there will be blood

IMG_1647I didn’t go into parenting with the intention of becoming the breaker of hearts. To be the dasher of young dreams.

But it seems it’s a role I am destined to play.

Take yesterday for example: I was lying on my bed working Grey Gardens-style — with my laptop, assorted papers, reading glasses and Kindle strewn about – when I heard the kitchen phone ring.

Now, I don’t know who’s calling your landline, but for the past year or two those callers here seem to consist mainly of robocalls coming from “Unavailable” or Gap credit services to tell me my payment is late. Again. (Listen, why can’t those Old Navy people set up some type of autopay plan so I can make timely payments AND receive my $10 coupons?)

Anyway, I hear the phone ringing and even though I can also hear a number of my children’s voices coming from downstairs, I wonder if anyone is even going to lower themselves to the level of the wall phone and answer it. It’s so beneath them.

But someone does and then I hear footsteps running quickly up the stairs.

“Mom, it’s for you,” says my youngest child, slightly breathless and looking a little excited. I’m about to tell him to tell whomever it is to take us off their calling list, when he adds, “It’s Jack F’s mom.”

I had heard through the fourth grade grapevine that Jack F’s mom has a number of slimy, jumpy reptilian things to farm out before her family packs up and moves across the country this summer (boohoo), so I had a good idea why she was calling.

Apparently, our boys had already discussed this dilemma and my guy was first-in-line to take their bearded dragon off their hands.

Let’s back up right here.

At this stage of my life, I no longer wish to be tasked with keeping anything alive. Even if it’s small enough to fit inside a shoebox.

I’ve kept four kids alive for over 20 years, and I’ll have you know that all of their fingers and toes remain intact. I hate to mess with that track record.

Isn’t it enough that I got guilted into harboring a half-dead cat in when it appeared in our garage during a snowstorm a few years ago, who is now under the impression that she is second-in-line for the crown and has become clinically obese?

 

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I am also trying to minimize the number of creatures whom I need to clean up after, and by that I specifically referring to their poop and barf.

And finally, I really haven’t bounced back since our dog Rudy, a truly glorious Golden Retriever and the finest and truest sidekick a girl could ask for, died suddenly one day last year. My heart is still sore from that loss.

I really don’t know how people can withstand the heartache of losing a pet, and just keep getting new ones. (Interestingly, I also seem to have suffered the same PTSD after losing a spouse.)

Okay, I’m pretty sure that I won’t get attached to the bearded dragon the way I did to Rudy. The thing probably won’t go for walks with me in the woods, lie under my desk while I’m working or try to trick me into petting it all the time. It might have similarly bad breath, though.

We’ve had an assortment of critters over the years: First, there were Bonnie and Buster, the hermit crabs that we brought home from the boardwalk when the kids were little and who briefly lived in a world dominated by pink sand and a beautiful purple castle. I would routinely forget about the two of them, though, between the potty training, half days at nursery school and trips to the playground, so Bonnie and Buster just kind of slowly shriveled up and eventually kerplunked out of their bedazzled shells onto the soft, pretty sand.

Then there was Huck the Frog, who lived about a week and then promptly died while he was placed under our friends’ care when we went out-of-town (He was already looking a little peaked when we dropped him off and then our pals were stuck with wrapping Huck up and keeping him in their freezer until our return. How do you say “thank you” for that sad timing?).

Then there was Chester the Guinea Pig – aka Dodo – routinely ignored by his caretakers, and then doomed when I banished him (her?) to live in the basement, where he/she quickly passed on and fossilized until I came upon the grisly scene one day. We did have a beautiful ceremony, though, commemorating Dodo’s life here on earth and he/she is now shaded for eternity by a gorgeous hydrangea bush.

Then there were the two white mice, whose names I never knew and who, I recently learned, were given the run of the girls’ dollhouse for their daily workout.

Shiver.

I don’t even remember how those two died.

Obviously, the takeaway from all of these experiences is that kids can’t take care of their own pets and I’m not much better. I should stick to killing houseplants.

So, when my oldest child, who I truly love but is maybe not the most thoughtful of people, got a bee in his bonnet last summer that he needed a lizard, I was adamant that the thing was not coming into my house. Aside from the obvious issue that I would be constantly worried that it would slither out of its tank and make its way into my bed, I just couldn’t have any more blood on my hands.

