Friday, February 25, 2011

Never Ever Not In A Million Years

Two of my granddaughters, both turning two this month, are celebrating their birthdays together tomorrow. The excitement runs high, furious cleaning, moving, painting, arranging and decorating is going on at my daughter’s who is hosting the fete. Elmo invitations are sent, a jump house is rented, multiple highchairs and booster seats are gathered and cloroxed to within and inch of their (if they had them) lives. Balloons, bunting and banners proclaim and adorn the day in bright primary colors, colors of joy.

My daughters are wonderful mothers, perfectionists with unbelievably high standards in all areas they feel are important to the health, happiness and well being of their children. I am sure that this will be a total joy to attend, that the toddlers will end the day happy and exhausted and everyone will go home saying what a wonderful job they did.

Watching them gear up for this important day I can only remember the various parties planned and hosted by me for my children….

Most of their parties were small simple family affairs. My first child’s first birthday went totally unmarked except by my saying Happy birthday Sugarbear to her and promptly bursting into tears. Her father was somewhere on the island of Crete shooting missiles from tanks, her Grandparents were literally in other countries. I was six weeks away from giving birth to my second child and that was about all I could muster. I was sad and lonely and clung to her much more than she clung to me that day. Her second was more exciting, having her uncles there to teach her how to say “Wassup?” and giving her change from their pockets. She had presents from her father and I, from her grandparents, her great-grandmother. We all moved outside after cake and ice cream to watch the uncles, one 12 and one 14, blow up model cars with firecrackers and whoop like wild things as they played with my baby girl in the Indian Summer twilight.

For my children born in the heat of summer parties were more elaborate even if still almost criminally simplistic. The heat in June and August in Georgia made it possible for us to celebrate out of doors. We played water balloon volley ball, and smear the queer (don’t be angry, please, that was the name of the game 30 years ago) with the water balloon, and went swimming. We had potato races and danced in sprinklers and went to the park and cooked out, eating second and third slices of cake while we watched adult relatives row lazily around the lake as their offspring threw hamburger buns to the ducks, skipped rocks and told secrets on the benches under the pines. On a rare occasion a friend was invited but there were just so MANY of us, of the family, that 30 was a normal number so who needed anyone else?

As my kids got bigger the parties began to take on more importance to them. They realized that they should be events of a caliber worthy enough to mark their birth. Luckily for my oldest, unluckily for the rest, she had 6 years on the next in line so she got to try everything first. The end results were so often irritating (on the up side) or down right disastrous (on the down side) that the others rarely got but a watered down version of the event if they got any version at all.

When Anna was turning 12 she wanted a slumber party. This is a normal request for a 12 year old girl. I had had many myself. Long nights filled with too many sweets, giggles and tearful arguments. Many a best friendship had gone up in flames and many a new, tentative friendship rose up in it’s place. What could be the harm? I knew the girls, knew their parents. We lived in a complex which had townhouses (called condominiums) and no one had more than a five minute walk there or home if need be. My husband had gone home to Belgium for a visit so it was just me and the kids. I thought it would be a blast.

Getting ready for the party was a hoot. We went and rented movies fit for tweens, “Princess Bride” being the group favorite, and bought potato chips, brownie mix and soda pop. Lugging these treasures home from the store my daughter started worrying that the three movies we had chosen would not be the RIGHT movies, and if they were, would not be ENOUGH movies for the party.

When we reached home she promptly went next door to her friend’s (twins!) house and after much secret deliberation the girls decided to raid their (at work) parent's stash of movies. I heard the trio come in, making big plans for a fun filled night. I heard them turn on the TV and the VCR opening. I asked them what they were going to watch, wanting to save the movies (a truly rare treat for me and my kids) for the actual party. They had borrowed a movie they said, called “Brown Eye” from the neighbors. “Uhm, girls, don’t turn that on!”
“Why not?” they asked in unison as the door slid shut.
I tried racing to the player but felt my feet go exponentially slower as the tape went fast forward through the opening credits. I felt like a cartoon, heard my voice in low slow mo crying “Noooooooo” as I tried in vain to reach the off button before they could see what I had only guessed at. As a woman’s quite large, curvaceous and gelatinously jiggling bare butt filled the screen (thankfully obscuring the split second but definitely THERE shot of a large male member) all three girls shrieked in horrified glee and my hand slammed into the TV control panel, sending the unit sliding across the table, my heart into my mouth and brain into shock. OH. MY. GOD. Ohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygod. Shit!

