didaink

Remembering Erma via Kyran

 

"No one ever died from sleeping in an unmade bed. I have known mothers who remake the bed after their children do it because there is wrinkle in the spread or the blanket is on crooked. This is sick." -- Erma Bombeck

I was so happy to see that Kyran Pittman, blogger and author of Planting Dandelions: Field Notes From a Semi-Domesticated Life wrote this week about finding Erma Bombeck in the foreign land of picket fences and domesticity. She was an American icon, that woman… and, well...

I admit it. There were many days that I secretly wished that Erma Bombeck was my mother. She was just so down-to-earth and accessible (something my mother wasn’t able to do easily) and regularly at my fingertips in my hometown newspaper.

I started reading her column when I was around 11 or 12 (I don’t believe my mother ever read her column or books) and I got so excited when I could hear her voice and see her face when I was in my teens, eating breakfast before school started with her and “Good Morning America.” I guess you could say she might have mothered me in ways that my own mother never could.

When she died so relatively young I was heartbroken, but I didn’t quite understand why I took it so hard. Then when I began writing again as a coping mechanism for becoming a mother at forty, it finally hit home. She spoke to the future writer in me… and the future mother in me. She was everyone’s friend and mother and comrade in housework and parenting with humor, and I loved her for it.

Kyran Pittman possesses so many of the same qualities in her voice as a writer and a mother that Erma Bombeck had. And Kyran, if you're reading this post, rest assured... there is a child out there who is reading your blog or even your book on days when his or her own mother isn’t accessible.

 

"I'll take Geography for $300, Alex."

Brain, Child Magazine (The Magazine for Thinking Mothers) asked its readers this week, “What's the most interesting way your parenting differs from how you were raised?”  

This required some serious thinking and spelling on my part, two categories in my upbringing that my parents invested copious (C-O-P-I-O-U-S, "copious." In Latin, "cōpiōsus," plentiful, rich)amounts of time preparing me for.

However, when I was a child I was never asked a single personal question. My parents had little interest in their children’s personal feelings or their views on the world, really, with the possible exception of world geography. Even then, it wasn’t because they were interested in my opinion about it, they just wanted to know if I could spell the names of the cities or countries that I was learning about in school.

Questions in my household weren’t even questions – they were clues. I provided the question to the clue that my Alex Trebek-style parents delivered across the dinner table, ala our home edition of “Jeopardy!”  We were often given clickers at the table, all seven of my brothers and sisters and I… in case we finished dinner early and had time for some “fun.”

“This capital city is known as the Athens of South America,” my father would bait.

Click-click-click. “What is Bogotá??” I might be lucky enough to blurt out before the other seven clickers went off, each one vying for my father’s praise, while my mother looked on nervously because dessert was melting.

“But, can you spell it?” he might fire back, trying to make sure I had an actual brain in my head instead of gumballs and a lucky memory.

My parents shot out competitive spellers like piping hot rolls from an oven mitt. My older sisters traveled back and forth to Washington DC from California to compete with the best spellers in the country under the age of fourteen.

I never made it to DC, and I don’t think my parents ever fully recovered.

“That one went out on sheriff in the seventh grade – ‘One R, two F’s!’ we tried to tell her. ‘Two F's!’  Poor thing, look at her..,” they’d tell their academia friends, pointing and shaking their heads.

Because my opinion never mattered much to my parents but my spelling and my grades always did, I try to take the pressure off my own children when it comes to academics. And I ask questions. Lots of questions. Too many questions.

“Mama, I don’t want to talk about it!” my five-year old son tells me, cutting me off when I ask him how he feels about getting a “3” and not his regular “5” from his preschool teacher.

“Well, if you feel like talking about it, just let me know.  Because, I am all ears… You know, when you’re ready… So... Are you ready yet?”

“La la la la,” plugging his own ears, hoping to drown me out.

My parenting style isn’t much of a “style” as it is a chance for me to get to know my children.  This is something my parents didn’t have much time or energy for, trying to feed and bathe and educate eight kids most of their lives.  But it is what I revel in… asking my kids about their lives, hearing their opinions on their little world and the other enormous one spinning around them. We sit down at our own dinner table now, looking over at the globe, while they ask questions about South America or Italy and their heritage, over black beans and pizza and even some good ‘ole American hotdogs.

