Big Brother

My sons and I were at an end of the season basketball party for my 6^th grader.  The riot of boys, fresh from a hoops victory found their way to the host’s sport court and quickly devised a game of chucking balls at each other with great force.  I never worry about my oldest son, a natural athlete and easy-going kid; but I am always keeping a special eye out for my middle guy.  Sports are not his thing, nor really are group activities.  He’s a sensitive and quirky boy given to wearing silly costumes and perfecting his Ninja moves when he’s not creating works of art on his Etch-a-Sketch. This sort of behavior doesn’t exactly put him in the main stream, or help him develop those instantaneous friendships that most kids seem to be able to strike up with absolute strangers.  But for the moment, Willie seemed to be holding his own in the mix.

After chatting with some other moms for a while, I looked past my social circle, craning my neck to find Willie in the expansive back yard full of boys.  I spotted his turquoise shirt far across the court.  “Still at it, that’s great,” I mused, just in time to witness him take his belt off and start swinging it wildly towards a small group of boys near him.  “Ooooh, that’s too much” I said out loud and began to hustle towards him.  As I neared, his face came into focus and I could see that he was very upset. “Willie!!” I called out to him, “Come here!!”  He found me with his teary eyes and rushed towards me.  “Can we go, Mom, please, can we go now?” he begged as soon as we met, then buried his face in my shirt.  “Sweetie, what happened?”  “Please can we just go home?” he implored, chin quivering as he tried to hold himself together.  “Let’s go to the bathroom and splash some cold water on your face and you can tell me what happened.”  He pressed his body into mine and we walked as a unit towards the bathroom.

Once inside he explained in tearful gasps that this group of older boys surrounded him and started whipping balls at him and taunting him.  He said he told them to stop but one kid wouldn’t let up.  As upset as I was to hear this, my first reaction was to lecture him that the answer was not for him to start swinging his belt and making a bad situation worse.  I impressed upon him that he always has the option of walking away.  Though I counseled him towards flight, my own response was pure fight. Peering into my son’s tearstained face, I felt my hackles start to rise.  A primitive instinct gripped me and sent a shot of adrenaline through my veins. Ain’t nobody gonna mess with my baby. 

I am conflicted about situations like this.  On one hand, I strive to be a responsible parent who raises good citizens.  The Bible tells us not to return evil for evil and Jesus himself taught that if someone strikes you, you turn the other cheek.  (Although with the utmost reverence and respect for my Lord and Savior, I do have to point out that though Jesus was the Messiah… he was never a mother… When people taunted or doubted him, I can’t help but picture Mary rolling up the sleeves of her tunic and yelling “Aw, HELL to the NO!!!” as Joseph struggled to hold her back…) But I get it, I really do.  I have to teach my kids to take the high road.

Then there is this other part of me, this carnal and gritty part of me that’s from Chicago (ok, not exactly the syringe-littered, pockmarked streets of Cabrini Green; more like the petunia-lined, cobblestoned streets of Libertyville, but still) this hardened part of me that sees things differently.  I grew up in a family of three older brothers and we were raised by our dad.  It was a tough household to grow up in – there was a lot of aggression and hostility.  You’ve heard of the whole:

“I can beat the shit out of my brother, but nobody else better lay a finger on him” mentality?  My brothers were the goons who invented that.

Once during my freshman year of high school I had a run in with a kid named Peter Boone [name not changed to protect him, because he wasn’t innocent].  Peter was cocky and arrogant, with blonde stringy hair.  And he was short.  He made Napoleon himself look like he had one heck of a ‘Peter Boone complex.’  One day Peter Boone got a big laugh by making fat jokes about me in front of a group of his friends and I went home that night in tears, refusing to eat dinner.  My normally detached father miraculously noticed my demeanor– or perhaps it was just that it was so very noticeable that I was actually skipping a meal– and tried to get out of me why I was so upset.  When I told him of Peter Boone’s unkind remarks, he was quiet for a moment, then turned to my older brother, Jim.

Like the sensitive, insightful ex-Marine that he was, my dad asked my brother:

“You know this asshole?”

Like the caveman with an underbite he was, my brother grunted.

“Take care of it” my dad commanded ominously.

“Dad, NO!” I begged him, “Tell Jim not to touch him!”  Wanting to in some way comfort his daughter-in-distress, my dad offered this:  “Then eat your dinner and tomorrow you tell that Peter Boone asshole, that if he ever says another word to you, Iam gonna beat the shit out of him.”  Ahhh, those were the good old days:  when parents could threaten bodily harm against their children’s adversaries without fear of the SWAT team, the ACLU, and Dateline NBC coming to knock down their door.

Thirty years later I found myself in the role of parent, grappling with the very same moral dilemma:  What to do about my son’s Peter Boone?  I felt like I had an angel on one shoulder.  And Don Corleone on the other.  Just then there was a knock on the bathroom door and my oldest son stepped inside.  “Is William OK?” he asked, his face registering genuine concern.  I told him briefly what occurred.  “Who was it?” he asked, and I noticed the almost imperceptible setting of his jaw.  When William told him the kid’s name– the short, blonde kid’s name– there was no aggression in his voice, just calm resolve when John assured his younger brother:  “That is not going to happen again.”

In that moment my 12 year-old morphed into a 6’5” gladiator, broad shouldered and strong.  He turned on his heel and strode—I had never seen him strode before—but he strode away from us, towards the transgressor.  It never occurred to me to try and stop him.  This was his shining moment and I wasn’t going to dim his light by getting in his way.

