Tag: boys

I’m No Mother Teresa

“Not all of us can do great things, but we can do small things with great love.” ~Mother Teresa

Sharkboy's box
Sharkboy’s box

I remember when I was in grade school, on February 13th we would decorate boxes that we would use to collect Valentine’s Day cards from our classmates the next day. With red, pink, and white construction paper, tiny scissors with blunted tips, and the ubiquitous Elmer’s glue we would craft works of art to hold the innocent and sweet messages heralded by Snoopy, Scooby Do, the Pink Panther, and the Hulk and delivered by our sugar-enhanced classmates. In 6th grade, our teacher, let us play our 45’s on the record player while we worked on the boxes, and Cheap Trick belted out “I Want You To Want Me” while I cut hearts out of square pieces of paper that were folded in half and then affixed them to the shoebox before me. Those were the good old days (emphasis on old).

Last year, despite my cynical disdain for this heart-shaped holiday, I made the choice to participate in my sons’ Valentine’s Day parties at school. When I arrived, I noticed that on the desks of children in the classroom were all manner of decorated boxes, bags, tins, and pails. On my sons’ desks were plastic grocery bags from Safeway. Sad, but true. I hadn’t realized that many schools no longer used classroom time for artistic pursuits like heart-covered boxes for valentines. And so, my sons were given plastic bags by their teachers because their mother had failed to provide them with lovingly festooned containers in which they could collect and bring home their cards and candy. In that moment, I imagined myself in a tattered ball gown holding a dozen wilted roses, a tiara missing its rhinestones perched clumsily on my wild-haired head, and a white sash emblazoned with the words “World’s Worst Mother” running diagonally down my front. Loser with a capital L. I was a sullied angel fallen from the heavenly sky of stay-at-home mothers.

This year, I determined, would be different. My sons would not be doomed to a plastic-bag fate. Yesterday, at 9:30 after I dropped my boys at school and acquired an appropriately caffeinated beverage, I locked myself in my office/craft room with two small shipping boxes, cardstock, duct tape, adhesives, scissors, google eyes, and some slowly atrophying creative skills. I first pondered what might not embarrass them too fully at their advanced ages of 9 and 11. My original plan was simply to cover the cardboard boxes with paper and duct tape (they are future men, after all) and then carve a hole in them. So far, so good. Then, realizing that my usual cut-out hearts might not be “cool” enough as enhancements for a boy’s box, I tried to envision what might be a more appropriate fit for my guys. Joe’s box theme came to me immediately. Joe loves sharks. In our house, he is Sharkboy. Sharkboy’s box would need teeth. Luke’s box was a bit trickier. Luke is our cuddly kid, friendly and open-hearted, not unlike a small and slightly less furry Golden Retriever. I wanted to make him a dog box that would represent his personality, but feared he might find it too girly or babyish. Ultimately, with not one more suitable creative thought, I went for it.

I spent two hours measuring, cutting, gluing, taping, coloring, and wrapping those plain cardboard boxes. Considering my lack of forethought to materials acquisition, I did okay with what I found around the house. The boxes, while not representative of the kind of creative work of which I am truly capable, are much better than a plastic grocery bag because they were created from my heart and are filled with my love. As much as I can be contained, I am housed in those boxes.

The boys were satisfied with my little surprise. Joe confessed that he was hoping he would have time to make his own box, but then admitted that the Minecraft box he had pictured in his head would be nowhere near as nice as the shark I had created. Plus, he said, he did not want me to have gone through all that effort for him for nothing, even though I assured him that my reward was in making the box and not at all tied up in whether he actually used it or not. I appreciated that he acknowledged my effort, though. Luke loved his doggy box so much he said he wanted first to use it to deliver valentines to his classmates before allowing it to receive valentines from them. Then he said he wanted to keep it in his bedroom after his party was over. If he does this, I assume that dog, like our own dog Ruby, will ingest a lot of Legos.

