DotMoms

The thing about book clubs

By Ellen Schuette

I, an English major and voracious reader of almost anything in print, have a confession to make: I don't like book clubs. I'm not sure why. I wish book clubs well; I admire what they are doing to bring literature to life in the homes and offices of America. I simply can't seem to make myself attend one. (Read more)

Home again

By Ellen

You know all the articles you read about college graduates who move home once they receive their degrees? Well, it's happened to me.

My son graduated from the University of London and spent the summer as a teaching assistant in a northeastern prep school. He loved being in the classroom. His reviews were great. He felt at home there, even chafed a bit at not being given free rein to do what he wanted to do (though he did teach an innovative chapter of a Toni Morrison novel that involved the kids sitting around a pretend dinner table and re-enacting the dialogue).

He came back to North Carolina convinced he was intended to be a teacher, and eager to get some more experience under his belt while pondering graduate school next year (and incidentally saving up some money).

A month later, he is working part-time at a bookstore and slowly adjusting to some painful facts of life: he has a small savings account, and it's not enough for grad school quite yet. It's cheaper to grit his teeth and live at mom and stepdad's house, instead of moving into his fantasy apartment. He doesn't have a car (who needed one in the UK?), and so he's driving his stepsister's boxy old Toyota, on loan from that side of the family but certainly not his idea of sharp wheels. He's trying to decide whether to make friends in this town in which he didn't grow up -- therefore putting down those dread things, roots -- or hold himself aloof and focus on next year.

It's a change for all of us. I was lucky enough when I graduated to have a sputtering used Fiat, a damp basement apartment in Atlanta, and a job that paid $8,500 a year. I thought I was the ruler of my own destiny, and I guess I was.

He doesn't have quite that freedom here. Mom still wonders why he has to go out for coffee after midnight; stepdad wonders if he's really doing enough around the house to help out. He is on the phone and the Internet sending resumes and letters, but there are spurts of activity followed by a complete dearth of interest (or so he must feel).

I know something will come along, and I try to reassure him. Sometimes he hears me; sometimes I'm just a pain. Sometimes sitting down at dinner with the family seems like drudgery to him; other times he's winning and friendly and talkataive. Sometimes we sit around and talk about books we've read and laugh at past episodes of "The Office" together, and it's great. I haven't had my little boy around in a long time, so I hope he forgives me for hanging on to these moments when we are mother and son again.

Because just as people tell you to enjoy your children when they are small -- for the time will be gone before you know it -- so do I know that this phase too shall pass. He'll get the phone call, the job, the car or the ticket back to the UK for grad school. He'll probably make friends here, there and everywhere and be around less and less often. He'll make his own life -- maybe not the one he envisioned he'd have at 23, but an OK one just the same.

So, I don't apologize for having a college graduate living in my house. I'm happy to be part of this phase of his life. Even if I do nag him to hang up his towels.

Ellen is a 50-year-old mother of two, stepmother of two, who lives in North Carolina with her family.

The school bell tolls...

By Ellen

… And it tolls for me. Because I want to go back to school, too!

Why should children have all the fun of new books and pencils, that scary-delightful feeling of walking into the classroom for the first time and spotting a potential best friend? Or the way it sounds when you slam that new locker door for the first time or hear the roar of the engine as the school bus lumbers its way toward you the first morning?

Of course I’m romanticizing the whole thing, but I loved getting ready to go back to school: reading the books on my book list, looking for interesting and novel supplies, trying on the new clothes that my talented mother made for me. Then there were the later years when getting ready for college was an even scarier-in-a-good-way experience … packing trunks full of sheets and towels, hearing (and discarding) family advice, loading the car for the trip five hours away, reveling in a dorm room untouched by human decorating hands since the last occupant left. Everything loomed ahead of me with such gorgeous possibilities, in a way that hasn’t been equaled since (except when marrying or giving birth, of course).

