The End of Motherhood?

love letters

He was right, of course.  I was tempted. 

But I couldn't read his text messages. 

I could, however, read my own.

Herewith, a pretty complete sampling, from oldest to most recent:

From Middle:  I hate everything.

From Mate: We have arrived.  I meditated in splendid accommodations.  I love you.

From Oldest: July 19th 330 doctor chin.  Will u write that down pleeeeeeeeaaaaase?

From Mate: This is so much fun!!!!!

From Middle: U kno im going 2 the waterpark 2morow nite

From Oldest: Just bought tickets.  Will work out finances tmrw

From Youngest: Im in the movie

From Oldest: Can you help us with directions to that barbeque place in kansas city?

From Oldest: K

From Oldest: Pulled pork sandwich

From Oldest: I also think I have fleas from the motel last night

From Oldest: Ya

From Youngest: Get on the ball orthadontist wise

From Middle:  Out w....

From Oldest: Takeoff kiss.

From Oldest: What's wrong?

From Oldest: Ohhh no

From Oldest: She's the most vulnerable dog that ever was

***

She is.  She was picked up by animal control as a puppy, wandering the streets, then was adopted by a woman who sent her back to the pound, then she joined our family.  I assured the boys that getting a mutt would prevent us from having to deal with the many medical complications that plague purebred dogs.

Or not.

She got a piece of glass lodged in her eye (we have seen a veterinary ophthalmologist - who knew there was such a thing?), she tore her ACL and had knee surgery, got irregular heartbeats from the anesthesia  which necessitated a visit from the cardiologist, swallowed a small piece of rubber during a playdate and had abdominal surgery, had numerous paw abrasions that required even more numerous bandages, had her other knee reconstructed, just finished rehab and, after a week of hiking full strength, has...pneumonia.

If she were only her medical problems, it would be hard to make a case for keeping on keeping on with the ERs, the medications, the endless bills.  But, Miss Biss also:

Helps us do our homework.

Wakes us up in the morning.

Reminds us all to relax.

Waits for us when we are slow...

And, oh yeah, loves every single one of us, every single day.

Keep your fingers crossed for her, OK?

alrighty then...

Youngest was invited to a party tonight.  It sounded like it might be a tad more rowdy than the normal eighth grade affair so I thought I would check in with him about the ground rules. 

"Here's the thing," I said, "My instinct is to just trust you.  I think you are completely able to handle whatever comes up at these things.  What do you think of that?"

"Mom," he said, looking at me very seriously.  "You can have a lot of confidence in me..."

I swear he paused here for dramatic effect before continuing...

"...because, unlike most people, I don't give in to peer pressure."

Alrighty then.

nobody ever said life was fair

One of my mother's favorite sayings, right behind "smell the privet", was "nobody ever said life was fair."

Though I have been known to point out beautiful things to a carload of children with great regularity, I never adopted the "Nobody ever said life was fair" response to complaints about the inherent injustice of, say, my choice of who gets to take out the garbage today.

Perhaps that is why my children have each developed and maintained a very keenly calibrated sense of fairness. 

For example, I was on the phone with Oldest yesterday when surprised me with the happy news that he has gotten a job!  He will be DJing at a local bar on Thursday nights with a friend.  He was telling me about the whole exciting endeavor when he mentioned, in passing, that the bouncers at the bar this year were "totally unfair."  Last year, he reported, the bouncers were great but "everyone is complaining" about this years crop and how unfair they are. 

"How were they fairer last year than they are this year," I inquired innocently.

"Oh," he replied blithely, "last year, if you had a fake ID, they let you in."

what's not to like?

It is necessary but not sufficient to love your child.  Every now and then, you have to dislike him too.

Every now and then you have to look across the car or the kitchen or your bedroom and hear your own amazed voice saying to yourself, "I don't like him. I actually DO-NOT-LIKE him!"

Ah, reader, you might well be shaking your head right now.  You might well be thinking just a tad smugly to yourself, "That's never going to happen to me.  It is not possible.  I could never dislike something I love so much.  Not me.  Not this child.  Not us."

You might be right.  But I wouldn't count on it if I were you.

Hey, even though it happened with both his brothers, even I never really believed it would happen with youngest.  He's my baby for God's sake. Shouldn't that give us some sort of Get-Out-of-Adolescent-Angst-Jail-Free card?

Uh, no.  Lately, Youngest has been fighting with me about every...little...thing...it...seems...the...more...minute...the...better.  And he does not stop.  He does not let go.  I'd call him a pit bull if that weren't, in our house, a term of the highest endearment.