I may never do great things in my life on a grand scale. I will not cure cancer or design a mode of transportation that will put humans into the farthest reaches of space. I will not stop global warming or solve world hunger. I may never write the great American novel or make a million dollars. And, we all know I’m certainly no Mother Teresa. But, after yesterday’s creative bent, I was reminded that at least I can do small things with great love. It’s those little things that will comprise the balance of my life and hopefully prove that I was worth my carbon matter while I existed here on Earth. And, who knows? Maybe the two small things I helped to create 9 and 11 years ago and have loved dutifully in my own small way ever since will someday do a truly great thing and there will be a miniscule part of me in it somewhere. I think that would count.

Posted on by Me 3

If Cleanliness Is Next To Godliness, I’m Screwed

The stuff life is made of
The stuff life is made of

I’ve been on a domestic binge of sorts this week. I’ve been trying new recipes and actually cleaning my house. Wait. That sounds worse than it should. I do cook for my family and clean my house. I’m simply not June Cleaver. Life is too short to waste it cleaning. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not as if we live in squalor. Most people who come here would report that the house is mostly picked up and neat. I clean bathrooms and the kitchen. Dishes are done several times a day. I vacuum regularly. Dusting I do less often because I despise it, but I still do it. What I don’t do on a regular basis is pick up in areas that are not my problem. This means the basement, which is merely a huge Lego storage room with a small area carved out for Wii and Xbox matches, and the boys’ rooms don’t get much attention from me. You know that old saying that cleaning the house while the kids still live there is like shoveling snow in a blizzard? I subscribe to that school of thought. I just close the doors, and it’s out-of-sight-out-of-mind for me. Let the snow pile up.

While looking for something in Luke’s room earlier in the week, though, I had to come to terms with the fact that it was time for an intervention. When a single shoe goes missing from a pair that was worn this very day, it’s time to take action. So, for the past two days, I’ve been gathering and redistributing Legos, locating missing glassware from the kitchen, and throwing out broken toys. Yesterday I attacked the basement. Today I cleaned the boys’ homework room and their bedroom. In Luke’s bunk, I found three books, a couple Lego magazines, an entire set of clothing (jeans, two t-shirts, underwear, and a pair of socks), assorted Lego pieces, and about 15 stuffed animals. Luke’s bed also had seven (yes, seven) blankets on it. Luke sleeps like a rat in its nest, curled into a little ball amongst things he has gathered.

As I was moving items and returning them to their rightful places, I kept discovering things long since lost…Joe’s rubber fish that he got out of the prize box at the dentist’s office when he was 2 and has treasured ever since, a ribbon from Joe’s entry in the regional science fair, and a couple stuffed animals previously owned by my grandmother. While stacking things neatly into a closet, on a top shelf I discovered a camcorder box for the old video camera we used when the boys were young. I pulled it down out of curiosity and lo-and-behold there were about 10 recorded video cassettes. Eureka!

I wanted to watch the videos so badly but the recorder was out of batteries and the charger was also missing in the chaos of our haphazardly organized home. I spent about an hour rummaging through every power cord hiding space to no avail. (As I was doing this, it occurred to me that we have at least twice the amount of crap we actually need or use. It’s not quite an episode of Hoarders…yet. There’s a whole other blog in there, I’m sure, if I could just dig through enough junk to find it.) I finally gave up for a while and then I remembered where it might be. I ran to my office, which is also a room with a regularly closed door, and there it was under the Christmas wrap that I still haven’t put away.

So, tonight after dinner, we sat and watched the videos as a family. The boys’ first few years are on those tapes. Birthdays and Christmases, Joe’s first trip to the beach, our trip to Alaska, Joe’s first time crawling, and Luke’s first smiles…all captured and now waiting to become digital media. There we found our beloved dogs, Buddy and Machiah, who now wait for us on the other side of the Rainbow Bridge. There is a snippet of video of my grandmother holding an infant Luke, a precious moment I was so grateful to relive and that made Luke tear up. And, even as sobering as it was to hear my youngest tell me repeatedly how young I look in the videos, I loved every minute we spent tonight showing our boys their infant and toddler selves, creating a new memory of the time Mom found all the videos.

It got me to thinking about the transitory nature of life on Earth and how time truly does fly. Our sons are growing up too quickly. We originally put the video camera down so we would spend more time living in the moment than watching it on a tiny screen. I don’t regret that decision, but it wouldn’t hurt for us to record a few memories of our family these days for posterity. Watching your life backwards on video certainly opens up some perspective. But, the greatest lesson I took away from today is that it might be a good idea for me to clean the house more often. If it’s true that cleanliness is next to godliness, I may be screwed.

