Category Archives: Parenting

Render unto Mommy the things that are Mommy’s

02 Sunday Mar 2014

Posted by in Family history, Humor/humour, Parenting

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Of course, there's chronological age, and mental age.

Of course, there’s chronological age, and there’s emotional age.

For years, my 19-year-old daughter has been “borrowing” (and not returning) things belonging to me:  my bicycle, my t-shirts, my necklaces, my leather boots, my–well, you get the idea.  Basically, anything that takes her fancy that’s not locked down. She’s now in college, so my access to my own things has dramatically and happily revived, once I went through her college-bound duffel bags last September and retrieved all my stuff.  

My UGGs

My UGGs

But now my 11-year-old daughter has sprouted, and I am finding myself “sharing” my possessions with this new interloper:  the pristine UGGs that I found at a thrift store for $40 two months ago, the t-shirts, the small  bit of make-up that hasn’t already been acquired by the 19-year-old and, as of two nights ago, my nightgown, because she suddenly decided that she no longer likes sleeping in pajamas.  I am now stomping around bootless in freezing weather while she walks to school in my UGGs, the sheepskin caressing her toes. Not to mention the fact that I’m tossing and turning at night in a pair of flannel pants and a sweatshirt instead of my comfy nightgown which now envelopes her as she gently drifts to sleep.

But, blessedly, my third child is a boy, so my possessions–at least my clothes–are safe. You would think.

No, this isn't me, it's a model from the catalogue, but thank you for asking.

No, this isn’t me, it’s a model from the catalogue, but thank you for thinking that it’s me.

I have two pairs of khaki trousers.  Two.  I love these pants;  they fit well, and they look as good as they can on my middle-aged body.

The last time I saw my khakis they were upstairs in a box with all my spring/summer clothes.  I was looking forward in the next month or two to shucking off the corduroys that I’ve worn throughout this god-awful, freezing cold winter, and breaking out the khakis.

But one night several weeks ago, I saw a pair of khakis on the lower half of my son. They looked familiar, and then it dawned on me. He was wearing my beloved khakis!

I told him in no uncertain terms to return my pants to the box, which he did.  But I have just looked, and they are gone.

Ten minutes ago, my son called from the airport.  And told me where my khakis are.

My khakis are in seat 24B.

My khakis are sitting (or are being sat on) in seat 24B.

They are on a flight to the Dominican Republic.

More specifically: they are on the nether portion of my 17-year-old son who is on a flight to the Dominican Republic.  My son, who is 6 feet tall and 180 very muscular, hunky pounds–seven inches taller and over thirty pounds heavier than me.

He is flying through the night, away from the snow that is blanketing New England and into the sun of a tropical island. Wearing my pants.

This is the teensiest bit misleading because my khakis will actually be spending their time in the poorest part of the DR and not on these amazing beaches.

This is the teensiest bit misleading because my khakis will actually be spending their time in the poorest part of the DR and not on these amazing beaches.

Which he will no doubt wear while he works for the next two weeks with schoolchildren in Santo Domingo, stretching my lovely khakis all the while to fit his large physique. My beloved khakis will never be the same.

And you know the worst thing about all of this?  Besides the fact that I’ve lost yet another cherished possession to one of my children, the very worst thing is that my son looks better in my khakis than I do!

Other musings on child-rearing:   Stupid things parents do;   The suckiness of having to model good behavior to your kids;  Lies parents tell their children;   The things she lost:  sign of the times;  Letting go and emotional rescue

The suckiness of having to model good behavior to your kids

06 Thursday Jun 2013

Posted by in Back in Boston, How we're coming along, Humor/humour, Parenting

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No, this is not me, but you get the picture.

This is not me, but you get the picture.

OK, this is what it was like here in Boston, Mass, over the last weekend.  It’s been bleeping hot, and because I have English genes I really, really don’t do well in the heat. It’s 93 in the shade, and all anyone in my household is doing is sweating.

We don’t have any AC going on because it’s been a really long, cold spring and the ACs are all tucked away in their little winter home in the laundry room, and those of us who have the time to get them into the windows have dodgy or scrawny backs (i.e., my mother, me, and my 10-year-old), and those of us who have the back strength don’t have the time (The Other Responsible Adult In The House, abbreviated as TORAITH) or the inclination (my two teenagers).  So everyone in my house is sweating and miserable.