And I find myself wondering, as I drive or use the word fucking in our argument or slam the bedroom door,  "When and how did this happen?  What about all those years when I carried you on my hip, shielded your face from the wind, when I watched you sleep just to see the fan of your eyelashes against your cheek and pushed you, you, you on a swing?  Who would ever imagine it possible to feel that all that love could  be wiped clean by something as banal as not liking. 

And Youngest, I'd feel really sorry about it if I didn't know that you are just as surprised at not liking me as I am at not liking you.

And so we fight.  And then I'll go into your room before bed, and tousle your hair, and lean down and give it a kiss and inhale the thirteen-year-old musk and say, "Hey thirteen, I don't like it when we fight."

And you, thirteen, you say to me, "It's like rowing, Mom.  You take a stroke and let it go."

And then, just like that, I fall in like again.

dilemma of the day...is it time to let the Easter bunny hop on down the bunny trail for good?

I was talking with my mother the other day when she asked me casually, "What are you doing for Easter?"  I pulled a complete blank. It was almost as if I didn't know what she was talking about.  To buy some time, I asked when it is this year.  She told me, but I can't remember what she said.

That is how not into Easter I am.

I had not even thought of Easter until that moment.  It's just not on my radar. For one thing, we don't go to church.  I was brought up Catholic and thus am familiar with the old saw that Easter is a far holier holiday than Christmas, but I am so disgusted with the Catholic church that it has tainted the few - make that the one - positive association I have with Catholicism.  And any magic the Easter bunny once held for my children has long since dissipated like an early morning mist.

If I purchase gifts, my children will happily open them.  If I go to the trouble of buying three dozen eggs and assorted dye kits, hard boiling the eggs, laying out the newspaper, mixing the vinegar with the dye in appropriately-sized cups, and laying the entire creative endeavor out on the kitchen counter, they will happily dye a few eggs.  At least three minutes worth.  If I decorate the house with the paper easter eggs I have bought at the flea market in years past, they might notice them. If I place assorted jelly beans in the paper eggs, they will definitely notice them.  If I pull out the easter baskets and fill them with foil-wrapped chocolate eggs and life-sized chocolate replicas of the Easter bunny himself, they will happily consume them.  And if I make an Easter ham, mashed potatoes, asparagus and lemon souffle, they will merrily scarf that down too.

There is no doubt in my mind that everyone would enjoy Easter if I decide to create it.  But the question for me today is, should I?  Or is it time to let the Easter bunny hop on down the bunny trail for good?

Sometimes I feel that as a mother, I am the keeper of traditions that then end up keeping me.  This has, oh, everything, to do with the fact that I do all the work.  And when I am all caught up in the buying and the wrapping and the decorating and the buying of the stuff that I didn’t buy the first time, I lose myself and my own work.

Apart from the fact that it consumes me for at least a week, there are other perfectly good reasons to not celebrate Easter. To wit, its now wildly commercial nature and the fact that we are  completely non-religious.

I do want celebratory moments in our family life.  But do they need to be linked to ancient traditions that I don't espouse?

Part of me wishes I could take the Waldorf route and celebrate the equinox, or whatever planetary event it is that is supposed be the harbinger of spring, but I really don't have it in me.

I decided to check in with Youngest and get his read on the situation. As he dropped his backpack and opened the refrigerator for an after-school snack, I asked cautiously, "Youngest, do you even care if we celebrate Easter this year?"

"What!" he asked with a slightly panicked look.  "When is it?"  He seemed worried that we had somehow already missed it.

"I don't know exactly," I replied vaguely, "sometime over vacation."

He knew instantly where this conversation was going because he actually pointed his finger at me and declared in a loud voice,  "We WILL be celebrating Easter!  Easter is my favorite holiday ever!"

"You don't even know when it is," I replied mildly.  "How favorite could it be? I was just thinking..."

He interrupted me, "I am ONLY thirteen!  You overestimate people's ages."

He makes a point.  There I go again, prematurely ending motherhood. 

OK. Fine. For at least one more year, the Easter bunny can make a stop at our house.  But I am NOT helping him hide his eggs.

that's so juvenile...

Youngest and I are driving to pick up take-out.  He’s mad at me because I forced him to come.  I didn’t want to have to park.   He will run in and get the food while I idle illegally outside La Salsa.  He deliberately picks a song on the iPod connected to the radio that he knows I will hate.  Head-banging, heavy-metal rock.  I groan. He looks over at me slyly.  I grab the iPod and he grabs it back.

“That’s so juvenile,” I say.

“So what?” he replies, “I am a juvenile.  If I went to jail, I’d go to juvie.”

He stares at me.  What's my excuse?  I shrug. 

What can I say?  Every now and then, time collapses right out from under you.

my bastard child

Anxiety and I are in a real relationship.  We are close.  We are like this. 

We have a bastard child together, Anxiety and I.  Its name is Worry.  I carry Worry in a sling with me everywhere I go.