And when it comes to questions about spelling, I often have to turn to my eight-year old daughter for help, especially on double consonant words. Because, I still can’t remember if there are two R’s or two F’s.  More often than not, she’ll keep her patience with me and she tries not to point.

“That’s okay, Mom… it is a tricky word. Just remember: she then riff."

 

Raising Girls for Dummies?

She is poking at her thighs and belly in the mirror again when I walk into the bathroom after her shower. 

“Mama, why can’t I be skinny?” Gulp. BREATHE. Don’t panic.

But, I can feel the heat rising up in my chest. Here we go again. She’s not even nine year’s old! Which “skinny” girl at school said something this time? I want to know! Because I will sit on that mean little bitch with my big fat ass and make her appreciate the importance of kindness and diversity! Uh… I, uh… didn’t just shout that out inside my head and write it down on paper, did I? No. No, I didn’t. Phew! “Payback Mama” appears to have left the building.

“Did someone say something to you today at school? Was it Bella again?”

“No, not really. But, why can’t my stomach be like hers?”

Hadn’t she overcome this nonsense yet? Have I not given her enough love, enough pep talks, enough support to push out all that crap on the playground, the toxic put-downs that eat away at a girl’s self-confidence throughout the day? I thought I had made a dent in my daughter’s fragile psyche with my last speech just a few months ago. That speech was stellar, jeweled with every adjective I could think of at the time: smart, beautiful, unique, loving, talented, gifted, funny, creative, determined, strong, generous, gullible. Okay, I left that last one out, but now, I almost wish I hadn’t.  

“Honey, you are gorgeous exactly as you are. And you can’t keep believing what other people tell you about yourself.”

“She says I'm chubby and that my pants are too tight.”

Teaching your child to stand up to a popular girl with bedazzled clothes from a wannabe-Disney-set store at the mall is much harder than it appears on Wizards of Waverly Place. I don’t recommend that you try it the way it’s written on that show or on iCarly, because the episode usually ends with everyone hugging it out, agreeing to go shopping together, and then the whole thing starts up all over again.

Our last serious talk about body types came after another startling accident on the turnpike to pre-adolescence, an expressway I didn’t think we’d be driving down until age ten or eleven. I was minding my own business, picking up dirty socks from the hallway carpet, when I looked up and crashed right into my eight year old daughter posing in the bathroom mirror, sucking in her stomach so hard that all I could see was her rib cage sticking out.

What happened to my last textbook heart-to-heart homily about celebrating your body and its unique shape, loving every inch of yourself? It seems to have disappeared into the optical illusion that a parental pep talk can completely erase a child’s self-doubt and the outside influences that surround our children. Because here we are again back at square one, and I’ve read all the books. This time, I want a speedy fix to get through yet another learning curve about how to raise a self-confident daughter.  If only there was a Raising Happy, Healthy Girls for Dummies. But dummies can and do carry consealed weapons.

“We’re Italian.”

“Bella’s Italian too.”

“We’re Curvy-Italian. And you’re half Brazilian, don’t forget, so that makes you a gorgeous combination of curves and, well… curves.”

“But, I don’t want curves! I want to be skinny!”

It’s down and dirty time now. I am rolling out the big guns and pointing them directly at “skinny” with all the ammo I’ve got. My regular “good news/bad news” speech ain’t seen nothin’ yet. I was saving it for my poker face puberty speech, but pre-adolescent body trumps poker face puberty every time.

“Honey, I have some good news and some great news for you. Which do you want first?”

“What do you mean great news?”

“You heard what I said… “

“I want the great news first then.”

“You have curves!”

“What? Then, what’s the good news?”

“There is no bad news.”

“Mama…”

“Don’t Mama Mia, me. No one -- not a girl like Bella or anyone else -- is going to make you believe that you can’t be curvy and healthy, strong and beautiful.”

“You really think so?”

