"...Quote Long-lost Boyfriend Unquote..."

Turns out not only is a visit from an old friend you haven't seen in nearly two decades a great way to remind yourself just how old you actually are, but if that friend happens to be of the opposite sex, the visit also tends to bring out the immaturity in all those around you. No one has actually whipped out the "_____and _____ sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g" song yet, but it's been on the tips of a couple of tongues and I caught someone humming it earlier today.

Despite the rumors to the contrary (started by none other than my own father*), he is not my "long-lost boyfriend." He was never lost; I've known right where he was all along thanks to occasional updates from a faithful spy and help from 411, back when it was still 555-1212. Further, he was never my boyfriend. Though I would like the record to show that that part was no fault of mine--really it was no fault of his either.

Being an Army brat, I spent my growing-up years hopping from town to town and his was a town I lived in twice. The first time from December of our eighth grade year through March of our ninth grade year and the second for four months during our senior year. Circumstances sent me packing again the January before graduation to a tiny town several hours away. I graduated from the high school in that tiny town surrounded by seventy-one near strangers.

This friend and I met in gym class in eighth grade and shared several other classes during the day as well. We soon found out that we had quite a bit in common. He had recently transferred from another school and, of course, I was a transfer veteran. We were both oldest children with smart mouths and quick tempers. We were both deeply attached to our crotchety grandfathers, both of whom were unwell. We understood each other. We were buddies first and then with hormones muddling things up, there were some near-misses with mushy stuff, especially over the summer at the community pool where clear water, shiny Lycra, emerging curves and the lack of parental supervision put even the most virtuous girls and boys at risk for "naughty" behavior. In ninth grade, we didn't have any classes together and rarely bumped into each other in our fairly large high school. And in spring of that year, my family was off again, per the dictate of the U.S. Army, into the wilds of New Hampshire.

During the two-and-a-half years I spent in New Hampshire, I didn't think of this friend often--there were intervening crushes, of course, and friendships and a part-time job and school--but when I did think of him, there was always a big question mark in my mind and a tinge of regret that things had been left so unresolved between us. When, a few weeks before the start of my senior year, it became clear that the military intended to move us again, my mother set about making arrangements for me to go back to the school where I 'd started high school, the school where this friend was also beginning his senior year. He was not the only reason I went back--I went back because it was familiar at a time when little else was, I went back because I had other friends there with whom I had stayed in touch, I went back because it was easier than going forward to something unknown--but a curiosity about him was on my list of reasons.

Senior year, we stood even less of a chance of running into each other--he was in vocational classes and was out of the building most of the day. Still, I grabbed what I could. I was like a wildlife photographer tracking that elusive species the High School Crush. He has recently asked me, "Instead of stalking me, why didn't you just talk to me?" He told me he'd heard rumors that I liked him, that it might not be purely coincidental that my car was always in the spot next to the friend's truck he rode home in every day. He thought they couldn't possibly be true.

Despite our best efforts to act like complete idiots that fall, we did manage to have several conversations that neither of us ever forgot--including one in a barn basement. He was a cocky kid, he admits it now and probably would've admitted it then. That day, I had somehow found myself in a conversation about his "attitude" with the woman he worked for and my friend, her niece. On a dare, I went out to the barn to tell him that I thought a lobotomy would fix his attitude. We ended up talking for twenty minutes about what had happened in our lives in the almost three years since we'd last had a real conversation. I walked away feeling like he had shown me a side of himself that he didn't let many others see.

And for the next few weeks, I obsessed about what his willingness to "bare his soul" might mean about how he felt about me. I was extremely insecure, though, and I also had been trained by years of Army Bratdom to not get too attached--or to at least not let that attachment show--because all it would do was make the next move harder. In short, I was afraid to pursue whatever might be there because both failure and success could've been equally disastrous.

In January, my living arrangements in his town fell apart through a variety of unconnected events that somehow felt like the Gods of High School Romance were smiting me. So off I went to the tiny town where I knew no one except my family and, along with my suitcase, I packed even more questions about him than I'd had to start with.

This weekend was, in part, an attempt to answer some of those questions. And my questions, at least, are answered. His--the ones I never even knew he had--are covered, too.

There seem to be an awful lot of NEW questions being asked now, though--not by either of us, but by everyone around us. As long as no one regresses to the days of cootie shots, I guess I can live with it.

*I talked to my eleven-year-old niece on the phone Friday evening just before my friend's arrival. She said, "Grandpa called here looking for you. He was wondering when your quote long-lost boyfriend unquote was coming to town. His words--not mine!"

She Ain't What She Used To Be

As if daily life weren't reminder enough, there is nothing quite like spending the weekend with someone you haven't seen in nineteen years to remind you of the ravages of time on your mind and body.

This weekend was the visit from the old friend/crush from high school for whom I wasn't going to buy "real" shoes, wear a skirt or curl my hair (lest I freak out some of my current friends). Happily, none of that is really necessary with him, although he did scare me on the phone the night before he came by saying he was going to go use "Just For Men" haircolor in the shower. I said, "No, don't do that! If you do that, then I'll have to do something and I'm really not wanting to do anything."

Anything I might have done would've been wasted since we spent the whole day Saturday tromping through the woods in state forest lands, including finding probably the only mud in a hundred mile radius--it having been a fairly dry summer in our area. This was boggy-suck-the-shoe-right-off-yer-foot mud, "real" shoes wouldn't have stood a chance.