Posted on by Me 7

My Kids Aren’t Cheap Circus Ponies

Portrait of our family
Portrait of our family

This past Thursday, prompted by recommendations from not one but two special education professionals, we trekked to Children’s Hospital so Luke and I could visit with a psychologist and determine whether he might (like his brother) have ADHD. Honestly, neither hubby nor myself were 100% convinced that Luke would be diagnosed. We thought that if he perhaps did have some of the markers, his symptoms at this point were mild. But, when we learned that ADHD and dyslexia occur together up to 25% of the time, we decided it was best to cover our bases.

During the course of the hour and a half we spent talking with the psychologist, she asked innumerable questions. Most of them were about Luke, but some were about our family life. When she asked me about how we discipline our boys, the strangest thing happened. I drew a blank. The more I sat there searching for an answer, the more shocked I was to realize that we don’t discipline our boys very often. I couldn’t decide where to go with that realization in terms of answering the psychologist’s question. I decided to come clean.

“This is going to sound strange, but we don’t discipline our sons very often. We set clear, realistic expectations, and our boys most often meet them.”

“Well, when you do have to discipline, what kind of discipline do you use?” she inquired.

“Most often we take things away from them…their iPads and video games, opportunities to play with friends, that sort of thing. But we’ve never done it for more than a day or two. They respond to that type of punishment fairly well and typically avoid having to repeat it,” I told her.

She seemed appeased by my answer and moved onto another question. Quietly, though, I wondered if she thought I was either a) lying to make our boys sound better than they are or b) simply another overindulgent parent with little control over her children. The test came when she asked our boys to sit on the floor across the hallway from her office while she asked me some questions. She told them it would be 10 minutes and that they needed to be quiet. At one point during the interview I started to become uncomfortable because it had been too long and they had been far too quiet. When she finally opened the door, I checked the time. They’d been out there for 20 minutes. I peered my head around the corner to see that Luke was shutting down the Dragonvale app he had been playing on my iPhone and Joe was putting his homework back into its folder. I felt vindicated. My 9 and 11 year old sons had sat alone quietly on the floor in a dull hallway without any adult supervision for upwards of 20 minutes without incident. See. They are good kids, just like I said.

Maybe it’s because our boys struggle so much with their issues that we go easy on them with other things. Their rooms are messy. The number of chores they’re asked to complete is minimal. As they’ve gotten older, we’ve chosen to let go of some things so that they can be kids. Their school work takes such an enormous amount of effort that we cut them slack in other areas; it’s not right when they break down in tears because they’re overwhelmed and miss their friends. We do expect things of them. We expect their best effort on their school work, but not A or B grades. We expect them to be polite, most of the time. We expect them to be kind and to try to get along with others. We expect them to work out their own differences and to recognize their own responsibility in a disagreement. We admonish them if we feel disrespected. In exchange for these things, though, we’ve given them a voice in our house and our trust. We ask their opinions. We let them make choices. And, yes, we pick our battles. We’ve decided that it’s better to give in on the things that don’t really matter so that when we ask them to yield on the things that truly do matter to us we’ll have the backing to gain their easy compliance. They understand that as part of a family sometimes they get what they want. Sometimes they don’t.

I don’t expect that our boys will never need more serious discipline. They’re boys. They’re getting older. They’re going to make bad choices. We all do. When I make mistakes with my sons (which happens far more often than I wish it did), I openly apologize to them. I show remorse. I make amends. I am not the Queen of Do-As-I-Say-Not-As-I-Do. I’m the Duchess of I-Try-To-Set-A-Good-Example. I told our boys the other day that my job is to make sure that they grow up to be the kind of men I still will want to spend time with, the kind I will invite into my home again once they’ve vacated. Discipline is important. My actual job as Mom, though, is to make sure they feel unique, important, and unconditionally loved, and not to ride them like cheap circus ponies. Just don’t tell them I said that. I’ll lose my edge.

Posted on by Me 8

A Mind Of Its Own

Gotta know where it is at all times.
Gotta know where it is at all times.