All he had to say to the boy was “That’s my brother. You are not going to be mean to him.”

“What are you going to do about it?” the boy answered back, his voice suddenly small, and squeaky.

“You don’t want to know what I’m going to do about it.”  And the little Petey Boone skittered away.

The next day John told me that when he saw this boy at school, the kid shied away and wouldn’t make eye contact with him.  So John took it upon himself to go up to the kid and reassure him.  “Dude, we’re ok.  Just don’t do it again.”

That was all it took.  A protective instinct embodied.  A decisive statement delivered with confidence.

And one moment for a son to prove to his mother that he knows exactly where the high road is.

Signs That Your 8-Year Old Watches Too Much TV…

(While riding in the car one day…)

Andrew: (angrily) “Mom, State Farm Insurance LIES!!”

Me: “What makes you say that?”

Andrew: “They said that their rates are lower than Geico!!”

(Later that same week…)

Andrew: “Mom, can you get in trouble for calling 911 if a bad guy isn’t chasing you?”

Me: “Andrew, it’s OK to call 911 if you are in danger or if you are really scared about something…”

Andrew: “… but not like if you are scared about what to wear to prom…”

Baseball Gear

The bad news was that my 8 year-old son couldn’t find his baseball cleats.

The good news was that he wore his cup to school this morning, so at least he knew exactly where that was.

“Don’t say you don’t have enough time.  You have exactly the same number of hours a day that were given to Helen Keller, Louis Pasteur, Michelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson and Albert Einstein.”

— H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

Prep School

My conventionally unconventional middle son, William, has strong opinions.  Last year it was his strong opinion that school was boring and he shouldn’t have to go.  Though his father and I patiently explained to him that truancy laws prohibit 8 year-olds from absences caused of their own free will, William nonetheless exercised the only peaceful protest he knew how:  he waged a boycott of 3^rd grade.

Such an act of civil disobedience was not new behavior for my son, who by the age of 2 had earned himself the nickname, “The Conscientious Objector.”  His M.O. was to protest any perceived injustice in his life– by simply going limp and unresponsive– thus requiring an exasperated parent to drag his lifeless body toward the bathtub or perhaps away from the gumball machine at the grocery store…

Once, at the age of 4, in order to get out of a much-hated swimming lesson, William pulled his passive-aggressive schtick, and went limp in the arms of his gullible swim instructor, who promptly activated the YMCA’s emergency response system, thereby clearing the pool, calling 911, and summoning the fire department and paramedics. 

So after Willie’s tenacious boycott resulted in him spending the entirety of his 3^rd grade year with his head on his desk, folding all his spelling and math worksheets into little origami ninja stars, it became apparent that our precocious son would be better suited to a less traditional environment than what our neighborhood public school had to offer.

A long search and much hand-wringing lead us to a progressive charter school where we learned, he would call his teachers by their first names and have the freedom to decide exactly what schoolwork he wanted to do and when he wanted to do it.  This school doesn’t give out grades—it doesn’t even have desks in the classroom!– but it does have a labyrinth for quiet meditation… an organic vegetable garden… and Peace Pole in the middle of campus where students can gather to celebrate one another’s diversity.

On the Friday before school was to start, we pulled into the parking lot for the New Student Open House.  My disbelieving eyes took in an unlikely assortment of dilapidated trucks and expensive hybrid vehicles.  Each sporting a bumper sticker with some sort of wacky liberal credo like:  “Friends Don’t Let Friends Eat Meat” or “Every Day is Earth Day!” or  “Obama for President.”   I warily parked my nondescript minivan next to a Volkswagen Beetle with a license plate that read “MTHRSHP.”  Seeing as how the most liberal thing about me is my use of sunscreen, I started to feel uneasy about whether or not we were going to fit in here.

As we walked across campus, I took in the people:  apparently every dad had either once played backup for the Allman Brothers Band, or perhaps had recently written a manifesto.   And as tired as I was of seeing the Scottsdale SAHM’s uniform of $200 jeans and Juicy Couture, nothing could have prepared me for the Lilith Fair reunion that were the moms at this new school— all hairy-leggin’ it under flowy peasant skirts, and free-boobin’ it beneath tye-dyed tank tops.  Their pierced noses and pendulous breasts reminded me of the National Geographics I used to thumb through at the dentist’s office back in 1979.  If there were any cues about Fall Fashion Trends to be taken from the women at this school… then, Ladies, I can tell you without reservation that “Hemp is the New Black.”

In the classroom, boys and girls alike had long hair and oddball names like Cosmo and Chrysanthemum.  They gripped their eco-friendly, reusable metal water bottles and talked excitedly about summer vacations spent composting garbage; while their parents stood around proudly comparing carbon footprints and exchanging the names of good Rolfers.

I quietly excused myself and wandered outside to the school’s ‘Garden of Global Serenity’ where I sat down forlornly on a bench—probably hand-hewn by the school’s 2^nd graders from the reclaimed bark of an organic tree…

Never before had I felt like such an outsider.  My bland little family is about as exotic as a loaf of Wonder Bread– yet at my son’s new school, conformists like us are the lunatic fringe.  I imagined having to instruct my son to keep our conservative values on the down-low:  Whatever you do, don’t tell them your parents vote Republican… or that we attend church on Sundays!   If anyone asks, we voted for… Kucinich… and we worship Mother Earth!!

I’m ashamed to say it to you now, but at that moment, I longed for signs of civilization as I knew it.  I closed my eyes and envisioned myself in my happy place: pushing a cart through Costco.  I found solace in the sea of sameness there:  the gargantuan SUV’s… creaseless foreheads… and buoyant silicone breasts.

