There is nothing I like more at the end of a long day than my bedtime routine.
I don’t answer the phone in the midst of it; I don’t even like to answer questions. I might nod, but I don’t listen to anyone or anything. I am off-duty.
The moment you announce that the free ride is over, that this parasite had better get out of your uterus, a tiny tyrant emerges, and you wonder if you might possibly cram it back inside, just to secure a few more moments of sanity and solitude.
This wee, adorable creature demands all of your time, attention, energy, and soul. There is nothing and no one else that matters as much. This is why cherished friendships shrivel, marriages are raked over the coals, and newish parents become unbearable. You are suddenly up at all hours of the day and night. You cannot finish a sentence or focus on anything uttered by an adult. Worst of all, the things you smirked and said you would never do, you see and hear yourself doing without apology.
A little shame, perhaps, but no apology.
The boundaries blend. It is not possible to distinguish where you end and where the child begins. You anticipate their needs, and punish yourself when you can’t identify or remedy a discomfort. They are the center of your universe.
And they grow.
Imagine that you are beside yourself because you are stuck playing Barbies yet again. Each minute stretches into an eternity. You can feel yourself devolving, while politically astute essays you composed in a past life unwrite themselves in your head. You parade a stupid piece of malformed plastic around, babbling the required perky gibberish–all while secretly wondering, “what is the meaning of my life?”
And then, the very next time the Barbies come out from under the bed, just as you are mentally muttering obscenities, your daughter turns to you, and from her lips come the most surprising news.
“Mom.” Accompanying eyeroll. “We are playing in here. Please shut the door.”
A lump forms in your throat. You were already gearing up to feel resentful for the next 45 minutes. What are you supposed to do now?
A mini-post in honor of NaBloPoMo: National Blog Posting Month.
NaNoWriMo is clearly out of my league this year, but I’m determined to use the energy surrounding the event to squeeze a little writing out of my keyboard on a daily basis.
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Before traveling to Japan last summer, my ten-year-old taught me six phrases:
Toire wa doko desuka? Where’s the bathroom?
Sumimasen. Sorry/excuse me.
Arigato gozaimashita. Thank you so much.
Gochiso-sama deshita! It has been a feast.
Ohaiyo gozaimasu/konnichiwa/konbanwa. Good morning/good day/good evening.
O-kanjo o onigai shimasu. May I please have the check?
But if I had to boil it down to the bare essentials, the top three would have done the job.
While in Tokyo, we had lunch with my brother’s in-laws, wandering afterward to Meiji Jingu, where he was married many years ago. Together, we pleasantly whiled away three hours, pointing, gesturing, smiling, looking at photos, exchanging gifts. It is astonishing how few words can communicate so much.
I suppose we couldn’t discuss the fine points of Kierkegaard’s Upbuilding Discourses, but I couldn’t do that in any language. I’m not advocating for monolingualism–so much of our history and culture is embedded in our words and silences. I am merely pointing out that speaking is not the same as communicating, and listening goes deeper than hearing words.
Read this yesterday, and it snagged in my consciousness. Both sides speak well and truthfully. I think we have conflated strength and power with their cultural definitions, and it is helpful to step back and rethink. I had trouble posting this, though, and couldn’t get the youtube video to embed properly. The link to the poem’s performance is in there, and definitely worth a watch. It also provides the context for Rarasaur’s essay.
I listened to your poem last month, for the first time. I know, I’m a little late to the party. Your performance was in April.
It was sent my way via an article that said it explained the plight of women, who sacrifice for men. I’ll be honest. Activism that suggests someone is behind because someone else is ahead bothers me. Feminism along those lines is what makes me reject the label with a ferocity that would surprise most people– given that I am the “breadwinner” of my home, and in most ways live the feminist ideal. This type of activism suffocates me, and angers me, and limits my brothers and sisters alike– and though I didn’t intend to– I listened to that poem without a beginner’s mind. I sought offense, and I found it– even though your poem was great, and your performance was brilliant.
I wrote my own slam poetry response. The first parodied yours. Yours played on the idea that men of age are often significantly larger than their wives. Mine played off the idea that women live longer.
