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Mr. T has officially reached adolescence. Since the day he was born, I’ve looked forward to this day with the dread of a Y2K fatalist—like a countdown to destruction and our impending doom.
I’ve spent the past several months wondering when everything will be different. When we he lose interest in this? When will he start refusing to do that? When will he decide he’s too old or too cool to do the things I’m not ready for him to give up? Or old enough or cool enough to do the things I’m not ready for him to try?
Late last night, I realized I’ve been bracing myself for the very worst. As a general rule, my life strategy is to keep the expectations low to avoid disappointment. But it’s not fair for me to assume everything will be a struggle. Undoubtedly, our adventure through the teenage years will be fraught with peril, but surely the most essential talisman to carry on our journey is hope.
I woke up this morning to find the earth is still turning, the sun still shining. Mr. T is still making me laugh and making me crazy in the usual dosages. Come what may, he’ll still be mine. And I’ll love him just the same.
Happy Birthday, Mr. T!
Good thing there’s no charge for awesomeness, or we’d never be able to afford you.
BigHugs was born on 7-31 at 1:31 am, weighing 7 lbs 7 oz. I’ve always liked those numbers.
Once we decided that our number four would be our last, I was determined to get this one right—to avoid all of the mistakes I thought I’d made with the first three. It didn’t take long for me to realize that either I’m not the kind of mom who learns from her mistakes or BigHugs isn’t the kind of kid who bends to the will and whims of her mother.
Year four has brought to pass so many milestones: out of diapers, out of our bed, out of our hair for a few moments at a time as she’s discovered how to entertain herself. As the last vestiges of babyhood fade away, I occasionally find myself wondering why I ever waste a moment wishing she would just grow up a little already. The past few months I’ve begun to feel the distance–that little bit of space opening up between us that has been both a source of relief and regret. Her more recent clinginess and sometimes resistance to all the “big girl” talk makes me wonder if maybe part of her is feeling it too, if maybe part of her is subconsciously reeling herself back in a bit. That pull makes me hopeful for the future—hopeful that no matter what we may say or do to each other in the coming years, we’ll instinctively manage to keep each other within reachable bounds.
Happy 4th birthday, BigHugs! I couldn’t have asked for a better last chapter to the story of my childbearing years—a chapter I hope will fill volumes. I love you!
I was at Freddy’s last weekend, picking up this and that when I noticed they had their summer clothes on sale for 50% off. All of my darn kids have grown since last summer (can’t this shooting up a size or two be like a bi-annual thing or something?), so I looked around for shorts for everyone.
I picked out a few things for the girls, and then moved on to the boys section. I looked around, and all I saw was plaid. Plaid shorts everywhere. Now I’m thinking these plaid shorts are pretty cute cool, but Mr. T tends to be on the more conservative side, so I wasn’t sure how he’d feel about them. I called him up.
Me: So I’m at the store looking for shorts for you, and everything’s plaid.
Mr. T: OK.
Me: Are you OK with plaid? Is that what the kids are wearing at school these days? (Is that what the kids are wearing at school these days?!)
Mr. T: Yeah, plaid’s fine.
And then I proceeded to describe to him the different color/stripe thickness combinations to try to get a feel for whether there was a difference between cool plaid and dork plaid because, you know, I’d like to think I’m the kind of mother who wouldn’t buy the dork plaid. Actually, I’d like to think I’m the kind of mother who wouldn’t buy the dork plaid without any special instruction from anyone else, but frankly, I have no such confidence in myself. I have no idea what’s cool anymore. And did I mention I said, “Is that what the kids are wearing at school these days?”?! No wonder my children have taken to rolling their eyes at me.
I used to roll my eyes at my mother when she whistled along to Personal Jesus on the radio (you don’t whistle to DM!), when she said words like “annual” (it’s a yearbook, Mom!), when she came home from a shopping trip with the dork plaid. I swore to myself I would never be old. That Mom old. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.
Yesterday, driving in the car, I looked over at Mr. T and the slight scowl he had on his face and realized he’s doing his best to settle into that prepubescent angst I’ve been dreading since the day he was born. I worry sometimes that he’s going to start seeing me as That Mom—the woman who has no clue, the one who doesn’t understand him (or anything else, for that matter) at all. The next few years are going to be tough. I’m hoping, at least every once in awhile, he’ll be able to see past That Mom whistling along to Boom Boom Pow (or whatever it is kids are listening to these days) and just let me be his mom.