I relented when I saw how the cause united the four children.

“You never let us have pets,” they shouted in unison and then drove off and shortly returned smugly bearing a cardboard PetCo box carrying a bright yellow gekko named Gordon.

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And since then, my eldest has been trying to make his lizard my problem.

By the end of last summer, he decided maybe Gordon should stay here and not head off to college with him, but I made sure that the Gekko and his tank were firmly packed in our SUV when we moved my son into his apartment off-campus in August.

My son has since discovered that keeping something alive takes work, and he has to keep hauling the thing and its accoutrements back and forth for school breaks. He has also learned that some college girls get weirded-out when they end up in some guy’s room late at night featuring a dimly-lit tank littered with frightened crickets. It’s creepy.

So I headed downstairs with my little guy hot on my heels to talk to Jack F’s mom and tell her that it was really nice but I just don’t want to take care of anything else right now.

I watched his face crumple a little, but when I hung up, I suggested that maybe he adopt his brother’s reptile instead. An olive branch, to be sure.

“Mom,” he cried, “This is, like, my only chance to have a bearded dragon. Do you know how cool they are?”

And frankly, I don’t. I just know there’s the word “dragon” is involved and I’m nervous.

My workaround was to try to get his father to take in the soon-to-be-homeless critter, but he wisely texted back, “No thank u.”

And now I’m wondering if I made the right call. If any one of my children is responsible, it’s this guy – even at 10. And while he won’t be able to drive to Petco to buy the crickets and mealworms or whatever disgusting thing a bearded dragon needs to stay alive, he probably would be more on top of its care than some of his siblings were of their pets.

I mean, really, doesn’t he deserve the chance to kill something like the rest of us?

 

 

 

 

 

Tradition

IMG_2597I ran out to the CVS in town around dinnertime last week to pick up some graduation cards and on the way home, I drove past the middle school and immediately began to cry.

Sloping up the school’s lawn, in front of the big white gazebo and under a perfect June sky, were the familiar blue plastic folding chairs that are hauled out of storage annually to set the stage for what has become one of my favorite nights of the year.

In short time, those seats would be filled by moms, dads, siblings and grandparents of the graduating eighth grade class. They’d be flanked by teachers, friends and well-wishers standing along the sides to witness yet another generation of kids move on from our school community. This year I even noticed one couple sitting off to the side in beach chairs like they were at a soccer game, just taking it in.

I went with two of my kids to cheer on our neighbor and we stood watching the graduates slowly walk in pairs from the red brick school across the lawn where they gathered in front of the gazebo.

We clapped and hooted for younger siblings of kids my older children had graduated with and we pointed out dresses we liked or how grown up some of the boys looked, all spiffy in their jackets and ties. Between the three of us, we knew who a lot of the kids were.

In our small town, which graduates around 85 kids a year, the graduation dress code dictates that the girls wear long white or pastel dresses and the boys wear white dinner jackets.

Before any of my own children had graduated, I thought the notion of little boys wearing rented tuxedos was ludicrous, and considered starting a campaign to change the dress code to a navy jacket and khakis.

But then my own son walked across the lawn looking smart in his fancy white jacket, joining the legion of young men who had graduated from our middle school and carrying on the tradition, and I was hooked.

Before the ceremony, they gather the kids together to take a photo of the graduating class lined up in front of the school, capturing one of the last moments of their childhood. That iconic picture will soon hang in the school’s hallway, just past the main entrance, joining a long line of graduating classes dating well over 50 years. Rows and rows of young girls with their hair just so and the boys with red roses pinned to their lapels have smiled for the camera.

So far three of my children have taken part in that tradition and their pictures are among the collection lining the school’s main entrance, where they will remain, frozen in time, with thousands of other children, many of whom eventually move back to town and continue the cycle with their own children.

And I’d like to be frozen too. I want to remain in that sweet slice of time.

So when my eyes filled with tears at the sight of all those blue chairs, it wasn’t for my children that I cried.

It was for me.

