Drink of Life Again

Dear Aidan,

It is a cruel element in the anatomy of grief that your birthdays continue to come and go even though you are not here.

You would have turned--should have turned--18 this year.

Every day I miss you, of course. But on your birthday, especially, I miss the marking of your journey toward adulthood. I am supposed to still be parenting you, helping you navigate this beautiful and scary passage. Soon we will reach the time when you would have (most likely) been gone from our house, living on your own. Adulting, as the kids say. But for now, I still grieve for the loss of young you, growing and maturing but still needing a mom and dad to help you along.

We spent the early morning of your birthday in the ER with M. Peevie, who passed out in the shower. It seemed an uncannily fitting way to start the day. You spent so much time there during your short life that the ER staff knew your name and your face. The scary circumstances evoked an egregious flashback to that traumatic day, three years and seventeen days ago, when we lost you.

In Man's Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl observed,

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms--to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.

For a long time, I felt unable to choose anything but grief and sadness. There were distractions, of course, primarily those that involve loving and taking care of my family. But everything else had been sucked into the black hole of grief.

Nothing is permanent except change. Now my grief is composed of the constant ache of your absence. Certain triggers cut my heart, and I cry: hearing American Pie, visiting your grave in the West Portal, an unexpected remembrance from a friend. But I am learning to live with this "new normal." I'm beginning to experience feelings other than grief, sadness, and depression. I am gradually gaining the strength to set aside grief in order to pursue meaning and purpose. I'm remembering to be grateful.

We spent the evening of your birthday eating pizza with your pals Ben, Nick, Alex, and Gabriel. Being with these boys--young men, really--gave me the feeling of having a part of you back for a time. I could almost picture you sitting at the table with us, abandoning your fear and anxiety and reveling in the silliness and comfort that these friendships brought you. 

Your pal Dr. Steve stopped by, too. We were so touched that he would take a break from the demands of his patients to celebrate and remember you with us. He loved you. He told me he thinks of you every day when he sees your poem on his desk. Your case comes up in his medical conferences frequently as the team of cardiologists and cardiac surgeons continue to improve their understanding of how best to care for their patients. He said that he has started recommending prophylactic cardiac catheterization to his asymptomatic teenage patients. If the parents decline, he tells them your story.

You are still having an impact on the world. I always knew you would.

All of us miss you terribly, darling. I wonder if you are OK. I want desperately to see you again, to receive a gangly, spontaneous hug from you, to hear your voice and your laugh. I yearn for the other side of eternity where the pain of losing you will be destroyed by joy and peace in the presence of Jesus.

When green buds hang in the elm like dust
And sprinkle the lime like rain,
Forth I wander, forth I must
And drink of life again.
Forth I must by hedgerow bowers
To look at the leaves uncurled
And stand in the fields where cuckoo flowers
Are lying about the world.                                            --A. E. Housman

Stop Saying This Word

I'm going to tell you why you should stop saying the word "should." And yes, I hear the irony.

Sometimes--especially around this time of year--we say that word to ourselves: I should lose weight. I should exercise more. I should read more books. I should drink less wine. I should be less crabby with my kids. I should call my mom more often. I should stop being a bad Christian.

We should all stop saying should to ourselves. I am trying to stop "shoulding" all over myself--but more about this in my upcoming memoir. (Props to my therapist, Doc, for that  nearly homophonic pun.) But this post specifically addresses the use of the word should when it's directed at another person.

Stop saying "You should..." to other people. It comes under the heading "Unsolicited Advice: Never Give it."

Don't tell your sister who has stage three ovarian cancer that she should feel grateful that she doesn't have stage four ovarian cancer. This is an important sub-category of Stop Saying Should: Don't tell any cancer patient--or any person with any illness at all--that they should feel grateful. In fact, just stop telling people how to feel.

Don't tell your overweight friend that she should try yoga or pilates or aqua cycling or pole dancing classes.

Thanks to Mimi and Eunice for the cartoon.

Don't tell parents who are dealing with a child that JUST WON'T SLEEP, "Oh, you should try Dr. Sleep Nazi. I did, and now my kids sleep perfectly!" 

Don't tell your son or daughter or friend or neighbor that they should spank their temper-tantrumming child, or that they should not give their children candy, or let them watch TV or play video games. Don't ever use the word "should" to your parenting son or daughter with regard to their parenting choices.

I know that your intentions are good. I know that you are only trying to be helpful. I understand that in your mind, when you offer an unsolicited "you should...", you are offering the benefit of your wisdom and years of experience.

But here's how it comes across: You know better than me. You would feel differently if you were in my shoes. You are better than me, and you would make different choices. It's easy if only I'd do it your way. You are trying to fix me.

Do you hear the condescension? That's how it feels. It's not helpful or constructive--in fact, it's counterproductive.

All of this is, of course, moot if your friend/son/daughter is actually asking you for advice. Then it's OK to make suggestions--although This Blog still recommends that you do it without using the phrase "you should." Try these alternatives: "Have you tried..."; "What worked for me was..."; or "I wonder if you could..." These phrases have a degree of humility and compassion.

By the way, I should people all the time. It's an instinctive reaction, I think--when we see someone we care about struggling, we want to help, to fix, to advise. One time I told my friend Roseanne, who was struggling with money issues, "You should cancel your cable subscription." To this day, I hear myself saying that, and I cringe. Who the hell am I to tell her how to live her life and balance her checkbook? None of us know enough about another person to tell her what she should or should not spend her money on--UNLESS SHE ASKS US FOR ADVICE.

What unsolicited shoulds have you received lately? And have you dished any out?

Parenting Lessons

M. Peevie had a big bat in her softball game on Sunday, and I complimented her on her excellent hitting. "I know!" she said happily. "My first-ever home run."

"It was great, M. Peevie! I said. Then I ruined everything. "But it wasn't really a home run. It was a triple with a one-base error."

"Gee. Thanks, mom," M. Peevie said in a small voice. "Thanks for ruining my good feeling."