At the dinner table.
Mr. T: Can I get a handlebar moustache?
Me: Like at the store?
Mr. T: No, grow one.
Me: If you can grow a handlebar moustache, you can have one.
DynaGirl: Why would you ask that?
Mr. T: What? Handlebar moustaches are awesome.
DynaGirl: No, I mean wouldn’t you just be able to decide for yourself?
Mr. T: But I might still be living at home when I grow hair. You never know.
Maybe there’s hope for us yet.
Here’s a little bonus awesome for you:
Chuck and I took the kids to see UP this weekend. I enjoyed it. Very much.
I’ve been feeling less than up lately. Not exactly down. Not exactly in the middle. Just kind of hovering in some place I really don’t know how to name—an upless, downless, middleless dimension of blahness. I haven’t had much luck figuring out what to do about it, how to pull myself up and out of the slump. Some people might say the cure for that is to immerse myself in something I love doing. Hmmm…and that would be?
It’s kind of depressing when you realize you have no real passions in life. What are my dreams? Not just the “Oh, it would be nice if”s. Real dreams. What do I want to do? Who do I want to be? So I like to write. I want to be a writer, right? Well, sure, that would be nice. But do I really feel passionate about it? Eh.
Eh. I think that’s been the source of my blahs. It’s not that I’m sad about not having accomplished my life’s goals or living my dreams, it’s realizing that I don’t have any. Not really. And that’s just wrong. There’s something wrong with me. That’s no way to live. You can’t just go through life floating along without really wanting. Can you? How can you be happy in life or how can you measure your happiness relative to your potential happiness without defining what it is that will make you happy? How do you even embark on this journey we call life without a destination in mind?
I’m a religious person, and thinking in terms of my faith I have an ultimate destination in mind, an ultimate goal. But along the way, I’m supposed to be making the most of this very limited time I have on Earth. I’m supposed to be doing things. I’m supposed to be making something of myself. I’m supposed to want in a way that leads to self-discovery (who am I meant to be?) and self-improvement (becoming that meant-to-be me).
These kinds of thoughts have been weighing on me for some time. I’ve been feeling like I’m failing at something I don’t even know I’m suppposed to be doing. I’m missing some kind of calling. I’m missing out on something—something big and grand because, you see, I don’t have anything big and grand in my sight. How sad. How pathetic. What a waste.
Sitting in the theater Saturday night, it hit me—a Pixar-produced epiphany. The big and the grand is in the now. All the little moments, even the
most routine and mundane, are my dreams come true because I’m doing it for and with the people I love and the people who love me. Yeah, it’s super corny. And more than a little cliché. But it’s my truth (bonus corny!), at least for now, and I’m feeling a little lighter today. I’m feeling a little up.
Today is my 15th wedding anniversary. Fifteen years ago today, I made Chuck the happiest man on earth. I won’t say that I love him even more today than I did 15 years ago. I don’t even know what that means. But I will say I’ve never stopped.
Here are 15 things I love about Chuck.
1. Early on in our marriage he volunteered to be the designated fridge-cleaner-outer, and he’s still doing it.
2. I can always count on him to make a corny joke. And he loves it when I roll my eyes.
3. He often can’t remember things I’ve told him 5 minutes before, but he recalls our courtship in vivid details even I had forgotten.
4. He takes care of all the maintenance on my car and sometimes even makes a special trip to make sure the tank is full, not because he thinks I’m incapable or that it’s his manly/husbandly duty, but just so I won’t have to bother with it.
5. I always know when I’ve “caught” him doing something because he has a guilty smile/chuckle that gives him away every time. He knows that I know, and he still smiles.
6. He always compliments me and tells me I’m beautiful, even when I feel (and, let’s be honest, look) worked over.
7. He’s very loyal. When I’m upset, he always takes my side—sometimes even when I’m upset with him.
8. He still writes me love notes and makes me mix CDs, often pointing out the lyrics of special significance.
9. He is careful with money (our finances are great), but he is not a tightwad, and if he’s ever been worried about my spending habits, he’s never let on to me. We have never had an argument over money.
10. Whenever he needs to go out of town, our kids are very upset and make a BIG deal over his homecoming. That says a lot about him as a father.
11. He always asks my opinion.
12. He sends me links and things that he thinks will make good blogging material.
13. He would rather spend time with me than hang out with the guys, but doesn’t mind giving me a girl’s night out. (Or at least he’s very good at pretending.)