“Men of my family have been shaving away seconds of life, for women, for decades.”
The second poem I wrote was structured like yours as well, but along the way led into the idea that my mother is the strongest person I know.
This made me reassess my reaction to your poem, and create an alternate possibility that I’d like to share with you.
You see, I’m nearly 30, and it was just a smidge over a decade ago that I would have scoffed at the idea of my mother possessing any strength at all.
I could barely look her in the eye for a whole year of my teens. She seemed like such a waste– this stunning, genius of a woman– reduced to a mother with a near broken back, working all the time for other people’s desires. I don’t know if she’s ever slept more than 8 hours in a row. As soon as she gains something, she gives it away– whether it was space, or knowledge, or money. Every time I saw her, I feared the same would happen to me.
I worried that I had been taught to drop my achievements at a moment’s notice– in the name of handcuffs created to hold women back– just because of my mom’s dedication to those same restrictions. I was worried that I was born into a kind of slavery.
And then there was the car accident.
You see, I have 5 brothers and sisters– so not everyone fits in one car. My big brother had the baby seat, so he was following behind us with my baby sister. The rest of us were with my mom. It was a dark night and we were driving back from dropping my father at the airport– down a fast-moving, icy highway. There were black ice warnings out, and I was in the front seat because I could almost always spot the slippery stuff.
It started to snow, in torrents hard enough to push at the car, and then from the side mirror, I saw it. My brother’s car spun out of control and rolled off the road and down a hill. I screamed his name, and my mom– who witnessed the same thing– put her hand out on mine. She sang a song, to keep the kids in the back of the car asleep, and drove steadily on until there was a place to safely stop. There were tears running down her face, but her voice was clear. She parked the car on the side, put me in charge, took off her 2 inch heels, and walked into the dark snowstorm barefoot– bravely towards what could have been the mere bodies of her children.
I’m not sure on the details, but my brother’s car was started again, and pushed up the hill– and both he and my baby sister were fine.
When I saw my mom finally walking back to me, hours later, the sun was coming up– she was soaked through, and covered in dirt and blood. She was holding her children– and a stranger– and she was smiling.
It occurred to me then that a passerbyer might see her as a woman down on her luck, in a position of weakness– but it was the most invulnerable thing I had ever seen. The sort of strength many people never get the chance to witness in a lifetime.
It sounds like you might have blessed by the benefit of an equally dedicated mother.
A dedication to sacrificing is such a brittle concept, and can look a lot like weakness– like late night trips to the fridge for yogurt and wine from a measuring cup– but it is more powerful than words or swords.
I of course do not know your specific situation, but the next time you see her tucked away in a small space, consider the possibility that it is because she doesn’t need much space to live the life of her dreams, and that she has faith in your ability to do something brilliant with the extra room.
And next time you see worn hands, or a tired back, consider the idea that it is because she has made a priority out of carrying those who cannot move forward themselves.
When the people around her seem to grow at the cost of her loss, lookagain. Their expansion is her battle cry. She is victorious through nurture and sacrifice.
It is a power connected to the heart of the universe. A strength that fueled a nun to care for lepers, and prompted a man to share a dream of equality. It echoes through every positive change humans have ever seen, and grows every day under the protection of guardians like our moms.
Does that really sound like shrinking to you? Because to me it sounds like something big enough to expand its way right past the hemmed edges of the galaxy.
I realize now that I wasn’t worried that I would becomemy mother. I was worried that I would never become the sort of person worth the sacrifices she made.
Snaps to you for showing off your power. I hope you know that your mom is right to give to you: you are worthy of all the good this world has to offer. If you can accept that truth, I think you’ll find you’ll stop apologizing for empowerment. Just do good with it.
With love from a big sister born of the same big power,
Rara
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I probably won’t respond to any comments about feminism, because it’s an issue that goes much deeper than my type of blog– but as always, you’re welcome to share your thoughts as long as you play nice. This post has seen the light of day due to a Daily Post prompt, asking about the post I was most nervous to publish, and what it was like to set it free. I’ll get back to you on that last part of the question depending on how scary my comment section ends up being.
Have you ever driven on black ice? It’s one of my top fears, even before this night.