I took a deep breath and shored myself up to rejoin the group of parents.   Despite the culture shock, I knew we’d made the right choice and found a school where our little non-conformist’s creative genius and personality quirks would be so nurtured that someday he could —  live his own truth — and fulfill his destiny… by chaining himself to a municipal building… or dropping out of Harvard… or publishing his very own manifesto.

Of Crafts and Carnage…

This morning I discovered a bloody towel in the bathroom that my three sons share.   At first I confess I actually didn’t think much of it, because frankly, when you have three sons, finding an occasional bloody towel in the house is not all that unusual.  A bit later, however, as I was putting laundry away in my middle son’s dresser, I looked down and discovered a bloody spot on the rug. Well, not so much a spot, really… more like a sizable splotch, likely left by a succession of drips.  Then my eye went to what looked like an entire  boxful of spent band-aid wrappers.  I didn’t need David Caruso and a Haz Mat team to tell me that I’d happened upon a crime  scene.

“William!”  I yelled.

“Yeah, Mom?!”  he yelled back.

“Come here!”  I yelled again.  Because I am the mother of three boys I do a lot of yelling.  I consider it my ‘Love Language’.  My nine year-old son arrived breathless in front of me.  He surveyed me, surveying the gory scene.

“What happened?”  I asked him.

“Paper cut” he replied.  Emphasis on the LIED.

“Son, the only way a paper cut could result in this much blood loss is if someone took a copy of ‘War and Peace’ and fired it at you with a bazooka” I reported, my 18 years of health care experience coming in handy yet again.

[Silence]

“Tell me how you cut yourself” I tersely demanded… I mean, I compassionately queried.

“With a knife,” his confession was barely audible.

“What were you doing with a knife?” I tersely, er, compassionately, uh, demanded…

“I was cutting up popsicle sticks to make a craft I saw on You Tube.”  ARRARARAHGH!!!!  Damn you, YOU TUBE!!!!

“Give me the knife,” I ordered.  From his closet he produced a pocketknife he’d borrowed from his dad for this past weekend’s Cub Scout camping trip.

“Now show me where you cut yourself,” I gently directed, my hard, crusty exterior cracking to reveal a soft, chewy center.   He lifted his left hand to reveal a tattered band-aid encircling a filthy index finger.  When I pulled off the band-aid, I saw an injury I immediately recognized.

Just 2 weeks ago my oldest son had been home sick with a cold.  In the middle of the day I was loading the dishwasher and he, I assumed, was watching TV in my bedroom.  Suddenly he appeared in front of me, his face ashen.

“Are you ok?” I asked, then looked down to see that his hand was wrapped in a towel and there was blood on his shirt.

“What the…?”

“I cut my finger”

“I can see that,” I asked reaching for his hand, “How?”

“I was trying to make a bow and arrow.  I saw it on ‘You Tube.’”

I guessed we’d get to ‘what in the Sam Hill were you thinking’ phase of the conversation later, but first I needed to see that finger.  I slowly unwrapped the towel he’d wound tightly around his injured hand (see what I mean about bloody towels not being all that unusual in our house?)  Oooh.  The cut looked deep.  And it sort of traversed the joint (there’s that health care background coming in to play again).  “Sweetie, I think I need to take you to the doctor.  You may need a stitch or two.”

Try SEVEN.

I couldn’t help but think that mothers of daughters have it so easy.  Girls will sit for hours quietly and peacefully entertaining themselves doing crafts.  Any mother of boys knows that any boy doing anything quietly for any length of time is cause for alarm.  In a household full of boys, “quietly doing crafts” involves sharp knives, bloodshed, and trips to urgent care.  I’ve yet to hear that one of my friends had to rush her daughter to the doctor for treatment because the little darling had a violent glitter mishap.  Or put her eye out when her Bedazzler misfired.  Or set her tutu on fire when her Easy Bake Oven exploded…  With boys it’s different.  There is an element of danger in everything.

When we got home from the doctor’s, we showed the stitches to his two younger brothers and had a nice chat about Internet safety, craft projects and the need for competent supervision when using sharp objects.  “Remember boys, just because you see someone do something on ‘You Tube,’ doesn’t mean it’s safe to try yourself” I wisely intoned.

After eleven days of protective finger splints and wearing Saran Wrap in the shower, it was time for the stitches to come out.  I started to stress when I thought of trying to squeeze another doctor’s visit into an already jammed schedule.  Wait a minute.  I have eighteen years of health care experience and besides that… I’m crafty… and I know how to sew. Really, how hard could it be?  I got on the Internet and Googled “how to remove stitches.”   I gathered some pointy little scissors, alcohol wipes, my reading glasses and some tweezers.  I limbered up my fingers, cracked my knuckles, then called my son over.  “C’mon, Johnny!  Let’s do this!”

“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” he asked dubiously.

“Of course I do,” I replied.  Emphasis on the LIED.

A little snipping.  A little tugging.  A little “Oh be quiet, that didn’t hurt” and voila!  Thank goodness, my Internet craft project went much better than his did.  We cleaned him up and put the whole cut finger mess behind us.  Or so I thought.

Now here I stood just two weeks later, looking at the same injury on a different boy.  Thankfully this cut– the exact same length, in the exact same location– didn’t look exactly as deep.  My now finely honed triage skills told me we could treat this second cut at home.

I led my son into the bathroom and cleaned him up properly, applying a layer of Neosporin and topping it off with a clean band aid, and a kiss.  “Come on, Sweetie.  You can help me mop up the blood spatters.”  It was a tender moment between a mother and son.