14. He is quick to reassure me when I doubt myself, quick to recognize my accomplishments (even if it’s just that I’ve managed to get the dishes done that day), and always without my feeling patronized or doubting his sincerity.
15. He has a special appreciation for my particular flavor of crazy. He must, after all, he’s still here!
Happy anniversary, Chuck! I still love you!
Have you ever had a once beloved and cherished friendship that just seems to have run its course? It’s not really anyone’s fault. Maybe she’s higher maintenance than you’re cut out for, maybe she’s not as supportive as you need her to be, or maybe she’s just left you hanging one too many times. Maybe you’re in a different stage of life now, and while she was just what you needed before, now she’s just—not. Or maybe it’s just that you’ve changed or she’s changed.
I’ve found myself in that position more than once in life. I find myself in that position now. Sometimes it’s hard to know when to let go. You have this history together. Once upon a time she was your best friend, you were always comfortable together, and while other friends would come and go, she was always there. She always understood you best, was best able to meet your particular needs. She was there to lift you up when you were feeling low, and didn’t complain when you shrugged her off now and again for a little extra space and breathing room.
I find myself wondering what happened. How did we get to this place? I suppose it was just a matter of time. It’s always just a matter of time. I’m reluctant to move on even though I know it would likely be in my best interest. We just don’t fit together like we used to, and while I hate to admit it, sometimes I feel like she’s holding me back—keeping me from being my best self. Honestly, she’s bringing me down, and that’s just not healthy, right?
While I know making a break would be the best thing to do, I’m nervous. What if I can’t find something better? I don’t make new friends easily. There aren’t a lot out there willing to put up with my deficiencies. I’ll be asking for a lot without much to offer in return. And I think I’m afraid I might find that what I really need just doesn’t exist, and, though surely I’ll find something eventually, it may never be as good as what I once had.
These thoughts have been weighing on me for a really long time, and even talking about them now makes me want to forget the whole thing and keep on going just as I have, pretending that nothing’s wrong. But I’ve already been holding on for too long, and I really don’t think I can do it anymore. I just can’t. It’s time for me to face the facts. It’s time for me to be brave and do the right thing. It’s time for me to man up and buy a new bra.
So this morning I get out my trusty dusty spiral notebook to write a quick note to DynaGirl’s teacher, giving her an update on DG’s arm and letting her know we forgot to get DG’s homework when we left early yesterday for the appointment with the doctor. I’m just getting started when DynaGirl says, “You’re writing another note?”
Me: What do you mean?
DG: Didn’t you just write her a note last week?
Me: Yeah, but that was to let her know when I could come in this week to work in the classroom.
DG: It just seems like you write a lot of notes.
Me: Is that bad?
DG: No, as long as people don’t start thinking you’re weird with all the notes. Or that I’m weird.
Me: Well, I was just letting her know that you need to sit out of PE for two more weeks and that we forgot to get your homework yesterday. Is that OK?
DG: Yeah, that’s OK. I’m just sayin’.
She’s right, you know. I write a lot of notes. I like to communicate with my children’s teachers. Is that so wrong? But I know how she feels. My mom was also a note writer. But not just your run-of-the-mill-please-excuse-bythelbs-from-class-today kind of notes. She wrote novellas. Whether it be an early dismissal from class or an excuse for missing a day or a question about whatever, she was always very thorough. One time in 5th grade, I did not complete a report on time. I think we had a lot of family stuff going on. My brother was sick and going back and forth to the hospital for treatments and my mom just didn’t have time to help me with the report. She wrote a three page letter, front and back, to Mr. Caperton, explaining why I did not have the assignment and asking if I could have more time to complete it. He came up to me during class. In one hand he held the letter, the other he placed on my shoulder. He looked at me, with what I thought was a glistening of a tear in the corner of his eye, and said in a tender voice, “Of course you can have more time. Of course. You turn it in whenever you’re ready.” I remember feeling embarrassed, wondering what my mom had written in that note. Whatever it was, it worked. Like a charm.