There are plenty of cultural oddities for a whitey round-eye like me visiting Japan.
For starters:
Japanese Vending Machines.
Did you know Japan is about 500 degrees in the summer? Plus 99% humidity? Me neither. It’s so tidy and cool in the guidebooks. Everyone looks all nifty and suited up and un-sweaty-like. Have they photoshopped all of the melting tourists out of the pictures?
Luckily, every ten yards or so there stands a vending machine of happiness.
I’ve seen vending machines before, obviously, but not like these. They are tempting. They are sassy. And they dispense whatever you might desire: juice, milk, towels, ice cream, sweet iced coffee labeled BOSS. You can say whatever you need to say to that boss for 120 yen. That boss has been canned.
A great many vending machines are chock full of beer. Due to circumstances beyond my control, such nectar of the gods is strictly verboten. I struggled to avoid eye contact with the Asahi machines that cropped up on every other block. Given the weather, a cold beer looked damned tasty, even through the shower of perspiration raining down my face.
Oh, well. The spouse could always roll his cold can on the back of my neck.
Japanese Toilets.
It was a little alarming the first time I sat down and perused a toilet control panel, too terrified to push anything. What invasive and embarrassing activity might commence? It is a vulnerable feeling to bare your behind and then submit it to the great unknown.
My two girls were not so tentative. I heard them locked in a stall, screaming and shrieking with laughter. Lord knows what was going on in there, so I retreated to the hallway, cheeks a bit flushed.
One finally emerged, breathless. “Did you push the button with a musical note?” she asked. Turns out, it had played the Star Wars theme. If the line had been shorter, I might have gone back to give it a go.
Sadly, in most restrooms, the music button only makes a loud flushing sound, but now that the note button seemed safe, I decided to step-up my exploration.
What I discovered is that many of the options are surprisingly refreshing. In fact, it was disappointing to arrive back in the States and remember that our lackluster commodes do nothing besides give the ol’ heave-ho to a variety of deposits.
And now…a quick word about the seat heater. It might be a nice feature in certain specific circumstances. Like, in the middle of winter…in your own home. But it was downright lurky to sit on a hot public toilet. It made me think of bacteria multiplying, and about the last pair of bare buttocks that had rested on the very same spot.
Pit toilets on trains.
Pit toilets and trains do not go together.
You may be imagining the pit on the ground, which would not be so bad. No. On trains, the pits are at commode level. You have to step a couple feet off the ground and clutch the safety rail for dear life, trying to maneuver your pants to the ankle area with your free hand. Alternately, you can use your free hand to tuck your skirt into your armpit.
Who decided it was a good idea to dangle your hind-side over a hole while hurtling through the countryside at 240 miles per hour? Avoid. Trust me.
Toilet Slippers.
Never step on tatami mats while wearing shoes. You probably know that.
Here’s where things get strange:
When you get to the restroom, you have to take off those REGULAR slippers and change into your TOILET SLIPPERS. God forbid you get your slippers confused.
When all this takes place in your postage-stamp sized hotel room, absurdity reigns. Imagine opening the door to your teeny tiny room, removing your shoes to put on your regular slippers, shuffling eighteen inches to the bathroom door and changing your footwear yet again.
Also, it felt ridiculous to have the word “toilet” written on my feet. At least dogs can’t read.
Pickles.
Pickles, pickles, pickles.
What is it with pickles?
Breakfast, lunch, and dinner. More pickles. Different pickles. Pickles as palate cleanser, as condiment, as garnish, as digestive.
It’s like the Eskimos with their snow, except you have to eat it.
Cat Cafés.
Traveling with children means you can’t simply do what the grown ups feel like doing all day everyday. In order to prevent a terrible snit–or worse, mutiny–we had to mix in destinations and activities that would amuse our tiny tyrants. Since we were trying to avoid places like Tokyo Disney, however, we tried to find things that were uniquely Japanese.
About two thirds of the way through our trip, the girls got very homesick, and started waxing nostalgic about our beloved, neglected cat at home. Cat Café, here we come.
