Ever since my son has reached the size of an adult, things have gotten more complicated. We can’t get away with a lot of the things we used to take for granted when he was child-sized. Like child-priced tickets at the movie theater, or kids’ meals when we eat out, or shopping in the boys’ section of the stores. This weekend, we got to experience another big bummer on the trip towards his adulthood. We went bike shopping.

In years past, the child has been easily guided towards the item we want him to have. You know how it’s done. You line up the options you’ve selected for him and let him pick one. You’re guaranteed that he’ll chose one you’ve already approved and he gets a sense of participation in the decision making. It’s win-win.

Fast forward to thirteen and that just doesn’t fly anymore. For one thing, the child is five foot, seven inches tall (and that’s quickly increasing) and weighs about 120 lbs. He’s bigger than most of his friends’ mothers (but not me, yet, I still have two inches on him and a umm, few pounds on him, too). So, it’s already a given that cheap is out. He has to have a full, adult sized bike.

continue reading…

Bookmark to:
    

Every once in a while it sneaks up behind me and says, “BOO!” in my face. I am a grown up. A genuine, bona fide, (multiple!) card carrying grown up. And I’m not sure how that happened. Of course, aside from the obvious, that I just kept eating, sleeping, breathing and getting bigger without interruption until I reached my full size and now here I am, all grown up. But, the adulthood business. The being an adult woman side of it, that’s still a mystery.

Every step along the way, every new rite of womanhood is met with disbelief and feelings of unworthiness on my part. When I graduated from college, I sat numbly looking at that paper, expecting that any minute, someone would be charging through my door to take it back. I still have dreams, now sixteen years later, that it’s all wrong, I was one credit short, there was one final exam I had failed, there was just something amiss about the whole thing and my degree is not valid. When I got married (which was actually six months before getting the afore mentioned degree, if you must know), it seemed like kind of a game that everyone was in on. Like we were playing wedding, pretending to be getting married, and all our friends and family members were just being good sports by being actors in our big production. In the hospital, I actually protested when they handed my first baby off to me. I said, “Oh, no thanks, I don’t think I can hold that baby right now!” and trembled a little when they ignored me and tucked him into my arms. Granted, I’d just had an emergency c-section and was more than a little stunned and loopy. But, my reaction was the same when they insisted he could go home with us three days later. How could those fools possibly think that I could take care of an infant? After signing all the papers to buy our first house, we ran out to the car and wondered if we should squeal away before they caught whatever mistake they had made leading them to believe that we qualified for our own house. But, none of those bad things has happened. I just keep being swept in by the undertow, venturing further into the deep, until now here I am, up to my neck in adulthood and the shores of my own childhood are small and distorted with distance.

My older kids do Tae Kwon Do, and there are a few seventeen year-old kids who are their teachers and role models. These kids are the definition of “Privileged.” They’re not spoiled. They’re not sprawling McMansion, prep-school, silver-spoon-fed rich kids. But, they’re middle-class, well-loved, nurtured, sheltered, encouraged and healthy. These kids don’t live in a racially divided inner city, they don’t have to worry about being accidentally murdered on their way to or from school, or concern themselves with whether there will be enough money for food or electricity next month. But, they’ve had to work for their successes, which are many and are proudly displayed and appreciated by those around them. One of these kids, the girl, came to the house yesterday to take my 9 year-old daughter out for a day of fun at the mall. The girl is all that I mentioned above, but then add to that sugar, spice and everything nice, stir it with her own blood, sweat and tears and serve it on a God-given bed of beauty, grace and good humor. She is our shiny, sparkling woman of tomorrow. She’s the kind of kid whose future is so bright she’s gotta wear shades. It just makes you feel all proud and optimistic to be around such a person. This is what all of our girls should be like, this is the proof positive of things gone right in a just world.