“I really, really, really think so. But, do you?”

“I do.”

I think I just married my daughter to herself… Curvy Italians aren’t that dumb after all, it seems -- for now, for today. I will need to find a tutor, though, to help me rewrite that poker face puberty speech. Clearly, it will require many aces up my sleeve. Hopefully, I still have a few more years to work on it. Either that or I’ll have to take a job in Vegas.

 

 

Post Valentine's Day Evil Mother Syndrome

It’s Saturday morning, 8:57am. My husband and daughter are still sound asleep, sleeping off their “Sweetheart Ball” hangovers on my scheduled sleep-in day. My son and I have been watching cartoons since 6:35. I thought it was a school day, his explanation at 6:30, fully dressed. 

“You told me I should always get dressed as soon as I wake-up then come tell you.”

Good times, good times. 

It’s not that I’m begrudging last night’s, father-daughter Valentine’s Day dance extravaganza and subsequent sleep-in way past the reasonable sleep-in hour.  No, no.  It’s that I might be suffering from Post Valentine’s Day Evil Mother Syndrome, PVDEMS.  It can last anywhere from 2-14 days, and it’s going on Day 4 for me I think. I probably should be seen. Too bad it’s Saturday morning and I can’t get an appointment down at Urgent Care because they’re only taking “emergency” patients, blah, blah, blah. If this isn’t a valid emergency I don’t know what is, I just raided each of my children’s Valentine’s candy for the third day in a row while trying to walk past it on my way to the coffee pot.

“Is your father up yet?  Is your sister up yet??”

“Um, Mama… I think you’re screaming a little.”

Oh, no, I am not. I am NOT a begrudgeoner. It’s the Hershey Kisses screaming, the Sweethearts, the Rolos, the homemade hearts on a stick smothered in rainbow sprinkles, the Dum Dums, the special edition pink and purple M & M’s, the strawberry marshmallow hearts, the Blow-Pops. It’s the ’frickin Fun Dip, I tell you!

PVDEMS ain’t pretty, people -- especially on a Saturday morning when your head should still be near a pillow instead of the interior of a pink and red crepe-papered box.

 

 

Farewell, Sweet Prince

“How many more days until everyone dies, Mama?” he asked me at bedtime.  I was about to sing him a lullaby. In a futile attempt to buy time, I lied. 

“Sorry, Señor, I don't have my hearing aid on. How’s about Somewhere Over The Rainbow tonight?” 

“Mama! How many more days until we all die?”

Earlier that day we had discovered Rocky, my son’s dwarf hamster, permanently asleep in his cage, nestled motionless beneath alfalfa seeds, peanut shells and paper curls. 

“I don’t know, my Señor,” bowing my head.

While Rocky lay cold and painfully still, his cousin Cody in the cage next door seemed completely oblivious to his absence. Cody kept to his same morning grooming routine. He continued his scheduled workout, taking water breaks here and there, then running over to the bars that fenced him in to poke his nose through the metal barriers -- an aroma of freedom taunting his whiskers from our family room. But, then he’d snap back into focus and jump right back onto his green neon Ferris wheel, like he was the first hamster to ever ride one at the World’s Fair. Cody had always been more into his body then Rocky, self-absorbed by his own reflection in the shiny plastic tunnels that circle inside his rectangular world.

“These are very good questions you’re asking, Señor…”

Rocky was the quiet sort, bookish and thoughtful, preferring to spend his free time in the warmth of his cozy mini igloo, likely reciting Shakespeare or Keats under the arched rooftop – next door, his egalitarian cousin perpetually running back to that meaningless circus wheel.

“I just wish I knew their answers.”

“Mama, I need to know! How many more minutes until our bodies stop working??”

I had rehearsed this moment in my mind many times and yet my response fell totally flat, deserted, nothing like those mock conversations I’d worked on in my "mother-imagination."

“Honey, that’s not something you need to worry about, okay?”

I kept thinking about Rocky laying in that giant shoebox, all alone, his favorite treat, a shelled peanut, placed between his tiny claws in the cardboard mausoleum my son had designed for him.  Out of respect, I was hoping that Cody might have been, at the very least, holding a candlelight vigil outside his domed plastic tower.