On Sunday, after three horrendous days of steamy heat, I had the chance to go see a movie with friends.  This was a highly acclaimed movie that combined two of my favorite things: 1)  it had a literary premise so I could feel virtuous about spending my money, and 2) it was set in New York City, a place I adore.  But more importantly, it was a movie with . . . sigh . . . air conditioning, because going to a movie in the summer in America is really all about the air conditioning.

But before I headed out for the movie, I had to take my 18-year-old daughter to the AT&T store to get her a new iPhone 5, which is part graduation present and part replacing her old iPhone 4 which she recently dropped.

In purchasing the new phone, I had to provide ID, which meant showing my driver’s license to the store employee.  Which is the point at which he told me that it had expired. On my birthday. And before you start Facebooking me to wish me Happy Birthday, I have to tell you that my birthday was in February, so I’ve been driving illegally for four months.

This situation was made far worse because my 18-year-old is on the brink of getting her driver’s license at the same time that her mother has been driving on an expired license.  Not exactly good modeling behavior on my part.

So I slunk home and had TORAITH take over for me at the AT&T store with an up-to-date driver’s license.

I immediately got online and filled in the form for the Registry of Motor Vehicles, hoping that I could get something saying that I could legally drive to the movie an hour-and-a-half hence.  After I answered some questions, the form told me that because I had no felonies, misdemeanors, unpaid parking tickets, or moving violations, and because I was just such a generally wonderful person, I could apply online instead of having to actually go to an RMV office.  All I’d have to do was print out my online preliminary new driver’s license and I’d be on my way to the movie and its air conditioned comfort.

But then, my payment using my credit card didn’t go through.  Then the second card didn’t go through.  By this time, TORAITH had returned home, so I used her credit card.  Then that one didn’t go through though it had worked satisfactorily at the AT&T store just half an hour earlier.

So here I was, with a statement from the RMV saying that I was eligible to get my new driver’s license online, but my payment had been refused on three credit cards that I knew to be completely okay.  So I figured out that the RMV’s payment system must be on the blink.  But I was still okay, wasn’t I?  They said I was eligible, so that must mean legal, right?

I could almost feel the cool air of the movie theatre wafting over me and the hairs on my arms lifting in the cool cool breeze.

And, as the friends I was going to meet asked me:  What are the chances I’d get into an accident driving to and from the movie, when I’d never had an accident in my entire driving experience?

The answer:  none.  Or almost none.  And I had the print-out saying I was eligible to renew online which had to count for something.

“Just go!” chimed in my soon-to-be-licensed driver who’s heard multiple lectures from me about the need for insurance and obeying the rules of the road.  “It’s their mistake that their website won’t take your card.”

Well, yeeeeeeessssssss.  But . . .

So:  should I stay or should I go?

There are so, so many things I’ve given up since having my three kids, and here I’m not just talking about sleep, money, and sanity.  I’m talking about all those things I did to model good behavior to my kids.images

o  PK (pre-kids), the words “f*** a duck” used to roll off my tongue for major and minor pains and disappointments and believe me, it helped whatever pain I was feeling.

No more.  AK–after kids–I became so good at not swearing that I’d managed to convince my two older kids up until they were 8 and 10 that the “F” word was “fart” and the “S” word was “shut up.”

o  When I went out PK, I used to have several drinks over the course of an evening.

Now, I never have more than one beer or glass of wine, and that’s over the course of several days or even a week or else my kids start telling me that I’m an alcoholic.

o  When I needed a good old pity party Pstrawberry-ice-cream-like-ben-and-jerrys-05_2K, I’d run a hot bath and sink into it with a  pint of Ben and Jerry’s chocolate fudge ice cream and People magazine, preferably with (insert a sigh of longing here) Brad Pitt on the cover.

IMG_1857

o  And I never, ever, ate broccoli PK.

Now, AK, those little green “trees” as I’ve learned to call them, frequently pass my lips although I find them as disgusting as I did before having kids.

Yuck! Steamed broccoli!

Yuck! Steamed broccoli!

But in terms of this movie:  I’ve already given up so much.  Can’t I just have this one thing–a really great movie in air-conditioned, ice-cold comfort?

The opening credits were starting in 45 minutes, and I had a 30-minute-drive to get there.  I had to go.

But then my daughter said, “Who cares about their stupid rules, anyway?”

Clearly, this thing of modeling good behavior hasn’t worked out as well as I would have liked. But I can’t give up modeling good behavior now, in front of this about-to-be-newly-minted driver.

I called my friends and told them that I couldn’t go.  Waves of disappointment spread over my hot, sweaty body as I thought of the hours ahead in our steamy house.