I didn’t need the Internet to show me how to do that.

On Boys, Balls and Climbing the Walls…

Yesterday afternoon my husband and I took our three boys to an indoor rock climbing gym– a completely new adventure for all of us.  I had no idea what an elaborate undertaking it would be.  I began to realize that rock climbing was not for sissies when there were 9 pages of liability forms to fill out and 18 separate spots requiring our initials.  Apparently there are numerous ways to maim yourself at an indoor rock climbing gym, and the owners were engaging in some serious legal CYA.  After we absolved the gym from any and all wrongdoing in the event of an untimely carabiner malfunction, there was a safety video to watch.  

During the video is when the true epiphany struck:  Rock climbing is mighty dangerous!  Why was this just occurring to me now?  What in the world possessed me to bring my boys here on a lovely Sunday afternoon in order to dangle them 50 feet in the air from a rope that was probably about as strong as a frayed piece of dental floss?  That image was scary enough… but then I started to wonder:  What if nothing at all went wrong… what if they had a great time…  what if they loved it?  I pictured a future of weekends filled with hand-wringing and floor pacing while my sons enjoyed wilderness excursions that included hanging by their fingertips from sheer rock faces like that Scientologist in that ‘Mission Impossible’ movie.  And then I thought:  “What if they all loved rock climbing so much that they became Scientologists?!”  I’ll be the first to admit that my imagination tends to run wild at times, and it was running completely amuck during that safety video.  

After the video we each put on our rented pairs of teensy tiny little rock climbing shoes that were inspired by ancient Chinese footbinding rituals, before awkwardly donning our requisite groin holsters (that incidentally served to freakishly exaggerate the manhood of every dude in the gym… and I mean that not in a good way).  We then commenced a 20 minute orientation with a cute little fresh-faced girl named Rachel who looked about 12 years old and should be filling us in about the favorite colors of the Jonas Brothers, rather than authoritatively educating us on the death-defying pastime of rock climbing.  When Rachel’s presentation was over, we had to demonstrate all our new found knowledge of knots, harness tightening and belaying tactics to her before she cut us loose (er, probably not a great choice of phrase here).  

The boys started climbing whilst my husband and I stayed on the ground and held on to their ropes for dear life.   Let me just tell you I have never been so tense in all my years.  Watching each of my boys scamper up a 30 ft rock wall was exhilarating and terrifying.  I marveled at their facility as each of them stretched and lunged and nimbly picked his way up the steep walls without a moment’s trepidation.  Even my 6 year old made it to the top about 62 times. It was amazing and I was so proud.  My husband beamed as he looked over at me and proclaimed:  “This place is boy heaven!”  And he was right, where else were boys allowed to literally climb the walls and flirt with death… and not get in trouble for it?  Finally it was Mom’s turn to try.  

It needs to be said that I was not dressed properly at all.  Never having climbed before, I showed up in running shorts.  (Emphasis on the “short”).  Between the teensy tiny shoes and go-go shorts, my thighs looked like they belonged to Mary Lou Retton (that is if Mary Lou had never been an Olympic athlete, and if her idea of “floor exercise” was kicking back with a bag of Doritoes, and flipping through the channels).   Add to that the tight harness cinched around my crotch and midsection, and let me tell you, I was a vision in Bulge.  And while I might have felt like the first woman to summit Mt. Everest as I bravely scaled the colorful plastic toeholds of the beginner’s section of the artificial rock wall, I shudder to think of the view my husband had of my backside as he belayed me from down below.  I must have looked like the second incarnation of the Hindenburg Disaster, up there all blimp-y and inflated while my comparatively little husband stayed down on planet Earth, yanking on my tether to keep me from floating away.  

And by the way, I didn’t actually know that I was afraid of heights until I was about half way up that wall.  I made the mistake of looking down at my little ant-like family scittering around far below me and my palms and forehead instantaneously broke out in sweat– and I mean like a bunch of sprinklers coming on.  When I got so high that I swore my nose was about to bleed, I begged my husband to let me come down.  “OFF BELAY!!!  DOWN CLIMB!!!  DOWN ME NOW!!! I screeched from a frightening altitude.  With my feet safetly back on terra firma, I asked him to point out how high I had gotten, fully expecting that his voice would be choked with admiration as he indicated some lofty distance.  He yawned and pointed to a pink rubber toehold barely 5 feet from the floor.  Totally embarrassing.  I was determined not to let Mt. Rock Wall to get the better of me and tried again.  Somehow during my triumphant ascent, my little tiny ant-husband managed to wield his iPhone to take a “proof of life” shot of me at the top.  I planted the American flag and descended triumphantly.  I couldn’t wait to see the picture of what a rugged and adverturous Boy Mom I was…  As my husband handed me the camera he politely warned me that the photo was “not, uh, very flattering…”  All I saw before I hit the ‘Delete’ button was a horrifying image of the underside of my keester oozing out of a crotch harness.  Let’s not talk about it.  

After a couple of hours of belaying the boys, my hands and my nerves needed a break.  My middle son wanted to spend some time with some boxing gloves and a punching bag, and since neither of his brothers was available to play the role of the punching bag, we went upstairs to the fitness area that gave us a bird’s eye view of all the climbers.   At one point I spotted my 10 year-old literally hanging around.  He had used the auto-belay to climb nearly to the top of the 30 ft wall and had clipped himself to a little tether to sort of “hang out” for a minute or two.  It put us virtually at eye level with one another, but about 20 feet apart with nothing but an expanse of air between us.  The gym was noisy so we couldn’t actually converse with each other, but our eyes met and I mouthed to him:

“What are you doing?”  He mouthed a response, but I couldn’t really make out what he was saying.  “What?” I mouthed back.  Again, I could see his lips moving but couldn’t really understand him. Was he telling me he loved it here?  That he was having the time of his life?  Finally after his third attempt, I got it.  He was saying:  “MY BALLS HURT.”  