“Just tell me!” my son pleaded.

I went totally blank. Tears began to fill my eyes and my nasal cavity was clogging up. 

When I was hospitalized last summer I replayed the scene from Terms of Endearment over and over inside my throbbing head, the one where Debra Winger is near death and has prepared a goodbye speech for each of her boys from her hospital bed. That is how I pictured this kind of poignant moment with my own son. Who in the hell was I kidding?  I could never be that stoic or brave, our moment would be clobbered by unabashed crying and gooey mucous hanging from my nostrils.

“Okay, okay!  Let me think… there are 60 minutes in an hour, so 60 x 24 hours x 365 days, times maybe 100 years is…is…“

If I had just worked harder at math in grade school instead of watching so many romantic movies, all those stupid, frivolous Fred Estaire/Gene Kelly musicals, then I might have been able to calculate the precise number of minutes, hours, and days in a long, happy life.  My realistic, five-year old son needed tangible data and I kept dancing around the numbers, flubbing the steps to explain it to him the way he needed to hear it.

“80 hundred billion minutes?” he shouts.

“Yes!  That’s it, Señor! 80 hundred BILLION,” kissing his forehead, praying that he was finished.

“So, that’s a long time, right, Mama?”

“Oh my goodness, Señor! That is an incredibly long time… that’s like, forever,” pulling myself together a bit, “and even when our bodies stop working, like Rocky’s body did today, we live on inside each other’s hearts.  That’s what love is all about, my Señor.”

His eyes were closing, a big yawn making an “O” in front of my best conjured-up, all-knowing expression.

Then he opens them wide again and in a normal, confident voice, he asks one last question before falling asleep to his favorite lullaby.

“Can I have a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup in my lunch tomorrow?”

I’d like to think Rocky heard him. He always did appreciate the value of a good nut.

 

 

 

Size 47

It’s official, my old number has gone belly-up... Here, now, sits its replacement:  47.

47 – 47 – 47

There, I said it. Then, upon saying it, wrote it down on this blank white page, by last count... 4 times, like it's no big woop. Maybe it's not. 

Now that I see it there in print it doesn’t look so bad; the 4 sitting almost elegantly next to the seven, crossing its long leg the way a flamingo might just before taking a relaxing nap… and the 7, well, it’s not as curvy as the 6 that used to sit there, nudging the four with its wide derrierre, but it too looks somewhat chic… its flat head wearing a sleek sou'wester that curves ever-so slightly, providing some shade and shelter from the sunny and rainy days up ahead.

Does anyone really care how old I am? Probably not. Can’t imagine why they would. I’m not even sure that I care that much about what number I have become overnight. Maybe that’s why I find it actually liberating to reveal my new number to the world. I’m somehow coping better this year than I was last year, my brand new 47 shoes ready for me to break them in during the next school year of life that awaits me, hopefully without too many blisters.

Maybe they’ll be like a pair of funky boots that help me to stand taller, sturdier, with a new perspective on the “forty-something” number that most women hope and pray no one will ever attempt to guess. But, I’m so much better this year about aging than I was a short year ago on my birthday, and ~ if I do say-so myself ~ my skin is looking a whole lot better than it did seven years ago.

I was, at 40, hitting puberty all over again with a terrific crop of junior-high acne that showed up when my hormones went berserk after the birth of my daughter. Then, at 42, these same 8th grade pranksters vandalized my pores once more when my son arrived on the scene, my graffitied forehead and cheeks spray-painted with a new patch of red bumps that would require heavy coats of zinc oxide diaper rash cream. Luckily, I had a vat of it from Costco for my baby boy's matching buttocks.

Atleast motherhood sits more comfortably on my shoulders now then it did when I had a drooling six-month old perched there, who then morphed into a territorial, screaming toddler demanding to climb back up, my pregnant belly about to burst with screaming baby number two.  At 47, I am still coping with two demanding children under the age of nine, but I don’t feel like a teenage-buzzing alarm clock anymore handling it.  I'd rather think of myself today as a regal grandfather clock, my big hand pointing towards the half-century mark with pride, my little hand reaching for another glass of wine.

