Month: October 2007

In lieu of drama

I’ve been wallowing in some mucky emotions. From those emotions sprung a post that made me weep, but for once, I decided to withhold the melodrama. Which leaves me with nothing but a recitation of daily events. Which may make you weep.

Can I just complain one more time about Pee-Wee football and how it sucks time right out of our family? My 9-year old only has to practice three nights a week. He has a game every Saturday morning. My husband is the former athlete in our family, the one who keeps signing up our kids for activities, so he is the one to stand in the damp cold, watching practice.

Except when he is busy, as he was Tuesday and will be tonight. I have permission, though, to drop off my son, alert another parent that I’m leaving and then pick him up later because nothing will make you want to cry like standing on the sidelines while darkness falls and your 5-year chatters and complains, “Is it over yet?” (Well, nothing except being rejected, but that melodrama is behind me.)

Tomorrow, I am leaving my family to spend forty-eight hours scrapbooking with a bunch of other escaped housewives. Oh, sure, some will be important career-minded women, but for the weekend, we’ll all be creative fools, fussing with our pictures as we adhere them to acid-free scrapbook pages. I, personally, will be reliving 2003, which, as I recall, was a fairly good year. Except I was very fat.

Oh, and get this! My husband mentioned that he’s invited over the new youth pastor and his wife, plus a military chaplain. They’ll be here Saturday night (while I am gone!) . . . which means I really need to straighten up around here and perhaps mop the floor. And maybe I’ll remove the dirty sock stuck to the fireplace. (Why, yes, that is a hole in my ceiling. Thank you for noticing.)
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At the moment

Someone left Nickelodeon on and the noise annoys me, but if I walk ten feet over to snap it off, someone will spring into sight and turn it back on. My daughter is playing outside wearing a pink skort with yellow dots, cotton shirt, and black parka. She is not wearing socks or shoes. Two of my boys are in the Boy Cave playing video games, sniffing the air and wondering when they’ll be allowed to eat breakfast burritos. The cubed potatoes are still cooking. Three or four stray boys are playing here, too. And it sounds like someone is upstairs, though I have no idea who that might be.

In half an hour, my husband will pick up our 9-year old and take him to football practice. Before then, I will fish his stained polyester pants from the dryer, insert the pads and lace him into his protective gear. When they leave, I will inform the neighborhood kids that it’s time to go home. My teenagers will shower (oh, how I hope they shower) and I’ll drive them to church for youth group.

When I return home with my chatty daughter, I’ll read (On Writing Well

by Zinsser) while she showers.

How I look forward to that moment.

Nature versus nurture

Over the past week, I’ve seen these twins separated at birth on several talk shows. (They co-wrote a book about their experience called Identical Strangers.) Despite being raised apart, they share much in common from mannerisms to their educational choices. (And almost everything in between.) I find their story relevant to me because I am raising adopted twins, albeit fraternal twins.

Fourteen years ago, we waited with great anxiety for the birth-mother to choose us. I believed wholeheartedly that Nurture would triumph over Nature in an arm-wrestling contest. Motherhood would be all about providing an appropriate, loving environment. I would mold my children into my image and they would become straight-A students with an affinity for the piano and a love of literature. They would be polite and gentle and funny. My only worry was that they might be ugly.

I discounted the idea that nature and their genetics would dictate the course of their lives.

I was so wrong.

My biological son is 9 years old. He shares not only physical traits with his father, but also personality traits. He is the sort of child who sets his own alarm, gets up early to do his homework, then takes a shower (without being asked) and plays with gusto until it’s time to go to school. At school, he listens, follows directions and excels in every subject. (I like to think he got that from me.) He has an optimism and a persistence that will serve him well. And he’s hilarious.

If he’d been my only child, I would have dislocated my elbow patting myself on the back. I would have been an insufferable, smug parent, one who believed that my careful choice of educational toys resulted in my boy’s brilliance. I would have thought that his success was due to my excellent mothering skills. I would have peered down my nose at other mothers with their difficult children and reluctant students. I would have blamed them for their children’s behavior and destiny.