Last week, Mr. T had an assignment due that he didn’t get in on time. Apparently, it was supposed to be the final draft of a paper they had written the previous week and then given to another student in the class for a peer review. The kid Mr. T had given his paper to, didn’t give it back to him until the morning of the day it was due. When Mr. T explained this to his teacher, his teacher gave him an extra day to complete the final draft. Well, that night when Mr. T went to type up his final draft, he couldn’t find the rough draft. He had accidentally turned it in with some other papers. I asked him to explain this to his teacher the next day and see if he could have one more day to finish the assignment. The next two days he had a sub, and I was worried that now that we were going into the weekend, his teacher would not be so understanding about an assignment being five days late. So I sent him an e-mail explaining the situation. I even threw in that I understood that now that the assignment would be so late, he might incur point deductions but I still felt strongly that Mr. T needed to finish the assignment. I heard back from the teacher who said he would allow Mr. T to finish the assignment and that he would not be penalized. He even e-mailed me again after class, letting me know that Mr. T now had the rough draft in his hands.
At first I was a little hesitant to get involved. I was worried about coming off as one of those hovering mothers that has to have her hand in everything her child is doing or feels the need to hold her child’s hand through everything he does. I even let Mr. T read the e-mail before I sent it to make sure I didn’t say anything that he would find embarrassing. Mr. T was OK with it, and the teacher even thanked me for letting him know the situation. I think he was just grateful to have a parent express some kind of interest in her child’s education.
So maybe my kids will spend the next 40 years mocking me for my penchant for note-writing, but I hope, at least someday, they’ll come to the same understanding that I eventually did with my own mother. She cared.
DynaGirl is nine today. And with every birthday of every child of every year, I find myself wondering where the time has gone. The seems like just yesterdays are always on the tip of my tongue, yet when I think about all that has happened, all that we’ve been through, and how much she has grown, I realize that of course this much time has passed.
At 6 pounds 14 ounces, she was my smallest little bundle of joy. Over the past almost decade, she has become my not so little bundle of joy and also my bundle of contradictions. She is my silliest and most serious. My toughest and most fragile. My first to forgive and last to forget. My most popular and most lonely. My most affectionate and most distant. My happiest and most melancholy.
She sometimes laments being the outsider among her sisters—the only brown-eyed brunette in a family of blue-eyed blonde women. I tell her I love that she is different because she brings me the best of both worlds. She sometimes wishes she wasn’t the oldest sister with all of the extra responsibilities and expectations. I tell her that being my first daughter will always make her extra special. She sometimes complains that I am quicker to praise her younger, more emotionally needy sister. I tell her that nothing and no one brings me greater joy than her. And it’s true. I hope deep down (or not so very deep down) she believes it or that at least someday she will.
Happy birthday, DynaGirl! I love you!
A week ago last Saturday, DynaGirl went with Goose and the neighbor and the neighbor’s daughters (DG’s and G’s BFFs) to open gym at the place Goose takes gymnastics. About an hour after they left, I got a call from my neighbor saying that DynaGirl had fallen off the balance beam and hurt her shoulder. They iced it there, and when she got home I iced it some more and gave her some ibuprofen. It wasn’t swollen or bruised and didn’t have any other sign of injury. We figured with a few days rest she’d be good to go. It was sore and tender for about three days, and then she just sort of stopped complaining about it. A couple of days after that, I noticed DynaGirl still wasn’t moving it normally. She had trouble lifting and extending her upper arm, and whenever she got dressed, she would use her other hand to pull her arm through the sleeve. I decided I had better get her into the doctor just in case. It was Friday and after hours for her regular doctor, and since I try to avoid the walk-in clinic as much as possible, I decided to call on Monday. They didn’t have an appointment available with her regular doc on Monday, so I just scheduled one for Tuesday.
So I took DynaGirl to the doctor yesterday to have her arm checked out. The doctor was totally puzzled by the lack of pain that accompanied the lack of movement. She said it was like DynaGirl had dislocated it, but she had never seen a case of dislocation where the patient wasn’t in fairly intense pain. We went to x-ray. It wasn’t dislocated. It was broken. BRO-ken broken. Like totally and completely all-the-way-through-the-bone broken. What kind of mother lets her daughter walk around with a broken arm for 10 days? This one. This one does.
They were very nice to me about it—tried to reassure me there was really no way of knowing given how little DynaGirl had complained. At least five people commented on how remarkable it was that she wasn’t in obvious pain with that kind of break. We ended up going to see the ortho guy, and he said it actually looks good. It’s slightly angulated, but he’s fully confident that as she grows it will all readjust itself perfectly and in a couple of years (a couple of years?) we’ll never even be able to tell it was broken. She’s got a couple weeks in a sling, and then we go back for a follow-up.