I cried because I don’t ever want this tradition to end for us. I want to spend one day every June feeling utterly entrenched in a community watching a beloved tradition unfold. I want to know who the girl is giving the speech or the boy who’s playing the piano and know exactly who their parents are and what street they live on.

I’ve loved raising my children in a small town and being immersed in my community. It’s been so satisfying being a part of something so much greater than me and taking part in so many traditions.

When my parents split up the summer between sixth and seventh grades, everything I knew, any traditions we had, came to a screeching halt. I left the tiny Catholic school that I had attended since first grade and we moved to anther part of the state and my mom got remarried. It was like the rug had been pulled out from under me and it took me years to regain my footing.

So when my own marriage came undone five years ago, I didn’t want our four children to feel as untethered as I had at 12. So utterly disconnected from everything I had known.

And for the most part, we kept it together. We stayed in our house and the kids still went to the same schools with the same friends and could count on third grade violin recitals and Civil War Day in the seventh grade.

I cried a second time earlier that day last week, when I went to the elementary school in town one last time to see my youngest child “graduate” from the fourth grade in anticipation of moving over to the middle school in September.

My two teenage daughters and their dad joined me for the ceremony that morning and the girls and I linked arms and walked down the school’s hallways to the gym one last time. I started to tear up at the sight of the artwork hanging along the walls and the little backpacks lined up outside the classroom doors and thought of the thousands of times I must have walked those halls over the last 15 years on my way to conferences or to help the kids celebrate a holiday or the end of school.

At the end of the ceremony, we all moved outside the school’s entrance to “clap” the class out. Another new tradition, the fourth grade walks through the school one last time en masse while the younger grades applaud as they file by.

My 16-year-old and I stood with the crowd waiting outside for the class to emerge and stared up at the school. We agreed it had been a great place for singing in countless concerts, dressing up like pilgrims or counting pumpkin seeds and making homemade applesauce, and she put her head on my shoulder and we cried that it was over.

“We had a good run,” I said and she nodded and we looked up to see the kids come out the front door and the crowd began to clap.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

less-than-stellar moments in parenting

IMG_1721Today was my final drop off at the elementary school my four children have attended since 1998 and the era ended just as I imagined, with me shouting at my 10-year-old right before he exited the vehicle.

Awesome.

He was just trying to be festive on this second-to-last-day-of-school, plugging a cord into my iPhone to play his go-to song, Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky.” And he wanted it loud. Really loud.

So the whole five-minute ride to school we went back-and-forth, turning the music up and then down, but as we approached a guard crossing a little girl running alongside her bike in front of our car, I snapped.

“Turn it down!” I barked, and he did, but I saw his face redden and eyes get glassy when he shot me a what-is-your-prolem kind of look.

We drove the last quarter-mile to school in uncomfortable silence, our two young neighbors  sitting quietly in the back, and when they got out of the car, no one said anything.

Usually we joke as they all scramble out, dragging bulky backpacks and instruments over the seats, and I always say “Good-bye” and wish them a good day.

Not today. Today they got out quickly and quietly, my son giving me one last glare before he slammed the passenger door and started walking towards the school.

So what haven’t I learned in all these years living with young children? That they can be slow and get easily distracted? That staying on schedule is not a priority? That sometimes they just want to open the windows and play the music really loud?

You’d think, given the number of children I have and the amount of time I’ve spent with them, that I’d be more chill by now. That I’d recognize a kid just being a kid when he’s sitting right next to me.

I am reminded that being a mom never gets easier. You never get to the point where you know how to behave in any given situation with your kid and screw ups can occur when you least expect them.

I only hope that I avoid being a diva on their graduation and wedding days. That seems like a reasonable goal.

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fuck fear

My girlfriend emailed me this video yesterday and had written “Fuck Fear” in the subject line and I was inspired not just by the whole “Lean In” thing but by the sentiment of those two words combined.

I’m tired of being afraid. Of not feeling good enough. And I have to keep reminding myself, “If not now, when?”

Luckily, just looking at myself in the mirror nowadays is a reminder that I am not the girl I used to be, when I see the slight sag in my belly while I’m sitting drying my hair or the deep wrinkle creating a slash down the side of my cheek.

And I will be very disappointed with myself if I don’t at least TRY to live the life I want to live before it’s too late.