I am the mother of sons. Although I had no say in the matter, the truth is that when hubby and I decided to have children I made it fairly clear that I expected him to give me sons and not daughters. Now, I know we had no say in the matter given that the general rule of conception, at least at this current moment, is “you get what you get and you don’t pitch a fit,” but I’ve always been a girl who knew what she wanted. You see, I am the oldest of three girls. And, while I know my mom enjoyed having young daughters, I remember what I was like as a teenager. I remember how I treated my mother. Furthermore, I remember what it was like living in a house with three teenage girls. Frankly, that amount of estrogen scares me. So, I put that part of my life behind me and gave it a firm “no thank you” when I considered my future and potential parenthood. I was thrilled when the Powers That Be determined that I should have not one but two darling little boys. Apparently, someone up there either understood what I wanted or figured I should parent what I was least likely to strangle. I have always understood why some animals eat their young.

Being the mother of sons is an interesting proposition, though. On the one hand, I never have to share clothes, make up, jewelry, or zero-calorie soft drinks. On the other hand, I am the problem child when it comes to camping and long car trips since I wasn’t built with an external pee hose for convenient potty breaks. All in all, though, being the only female in the house has been an ideal situation for me up until now. Now, my oldest son is now firmly in the throes of being a preteen. Situations in which I am asked to demystify the male anatomy are becoming more frequent. This might freak some women out, but I am not squeamish. I’ve never talked to my sons with baby talk about body parts. I’ll bet I utter the word penis at least five times in any given day, and I’m okay with that. I’m the one who gave my sons their first (very simplified) “sex talk” because 1) they had questions and asked me, 2) their dad was not interested in discussing it yet, and 3) I determined it would be better if they got the details from me than from one of their little friends who has erroneous information. Quite honestly, it’s been fun to hear the things my sons will tell me.

“Please put your penis in its house,” I requested of a not-quite-fully-clothed Joe who was standing in the hallway wearing nothing but a towel after his bath.

He looked down into the towel. “It’s not ready to get dressed yet,” he replied matter of factly.

I closed one eye, cocked my head, and pondered why it might not be ready to get dressed yet. Then I shuddered. Oh Good Lord. “It will be fine. It will fit into pajamas. Get dressed. I may not have a penis, but I know how they work,” I claimed.

“Trust me, Mom. They have a mind of their own.”

So I’ve heard.

You know, my whole life I thought that saying was a cop out. Turns out that even 11 year old boys know it to be true. The best part about being a mom to boys isn’t what I expected it would be. It’s not that no one is hogging the bathroom while doing their hair or that no one is breaking down into weepy, hormone-induced puddles, although those are both good things. It is instead the education I’m getting being able to see the male experience as it happens from birth. It’s given me an entirely new perspective on the male species. I still don’t truly understand men, but I’m getting closer. Apparently, it really is all about the penis.

Posted on by Me 9

The Best Brother In The World

Two peas in a pod

So this morning we had an actual face-to-face meeting with the school psychologist who did the testing on our youngest to determine if he has a learning disability. As she mentioned in her earlier phone conversation with me, her test results point to Luke having markers for dyslexia. Her report suggests Luke begin intensive tutoring with a dyslexia specialist, which he will start tomorrow. Two days a week for an hour he will be participating in remedial reading lessons. These will either help him fill in the gaps in his reading skills, which will prove he’s not dyslexic, or they help but not significantly, which will prove he is. In addition to this, she has also suggested that we have Luke tested for ADHD as she suspects he may have some of those issues as well.

I haven’t decided how I feel about this whole assessment. While I’m certainly not happy about either diagnosis, neither dyslexia nor ADHD are cancer or some other life-threatening condition. Things could most definitely be worse. Still, the thought of Luke struggling the way Joe struggles sucks. And, because of the joint issues of both boys, we may need to consider a different school for them. It’s a lot to take in. And, I suspect that I’m holding it together on the surface right now because I know it’s not about me. Having a mini-meltdown about the situation will not make Luke accept it with any greater ease. A mini-meltdown will not accomplish anything other than perhaps keeping me from needing a glass of wine and what kind of consolation is that?