Well--what was I supposed to say? Am I supposed to go along with her misconception? Wouldn't that be like letting her win at CandyLand--which I could not in good conscience condone?

So I presented this moral dilemma to my non-parenting colleagues.

"Wow," said Young Master O. "You're that person in the room who always has to be right. Way to ruin her childhood."

"Yeah," said The Psychiatrist's Daughter. "My mom used to do that to me, too. She'd even cheat at Monopoly to make sure I knew what the real world was like."

I was flummoxed. "Really?" I asked. "I shouldn't have said that? But it's true."

Something can be true but not necessarily the right thing to say to an 11-year-old, they said. This sort of made sense to me, but I still needed more clarification. I asked for a script.

"Here's what you could have said," said Daughter, "How about: 'That's great, honey. I'm proud of how you drove those runs in.'"

Oh. I was starting to see a better way.

"But then," Daughter continued, "If she insists that it was a home run, you can say, 'Well, I'm very proud of you for getting that great hit, but technically it wasn't a home run.' That way you're putting the emphasis on what she did well, rather than on the fact that it wasn't as good as she thought it was."

"How do you know all this?" I asked her. "You don't even have kids."

"Years of therapy," she said. "Years of therapy."

I've been doing this parenting thing for 17 years now, and still messing things up. But hey, that's what therapy's for, right?

Their Loss

My last post, Drastic Measures, has generated a bit of controversy.

"You are making a big mistake," one friend offered.

"Don't leave your job! Don't isolate A. Peevie!" another friend worried. (She wasn't the only one who worried about socialization--it's the obligatory objection whenever the topic of homeschooling comes up.)

These comments do not offend me; I know they spring from love and concern. But they are also driven by ignorance--and I mean that in the dictionary sense of the word, and with no rancour.

We started thinking about high school for A. Peevie sometime during his sixth grade year. We knew that the Chicago Public School selective enrollment high schools were out of our reach, and we started researching other public and private high school options. We visited the Chicago Waldorf School, and I posted on my FB page that I couldn't imagine A. Peevie going anywhere else for high school.

And then, guess what? I was a little too honest about his struggles with anxiety and organizational skills, and they turned him down. Here's the letter I wrote asking them to reconsider:

I've been thinking about Waldorf's thumbs-down on accepting A.Peevie in the high school in the fall. I don't know if you have a waiting list or not, but if so, I'd like to ask the admissions committee to reconsider his application.

One of the things you mentioned is that you are looking for students who are self-motivated learners. This is exactly the reason we are looking for a non-traditional school for him. The traditional academic environment seems to crush his spirit and his enthusiasm for learning; but when he is on his own, he takes the initiative to learn many new things. For example, he was learning about Leif Erikson in school, and he was so interested in him, and in the time period and his background, that he started teaching himself to speak Norwegian.

One of his heroes is Albert Einstein. When he learned that Einstein loved geometry (when he was about 11 years old), he decided he wanted to learn it himself--so he went online, looked up related websites, and printed out 15 pages of beginning lessons. He worked through all 15 of those pages on his own because of his own interest and curiosity.

He showed you one of his unfinished games that he had started to create. He has created several different similar games, with characters that he has drawn himself; he made duplicate card packs that he distributed to friends and neighbors, and they have ongoing games and battles using his unique characters and scenarios.

Currently, he is writing an adventure story--on his own, and not for school--that is in the fantasy/adventure genre. It's already about 15 chapters long, with unique characters and names, imaginary settings, and dramatic conflict.

You also mentioned that he might need more help than what Waldorf can give him with regard to his organizational skills. But again, it seems to me that Waldorf has exactly the environment he needs, and the study skills class seems specifically designed for kids like A.Peevie. He also has two very involved and supportive parents who are determined to make sure that he learns what he needs to learn in that arena in order to be successful.

He has managed to keep his creativity and imagination alive in spite of (I'm sorry to say) the stultifying atmosphere of a school that is not equipped to handle kids that fall outside of the traditional academic mold. He struggles, but he perseveres. He has dealt with many difficult challenges in his life, and this has given him a great deal of empathy for other people who are struggling. He is a heroic, charming, beautiful soul who will someday change the world.

A.Peevie would be a great addition to your school, and I am confident that he would thrive in an atmosphere that values individuality and creativity. I hope you'll bring my letter to the attention of TPTB (the powers that be), and that they will reconsider.

I don't know how Waldorf turned him down after that inspiring (if I do say so myself) plea, but we got a two-line response saying, "No, we're not going to reconsider; good luck; try this other school." Bastards.

After I got over being angry, I felt like God was firmly closing that door so that we could move on; and we did.

A Tender, Private Moment. Not.

I'll get right to the point. It's hard to find the time and privacy for sex when there are what seems like dozens of kids running around at all hours of the day and night. The other night we thought we had dispatched them securely, and Mr. Peevie and I retired to our boudoir and locked the door. It was after 10 p.m.--what should be a safe hour for conjugal activities. But no.

Minutes after I climbed between the sheets (and started watching a M*A*S*H rerun), a knock came on the door. I got up, unlocked the door, and opened it to find C. Peevie. He looked at me, and an expression of horror began to gather on his face.

"You...," he started, "you...you...had the...door locked?!"

"Yes," I said. "What do you want?"

"Well, I just came up to get money," he said, taking a step back as though I was contagious, "but YOU HAD THE DOOR LOCKED and now I want to THROW UP" He collapsed in a heap on the hallway floor, moaning loudly. "You had the door locked," he groaned, "AAARRRGGHH!"

C. Peevie's moans got the attention of A. Peevie, who wandered out of his bedroom to find out what the hoopla was about. C. Peevie obliged.

"Mom and Dad had. The. Door. Locked!" he said, tossing in a groan for good measure. "AAARRRGGHH!"