Oh.

All in all it was a great afternoon.  I felt adventurous and gratified after a fun family outing where everyone attempted something new and walked out tired and happy. Despite all my worries, there were no carabiner malfunctions, no broken bones, and no dramatic Scientology conversions.  

Mission accomplished.

Father (thinks he) Knows Best

The morning of the first full day of summer, my husband (If he were a Super Hero his name would be MicroManageMan!), woke me at 6:50 am (Thanks, Honey) to tell me that my older 2 boys were in the pool.  I groaned at the realization that I would have to go from “comatose” to “alert” in 0.6 seconds in order to supervise them after my husband left for work, but the fact that my sons were already up and at ‘em to such a ambitious degree pleased my husband greatly. 

My husband was raised by a father we affectionately call “Grampy the Hun” for his gentle, laid back approach to childcare and forced labor.  This was a man who relished sending his children off to slumber with bedtime stories from the Struwwl-Peter book fresh in their heads.  For those of you unfamiliar with this book, Poor Struwwl-Peter and his friends learn life lessons the hard way. For instance, when Peter’s friend won’t stop sucking his thumbs, a tailor comes to his house and cuts them off with giant scissors.  Adorable.  Sweet dreams, son.  

Apparently every Saturday morning at the crack of dawn, Grampy the Hun and his never-ending chore list had my husband out helping with an unending list of home repairs, wood chopping, house painting and snow shoveling — even in the bleakest morning hours of the coldest Connecticut winters. My husband loves to garner sympathy with his retelling of an austere upbringing wherein he and his younger brother shared a drafty third floor bathroom with no heat which, according to family lore, had them executing a morning routine that included showering in frigid water while scraping icicles from thier eyebrows at the same time.  The way he tells it, waterboarding would have been a far more pleasant approach to their morning ablutions. (But don’t cry for them, Argentina.  That “rickety old house” they lived in had 11 bedrooms and was situated on 5 acres just down the street from David Letterman in New Canaan, CT… Poor baby.)  

Anyway MicroManageMan has a vision of how this summer will proceed that is clearly informed by his childhood memories.  In order to beat the Arizona summer heat and maintain maximum productivity during all daylight hours, my husband expects that all of his children will be up, dressed, and fed by 5:30 am.   By 0600 they will be fully engaged in some form of rigorous outdoor physical activity such as swimming, bike riding, running a military-style obstacle course, or perhaps enjoying a 5-mile forced march through the desert.  Note:  all preceding activities require competent adult supervision—which would require ME to be up at 5:30 am.  (Which tells you right there that his idea of the ‘perfect summer day’ is pure fantasy…) 

After completion of a minimum of 3 hours of vigorous outdoor physical activity, MicroManageMan dictates that each child has a healthy snack consisting of bran, pitted dates and whey protein.  After said snack, the children must brush their teeth with baking soda and sawdust, before swiftly moving to commence their chores.  This morning — the first morning of summer– MicroManageMan left a chore list for the boys that included the following:

1.    Unload dishwasher

2.   Load dishwasher

3.   Put backpacks away

4.   Make beds

5.   Fold, put away laundry

6.   Hug mom 

(Alright, I guess I’ll give him a point for #6, but still, he’s seriously stepping on my toes here …)

After the chore list is completed, MicroManageMan requires a minimum of 2 hours of academic work such as can be found in the Summer Bridge workbook or perhaps reading Tolstoy or memorizing entire books of the Bible. When academic work is completed (and painstakingly checked by Mother, of course) the boys are required to retire to their rooms for a 2-hour nap.  The children will arise from thier naps, do a series of calisthetics such as deep knee bends to alert thier minds; help Mother prepare dinner and perform their evening chores.  Afterwhich the family will provide a full accounting of their day’s endless productive and enriching activities to Father, who will nod his head approvingly and beam with pride.  Before bed, Father will smoke his pipe and read select passages from the Book of Virtues to the boys before they blow out thier lanterns and fall asleep by 7 pm.    

Frankly, if this is the way he thinks the day will go, then I want to know what kind of pipe he is smoking…  

(Editorial note:  OK, I’ll admit, at this point my original “Super Hero” idea has morphed into a dream sequence more reminiscent of Father Knows Best meets Little House on the Prarie.  If you don’t like it you can write your own damned blog).  

What actually happened this morning when my husband left for work at 7 am was this:  I dragged myself out of bed and threw on my robe to stagger to the kitchen for a cup of coffee.  There– at 7:05– I found my two amphibious sons dripping wet, staring at the TV and eating pudding.  Their father hadn’t been gone for 5 minutes.  I don’t even think the garage door was fully down or his car had cleared the driveway before they embarked on their own agenda for the day: Snack, watch TV, repeat. Fight with a brother. Snack, watch TV, repeat.  Jump on the couch. Snack, watch TV, repeat. Break something. Snack, watch TV, repeat. Fight with the other brother. Snack, watch TV, repeat.  The aforementioned routine can only be amended by Mother yelling “KNOCK IT OFF!!!” at the top of her lungs. Once won’t do it.  Twice is a joke.  She must yell it seven hundred and fifty two times before it catches their attention.   And so the day goes…

Mother tells boys to turn the TV off seven hundred and fifty two times.