As I’ve been working through all this in my brain, one positive thing did occur to me about it. Joe has, for three years now, felt bad that he is a stand-alone in this family in terms of needing extra support on things. That is no longer the case. Now, Luke will also have special needs that must be met. Joe has gone through tutoring and now Luke will endure the same. And, if Luke receives an ADHD diagnosis, whether or not we put him on medication, the two boys will have that in common as well. Joe will no longer feel like the odd man out.

This past summer, when Joe was taking a break from his medication, I had to have several conversations with Luke about how he needs to be patient with Joe because Joe struggles to do basic things Luke takes for granted. I told Luke that we all need to cut each other some slack. Today I had the occasion to have a long talk with Joe about Luke and his reading. I told him that he cannot make fun of Luke’s reading skills. I told him that we all have our issues, and reading is Luke’s. Joe is not allowed to ask Luke to read anything or to tease him when he gets something wrong. He’s not permitted to compare his reading skills to his brother’s skills. Reading will never be Luke’s strength, and the best thing we can do as his family is to reassure him that his difficulty with reading in no way diminishes his intelligence or makes us love him any less.

I am fortunate to have the boys I have. They adore each other. They always have. Luke has always stood up for Joe and Joe has always looked out for Luke. I know that although it’s a mixed blessing, having two boys with differences is still a blessing because they will better be able to understand and relate to each other. This is simply another thing they have in common, another thing that will draw them together. I may not be 100% certain about how I will be able to handle this new situation, but I have no doubt that my boys will be fine. They’re both bright. They’re both capable. And, they both have the best brother in the world.

Posted on by Me

Want Something Cleaned? Pee On It

It’s clean and I didn’t have to do it!

Last night, our son Luke had a friend spend the night. His friend slept in the top bunk of the bed where Joe usually sleeps. Joe was displaced, so he slept on an air mattress in our room. This morning before sunrise, Joe woke up to use the bathroom. As soon as he was finished, Steve went to use the bathroom. The toilet flushed, the light turned on, and all hell broke loose.

“JOE!” Steve yelled with disgust.

“What, Dad?”

“There is pee everywhere in here. You have GOT to look where you’re peeing,” he said.

“It was dark,” Joe replied calmly.

“Well, then, TURN ON A LIGHT! Seriously! The floor is wet. There’s a puddle here. You are going to clean this mess up,” Steve barked.

“I didn’t mean to,” Joe complained.

“Yeah, hon. He didn’t mean to,” I said, hoping to diffuse Steve’s annoyance. It didn’t work.

“You should see the mess he made. Joe…did you get any pee in the toilet? Any at all?”

“I’ll clean it up, Dad,” Joe said as he grabbed some paper towels.

“We need more than paper towels, Joe. We need rags.”

Joe came in and did a little mopping up with paper towels while Steve railed on about the sheer amount of urine covering our bathroom floor. Joe apologized and sneaked out when he felt the coast was clear. I couldn’t blame him. This pee mess had really gotten to Steve. I waited for things to calm down, then I went to inspect. Steve was on his hands and knees with disinfectant and he was mopping the floor and wiping the walls. Our bathroom floor was spotless. (Not that I would eat off it or anything.)

“It was dark. How did you know he’d peed everywhere?” I asked.

“Because when I stood up I realized my butt was wet,” he replied, “and I knew that was not right so I flipped the light on.”

I muffled a giggle. At least now I could understand the vehemence of his response. As the only female in our house, maybe I’m just used to it. I don’t sit on a toilet seat here, or anywhere else for that matter, without expecting it first. Sit on someone else’s pee once, shame on you. Sit on someone else’s pee twice? Well, I’m just not that clueless. I’m used to messes. I own several pairs of yellow rubber gloves because of them. I also make my sons clean their own toilet. I won’t even touch that thing. And, you could not pay me to use the toilet in their bathroom. Donald Trump couldn’t even give me $5 million for my favorite charity to do it. Still, the mess was hearty enough to encourage Steve to clean our toilet and mop up the bathroom floor.