A. Peevie let out his own horrified noise, and also collapsed on the hallway floor. "ACK!" he said. "Ack, ack!"

"I just came up for some money," C. Peevie moaned. "Why didn't you tell me you were going to have your DOOR LOCKED?!"

"That's just stupid," I said. "I'll get you some money. Next time, could you ask for money before 10 p.m.?"

"Ack, ack!" A. Peevie groaned lugubriously. "I want some money, too!"

By this time, the cacophony of lament had attracted M. Peevie's attention, and she wandered into the hallway.

"What's going on?" she said, watching A. Peevie and C. Peevie writhing on the floor, weeping and gnashing their teeth.

"Aarrgghh!" said C. Peevie. "I have to have my brain scrubbed!"

"Ack! Ack!" said A. Peevie. "Mom and Dad had their DOOR LOCKED!"

M. Peevie is only ten, but is no slacker when it comes to interpreting innuendo. She dropped like a bag of rocks, and clutched her stomach.

"AAIIIEEE!" she keened. "Aaaiiieeee! Door...locked! Gross!"

I stood at the door and looked down at my three spawn, none of whom had been immaculately conceived. I decided to take a hard-line approach.

"Yes," I said firmly. "We had the door locked because we were going to HAVE SEX."

"AAARRRGGHH! Ack, ack! AAIIIEEE!" they groaned/moaned/keened.

"And now," I said, "I am going to LOCK MY DOOR again. I think you know what that means--so please disperse."

They dispersed--but not without another five minutes of anguished caterwauling and requests for money.

Double-Wides

My daughter is a very special girl.  And by "special" I mean "stubborn" and "expensive" and "opinionated."

M. Peevie has always known exactly what she wanted, from the time she was a tiny baby.  She refused to take a bottle, no matter what was in it.  No brand of formula, not even breast milk.  Not even breast milk spiked with coconut rum.  She would sob and cry until her eyes looked like she was having an anaphylactic reaction.  I was chained to her nursing schedule until she was four months old and learned to drink from a cup.

So now she's nine, almost ten.  She is the whole package--beautiful, smart, talented.  But she has one debilitating flaw (besides the stubbornness):  she has the widest feet known to mankind.  Girl-kind.  Whatever.  This presents problems with regard to her sense of high fashion.  She loves grown-up shoes--no Mary Janes for this fashionista. 

But forget about Payless, forget about Famous Footwear, forget about the department stores.  Only a real shoe store will work for the Divine Miss M.  Waxberg's Walk Shoppe, to be precise.  Their motto is "If we can't fit you, nobody can."  I started to feel hopeful the minute we walked through the door.

The saleslady, Trudy, measured M. Peevie's right foot at 7.5E and her left foot at 7EE.  She brought us a few pairs of mom-approved styles, and when M. tried on the first pair, a beautiful pewter-colored Mary Jane, we asked her how they felt.

"Better than any other shoes I have ever worn!" she said appreciatively.  I was ready to buy the MJ's and leave, but M.P. had her eye on some other, more fabulous styles.  Like Finn Comforts ($264) and Kumfs ($179) and Helle Comfort ($203).  Mr. Peevie and I had our eye on brands that delivered slightly less hurt to the wallet, and after about six hours of shoe-trying-on, M. Peevie narrowed her choices down to an adorable red sweater-top slip-on, and a hideously plain pair of brown Birkenstocks.

Guess which pair she picked?

So we ended up paying $130 for a swath of suede stitched to a bumpy slab of cork.  Crazy.  (I don't pay half that much for my own shoes.  I typically wear a pair of five-year-old Land's End all-weather mocs that cost about $25.)

And then it turns out that the girl is not even allowed to wear the Birks to school because they have no back.  They're not safe enough.  I ask the principal for an exception for our hard-to-fit daughter, and she respectfully declines, after watching M. Peevie walk around in the room-to-grow shoes.  I don't really blame her, but now I have to face M. Peevie with the news.

She cries and cries.  "What about those cute red ones you liked?" I remind her.  

"I hate them!" she declares, determined to be miserable; so I tell her we will go back to Waxberg's and try on every pair of shoes in the store until we find a pair that's a) under $150 and b) acceptable to her school and c) acceptable to M. Peevie's finicky sense of fashion.  We put the Birks back in the box to be returned to the store.

A few days later, M. Peevie is dressed for church, and as she's tying the laces on her sneakers, she says, "I sure wish I had those Birkenstocks to wear with this outfit."  I looked at Mr. Peevie, and he looked at me and shook his head.

"Please!" I mouthed, and he reluctantly agreed. 

"M.," I said, "Daddy and I have a birthday present for you, and we're thinking of giving it to you a couple of weeks early."  Her face lighted up.  "Do you know what it is?  Do you want your present early?"

"Yes!" she said happily, "and I think it might be those special shoes!"  It was.  I handed the box to her, and she put the shoes on, and ran over and bear-hugged me until I was concave.  "Thank you, Mommy and Daddy, thank you!" she said, over and over.

So now M. Peevie has an expensive pair of shoes that she cannot wear to school.  And we're still facing another trip to the shoe store to fit those double-wides.

Young Sociopaths Next Door, Part 2

So, I was telling you about the pre-pubescent sociopaths next door, BUT.  There is more.

"Mom," A. Peevie said, "Curly (formely known as A.Boy) took C.Peevie's game and M.Peevie's game, and he won't give them back."

I am starting to get tired of conversations that begin with, "Curly took..." or "Curly did..." or "Curly said..."

"How do you know Curly took them, A. Peevie?" I asked.

I just know, he insisted, so I suggested that he tell C. Peevie and M. Peevie to go to Curly and ask for the games back.  Less than an hour later, he was back.

"Mom," A. Peevie said, his eyebrows crawling toward each other other below a line of worry on his forehead, "Curly gave the games back." 

"Well, that's good, right?" I said.

"Not exactly," he said. "He said he found them in the grass.  He lied, Mom. He stole them, and then he lied about finding them in the grass."  The heartbreak of betrayal and disillusionment spread across A. Peevie's face.  Again.