This modeling good behavior, although a useful thing, was for the birds.

And I couldn’t even say, “f*** a duck”!

What pleasures of your life have you given up in order to model “good behavior” to your kids?

The things she lost: sign of the times

07 Sunday Apr 2013

Posted by in Parenting, US vs UK

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My 18-year-old daughter Katie has lost the following things:

our house keys                            too many times to count

her Uggs                                        stolen at a track meet, Boston, USA

non-internet cell phone #1        left on a table in school cafeteria; stolen

non-internet cell phone #2       “uh, somewhere”

non-internet cell phone #3        dropped in toilet

$200 North Face jacket               lost on the first day she wore it, Cambridge, UK

my Raleigh bike                           left unlocked in a Cambridge bike rack;  stolen

various t-shirts                           “swapped” with friends;  never returned

Converse  sneakers                    left at a friend’s house, never found

all of her school papers             left in the women’s bathroom at high school

my socks                                       lost one of each pair

my ear buds (borrowed)           “how would I know where they are?”

my necklace  (ditto)                   “not me”

my connector cables (ditto)      “somewhere”

my Obama t-shirt (ditto)           “what???”

my slippers (ditto)                     “really, Mom, really?”

her iPhone 5                            Never ever lost even for a second*

*because how could she function without it?

Lies parents tell their children

29 Friday Mar 2013

Posted by in Humor/humour, Parenting

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My kids don’t read my posts, which gives me a certain freedom to write about the parental white lies in which I engage.

When we lived in Cambridge, England, last year, the nights that we had homemade burritos were few and far between because I just couldn’t find the ingredients in the grocery stories.  Here in the US, with the substantial Hispanic and Chicano population, it’s not a problem.

When I make burritos, my kids rebel against the vegetarian version of refried beans.  They like the “traditional” version with lard.  As a vegetarian, I abhor the lard, but I have always bought both the traditional and the vegetarian because the kids say they can tell the difference.  When they were younger and not as polite as they are now (ha!) they used to make loud gagging noises and spit out the vegetarian refried beans if they accidentally made their way into the burritos.  Needless to say, I always bought both types to satisfy all palates.

Except when I didn’t.

One day about five years ago I found that I had only vegetarian refried beans in the house, and I was not about to run out to the store to get a can of traditional refried beans.  So I faked it.

I put two cans of the veggie refried beans in a casserole dish, drew a line down the middle, then smoothed out one side and “fluffed up” the other.

Half vegetarian, half "traditional"

Half vegetarian, half “traditional”

Then, when the kids wanted to know which was the “good stuff”–meaning the lard-ridden beans–I pointed to the fluffed-up side.

The kids didn’t know the difference and happily chowed down.

And now that’s what I do every time we have burritos.  We had burritos last night, and after John, my 16-year-old, asked which side had the “good stuff,” he snarfed up a large spoonful of it.  I asked him if I could take a photo, which I did.

John happily scooping up veggie refried beans for his burrito.

John scooping up veggie refried beans for his burrito.

And because they don’t read my posts, John and his older and younger sisters will never know that they have been happily eating vegetarian burritos for the past five years!

Are there any white lies you tell your kids to just be able to get through the day (and keep your kids healthier)?

Stupid things parents do!

10 Monday Sep 2012

Posted by in How we're coming along, Humor/humour, Parenting

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A couple of years ago, I wrote a parenting column for the Boston (US) Globe Sunday magazine. I enjoyed it because my kids supplied me with a variety of subjects and it gave me a way to write about things that mattered deeply to me.  But, with the focus of this blog on living in England and the differences between the US and UK, I’ve written much less about my kids than in earlier years.

And then I did something even more stupid than when I, as a sleep-deprived mother of a colicky baby, rubbed diaper rash cream on my face, thinking it was face cream, and then proceeded to cover my entire face with it all the while sensing by its smell and texture that something wasn’t right but unable to identify what it was.

So last night I was lying on my daughter Meg’s bed, reading to her.  Although she is nine and a little bookworm, she still likes me to read to her at night.

Our ritual is for me to read to Meg first, then for her to continue reading her book and for me to read my own book while she settles into sleep.

I was reading The Red Book, by Deborah Copaken Kogan, about four women Harvard graduates at their 20th college reunion.  I was only mildly interested, wasn’t keeping all the people sufficiently straight in my mind, but was determined to finish it.

Meg’s book was about a girl and some ghosts.  I’d already read her a chapter, when I realized that she hadn’t brushed her teeth. When she returned from the bathroom, I picked up the book and resumed reading to her.  I’d read about three pages when I got to:

“‘My work wife, Mia, has already called her.  Even before 9/11.  And–here’s the real kicker–though I feel a little guilty about what happened, and was obviously worried what would happen if Mia found out, if I’m really being honest with myself, I don’t regret it.  When I think about it, which of course I end up doing whenever that day is mentioned–I mean that’s my cross to bear, I guess, cheating on my wife on the one day of our generation’s lives that will go down in infamy.”

Cheating on my wife?  I threw the book down.  What the hell is going on with children’s literature!  “This is SO INAPPROPRIATE,” I thundered to Meg.

“Mommy,” Meg said, “that’s your book.”  She handed me a book with a ghost on the cover.  “This one is mine.”

Back to School!!!

05 Wednesday Sep 2012

Posted by in How we're coming along, Humor/humour, Parenting

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All over the US, England, and no doubt other countries around the world, parents are celebrating the end of summer.* 

With the new school year about to begin in the US and UK, my eye drifts to this cartoon that I tacked on my bulletin board ten years ago after a two-and-a-half-month-long summer “vacation” which was all kids, all the time.

Like almost all parents, I adore my kids, but I also need them in school so I can do my work–something which, as a writer, is the first casualty when the kids are around.

I will miss them and all of our summer rituals and pleasures, but it’s wonderful to return to my second love–writing.  And, after all, they’ll be home by 3.

*  (Apologies to the cartoonist whose name I accidentally cut out while clipping this brilliant cartoon ten years ago.)

Blogging with kids

17 Thursday May 2012

Posted by in How we're coming along, Parenting

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This evening, my nine-year-old, Meg, came over to me as I was working on my computer.

“Are you writing about my tantrums?”

Where’s this coming from? I wondered.

“Uh, no.”

I haven’t written about her tantrums, those explosive manifestations of her unhappiness here in England, that have been so bad that I’d thought many times of having all of us return to Boston despite the fact that 3/4 of us, my older daughter, my mother, and I have, except for Meg’s unhappiness (which is a HUGE “except for”), been having an excellent time here.  I subscribe to the theory that you’re only as happy as your unhappiest child, and Meg has been miserable here except for the occasional weekends in Crich with her cousins.

The fact is that ever since we moved to Cambridge and Meg started school here she’s been having, shall we say, loud expostulations accompanied by crying and harsh words (in short, her word: tantrums) most evenings and mornings connected to going to school, along with daily outbreaks of hypochondria (sore throat, sick tummy, hurt toe–no part of her anatomy untouched).   And it’s been going on for six months.  Almost every single school day.  Without a break.  It’s been emotionally wiping out me and my mother, making my older daughter angry, and hasn’t been a picnic for Meg, either.

Meg clearly doesn’t want to move away from this topic.  “Why don’t you write about it?”

The tantrums?  “Because it’s very personal to you.”

This is exactly why it’s so hard to do a blog.  Where do you draw the line between public and private?  With my children, I hold it pretty close to the vest.  Ah, the stories I could tell, if I had their permission.

“It’s okay, Mommy.  I don’t mind.”

What?

“I don’t mind.  Really.”

Here one of my children is saying it’s okay to write about her. All of a sudden I see the huge wall that I’ve carefully erected between my blogging and my kids crumbling.

I used to write a parenting column for the Boston Globe.  I’d occasionally (okay, in every column) refer to something my kids said or did in order to get the topic at hand (nutrition, swearing, weekly allowance, whatever), going.  The rule I had for my kids was, it’s your story and if you don’t want me to use it, that’s fine.  But if you let me use it, you get $5.

This is how people reading my column learned that I had to lock away cookies and junk food from my son who has no self-control when it comes to this stuff, that Meg, at age seven, called her best friend a “douche-ball” (sic), and that I had to plead with my older daughter Katie to go to church with me on Easter and that when she asked at two in the afternoon on her birthday to be taken to the beach an hour up the coast, I took her.

“You’re saying it’s okay that I write about your tantrums?”  And about the reason why she’s so miserable and how guilty I feel about it because on so many levels I can totally understand how she feels?

“Yeah.”

Wow.  It’s like a whole new world is opening up.  There’s so much I can say on the subject of, as the “responsible adult,” making a major family decision that has worked out extremely well for most of the family and very badly for one member.

Keep posted.  And I owe Meg $5.