Mother tells the boys to pick up their rooms seven hundred and fifty two times.

Mother tells the boys to keep their hands off each other seven hundred and fifty two times.

Mother tells the boys to put sunscreen on seven hundred and fifty two times. 

Mother tells the boys to stop yelling in the pool seven hundred and fifty two times.

Mother tells the boys to shut the sliding glass door because they are letting the cold air out seven hundred and fifty two freaking times.  

By now it is 4:47 pm.  Mother has yet to shower for the day.  Her hair like Medusa, her eyes wild and glassy; she’s hyperventilating in the kitchen, nervously rocking back and forth and muttering under her breath.  Surrounded by laundry and crumbs, a twitch develops under her left eye as she stares at the clock, mentally willing it to be 5 pm so she can pour a generous glass of chardonnay to wash down the sleeve of Girl Scout cookies she’s been eating.   The air conditioner is on overdrive because the sliding glass door has been left ajar.  Again.  The boys are quiet for the first time today.  Nevermind that hey are covered in sunscreen and lying all over her unmade bed eating cheetos and watching their third hour of reruns of ‘Saved by the Bell.’  They are quiet and that’s all that matters.   And that they finally have sunscreen on.  

The silence is broken by the sound of the garage door going up.  Uh oh, Dad’s pulling in the driveway.

Quick…  Everybody look busy!

Schoooooool’s Out for Summer…

I sat outside waiting for the bus to deposit the boys at our stop on the last day of school.  Over the past week or two I have listened to numerous mothers claim to be “so excited” that school was almost over because they just “can’t wait” to get some “quality time ” with thier kids!

I am not one of those mothers.  

Don’t get me wrong.  I am always genuinely glad to see my boys get off the bus at the end of a long day apart from them… but frankly, it usually doesn’t last all that long.  No sooner do they cross the threshold and they start bickering with each other, arguing with me about homework, sneaking illicit snacks, and systematically destroying the house I spent all day cleaning…  And on this day, the last day of school, it was slightly terrifying to think that they wouldn’t get back on that bus for another ten weeks.  So as I watched them disembark and start to slowly trod across the grass toward me, I admit I sort of had to feign enthusiasm.  I threw up a feeble:  “Woo hoo!”  and started to sing my own middle aged mom version of Alice Cooper’s “Schoooooool’s Out for the Summer!!”   My younger two looked amused.  My fourth grader (ahem) — my fifth grader– shot me daggers as he stomped by and grouchily barked: “STOP EMBARASSING ME!!”

I followed the boys into the house and reminded them that we had big plans to head to a pool party at a friend’s house in 45 minutes, so whoever was hungry should have a snack and then should help me start pulling swimsuits, towels and sunscreen together.   Right about then the TV flipped on and thier minds went completely blank.  Schoooooool’s out for the summer… 

Snapping the TV off, I remind them that we are supposed to be getting ready for a party…  big fun… friends… swimming… boat drinks and the like…  naively assuming that this would motivate them to rally and cooperate to get ready.  Nope.  Feet dragging, muttering, sniping at each other, each boy disappeared into his room.   Several minutes later I hear another TV snap on somewhere in the house.  “What the…”  I wonder as I wander toward the sound of cartoon voices.  “Seriously, guys. POOL PARTY! Woo Hoo!  Let’s get ready to go!”  

In the kitchen I start going through backpacks in search of report cards.  My middle son comes back into the kitchen and sees me eyeing his end of the year grades with a pleased look on my face.  “Give me $10 bucks!”  He bleats, demanding an instant reward for the O’s on the page.

“Excuse me, young man, but your reward should be the feeling of accomplishment you derive when the grades you earn are an appropriate reflection of your effort and intelligence.  Your motivation should be your desire to do your best.  You know, Eleanor Roosevelt once said:  ‘Whah whah whah whah whah whah whah.’  Suffice it to say, I am not going to pay you for your report card.”  

Clearly my eloquent speech really hits home and he responds: “Whatever, Lady” and snaps on SpongeBob on the kitchen TV.  Just then my oldest son storms out of his room:  

“You didn’t sign me up for basketball and now the team is almost full!”  

“What?  It is?  Well, I called the coach and haven’t heard back.”  

“You never signed me up!”  

“OK, well, I did try, and don’t worry, we’ll get you signed up.”  

“Well the team is almost full!”

“Easy does it, son, I tried to get the information, I never heard back.  Just relax.  We’ll get you on the team.” 

“It’s almost full!” 

It dawned on me then that I was being sucked into the vortex of one of those circular, over-dramatized arguments that tweens are prone to provoke.  It also dawned on me that I had already spent nearly $600 on “Summer Basketball” plans for my not quite 11 year-old son who was now yelling at me for not getting him signed up in time for an ostensibly nearly full YMCA team that I had no information about despite doing my maternal due diligence.  It further dawned on me that he still needed new basketball shoes.  Make that $650 dollars.  And he was still yelling. 

            “You never signed me up!” 

I was starting to get a little ticked.  “What do you want me to do?!?  Alright everyone!  In the car!  On the double! We’ve got to go sign up for basketball RIGHT NOW!  Let’s get to the Y!  WHY?  Because John says so!” 