While she stood in my kitchen making small talk with me as I wrote out a list of emergency numbers, it occurred to me, as it often does when talking to one of these kids, that she is in fact still a KID. Just a child housed inside an adult body. She carries all the accouterments of an adult—palm pilot, cell phone, purse, car keys, and she dresses like an adult and uses words like adults would use, but it’s all pretend. She’s just playing adult. And so am I. I’ve just been playing it longer than she has and am better at it. I mean, if you start playing Monopoly as a novice when you’re a child, and you have people mentor to you and show you some short cuts, and then you devote all your time and energy to the game once you hit eighteen and keep at it for another solid twenty-two years, then by the time you’re forty you will be quite the Monopoly expert. That’s really all we are when you get right down to it, we’re children who have become experts at playing adult, and just like any game, the rules change with the players. There are these house rules over here, and those house rules over there. There are squabbles over whose rules should rule and you learn to compromise and find a way to defeat the cheaters. Sometimes you roll snake-eyes, sometimes you land on Free Parking and sometimes you’re sent directly to jail.

I don’t know whether to be comforted or appalled that this is all it is. That it’s just a big game of make believe, that we all believe. I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise. This is how it happens with other mammals. Their childhood play is really just survival skills on a smaller scale. But, just like these kids at Tae Kwon Do, who have been given their pieces, given their play money and given hints on how to succeed, there are others who haven’t been given any play money, are missing a bunch of the properties, are playing with a torn-up board and the manual has been stolen or is in a language they don’t understand. So, the game isn’t exactly fair. Regardless of the luck of the dice or the strategy involved, not everyone starts at the same GO square.

I was someone who started on a decent GO square. My house rules may have been a little different than my peers’. Maybe some of the instructions were mixed up along the way by the time they got to me, but I had most of the pieces that would be required, even if they needed a little rearranging once I got the hang of things. I was one of those lucky girls with a big spotlight on me with the expectation to succeed and I’ve made it work out for me in the long run. I’m a pretty accomplished adult-pretender and I have some prizes on display to prove it.

But, I’m finding myself at an odd place in the game. I always have had guidance in this. When I’ve hit a rough patch, I’ve always had someone to give me the benefit of her wisdom in playing out the game as a woman. And now I don’t. I look at my little three-year-old daughter who looks up to her nine year-old sister for mentoring, who in turn looks up to this seventeen year-old friend for mentoring, who in turn looks up to the adults around her to mentor her and for me, it’s the end of the female line. I look back over my shoulder and there’s nobody else there. I’m it. I have an older sister, who is unmarried, childless and recently estranged. If Monopoly is the game in this analogy, then she was always playing Scrabble by herself anyway, so she’s of no help. I have an aunt who I haven’t seen in twenty-five years, so she’s no help either. My grandmothers are long dead. And now my mother is gone. I am the matriarch in this immediate bloodline and it’s a role I don’t really want to play yet.

How does one change pieces when the game’s half played? How does one go from being daughter to matriarch? Should I start wearing old lady clothes to fit the role? Like when my daughters put on play make-up and type on a play laptop, or when the teen girl pulls out her palm pocket to key in important information? Shouldn’t I have some costume to wear to help me get into character? It seems like there should be some kind of crown or scepter passed on to me to mark my status, but all I feel is rather childlike and lost, quite the opposite of what I believe I should be feeling with this new responsibility.

I guess this is the role I’ve been preparing for since birth. This is the role we’re all destined to play at some point, just some of us sooner than later. We all face the possibility of being the end of the line some day. We just don’t realize that’s what we’re heading towards the first time we cradle and coo to our baby doll and then crawl on our own mother’s lap to be cradled and cooed ourselves. But, as laughable and adorable as my daughters look when they pretend to be women, and as naïve and enviable the teen is on the cusp of grasping her adult self, I know that I, too, will awkwardly fake it until I make it in this role. I am one of the lucky, the privileged and I have the skills to play my own game, so there’s no excuse for me to drop the ball, now that I’m the last one holding it for the female part of my family. I am an adult woman in this new millennium, paving the road, now alone for those behind me to follow. I just hope I don’t fuck it up.

Bookmark to:
    

If you’re anything like me, then you find having to chat up other parents about as much fun as a late third trimester internal exam at the OB’s office. Something you wish they’d serve up a cocktail of good drugs beforehand to get you through it. I’ve been at this game for thirteen years. THIRTEEN YEARS. I’ve sat in “observation rooms” at Little Gym, the YMCA and tae kwon do. I’ve belonged to “mother’s groups” at the church and “parent discussion groups” at the pre-school and mom drunk clubs, er, I mean book clubs. I’ve been seated in bleachers, on folding chairs and on the grass at school plays, Christmas concerts and t-ball games, and up until now, all I could say about it is: Mommies Suck.