"Wait just a cotton-pickin' minute," I said.  "He said he found BOTH games outside in the grass?"  That was enough to trigger my inner closer, and I headed over to confront the little miscreant.  He was standing on his porch next to his mother.

"Curly," I said, trying not to sound like a Guantanamo interrogator, "A. Peevie told me that we were missing two DS games, and that you found them in the grass.  Is that right?"

"Uh huh," he agreed, looking away.

"Curly, look at my eyes," I said, "C. Peevie's game was missing, and you found it in the grass.  M. Peevie's game was missing and you found it in the grass.  You're telling me you found two game boy games in the grass?"

He looked into my eyes briefly, but couldn't hold his gaze there. "Yeah," he said, unconvincingly.

"Where did you find them?" I asked him, figuring that the more lies he had to tell, the easier it would be to trip him up.

It didn't work.  "I found one over there by the street, but in the grass," he said, still not making eye contact, and pointing to the curb, "and the other one here, by the garden."

"Hmmm," I said.  I looked at him.  He glanced at me, and looked away.  "Curly, are you sure you didn't borrow the games without asking, and then you said you found them in the grass because you wanted to give them back?"

"No," he said.  "I didn't borrow them."

"OK," I said.  I was out of gas, and my career as an interrogator was going down the toilet.  But then his mom saved me.

"What do you say, Curly?" she asked him.  I was a little taken aback.  Why did she ask that question?  But Curly fell into her inadvertent trap.

"Sorry," he said softly, looking at his shoes.

"What are you sorry for, Curly?" I said, my new career back on track.  "Are you sorry that you borrowed the games without asking?  If you tell me the truth, I won't be angry with you."  Well, ironically, that last bit was sort of a lie.

"Yes," he admitted.  Then we had a little conversation about not "borrowing" things without asking, and about if you do something wrong, you just make it worse if you lie about it.  The fact that Curly could barely make eye contact during the whole conversation is a good sign, I think.  Perhaps he is not (yet) a sociopath.  But his mom better start taking this stuff seriously, or he is going to end up in jail whether he is a sociopath or not.

The most disturbing thing about this whole situation is that Mom was sitting there the whole time, and even at the end, she never said anything to me about her son stealing our stuff and then lying about it; and as far as I know, she never gave him any consequences for his antisocial behaviors.

And now I wonder if C. Peevie's mysteriously missing $80 baseball glove is upstairs in Curly's room.

Young Sociopaths Next Door, Part I

My tender-hearted middle son is learning a very difficult life lesson:  people suck.  They lie and they steal and they hurt you--and some can do it without even blinking.  It is breaking his heart, and consequently, it is breaking my heart as well.

We were so happy when our new neighbors moved in, because they have two young boys for A. Peevie to play with.  He was too shy to introduce himself when we first saw them, but within two days the three boys were practically inseparable.  A. Peevie could barely bring himself to come in and eat dinner when M.Boy and A.Boy were around.

And then things started disappearing.  We imagined at first that we had Borrowers--that Pod and Homily and little Arrietty had moved into our walls and had suddenly found an unexpected use for video game cartridges and Pokemon cards. 

One day, when M. Peevie was frustrated about her missing cards, she picked up her gumption and marched right next door and rang the bell.  "A.Boy," she said firmly, "Do you have my Pokemon cards here?"  He did, and she got them back.  I was sort of impressed at her resolve.

Another time, A. Peevie was fiercely upset that M.Boy had stolen a really good card from another neighbor boy, K-Pup.  He was actually crying and sobbing about the injustice of it all.  "Why would M.Boy do that?" he asked, not entirely rhetorically.  "Why won't he give it back?  It's not right."

Then he became the Avenging Angel.  "I'm going to get K-Pup's card back," he said firmly, wiping his tears and putting on his red cape.  "I'm going to tell M-Boy that he has to give K-Pup his card back, and I'm gonna keep on nagging him until he does it."  He approached M-Boy several times about the card, but M-Boy had a different excuse every time.  The last time, A. Peevie told me, M-Boy said he wouldn't give it back because, he said, "I'm evil."  I am not even lying.

Not only did things disappear, but we also learned that the A/M-Boys were trying to obtain our wireless password so that they could have wireless access without paying for it.  "Our mom needs it because she needs to pay bills," A-Boy told A. Peevie disingenuously, and repeatedly.  

"Did you give it to them, A.?" I asked.  

"No," he said, "And plus, I know they're lying."  He had asked A/M-Mom whether she had asked them for the wireless password, and she knew nothing about it.  Again, this broke A. Peevie's heart, and he wept because his heart felt betrayed.

Check in tomorrow for Young Sociopaths Next Door, Part II, in which a young sociopath gets totally busted

Foray Into Fiction

Desperation

She left on a Tuesday morning.

The kids were fine--they loved the sitter; they knew their routine: lunch at noon, naps for the younger ones at one, videos for the older kids; mom back by three so the sitter could get to her other job in the coffee shop by four.  But today she'd be late.  Ronnie would be too responsible to leave the kids alone.  She'd call the cell phone and leave a perplexed message:  "Um, Janie, this is Ronnie.  I'm just wondering if you'll be home soon.  I was supposed to leave at 3 today.  Um, OK.  Bye."

But the cell phone was turned off.  She'd dropped it into the laundry basket, where someone would find it eventually.  Paul, maybe, or maybe even a cop, when he eventually called the police.

Ronnie would try Paul at the office, but she'd probably get voice mail there, too.  He'd pick it up and call her right back.  "She's not there?  Did she say where she was going?"  They'd go over a few unlikely scenarios, but in the end, he'd pack up his work and leave early.

He'd swear under his breath as he powered off his computer and arranged the papers on his desk into orderly piles.  He'd get mad first, and worry later.  He would load files into his briefcase like he did every night--files with names like STAT PROG and CHECK CODE--but tonight he wouldn't get to them until well after 9:30, after the last pajamaed child padded out for the last hug and the last glass of water, wondering my Mommy didn't come in to kiss him goodnight.