In the 10 years we’ve lived in this home, Steve has cleaned our bathroom floor once, maybe twice. (He says more, but I find that highly unlikely because I’ve never actually witnessed such an act and I’m home a lot.) As I’ve mentioned in previous blogs, Steve is wonderful about cleaning our stove, which I refuse to do because it’s one of those gas contraptions that take forever to clean. He’s also amazing at deep cleaning totally random, out-of-the-way spots in our home right before we have guests over. He has been verbally abused by me via blog twice for cleaning the laundry room and the cabinet under the kitchen sink just before company arrived…because we all know the first place house guests snoop is under the kitchen sink. It turns out that I am actually grateful to Joe for peeing all over our bathroom in his still-half-asleep, 11-year-old boy way. His pee mishap has left me with a shiny clean bathroom floor that I didn’t have to touch. Heck…if I had known that Steve would become so impassioned about cleaning after a little yellow accident, I never would have potty trained our boys. Imagine how clean my house could be!

 

Posted on by Me

Doing The Oblivious Backfloat While Swimming In Denial

You know how you know something is happening, but you don’t really see it until you have photographic proof? This happens to me a lot with weight gain. I feel okay about putting on that extra ten pounds until someone catches a shot of me at the dinner table at Christmas and suddenly I’m thinking, “Whoa…wait a minute. What happened here?” as if I am shocked and hadn’t actually noticed that my pants haven’t been fitting lately. Well, today, my sister took a family photo for us at the corn maze we were at with our boys. As I was going over the photos again just a few minutes ago, I was shocked to find that my oldest son is now tall enough that the top of his head reaches my shoulders. I looked at the photo a few times to verify this. Then I called for a second opinion.

“Steve…I think Joe has grown. He’s almost up to my shoulders,” I told him.

“Yep. He sure is,” was all he said. I’m sure he was thinking I was a complete numbskull for not having noticed this before.

“When did this happen?” I asked.

“It’s been happening,” he said. “You haven’t noticed?”

“Well, yeah. I mean, I knew he was getting bigger but I guess I hadn’t realized how much bigger. Someday he might actually be taller than me,” I said.

“Let’s hope so,” he replied.

“Do you think he’ll get facial hair too,” I asked.

“If he’s lucky, he’ll even get more of it than me,” he quipped.

“You know…when I said I was okay that they were growing up, I wasn’t really focusing on this part of the actual growth process. I’m not prepared for them to go through puberty, start shaving, and lock themselves in their bedroom for private time. I don’t want their cute little voices to change. How will I know they’re still my babies when that happens?”

My darling husband looked at me as if I’m a loon which, let’s face it, I am.

“Let me see the photo,” he said. Then he peered at my laptop. “Huh. I don’t think I’m that much taller than you either,” he continued, clearly thinking something was amiss with the photo.

“You’re six inches taller than me,” I informed him. How can he not know this stuff?

“Are you sure you’re not standing in a hole?” he asked.

“What kind of crater-like hole I would I be standing in while in a flat corn maze? Maybe it wasn’t me at all? Maybe you were standing on a hill?” I shot back.

“I’m just saying that maybe he’s not really quite as tall as he looks in the photo,” he continued while ignoring my snarky attitude.

Me and the boys in 2009

Joe’s in bed right now, and he’s actually sleeping and not just watching My Little Pony on his iPad. (Oops. Wasn’t supposed to mention that my 11 year old son is currently enjoying watching that show on Netflix because that tidbit might embarrass him. Oh, paybacks. How I love thee.) It would be counter-productive to wake him up and ask him to stand next to me so we could measure his height. At his last physical, though, he was measured at just over 54″ tall. I like to say I’m 65″ tall, but I fudge that number by at least half an inch, maybe more. All of this means that it’s completely possible that he is shoulder height to me. When did this happen? Just three years ago, he was teeny.

It’s funny how sometimes it takes photographic evidence to convince us that time is marching on and our children are growing up despite our best wishes. We go from day to day in such a dizzying rush, trapped in the now of running here and there, and we truly can’t see the forest for the trees. My boys are growing up. And, although I know that as they inch higher and higher in grade school, it’s not the same as seeing them standing up to my shoulder in a photo. It’s not real until I try to pick up Joe and find it to be an incredible struggle now that he’s finally 70 pounds. I guess it’s easier to float along as a parent, just swimming in denial. Damn you, George Eastmann for pioneering celluloid film and the Brownie camera that led us down this slippery slope into a world where our images are continually being captured. It’s a lot more difficult to live in oblivion when you’re staring at the proof.