Why is it that when you get a group of women together who happen to have bred, all they talk about is their children? If not the children themselves, then peripheral child-related things like kid clubs, kid homework, kid food, cleaning up after kids, and kid so on. You get a bunch of men together who happen to have bred, and they talk about anything BUT the kids. It isn’t fair. Then try hanging out with the dads instead of the mommies and you’ll find yourself blackballed from said church group, parent discussion or book club. Because mommies are also a testy little species.

That’s not to say that there isn’t a time and a place for discussing your kids. The time is whenever I feel like it and the place is the internet. Some of my best friends are women I met on one of my kid’s birth board. Surprisingly, we talk about kids AND other things, too, because they’re moms or mothers not mommies. While I love to talk about my kids as much as the next person, it isn’t the extent of my topic repertoire, and it was a glum day when I realized that the women in my vicinity seemed incapable of talking about anything else.

But, I’m here to tell you there is a light at the end of the tunnel. My oldest is a teenager, and there’s a whole lot of bad that comes with that, but one shiny nugget of good is that I’ve noticed I like his friends’ parents. For one thing, we don’t talk about the kids. Not really. There is the occasional bitch session about a particular teacher or policy or whatever, but those conversations are few and far between. Typically, we talk about travel and books, restaurants and movies, politics and religion and tell funny anecdotes—about ourselves!—not our kids. It’s a world I suspected existed, maybe somewhere in France, but couldn’t count on it here since I saw no promise of it all these years.

So, what has changed? Were we all just running in different circles years ago, all of us the single bright mother in our group of dim-witted mommies, wishing there was another intelligent being on the premises? Is it that parenting smaller children is just so all consuming, sapping time and energy from us completely that we have nothing more to give by way of small talk? Or maybe our kids are just too embarrassing at this tender age to talk openly about them? Really, they’re teens, what would we talk about? Deodorant brands that actually work? Suspected masturbatory inspirations? How many times they shouted, “I hate you, I hate, you, I hate you, you don’t let me do anything,” in the past week? Whether the acne will clear up on its own or if you need some of that infomercial stuff? Whatever the cause of this turn of events, I’m thrilled with this unforeseen boon of parenting a teen. The kids are nice, have values similar to our own (even if they do sometimes smell a little strong and take an unusually long time in my bathroom), and the parents are all articulate, well-traveled, well-read, witty and just fun to be around. I know that not all parents of teens are people I want to hang with. There’s not a universal metamorphosis that happens where the kid turns 13 and the parents become good conversationalists. I see the kinds of parents from before in the hallways at the school, or catch snippets of their redundant, idiotic conversations at teen events. They’re just not MY kid’s friends’ parents. Which means that there is some specific selection thing happening on the part of the kids.

Since becoming aware of this phenomenon, I’ve paid more attention to the mommy-talk when I’m out and about specifically for my younger children, thinking maybe it’s just me. It’s not. The moms of my 9 year-old’s friends still dominate the talk with kid-related things. I try to pull it away (because now it’s more of an experiment than an actual conversation) and they reign it back in. Any prolonged silence (like the intake of a breath or longer) and they start rapid firing questions about math tests, seating arrangements, field trips, pant sizes, and reading groups. How do you like the teacher, what book is she reading, does she do Webkins? Wow, her hair is long. Does she brush it herself, when did she start tae kwon do, how much does she weigh?

The almost three-year-old is worse. A lot of those mothers are new mothers, this being their first kid, so a lot of those conversations are just mind numbing. Literally make you start drooling and feeling like you might need a shape and color quiz like the one they’re giving their kid just to stay sharp enough to drive home. I don’t begrudge them this, because it’s crazy worrisome when you’re new at it and everything seems so big and overwhelming. But, it’s like an endless cycle of déjà vu for me. Haven’t we had this conversation already? Twice? No, that was some other mother in some other park years and years ago. The exceptions to this are the parents who also have older kids and the parents I met elsewhere and have a different foundation for the friendship, and oh how I love them.