It feels good to reveal the truth about my new number. I think I'll stand upon it proudly now, taller from the thought, enjoying the view from here. There will come a day when I cannot stand for long periods of time because my knees don’t work so good, and I will think back and remember the color of those funkadelic boots. Lucky girl. Size 47.

"Earth to Steve Martin... Breaker, Breaker... Rodger me."

 

“Mama, don’t put dessert in my lunch today,” my son barked from the breakfast table this morning.  However, I didn’t hear the “don’t” part and instead asked him what kind of dessert he wanted in his lunch.

“Mama! I said DON’T put a dessert! Hello??  Earth to Mama...”

When your five-year old quotes you to yourself using the euphemism you came up with for “Duh” you know it’s time to step up your game. 

“Well, EX-cu-ooh-oohze meeee!” my hands waving back and forth, the way I remembered it.

However, because your son is five and has never heard of Steve Martin or his stand up routine from 1974, this may not be the right response to your child while he looks at you like you are the world's unfunniest mother. 

“Listen, Steve Martin was and still is a very funny guy, a wild and KAH-razy guy, who even knows how to play the banjo and…. All right, forget it, but someday you will come to appreciate Mr. Steve Martin!”

“Uh, okay, Mama… so, anyway, NO dessert.”

“Señor Belinki, are you a wild and KAH-razy guy today? Why don’t you want dessert?”

“Because!”

“Yes… because?”

“The teachers say I don’t have enough time!”

“Huh? Okay… but, how come you don't listen to me when I say there’s not enough time for dessert?”

“Because you’re NOT my teacher, you’re my Mama… Hello??”

I am now carefully plotting my next comeback line, busily thinking up new euphemisms for Smartass.

So far, all I’ve got is, “Hello?? Earth to Steve Martin...” Rodger THAT, my Señor.

 

 

Loud in MY house of motherhood

Rarely do I land upon a book that changes me as a mother... but, then came Loud in the House of Myself aka LITHOM. 

As a mother of a girl who is already struggling with body image at age eight, who is also intensely emotional and creative, I found that it was initially excruciating to read the details of what this young girl experienced. Stacy as a child was just too familiar. I had to stop reading for a while because it was too painful to idly sit and watch this tormented young girl unravel under the watch of her Arkansan family in a town the size of a Wal-Mart Supercenter. Besides, the way I stumbled upon Stacy Pershall and her memoir was fortuitous. I went to Barnes & Noble in Little Rock that afternoon to buy only David Sedaris’ latest book and walked out holding a copy of LITHOM with “Strange Girl Army!” inscribed in pink ink, the author’s infectious smile and mural of colorful tattoos indelibly part of my experience in the South. 

Here was my other problem but the reason I picked it back up: I loved the way Stacy wrote, her ability to paint the painful details of her childhood with such an honest, almost comical, stroke that I couldn’t stop caring about this little girl and how much she loved her mother and father. I fell in love with her one-of-a-kind quirks (the love for Hot Wheels instead of dolls, how she wanted to be Schroeder from Peanuts with a lit candle on her tiny toy piano, her love for Sugar Daddies, my all-time favorite candy from the 70’s). 

She was smart and full of what I call “the sillies,” doing things her own unique way as a child, writing stories that showed her creativity, and in the beginning her mother accepted all of it… all of her eccentricities. She probably even celebrated them and laughed a little too loud about them like most every mother does who thinks her child is the cutest kid in the room. 

But, as I continued to read, I grew angry with her mother, her father too, for their negligence in accepting their beautiful, artistic, tormented daughter as she got older, for ignoring what they, no doubt, had observed all along, for never even going along for moral support when she got a tattoo that held meaning for her when she reached adulthood -- just to hold her hand, if nothing else, even if they didn’t agree with it. 

Then, it hit me. They had absolutely no tools by which to reach her. It was as if she had fallen into a well, calling out for her parents, but they didn’t have the right kind of flashlight to see her or the right rope ladder to pull her out, and she and they kept slipping off the rungs back into the dark. 