Right now I’m in the midst of planning “back to school” programs at the Children’s Museum where I work, and I’m also helping two college students and one high-school student in my own family make their own preparations. And you know what? I’m conscious of occasional pangs of jealousy. I’m happy for all these children – for my own children – but I also think grownups deserve to go back to school just once, too. We would simply savor it so much more than they do! It’s that “clean-slate thing,” starting over, starting BETTER.

Knowing that in 30 years we’ll be consumed with deadlines, and mortgages, and elderly parent care issues, and the need for Botox, and school will be a distant memory, something we slogged through without perhaps knowing just how free a time it really was.

Knowing that we would have conveniently “forgotten” the less pleasant aspects of school, such as bullies and lost homework and intimidating teachers, in a way that is perhaps dishonest, but perhaps, ultimately, healing.

Knowing that the best was yet to be ... and wanting to be more "present" when it happened.

So call me a sentimental fool, but watch out when that classroom door opens. Someday, I may be back inside, ready and waiting for that bell to ring and the endless possibilities of learning to present themselves. One more time. 

Ellen is a 50-year-old mother of two, stepmother of two, who lives in North Carolina with her family.

A Different Kind of Summer

By Ellen

They were here briefly, both of them. And now they've gone north for the summer. And I'm missing them like crazy!

My son graduated, finally, from the U of London and is now off at a "prestigious prep school" in Massachusetts as a teaching assistant for the summer. He is trying out the teaching profession to see if he likes it or not ... so far, he is over the moon about it. I'm just happy he's back on my side of the Atlantic, and happy that he will get the chance to impart his fierce love of English literature to those boys and girls.

Meanwhile my daughter came home from college in Georgia, slept like a log for days, then departed for the other end of Massachusetts, to be a painting/drawing instructor at a coed camp for kids. She was nervous and excited, having never laid eyes on the place before. She was immensely brave, getting on that airplane with her list of counselor duties and her favorite paints, and I think she'll have a positive impact upon a cabin of 11-year-old girls.

I'm proud of both of them, because they found these jobs themselves, aced the interviews and made the travel arrangements. I know they're okay. Mom? Not so good.

I miss summers with the kids in a way I didn't anticipate until now. This is the part of children leaving the nest that is bewilderingly sad for me ... I can rationalize them both being away in college, studying and making friends and groaning over tests and calling home for money and the like ... that's normal and right. There is a season for everything, and fall/winter/spring is the time go away and live the life scholastic. I have my own life, after all.

But summers should be all about drinking lemonade together, playing board games, going to the beach and to grandma's house, complaining about being bored while secretly enjoying it, sleeping really late and disagreeing with each other over the briefness of one's swimsuit or the length of one's hair.

Now my children are, in essence, extending their growing-up season into the three months of the year when I most want to have them with me ... when sitting around talking about life and watching the lightning bugs from the screened porch is so lovely and right, when everyone and everything slows down and reconnection can happen, when they walk in smelling hot and tired and outdoorsy and evoking the little-girl, little-boy fragrances of summers gone by. 

I miss that. I miss them. I have to content myself, for the time being, with sporadic phone calls and emails, or pull up the websites at the camp and school where they are and peer at the screen for a glimpse of them in photos. Or (yes, I admit it) going into their rooms and pulling out the jackets they each wore home and burying my face in them, just to believe their spirits still linger in my house.

Being a mother is all about connection, separation and reconnection, sometimes coming so rapidly that it takes your breath away. I can't hate myself for wanting the good old days of summer to return, even as I'm proud of them and their efforts to fill the summer months with growth. I just have to "ride the wave" until August, and do some growing up myself.

Ellen is a 50-year-old mother of two, stepmother of two, who lives in North Carolina with her family.

Bringing the Outdoors In

by Ellen

I recently returned from a children's museum association meeting in Boston ... a great chance to refuel, collect ideas, network and generally feel like a grownup traveler again, away from home on a mission.

I came back with a particular topic on my mind. Author Richard Louv was there to speak about his book, "Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder." He talked about the fact that we -- society -- are removing our children from those experiences with and in nature that were so much a part of our own upbringing.

Partly it's due to fear of strangers in strange places, partly because with all the negative talk of global warming, natural disasters and the like, we're ALL beginning to have this image of nature as no longer a benignly magical place of exploration but instead a place of shadows and fires and bears and danger. And of course, when you mix in the fact that many children see nature only from their living rooms -- or wherever their TVs, computers or video games happen to be stationed -- we should be afraid. Very, very afraid.

Can you remember growing up in a neighborhood where it was expected that you would spend all afternoon every afternoon playing outside? I do. Oh, we made forays into each other's houses to inspect Barbie dolls and get some Koolaid, but for the most part we pedaled our bikes up and down the street and hung out in each other's tree houses with nary a care in the world. One mother would ring a bell or holler a child's name as the sun began to go down and we would all drift home, dirty and tired and pleased with ourselves, to eat a big dinner and settle down to homework.

As far as I recall, our parents wanted to know the general direction in which we were headed outside, never followed us in their cars or made us carry communication devices. Kids plus outdoors equaled fun. SAFE fun, as long as we used our common sense.

My favorite book from those days, which I still cherish, is a little green volume of recipes for dolls. Things like "dandelion soup" and "hot rock biscuits," all cleverly illustrated and designed for me and my favorite doll to experience. You can tell, from looking at the dirt-smudged pages, that I not only loved the book but also took it "out into the field," so to speak ... and did that without fear.

I'm thrilled that my kids have rediscovered nature, somewhat, in the form of riding bikes around their respective towns (London, England and Savannah, Georgia). I'm happy that they seek out parks and shady spots to picnic. They wear helmets and they use their common sense (or so they assure me). My stepdaughter, 14, hasn't found her way back to the fresh air yet ... alas, she's too involved in TV and instant messaging and homework to welcome a happy afternoon pulling up grass to make "grass tacos" for dolls. We have suggested gardening, only to be met with that expression of early teenager derision that is so classic: "Why would I want to do THAT?" Even getting her to walk the dog a block is a chore. That makes me sad. Sunshine, fresh air, dirt under your fingernails ... she simply doesn't get it.

And she doesn't get it at school, either. From what I can tell, recess is where you walk around in small groups and giggle about other kids or sit and frantically catch up with your late homework assignment. Author Louv says one school in his home state of California recently posted a sign on the playground that blared, in big letters, this message: NO RUNNING ALLOWED. HUH!?

We at the children's museum conference were urged to find ways to put the nature back into children's play experiences, and we have plans to do that. We already have a walled-in garden that rings with the sound of kids laughing as they play in sandboxes and draw with chalk and dabble in water. But still, thinking back upon my own fond memories of tree houses and jumping over creeks and playing hide-and-seek in the yard, it seems to me that those days are gone ... that a small garden will never recreate for this generation's children the magic my friends and I experienced .. and that no attempts to bring nature "inside" to children afraid to venture "outside" will quite do the trick.

Still, it's worth a try, isn't it?

Ellen is a 50-year-old mother of two, stepmother of two, who lives in North Carolina with her family.

That little matter of self-esteem ....

By Ellen

I was touched last night by the Dove commercial that aired on TV during the Super Bowl. It was all about girls’ self-esteem, and while the subject seemed odd for a sports event –- was it directed at dads? Moms? Prospective boyfriends of teenaged girls? I wasn’t sure –- it certainly raised an issue that I think about a lot, particularly with a 14-year-old stepdaughter around.

What a hard age this is! She alternates between gawky and graceful, positive and negative, shy and outrageously in-your-face. She’s an honor-roll student yet can’t be persuaded to open a book just to read (that’s “BORing”). She’s the master of instant messaging but seems to use it (and she’s not alone here) to say things she wouldn’t have the nerve to say to her friends/enemies face-to-face. She treats her dad with utter scorn when he offers homework advice, yet still wants him to sit with her every night as she falls asleep. Nothing is gray with her at this age, only black and white and no chance of compromise somewhere in between.

So much of this stage has to do with figuring out who you are and where you fit in the world; that exploration seems to be so heartless sometimes. I hear her on the phone at night, giggling with girlfriends, and they are talking about who wears what, who looks cool and who doesn’t, why so-and-so is a dork, etc. And you figure that everyone they are talking about is talking about THEM. It’s almost mind-boggling.

And there is a label, it seems, for everyone. That came home to roost last year when she received her 7th grade yearbook and she and her best friend proceeded to write comments on almost every photo: Ugly. Stupid. Crazy. Pretty. Pretty/popular. Loser. I asked her if she thought this was fair, and she simply shrugged and said, “It doesn’t mean anything, it’s a joke.” But when I asked her how she would feel to be labeled this way by someone else, she looked very sad. As if it was inevitable, somehow, and perhaps it is.

But why? What can we do to help these girls be kinder, gentler and more positive towards each other? How can we make them understand that tearing each other down hurts all of them? It seems to be so much easier to “go with the flow” and be cruel to other girls than to try to understand one who’s different or unusual. And often her own behavior is so damn annoying that I find myself railing at her instead of offering constructive criticism.

And the focus upon how she looks is absolutely disheartening to me. She pores over catalogs, circling things she likes and doesn’t like; she browses favorite sites on the Internet and then begs to spend her money on a certain sweater because “I HAVE to have it! Everyone has it!” The fact that it’s an item better suited to someone in her 20s or 30s doesn’t seem to matter; neither does body shape or coloring. It’s one-look-fits-all if you want to be popular: the same sweater, the same patterned fabric bag, the same monogrammed ring, the same style of suede clogs. Heaven forbid you climb upon the school bus wearing something that is comfortable and looks good just on YOU.

I know it was like this for me at her age, to some extent, although I don't remember voicing my opinions quite so openly as she and her friends do. Perhaps the discomfort I feel around her these days is because she's pushing my old buttons from the past, even opening up old wounds.

So: I’m open to ideas. How do I help this child –- no wait, this young woman –- increase her own self-esteem without tearing down the self-esteem of others? How can she learn to love her own individuality? And why do girls who at 8 or 9 are self-confident and assured and expressive and compassionate change so drastically into tweens and teen girls we fear are far too comfortable disliking themselves and others?

If Dove has a solution, I’d love to hear it! At least they addressed the issue. Which is more than I feel like I’m doing at home these days.

Ellen is a 50-year-old mother of two, stepmother of two, who lives in North Carolina with her family.

Slides of Christmas past

By Ellen

Oh, the family's Christmas slide show! What is there these days to equal it?

My Uncle John wasn’t a fan. In fact, every Christmas Eve after dinner at my parents’ house, as soon as my dad began dragging out the boxes of Kodak slide trays, Uncle John announced that it was time to go. “We’ll be heading home now,” he would say as he and my aunt and cousin practically flew out the front door. “I don’t believe we’ll be watching the slides this year.”

That was OK with us, though. We loved our relatives, but we loved our slide show more, and we weren’t about to change the Christmas Eve routine. 

First, up went the card table, a mysterious, heavy, four-legged creature that only came out for special occasions. Then came the boxes of slides, followed by the menacing-looking projector that made a lot of metallic-sounding noise and blew hot air and was so temperamental only my father could work it. My brother and I were allowed to help hoist the huge screen up onto its pedestal, then we settled down on the living-room floor to watch pictures of Christmas past.

There was something magical to me about the cozy darkness, the thick carpet on the floor, the spicy smell of the Christmas tree, the sound of the click clack as slides dropped down into the projector and appeared onscreen. My brother and I would pinch and wrestle with each other between slides, though not too much as Santa was watching. My parents would argue gently about whether or not the picture of the 1965 Christmas tree was backwards. My grandparents would cluck and say, “My, my, weren’t you a big girl!” just like they always did. And there I was, up on the screen, captured for all time with the spoils of Christmas. I could figure out how old I was from the gift: the year I was six along came the Chatty Cathy doll, when I was nine I received the Barbie Dream House.

Every year, despite what I considered my growing sophistication, I secretly looked forward to the slide show. After a while, we had so many trays of slides that my dad edited them into one tray entitled “The Best of Christmas” and we watched that instead. And every year I began to notice more about our family as a whole, not just myself, as we appeared in those frozen snippets of time: what we wore, what we ate, our expressions, and the weather outside the windows. And as the years went on, there was photographic proof that times they were a’ changing: we had acne; my grandmother could no longer travel; the gifts changed from dolls and fire engines to socks and bathrobes; my brother and I posed without sitting close to each other, just to show how cool we were. 

Soon my children and I will probably pull out our shoeboxes full of photos and trace our own histories at Christmas. And I’ll enjoy it, of course. But somehow I don’t think it will be the same to flip through the prints as it was to lie on the floor and watch the slides of yesteryear. There was something special about being cocooned in my warm living room and at ease with family tradition –- even my uncle’s annual departure –- that can never be recaptured. I’ll never again be as full of wonder as I was back then, looking way, way up at that little girl so full of Christmas innocence and glee on the screen.

Ellen is a 50-year-old mother of two, stepmother of two, who lives in North Carolina with her family.

Beginning a new mothering chapter

By Ellen

I have to confess that I’m uncertain about my motherhood status at the moment. You see, I’ve entered a new chapter in the parenting book, and I am not at all sure how I feel about it.

My 18-year-old daughter departed for college in early September, joining her 22-year-old brother in the shared pursuit of higher education, independent lives and the future. And while I’m glad they are both happily settled in institutions of their choice in two wonderful cities (London and Savannah), I’m not so happy some days about where it leaves their mom: disconnected.

What’s my role now that the nest is empty? How do I quell my panic when the girl who called me almost daily from her high school in Virginia doesn’t even call weekly from Georgia? How do I resist pushing her for more information when all she says in her rare phone calls is “yep” or “nope”? I’m supposed to be good at this long-distance mothering thing, and yet knowing vitually nothing about my daughter’s classes, friends or feelings leaves me feeling like a rank amateur. Her brother says she talks to HIM and that she’s having a great time –- I guess that’s a relief. But I want my own confirmation! And visiting the school Web site just doesn’t do it.

I’m whining, and I always swore I wouldn’t, that I would never become one of those poor, tearful, depressed empty nesters you read about in women’s magazines or see in sitcoms. I DO have a life of my own! I have a wonderful and demanding job, a loving and supportive husband of two years and a 14-year-old stepdaughter at home, but that child has her own mother nearby and I’m more of a laundry consultant and chauffeur for her than anything else. Somehow it doesn't seem appropriate to throw my temporarily underused mothering skills her way, nor do I think she'd accept them. 

Meanwhile, during the evenings I sometimes walk restlessly around my house, fighting the urge to pick up the phone and call my kids. I want them to feel free and unfettered, to make their own way, not to depend on Mom for advice. But I don’t understand why I feel so sad when the phone doesn’t ring, the e-mails don’t come and that fierce bond between mother and child doesn’t feel as tangible as it once did.

I know all of you mothers of young children are saying to yourselves, "This will NEVER happen to me." I said that, too. And I did a lot of reading and thinking about how to prepare myself for the empty nest stage ... to little avail.

I've been surprised by my daughter's reaction to sudden freedom, yes, but MORE surprised about my own feelings, whatever they are. Discontent? Low self-esteem? Anger? Probably a mixture of all three. Writing about this all may help; that's why I've offered to start a new category for DotMoms called "Empty Nester."

Please send me your thoughts and share with me your perspective if you have experienced this yourself (or remember it from the viewpoint of your own departure from home). I'll be interested in seeing how -- with your help -- this new chapter of motherhood will read.

Ellen is a 50-year-old mother of two, stepmother of two, who lives in North Carolina with her family.

A mother by any other name

By Ellen

So what do your children call you, and where, when and why?

I thought about this the other day when I realized my daughter was addressing me as "Madre." I think she picked that up from her brother, the Latin scholar in high school, but I could be wrong. I'll have to find out.

The fact that she called me "Madre" led me to ponder my children's other appellations for me.

Most of the time I'm "Mom," and that suits me just fine. I'm not like my own mother in that respect. She decreed long ago that she did not want to be called ANYTHING but the very formal "Mother," which I still use to this day. She was never a Mom or Mommy, but my kids call me by both those names. My son, who now lives in London, has branched out into Britishspeak by calling me "Mummy" or, occasionally, "Mum." It always tickles me.

My daughter says "MUUUUUU-ther" in tones of disgust when she is really annoyed with me for some reason, and I'm always aware of her feelings when that long drawn-out title comes forth. It's kind of like when you holler for your own children by their full names and they know they are in big trouble: "Come here right now, John Jacob Jingleheimer Smith!"

Both kids usually stick to "Mom." It's short, to the point and all-purpose; I usually pay attention to it; and it can be used in all social situations: "Meet my mom." "Mom, do you have some money for Starbucks?" And so forth.

Lately, however, a new form of address has crept in. I've noticed that when my daughter wants my undivided attention and doesn't believe she's getting it -– for example when we're in a crowd, or I'm trying to tune out the CD she insists on playing in the car, or I'm attempting to multitask (no mean feat when you're adult ADD) – she yells out "ELLEN!"

Startling, but it works. And now that she's 18 and beginning to evolve into young woman/friend as much as daughter, this new name may be the wave of the future. I'm not sure how I feel about that, though. There's something awfully sweet and may-never-come-again about the word "Mommy."

Ellen is a 50-year-old mother of two, stepmother of two, who lives in North Carolina with her family.

Driving with Daddy

By Ellen

My husband and his 13-year-old daughter are about to leave for a weeklong vacation in Michigan. They will be setting off in his cherished, rattling 18-year-old Mazda RX-7 to make an 18-hour trek from North Carolina to Ann Arbor –- his old educational stomping grounds –- and on up to grandmother's house where his four sisters and brother will join them.

I can't go with them due to work obligations, but I'd give anything to be an invisible backseat passenger! That's because I remember with fondness so many dad-and-daughter trips from my own childhood.

In the summers when I was out of school, I'd go with Daddy to visit shoe manufacturing plants in western Tennessee, trips always broken up by stops for "the best homemade pie" or "the best iced tea." My dad was a rolling gourmet, and everywhere he went we tried out blue-plate specials at those wonderful mom-and-pop eating establishments that dot the rural highways of America. And he seemed to always know the owners, too. I was partly mortified by his ability to talk to anyone, anywhere, but partly proud, as well. And when we got back in the car and drove on down the highway, he'd tell me stories about his boyhood and we'd talk about Life.

My dad has been gone for almost six years now, and I still miss my special times with him. They were fewer and far between as I grew up and went off to college, married and had my own family, but they were special memories nevertheless. I'd give anything to share another piece of homemade pie with him and another talk about Life.

I hope that over the week, my husband can reconnect with his teenaged daughter in some magical ways. They will visit with interesting relatives; she'll tour the campus where he received three degrees. I've heard that she is already researching the biggest malls along the way. There will be no stepmother along to complicate any family discussions, and that's not a bad thing, sometimes. In a way, this trip will be a watershed experience for them because this time next year, my stepdaughter will be learning to drive herself, and trips with Daddy will begin to fade away as her independence grows. 

I hope my stepdaughter will feel free and easy around her father, will treat him with respect, will see him on the trip as just not the man who often annoys her and invokes silly rules, but also as a person. I hope he will listen to her hopes and dreams, read between the lines and treat her as the emerging adult she is, rather than the little girl he wants to protect. No doubt they will have tiring days, arguments, bumpy roads and other challenges along the way, but I hope they come back to me safely and with a new and stronger bond.

The trip will be good for all of us.

Ellen is a 50-year-old mother of two, stepmother of two, who lives in North Carolina with her family.