the car. I saw my son hanging out of the window. “Oh, shit!” I thought.
“Where have you been!?” he screamed. Then he saw the shoe bag.
“You went shoe shopping!” he screamed. Then he saw the candy.
“You went to the candy store!” he screamed. “You left your son in a hot car in the middle of summer while you took your daughter shopping for shoes and candy?!”
I did the first thing that came to my mind. I blamed him.
“Well, you chose to stay in the car,” I said as calmly as a guilt-ridden soul will allow.
“Because you were going to the library!” he screamed. “You didn’t tell me you were going shopping!”
“You didn’t have to stay in the car. You could have come in the library.”
“But you weren’t in the library, were you?” he asked. “You were shopping! For shoes! And candy! While I was waiting in the hot car!”
“You’re 13,” I shot back. “You could have gotten out of the car any time you liked. And it’s not that hot out anyway.”
By then, I had gotten the packages and bag of library books into the trunk of the car. My daughter and I were buckling in. It was silent for a few heartbeats.
“You forgot me, didn’t you?” my son said, an eerie calm in his voice. He knew the answer and he knew he could use it to his advantage again and again and again.
“I am done with this conversation,” I said and drove home. My son, however, was not done with the incident. He still isn’t done with the incident. Anytime he needs a little parental guilt to help him get his way, he merely needs to say, “Car” and he’s well on his way to winning any battle.
Most of my failures are far less spectacular. My daughter whines more than we’d like because we will do anything she wants to make her stop. She eats too much candy and doesn’t wash her hair enough. Our son has more failing grades than I care to admit. While I realize that the grade is, in the end, his responsibility, I feel responsible. Also my fault are his lackadaisical approach to practicing scales and his enthusiastic embrace of video games. Did I mention both of their rooms are hazmat sites?
I asked my husband if he ever felt like a parental failure. He related an incident with our daughter. He had tucked her in; she got out of bed for some tremendously important reason. He tucked her back in. She popped out again. He refused to tuck her in a third time, it being far past her bedtime. She looked him in the eye and said, “Most daddies like putting their daughters to bed and tucking them in,” then sobbed into her pillow. I consider this incident a resounding parental success. The girl had already had two tuckings, for crying out loud.
I took a break from writing this just a few minutes ago. My daughter was downstairs having a snack. Apparently, the dinner I prepared failed to fill her sufficiently. I snagged a chip from her, dunked it into salsa and popped it in my mouth. She asked me to sit and play with her for a while. “I have to work,” I said. Not looking at me, she said, “Well, you could go back to work or you could eat chips and salsa with your daughter like a real mom.” I sat and had the chips and salsa.
If I were a better mother, my children would be earning medals and trophies. They would be captains of teams and presidents of clubs. They would volunteer their time helping the elderly and feeding the starving. They’d win scholarships to Harvard and Julliard. But I’m not that mother. Instead, my kids are pretty health, fairly happy and completely loved. I’m a good enough mom and that’s usually good enough.
Some years ago, I asked my children what they wanted for Christmas. Actually, I ask them what they want for Christmas every year, but I’m talking about a specific year. Money was tight, tighter than it had been in years just prior. The children asked for myriad things that we couldn’t afford. I used their lists for inspiration but bought things I could afford. So, instead of the My Little Pony Magical Castle with running water and a hot tub, I got my daughter a smaller MLP play set and some MLP bubble bath.
Christmas morning came and the children woke early, begging to go downstairs. I went with them, anticipating their whoops of joy and excitement. When she got to the tree and saw her gifts arrayed under it, my daughter said, “I didn’t ask for these things. These must be someone else’s toys.” Then she started crying, wondering where Santa had left the things she ordered.
My children have since been instructed in the ways of Santa. Even when they still believed that their stuff came down the chimney, they knew that Mom and Dad had to pay Santa for the toys. “Why?” they wanted to know. “Because the world is over-populated,” I told them, “and Santa couldn’t possibly make all the toys for all the children in the world.” I think I fed them a line about the elves only making wooden toys; “Santa has to buy all the branded stuff,” I explained.