So I started this year off by announcing to my therapist early in January (thus going on the record) that I was no longer fucking around and had three goals for my year:

  1. To concentrate on my writing.
  2. To go on an adventure.
  3.  To to be open to love.

And while, as noted previously, I haven’t been super-proactive in the love department, I’ve actually followed through on the other two.

Obviously, at long last I got it together and launched the blog and while I don’t post as often as I’d like to, I’ve been pretty regular with my writing. And now that I’ve conquered that part of the equation, I’ve decided to throw my hat into the official blogger ring and attend the BlogHer conference in Chicago and hobnob with fellow over-sharers in July.

(Sidebar: I knew it was a sign I should attend when BlogHer announced that Sheryl Sandberg would be their keynote speaker.)

And in August, right before I say hello to 47, I will spend a week sailing around the Dodocanese Islands on a small boat surrounded by strangers on what I hope is the adventure I’ve been longing for yet tired of waiting to find someone to share it with.

So, I say, “Fuck you” to fear (or try to, at least) and not only do I encourage my daughters to take risks and believe in themselves, but my boys as well.

My youngest son, who’s 10, learned that this morning when we found ourselves scrambling, once again, to get him out the door to an early saxophone lesson. It’s been the bane of our existence the entire school year, getting him to the weekly lesson and practicing at home a few times a week. It’s all led to him feeling inadequate as the other kids have improved and he continues to struggle with the instrument.

So I looked into his big eyes this morning as we sat parked in front of the school, — and really, you’ve never seen such bright blue eyes — just brimming with tears, and I assured him that he could be just as good as those other kids, he just needed to get serious and practice hard before next week’s concert.

And then I told him what I named this essay  and to dry his tears and get out there and give it his all.

Because life is an equal opportunity challenger, as we are reminded is this quote that I’ve been loving by Teddy Roosevelt delivered over 100 years ago:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again … who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

My little guy got out of the car and walked towards the school’s front entrance, weighed down by the instrument case in one hand and a backpack stuffed with about 20 pounds of text books and pretzels, hanging from his back. About 10 steps from the front door he turned around and gave me a little wave and then opened the door and entered the arena.

stinky way to start the day

IMG_2483I found it in the refrigerator yesterday as I was digging out the half and half for my early-morning coffee.

There it was, sitting quietly next to the pancake mix and Frank’s buffalo sauce, like a time bomb waiting to explode.

I had sent my son to the market the day before to pick up something we needed for dinner and told him he should also buy sandwich fixings for lunch this week. He’s starting his summer job working for a landscaper and I knew he could barely afford the gas to drive to work each day, much less buying lunch.

“Get some of their good ham,” I suggested. “Or maybe a container of pulled pork.”

And while he did take my advice and get the pork, he also bought something that is banned from my house. Like, even my ex-husband, who was not great with boundaries, knew it was off limits.

It’s fucking tunafish. There’s a big, oozing tub of it on the lower shelf of my fridge and I can’t stop thinking about it.

It freaks me out.

If I ever got, like, a piece of it on my hand, I’d have to chop it off.  It is my mortal enemy.

I worked in a deli in college and had made it clear that I did not get involved with the freaky vat of tuna for subs (or egg salad, for that matter). If you were working with me, you just knew that when an order for tuna-anything came in, you would be slathering the stuff on a roll and not me.

I found myself working with a friend one weekend afternoon our senior year, and although we were sorority sisters and had lived together the year before, she was having none of my tuna-bullshit.

An order came in for a tuna sub and she turned to me and asked me to make it. I balked.

“Make the fucking sub,” she instructed, and I knew I was being difficult and irrational, but I was actually afraid of the stuff.

In the end, it turns out I was even more afraid of her, and found myself scooping the smelly brown glop from a tub and smearing it on a sub roll.

Traumatizing.

On a recent flight to San Francisco with the kids, a family seated a few rows behind us – reluctant, it seemed, to pony-up the cash for inflight dining snackboxes – cracked open their lunches from home and the smell of tuna immediately filled the cabin.

It was all I could do not to turn around and give them the hairy eyeball for subjecting 20 rows of passengers to their lunch stench. Selfish.