Posted on by Me 2

What’s The Exact Opposite Of Cats In The Cradle?

The loves of my life

I love travel. Although I love my home, if I can fly somewhere every 3 months I am over the moon. Most of the time, we take our boys with us when wanderlust strikes. Tomorrow, though, hubby and I are skipping town for a few days. Literally. A few days. A couple hours before bed tonight, our oldest comes into our room crying because he doesn’t want us to leave. His face is wet. His eyes are red. He’s been suffering in his room quietly until he could stand it no longer. This breaks my heart. It also tells me something. Hubby and I do not leave our sons often enough.

I know that he’s eleven and that in just a few short years he’ll be smiling as he slams the door behind us when we leave, so I should treasure his hysterical tears now. But, I can’t. They make me feel like we’re not doing enough to prepare him. I love my sons, but I do not want them living in my basement and delivering pizzas for a living. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I just don’t want them doing it from my basement. They’re more than welcome to pursue that life path for themselves from a crummy, garden level apartment that they finance themselves. No judgments from me. Make no mistake about it, though, as much as I love my sons to infinity and beyond, I want them to leave me someday the way they are meant to. I want them to grow up and have their own adventures. They can miss me, but they’ll have to leave me to make that happen.

We gave Joe tons of hugs and told him that we trust him. We told him that we’ll miss him oodles and will FaceTime with him every day. We told him that he’s brave and strong and that he’s got this. We told him that parents need time together alone as a couple so they can stay married. We told him that his little brother would protect and care for him. I don’t think it made much of a difference, but he did finally fall asleep. I know that someday he will walk out our front door, his car all packed for college, and when he drives away I will cry just like he did tonight. I’m sure it will be my ugliest cry ever. But, there’s a part of me that will be so glad to take that burden of sadness away from him. I can handle it. I think.

 

Posted on by Me 3

How ‘Cry Me A River’ Became ‘I’m Too Sexy’

When our oldest was a toddler, we began to suspect that he was a fairly sensitive child. As soon as he began to talk, our suspicions were confirmed. He seemed to pick up on emotions and parental concerns more quickly than most children his age. From the tender age of three, he began asking the tough questions (about God, natural disasters, death, etc.). We would do our best to answer them, never talking down to him but making our answers as palatable as possible for his preschool mind. Without fail, two or three days later, he would return to ask a follow up question to our response, proof that he had been pondering our answers ever since we spoke them. He would sneak attack us with his concerns about the world. Our friends and family would often comment about what a sensitive child he was.

I’ve never liked the term “sensitive.” Never. Maybe it comes from my family. When I was Joe’s age, I would be whining and carrying on about something. My mother would make tiny circles between the thumb and forefinger of her right hand and ask me if I knew what that was. It was the smallest record player in the world playing, My Heart Bleeds For You. Sometimes, just to mix things up, she would break into Cry Me A River instead. I suppose that for me, then, sensitivity was equated with whiny weakness. So, I would not allow myself to go there. At the mention that our Joe was sensitive, I bristled. I decided I could not live with that term, even if it was the truth. So, hubby and I opted instead to tell people that our son was a “deep thinker.” He is. He doesn’t cry easily or often, but he ponders the mysteries of the world often and deeply.

No. This is not an Rorschach test.

This morning I was in the midst of a drawing game on my iPhone. I regularly draw a scene in the Draw Something app and then immediately question whether or not my friend will be able to guess the answer from my substandard artistic attempt. My litmus test consists of sharing the drawing with either my nine or eleven year old son to see if he can guess it. If he can get it, I assume we’re golden. So, that’s exactly what I did this morning. The word I was drawing was “iceberg.” I suspected that my crude iceberg might be lost underneath the very rough drawing of a polar bear standing on top of it. So, I went to my review committee.

“Joe, what do you think this drawing is of?” I asked, covering the answer at the top of my screen so he had no hints.

“Ummm…ice? No. Wait. Is it global warming?”

Holy crap. Really? That’s where we’re going with this drawing?

“Why do you think it’s global warming?” I queried.

“Well…the polar bear is on a piece of ice but there’s no other ice near it. There is water all around. The polar bear looks like he’s stuck.”

Wow. Did not see that coming.

