Blubber for Dinner

One evening, when Quinlan was about five, I served a meal that consisted of pork chops, mashed potatoes, and peas. When I asked Quinlan if he wanted gravy on his potatoes, he said, "I don't know--is there blubber in gravy?"

"Yes" I said.

"No thanks," he replied, "I don't eat blubber."

I Hate Snakes!

I hate snakes! One day, just before Bambino baseball, I passed by our basement door and saw a snake slithering into our first-floor hallway. It didn't matter to me that it was a common-variety garter snake--basically harmless--I freaked out. My husband was at work and I don't touch snakes, so I called the boys to the living room.

"Boys, you have to get the snake out of the house." I said this to the boys in my most serious voice. I wanted them to know that the situation was dire and that they had to do something. They were around nine and ten years old. The boys looked at the snake and then back to me.

"What do you want us to do?" Evan asked. I'm pretty sure he knew what I wanted them to do. He was just stalling.

"You have to grab the snake and take it outside to the desert," I explained in my most calm voice.

"I can't," was Evan's sad response. He clearly wanted to help, but he was also as scared as I was.

"I need you to do this!" I was on my knees, with my hands on Evan's shoulders--I was begging.

Now, I realize that mothers generally put themselves between their children and harm, but these were snakes. And besides, it wasn't really harm--it was simply fear. I wanted my boys to move through their fear and get the snake out of our house.

Quinlan tried to step up. He ran out of the living room and returned a few minutes later wearing hip boots, oven mitts, and swimming goggles and carrying a golf club and an empty bucket. But when he moved toward the snake, the snake hissed.

Quinlan turned to me and said, "I can't do it."

"You have to. You have to get the snake out of the house." I insisted. But it didn't matter. My boys--the ones who had spent hours catching horned toads and lizards, who have eaten ants, who had baited hooks, and gutted fish--were not willing to catch a snake for their mother.

I was not willing to catch the snake either. The boys changed into their baseball uniforms and I took them to their game. When we returned home several hours later, the snake had moved from its position in the hallway and we could not find it.

We found the snake the next morning sunning in the dining room. My husband removed the snake to the desert.

I slept that night--and I allowed my boys to sleep that night--with a snake in the house. I'm not proud of that. But I still think they should have removed the snake and I think any mother worthy to be called a mother, would similarly expect her boys to take care of the snake.

Mom's on Strike--Permanently

Mother's Day at church can be unbearable. Especially when people, usually men, talk about how incredibly wonderful their mothers were.

One Mother's Day I sat and listened to a gentleman go on and on about all the super-human things his mother had done for him. At some point during his talk he said, "For you young people, imagine if your mothers went on strike." Now I was paying attention. He was about to give my boys some crazy ideas about what I was supposed to be doing.

"Imagine," he went on, "that your mothers quit doing your laundry, quit making your meals, quit cleaning up after you."

At this point, Quinlan leaned over to me and whispered, "Are you on strike?"

The boys began folding (okay--nicely wadding) their own clothes when they were five years old. They completely took over their laundry by the time they were ten. They have done dishers for years.

Once while, watching television, a comercial for a mop came on. Quinlan asked, "Why do they market mops to women?" I knew he was asking the question because he had never seen a woman use a mop. "They should market mops to teenaged boys," he quipped.

Teaching boys to do household chores looks a lot like striking.

Raising Real Men

So my boys are out of the house. Quinlan, the youngest, has been gone about a month or so. For years the boys have had their own bathroom and they were responsible for keeping it clean. Naturally, I checked their work.

Yesterday I decided to clean their bathroom. Despite the fact that no one has used it for about a month. What I found in the sink cabinet was amazing. In the cabinet, and this is not a complete inventory, was a broken mirror (it appears all the pieces, down to the tiniest shards, were there), four half-used deoderants, three razors, a hot-water bottle (I don't even remember owning this), two bottles of mouthwash, two towel bars, three socks, an empty container of cranberry juice (the big, 2-liter size), a Gameboy, various bathroom cleaning products, and an Indian headress (likely purchased at the party store). It appears that the boys have simply been cleaning the bathroom by cramming their clutter into the cabinet under the sink.