The first cat café started in Korea, followed shortly thereafter by one in Osaka, but the pet rental phenomenon really took root in Tokyo, where they have about 40 cat cafes. Since most apartments forbid pets, these places feed the need to find furry love and a little zen-like escape from the frenetic, crowded urban life. One can also find bunny bistros, dog cafes, and an occasional goat here and there, but cat lovers head to places like Nekorobi, in Ikebukuro.
This was a lovely respite for all of us, except the spouse, for whom one cat is definitely enough (if only barely tolerable). He amused himself around Ikebukuro, which is an interesting little pocket of Tokyo.
In case you are secretly judging me, this was not just a place for crazy cat ladies. People go there and play with cats, of course, but only when the cats are interested. Otherwise, people read, and sip coffee, and work, and do regular people activities.
Best of all, Nekorobi had fancy vending machines. They had cubbies and sci-fi toilets. They had regular slippers and bathroom slippers, bean bags, and wifi. And cats.
Plus, no pickles or pit toilets. Perfect.
By now, you’re probably familiar with the benefits of vacation. I don’t need to list them, do I?
If you’re not sure, you can seek help from a pile of sunkissed facebook friends, always slapping up photos of this or that paradise, regaling you with stories of fun, fun, fun, and going on like foodie wankers about every morsel that has touched their lips.
I love reading your posts, of course. That goes without saying.
I just got back from the trip of a lifetime, so once I have fully digested the experience, I’ll probably bore you with a post or two about how great it was. For now, I thought I’d remind you that vacation can have its drawbacks, too.
1. Jet lag is insufferable.
How is it that human beings have figured out how to clone a sheep, land on the moon, and sequence our genetic material, but no one has figured out how to avoid jet lag?
I try, though.
I have tried all kinds of homeopathic remedies, as well as a garden variety of pharmaceuticals. I have tried foregoing coffee a week in advance, or drinking it only at 4 pm. I have tried yoga, sleep hypnosis, and apps with gentle sounds and white noise. Last time I suffered from jet lag, I tried getting up in the middle of the night to write. This year, I am just lying in bed worrying about not sleeping.
2. Kids do not sleep well when traveling, either.
This is an understatement. I’m not sure I can talk about this without dropping a few choice words, but I should try since my mom has started reading my posts.
On our most recent trip, the eight-year-old completely forgot how to sleep like a regular person. First off, she couldn’t fall asleep. She whined and cried, and then cried harder because she felt guilty. “I’m so sorry, Mama,” she sniffled repeatedly.
“No one’s upset with you, sweetie,” I lied, trying hard to keep my tone light. “But it would be great if you could just lie still and be quiet.”
We plied her with Sleep Rescue and Calms Forté. We gave her chamomile tea and rubbed her back. We stroked her hair and whispered soothing things. After a couple of hours, she would drop off for about 45 minutes. Then, the sleepwalking commenced. And sleep shouting. It got to the point where I couldn’t doze off, no matter how exhausted, because I knew should she would scare the bejeezus out of me the second I relaxed. “Help! I can’t get out! Let me out! I NEED TO GET OUT OF HERE!” she yelled, pulling open drawers, banging against the walls and the door. That girl was constantly and desperately trying to escape.
“Not to be rude,” the ten-year-old finally piped up one night, “but could you possibly shut up so I could sleep?”
Did I mention that we were all busy not-sleeping in the same room for nineteen days?
3. You can still get sick.
For once, it wasn’t me, but it sounded pretty bad. The spouse got a sinus infection accompanied by a wracking cough and general malaise. Every time he laid down, he would start hacking like an emphysema patient, adding to the challenges mentioned in numbers one and two. Consequently, he burrowed into the hotel room in a semi-seated coma for several days. We didn’t completely desert him; we would stop by now and then to get updates on the progress of his plague.
“I just pulled out a rope of snot,” my spouse confided. I murmured something, but apparently did not communicate the proper awe. “Seriously. I was physically pulling it out of my nostrils, because it was too thick to blow.” OK, kids. Time to go.
4. Interesting cultural moments can be a bit painful.
Like when your child says, nice and loud, “How much is a million yen in human money?”
Sigh. Eight years of sensitivity training at home, all for naught.