And now it’s living in my house.

I’ve seen my son make a sandwich. I’ve witnessed the aftermath of debris all over the counter and sandwich matter caught in the teeth of a serrated knife lying in the sink. I don’t know if I could handle bits of tuna lying on my granite counter or perhaps dripping down the side of the container and threatening to infect the innocent pint of strawberries sitting nearby in the frig.

My first instinct when I saw the tub yesterday was to quickly wrap it up in a Target bag and throw it out in the trash in the garage.

“Don’t do that,” advised my daughter, who was almost as freaked out as I was by the discovery, but definitely more pragmatic. “It would be such a waste.”

And I know the tuna-buyer would certainly tell me I’m being a baby (which I’m sure he will after he reads this) and that’s possibly true, but he’s got his own list of of phobias (used Band Aids and hair in the drain, come to mind).

So maybe he should understand how bugged I am.

In the time it took for me to write this, I’ve heard him banging around downstairs making lunch and getting ready for another day working in the hot sun. I hope his sandwich is especially delicious when he eats it in a few hours.

And if he ever were to ask me how much I loved him, I wouldn’t say, “I love you from here to the moon and back.”

I’ll tell him, “I love you so much, I let you keep tunafish in my refrigerator.”

Because that is truly love.

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winter is coming (and it’s only memorial day)

P1000028I was lying on a bed in a hotel room in the-middle-of-nowhere Virginia last week, waiting for my daughter to finish her final exam for the semester, when I posted the following on my Facebook wall: “Winter is coming.”

And I know that Memorial Day is here, and maybe I’ve been watching way too much Game of Thrones lately (hello, Khal Drogo), but I just couldn’t shake that imminent sense of doom.

Because like the good people of the House of Stark living in the north on the HBO series, I know that hard times are coming. On the show, they’re always ending conversations with the ominous, “Winter is coming,” tagline. Only now I totally get what it’s like to see the shadows quickly creeping towards you. I might start guzzling wine like Cersei before too long.

The summer months have always been challenging for me and now I fear the seasonal shift will be even more pronounced as I go from tending to the day-to-day needs of only two children back to the full load of four.

It’s like someone lifted a giant weight off my shoulders only to sneak it back on while I was folding laundry.

I don’t want to assume I’m doing what’s expected of me, just minding my own business while working on my laptop or turning ground turkey into one magical thing or another, only to turn around and get my head lopped off, Ned Stark-style, by some terrible enfant.

And so far, it hasn’t been terrible. My oldest son, at 20, seems to have come to terms with many of the conditions for living with his family and has been seen clearing dinner dishes and wiping counters and I’ve heard he might have even pet the cat once or twice. And his sister, who’s 19, has come in handy picking up and dropping off her younger siblings to work or baseball or sometimes she even drives me if I want to have a cocktail or two. I have also hired the older two to handle the cleaning of our pool,which  currently resembles the Black Lagoon, a task that has always fallen under my purview. It’s time to pass that time-consuming baton to those who actually have time.

Don’t get me wrong, though. Things aren’t like all rainbows and puppy dogs over here. I came down this morning to find a number of shoes lying around the family room floor and a pair of bunched up socks stuffed behind an ottoman. There’s generally a few bowls sitting in the sink, the remnants of a late night snack of ice cream or spaghetti and sauce caking the surface and much of our stainless steel sink, to greet me each morning.

And I hesitate to mention the big dent that recently appeared in the rear of our car.

It could be worse though, according to a girlfriend, whose two college kids brought home ants and mumps, respectively.

And I know it pissed the older kids off when I wrote about this before, and although they are the divas of the brood (NOTE: If you are reading this, my loves, don’t even pretend this isn’t true. It’s part of your charm.), it’s not really the specific people. It’s quantity over quality in this matter.

There have been some bright spots. I looked out the kitchen window one day earlier this week and saw the two older kids sitting in beach chairs in the backyard with their noses buried in books, and for some reason, I was not annoyed. If they were sprawled on the couch in the middle of the afternoon watching Vampire Diaries or Adventure Time, I think I would screamed the way I did when I found a certain someone still asleep at 12:30 yesterday afternoon.