In my head I cursed the neighbors, cursed the kids, cursed the VCR, cursed the damn slumber party. Out loud I heard myself say “Well, I don’t think that looks like a good movie” as I slapped at the buttons, wrenched the tape out, put it in an envelope, wrapped around the entire package 50 times with duct tape and marched outside to leave it like a foul smelling dead thing on the neighbors front stoop.

At this point the party was a success as far as the girls were concerned. For me, it was a portent of the evil that was to follow. Sitting in my room about midnight I heard the house go ominously still below me. The sound of the Princess Bride floated up quite clearly in the silence. Not even my other kids, banished to the upstairs in various states of mutinous anger (This sucks! Why does she get everything she wants? I HATE YOU) were silent. As every mother knows, silence is not golden, silence is freaking scary. I crept downstairs to find them all out on the patio, standing on folding chairs and tables and motorcycle seats (their dad would KILL them) peering over the fence at the OTHER neighbor’s house. Sounds of great revelry permeated the night air, loud music, glassware tinkling, ice cubes jingling against each other muffled by the slightly viscous  sound and smell of cheap bourbon. I slid in amongst them, they were too engrossed to notice me, and got an eyeful of the spectacle they were so enjoying. A woman who could very well have been the star of “Brown Eye” was dancing, sort of, on the kitchen table. Clothes half off, eyes half closed, glass half full, the 3 men who shared the unit looked on in slightly sickly silent greedy lust. “OH FOR CHRIST’S SAKE!!” My outburst startled every single one of us in the tableau, the kids stumbled back trying to keep their footing on their various shaky perches, the men turned their heads with snaps slowed by inebriation, the woman fell off the table backwards into the wall with a whoop, a hiccup and a giggle.

The babes were marched back upstairs and I could hear them trying to define what they had witnessed… “I don’t think that was dancing, you don’t dance on a table!” “You do if you are a grown up” “Mom and dad never do!” “That’s cuz our tables too shaky” “I don’t know…”… the big girls returned to the tale of princesses and honor and love, definitely pale in comparison to what they had just witnessed and tried to NOT talk about it. I spent the rest of the night on the couch smack in the middle of the gaggle eating potato chips out of the bag and thinking of how I would never, ever not in a million years host a slumber party again.

I did, of course, but that's another story.


Sunday, February 13, 2011

Them Bucks Will Gut You

I love to catch little snatches of other people’s (men’s) conversations. This gives me an insight into their (men’s) lives, an idea of what they are going through, what is important to them, their dreams and ambitions and, on occasion, reminds me of just how stupid we all sound sometimes.

My favorites bits are snagged in bars…. Picture this: Two men and a beautiful woman sitting at a local bar, waiting for their food order to be delivered to their table. Quite a few beer bottles sit empty if front of both men and the lovely lady, evidently the designated driver is on her second sweet tea. Both men are 35 and just a bit pudgy, both in uniforms of some type, both with sturdy steel toed boots and multiple phone and tool pouches on their belts. One’s hair is a tad too long, a mullet slicked back with something a little too shiny and is clean shaven and one has the redneck-hip bald head and goatee. One’s shirt is white button-up (with one too many buttons loosened at the collar), one’s shirt is uniform blue. Both are wearing too much cologne, splashed on hastily in the car to make up for the fact that they couldn’t shower before coming out to play. Pool cues lean against the edge of the table and the wall and a tumbled pile of quarters sits next to the cardboard centerpiece advertising Texas ‘Rita Tuesday. There isn’t much about them that grabs my attention; the place is full of tables exactly like this enjoying the requisite Redneck Top 40 playing on the jukebox. Then I catch one line, one small phrase that makes me wish I had listened to more of their conversation… White button-up slick mullet dude—“If I could do anything I would be an international arms dealer, now they have it made”

God, sometimes I wish I were a guy.

Not surprisingly at the same bar (but at a different table) sit what is sure to be the same threesome 30 years hence. 65 year old slick back (waaayyyyy back, damn hairline) mullet dude in white button up with one too many buttons undone, cracker-no-longer-hip, just-bald-dude with scraggly chin hair, blowsy lounge lizard with smeared lip stick, no longer the designated driver so drinking Long Island Ice Teas sit on a Sunday afternoon discussing the liqueur they seem to have just discovered. Same dude, still wishing to be more macho exclaims—“Seriously, they put buck blood in it, makes you a love stud, but you cain’t drink it during hunting season, them bucks will gut you”

I worked in a cafeteria for a while, baking all day, which was fabulous. There was a man of Hispanic origin, I have no idea from whence he hailed, who was the master baker. He was contemplating proposing to his current girlfriend so the kitchen conversation revolved repeatedly around that subject. Through bits and pieces I gleaned some interesting facts. He had been married four times, yes I meant 4 times, before and had over a dozen children. He could not have been more than 35. He came in on a Friday and whipped out a jewelry box with a very lovely, though teeny diamond in it. With a flourish and a bow he exclaimed he was going to do it, he was taking the plunge, but—“5 times is enough, man, if this doesn’t work out that’s it! No more commitment for me”

I was the only woman who worked in the kitchen and therefore, not surprisingly, the only one who found that statement horribly ironic and funny. I wasn’t included in the conversation but burst out laughing only to have the other staff look at me like I had flown off my rocker, laughing to myself like a ninny, and was given a wide berth all day.

At one point in time, I had a co-worker in the cube-farm I currently inhabit 8 hours or more a day who seemed to believe that 5 foot high walls that only surround you on three sides made him both invisible and silent. Most of what was overheard was just gross: nail clipping, nose snuffling and loogie hocking, farts of amazing volume and velocity, but some of it was an intriguing look into the mind of a man. One morning he had a woman I will choose to assume was his wife on the phone and kept trying to steer the conversation around to how magnificent he had been in the bedroom the night before. Finally, after being shot down repeatedly he wailed—“I know you don’t like to do it, or watch it, but can’t we at least TALK about it? I mean, Jesus! I rocked”  Wow.

Another co-worker gave me food for thought when the economy took a nose dive and making promises of slashing government payrolls became the popular way to garner votes. This co-worker seemed immune to the tension flooding through the floors of our high-rise, going on about his merry way without a care in the world. Standing out smoking one day a fellow civil servant asked him how in the world he could stay so calm about it all when the rest of us were updating our resumes and calling in old favors. His reply?—“They can’t fire me, I mean, they can, but they won’t, I’m gay”

I totally get the Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus idea. In these instances a women might be overheard saying “If I could do anything I wanted I would be Angelina Jolie, now she has it made” but more likely you would hear “I would so do Brad Pitt” We would have talked about how the liquor made us warm and toasty, the thought of being gutted by lusting-for-revenge horned animals never entering our minds. “That bastards been married four times and asked you what?” would have been our response to the disclosure of the proposal, “run me a bath, pour me wine and light candles and I might rock you again” would have been our side of the conversation on the telephone in the cube farm. As far as not worrying about losing one’s job…… with a husband, 3 children producing 9 grandchildren I don’t think the gay thing will fly but I am working on other options……



Monday, February 7, 2011

Whooozat Baby?

Being in the Bible Belt, the argument arises often for Evolution Vs. Creationism. When you consider that the entire human being, body, mind and soul, develops from two cells how can the existence of some higher power be questioned? When you see them develop and grow, trying and failing and trying again until success brings them to a new level of achievement, how can one doubt that evolution is an absolute truth?

In their nascent (Definition: beginning to exist or develop) stage, they  are pretty much useless. Cute as can be but with no direction, no desire to grow, to learn, to change. They do not even know these things are a possibility yet. They have two modes of operation, on and off, and three activities, eating, passing water, and the seemingly endless pooping. This is the only time in a life when base human desire is not at war with society This stage lasts, in my experience about six weeks. This coincides roughly with the amount of time it takes a mother to recover mentally from the shock of actually having the cherub (for the most part) and start looking at her darling little lump of fuzzy headed, sweet smelling, pink cheeked goodness and expecting more of it.

We get in it’s face, grinning like madmen and say stupid things like “whooozat baby? “ in a high falsetto guaranteed to get their attention. We shake their little feet, we rub their heads, we tickle their ribs. We swing them up over our heads, tuck them under our arms like footballs, sit them up, roll them over, shake toys in their face that rattle, hum, vibrate, play single notes and simple melodies. We maneuver their bodies into several different outfits a day, introduce them to confining shoes and wipe their butts in public places. The first time a child smiles, or laughs, or squeals, if you look at it’s little face immediately after, you will see it get a horrified, terrified, what the hell was that? Expression on it’s face. Once a baby figures out that that noise or gesture  has an immediate return the first step of evolution is complete. They have figured out tit-for-tat, only they want way more than they give.

I have always been amazed that it takes a kid a solid month to learn to smile at you when expected, which is seemingly simple, and the same month to develop at least three separate cries…tired cry, hungry cry, wet cry…and for some really bright children a fourth, the ‘I do not want to be alone so I will annoy the hell out of you until you  bow down to me and pick me up wench’ cry.

Progress is slow in the first few months, because while learning, they are also learning how to learn which slows them down. I find that once they have that part figured out, the ability to concentrate and to try things pick up speed at an alarming rate. The first major change in a baby is rolling over… usually as parents we discover they have this one down when they use it to roll OFF of something and scare the bejeezus out of us. This is a necessary occurrence. We learn at that point in time that we are not perfect parents (a lesson we seemingly need to learn again and again) and they learn that a boo-boo generates an effluvium of love, snuggles, nurturing and guilt, all useful tools in an older child’s arsenal, tucked away to be turned back on their parents at a later date.

When a child learns to crawl, we learn just how deadly our environment is. After reading the books and talking to other parents, doctors, experts of some kind in the field of childrearing we usually feel like we have a handle on it. We have plastic guards stuck in our plugs, cabinets that it now takes an engineering degree to open, locks on the toilets that they won’t even be able to reach or have any interest in whatsoever for months. We have baby gates, crib bumpers, safety seats and soft toys. We go to all this trouble just to have them pull themselves across the floor using one foot and one finger to find the penny you dropped in your 8th month of pregnancy and were too fat to pick up. It has since been kicked under the couch, and , while you would need a broom handle to reach it, this 24 inch long creature with no coordination can snag it and pop it in their mouth before you can say “whooozat baby?” Never owned a paper clip? They will find one. Dog food, beach sand, ancient Fruity Pebbles, pop tops, tortilla chip corners coated in dust, mints, toothpicks, bottle tops will all turn up. Usually already in their mouth, and usually when there is someone visiting that you want to impress with either your clean home, your excellent mothering or both.

At this point in time, mothers begin to wish for the little lump of fuzziness that the child had been. This is genetically programmed into us, supposedly so that we continue the species, but is also born out of a nostalgia for that time, so shortly gone, when being a mother was all love and fatigue and very, very little drama.

Once the child starts walking, which we foolishly push them and push them to do, we are done for. Three things happen at this point. They beat us for one. They have legs six inches long but can run like the wind, with a silent stealth they vanish into seemingly thin air in the mall, up steep flights of stairs, towards roads, rivers and pools. Every time they do this our reactions tell them they can make us crazy.  They have won the game already, neither parent nor child realizing the immensity of this discovery, that this is an epiphany, but understanding that this is true all the same. They love that. The second thing that happens at this time is that we realize we are not perfect parents (again) and thank God, or the heavens or our own good sense for giving us the speed, the strength, the stamina to catch them before they run into or stumble into or fall into tragedy. The third thing that happens is that children develop a love affair with the Band-Aid. Kids can never get enough Band-aids. This is true until they reach the age when grossing other kids out is more valuable to them than having a cool Band-Aid hiding a mystery boo-boo and the curiosity and envy in other children that it generates.

Parents love to moan when their children start talking because they never are quiet again. We grouse about it to each other, but always with a smile, a shrug, a who knew sort of gesture which is hiding our pride in this phenomenal accomplishment. Secretly we are entranced by conversations about puppets and cookies and how to use a potty (YAY!!). We think they have finally learned something that can only help us. They can tell us when they are sick or tired or hungry. They no longer grunt or cry in frustration when they want or need something but can convey these things to us accompanied by a cute little baby accent and a sweet smile. Fools that we are we welcome this, read to them, teach them how to rhyme, to recite the alphabet, to count, to sing. We chatter endlessly about fanciful things like fairies and transformers and dragons and gnomes. These are the halcyon days. The full impact of children having the ability to converse is hidden from us until the dreaded all out assault of puberty.

An internal alarm goes off in a child on the day they turn 15 telling them their time as a child is finished. Their bodies wake up with a jolt, changing daily, shooting up, clothes busting at the very seams. Their faces explode, their hair goes nuts, their bodies changing so quickly and dramatically that it causes physical pain.  Your child goes to bed a child and wakes up the next day as some pod person/zombie/Godzilla/3 month old/seer mutation of what you knew before. The exact same sequence of events brings screaming rages one day, desperate tears the next followed by total nonchalance  the third. A child’s body becomes the physical equivalent of a tempest in an ungainly, pimpled teapot and life as you knew it is over. No warning, no time outs. Once again, we are forced to realize we are not perfect parents but this time it is because they TELL us. Daily we are informed of our shortcomings… materially and emotionally we have failed them. All parents fail all children, it is the way of the world, but it doesn’t make it any easier to hear. Just when the fatigue, guilt, anxiety and anger threaten to overwhelm them and us a moment will happen that allows that former bond to re-exert itself. A shared moment, a glance, a joke and a glimpse of what has been and what will be again emerges. The only reason anyone survives this phase is because of the 15 years of mutual need, care and affection that came before allow us to hope and pray that this too, shall pass.

It is hard to watch this process, to see someone you love so desperately turning away from you, striking out alone or in the company of a few good friends and a lot of losers, making their own, often poor decisions. It is also, however, the mark of being a good parent, of raising strong children who are not afraid to try and fail and try again until they reach that level of achievement that allows them to try something new.

Thursday, February 3, 2011

Ode To Buckwheat

We have a cool memorial not far from here, Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park . My husband and I, trying to find something to do that the kids would enjoy that cost nothing but time chose to spend a lovely day there ‘en famille.’

My husband and I had gotten the kids all pumped up about it, telling them of the cannons, the old houses, the wonderful hiking trail (which turned out to go straight up) and assured them it would be a great adventure followed by a nice picnic lunch. It was during Memorial Day weekend so the park was gussied up, flags aflutter everywhere, waving as if ushering us in. Literally thousands of people were milling about, taking pictures, throwing balls, picnicking on the grass, perfect!! One of my sons, upon seeing a dog race across a field and with a mighty leap catch a Frisbee, shouted “Oh mom, I want a dog like that!” My answer, as always, was ‘No’ (Aside: No one has ever accused me of being not practical. A bitch, sure, but never not practical) My son, refusing to be thwarted, burst into tears and yelled “Well, can’t we just rent one then?” I went into my usual litany of we haven’t got the room, the time, nor the money. Who would walk him, brush him and feed him? He stuck out his lip, turned his back to me and said in a very quiet but very mutinous tone “A boy needs a dog mom!”

Flash forward, several years; our family found itself adopted by a Golden Retriever named Buckwheat (oddly enough, because he was the color of buckwheat) who had been usurped as lord and master of his previous domain by a new baby. Suddenly, and to my children’s great joy we had a dog we could take to the park. He was too fat and too old to catch Frisbees but entertained us for hours on end with his near ridiculous behavior.

It was once again Memorial Day and we putt-putted off to the same park, 6 people and a hundred pound dog in a tin can car made for 5. We poured out like clowns at the circus, stretching and groaning, trying to get our blood flowing before we struck off across the field for the trail. My son, after watching several Frisbee tosses bounce off the dog’s head had given up on that and had decided instead to use him as an engine, a tow truck of sorts to help him get up the mountain. This trick worked great for the first three hundred feet.  Buckwheat lunged up the first few cutbacks, tail wagging, children dragging behind,  Barks and whoops and hollers proclaimed everyone’s joy at being out and about and together on this perfectly gorgeous day.