5. There can be some alarming culinary challenges.
Make no mistake, I had some awesome meals. But in the interest of keeping an open mind, I made myself try a lot of things that were outside my teeny tiny comfort zone. Due to a variety of preferences and intolerances, plus general squeamishness, I am a pain in the neck at the table. This time I was going to surprise everyone, especially the brave spouse.
He arranged for a kaiseki meal.
Kaiseki roughly translates from the Japanese to: “if you put a second mortgage on your house, the chef will serve fourteen courses you would never, ever order, then watch intently while you try to put it in your mouth without making a face.”
I ate a whole fish, pleading eyes, spine, fins, and all. It was gut-wrenching to make my teeth crush that little guy. Uni (sea urchin) appeared. It was terrifying. It looked like the jaundiced tongue of a ill-fated five-year-old. But I ate it. I also ate raw quail egg, fish jello, pickled everything except cucumbers, and quite a few things I simply could not identify.
Then a shot glass appeared, full of a clear, gooey viscous something–I believe the chef called it sea threads–complete with a raw octopus arm shoved in there. I hesitated. The spouse plunged fearlessly ahead, of course. I watched him toss back the shot and chew it for several long minutes, while fighting my gag reflex. I couldn’t do it.
Frankly, I’m a little disappointed in myself. Maybe it was fabulous.
6. Mother Nature has her own itinerary.
Evidently, we were staying at the foot of this mountain for four days:
I never saw it. I have a picture just like the one above except there is no mountain. And no sky. Just a big cloud of nothingness encompassing everything above 6 feet.
During this period of inclement weather, our hosts came down with strep throat. We babysat their kid and wished we knew of someplace to go–and how to get there. We did visit the supermarket several times, and ate at a place known affectionately as “the truck stop.” We visited a dirty little hot springs–complete with a vending machine of towels and a layer of sulphuric slime on everything–while the hosts slept in the car in the parking lot. Then they rallied and drove us around a bit, pointing out places we might have gone if they had been feeling well, or if the weather had been better.
Nice people, though. Really nice.
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I have plenty of other misadventures to report, but now that we are nestled back in the damp, cold that Bay Area residents call “summer,” those memories are starting to fade. Pretty soon, all I’ll have left are the good ones, plus some lovely photos. Perhaps I’ll post them for everyone to admire.
Though going to art school was inherently non-rational, I approached it in a methodical, uptight manner which might seem out of character. As a non-traditional, second-degree student and mother of two, I was not at a point in my life where it was acceptable to dabble and meander and find myself. I took the requisite courses, in the prescribed order, and checked them off my list.
But one summer, realizing I had a single elective to squander, I inexplicably found myself signing up for a sewing class in the Fashion Design department. I did not admit this to my classmates in photography, however. It seemed shallow and irresponsible. Maybe a tad shameful.
It was also ridiculously inconvenient. It met two evenings a week, from 6-10 pm, which meant that my husband had to rearrange his work schedule, and home life was turned upside-down for half of the summer. In order to get to the first class, I had to leave my family stranded and carless in Tahoe, drive three and a half hours, eat Taco Bell in the car, and change out of my sweats in the parking lot of Sports Basement. Then I drove back.
Meanwhile, I wondered…why would I invest so much time and money on this class when I already knew how to sew? I could sew on a button; I could hem pants. It wasn’t like I wanted to sit around and make homely, ill-fitting clothes in all of my ‘extra time.’ How would this help me in my art practice? How would this contribute to the world? What was I doing?
But I went anyway, and after covering everything I knew in the first twenty minutes, what unfolded thereafter was a complete surprise.
We were a small and motley crew: a paralegal, a woman from student affairs, a RISD student in the Bay Area for the summer, a chipper, chatty nineteen-year-old obsessed with lingerie, and a tough guy who worked in the wood shop. Plus me.
Outside, it was freezing in the San Francisco summer way. The fog would roll in right at the start of class, casting a gloomy pall over our fair city as I hunted for parking. Inside the sewing room, however, it was eternally close and sweaty. We hunched over our commercial machines wearing as little as socially acceptable. We lingered long after the official class ended–often staying until midnight–sewing an imaginary world made of fabric and thread.