But it was nice to see that all those nights of reading to them when they were young, learning for the thousandth time what happens when you give a moose a muffin or put a sister up for sale, weren’t for nothing.

So I’ll put up with the shoes scattered all over the mudroom and the daily “What’s for dinner?” because it’s a part of the package of being their mom. And aside from the fantasy of shipping all, maybe a few, okay just one of them off to the proverbial Wall, Nights Watch-style, what are my options?

Oh, the things I do for love.

 

 

 

 

Five Reasons Mother’s Day Was Pretty Okay

IMG_2445 I used to joke that Mother’s Day was not for mothers. If it were, I reasoned, moms would be able to slip away, guilt-free, and spend the day free from butt wiping and nugget baking or whatever was the urgent-need-du-jour.

But that never seemed to be the case. There were brunches to attend and pasta necklaces to wear.

I went to visit a college friend over Mother’s Day weekend a few years ago and my kids and their dad were, like, totally insulted. How could I choose a weekend of shopping, glasses of wine and catching up with a dear friend over them asking me, repeatedly, what I wanted to do on Mother’s Day?

If Mother’s Day was truly all about giving moms a break, we would just be able to switch our OFF DUTY lights on like yellow cab and ignore all those frantically waving arms trying to get our attention.

But somewhere along the way, Mother’s Day has started to seem a little more special to me. I look forward to seeing what the kids have up their sleeves. And I don’t know if it’s because they’re older or that their dad’s not around to pick up the holiday slack, but the kids have really stepped up their Mother’s Day game.

Or maybe it’s just that I’ve learned to keep my expectations low. That could be part of the equation, too.

But even with only two kids living at home this Mother’s Day, I felt loved and appreciated – if only for a day – by my people.

Forthwith, the top five reasons why my Mother’s Day was pretty okay this year:

IMG_2439REASON #5: My house did not catch fire.

He might have had to get up at 6:30 a.m. to pull it all together and in the meantime, put everyone in the house at risk while we slept, but my 10-year-old son can whip up a solid batch of scrambled eggs for breakfast in bed. They may have been served cold and arrived earlier than I planned on waking, but I could feel the love rising off the plate. And, he remembered I liked hot sauce.

IMG_2436REASON #4: Love and candy from miles away.

Although they weren’t home for the big day, my two college kids had the foresight and wherewithal to send me flowers and candy that arrived Saturday. Was the effort likely spearheaded by my daughter? Probably. Were the flowers ultimately bought with money I had deposited in their bank accounts? Of course. But could you ever put a price on the enclosed card that declared, “We miss you so much mom!”? No way.

IMG_2442REASON #3: I was a happy guest.

My sister hosted our family for lunch and it was lovely, filled with lots of siblings, our mom and steak. I even brought along a cake. But the party prep and cleanup were handled by my sister and her husband and for that, I was supremely grateful.

 

IMG_2443REASON #2:  The ultimate gift from a teenager.

The 15-year-old handed me a card with an envelope addressed “Mother Dearest” in kidnapper-style cut out letters (she knows I am a sucker for that form of correspondence).

Inside was a post-it note announcing I was about to embark upon a scavenger hunt, and off I went, searching for the next post it note marked with a clue and a letter. Once they were all collected, I unscrambled the letters and found they spelled: “Check your Facebook.”

525736_10151589668497173_1625768403_nI grabbed my phone and found a friend request from this daughter who had made it her mission to avoid being linked to me on social media, despite her two older siblings succumbing over the last few years. And while she also got me a gift card for a massage, don’t tell her that that was just icing on the cake. She had me at Facebook.

REASON #1: A crack in the wall.

My ex husband and I have had a less-than-ideal split. We married way too young and had different visions of what a committed relationship should look like but somewhere in between the arguing and long stretches of silence, we brought four children into this world. And he held my hand and fed me ice chips and loves those people as much as I do.

While we were married, he had to buy me flowers and have the kids make me a card. It was part of the deal. But now, with all that obligation long out the window, any gesture from him is seen in a different light.

So when I saw the text from him wishing me a Happy Mother’s Day first thing Sunday morning, I felt that maybe there was hope for us after all. Like Reagan and Gorbachev, maybe we could find a way to tear down that wall, if not for us, then for the good of our people. And that, would be the best gift of all.