On the other hand, if I didn’t have my 9-year old, I would consider myself an utter failure as a parent. Over these past fourteen years, I have repeated myself like an insistent parrot. I have hovered over my boys, insisting that they do all the math problems. I have pointed out that laundry goes into the laundry room. I have lectured and pointed my finger and on occasion, stomped my feet in frustration. My boys shrug off my parenting like a coat that does not fit. They refuse to bend to my will, to fit into the mold I expected.

Living with them is a lot like living with strangers. They do not act, think or behave like anyone I know. When I make jokes, they look at me in confusion. (The other day, one of them demanded, “WHY CAN’T BRANDON SPEND THE NIGHT?” They wanted a sleepover on a Saturday night, which is against family rules because sleepovers on Saturdays make Sundays too hard. After offering a bunch of reasons only to be met with arguments, I said, “It’s against my religion,” and the son in question said, “That’s not in the Bible!” I laughed at his indignance. “It’s a joke!” I said. These boys do not “get” sarcasm, which is my primary love-language.)

So, stories like the twins separated at birth give me hope. I can stop fretting and loosen my grip just a little. I cannot control these kids. They are who they are. I’m merely along for the ride, hoping that they’ll believe me when I tell them we should turn left at the corner. If they don’t, we might get lost for a while, but I’m sure (relatively sure) that we’ll all end up at our destination sooner or later.

I’m just the mother, not the Grand Ruler of the Universe. I need to remember that. I must not take their rejection of my mothering skills personally.

A Giddy Phone Call

Yesterday, I spoke with Nicholas Sparks on the phone. Yes, that Nicholas Sparks, the novelist. His newest novel, The Choice, is currently number one on USA Today’s Best Selling Books list.

A bunch of us “mommy-bloggers” were invited to participate in a conference call with Mr. Sparks (Nicholas, may I call you Nicholas, Mr. Sparks?). We each had an opportunity to ask two questions, and as it turns out, we collectively asked questions already answered on his website.

It was fun, though I bet he gets tired of answering the same questions.

I was the last blogger invited to ask a final question and I asked him my favorite question for writers: “What are you reading now?” (I prefaced this by saying perhaps he doesn’t have time to read since he’d already mentioned that he has five kids, works out two hours a day, coaches for three hours a day, and is involved with the start-up of a private school. He said he rarely watches television or surfs the Internet.)

But, he said, oh yes, he reads and reads a lot. Here are the last six books he’s read:

1. A book called Unbroken that someone gave to him. (I don’t know author or genre.)

2. Bowerman and the Man of Oregon: The Story of Oregon’s Legendary Coach and Nike’s Co-founder.

3. The Case Against Homework.

4. The Post-Birthday World.

5. 1453.

6. “The latest Grisham novel,” which is Playing for Pizza.

Someone asked him, “Do you find writing cathartic?” and he said, “No! I find writing hard!” He also pointed out that what he writes are “modern day Greek tragedies.” Love stories, he said, descend from Greek tragedy in which every story ends with a bittersweet or tragic ending (as opposed to a romance novel which always features a happy ending).

He also said, “Love changes you,” and in his books, love changes the characters.

At the end of the telephone call, he mentioned that he’s been on tour for 10 or 11 days and furthermore, that he was really sick. I couldn’t hear an audible “awwwww,” but I suspect that every single woman clutching a phone to her ear thought the same thing and wanted to personally tuck him under the covers and tell him to rest.

(His website is full of information for writers and readers alike. Just so you know. And here is a link to another blogger’s transcript of the phone conference

Immigrants (L.A. Dolce Vita) dvd

.  Oh, and look here.  Here’s another blogger’s post about it.)