We talked, ate picnic dinners on the cutting tables, and commiserated over the evil overlock machine, but mostly we just sewed in a zen-like stupor. Fans oscillating, music cranked, we listened to an endless loop of loud, meditative dance music selected by the club-hopping RISD kid.
I made a skirt I sort of like, an ugly, uncomfortable shirt, and two princess dresses–the last of which was my masterpiece. Including the muslin mock-up, I must have spent thirty or forty hours on that thing. But when I brought it home for my five-year-old, she wore it once and let it languish in the back of the closet. A little peeved, I asked her about it. “I’m not really into princesses anymore,” she said. “I’ve started my rock star phase.”
First of all, #$%*()@!
Second of all, what five-year-old talks like that?
Still, it doesn’t really matter. That class gave me endless joy.
To this day, when I hear the first couple of bars of Breathe by Telepopmusik, I am immediately transported to those long, hot, unstructured stretches of happy time. If something important is due, if I am frustrated or inconsolable, if I have 30 seconds to sit in the car before picking up my kids, I pop in my headphones, and there I am in the sewing studio again: feeding fabric, clipping threads, watching the needle go up and down. I let thoughts float and disperse like clouds, fixing on nothing in particular. Just breathing.
One summer day in my early teens, my parents and I went on a long drive from our woodsy cabin to Lands’ End.
Though we had hoped for a sunny day on the coast, the fog was so thick we could barely see the sea from the shore. We meandered along the water’s edge in our own little pocket of cloud, quite separate from the world beyond. I thought I would say something nice for a change–perhaps even express some filial gratitude–when I noticed an odd look on my mother’s face.
She raised her arms, laughed out loud, and launched her sprawled limbs into a cartwheel in the sand. It was so astonishing, so completely unexpected, that I suddenly realized how little I knew about her beyond the character she played at home. Now I might consider her as more than my mother, someone whose inner life might be rich and complicated, someone who had lived a lifetime before she made me.
Not that she ever turned another cartwheel, but still. I continued to wonder about her, too Scandinavian to pry.
The only clue I had to her younger days was a doll she called Judy, which she had lovingly arranged in a child-sized rocker facing my bed. She was eerily beautiful, despite a crack across her cheek, a worn petticoat, and misshapen, yellowed socks. Judy had stared at me tight-lipped for years, never spilling the secrets of my mother’s childhood or beyond.
I imagined my mother quarantined on her parents’ plastic-covered couch, hands folded primly, dreaming of play; dreaming of siblings.
Did her parents have the same ancient hard candies back then–the ones at which I stared during my visits to Grandma’s– arranged in the same fancy china dish?
As an adult I get little glimpses of her as a non-mom. Like the night my spouse got her a little tipsy, and she dropped the f-bomb telling a joke. How lucky for me, that there are still opportunities to hear my mother’s stories. Now, to find the time and the courage to ask.
I look at my kids and wonder: when will I suddenly appear to them as more than a purveyor of fine snacks, a laundress, a driver, a shoulder to cry upon? What will I do or say that will alert them that there is an actual person in my shoes? Chances are, they’re already clued in. I haven’t played the role quite so gracefully as my mother.
It may have been a little unclear, but I was actually happily married until I posted Man Shopping a while back. Obviously, I did not paint a complete picture—I’m pretty sure everyone figured that out. Still, in the interest of domestic harmony, it probably wouldn’t hurt to throw a few compliments in my spouse’s direction right about now.
I would also like to mention my Undying Gratitude that he does not yet have his own blog. I hope he’s not in any hurry to get one, either. Over the years, I have unwittingly provided a great deal of fodder for retaliation.
What follows are just a few of the ways that he generously compensates for buying fröot juice on occasion.
Now that his parole papers are in order, he is the perfect travel companion.
That sounds WAY WORSE than it was. There must be two sorts of parole papers, because this was an INS thing; not a prison thing, as far as I know. Apparently, even if you are married to a US citizen, there is still a boatload of paperwork and a lot of wait time to endure before they let you come and go as you please–which is why I took my friend instead of my groom on our honeymoon.