There were no books like LITHOM in their world, or for that matter, on any bookshelf in the South, let alone Prairie Grove, Arkansas. There was no Amazon, no Goodreads… and even the almighty Oprah, who Stacy’s mother might have turned to at the time on the topic of eating disorders, was of no help either, Oprah herself obsessed with diets and fitting into her “skinny” jeans as American women cheered her on. 

This book has changed me for the better, but I resisted it at first… because I was scared – scared to look too closely at things a mother doesn’t want to really see or confront. Had Stacy’s writing not been so rhythmic, so intelligent, so genuine, I would have stopped and gone back to reading David Sedaris for kicks after carpool, math homework and dirty dishes. 

I now encourage mothers to read this book to better understand our girls and boys, to understand mental illness and our healthcare system better. We, their parents, need to seek out memoirs like Stacy’s and educate ourselves about things that are too painful most days to contemplate. When it’s too painful and we want to look away, that’s how we know that we need to keep reading. This is how we learn what type of ladder or flashlight we should have in our parenting tool shed. We may slip and fall until we find the right one, but then we just make another trip back to Home Depot or the closest Wal-Mart Supercenter in the great state of Arkansas.

 

Asking your kids about Osama bin Laden via The Incredible Hulk

Last week I read Peter Hartlaub's piece, Telling your kids that Osama bin Laden is dead, on SFGate.com. Peter is a well-known San Francisco journalist who also writes "The Poop" -- a parenting blog for SFGate, the online affiliate to The San Francisco Chronicle.  

In his blog post, Peter asked some interesting questions about how to feed the news President Obama gave us about killing Osama bin Laden to your (young) children, “Do you get proactive and have an Osama bin Laden is dead discussion?” he asked. “Do you undergo a news blackout in your house? Or do you sit back and wait to see if they ask?” 

One approach Peter didn’t mention was this, “Do you ask your child what they would do if they had to stop a bad guy or a bully who wants to hurt other people?” Most young children already know the “bad guy vs. good guy” plot very well from everything they’re fed in our culture of fairy tales, countless Disney movies, and massive amounts of consumer branding.  

And even though I liked Peter’s approach about being honest and answering your children’s questions without telling them the gory details about Osama bin Laden and his death, I digress... I would much rather discuss the birth of the new robins in our backyard. Cowardice maybe, but my children are four and seven and in their world baby robins hatching out of tiny sky-blue eggs right above their heads (the robin’s nest is tucked under our roof atop a drainage pipe) is still a “headliner.” Literally.

Last week, however, I did raise some serious questions to my younger child, my son, who is always quick to tell me exactly what he would do in any situation. He also recently revealed in his preschool "All About Me" book his secret wish: a gun for his fifth birthday. Mmm hmmm.

I decided to use The Incredible Hulk movie with Edward Norton as a segway into the topic, probably not the best use of analogy, but something I knew was still fresh in his mind from an episode that played out in our house just a few hours before President Obama came on television to announce that bin Laden was dead.

We were about to sit down to a “family” movie when I went to get something from another room and left my husband in charge of putting on Fantasia. When I came back into the living room, I found them all watching The Incredible Hulk on cable. Uh… Okay. How it went from Walt Disney’s Special Edition of Fantasia to The Incredible Hulk is still not quite clear to me. The explanation my husband gave was, “It’s The Hulk,” which sounded a lot like, “Everybody loves The Hulk, Honey... Duh.”

“Come on, Mama, it’s The Hulk,” my son reiterated. Even my Disney on Ice daughter forgot all about Fantasia and the dance of the sugar plum mushrooms she loves so much, “I'm not scared, Mom. It’s just pretend.”

After a few very long stink-eye glares, my husband eventually switched back to the DVD player and Fantasia played for the next hour, much to my son’s chagrin. But, he also loves Mickey Mouse so he settled down pretty quick… funny how an animated mouse from the 1930’s and a giant green monster-man, dodging grenades, can balance each other out.