There are all sorts of things I'll be taking from this weekend, things it may take me a week or two to process (that's probably being foolishly optimistic), but the main thing is something my friend summed up on the phone during the "Just for Men" exchange. He said, "I hope by the end of this weekend, you'll know I'm really still the same person, just older, fatter and balder."

To which I say, "Ditto."

A Mile In Her Shoes

I was watching MTV last week with some assortment of my children. I do that sometimes, both to check in on what they're ingesting via the television set and because, somewhere inside my ever-aging Masked Mom body, there is some elemental part of me that remains sixteen and still kind of likes the stuff on MTV. We were watching an episode of "MADE," a show in which an "average" teenager wants to make some extraordinary change in his or her life and MTV sends out experts and coaches and offers the occasional well-placed product to help make the kid's dream come true. Some of the ones I've seen in the past have involved a self-described geeky kid learning to dance well enough to enter a competition and a moderately popular girl running against the really popular crowd for some homecoming queen-type title. It's all sort of fairy godmother-esque in a more hip, modern way and I've been comforted by the fact that the wishes of high school aged kids are largely the same as they were when I was a high school aged kid.

This last episode we watched, though, struck a whole other chord. Sam, a tomboy, wanted to be "made" into a "girly girl" and get a date for the prom. MTV sent in Rosalie a "beautiful actress and pageant winner" to help whip Samanatha into shape. Sam is introduced to the world of eyelash curlers, eyebrow waxing and high heels. Several times in the month or so they spend together, Sam breaks down crying and threatens to quit the program. The most disturbing scene for me was when Sam was talking to her mother and father about wanting to quit and Sam's mother was literally in tears, very nearly begging Sam not to quit. I couldn't help wondering if it had really been Sam's dream to be a girly girl in the first place.

But there were several other scenes that were almost as upsetting: The "new" Sam blows off her little brother, who was her closest friend, in order to hang out with "girls she admires" (Rosalie's words). When Sam is asked to the prom by her friend Eric, she accepts, but then as she gets "girlier" and attracts the attention of "hot Eric" she decides (partly on the advice of Rosalie and her new friends) to tell friend Eric that she can't go with him--friend Eric's feelings are completely glossed over by everyone involved--there is some lip service paid by "hot Eric" to the other Eric's feelings, but we never get to see friend Eric's reaction on-screen (Sam gave him the news on the phone). Rosalie helps Sam pick out high-heeled shoes and makes Sam wear them in the mall for practice--even though Sam is wearing a tomboy outfit--and when Sam points out that people are laughing at her, Rosalie denies the obvious truth and even tells Sam that the shoes don't hurt "that bad," while holding back tears herself. (That last scene is the second video clip available at the MTV page that's linked above.)

I was a ranting fool by the end of the episode. Any "cool" mom points I had gotten for hanging out watching MTV evaporated in the face of my screaming at the television. There were so many things wrong with the episode that I could barely catch a breath. "You do not sell a person out because someone 'hotter' comes along!" "She doesn't look like a girly girl, she looks like a tomboy with makeup on." "She looks intensely uncomfortable." "Why is that woman LYING to her on national television?" "Why is her mother so upset? Does her mother wish she'd had girly-girl lessons?"

There were no girly-girl lessons when I was a girl; there was no "MADE" on MTV. (There was, despite my children's professed doubts, TV. There was even MTV.) I wouldn't have wanted them anyway, though I struggled with not being "feminine enough." In fact, those doubts staked out a fairly large corner of my psyche and made themselves at home. They lingered even after I married and had children. So deep were they that even though I'd had three boys in a row and everyone thought I must be dying to have a girl, I was pretty sure I wasn't qualified to raise a girl--there was so much about being a girl that I didn't "get."

Eleven years into raising a daughter, there's still a lot I don't get--eyebrow waxing? Insane. High heels? Inhumane. But there are some things I do get now--humanity is infinitely more important than some pre-packaged concept of "femininity." Being comfortable with who I am, rather than doing mental, physical and emotional contortions to fit some cultural ideal is the best example I can set. My tomboyishness is an essential part of who I am*.

For Daugther-Only's part, she straddles the girly-girl/tomboy line--equally comfortable in jeans and skirts. It will be great if she can always dance in and out of those two worlds (in high heels OR sneakers), but if not, she will have a sympathetic ear. I have a feeling Sam may be needing a sympathetic ear these days as well (I found follow-ups on some of the kids from "MADE," but not of Sam) and I hope she finds it.

*A story of how deeply ingrained my tomboy tendencies are: I have an upcoming Event (the visit of an old friend/crush from high school) and a friend of mine said to me, "You're not going to, like, put on real shoes and wear a skirt and curl your hair or anything, are you? Because I think I would freak out a little if you did."

Harry Potter & the Half-Awake Prince

Son-Two is the rabid Potter fan in our household. He preordered his copy from Amazon with his birthday money in January. The copy was in our mailbox at 10:24 Saturday morning. Despite Son-Two's elaborate surveillance system (including repeatedly sending his little sister outside to check if the mail truck was on our street), I was the one who saw the mailman first.