Now that he has his paperwork in order, though, traveling with this guy is delightful. We are interested in many of the same sorts of places and adventures. More importantly, his attention span for lying around, traipsing about, or absorbing culture is almost exactly the same as mine. We can look and look and know precisely when to leave and get a tasty snack or go for a swim. Having traveled with a variety of other people, I know that this tidy alignment is not guaranteed. Not everyone knows when an intense experience on the streets of Phnom Penh might best be topped off with, say, a Richard Pryor movie and a little air conditioning.
I worried that children might mess with our travel groove, but now that they can tie their shoes and attend to their bowel movements independently, it is actually a joy to have them join us. Now, if only Mary Poppins could come along so we could have a date once in a while…
In truth, we might not be as well suited in terms of musical taste. But, over the years, we have learned that certain music should only be played in the others’ absence. Topping the audio blacklist: Bruce Springsteen, Cold Chisel, Joni Mitchell, and the soundtrack from Hair. I’ll let you sort out who likes which. Still, the fact remains that:
He appreciates good music, played well and played loudly.
Long before kids, my spouse worked in the audio industry, and consequently purchased a set of very, very nice speakers. He set up the living room so that the red velvet love seat was exactly centered between the speakers, facing them, with two more speakers behind. We put red light bulbs in the chandelier, turned the music up to 11, and voilà, the Red Room was born. The Red Room was awesome. It had a great run, too, though I suppose it caused its own demise by inadvertently producing our first kid. That was a particularly great night.
What followed were painful years spent listening to Sesame Street songs as quietly as possible, and struggling to find an inner zen-like happy place when Raffi songs were required. I’m surprised we survived that era.
Now that our oldest child is ten, however, with a blue streak in her hair and a pair of drumsticks to match, we have begun a practice of family karaoke night. I cannot begin to explain how charming it is to see our dainty seven-year-old belting out Hell’s Bells, while the spouse works the mixer and magically gets the lyrics to appear on the TV. He also wins for most enthusiastic musical performance. I might need to up my game a little, frankly.
Who knows, the full-fledged Red Room might even make a re-appearance, though I suspect we would have to cede some of the musical selection to the kids. There is probably a lot more Dev and Taylor Swift in our future than one might hope.
He has the ability to fix almost anything.
He has fixed the dryer, the dishwasher, the car, the shower…He is truly amazing. He can hook up any appliance, rewire the house, and frame a room.
There really isn’t anything amusing to say about this. It’s just awesome.
This has made me aim higher. I have been moved to unclog drains, mess around with the disposal, and even monkey with the color printer. Not always successfully, but still.
Now we get to the most important part.
On one particularly trying day, after many meltdowns, a lot of sass, and a series of eruptions of all sorts, one of my kids stuck a stuffed alligator in her pants at the dinner table. Since I was in a foul mood, I found the harmless incident much more annoying than necessary. My husband, on the other hand, took one thoughtful look and pronounced, “That’s a croc of shit.” It was impossible to stay grumpy.
This man has a knack for sanity-saving comments and for maintaining a sense of humor in the midst of parental hell.
Here is someone who suffered with me through one of the longest hours ever spent. We were watching a production of the Wizard of Oz for the second or third time–a production full of confused small people singing enthusiastically off-key, and mumbling endless and incomprehensible dialogue. To enhance our enjoyment, several lightly supervised boys in the row in front of us made fart noises and punched each other in the arm. Eyes politely fixed on the stage, my spouse leaned over and whispered: “Now we know the TRUE PRICE of unprotected sex.”
As I struggled to keep my composure, he mimed a samurai maneuver, slicing open his torso and extracting an organ or two. That gesture has become a very reassuring symbol of solidarity, and is especially helpful in situations where passing a flask might be frowned upon.
Thanks, pal. You can bring home a fifty pound bag of rice whenever you want.
It was April 1st, many years ago. My mother had just left town without us, which never happened. I can’t recall where she was headed or why; I only remember going up to my room and noticing that something felt distinctly out of place.
Granted, my room was a perennial disaster, but my bed was a different story; I made that thing with the precision of a watchmaker. I pulled the sheets and blankets into crisp hospital corners, relentlessly smoothing each layer. I folded the top of the bedspread back and over a perfectly fluffed pillow, so not a single peek of the sheets was visible.