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mommy math

images-3I have a confession to make: although I purport to be this harried mother-of-four – making a sandwich with one hand while blogging with the other — the truth is that over the last nine months two of those kiddos have been far away at school.

The brother and sister are back-to-back grade-wise so he graduated and left for college in 2011 and she followed suit the next year.

And do you know what I’ve learned in that time?

That basically I was a fucking asshole for carrying on the way I did way back when about NEEDING four children. Seriously, ask my former husband, I cried.

Having two kids is AMAZING. Seriously, hats off to all of you who had the good sense to stop at a pair. It’s easy street.

There’s just less of everything: laundry, shoes scattered in the mudroom, food crumbs in the pantry, plastic water bottles in the recycling and definitely a reduction in personalities. That right there is worth the cost of two college tuitions.

So I read with interest a newly-released survey by the geniuses at the Today Show this week reporting that parents with three children are seemingly more stressed out than parents with four or more children.

“Call it the Duggar effect,” the article on Today.com proclaims. “Once you get a certain critical mass of kids, life seems to get a bit easier.”

Please, somebody, help me do that math. Because as far as I’m concerned, it’s a numbers game, people. And even though I majored in English and couldn’t convert a fraction to decimals if you paid me, I clearly understand that 2 children + 2 children = more of everything.

Like, get in a cage with three monkeys and throw another one in and it just compounds the amount of poop, screaming and jumping around you have to put up with.

Here’s the kind of math I understand: Remember Schoolhouse Rock’s Four-Legged Zoo? Just like the animals in that cartoon zoo, all those feet (that need expensive sneakers), mouths (that need palate expanders and braces) and ears (that don’t hear a fucking word you say) just multiply with the more children that you add.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGfKbo770uw

And things get dangerous (usually for the children) the more you have if,  like me, you tend to leave one behind every now and then.

Like once I drove off in our minivan and about 10 minutes into the drive told the oldest (probably 7 at that time) to sit up in his seat way in the back, only to hear his sister say, “He’s not here.”

Another time I took the two girls to Petco to stock up on dog food and we loaded the giant bag into the car and my older daughter and I got in and I started to drive away. We drove right past the other sister, who had gone to return the shopping cart. She just stood there, watching us drive.

“I was kidding!” I assured her as she climbed in the car teary-eyed. I could tell by her face she wasn’t buying it.

But the fourth kid is the one who always seems to be slipping through the cracks. To date, I have left him alone in a neighbor’s basement while we all went out to deliver Thanksgiving dinners to the needy (he said he alternated his time between watching television and going outside to bounce on the trampoline). And two years ago we dropped him off for baseball practice only to discover two hours later when I picked him up that there had been no practice (he spent some time at the playground, apparently).

So, do I regret having four children? Don’t be silly. Being their mom has made me a better person and my life feels full and blessed with them in it.

But do I enjoy only having to cook for two kids every night and clean up our little end of the kitchen island that we can now comfortably fit around?

Well, you know what they say: Three is a magic number.

 

 

 

 

too much information

It happened one day last week.

There I was, minding my own business in my kitchen while frittering away precious moments on Facebook, when I heard the ding of a text hit my cell.

I looked and saw my ex-husband’s name pop up and felt that familiar spark of adrenaline as a panic attack began to spread through my chest. He can be a serious text bully, and had spent a lot of time sending me venomous thoughts wirelessly during our divorce. To this day, I experience PTSD symptoms every time I see a text come in from him, even though nowadays most of our exchanges are benign and sometimes even pleasant.

But I’d been waiting for this one.

He  was wondering, via text, what our children must think of my newsletter “or whatever u call it.” He’d been hearing about it “week after week”  from others, asking him how he felt about his ex-wife writing about him and the kids.

That’s funny, I thought, my friends had been asking me the same thing. Well, now we know he’d at least heard about my blog.

“Thanks 4 that. I’m sure the kids will thank u 4 that some day too,” he finished, adding what time he’d pick up our youngest for baseball practice.

Here’s the funny part: My children are my blog’s biggest fans. They are usually the first ones  to like a post on Facebook. They always send encouraging notes after reading a post and get on me when it’s been a while since I’ve written something.