So I guess my negligence hasn’t caused her any permanent damage, but I still feel like crap.
Moral of the story—You can totally screw up with your kids and they’ll still be OK. And you can have a dozen people tell you it’s not your fault, and you’ll still feel like crap.
On Friday, Mr. T went on a campout with his boy scout troop. This was his second attempt. The first campout did not go over so well as it was raining and cold and there were irritating boys whose sole purpose in Mr. T’s estimation was to make everyone else miserable. Friday afternoon I reminded him it was time to get ready and he heaved a heavy sigh. Chuck and I decided long ago that scouting would not be something we would force upon our son, but Mr. T is the type of kid who occasionally needs a little nudging to do anything besides sit at the computer so we’re still trying to gently encourage him. He agreed to go and got everything ready. We were to meet at our church at 4:50 pm so they could leave at 5 pm sharp. The scoutmaster ended up being over an hour late. Whatever. It was also raining and cold. And there were irritating boys whose sole purpose was to make Mr. T miserable. I’m not sure we can talk him into going a third time. I’m not sure we’ll even try.
Saturday night DynaGirl woke up sobbing. She’d had a nightmare. She said she dreamed that Mr. T, BigHugs and I had all died. Yikes. That’s a nightmare. The kind I have frequently. I have times where my subconscious is a little too preoccupied with death. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had nightmares about losing members of my family. They’re awful. And even the relief of waking up and realizing it was just a dream isn’t enough to take away the feeling of dread. It just lingers and makes me want to cry. Sometimes I do, like DynaGirl.
My favorite death dreams are the ones where someone dead comes back to life, specifically my mom. I used to dream about her all the time—that she was still alive and everything was back to normal. Those were actually good dreams, and even though I would wake up only to realize she was still gone, that repeated grief and disappointment was totally worth having her back for a few imaginary moments. Sometimes I would dream that she was still alive, but then she would die again in my dream. Those sucked. No fair to have to relive it.
On Sunday night, we were all sitting at the dinner table when I noticed this weird noise in the background. My kids were convinced it was the dryer. I thought, “It damn well better not be the dryer because that is definitely not how the dryer is supposed to sound, which could only mean that something is terribly, terribly wrong with the dryer and didn’t we just do the whole dead washer routine?” I decided to investigate and ended up poking my head out the front door to find an ambulance and fire engine outside my neighbor’s house. The weird background noise was the fire engine idling.
We go to church with these neighbors (an older couple with mostly grown kids and one 16 year old son at home), and have lived across the street from them for over seven years. My first thought was one of them must have had a heart attack. They’re both large people. Lovely, lovely people, but large. I was afraid. I sent Chuck over to investigate, and it turns out Mrs. Lovely large neighbor had her leg just collapse out from under her. She heard a pop and then it just folded. Ouch. Her husband said it happened in their bedroom, which is downstairs, while he was away, so she called out to her teenage son, who was upstairs, but he couldn’t hear her so she called him on his cell phone. This is a small house, but thank goodness for cell phones, I guess. Her son called his dad and he came home. Chuck said the son was still upstairs when he got there. I was wondering if he was still upstairs or upstairs again. Surely he didn’t just stay upstairs and leave his poor mother alone in her misery until dad arrived. Surely.
I was just so relieved no one had a heart attack. I’m going to check on her today.
Today Chuck left for a 10-day business trip. Again with the business trips. It would have been a full two weeks only DynaGirl’s birthday is next Thursday and Chuck missed her birthday two years ago while on business in Italy, and DynaGirl has never let him forget it. She still brings it up at random non-birthday related times. “Remember that time you missed my birthday?”
He broke the news to the kids Friday night over dinner.
Chuck: I’ve got good news and bad news. Which do you want first?
DynaGirl: Bad news.
Chuck: I have to go on another trip.
DynaGirl and Goose: What? Again?
DynaGirl: You’re going to miss my birthday! Again!
Chuck: Wait for the good news.
DynaGirl, sulking.
Chuck: I’m coming back on your birthday.
DynaGirl: Yay! Wait, what time?
He’ll be home before she gets home from school, but I love how quick she was to make sure he wasn’t trying to pull a fast one on her. Like not getting home until nighttime would have been totally cheating because he still would have basically missed her birthday. Again.
So, to sum up:
stupid campouts = bad
death = bad
jacked-up leg = better than a heart attack
DynaGirl = forgive, but not forget
How was your weekend?
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