So, last week, after contemplating Telling your kids that Osama bin Laden is dead, this is the discussion I had with my four and a half year-old:

“So, did you like The Incredible Hulk movie Papa let you watch yesterday?”

“Yeah, I love The Hulk.”

“So, was The Hulk the good guy or the bad guy?”

“It's The Hulk, Mama… he’s a superhero!”

“Then why were the soldiers trying to hurt him?”

“They were bad soldiers and they were ruining the city.”

“Oh… So, what would you do if a bad soldier was trying to hurt someone or ruin your city?”

“I’d just punch him in the nose.”

“What if that didn’t work and he kept trying to hurt people, innocent people who weren’t doing anything wrong. Then what would you do?” 

“I’d karate chop him.”

“But, what if that didn’t work and you really had to stop the bad guy, or even kill the bad guy, to stop him from hurting more people?”  

I didn’t want to use the word, but out it came... Up until that moment, I had said to my son that “kill” was an awful word and that I never wanted to hear him say it again after overhearing him use it on the playground while playing Star Wars.

Up until that moment, I had thought that avoiding violent words was the best thing to do when teaching my son about compassion and responsibility – the best way to handle complex lessons about the stinging reality of his future world, a globe spinning with mixed messages and very real guns and ammunition. Then all of a sudden I found myself asking him about killing someone, “the bad guy,” realizing that with that suggestion I was potentially raising a boy who might become one himself… After all, the night before he was embracing graphic military warfare, cheering on The Hulk and bullets and firebombs for ten high-definition minutes. I squeezed my hands shut and braced for what would come out of his mouth next.

“Mama… then I’d just call the police, and they would take him down to jail.”

It’s a Disney ending, but I am mercifully relieved to hear my son choose it over the alternative.

 

Green Boat (in honor of Christina Taylor Green)

Yesterday afternoon, January 8, 2011, my daughter and I got ready for some quiet reading time together.

Normally on Saturdays, while my husband and son are at the store or attempting some chore neither of us girls are necessarily good at, my daughter and I sit side by side like an old married couple… immersed in our magazine or book, we are happy and peaceful in the quiet world of story and thought.  Sometimes she’ll look over at what I am reading and want to read it, too, just to see if she can.  At seven and a half she can now easily read almost anything I’m reading, but it scares the life out of me to see her reach for my Newsweek before I have the chance to give her the latest National Geographic Kids. 

So, I have learned to keep Newsweek and Time stashed away in secret hiding places around the house.  I grab the mail now and newspaper before she wakes up or before she gets home from school.  Somehow, I’ve managed to keep her innocent, inquisitive eyes away from the violent news stories that plague our world.  That is, until yesterday.  Yesterday my face revealed too much.

I thought she was reading her book as I opened up my laptop to get a quick dose of Yahoo news before diving back into my book. She was, gratefully, reading on the carpet instead of next to me on the couch, her eyes safe and far from the flourescent flicker of the screen.

Six dead, including a nine-year old girl, after gunman opens fire on Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords during a public event in Tucson, Arizona.

“Mama? What’s wrong?” she was reading the expression on my face.

I tried to erase the fright written in my eyes while I skimmed through the details, hoping I had read it all wrong.

I slammed my laptop shut and changed the subject.

“Nothing important.  Looks like there's something wrong with my computer.  So, what are you reading, Tickle Maria? Can you read it out loud to me?”

No wonder there are so many Academy Award winning actresses who are mothers.  I think Meryl Streep has something like five kids and twenty Oscar nominations. 

“Mother Goose’s Book of Nursery Rhymes,” she answered, looking content again.

I had fooled her for now, wondering how much longer I’d be able to hide the horrors of the world from her.  I thought about all the other mothers doing the same thing, acting normal in front of their little ones yesterday, making up excuses and stories to twist the truth, holding their children closer and longer, reading rhymes to keep from crying.

 “Is The Owl and The Pussycat in there?  I love that one.”

… and as we recited our beloved nursery rhyme together, I tried not to picture that nine-year-old girl in a sea of red.  I tried to picture her in a beautiful pea-green boat, sailing peacefully by the light of the moon, the owl and the pussycat watching over her.