The look in his eyes told me that my little tirade had me inching toward the cliff called Crazy, so I switched gears:  “Would everyone please just get your swim suits on so we can go to the POOL. PARTY.!”   My oldest son headed off to get his suit, in the bathroom off the kitchen that he now claims as his own since we converted our former guest room into his tween bachelor digs.  Gasping for air and clutching his throat he dramatically staggers backwards out of the room choking out the following totally unnecessary and obnoxious proclamation: 

“SOMEONE POOPED IN MY BATHROOM AND IT SMELLS HORRIBLE!!!!!” 

“Oh for crying out loud… get your suit and swim shirt so we can get out of here.” 

Pulling his shirt up to cover his nose and mouth, he cautiously inches forward toward the bathroom, face set in a grimace and arm outstretched like he’s determined to enter a burning building to save a child.  “Would you just get over it and flip the fan on?” I implore him, my tone exasperated, my eyes rolling back in my head.

Unfortunately we keep all the boys’ swimsuits and shirts in that bathroom, so once my older son staggered back out clutching his suit I had to send my middle son in to fight the noxious fumes and retrieve his.  Oh. The. Drama.  No sooner does he dart into the offensive chamber then the screaming starts:  “Aaaaah!  Aaaaaah!  Aaaaaah!  IT’S HORRIBLE!  IT’S HORRIBLE! YOU’RE TRYING TO KILL ME!!!!”  he shrieks as he sprints full speed out of the room, clutching his bathing suit in his flailing hands.  In the meantime my oldest son, airway still protected by his stretched out t-shirt, appears out of no where and tapes a hastily fabricated “KEEP OUT OF MY BATHROOM!! YOU STINK!!” sign on the door. All this fuss over their little brother having used the potty?  I go in to turn on the fan and air out what can’t be more than a little stinky gas. 

Sweet mother of god. 

“Toxic” doesn’t touch it. “Repellent” is not even in the ballpark.  To this day I cannot comprehend what sort of vile atrocity that small child could have eaten to cause such an unholy stench. Seriously, the corrosive fumes nearly singed my nose hair.  I flip on the fan and fumble under the sink for the anti-bacterial room spray, spraying the room liberally and then taking a few huffs myself in a vain attempt to purify my nasal passages.

Turing my attention back to the gruesome scene, I am determined to find the source of the smell.  It was then that I compiled the clues that allowed me to get to the bottom of it (so to speak).  I spy an empty toilet paper roll.  Fecal matter on the faucet handle.  And a brand new, formerly white swim shirt crumpled on the floor… It doesn’t take a detective to know that ‘putting poo and poo together makes gore.’ Sticking my head out of the room and inhaling deep agonal breaths, I gasp to my two older boys to get their younger brother, the Poopetrator of this crime against humanity.

Andrew, oblivious to the odor, but keenly aware of the pained look on his mother’s face, hesitantly approached the bathroom door.  “Son!  If there isn’t any toilet paper, you need to ask mommy to get you some! You made a big mess and didn’t tell anybody. That’s not OK! Do you know what the word ‘BIOHAZARD’ means!?” He hangs his little head and turns to leave the room.  That’s when I see it.  A skid mark on the back of his lower leg.  I exhale deeply and escort him to the bathtub.  The clock catches my eye.  The boys got off the bus at 12:40.  It is now 1:00. 

We are only 20 minutes into Summer Vacation.     

I’ve already had to turn off the television 27 times, deliver a commencement-style address about the virtue of intrinsic motivation for academic achievement, settle a contentious basketball arbitration, and channel my inner Nancy Drew to solve the ‘Case of the Exploding Bowels’ not to mention donning a respirator and HazMat suit to clean it all up.   And we still don’t have our swimsuits and sunscreen on…  

Only 109,440 minutes of summer left to go…

Sweet mother of god.

Effing Amish Friendship Bread

The other day my friend, Melissa, handed me a large ziploc bag filled with something that looked like glue.   She told me it was an “Amish Friendship Bread” starter and that I would need to “mush the bag” every day for 6 or so days, then on the 7th day add some ingredients and bake it.  “It tastes like cake,” she said.  “My kids loved it.”  (She had me at cake). The bag of glue came with a detailed sheet of instructions that I ignored. “Should be something fun to do with the boys,” I thought before tossing it on the counter and forgetting about it.

The next day my 10 year-old son spotted the curious bag, still full of glue and now also quite full of air. “What’s this?”   I told him what it was and asked if he wanted to help me “mush the bag” each day for the next few days until it was time to bake it.  “Sure,” he said as he looked over the instructions, “it says we’re supposed to let the air out.”  “Hmmm, I hadn’t noticed that.  That can be your job.”  For the next few days my son and I took turns letting the air out of the ever-ballooning bag and mushing it’s pasty contents.  I ticked off the days until Bake the Bread that Tastes Like Cake Day and was relieved to see that we would have all day Saturday to get it done.

Saturday morning dawned early and it was immediately apparent that the boys hadn’t had enough sleep.  By 7:00 am there had already been a few punches thrown and a few doors slammed and multiple declarations of war.  It was going to be a long day.

In order to curb their aggression, we tried to keep them busy:  chores, grocery shopping, lunch, cleaning up after lunch, making messes, cleaning up after messes, etc, etc.  They also spent a good portion of the day in the pool.  By the time we got everyone ready for our double-header at the Little League field, it was clear that all three boys were sunburned and exhausted.  When the first baseball game started it was over 100 degrees with an insistent breeze blowing that felt like Mother Nature had her super-sized blow dryer trained right on your face.  Nearly four hours later the games ended and we loaded our hungry, hot-pink, dust-coated brood into the car and headed home.  By the time everyone was bathed, fed, and tucked in bed, and the filthy uniforms were in the washer, and the kitchen was almost clean it was already after 9 o’clock.  “I’ll finally be able to put my feet up,” I thought as I wiped down the counter and loaded the last few dinner dishes in the washer.