I would just skip it. I’d keep away from the other mommies and mommy populated little-kid activities. Figure I’ve been there, done that, don’t need to do it again, but I don’t know if that’s fair to my little one. What if the child will only choose friends with cool parents later if I pay these dues now? What if my dinner table rants about how fucking brain-dead stupid some of these other mothers are is a big character-building exercise that we don’t see the results of until much later? How can I properly parent her then, if I don’t have these simps to mock and ridicule in the evening for her benefit? I need to go to these classes, sit in these groups, have the same conversations I’ve had before, roll my eyes, offer up the wisdom of my experience (and have it blatantly ignored) and do my time. But, it should be easier this time around, I know there’s a pay off ten years down the road for her and for me.

Bookmark to:
    

I recently had to administer the strangest admonishment. I need to talk about it, because it was so bizarre. But, a little background first.

I coach an Academic Triathlon team at my son’s school. It’s a group of five 7th grade boys. Good kids. Nerds, all of them, but that’s the em-oh of the school. My son goes to a bona fide geek school, and it’s a good fit for him. I like the boys, I like coaching the team. I enjoy the company of dorks, because I was one myself. Now I’m not so dorky anymore compared to other moms, so it kind of makes me feel like the queen of the nerds or something, to have survived and conquered geek-dom and have wisdom to pass on to the new generation.

Anyway, a while back these kids started spelling out internet abbreviations in conversation. One of the AT kids would say something and one of them would respond with, “Arr-tee-eff-el” and then laugh. When my husband got home from work, we conferred quickly and quietly in the bedroom closet (our only private place) and came out to gently try to put a stop to this in our son.

“You’re embarrassing yourselves!” I told him. “Those are internet abbreviations, you’re not supposed to SPELL THEM OUT when you talk! You kids have got to make even just a little effort to blend in with the general teen population. I know you kids are brilliant and kind of out of the loop, but you cannot go around doing that, you sillies!”

My son insisted we were old fogies, from the dark ages and didn’t know anything about kids today. To piss him off and illustrate how asinine this was (and show off our own vast knowledge of chat-room talk), we used abbreviations whenever possible all throughout dinner.

“This pasta needs more salt, kay-double-u-eye-emm?”

“Yeah, eye-eye-arr-see, you used to use a different seasoning.”

And so on.

Well, the kids showed us what for when later that evening, we were in front of an earlier TiVoed sit-com and iCarly responds to Sam, “El-oh-el.” Now, I may be old, but I know that iCarly is cool. Dee-aych and I stood corrected.

We spent the remainder of the evening irritating our children by reverting back to the teen-speech of our era.

“There’s a new Top Gear on tonight, CHOICE!”

“Yeah, I tried to tell people about how funny James May is on the show, but everyone thinks he’s grody.”

“People can be so ignorant.”

“To the max.”

My kids threatened to barf. They would have called us hosers, but they don’t know how to use that word properly in context yet.

So, I backed off and took to rolling my eyes privately when the AT kids would spell out letters. Until one of them dropped the bomb—

“Double-u-tee-eff?” One kid asked of another.
“Eff-you.” Another responded.

I whipped around with my eyes ablaze.

“No!’ I shouted. “No, you cannot say that!” I caught myself and what I was yelling about and started laughing a little.

The kids were struck dumb, sending rapid-fire telepathic texted abbreviations to each other with their eyes WTF, oops! How does she know what that means? IDK! NW she chats, she’s like old, so WTF?? Oops! IDK! BC! Just BC!

“Yes,” I crossed my arms over my chest. “I know what that means, and we’ve been through this before. You guys cannot swear in front of me! Got it? That includes abbreviated swearing.”

So, this is what it means to be old. I don’t know who was more shaken up by that ridiculous conversation, me or them.

The first time one of them dropped his viola case trying to get his stuff in the car and shouted, “Oh, shit!” I ignored it. The child had clamped his hands over his mouth and literally ducked as though I would beat him, but I just pretended not to hear it. It was a viola case afterall, those things are goddamned expensive, I’d have reacted with exactly the same word choice if it were me. It spread quickly that I was tolerant of curse words, and really I am. However, they started taking advantage of that, swearing casually all the time and I had to reign them in, explaining that it’s really kind of disrespectful to be swearing openly in front of me, when I’m supposed to be somewhat of an authority figure, and it’s also really a double standard, since if I were to swear openly in front of them like that, I’d get in trouble with their parents and maybe the school. They understood that second part a little more than the respect for my being an “authority figure.” I didn’t like having to curb their swearing, I mean, I LOVE swearing, but it seemed like the responsible thing to do.