Checking the calendar on the refrigerator, Paul wondered if he had forgotten girls' night out.  It had happened before: Paul was supposed to be home by five to give her a chance to change clothes and put on makeup.  He knew that some days she didn't even make it into the shower before 11 a.m.; some days, not at all.  He couldn't really imagine what it was like, taking care of four young children all day, all alone--but he tried, and he tried to make sure that he helped out when she asked, and came home early when she needed him to.  He didn't even mind the expense of the sitter two days a week, to give her a chance to run errands, have some down time.

"Shit," he said, falling back into the butt-shaped divot on the leather couch.  "Where the hell is she?"

Janie was driving across Oklahoma in a beige Toyota--she'd sold her own car in Missouri, and bought this one with cash--carefully observing the speed limit and listening to Josh Turner asking why don't they just dance.

"I'm not a big fan of country music," she said out loud, looking over at the empty seat as though he were there.  "But if I listened to you for very long, I think I might just change my mind."  I'm going to be changing a lot of things, she thought, starting with my name.

Amanda.  Jenny.  Kate.  Janie ran through the names in her mind, seeing how they matched up with the new life she was envisioning for herself.  It wasn't a glamorous life--she didn't need Roberto Cavalli sunglasses or a Hermes handbag.  She needed to be a real person, to feel true, to experience a life that made her eyes open wide and her breath catch in her throat.

She'd felt that way once, when Mattie was born.  She couldn't get enough of his smell, his softness, his tiny perfection.  But the sweetness of those moments had faded with sleep deprivation and the intensity of day-in and day-out parenting.  Soon the other three kids joined him.  The fourth, Boo-Boo, was an accident--Janie already knew that three kids was tipping her over the edge--and the last traces of her identity circled the drain and disappeared like that blue Polly Pocket shoe last week.

Her friends all laughed over margaritas, and commiserated with one another--"I just can't wait until I can pee without someone watching me!"--but Janie knew that only drastic action would save her.  Hence, Oklahoma, the Toyota, the soon-to-be-chopped-off-hair, the new name.

"Kate," Janie decided.  "I'm going to be Kate.  I'm going to work at a bookstore during the day, and play guitar on weekends."  Under the vast night sky, she drove toward Texas; and she wondered if Paul remembered to give Boo-Boo his antibiotic.

The Reason We Have Kids

"A. Peevie," I said, "I'm still waiting for you to bring me my wine glass!"

"Why don't you get it?" he asked impertinently.

"Because I gave birth to you and I asked you to get it," I said.  "Obviously."

Rules for Parenting a Teenager, Part I

Boy.  When you take a week or so off from blogging, your blog stats plummet like Obama's approval ratings. So, this is me, getting back into the swing of things. 

My big boy, C. Peevie, has finally reached that age when he does not have to be bribed or coerced into showering.  I thought it would never happen.  Now he not only showers, but he even has shampoo preferences, and appears to be single-handedly keeping the Axe brand profitable.

He was sitting on the floor next to my Chair of Don't-Bother-Me-I'm-Watching-TV, and we were watching a Castle re-run.  I looked over at him, and he was sweet and lovable, and his hair was all clean and shiny and soft, and I had the maternal urge to pet him.

"Can I pet you?" I asked, reaching for his hair.  I was sort of proud of myself for respecting his personal boundaries by asking before touching.  Usually I'm a bit more impulsive.

He looked at me, and tipped his head away from my hand.  "Did that sound less creepy in your head?" he asked.  And then he laughed hysterically at his own hilariousness.

Yes, son, as a matter of fact, it did.  It did not sound creepy in my head AT ALL, thankyouverymuch.  I'm still figuring out how to navigate the turbulent waters of teenagerdom.  C. Peevie just turned 15, and it seems like the rules keep changing.  I can hug him, I can't hug him; I can touch his hair, I can't touch his hair. I can watch TV with him, I can't watch TV with him.  He wants junkie snacks, he wants healthy snacks.

But I can always give him rides, or give his friends rides.  That has not changed.

The Wisdom of Peevie

I hate my mornings.  Forcing myself out of bed always feels like an insult to my body, no matter how much sleep I've had the night before.  And then getting the younger Peevies ready for school often feels like a battle for which I am unprepared and destined to lose.

M. Peevie can make a two-minute morning routine take half an hour.  Even though she's only nine, she loves the mirror, and she won't leave the bathroom until her hair looks exactly the way she wants it to look: side ponytail, bangs hanging over one eye, tendrils perfectly waved.  I don't know where she gets this from.  Certainly not from her mother:  there have been times when I've gone through half my morning before I realize that I totally forgot to brush my hair.  I'm not proud of this; it's just the way it is. 

Also, M. Peevie has no sense of urgency, until after we're already late getting out the door.  Then there are tears and regrets and promises to do better next time.

"I hate promises," I tell her, as I tell all my kids.  "Promises mean nothing to me.  You know what means something?  Doing it means something."

But some mornings contain moments of grace, and even humor.  Today, for example, I was trying to motivate M. Peevie to get up off her butt and get moving. "Wait," she said.

"There is no 'wait'," I paraphrased the Jedi Master, "There is only 'do'."

She looked at me thoughtfully for a moment.  "Shakespeare?" she said, guessing at the source of my wisdom.

"No, darling," I said. "Yoda."

"Oh," she said.  "My next guess was going to be Jesus."

The Faulty Science of Self-Esteem

All praise is not equal, but some praise is more equal than other praise.

This is the conclusion of recent research on the effect of praise on students in New York schools. The article How Not to Talk to Your Kids (New York Magazine, Feb.11, 2007) deconstructs the faulty science of self-esteem and offers practical, evidence-based suggestions for how parents can encourage and support their kids without inadvertently sabotaging their confidence or causing them to become risk-averse.  Parenting Science also deals with the topic of how to praise your kids. This unique website provides evidence-based parenting and child development information--complete with citations from scientific and medical literature.

"Offering praise has become a sort of panacea for the anxieties of modern parenting," suggested Po Bronson in the New York Magazine article.  "We put our children in high-pressure environments, seeking out the best schools we can find, then we use the constant praise to soften the intensity of those environments."  Or we praise more in order to ease our own separation anxiety over relinquishing their care for all or part of the day.

The guy who exponentially kick-started the whole "praise your kids until they think they're one notch below Jesus" philosophy of parenting--which I have, until recently, uncritically embraced--was Nathaniel Branden with his seminal work, The Psychology of Self-Esteem (1969).  This is what started the whole ridiculousness of giving a trophy to every child who signs up for soccer, among other ill-advised self-esteem-building maneuvers.

So we all started hemorrhaging praise-talk to our kids:  "Oh, you drew such a pretty picture!" and "Oh! you're so smart!" and "My! what a huge booger you pulled out of your nose!"--and now, apparently, we've gone and done it.  We've screwed them up in new and improved ways:  for example, the article suggests that some students turn to cheating because they haven't developed a strategy for handling failure.  I don't necessarily buy this argument, though:  cheating has been around way longer than the psychology of self-esteem.

I do buy, however, the argument that excessive and inappropriate praise could rewire a child's brain to become risk-averse, and to give up rather than trying harder.  The article suggests that students "who think that innate intelligence is the key to success begin to discount the importance of effort."  One study demonstrated that those who were taught that the brain is a muscle showed improved study habits and math grades.  Persistence, it turns out, is "more than a conscious act of will; it's also an unconscious response, governed by a circuit in the brain." The brain can be taught, or rewired, through intermittent reinforcement, to choose persistence.

The culture of praise-parenting persists in spite of the research, one researcher said, because "When [parents] praise their kids, it's not that far from praising themselves." Hmmm. And ouch. I feel the sting of truth in that statement.

So what's a parent to do?  Stop praising and start ridiculing?  Heh.  No, silly.  Praise is still good--but it should meet certain criteria in order to avoid the Praise Pitfalls.  Praise should

• be specific
• be sincere
• be about things the child can control--like effort rather than ability.  "Emphasizing effort gives a child a variable that they can control [the researcher] explains. "They come to see themselves as in control of their success"
• be less about accomplishments that come easily to them, and more about perseverance and hard work
• not involve a comparison with other kids.

Now I have to go undo all the damage I've done by telling my kids that they are smart enough to cure cancer, athletic enough to win MVP in the big leagues, and creative enough to invent the Next Big Technology Thing.

A Lesson in Apologizing

I learned something about apologies today.

I had grabbed A. Peevie's thumb playfully--but I accidentally hurt him, and he was mad at me.  "I'm sorry, A. Peevie," I said.  "I didn't mean to hurt you."  He was still mad, and not ready to forgive.

"You really, really hurt me," he said, cradling his injured thumb in his other hand.

"I know," I said, and again: "I'm really sorry.  I wasn't gentle enough."  He stared out the window, frowning.  I gave it another try, even though by this time I wanted to tell him to get over it, it wasn't that bad.

"A. Peevie," I said, "I'm sorry I hurt your thumb.  I didn't mean to do that."  No answer.  More frowning.  I gave up.

Several minutes later, I glanced back at him to see if he was ready to forgive and move on.  He still looked grumpy and unforgiving.  "I've already apologized three times," I thought to myself.  "Geez.  He really needs to get his Jesus on, forgive me, and get over it."

A song came on the radio, and I saw my opportunity to try to make peace one more time.  "A.," I said, "Who sings this song?"

"Green Day," he said in a smallish voice, like he was on the verge of liking me again; and that's when I realized several things about apologies:

1.  It's wrong-headed to keep track of how many times you've said "I'm sorry"  for the same injury.

2.  You may have to keep on saying "I'm sorry" until the person you've hurt is ready to hear it.

3.  To say "I'm sorry" once or twice or even several times, and then to unilaterally decide that you've apologized enough, is essentially the same as telling the other person how to feel--which Green Room readers will know is Just. Not. Right.  The unspoken message is, "You should not feel hurt any more; get over it."  It is not your prerogative to tell another person how to feel.

So I apologized again.  "A. Peevie," I said, "I really am sorry that I hurt you."

He smiled at me with gentle forgiveness on his face.  "It's OK, Mom," he said.  "I forgive you."

An Anti-Drivel Mothers' Day Post

I can't repost my recent rant about why you should stop saying "Happy Mothers' Day" without appearing to be a lazy blogger who has run out of ideas, so instead, I'll add these helpful quotes about mothers and their body parts:

Most mothers are instinctive philosophers.  --Harriet Beecher Stowe

Women who miscalculate are called mothers.  --Abigail Van Buren

It is quite surprising how many children survive in spite of their mothers. --Norman Douglas

My mother never saw the irony in calling me a son-of-a-bitch.  --Jack Nicholson

My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it.  --Mark Twain

It would seem that something which means poverty, disorder and violence every day should be avoided entirely, but the desire to beget children is a natural urge. --Phyllis Diller

Yes, mother.  I can see you are flawed.  You have not hidden it.  That is your greatest gift to me. --Alice Walker

Everybody needs a bosom for a pillow.  --Cornershop

I scrolled through about seven zillion quotes about mothers to come up with this list of quotes which have some relationship to my own reality, and which counteract the whole "mothers are perfect angels" drivel that fills the Internets this time of year.  Most of the quotes were gushy and overstated, like a Helen Steiner Rice poem multiplied by six Jewish proverbs.  I think we should appreciate and honor our mothers in ways that acknowledge their imperfect humanity as well as the parts of motherhood that they got right.  If Jeannette Walls can do this, so can I.

My mother was and is far from perfect.  But now that I'm a far-from-perfect mother myself, I have a lot more appreciation for her, and I see her sacrifices more clearly.  In my mind I can see her sitting on the sidelines of my field hockey games, wearing cotton pedal-pushers and white Keds, her blue hair glinting in the sun.  I know now that she probably had other things she'd rather be doing on a weekday afternoon other than getting her butt damp and grass-stained while I cleated around a muddy field in a kilt chasing a white ball with a stick. 

But she showed up, and when my friends said, "Hey, look at that lady over there with blue hair!", I was happy to say, "Yeah.  That's my mom.  She comes to all my games."

Surprised by Joy

Today I should be heading to the Secretary of State's office with my daughter to get her driver's license. We should be playing hooky together to celebrate her 16th birthday, and maybe going shopping, having lunch, and getting her hair cut.

But Caitlin was born too soon and did not survive; and I lost not just my tiny daughter, but my entire future with her. The future looks different when you lose a child, and especially when you lose a baby with whom you have not even had a chance to make memories. You've started to make plans, you've started to wonder: what will she look like? Will she be a princess or an athlete--or both? Will she inherit math-phobia from mom, or have a knack for numbers, like dad? Will she be a rock star? A poet? An engineer? A mom? Every expectant parent imagines and anticipates the moments of sweetness and connection: sitting in a rocking chair singing lullabies; stretched out on a bed reading books; walking in the door at the end of the day and hearing, "Mommy!" (or "Daddy!").

Getting through those first few months was painful and lonely, but losing Caitlin eventually supplied me with a mission: to walk beside others who are going through the same painful loss of a pregnancy or infant. I don't have anything to offer except empathy and compassion. Sometimes it helps a grieving parent to know that someone else has gone through that dark valley, and come out on the other side, where eventually, hope and laughter return, where we can again be surprised by joy.

The brief lives of Grace, Jonathan and David, John Paul, Abigail, Jeremiah, Luke, Willow, and Jack touched many people besides just their parents and siblings. The continual presence of their absence changes the future, and we may never understand why God allowed these lives to be conceived and then cut short.

And now there's another one. Tomorrow I'm getting together with Matthew's mom, two weeks after his birthday, which was also the day he died. Another mom struggling to put one foot in front of another, watching the rest of the world go about its business while she wants to scream, "I had a baby, and he died!" I'll sit with her, and ask her to tell me Matthew's story if she wants to, and I won't try to cheer her up by telling her, "Don't worry; you can have another baby!" I'll try to help her feel a tiny bit less alone.

Maybe I'll bring her a copy of this poem by William Wordsworth, which my friend Irish read at Caitlin's memorial service:

SURPRISED by joy--impatient as the Wind
I turned to share the transport--Oh! with whom
But Thee, deep buried in the silent tomb,
That spot which no vicissitude can find?
Love, faithful love, recalled thee to my mind--
But how could I forget thee? Through what power,
Even for the least division of an hour,
Have I been so beguiled as to be blind
To my most grievous loss?--That thought's return
Was the worst pang that sorrow ever bore,
Save one, one only, when I stood forlorn,
Knowing my heart's best treasure was no more;
That neither present time, nor years unborn
Could to my sight that heavenly face restore.

So I'm not doing normal mother-daughter birthday things with Caitlin--but I'm saying her name a lot today. And maybe tonight we'll have cake in her honor. I'll bet she'd like that.

Joy of Parenthood

One of my fondest joys as a parent is talking about about sex with my children. I really do love these conversations, because I just never know what will come up.

Last week, A. Peevie and I hopped out of the car and walked across the parking lot to the drug store. Along the way, we passed a discarded condom wrapper lying on the asphalt.

"What's that, Mom?" A. Peevie asked.

"It's a condom wrapper, A.," I said. "Do you know what condoms are?"

"No," A. Peevie said. Pause. "And I don't want to know." His instincts guided him to take evasive action to avoid a conversation that he somehow intuited would be awkward.

"Well, buddy," I said, "I'm going to tell you what they are when we come back out to the car. And it's going to be only the first of several conversations that we will be having about sex in the near future." I could feel him sending vibes of displeasure into my airspace, but he didn't say anything else.

"So, A.," I said as we walked back to the car, "Condoms. A condom is like a little rubber hat that a man puts on his penis when he has sex to make sure that the woman he's having sex with does not get pregnant." I was not ready to get into a discussion of STDs yet.

"Oh," said A. Peevie.

"The reason I need to tell you about this is that it's time for us to start having a couple of talks about sex, buddy," I said. He grimaced. "And by the way, are you doing sex education at school this year?"

"Umm, hmmm," he said. "For a week." Well, then. That should do it, right?

"Well, dude," I said, "Daddy and I want to make sure you know what's true and what's not true about sex. So we will be talking about it--but for today, we can be done." He emitted an audible sigh of relief.

In the same week, I was in the car with M. Peevie and a news story came on the radio about the Illinois abortion notification law. "What's abortion, Mom?" M. Peevie asked. Of course she did.

"Sometimes a woman or a girl gets pregnant, and she doesn't want to be pregnant any more, M.," I said. "An abortion is a medical procedure that makes her not pregnant any more." I knew it would not end there.

Sure enough. "But Mom," she said, "What happens to the baby?"

"Well, M. Peevie," I said slowly, thinking through my options--there's a simple answer to this one; and then there are answers that are just going to lead to eight thousand more questions; I went with simple--"the baby dies." It still led to more questions, because this is M. Peevie. It's what she does.

"But Mom, why would someone not want their baby?" The questions were getting harder.

"Sometimes a person gets pregnant, but she's not ready to be a mommy, M.," I said. "Sometimes teenagers have sex, and they get pregnant by accident, and they aren't ready to take care of a baby. That's what that news story was about."

She was quiet in the back seat as the traffic whizzed past. "Um, Mom?" M. Peevie said, "I think this conversation is going into things I don't want to talk about."

Phew. I could not agree more. After all, she's only nine.

"OK, baby," I said. "We don't have to talk about it anymore."

I wasn't kidding when I said these kinds of conversations are a true joy of parenting. They're challenging, for sure; and mostly I'm just swinging in the dark, trying to tell the truth, but without giving them more information than they're ready for.

And I love that I get to be the one to guide them. What an honor; what a precious honor.

And what a crapshoot.

Why You Should Stop Saying "Happy Mothers' Day"

I don't actually hate Mothers' Day any more (it was not high on my list of holidays after losing a child), but I totally understand why some of my friends do.

My unscientific poll last year found that more people feel sad on Mothers' Day (MD) than happy. Many people feel ambivalence or even dread as MD approaches, for many reasons: having lost a child, desiring a baby, having a sick child, having a strained relationship with your child or your mother, wanting to be married, having a mother who hurt or disappointed you (aka, being human), experiencing the death of your mother, dealing with your mother's serious illness, and on and on.

So for all of you out there who don't feel particularly thrilled about the prospect of yet another crummy mother's day approaching--I'm sorry for your pain. I get it.

Why does there need to be an official mother's day on the calendar, anyway? I've decided that I want to be the kind of mother that has zero expectations around the day. What I really want is to have a great relationship with my kids, such that every day we have loving interactions, and That Sunday in May is just another typical day.

When they've grown up and established their own households, if they want to send me a card or a potted geranium or take me out for a meal, great. (Although I'm not particularly fond of geraniums. But whatever.) I will never decline kindness or attention. But if they forget, or they're not good at getting a card in the mail, or they've had a busy week--so what? If we continue to have fun together, and good conversations, and reciprocal expressions of love and appreciation, then one Day on the calendar means very little.

(BTW, this logic does NOT apply to my birthday.)

If, however, by the time my kids are out on their own I've screwed them up enough that they don't feel any tenderness or appreciation toward me, then our problems are larger than an M-Day card can fix. (God protect them, please, from my mistakes and selfishness.)

And what about dads? Should they be off the hook? Mr. Peevie's job, I believe, is to help the kids, while they're still young, to say "I love you mom" and "Thanks, mom"--but not just on M-Day. If he does it on M-Day, great; but as long as he's setting this example the rest of the year, then I'm totally cool with minimal fanfare on That Day.

I don't dread the Day; and I don't want my family to dread it either. Do you want to join me in my Quest to Take the Expectations Out of Mother's Day?

And I really want to address the issue of the ubiquitous, relentless, and somewhat mindless Mothers' Day greetings. The only person you really need to acknowledge the Day to is your own mother. You don't need to say it to me or to any other woman, whether she's a mother or not. It's not like Christmas/Hanukkah, or Independence Day, or Halloween, where the celebration and acknowledgement includes everyone.

I'm not trying to be mean here, and if you say HMD to me, I won't bite your head off. But be aware: saying "Happy Mothers' Day!" does not make it happy. Before popping out the cliched holiday salutation to someone who is not your mother, look into her eyes, and try to discern whether it is, in fact, a happy day for her. Maybe a better thing to say is, "How are you today?"--and really mean it.

And I will leave you with this Anne Lamott essay in Salon about her not-June-Cleaver-mother. It's not pertinent to Mothers' Day, per se; but it's Anne Lamott, so it's entertaining, touching, and truth-telling, and I think you will enjoy it.

NOTE: I really wanted to include a picture of June Cleaver with this post, but for some reason Blogger won't let me. Stupid Blogger.

A Tiny Sign That Maturity Might Come. Eventually.

Two kids who often fight like feral cats were sitting on the bed, still in their PJs on a Monday morning (thank you, Lutherans), playing on their DSs, together in their virtual world.

"Oh, I'm going to die. I'm going to die," I overheard A. Peevie say. "I'm dead."

And then, the part that made my heart well up with pride and joy, and not a little astonishment:

"You're doing good, M. Peevie," A. Peevie encouraged. "You can do it! You can beat him! Good job, M., good job!"

I don't know about you, but when one of my kids forgets his own (fake/virtual) troubles and opens up a can of Unexpected Maturity to say something kind and encouraging to his sibling, I practically start crying from happiness.

Even if it's just about a video game. Because that's a start, isn't it?

Good Kids, Good Books

We started reading to our kids when they were tiny. We'd take turns sitting in the rocking chair with a baby on our lap, and we'd read Goodnight Moon if it was get-sleepy time, or But Not the Hippopotamus ("serious silliness for all ages") if it was get-rowdy time. I'm so happy that all three of my kids have developed into serious readers, the kind of kids who read on their own and who feel sad if they don't have a book to read.

C. Peevie has become a fan of Agatha Christie (whom I love) and Martha Grimes (who Mr. Peevie loves but I could never get into). I still read to him occasionally, and C. Peevie laughs at my mispronunciation of the occasional French phrases in Murder on the Orient Express.

He recently finished And Then There Were None by Dame Christie. "Mom!" he said, "that book is awesome! I can't believe how good it was!" I remembered having the same reaction. Every time.

A. Peevie introduced me to Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea. He chose it for his book report, and when he finished it, he declared, "That's one of my favorite books now!"

"What did you like about it, A.?" I asked him.

"I like how the old man kept on trying and trying and trying to catch the fish," he said. "I admired his...," he searched for the right word.

"Perseverence?" I suggested?

"Yes," he said. "What does that mean again?"

"It means you keep on trying, and you don't give up," I said.

"Yeah," he agreed. "I admired his perseverence."

M. Peevie is going for more modern, but still excellent choices: the Alanna series, by Tamora Pierce. Most nights she and Mr. Peevie hunker down in her room, and he reads to her, interrupted every 90 seconds or so by her questions, comments and exclamations.

But she also loved Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time (all three of the kids did), and has started on the other titles in the Time Quintet. She's also enjoying C.S. Lewis' Narnia series with me, although it's taking us awhile to get through The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

I love raising readers.