“CRAP!!!”  I exclaimed to no one in particular.  “Today’s the day I have to make that Amish Friendship Bread!”

Thinking it would only take a few minutes, I found the sheet of directions and preheated the oven.

OK, what do I have to do?  Let’s see, oh, I guess I’m not just baking the bread, but I have to parcel out the starter to give to other people. I got out 4 ziploc bags and dated each with a Sharpie. And what is this?  Oh geez.  It says in big letters “DO NOT PUT MIXTURE IN METAL BOWL!”  Gosh, there’s a lot to this…  Let’s see… ‘Add 1-1/2 cups each of sugar, flour and milk.’  I measured out the sugar and flour and dumped them in the bowl with the starter; then headed to the fridge where I discovered we were out of milk.

“CRAP!!!”  I nearly shouted.  To the Amish in particular.  

“Honey?”  I sweetly addressed my husband who was hunched over a sandwich and seemed to barely be able to keep his head up off his plate he was so tired.  “How would you feel about going to the grocery for some milk?”

“Huh? Now? Can’t we get it in the morning?” he responded. (Quite rationally, I might add).

“Well, I kind of need it for this silly Amish Friendship Bread.  Would you mind?”

“OK” he sighed, pushing away from the table.  I have to say that my husband’s a rock star when it comes to last minute, inconvenient  trips to the grocery.

I figured I’d get everything ready so I could just dump the milk in and get it in the oven as soon as he got back.  “Man, there are a lot of ingredients to this stinking Amish Friendship bread…” I set about measuring baking powder, baking soda, vanilla, cinnamon, oil; cracking a few eggs… When I was done with each ingredient, I promptly put its container back where it belonged, priding myself on keeping a clean kitchen, even as I cook.   My husband arrived home as I was adding the final few ingredients.

“CRAP!!!” I groaned.  To everyone residing in Pennsylvania Dutch country.

“What now?” my weary husband asked.

“It says I need 2 boxes of vanilla instant pudding!!!  We don’t have any instant pudding!!!”

Just then there was a long pause in the kitchen.

“Are you going to scrap it at this point… or are you going to ask me to go back to the store for 2 boxes of vanilla instant pudding?”  My husband asked slowly (but by the tone of his voice, I could tell he already knew how I would answer).

“Well… it’s just that I already have all the other ingredients in the bowl and it makes 2 loaves and it could be our dessert tomorrow.  (Long pause of my own) And tomorrow is Mother’s Day…”

“Whose school project is this anyway?” he wanted to know.  I guessed that he was trying to psyche himself up for the drive back to the store by clarifying which of his three sons’ academic success he was selflessly contributing to.

“Uh… Melissa’s?” I answered meekly, attempting a chuckle.

“Is this like some sort of a chain letter?!” he demanded.  “You mean to tell me I’m headed out to the grocery store– for the second time— at 9:30 at night— for a chain letter…?!” I heard him grumble as he pulled his keys off the hook in the laundry room and headed out the garage door. “Well then, I guess I’d better go because if we don’t make the bread it will mean 7 years of bad luck!”

“Oh geez this is sort of ridiculous, and I am exhausted!”  I thought as I added the milk and grabbed a whisk and started to stir the concoction.

“OH CRAP!!!” I bellowed.  (To all future generations of electricty-eschewing Amish people the world over.  And the horses that pull their buggies.)

A metal whisk!!  I was using a metal whisk!!

I yanked the whisk out of the bowl, slopping the now much-hated mixture all over the counter in the process.  When my husband returned with the pudding, I finished mixing with a plastic spoon, put all the ingredients away and wiped down the splattered counter.  All I had to do now was pour the batter into 2 loaf pans and stick it in the oven.  I thought. I got out the only two loaf pans I owned.

CRAP!! (To those carriage-riding, furniture-making, barn raising, technology-avoiding … and to Bill Gates and Steve Jobs and…)

One was glass and the other was metal.  There was absolutely no way I was going to ask my husband to go back to the grocery store to purchase another glass loaf pan. Come hell or highwater or mysterious cake-ruining chemical reaction, I was going to pour the batter into the 2 pans I had, but first I checked the recipe one last time.  I wanted to see if there were any explicit warnings about explosions or corrosive metal cake poisoning, or…

CRAP!!!  For the love of  all things AMISH!!!!

What’s this!?!? Forget about the physical properties of the loaf pans!! Those Amish people with their crazy Old Testament names and Abe Lincoln beards don’t just pour batter in pans, apparently!!!   Nooooo… they get back out all the ingredients they just put away to keep their kitchens clean, and they mix sugar and cinnamon and dust the freaking loaf pans first!!!  Out come the measuring cups. Out come the sugar and cinnamon. I was so tired by this point, my vision was starting to blur.

Finally.  Finally. I got the pans dusted, the batter poured, and put it all in the oven.  It was 10 pm.  One last check of the evil Amish recipe told me that the god-forsaken Amish Friendship Bread would have to bake for ONE HOUR.

I wanted to kill myself.

No… I wanted to kill “my friend” Melissa.

When the resented loaves were finally pulled from the oven, and I’d had a good night’s sleep, and woke up to freshly baked cake/bread… I had to admit, it was really good, and my husband and the kids loved it.  But make no mistake.  If I happen to give you the starter for this Effing Amish Friendship Bread… I really must not like you very much at all…