Call me Mr. Spock

Unsympathetic. That’s me. When one of my kids chooses a stupid action which results in an injury, after checking for blood and consciousness, I tend to roll my eyes and say, “Well, you should be more careful.” I rarely swoop in with a flurry of hugs and concern. In the old days when I blamed myself for being imperfect and measured myself against Ma Ingalls of “Little House on the Prairie,” I would have considered this proof of my failure as a mother.

Now, I just view this as a personal quirk, an endearing quality, one of those weird things about me that make me myself and which also makes me rational during emergencies. I regret that I’m not all sweetness and light, in the same way I regret that my right pinkie toe insists on rolling to the right, but what can you do, really? I’m pragmatic. (Once, I observed out loud to a friend of mine, “You’re so pragmatic!” and I think she felt insulted, but I meant that as a sort of compliment. Isn’t it better to be realistic than bubbling over with pointless emotion?)

This afternoon, thunder rumbled and lightning flashed. Here in the Pacific Northwest our rain is usually delivered without drama. We just tolerate day after day of drizzle and gloom, no fuss, just muss. No light shows, no audio.

The kids (only three here at the moment, age 9, 9 and 5) were dazzled, and one of them (a visitor), said, “I’m shaking. I’m terrified of thunder. Once, when I was four, I was getting into my pajamas and the thunder hit and I fell over.” And I, Miss Sympathetic, said, “Oh, well, you’re fine. Go play. It’s just a storm.”

And a little later, I followed that comment with, “Hey, look! Stop speaking your phobias aloud because she is borrowing that from you!” I finally told my daughter that storms don’t kill anyone. (At least not here in the Northwest, at least not often, at least not in the house, not while I am in charge, so there.)

My tolerance for fear is low. Either something terrible will happen or it won’t. No need to freak out. Save that emotion for something that matters like wondering whether your children will ever really grow up and and leave the house. Also, will someone please tell me why everyone who lives in this house except for the teenagers is capable of putting their dirty laundry in the laundry receptacle I put in the bathroom? They must be blind; how else to explain the dirty clothes discarded next to the basket?

And in conclusion, I’d like to mention that my family room ceiling still has a hole in it because the leaky shower drain has yet to be fixed. (I think our friend, Mr. Fix-It, has forgotten us.)

Monday morning madness

After my morning hour-long walk, I fixed lunch for my third-grader and welcomed the five-year old from down the street. Then my boys left with their dad for P.E. at the local YMCA. I savor the time they are gone, not just because they are 14 and tend to forget to put on their deodorant, but because we spend so much time together that I need the occasional break from their judgment and back-talk. Okay, that and I like to clean their room while they are gone.

Now, the more responsible mothers among us wouldn’t dream of cleaning their teenagers’ room, but I figure that my baseline standard of cleanliness is beyond my boys’ comprehension and so, if I want it cleaned to my standards (which aren’t really that high, but still), I should clean. So I do when I can’t stand it anymore.

Also, that room is not just their bedroom, but also a sort of rec room in which all the neighborhood kids and all my kids spend an inordinate amount of time. In fact, a large part of the distressing mess in there was mine because the (old, used) piano bench fell apart and I removed all its guts (sheet music, old music books and newer piano lesson books) and left them in disarray on the adjacent filing cabinet. For months. Even after I repaired the bench, the stuff sat. A few other things piled atop the music books and then someone left a shirt (post-sleepover) here which I put on the top of the piano. Then, for whatever reason, an extension cord found its way to rest on top of the shirt, along with two screwdrivers and a thingamajig that you use with caulk.

Cover the whole thing with dust, bake thirty minutes at 350 degrees.

No, wait. You must not bake clutter. You must put it all back where it belongs and throw away what you can. Which I did. Then I dusted and vacuumed, but not before I moved the couch and unearthed some stray Legos, a spoon, a plate, three dirty socks and a million string cheese wrappers and a pile of Goldfish crackers.

Yes, that was pleasant.

I hooked up a gigantic speaker to the boys’ computer, threading the cords behind the big desk. I put away their clothes. And now, at least for today, when I walk into that room I am not tempted to hurl myself to the ground in revulsion.