My son has graduated from wanting really expensive game systems to wanting really expensive musical instruments. We’ve taken to giving him money or gift cards that he can combine with gift cards from family to purchase what he desires. Giving cash and gift cards is so boring, though.
One Christmas, my mother gave my siblings and me really nice fleece sweaters from Land’s End. Each sweater had a surprise in the pocket…a crisp large denomination bill. I decided to use my mom’s idea for my son. I found a cozy shearling-lined hoodie that I knew he’d like. I put a large denomination gift card in the pocket. I put it under the tree. He loved it. He looked for other presents. There were none. “That’s it?” he asked, “a hoodie?”
“It’s nice hoodie,” I said.
“It’s a hoodie,” he said. “I got a hoodie.”
“Put it on,” I said.
“Mom, it’s a hoodie. It’ll fit.”
“Just put it on. It was expensive. I want to see if it looks good on you.”
“Fine,” he said. I figured he’d put his hands in the pockets, the way everyone does when they try on a hoodie. He stood in front of me, arms limp at his sides, disappointment draining from his pores.
“There,” he said. “It’s on. It’s a hoodie.”
“Look in the freaking pockets,” I said.
He looked in the pockets, pulled out the gift card and looked sheepish. But did he say thank you? No.
I’m not freaking out about his apparent lack of gratitude, though. Frankly, I’m a little burnt out on gratitude. There are gratitude societies, gratitude experiments and any number of gratitude websites. Gratitude has replaced grace as the favored state.
All this emphasis on gratitude leaves me feeling like an ingrate. It’s not that I’m not grateful for the good things in my life. I’m just getting really tired of apologizing for expressing disappointment, frustration, anger, sadness, grief, resentment and the range of other emotions we’re told are negative and will eat our souls if we let them.
My sister is an artist and teacher. She’s tenured and has two advanced degrees in her field. Until this year, she had a job she loved teaching the art topics she loves to students who loved them. That’s all changed because of budgeting concerns in her district. She now splits her time between two campuses, traveling between them daily. Her student and class loads have been changed so that she’s teaching students who don’t want to be in school, let alone art.
She’s angry, frustrated and sad. She’s embarrassed to talk to me about it because I don’t have a teaching job. She’s in a crappy situation. Even though I’ve told her it’s more than ok to complain to me about it, I can tell she thinks she doesn’t have that right. At least she has a job, she reasons.
My mother died three years ago. Hers was a long, slowly-progressing illness that every year took more and more of her freedom. At the end, she was on just about every kind of support a life can need and it still wasn’t enough. We chose to end it. Her suffering ended and, for that, we are all grateful. But she’s still dead and it still sucks. And every day that I remember she’s dead, it sucks all over again.
I’ve been a runner long enough now to know it is in repairing the tiny tears running creates that my muscles grow. I am grateful that there is benefit in the training I’m doing. But, I’ve got to do the damage first. Ice and ibuprofen help ease the pain, but only time makes the permanent changes possible.
Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh instructs his followers to be where they are. If you are happy, be happy. If you are angry, be angry. If you are frustrated, be frustrated. If you are sad, be sad. Tell yourself, “This is me being sad.”
When my mother died, there were days I could hardly tell you who I was. There were days I expected to be swallowed whole by sadness. I told myself, “This is me afraid I will be swallowed by sadness.” When I missed her terribly? “This is me missing my mother.”
I will not rush to gratitude through the challenges in my life. I will sit with them; I will honor them. Then I can give myself completely to thanks.
Being a mom is a lot like being in a circus act. The clichéd parallel is the juggler, but that’s not accurate. Jugglers choose to make their lives more difficult. They begin the act with one ball, then add another, then another. While one could compare that to having one child, then another, then another, that doesn’t get to the heart of being a mom. Neither does comparison with the plate-spinning guy. No, he put all those plates up there. No one else is putting plates up there and he damn well knows that the plates are going to stop spinning eventually and will fall. If he’s any good at his job, he can predict pretty accurately which plate will fall when.