When I was a teen, we watched movies like Better Off Dead where it was the epitome of comedic hilarity to watch the parents reading up on the teen lingo, trying to communicate with their children. I’ve got the 411 for now, but I won’t 4EAE, and I wonder … where can I get my hands on one of those books to teach you how to keep up? It’s just a sad turn of events when you realize you’re no longer the one poking fun, but the one receiving the poke instead.

Bookmark to:
    

Saturday Night Fever was my first R-rated movie. ?�? I was 12.?�? I bought a ticket and walked right in past the ticket-takers and among the ushers with 12 year old girlfriends on a Sunday afternoon at my local movie theater, which, in 1977 was simply that, a movie theater, not a mega-plex.?�? ?�? Popcorn was sold in boxes, not bushels. Before that day, John Travolta was simply Vinnie Barbarino and The Boy in a Plastic Bubble.

It’s an understatement to say that times have changed.

Almost thirty years after Night Fever (cough, choke), I would just as soon drop my 14 year old son off at an R-rated movie as I would hand him the keys to the car and my American Express.?�? It’s just not time yet. ?�? But he doesn’t want to watch claymation, animation or animal tales.?�? He doesn’t want sweet or sentimental.?�? He goes for action or horror or adventure or toilet humor, which is all completely appropriate considering?�? he’s almost 15.?�? ?�? ?�?

Why wouldn’t kids start seeing R-rated movies before age 17? Fact is, many kids today start seeing PG-13 movies well before age 13. My son was around 11 when G and PG movies were just not amusing or entertaining.?�? That was just about the time I was ready to drop talking candlestick flicks for something a little more upbeat. At that time he was still seeing movies with me, so they were reviewed and monitored for content. As the younger sibling, my daughter started seeing PG-13 movies around age 9.?�? And while those weren’t always my most stellar parenting decisions (i.e. do not see Must Love Dogs with your preteen, because it is NOT appropriate, while similarly rated The Perfect Man is absolutely fine), it has not adversely affected the world as we know it or even her developing psyche or sense of self.?�?

Actually sometimes I think it’s good for kids to be well-aware that they’re the victims of an error in parental judgment.?�? After all, it gives us leverage for not making the same mistake again, and for the right to cover their eyes on occasion, or hope that their popcorn and gummy worms are as interesting to look at as they are tasty. ?�?

How do we know where to draw the lines when what’s acceptable for PG or PG-13, or even R, keeps changing??�? Is it ok for a 14 year old to watch people get blown to pieces but not someone’s naked backside or some intentional boobage??�?

And is?�? there a difference?�? between MTV shows, many of which I do allow him to watch,?�? and R rated movies??�? Is there a difference between R-rated sex and R-rated violence??�? How about what he can find when he outmaneuvers my parent controls on the tv when I’m not around.?�? Do I just succomb to pressure and allow him to see an R-rated movie in a theater??�? ?�? If I don’t, am I a hypocrite??�? And who decides??�? Absolutely not, and…ME! ?�? It’s the privilege of being a parent ???��??? I’m judge and jury in a court of one handing down sentences and changing my mind, when appropriate or when I feel like it.

But is it unrealistic to think that the time isn’t right now when I’m still around monitoring what I can while gently shoving him in the right direction and screaming my opinions through the crack under the closed bedroom door?

I guess I’ll just keep making these decisions on a case by case basis.?�? Precedents matter not,?�? but I suffered no negative effects by seeing Saturday night Fever at age 12. I didn’t want to become a dancer or wear platform shoes or have sex in the back of a car (at least until I was older) and I still know every word to Stayin’ Alive.

Oh yeah. I suppose that part about “no negative effects” is completely subjective.

?�?

Bookmark to:
    

Twenty-one year old Ana Carolina Reston died in Sao Paolo, Brazil on Tuesday due to complications from anorexia nervosa.