The box was open in seconds and off Son-Two went with a grin and a "See ya' later." He holed up in his room until I dragged him out around 2 p.m. for food. This is the boy who's usually first in line at the buffet, who eats a staggering amount of food (since he's been blessed with his father's physique and metabolism, it's all converted instantly into sculpted muscle--it's an unjust world), who will do Matrix-worthy manuevers to get that last pork chop or last anything remotely edible left on the plate. Yet, in the grip of Rowling's spell food was completely forgotten. I am in awe of her skills...

Except for another mother-enforced visit to the kitchen around 10 last night, he was in his room, reading for at least fourteen hours straight. He claims he's a slow reader, but he slept face-down on page 458, so I don't think he's doing badly.

There's been some insinuation around the house that I'm a neglectful mother for not purchasing additional copies since there's a line behind him for this copy, which is, technically, his. I think it's the height of generosity that I didn't use my pull around here to cut to the head of the line.

Internet Quiz: Dorks Only Need Apply

You're A Prayer for Owen Meany!

by John Irving

Despite humble and perhaps literally small beginnings, you inspire
faith in almost everyone you know. You are an agent of higher powers, and you manifest
this fact in mysterious and loud ways. A sense of destiny pervades your every waking
moment, and you prepare with great detail for destiny fulfilled. When you speak, IT
SOUNDS LIKE THIS!


Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

This has been on my Top 10 Favorite Books List for years. Of course, my Top 10 is ever-changing and shifting but this is one of the "keepers." I'm not sure, though, what it means that I "AM" this book. My sister pointed out that my kids probably do think I TALK LIKE THIS, which made me wonder if they're maybe not the only ones who think I TALK LIKE THIS. (Bet you're glad this isn't an audio-blog, aren't you?)

There are supposed to be 64 possible books a person can "be." Makes me wonder about all those books I'm not.

Two Thumbs...Just Grateful To Be Out Of The House

In an occurrence almost as rare as interplanetary invaders, Hubby and I went to see a movie alone last night. We were trying to remember the last movie we'd gone to see alone together and we're pretty sure it was "Daylight" with Sylvester Stallone--a movie so horrible that the man sitting directly in front of us fell asleep and snored loudly through the second half of the movie and we didn't even mind because we didn't feel we were missing anything of any value. "Daylight" was a disaster movie in which Sylvester Stallone tried to save a bunch of commuters trapped in the Holland Tunnel. Though it's hard to choose, the thing I hated the most about the movie was that everyone trapped in the tunnel was so annoying I found myself actively hoping they wouldn't make it.

Last night we saw "War of the Worlds." It's the kind of overly hyped mega-blockbuster movie I would normally avoid (a partial list of "must-see" movies I haven't seen: "ET," "Titanic," "Independence Day," and all but the very first "Star Wars" movie). I've always gravitated toward the less splashy stuff on the belief that if a movie is really good, there's no need for all the noise about how good it is. The movie will speak for itself. In our tiny town, though, the theater offers only two choices at a time and when all the other stars are aligned for Hubby and I to go see a movie alone-together, we have to take what we can get. (Our other option was "Mr. and Mrs. Smith," by the way. We picked "War" on the grounds that Pitt and Jolie wouldn't look significantly less impressive on the small screen when they're out on DVD in six months, but the special effects-laden "War" might.)

Whatever its flaws, "War" at least had characters I didn't want to root against. Dakota Fanning was, as usual, stellar. She's like a little alien in her own right, superhuman in her ability to emote on cue. Cruise was solid, especially in the scene where he sings "Little Deuce Coupe" to his daughter because he doesn't know the words to either of her favorite lullabyes. What struck me, though, was the scene in which Cruise's son, played by Justin Chatwin, takes Dad's car without permission. I flashed on Cruise, as the son, tooling around in Daddy's Porsche without permission in "Risky Business." As the aliens stepped up their attacks, I was stuck on the thought that I had no idea how so much time had passed--how had Cruise, the consummate teenager become Cruise, dad of the consummate teenager?

My overriding impression of the movie, offered when the kids swarmed us the second we walked in the door, was it was loud. It is a very, very loud movie, but still somehow more relaxing than being at home on another Friday night.

*Geek that I am, I could not let a mention of "War of the Worlds" pass without mentioning a book I read in 2002 called "The Spinster & The Prophet." The book is the true story of Florence Deeks, a teacher and amateur historian, who sued H.G. Wells, author of the original "War of the Worlds," accusing him of plagiarism. (The disputed manuscript was non-fiction, not any of his better known science fiction works.) The book is worth reading, though it might fill you, as it did me, with impotent rage on Deeks's behalf.

Oh What A Dork Am I!

I'm a word-geek. This means all kinds of things in my daily life--for instance, I hardly ever leave the house without reading and writing materials. When I do leave the word-supplies at home, I usually regret it--I crave word input (and I guess, in the case of writing, output) like a junkie craves that next fix and the withdrawal symptoms aren't pretty. One of the other things my addiction means is that I proofread everything, everywhere. This is truly a curse. To find typos about which you can do absolutely nothing is the second-worst form of torture for a word-geek. (The first being making a typo and realizing it after it's too late to do anything about it.)

Then there are the mistakes that can't even be blamed on typos--the grammar, usage, spelling errors that are absolutely everywhere and make a word-geek cringe. I'm not talking about icky-picky things like ending a sentence in a preposition--I'm talking about things like the church sign I saw over the weekend. It said: "The Ten Commandments are not an option."