For me, being a mom is like being that woman who rides the elephant. No matter how experienced a rider she is and no matter how well she knows the elephant, at any moment a mouse could run across the elephant’s path. Instantly, she goes from a nice sedate ride on Jumbo to trying to wrangle a gentle landing from a raging pachyderm.
I have been riding the elephant for more than 16 years now, since my son was born. In that time, many are the mice that have skittered across my path, wreaking havoc that lasts long past the time they’ve disappeared into the woodpile.
My most spectacular tumbles from the elephant have involved my son. Every year, my sister’s family hosts Christmas Eve. Our son was 15 months old. I am a much more experienced elephant rider than I was then else I would not have allowed my son to stand on a chair and play at the kitchen table while my husband and I got on coats, gathered our contributions to the dinner, etc.
How many stories of children’s accidents include the words, “I looked away for just a moment,” do you suppose? I looked away for just a moment. My son fell from the chair. My husband grabbed the boy from behind and thrust him toward me saying, “Is he ok?” As the child was screaming and his face was covered in blood, I decided that, no, he was not ok.
One minute, my elephant was on its way to my sister’s house, the next it was on its way to the hospital. Four hours later, I had learned that my son is virtually impervious to pain and my husband is a rock when it comes to getting a toddler through a CAT scan. I also learned that a divorced oral surgeon is not just ok with spending Christmas Eve stitching up a little guy, but welcomes the excuse to not shop for his ex-wife.
Four hours seems to be the requisite amount of time to spend in the ER with a child as evidenced by another elephant crash, this one when my son was three. We lived in Oak Park, which seems to have an inordinate amount of deadly nightshade growing wild. It’s actually kind of pretty with its little purple flowers followed by small berries that turn a brilliant red. Still, with “deadly” in its name . . . well. I did my best to eradicate it. I tried pulling it, thinking myself tremendously environmentally responsible. After an hour of barehanded nightshade pulling, I felt distinctly queasy and more than a little dizzy. A little research revealed that nightshade will kill you, but first it will make you feel queasy and dizzy. Further, pulling it merely signals it to grow, grow, grow. I got out the Round Up and got rid of the weed.
Cue ominous music. I did not get rid of all of the weed. My son found it as I was readying to ride my elephant to a business meeting.
“Mommy,” he said, displaying a handful of nightshade berries. “What are these?”
“Oh, honey,” I said. “You must never, never eat these. They will make you very sick.”
He started spitting immediately. I immediately took him to the hospital. I recall having a rather nasty “Screw the meeting; my kid just ate poison” call. Four hours later, I learned that the only cure for nightshade is to wait it out, treating the cardiac symptoms as they emerge. I also learned that modern toxicology tends to focus on illicit drug overdose. The ER doctor had no idea what nightshade was or even what it looked like. She was fascinated. I was appalled.
I can’t recall a time when my daughter caused such a dramatic divergence in the elephant ride that is our life. My son seems to inspire disruption when I am in motion. My daughter has elephant repose radar. I sit down to read a book and within minutes I hear, “Mommy! Come here!”
“What is it?” I ask.
“I need you!” she says.
“Why do you need me?” I ask.
“I want a hug.”
So, I set the book down and go give my daughter a hug. The variation on this theme is I sit down to read a book and she comes flying into the room, shouting, “Huggy!” and lands in my lap.
Last night, the elephant lumbered to my office with me intent on writing this post. My daughter, you may recall, has trashed her room so utterly that she now sleeps in said office. I thought we could quietly share the space, so I began writing. She began reading a history of Ancient China. She began pointing out interesting facts about Ancient China and asking for assistance with complicated words like “foreign” and “conquered.” The elephant crashed, depositing me on the daybed next to my daughter.
We read “Ancient China” for a while, lying next to each other. When the elephant stirred my “I should be working guilt,” I kicked it soundly. Then I tucked my daughter in and kissed her goodnight.
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