By the time he rounded the third cutback, Buckwheat was starting to slow down perceptibly. By the fourth he was chugging like a train while the kids urged him on, cajoling with promises of pets and treats. At the 5th cutback he sat. I am here to tell you that one hundred pounds of retriever flesh is not easy to move once it has decided it is done moving. When the kids snapped the leash and shouted “Come on dog!” he lay down. When they shouted “You can do it” he put his head on his paws and closed his eyes. When they pointed out much smaller and (quite frankly) less majestic dogs leaping over him as they gaily trotted next to their well scrubbed masters, he yawned and rolled over onto his back. To a stranger looking on it might have looked like a family taking a break from the climb, in reality it was a battlefield anew, fat dog on one side, six people in various degrees of frustrated confusion on the other. Needless to say the dog won.

My husband walked back down the mountain, carrying the mutt cradled in his arms like a baby, while the children and I fought to enjoy the rest of the steep, steep hike. The kids were worried that their innocent game had hurt the dog, would he be okay, would he live? I didn’t know how to answer their questions, instead snapping “This is why I never wanted a damn dog!” When we finally reached the summit we stood at the lookout and gazed down at that “damn dog” far below, running, leaping, barking and chasing another dog like a wild thing while my husband huffed and puffed and tried to get sensation back in his arms and legs, face red as a beet. This was just the first of many times that Buckwheat used his considerable bulk as a weapon in the war of wills that is man vs. beast.

Buckwheat liked nothing better than having everyone around him. When the entire family was together in the little living room he was in dog heaven. The happier he was, the more relaxed he got, The more relaxed he got, the more gaseous he became. He would be just aquiver on a Saturday morning when he spotted the mound of kid limbs sprawled across the couch and floor. Fats rolls vibrating and tail wagging he would crawl up on the couch, squashing the kids into the cushions and letting out such vile clouds of noxious gas that we worried about the kids surviving it. Since he weighed more than three of them combined they were stuck, wedged into the nylon cushions unable to rise or even turn their heads away. I would like to think this was uncontrollable but seeing his face when they all yelled “Buckwheeeeaaaatttttttt” I have my doubts

One Christmas, after having eaten half of the goodies in the kid’s stockings and gassing them all good once or twice, he appeared to nap while we made preparations to spend the rest of the day at my parent’s house. Now, you have to understand how much Buckwheat loved riding in the car. The enforced closeness set his little heart to pounding so that we had to always ride with the windows all the way down while we joked about igniting fireballs with cigarettes, air pollution indexes rising and birds dropping from their perches in the trees. As we got the last of the loot loaded and instructed the troops to load up Buckwheat lit out of the house and jumped heavily into the back seat as soon as the door was opened. We told him to get out, he stared out the windshield. We told him to get the HELL out, he stared out the windshield. We tugged, he glanced at us, we pushed, he snorted at us. We did both together and he lifted his hind end just enough to let out another chocolate laced poot. After 20 minutes of pushing, pulling, yelling, cursing, wheedling, bribing, coaxing, we just gave up. My husband got in the car and slowly, in a very stately manner, drove Buckwheat around the block. When he pulled back in the drive, he opened the back door in the manner of a chauffer and nodded to the dog as he stiffly and with great aplomb stepped out of the car and, looking neither left nor right, walked into the house.

That dog was proud of his girth, he adored his barrel chest and his heavy haunches, you could just tell he knew what he had and he loved to flaunt it. However, tell that dog it was bath time and, in his head anyway, he could shrink to next to nothing and stay silent, stealthy like a ninja retriever. He would hide behind whatever was closest, stock still, head down, tail tucked, cutting his eyes barely in your direction to see if his mind meld trick was working on you. Not only did he strive to become like a monk in a bad kung fu theater movie, to become one with nature, he tried to do it outside. Inside he could have at least hidden behind the couch, but no, he chose to test his mettle by hiding behind a pine tree with a 3 inch diameter trunk  Giant ass hanging out one side, giant head hanging out the other he dug in, daring us to find him, let alone try to bathe him.

Buckwheat was a good dog. Not necessarily a good dog for the park, or for kids, or for company, but a good dog none the less. Funny and smart and ludicrous and entertaining and an integral piece of our family and it’s history.