The bedspread itself was covered with the names of tourist destinations I had never visited, arranged in a step and repeat pattern, white on blue. Miami. Palm Beach. Orlando. San Antonio. Miami. Palm Beach. Orlando. You get the idea. For the final touch, I would place a little rectangular pillow at a 45-degree angle, with two opposing corners pointing at a couple of Miamis.
Perhaps this was a byproduct of all the years I had to sleep on the daybed. I’ve softened a little, over the years, but I still remake the bed when my husband is not looking.
On this particular day, however, one corner of the throw pillow did not point to Miami and, glancing at the calendar, I knew there was trouble. Sure enough, someone had short-sheeted my bed. Without a word, I quickly and quietly remade it, waiting eagerly for evening.
When my father tucked me in that night, I made a bit of a show crawling in and stretching my legs with a yawn. He eyed me suspiciously. “Anything wrong?” he asked. No, no. Just happy to be in bed. “Really? Everything is OK?” That’s when I learned that my mother had nearly missed her flight cooking up that little prank. Ah, sweet victory.
The most memorable April Fools’ Day from childhood, however, involved my brother and me tormenting our sister. Thanks to his music pedagogy class, the day started with a harrowing early-morning bassoon solo/wake-up call—is there any other kind?– followed by my offering her breakfast in bed, which I promptly tossed on top of her.
That got her up.
As she began her morning regimen, we headed down to the kitchen.
Lord knows how we came up with the idea, but we decided to make a concoction that resembled dog vomit. We filled the blender with peanut butter, yellow food coloring, raw oats, and a variety of other edible items. The result was surprisingly lifelike. Frankly, we were all unfortunate experts on the appropriate color and consistency, since our dog was prone to eat and upchuck just about anything from inside of a garbage can or under a rock. I have even seen her enthusiastically lap it up and repeat.
We put a generous helping of this lumpy, gooey treat on a small piece of saran wrap, and set it on the carpet in my sister’s room.
“Oh, man! That is disgusting! Look what the dog did on your rug!”
We played it up, of course, nice and loud so the entire household was privy to our conversation.
My sister, already more than a little annoyed from the previous incidents, poked her head out of the bathroom, took a good look, and sighed. “Do you think you guys could clean that up? Please?” She sounded a bit desperate, as I remember, and I wish I could say that I felt a twinge of guilt.
“Of course,” I said, ostensibly heading down for some cleaning supplies.
“Just a minute,” my brother said, suddenly serious. “I’ve heard that dog vomit is very nutritious, and surprisingly tasty as well.”
I feigned surprise. “Really? Is that true?”
“I know it sounds ridiculous,” he continued, “but I was just listening to NPR, and a nutritional scientist was on the program discussing potential benefits of eating the regurgitated meals of domesticated animals.”
We debated for a while, after which I acquiesced to try it, and the discussion evolved to determine the proper substrate. We continued to deliberate as we went back down the stairs, rooting through the bread drawer and the corner cupboard of snacks. Finally settling on a hearty slice of homemade whole wheat—not the pickle juice variety, thankfully, that’s a whole other family legend—we brought the bread upstairs with a napkin and a butter knife.
“Mom!” my sister screeched. “Do you KNOW what they are DOING?”
If I recall correctly, this was about the time that the Shaklee saleslady arrived.
You might think that common courtesy would dictate an end to our charade, but the possibility of a larger audience only egged us on.
“Wow. Dog barf is surprisingly delicious!” I fairly yelled. “But seriously, when we finish, which Shaklee product will best remove the stain and odor?”
My only regret is that I missed the expression on the faces in the living room, as Mrs. So and So pretended not to notice and continued to hawk her fine products. I believe my mother did buy a bit more than intended that day, perhaps in an unspoken agreement to keep this story out of our town’s gossip circles.
The sad thing is, I’ve spent so much time reminiscing, I haven’t cooked up a decent prank to play on my own kids this year. And they don’t even have sheets to short under their duvets.
Any suggestions?
Bad Parenting 101 