I worry most about my Oldest.  I’m not exactly sure why.  Sometimes I blame it on the fact that he was 6 1/2 weeks premature.  I worry that he wasn't ready for life and will never recover from being shot into it unprepared.  Sometimes I blame myself for being so vigilant with him.  Once, when he fell hard asleep, as babies do, I was sure I had killed him.  I was sure I had unknowingly snapped his soft neck under my fingers.  Sometimes I blame it on the fact he was the youngest kid in his class for most of his life, and always clung on by his fingertips as his classmates moved blithely ahead.  Sometimes I just blame him for not grabbing life, for not allowing himself, as James Merrill wrote, “to be lived by life.”   

Yesterday, the iChat bubble bounced on my screen.  It was Oldest.  Here is what he wrote:

***

ive noticed that the easiest way to stay in the present is to notice everything you can about the present

and try to find beauty in everything.

***

I think it may be time to untie the sling, set my bastard child down, and walk away.   

My Valentine's Day, or, as Middle's friends like to call it...

…National Premarital Sex Day.

              ***
I had the following iChat exchange with Oldest:
Me:  I have two gift certificates to Itunes that I gave you that you never cashed
Him:  tatd be nice
Me: What’ll you give me for the serial numbers?
HIm: ha
Me:  You haven’t even asked me to be your Valentine!
Him:  ha.  be my valentine
Me:  Oh, all right.  If you insist.
Him:  I do.

          ***

Color me an enabler, but today I bought a Valentine’s Day present for Middle to give to his girlfriend.  She is very sweet and  invariably showers him with gifts, writes him adorable notes, and generally expresses her love for him in appropriate holiday-inspired ways.  Though his affections are absolutely equal to hers, he simply does not think about the procurement of gifts.   Though he appreciates the largesse she gives him, the idea that maybe he should reciprocate now and then, well, that doesn’t seem to cross his mind with any regularity - or at least not when he has any money in the bank.  The plotting, hunting and purchasing of gifts is just not on his radar.   But raising boys can teach you truths about men that you never picked up in all your 48 years of dealing with them,  because today, as I handed over my credit card, I really understood that the fact that he doesn’t hand over the swag doesn’t mean he doesn’t love her.   Now there’s a gift.

          ***
Youngest and I shared two small boxes of Sees Candy and then I dropped him off at the orthodontist to get his braces fixed.

jacked iChat

     This afternoon, as Youngest was making his after-school PB & J, I iChatted with Oldest about why he has yet to set up his own ebay account and, even more pressing, what possessed him to bid on a Jurassic Park tshirt.  I then remarked that Youngest had spent the weekend at the California State Junior Classical League Convention.  Before you waste a minute of your time being impressed, I feel obliged to let you know that my Youngest did not sign up for any of the available workshops, which included the always-popular interpretation of Ovid's “Metamorphoses” and a no-doubt sold-out “Gregorian Chant”.   No, my little scholar signed up for the two mandatory tests and then opted for every available sporting event.  Oldest, who back in the day attended a few Latin Conventions himself, asked…

                                                     ###

have fun?

He says it was "hella tight."* He was partying with a lot of high schoolers.

thats ill.** tell him i want details

he says it was "strung up hyphy"***

tell him i like the use of the lingo hyphy, but he should drop hella

how come?****

hyphy is good nor cal lingo. hella is not.  tell him that whenever he feels like saying hella to just say "mad" instead*****

He says he is taking the advice of Kevin Hwa and Melissa Chen, his newfound best friends from 11th grade in norcal.

tell him hella is not good and people will make fun of you if you're anywhere but norcal******

I relay this information to Youngest, who elbows me out of the way and takes over.

thats what it was like during the FIRST two hours of school. now people say it. i'm just cool like that

ha i'm sure you are.  But it does sound stupid... so are u listening to mac dre? and keek the sneek? and e 40?

?*******

they’re all nor cal rappers. they invented hyphy

haha. they suck. ********

                                                       ###

* I want to ask for a definition, or at least a clarification, but restrain myself out of a misplaced and fruitless attempt to appear cool.
** Ditto
***They spend the first three years trying to figure out what you are saying, you spend the rest of your life trying to figure out what they are saying.
****I can no longer restrain myself.
***** I knew all that private school tuition would pay off someday.
******From 3000 miles away, Oldest is actually looking out for his younger brother. Yesss.
*******   Youngest is as lost as I am. This pleases me to a humiliating degree.
******** That's gratitude for ya.

now this is what I call boring

I return to my computer to find the following conversational opener hanging in iChat space...

***

hey

mooom

if i have a sweatshirt thats light green and light grey do i wash it with whites or darks

***

My mantra today is courtesy of Michelle.  Hey, at least he's calling.