Yesterday, my oldest told me my most recent post had him “crying lol.”

“Great writing,” he texted.

When I wrote recently about my gift for getting pregnant and several subsequent miscarriages, he told me how “emotional” he felt reading it and was promoting my blog to all of his friends via Facebook.

“Writing too good for people not to see,” he wrote.

My heart swelled inside my chest, Grinch-style.

This, from the child who challenged me from Day 1. Who at times made me question myself as a mother and a person. But to be honest, he’s the oldest and had always been under my mommy microscope. Nonetheless,  I was thrilled.

But I admit, I am always nervous before posting something for all the world to see. I never want my children to feel like I’ve thrown them under the blogger bus. And though I know I have the propensity to overshare – to friends, family, complete strangers – I feel like I (usually) have a good sense of what really should stay private.

Things no one needs to read about online.

I went to hear Anna Quindlen speak at the 92Street Y a few months ago and someone in the audience asked her what her rules were for writing about her children. Quindlen said she was sensitive to it and as a rule has the subject review the piece before publication.

I, on the other hand, am not so democratic.

Of course, I have gotten a couple of texts from my college son complaining that I’d crossed the line (one time was valid and the other he completely misread). Even my post – complete with photos – about my daughter’s pigsty of a bedroom didn’t elicit any e-message to cease and desist. And that girl can be very intimidating when threatened.

My little guy walked by me while I was working on my laptop recently and spied the photo of his handywork mutilating the sheetrock in our garage as the picture accompanying one of my posts. He stopped, stared over my shoulder, and said, “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

As for my former husband, well, therein lies the rub. On the one hand, the man has provided enough copy, as Nora Ephron would say, for a lifetime of blog posts. But we had a whole herd of children together and although our marriage didn’t last, I believe in my heart that he truly did the best that he could at the time.

I mean, don’t we all?

And I don’t want to speak badly about him for my kids’ sake, too. Who wants to be that ex-wife? But that doesn’t mean that sometimes I don’t want to take a little swipe. Like, I’m not perfect.

I think I subscribe to what Epron wrote in Heartburn, “Because if I tell the story, I control the version. Because if I tell the story I can make you laugh, and I would rather have you laugh at me than feel sorry for me. Because if I tell the story I can get on with it.”

Interestingly, my 19-year-old daughter and I were chatting on Facebook yesterday after she read my most recent post and she started getting all Jan Brady and complained, “You only write about the boys.”

“Really?” I asked. “You really want me to write about you?”

“Of course,” she replied. “But only the good things.”

take the plunge

I know I’ve said in the past that one of the few times I missed having a man around the house was when it snowed.

That is not true.

I also wish there was somebody else around here (there doesn’t even need to be a penis involved) to help out when I see dead things floating in the pool and when a toilet starts to overflow.

Which seems to be happening around here a lot lately.

Now, I’ll take responsibility for failing to mention to my children that toilet bowls aren’t like really fancy trash cans. You can’t just put anything in there and flush without thinking there are going to be repercussions months, or sometimes even seconds, down the line.

I walked into my own bathroom last week (which now everyone uses because of the kitty litter box lurking in the kids’ bathroom) to find mounds of paper towels filling the bowl. One of the kids had cleaned something off the bathroom mirror and instead of tossing it into the trashcan literally one millimeter away, she opted to dispose of it in the toilet (yet failed to seal the deal with a flush).

Having grown up living with a temperamental septic tank, I was incredulous that anyone would even consider flushing anything but toilet paper.

“How was I supposed to know?” asked the culprit, rather nonplussed, and more than a little irritated that her mom was being such a freak about the toilet.

I also didn’t think I had to mention to the girls, in this day and age – what with all the signs posted in like every goddamn public restroom stall you sit down in – that only toilet paper should be disposed of in the toilet.

The girls were shocked to learn that feminine products, no matter how small and seemingly streamlined they may appear to be,  cannot be disposed of through the toilet. “Wait, what?” said one. “That’s stupid.”

Stupid, perhaps. But only until toilet water is starting to pour down the sides of the bowl. Then, as you are trying to remember where the fucking plunger is, it starts to make perfect sense.

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