“That’s a little more thoughtful of an answer than I’m looking for here, Joe. Look again, please.”

“Oh…is it iceberg?” he said, finally noticing that I had drawn an arrow to the item the bear was adrift on.

Ding. Ding. Ding. We have a winner.

Later, on the way to school, Joe dropped this light thought on me. Keep in mind that I was less than 1/4 of the way through my morning non-fat latte.

“Mom…you know how people say that space is the final frontier?”

“Ummm…sure,” I replied without a clue as to where this had come from or where it was going.

“I think they’re wrong. I think the final frontier is actually time travel,” he informed me.

“That’s a pretty deep thought to have before 8 a.m., Joe.”

He sat silent for a while and then chimed in again.

“My teacher told the class the other day that we’re all deep thinkers. I think she’s wrong. I don’t think any of them are deep thinkers like me.”

That comment proved it. The phrase we had coined to cushion his ego had actually puffed him up. Suddenly, not only is he not weak, he’s actually got more honest depth than most other people on the planet. Apparently, we accomplished our goal. Our son’s sensitivity is not an issue. He doesn’t even notice it. But, now we’re going to have to do something about that haughtiness.

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The Zombies Have My Boys

This is how my boys spend their computer time.

My house has been taken over by Creepers, Zombies, and Endermen. Just three months after the Skylanders invaded our home, they are out and Minecraft is in. Our neighbor’s son, helpful kid that he is, turned our boys onto Minecraft just two weeks ago. Now, they are obsessed. (Minecraft, in case you are not game savvy, is one of the hottest games out there right now with over 41 million registered users and about 7.5 million games sold.) In just two weeks, we’ve already threatened to take the game away from them no less than 10 times. It’s that powerful.

When Joe convinced me to download it to his iPad using the last little bit of the iTunes gift card he got for his birthday back in June, I had no idea that this would become the new “thing” in our house. But, sure enough, the $7 app for his iPad became the $27 computer version so both boys could play. The first night Joe tried out the online game on his Mac, he made me sit and watch.

“What do you do in this game?” I asked.

“You try to survive,” Joe said. “See? Look…I am swimming. It’s daytime. When night falls, the Zombies come out. They can kill you so I have to try to find a village for safety. I’m looking for land so I can find a house.”

“Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. When you told me about this game, you told me it was a game where you build stuff in another world. Now suddenly you’re killing Zombies?”

“And Creepers too,” he went on.

“So, if you’re in a house, the Zombies can’t get you?”

“No. They can break down the door. Then you have to find a way to kill them,” he said.

“Oh, holy hell,” I said under my breath to no one in particular since he was already absorbed back into the game.

Just hearing about Minecraft began to stress me out. Fearing I might start dreaming about killing Zombies, I stopped asking. Today though, after weeks of denial, I finally accepted that it is not going away. I asked Luke to describe it to me so I could better understand their new favorite activity. This is what I found out. The Creepers can’t really kill you, but for some reason they can explode so if you’re near them when they explode you die. There are four game modes (Creative, Adventure, Survival, and Hardcore), but Joe only likes Survival and Luke only likes Creative. According to Luke, at night the Creepers are “highly aggressive” and in the day they are “semi-aggressive.” You cannot kill Endermen with a bow and arrow because they “just teleport away.” You can revive Endermen, Creepers, and Zombies, although I have no idea why you would want to revive something that is trying to kill you. In Creative mode you can’t die and in Survival mode you can revive yourself if you are killed, but in Hardcore mode when you die you’re done. Creepers and Zombies are both green but Endermen are black with pink eyes. You can keep Creepers in a zoo. There are all kinds of animals in this world, including cows that grow mushrooms out of their backs. (Somebody was tripping when they came up with that animal.)

Luke confidently and competently explained to me how he was able to build a fortress that included rollercoaster tracks that run right through the house. He described how you survive your first night in the game. He told me how you can smash bricks and turn them into other things. My 9 year old son talked for 7 minutes to the Voice Memos app on my iPhone, explaining this new obsession in ridiculous detail. When he was done talking, I asked him how to spell “blare,” one of the words on his spelling list that he has written down no less than 16 times in the past four days. He got it wrong. I shook my head. Apparently, the Minecraft Zombies have already eaten my sons’ brains.

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