This has been driving me crazy for the past thirty-six hours. I actually took the long way on an errand today so I could avoid driving by the church and seeing the sign all over again. Clearly, the minister means to highlight the fact that the Commandments, as the first two-thirds of their name implies, are requirements and not a list of helpful suggestions. What he means is that following the Commandments is not a choice, but a necessity. What he's said is that following the Commandments is not among the choices available to us.

There are two things that scare me about this sign. The first is that presumably no one in the congregation of the church has taken the minister aside and said, "Listen, what you mean is 'The Ten Commandments are not optional.' " That means either no one noticed or everyone's afraid of the minister. The second scary thing is this is not the first time this church has had this message on their sign. Sometime last year, I noticed that another church in town had the message "The Ten Commandments are not optional." on its sign. The very same day, the sign on the offending church said, "The Ten Commandments are not an option." I said to my sister, "Oooh they must subscribe to the same Church Sign Newsletter*." And then we discussed the mistake the second minister had made by apparently trying to stand out from the church-sign crowd.

The scariest thing about this whole situation by far, though, is how bad it all gets to me. I have always known I was a dork, but the true depth and breadth of my dorkiness has only begun revealing itself to me.


*I was only joking about the Church Sign Newsletter, but I stumbled upon this website this weekend and it turns out that church signs are quite an industry and making fun of them a popular pastime.

Wedded Blitz

A year or so ago, at the Day Job, a customer was ordering something for his aunt and uncle's 62nd wedding anniversary. I said, "Wow, 62 years, that's amazing."

The customer said, "It's really amazing. If you were around them for a few minutes, you'd never believe they'd been married 62 years."

So I'm thinking they must be one of those lovey-dovey older couples and I'm all set to roll out the "aww, how cute" when the guy continues, "Yeah, if you were around them for a few minutes, you'd wonder how they hadn't killed each other a long time ago."

In Dennis Lehane's book "Mystic River," Annabeth (Laura Linney, in the movie) is talking to Sean (Kevin Bacon) about marriage: "The person you love is rarely worthy of how big your love is. Because no one is worthy of that love and maybe no one deserves the burden of it, either. You'll be let down. You'll be disappointed and have your trust broken. You'll have a lot of real sucky days. You lose more than you win. You hate the person you love as much as you love him. But, shit, you roll up your sleeves and work--at everything--because that's what growing older is."

I was watching the movie "Alfie" starring Jude Law the other night. There is a scene in the urologist's restroom (where Alfie has gone while waiting to find out the results of the biopsy of a lump on his, um, penis). There is an older man there, Joe, who has just lost his wife of many years. As they're concluding their small talk, Alfie apologizes to Joe for his loss. Joe says, "We weren't all that fond of each other, but we were very close if you know what I mean." Alfie says he does, but having never been married, I'm not sure he possibly can.

I, on the other hand, have been married 18 years as of Monday and I get it, I totally get it. Love and marriage may go together like a horse and carriage, but neither one of them is getting anywhere without all sorts of other accessories: patience, compromise, and for whole stretches of time, just plain endurance. Does that sound cynical? Or just pragmatic?

Either way, it's true. But there are some other things that are true, too. Sometimes he gives me a look and I still get that giddy-tickle feeling in the pit of my stomach. Sometimes at the end of a long day, it is the greatest comfort in the world to come home to someone who knows every wart, flaw and blemish, physical and emotional, and will give me a big hug anyway. Sometimes it feels like a gift just to have someone so familiar to hug back at the end of the day.

In the end, I wouldn't trade a minute of it--the good, the bad, the morning breath--because to change one tiny detail puts all the rest in jeopardy. It's a package deal, every moment depends upon all the moments that came before it. Until all of a sudden, there are 18 years of moments behind you and, you hope, many more moments to come.

Soapbox: A Confession & A Tirade

First, the confession: I know it's completely un-cool to admit you actually like TOP 40 music of any kind--it marks you as culturally lazy, not adventurous enough. If you love TOP 40, you probably think instant mashed potatoes is real food, right? My thing, though, has always been lyrics and I don't care where I find them. I'm not against listening to an artist I've never heard of before in a genre I think was made up last week (I mean I actually saw "prog-funk" and "literary Scottish indie-rock chamber music" in Rolling Stone reviews) and some of my favorite songs have come to me this way. But I don't listen to anything for technically superior chord progressions and I wouldn't know what a riff was if it bit me hard on the butt. I'm a word geek and it's all about words to me--whether I find them in Eminem's latest or a 1979 Barbara Mandrell tune that was never released as a single.

Okay so now I've marked myself as an un-cool person who doesn't get out much and actually doesn't mind instant mashed potatoes in a pinch so I might as well go the rest of the way and admit that not only do I like Top 40 music, but I like country music as well. There's all sorts of wit and wisdom buried in all that twang.*

It was while listening to that twang that I heard the new Trace Adkins song "Arlington" this past weekend. It is a beautiful song that under the right circumstances may have moved me to tears or at least given me a killer bout of goose bumps. But then there was this line: "There's a big white house sits on a hill just up the road/The man inside, he cried the day they brought me home." I reflexively shouted, "Yeah right!" (Yeah, along with the instant mashed potato thing, I talk to the radio. The Internet's just full of freaks, isn't it?) I get the purpose of the song--and I'm all for supporting the troops, honoring their sacrifices, but I'm not sure this is the best way of doing that.

This is one area where country music consistently lets me down--the so-called "patriotic" songs. The two that make me literally grit my teeth are Toby Keith's "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American)" and Darryl Worley's "Have You Forgotten?" (No, I'm not linking to them. Isn't that petty?) They're angry songs, written in reaction to the attacks of 9/11. The events of 9/11 were tragic, horrifying, cowardly and a thousand other things, but it doesn't honor the victims, their families or the troops now in danger to reduce the complex political, socio-economic, and religious issues that led to those attacks to an US vs. THEM mentality.

I was raised in a career military family. My father was voluntarily serving in Vietnam when I was born. After his tour of duty was done there, he chose to go to Korea, not once but twice, when he could've gotten a Stateside assignment. I'm no stranger to patriotism, to sacrifice in the name of your country. But shouldn't patriotism be about more than unquestioning loyalty to the current administration? Shouldn't it be about more than revenge? Shouldn't it be about more than being the biggest bully on the block? Doesn't it stand to reason that a longer-range view is in our nation's best interest?

It's hard enough to find that viewpoint in newspaper columns and television commentary, let alone in our government, I'm not sure why I would expect country musicians to pick up that slack. There was one post-9/11 song that did, though--Alan Jackson's "Where Were You (When The World Stopped Turning)." He caught it all--the shock, the devastation, and, yes, even the anger--in words. Made me proud to be an American.

*Examples of twang, wit and wisdom: JoDee Messina's "My Give A Damn's Busted"; Tim McGraw's "Do You Want Fries With That?"; and Bobby Pinson's "Don't Ask Me How I Know."

And the Living is Easy...

It's summertime. And around here, from June 15 to July 4 especially, comes a whirlwind of celebrations and observations. One birthday after another (Son-Two is on the other side of the year, but the other three are clustered right here together), plus our wedding anniversary. Along with being a financial and practical challenge--juggling gifts and parties with all of the end of the school year activities, academic and otherwise--it often sends me into a tailspin of Deep Thought. Because there are so many reminders of passing time clustered together, this time of year is just as emotionally charged for me as the winter end-of-the-year holidays are for most people, with the added bonus this year of stifling heat and humidity.

This time around my deep thoughts have been centered around my early days of motherhood. I was the first of my group of high school friends to venture into marriage and motherhood, getting married just a little over a year after high school graduation, and having our first son a year later. Hubby and I had a certain warped wisdom in our rapid-fire reproduction schedule--we knew we wanted more kids than most people and we figured we should have them all right in a row, so that once we'd made it safely through one stage--diapers, preschool, puberty--we could move on to the next. Of course, from the outside, we appeared mildly insane or bent on self-destruction depending on the day--we've had more than one friend tell us that visiting our house in those years was the strongest argument for birth control they'd ever seen.

In any case, back in the beginning, when it was just Hubby and I and Son-One, a friend of mine who was a third-year engineering major at a private university in Pennsylvania, wrote me a letter about campus life and her career plans and then asked, "Is motherhood what you expected?" Please understand--at this point I was a full-time mommy to a single child who was just nearing his first birthday, mommyhood had much, much more in store for me and of course I had no idea what any of that was, but I was wholly absorbed in Son-One's daily doings and hadn't really had the time or energy to give much thought to expectations. Between diaperings and nursings, I gave it some thought. (By the way, anyone who thinks full-time motherhood is not challenging has never tried to nurse a teething eight-month-old who can't wait to try out those newly hatched "teefers.")

What I decided was that there were all sorts of practical ways in which motherhood was exactly what I expected--I had three younger siblings, countless cousins and a raft of babysitting charges who financed my adolescent addictions to books, music and junk food, I understood what was involved in keeping a young'un alive and reasonably content from one end of the day to the other. It was all that other stuff I couldn't have seen coming--how my interest in world events (and my investment in them--this is the world I'm sending Junior out into someday) increased in inverse proportion to the amount of time I had to keep informed, or to do anything with that information. How my relationship with my own parents changed drastically and some days I felt as though in their eyes I'd become merely a bridge between them and their grandchildren, no longer a person in my own right. But I especially had no idea how it would affect the way in which I viewed myself from one day to the next.

Some days I would feel like Mother Earth herself, full of nurturing energy, unconditional love and flowing kindnesses. On those days, I was sure I was the only person qualified to parent this child (with, if I was feeling generous, an assist from Hubby), and that his only chance was for me to never let him out of my sight, even for a second. Then there were the other days. The days when, for whatever reason, I was certain I was unqualified to care for anything more evolved than a houseplant or, if I was feeling generous with myself, a hamster.

The funny thing is that with all the years that have passed, with all the experience I've got under my Masked Mom Utility Belt, and with all the lessons I've (at least theoretically) learned, you would think the I'm-not-fit-to-care-for-a-hamster days are a thing of the past. If practice makes perfect, you might think I would have days of soaring arrogance about my mothering ability, but I never feel like that Earth Mother woman anymore. I never suffer from that dead-on certainty that I'm doing right by my kids. I've mostly come to be satisfied with knowing that I'm doing the best I can, that whatever the results, I mean well and I try really, really hard.

And mostly, it's enough.

Exclusive! Conversation With A Drama Princess!

The following recording, obtained by Masked Mom through a secret informant close to the source, is actual dialogue between the Drama Princess and her Beleagured Mother. Recorded on the Eve of Daughter-Only/Drama Princess's Eleventh Birthday.

DO/DP: MOM!
BM [any similarity between the initials of this poor mother and the shorthand for poop is entirely coincidental, but we would nonetheless like to point out that after the week she's had, Mom does kind of feel like crap]: YES?
[Both players are speaking at full volume since DO/DP is wandering aimlessly through the house and BM is in the bathtub]
DO/DP: What's for dinner and how much do you love me?
BM: [Stunned into silence. I mean, what units are we measuring this in? Is this one of those trick questions where I pick a number and whatever it is it's wrong? Or she uses whatever answer I give her as a bargaining chip in every negotiation between now and whenever she enters therapy?] Uhhhh...What kind of question is that?
DO/DP: I was just wondering. I'm going to T's. See ya' later!

Maybe Mom will be in therapy way before Daughter-Only ever gets there.

A Po-em--How Nice..., or Why I Write Prose

Listen my children,
And you shall hear,
Your mother's words go in one ear,
And out the other--
Why pay attention?
She's just the mother!

Repeat After Me...

There are plenty of challenging, minor annoyances involved in parenting four children: too much to do, too little time; balancing the wants & needs of distinct individuals who each clearly (occasionally) believe the world revolves solely around him or her;trying to do what's in their best interests even when it's not the fun or popular or most energy-efficient thing to do. But, there are two things about parenting that really, really get to me on a regular basis--not nagging irritation get to me, but nails-on-a-chalkboard-over-and-over-in-my-brain-get-to-me.

First is the noise. As I mentioned in an earlier post, at least one of my children has a habit of making pointless and painful noises for absolutely no discernible reason other than to annoy the crap out of Mom (at this, he is an unqualified success). When these noises are layered on top of the rest of the household noises--TV, video games, "normal" conversation (between adolescent males this seems to consist of insulting one another in increasingly loud voices and then laughing about it), the "MOM!" whine of Daughter-Only when yet another tragedy has befallen her--they become almost unbearable. In fact by around nine most nights, I feel like I'm suffering from a sensitivity to external stimuli to rival poor Roderick's in "The Fall of the House of Usher." The sound of a faucet dripping two rooms away causes excruciating pain.

Second is the repetition. I feel like I say the same things over and over and over...and that's not because I'm suffering from some medical condition/family curse, it's because I actually am saying the same things over and over. "Pick up that stuff." "Did you put away that stuff?" "Do you have clothes for tomorrow?" "Is your homework done?" I'm starting to feel like one of those pull-string dolls with a limited number of installed phrases, like a Stepford Mom with a short in my verbal interaction program. The most frustrating thing, though, is that even though it clearly annoys the kids when I do it, it doesn't occur to any of them to just do what they're asked the first time. Or, even, quantum leap though this may be, to just do it without being asked. It's not as if they don't know the routine at their advanced ages.

With the seventeenth birthday of Son-One in the rear-view mirror and the eleventh birthday of Daughter-Only just days away, I've started to have serious concerns about what's going to happen when they all go out into the world. How will they function? And how will I? Will I miss all the racket? Will the deafening silence beg to be filled? Will I spend every evening on a five-way conference call, listening to them bicker, talk over one another and play their stereos too loud until I can't take it for one more second? And then call them all back (twice, each) to be sure they have clothes for tomorrow?

Misty-Eyed Moment

Daughter-Only was off to her milestone, rite-of-passage, fourth grade overnight field trip yesterday. Camp So-and-So is pseudo-camp, but they make you pack like it's real camp. The whole thing brought tears to my eyes. Not sentimental, my-how-the-time-flies-my-little-girl's-all-grown-up tears. No--tears of frustration and righteous indignation. Despite the fact that she's had the list of what to pack for three weeks and had repeatedly assured me that things were "under control," we were shopping the night before she left for the exact right kind of bug repellent (cream is preferred, you know--so what if every store in a fifty-mile radius is sold out?), we were calling around to borrow a fishing pole (yeah, okay, imagine a busload of fourth graders with long pointy poles that as an added bonus have rusty hooks on the ends of them), and she was doing laundry to have the right combination of clean underwear. Better yet, yesterday morning, we were labeling her clothes at 8:47, a good three minutes past when we can leave and both be on time for school/work. Best of all, we had to stop at the drugstore on the way to school to buy a mini shampoo--it was on the list even though they specifically said no one would be showering unless there was an "emergency." (By emergency they must mean something too horrifying--and amusing--to consider. Skunk spray, food fights, I don't know.)

Why put off until tomorrow what you can put off until the very last minute thereby making your mother insane and fifteen minutes late for work into the bargain?

The bus is bringing them back at 1:00 today. I'll remember to pick her up. I really will. It's under control...

Can I Stay Out of the Kitchen?

I can't stand the heat. I am the world's biggest baby when it comes to heat and humidity. Don't even get me started on the people who say, "It's not really the heat that's bad, it's the humidity." Hello? In our neck of the woods (as that great meteorologist Al Roker would say), the two almost always come hand-in-hand. We don't get that fabled "dry" heat you hear people who live in Arizona talking about. We get the slimy, pant-inducing, thick air 90% relative humidity heat. And this year we've had it for going on ten days in a row--right at the beginning of June. It's entirely wrong, of course, but where do you file those complaints?

The weather makes everyone cranky, but especially me. I become a slug, covered in a layer of post-sweat stickiness, incapable of any but the smallest movements. I laze around in front of a fan, reading as slowly as possible so I don't have to exert myself to turn pages any quicker than necessary. Of course, except for the fan part, that's pretty much what I'd do given the choice so I guess I should quit complaining and enjoy the excuse while I have it.

Out of My Mind, or Just Out of Context?

Spring is over just as it arrived--par for the course in our little corner of the world. It was in the 90s all weekend and even, cruelly, on MONDAY. (Monday doesn't suck bad enough without insanity inducing temperatures?) Warm (hot as Hades) weather means open windows, which means sharing our little slice of craziness with half the neighborhood. Last night, deep inside the house, away from any open windows, Son-Three was "singing" a "song" which consisted entirely of the full-spectrum of noises that would be made at three a.m. by horny tomcats defending their territory. I was in the bathtub, trying to have a Calgon moment--but as ever, I am stuck in the first half of the Calgon commercial, all the stuff Calgon is supposed to whisk me away from. With the water and the porcelain acting as vocal magnifier, Son-Three's musical improvisation was not only heard, but felt--inside my head.

I sat straight up and yelled, "KNOCK IT OFF!!!!!!" I yelled this in the bathroom, which not only has a window (which was of course, wide open), but has the echo-chamber acoustics of most bathrooms and it overlooks the backyard, which itself has some echo-chamber characteristics owing to surrounding buildings, etc. I sounded like Psycho-Mom, arch-villain of kiddies and right-thinking Moms everywhere.

Now everyone in the neighborhood thinks I am some evil dictator--is it just me or does dictator sound like the kind of thing that should be taken care of with periodic body maintenance? Toe jam, eye boogies, ear wax and dic-tators? How evil can I be if I still think like a seventh grader?

Masked Mom's message for the week is that all moms everywhere should withhold judgment--remembering that when we see a mom lose it, we may not be aware of the minutes, hours, days, years of provocation leading up to the moment we witnessed. Remembering, too, that our turn to lose it may be right around the corner...at least I hope the lady next-door is ready to blow any minute now. It will take some of the attention off me.

Social Caterpillars

My youngest sister e-mailed us a link to enter the Harry Potter essay contest--the grand prize of which is a package including a trip to New York and London and a guest spot on the Today Show. Son-Two is a Potter Fan from way back and even the rushing hormones and the fact that he's recently started needing to shave have not curbed that enthusiasm. At least at home. He is torn though about entering the contest--for several reasons. I don't think it's particularly "cool" (or whatever word is the new "cool") for a guy his age (a guy who's a guy and no longer a "boy") to like, let alone passionately enjoy Harry Potter. For that and a hundred other reasons, the thought of the Today Show appearance is terrifying to him. So he's afraid to enter the contest not because he's afraid he won't win because he's afraid he will. It's an interesting paradox--he's carrying around supreme confidence in his writing ability (so sure he'll win that he's afraid to enter because he's not sure he wants to win), but not enough confidence in his social skills and himself in general to say, to his friends and the Today Show audience, "I still like Harry Potter--get over it."

This is an aspect of his personality I identify all too readily with. I've never been a social butterfly--I was stuck in the larval stage for the longest time and, ironically, it was my kids who pushed me into acquiring any adult social skills at all. It was either learn to make small talk with other Moms and Dads or move us all to a cave somewhere and raise a family of hermits. My grandmother used to call me "a little backward" which was her word for shy--imagine my delight when I discovered that in some regions of our state, it means a little, um, slow. Either way--slow, shy, backward--I got it in spades. I still squirm at the thought of "public" appearances--anything from going into an unfamiliar grocery store, to attending a concert at the school, to picking up one of the kids at a friend's house where the friend's parent or parents may want to chat. (Chat, you'll notice, is a four-letter word.) I just try to hide the fear better and work around it more.

Seeing this trait in Son-Two (or any of Them for that matter) is difficult because I feel his pain, so I want to sympathize, but I also want to "help" him overcome it by taking him by the shoulders and saying, "Don't you get it? You'll miss out on so much!" It's hard when I still practice so much less than I preach--they all know I'd hide under the bed eighty-percent of the time if I had the option.

In fact, when he told me his phobia about appearing on national television, I said, "I fully understand your fear--that's why, if you win, your aunt will be your companion on those planes to New York and London."

Don't you get it? You'll miss out on so much!

Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?

When Son-One started kindergarten (lo these many years ago now), I penned an outraged entry in my spiral notebook journal about the cruelty of schedules. Whether laziness or some high-minded principle, I have always been very averse to schedules. Yeah, yeah, they're a fact of civilized life, we couldn't get along without them...but I'm for them only where they're absolutely necessary. Consequently, when the kiddies were preschool age and all home, their inner clocks were much more in charge than any that hung on a wall or sat on a night table. I'll admit that it may have made for a harder than average adjustment (for the grown-ups, at least) when it came time to be somewhere every day at a prescribed time, but the rest of the time, it was infinitely easier to go with the flow than to battle daily (hourly) in vain to get four little personalities to conform to some preconceived notion about the right time to do this or that. These days, of course, we are a houseful of people at the mercy of schedules.

Still not a convert to the wisdom of schedules, I fight them every step of the way with pointless and quiet rebellion. This week, my bedside alarm clock is 44 minutes fast--sometimes it's even faster than that and sometimes it's a little closer to right, but it is never truly right. Each night I set the alarm for at least half an hour before I have to actually get up, giving me plenty of opportunities to hit the snooze bar. I'm a snooze bar expert--can hit that sucker without even lifting my head off the pillow. Hubby, to put it mildly, is not impressed with my morning routine. I have tried repeatedly to explain to him that the feeling of getting away with something is worth all the hassle. According to my clock, I sleep in every single morning. I understand, intellectually, that I'm not actually sleeping longer, but my intellect doesn't kick in until noon on a good day. Strangely, with my system, I am wider awake when I do finally get up than I would be if my clock was set for the right time and I got up with the first buzz. It takes a lot of complicated math to figure out what time it really is and how many more times the snooze is going to go off before I actually have to get out of bed--really gets those mental juices flowing.

And I need every ounce of that alertness when dealing with my children at that early hour. Not one of them is what you'd call a morning person--morning demon, maybe. They're surly and mean, growling at one another and their long-suffering mother. On Tuesday morning, I had called Son-Three downstairs repeatedly as the clock inched toward and then past the last possible minute to leave and still be to school on time. When finally he came stumbling down the steps with a grimace carved into his face, he said (very loudly, I might add), "JEEZ! Why do you have to yell?"

Perhaps, dear son, I yell for the same reason you yell in the morning--we have been awakened at this ungodly hour by the whims of the school board and the needs of the buying public. It is cruel, it is inhumane. We are cranky rats in an endless maze.

Resistance is futile...but it's all we've got.

Sports Highlights--Olympic Backyard Volleyball Edition

After all the wrangling about Daughter-Only being excluded from the boys-only volleyball games, Dad and I played a game with all four of the kiddies, and an aunt and uncle yesterday afternoon. Daughter-Only turned in a spectacular performance. Not only was she not afraid of the ball, she consistently hit it exactly where it needed to go--including several times when Son-One "accidentally" set it to her (he said, "oops, I don't know why I did that..." just in time to realize she'd gotten it over or set it again to her dad--his shocked look was amusing the first time and hysterical the next several times). All this in spite of the fact that everyone else on the court towered over her. Her shortest brother is half a foot taller than her. She would not be intimidated...

We're hoping this was a lesson to them in giving people--especially their kid sister--a chance to prove themselves before dismissing them as too short, too young, too female or too anything else. Anyone has the capacity to surprise us--to defy expectations. Butt-whuppings come in all kinds of packages..

Just Another @#$%$# Monday...

I'm at the day job today--the real job, the one that I get the "big bucks" for instead of the intangible "rewards" offered by motherhood--and a customer asks how much a particular item is. "They're $3.50 each." It's barely out of my mouth when I realize they're actually $2.50 each so I correct myself, "They're actually $2.50." Then by way of explanation I say, "Sorry. It's Monday." So the customer is completely baffled: "You mean they cost less on Monday?" I answer, "No, I mean I'm stupid on Monday..."

Clearly this guy has never had a real Monday. In high school, I wrote an essay in my freshman writing class arguing for the abolition of Mondays--I realized the futility of that even then. Get rid of Monday and Tuesday becomes the new Monday....but still, there's got to be something we can do to soften the blow of the beginning of a new work/school week...

Perhaps that was what Son-One was thinking when he activated the emergency shower in the science lab at school today--perhaps it was just his way of providing a little amusement, a break from the humdrum regular routine. When the kids do completely incomphrehensible things, isn't it nice to delude ourselves into thinking they might have had altruistic (or at least somewhat logical) motives? Son-One shows up at the shop today, twenty minutes after school is dismissed, with a deer-in-the-headlights expression, "Did they call you?"

A conversation that starts out "did they call you?" is not going anyplace you want to visit. Then out spills the story. The horrible part is that when he said, "Mom, I turned on the emergency shower in the science room today..." my absolute first reaction was to burst out laughing. I know that's not responsible parenting, and I pulled it together (almost) immediately to give him a stern, "What could possibly have motivated you to do something so asinine?" Turns out they'd asked him that in the office, too. And, really, he has no idea at all why he did it. The best he could offer was, "Because they told me to." He knows this is no excuse, no explanation--that five guys in the class were daring one another to pull the shower lever and then in a "let's get Mikie" Life Cereal moment said, "Let's get HIM--HE'LL do it."

The fact that even he seems completely baffled that he did it, as though his hand in that moment had a mind of its own, will probably save him from truly dire consequences--like grounding until graduation. He will be responsible for the damages--limited as far as we know at this point to a few spattered books on a nearby shelf--and, as he said, "I got, like, an instant two-hour detention."

This is a child who has made it to his sophomore year without a single behavior-related complaint in school, ever. This is also a child who, until a few months ago, avoided all forms of social contact. He was computer-obsessed, shy (though he resented that word) to a fault, and turned down every invitation that came his way. Something clicked at the beginning of this year, and now the phone rings and it's for him--better yet, he actually calls people. It's probably indicative of a real mental illness on my part, but I kind of see this as a good thing--not that I want him to repeat it anytime soon--his initiation into normal adolescence. Adolescence is the time for acts of great stupidity--it's part of the maturation process, right?--and since this particular act of stupidity caused no one or thing any permanent damage, I'm mostly relieved.

Not bad for a @#$%$# Monday...