I went back in my mind to all the times I sent them into the bathroom to clean and all the times that I inspected their work. I would open the shower curtain, I would lift the toilet seat, I would check behind the toilet, and I would check behind the door. It never ocurred to me to check the cabinet.

Soon after potty training the boys, I decided to designate one bathroom in the house as the boys' bathroom. I also desginated one bathroom in the house as the public bathroom (the boys were banned from this bathroom). The no-boy bathroom meant that one bathroom could remain clean. I had to do this because the boys would start their business before they had really aimed their business. Thus, I had to clean the bathroom, and I mean the entire bathroom, several times a week.

I finally told my husband, "If you do not teach those boys how to hit the toilet, I am going to teach them to pee sitting down."

He immediately took the boys into the bathroom and said things like "just because you are in the bathroom doesn't mean you are free to let it go," and "you have to hear the splashing," and "if you miss, you clean!"

It seems real men do not have boys who pee sitting down. But does that also mean that mothers cannot have clean bathrooms?

The Sea of Love

Some days, when mothering was extra difficult and irritating, I would escape to a good bubble bath and dream of the life of the sea turtle.

Consider the life of the sea turtle. Sea turtles swim fee in the ocean (to make this work you have to ignore that they are an endangered species). When it is mating time, they swim hundreds of miles or so until they find a sandy beach. Once on the beach, they dig a hole, lay a hundred eggs or so, bury those eggs with some moist sand, return to the ocean, and swim away.

Some time later, the eggs hatch and the baby sea turtles make their way to the ocean (or maybe they don't--admittedly that is sad, but that is nature, and the momma sea turtles need not feel guilty about it).

It is a beautiful thing. Sea turtle mothers never have to settle disputes between bickering sea turtle offspring. They never have to make sure that sea turtle offspring mind their homework, music practices, or chores. And even if sea turtle offspring talk back or get disrespectful with their mothers, their mothers never hear it because they are off swimming in a different part of the ocean.

I guess sea turtles exit their shells and immediately know how to be sea turtles. Human babies don't wake up and know how to be human. No, it turns out that human babies need the help of human mothers to become fully human, and they need that help for quite a long time.

Some days I got it right. Some days I had to soak.

What's Cookin' Good Lookin'?

The boys were in elementary school when I was in my doctoral program. Like all busy moms, I often struggled to manage all my responsibilities.

One evening I found I had very little time to get the boys a meal and to their Grandma's house before I went to class. Rather than driving through a fast-food restaurant, I rummaged around in the refrigerator for something nutritious to feed the boys.

After about three minutes, I had prepared a plate for each boy that contained a low-fat yogurt, string cheese, a handful of Triscuits, half a peach, and a pile of fresh, raw, greenbeans. I was feeling pretty good about what I was able to put together.

The boys clammered into their seats and began to eat.

Holding a greenbean high into the air, Quinlan exclaimed, "I love these!" Which only confirmed my greatness as a mother and chef.

Then he said, "Mom, some day do you think we can try these cooked?"

So much for maternal and culinary greatness.

Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire

When Evan was about six or seven years old, he took up lying. Not big lies. What big lies would a little boy have? He would lie about how many pieces of candy he had eaten or if it was he who had tried to give Barnie the Bear a bath (that was a mess!).

He wasn't good at lying. I could tell, of course, by the way he stammered and looked around, as if to find the perfect, most convincing words.

So one day, after he told a lie, I said, "Evan, don't lie to me. I can tell when you are lying."

Surprised, he asked "How?"

I guess I should have been prepared for that question. But I wasn't. I thought he would simply say, "Okay, Mom." I didn't want to tell him how I could tell he was lying and essentially teach him how to lie better.

So, in a panic, I said, "I can tell because your tongue turns black."

That's right. My best tactic to keep my son from lying was to lie to him.

It sort of worked. Everytime he lied in the future, it was clearly obvious because he tried to speak while hiding his tongue.

We All Fall Down

Here is a fun game to play with a baby who has learned to sit up.

Hold him in your arms as if to give him a hug and spin around quickly. After about ten to fifteen spins, stop and sit the baby on the floor.

Being dizzy, the baby will simply flop over.

Ah, fun for baby and mom!