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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..
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...
Sharing my life with three teenage sons and a daughter hovering on the cusp of adolescence, I'm not always sure whether these four are the sidekicks of Masked Mom or a band of her archenemies. Son-One is weeks away from being seventeen, carrying a newly minted Learner's Permit in his wallet. Son-Two is fifteen (and a half, though he's past the age where he thinks that half counts for anything), two inches taller than his older brother. Son-Three is thirteen, careening toward fourteen (in July), hyper-aware of the age (and privilege) differences between his brothers and himself. Daughter-Only is ten, with eleven coming a week after big brother's seventeenth and a week before other brother's fourteenth, she is not only aware of the age and privilege differences between herself and her brothers, but the gender inequities as well (real or imagined). There was a screaming fight over her being left out of a volleyball game last night--the boys were playing in the backyard with a group of their friends. They excluded her first on the basis of age and height, but she rightly pointed out that one of the boys playing was only a month older and an inch taller than her. Worse yet, one of the boys who is a year older is her height exactly. There was nothing left then but the fact that she's a GIRL (notice it's a four-letter word...and they always pronounce it exactly as they do other four-letter words).
What's a Masked Mom to do in a situation like this? My first impulse--to make them let her play (on the grounds that someone let them play even when they weren't, as obviously they are now, Olympic Volleyball material and on the grounds that gender-discrimination is very not okay with me)--would have only caused more friction. Several of the boys--mine and the guests--threatened to quit if Daughter-Only was included. But to just let it slide also did not seem right. In the end, a pointless, and no doubt tuned-out, speech was made for the benefit of Sons-One through Three and Daughter-Only. No one felt better and Masked Mom lived on to fight (in vain) another day...
She's an uneasy cross between Superman and June Cleaver, between the Lone Ranger and Jill Taylor, between Spiderman and Marian Cunningham, between Wonder Woman and Rosesanne Connor before the real-life Roseanne's personal dramas drained the show of all its heart.
She has some superpowers--the same ones required of all parents in our demanding times. She juggles: schedules, committments, guilt. She bestows magic kisses on scraped knees while reassuring her boss on the phone that her project is on track. She is the ultimate multi-tasker. If she could be two places at one time, that would still leave her feeling guilty about the third and fourth places she should be...
This space isn't about her superpowers, though, but about the ways she's all too human. Her alter ego--Clark Kent meets Carol Brady?--is often overwhelmed, occasionally panicked, perpetually exhausted.
I am that alter ego--mother of four children, ages 10 to 16, employed full-time, married eighteen years, waiting less and less patiently for all the hard-earned wisdom to kick in so I can relax and coast a while....