She weighed 88 pounds.?�? At 88 lbs she had a body mass index of 13.5%.?�? Anything under 18.5% is considered malnourished.?�?

Does it matter that she was a model??�? Yes and no.?�? She was also someone’s daughter, granddaughter,?�? possibly a niece, maybe an aunt, most likely a friend.?�? Not all those afflicted with anorexia are models, but all are dying to be thin. I know that was the name of a movie of the week at some point, but it certainly describes the epidemic perfectly.?�?

No matter what or who she was, she ?�? caught-up - or shall I say - tangled up - with the driving need to be thin. So much so that thinness became her addiction and her illness?�? and it overtook - and took - her life.

Its not news that models are too thin these days and that it sends a convoluted message to girls, women, boys and men everywhere as to what a healthy body is - and what a healthy body image should be.?�?

In Spain, models must have a body mass index of 18%.?�? That country is trying to keep its young models alive. Thinner than most of us still, but not dead model walking thin.?�? And I think that’s a good start and a trend worth following.

I’m telling my eleven year old about the Brazilian model and also about?�? the ruling in Spain.?�? Not that I think she’s anorexic - or even has the tendency to be.?�? Not that I want to scare her. I just want her aware of what happens to?�? some people sometimes - and that it is possible to be too thin.?�? Not too thin?�? along the lines of the girls who are still sporting little girl bodies in junior high, but?�? so thin that?�? it isn’t healthy. I think that is a hard concept?�? for us to wrap our heads around, even as adults. We know it, but it’s hard to believe and understand.

So while?�? Brazilian bikini waxes get a lot of?�? airtime?�? ?�? — why not this story from south of the equator??�? Because?�? a young model dying from anorexia nervosa is not a pretty picture.?�? Real images of a young woman at 88 lbs with bones sticking out of paper thin skin, gaunt cheeks and?�? sunken sullen eyes do not sell the magazines that Ana Carolina was dying to be in.

When you’re in the pretty picture business, death and dying do not add up to dollars.

Maybe just once if these magazines would hold up an example of ‘What Not To Do’ it could make as much of an impact on young girls?�? everywhere as the famed “What Not To Wear” has made on the contents of many closets.

?�?

Bookmark to:
    

My kids were nine and six on September 11, 2001.?�? They stayed at school that day, and heard appropriate dribs and drabs of what what was going on.?�? At home, their father and I, who were still married at the time, told them that terrorists flew airplanes into the Twin Towers in New York and they collapsed, killing thousands of people.?�? How sad it was.?�? How wrong it was.?�? How sad we were. How wronged we felt. I was outwardly distraught, inwardly panic-stricken.?�? I sat riveted to the television watching the unimaginable events come to life before my eyes. But my kids, safe in a Midwestern suburb, with their parents safe not far away, continued watching watching Sponge Bob, Power Rangers and Arthur.

Now, on September 11, 2006, my kids are 14 and 11. They?�? are much better equipped to handle some of the images that will be replayed today. They’re politically aware and they’re savvy.?�? But, I’m still going to choose what they see today, and how they see it.?�? At their ages, five years is a lifetime.?�?

They remember nothing?�? but growing up in a world when homeland?�? security is?�? familiar terminology?�? and the war on terror is a known entity.?�? They will live their most formative and memorable years at a time where we do not take safety for granted.?�? They instinctively?�? take off their shoes before going through airport security.?�? ?�? Their trips?�? to New York City will only ever include visits to a changing Ground Zero and pointing fingers to where the towers once stood, and then fell.

While I believe it’s my job to convey the seriousness of the events that enveloped our nation that day, I also believe in allowing?�? my children to continue to exist in the safety of their world that was untouched.?�? While it feels like yesterday to me, it feels like history to them.?�?

I don’t want my?�? kids completely shielded from reality,?�? I just want them to be kids.?�? I want to help them understand, at?�? an age-appropriate level,?�? what happened then as well as what is happening now.?�? What I?�? don’t want is for this information to color the world they know - which is good - albeit with its own inherent flaws.?�? ?�?

I usually encourage my kids to hunker down next to me and watch the news.

Not today.?�?

Bookmark to: