DotMoms

The sounds of silence

By Terry

Shhhh… do you hear that? You don't? Concentrate. Listen a little more closely. Did you get it that time? It is, as Paul Simon would say, the Sound of Silence.

Andrew has both children off on an excursion to the petting zoo and the playground and, for the next hour and a half or so, the only sounds in my house are going to be the ones that I make and those that come through the open windows in this gorgeous day: Crows calling, lawn mowers humming, the clacking of my keyboard, "Tapestry" or "The Divine Miss M" or some other album recorded by an actual human being over 21 years of age that doesn't refer to eating my vegetables, brushing my teeth, or looking both ways before crossing the street; and an uninterrupted phone conversation. Or maybe not a phone conversation after all. I just might hoard these precious minutes, refusing to share even a few, even with my best, most amusing, friend.

For the next hour and a half, there will be no toys beeping, no insipid and repetitive soundtrack of the day's video of choice, no one calling "Mooooooooom!", no one hollering or bickering or expressing their displeasure with menu choices.

And what will I do with my ninety minutes? I just can't decide! Get through some tasks in a focused and uninterrupted way? Clean the kitchen, and sit in it for a few minutes, marveling at how my work has not been magically and instantly undone? Watch "Sex and the City" reruns? Read that book that I've almost finished? A little of each, I think.

I'm going to enjoy each quiet moment to its maximum, sure that, when my children return, accompanied by cacophony and entropy, I'll enjoy that, too.

Terry lives in Connecticut with her husband and two children.

Old friends

By Terry

You know that old saying about how cheaters never prosper? Total bunk, and I know it for a fact. How do I know it? I know it because I am both cheating and prospering at the very moment you're reading this. Cheating because I actually wrote this post and filed it well in advance of today's publication date; prospering because, while you're doing whatever it is you’re doing today, I'm sitting on the beach with Sharon.

Sharon has come East from her home in Seattle, and we're meeting at her family's beach house near Cape Cod.

Sharon is the first friend I remember having. I guess that there was a time before I knew her, but I have no recollection of it. We've been together forever. She was there when I was so excited that I threw up at my 7th birthday party; I was there when she wrote "I Love David Mehopsatopset" on her basement wall because she was too embarrassed to have anyone know of her true passion for David Cassidy.

She was there when I cried my way through a junior high school party, sure that Michael would never love me back; I was there when she broke up with Rob, her first love, just before heading off to college.

Somewhere, lost to time and the tides, there are pictures of Sharon and me -- naked and smiling, tushies turned toward the camera. Not lost is the picture of us in bell bottoms and matching T-shirts that read "Love makes the world go round," arms around each other, grinning. In boxes in our closets and under our beds, there are pictures of us at each other's bat mitzvahs, sweet sixteen parties, graduations, and weddings. There are pictures of us on our first real, grown-up vacation together, and pictures of the trip that we took with our new husbands.

In a few days, there will be new pictures -- pictures of us with our children, spending a weekend on the sand.

Do you have a lifelong friend? How is that relationship different from the friendships you've made recently?

Terry is a stay-at-home mom who lives in Connecticut with her husband and two children, Emily and Jonah.

Why this mama bear's cub can't be a scout

By Terry

Last week, I saw a necklace that I loved. It was stamped with a quote from Ghandi: "You must be the change you wish to see in the world." I thought of it this week at the annual Girl Scout Leader Recognition Dinner, as I considered my family's future in scouting.

Regular readers of my blog know that I lead a very active and ambitious troop of Brownies. Since moving to Connecticut, Girl Scouting has provided me with a place to learn, stretch, grow and create. I have been pleased and privileged to become part of a group of women who, each in her own way, is seeking to guide girls along their paths to enlightened adulthood. For my troop, that has sometimes meant sharing my own world views and teaching some fairly challenging vocabulary for second graders –- words like "tolerance" and "diversity."

And therein lies the rub.

You see, although Jonah is only three now, eventually he's going to head off to first grade, and he's going to be recruited by the Boy Scouts, which is huge in my town. He's going to come home with a piece of paper and ask "Can I join?" Or his best friend is going to sign up and invite him to come, too. Or someone is going to know about my success in Girl Scouts and ask me to be a den mother.

The answer to all of those requests is a polite but resolute "No."

The motto of Girl Scouts of the USA is "Every Girl, Everywhere." On the other hand, the Boy Scouts of the USA have chosen to bar homosexual boys and men from participating, and have gone all the way to the Supreme Court to be allowed to continue this policy. Shockingly, or perhaps not so, depending on your point of view, the Supreme Court supported the Boy Scouts and they remain an exclusionary organization.

This policy -- which would be universally decried if the word "homosexual" were instead "African-American," "Jewish," "Democrat," or even "fat," and which, in my opinion, serves to perpetuate and institutionalize the negative and incorrect public perception of a correlation between homosexuality and pedophelia -- makes it utterly impossible for me and my family to support their activities.

So, eventually, we're going to have to explain a difference in policy to our children concerning their extracurricular activities. Emily may well grow up to become a Gold Award Girl Scout, but Jonah is going to have to stick to other things, at least until the Boy Scouts open their arms to every boy and man who wants to participate in their very fine and worthwhile program.

I hope that, in the next three years, for my son's sake, for other mothers' sons' sakes, and for the sake of what is right and just, they do just that.

A mother's work...

By Terry

In the Passover haggadah of my youth, the one provided free by Maxwell House coffee to American Jews from coast to coast, there is a passage in which a group of rabbis goes camping and, sitting around the campfire at night, discusses the 10 plagues. One says that, although there were only 10, because they were so awful to endure, it felt more like 50 to the Egyptians. Another said that, because of God's terrible anger, it was more like a hundred! And so on, until they come to the conclusion that there were really 250 plagues or more.

I am often reminded of this passage when I think about my work as a full-time, stay-at-home mother. Andrew and I divide the labor around here pretty traditionally –- he brings home the bacon, takes out the trash, and reaches things from high shelves; I do everything else. So, in addition to my two actual children, I am mother to a whole host of other things.

I am mother to my wonderful husband, who sometimes thinks that he can function on 4 hours of sleep a night, that Mountain Dew is a food group, and that going to the doctor is for when you're sick.

I am mother to a 10-year-old dog, who, this week, is in the veterinary hospital, having decided that going blind was not sufficiently dramatic, so he became an insulin-dependent diabetic as well. I wrap his various pills in deli meat, give him his shots twice a day, and get him out to pee every three hours, as the diabetes is diminishing his continence.

I am mother to my house, inside and out, not only keeping it picked up and cleaned, but making sure that its chimneys are cleaned on schedule, its gutters are cleared of leaves annually, its septic tank is sucked out, its beds are planted, its lawn is fertilized and cut, and its furnace is maintained. I am mother to all of its appliances, watching them carefully for signs of illness, and getting them fixed or replaced in case of crisis.

I am mother to our bank account, making sure that money goes in and money goes out on time and in the right amounts, keeping an eye on the children's college funds, and each year paying Uncle Sam his due but not a penny more.

I am mother to a minivan and a small sedan, asking "What's that noise?" and arranging oil changes and assorted checkups on a timely schedule.

I am mother to three computers, responsible for periodic backups and solving the occasional crash or network disconnect.

I am, by choice, I know, mother to 12 Brownies, putting my blood, sweat, and tears into their development as competent, confident, and tolerant young women for 9 months each year. I am also mother to 21 Sunday School students, helping them learn the basics of their culture and religion weekly.

It's not a job with a clearly defined description, this career I embarked on when Emily was born almost 8 years ago, and sometimes it does feel like I have 250 kids or 250 jobs! I am, as are we all, nurse, teacher, maid, psychologist, laundress, chauffeur, referee, personal assistant, social secretary, gardener, accountant, handyman, prison warden, and mother to all that crosses my path.

Besides your children, what will you mother today?

Bodies, issues

By Terry

For as long as I can remember, my body and I have been at odds. I've wanted to be 5 foot 7 and a size 6 B-cup. It has wanted to be just about 5 feet tall, to carry between 5 and 50 extra pounds and, post babies, to need DD-cup bras.

We're cool these days, my body and I, mostly. I've lost some of the extra weight and bought myself some decent undergarments. High heels offer the delusion, if not actually the illusion, of height. True, if my fairy godmother offered to wave a wand and change some things, I'd likely take her up on it. But I'm 40 now and I have no more time for, or interest in, self-flagellation and low self-esteem.

At 7 years old, Emily has the most magnificent body I've ever seen. She is long and lean and, even as a baby, has always had a shape like a violin from the back. She outgrows her pants in the length, not the width. When she wears her leotard for dance, her tushie looks like a peach, and it's all I can do not to squeeze it every single time.

These days, I eat healthy foods, I exercise when I can (did you hear the survey that said that housewives typically work 100 hours a week!?!?), and I feel pretty good about myself and the way I look. But it's taken me years to get to this point.

As a child, I took a tremendous amount of abuse from my peers about my body size and shape. I was so desperate to be thin -– to be one of those pretty girls who crossed off the waist size of her Levi's out of pride, not shame. Instead, I felt ashamed and, the worse I felt, the more I ate.

And now I find myself feeling the same desperation, but not for myself. I am desperate to help my daughter keep her beautiful body.

Emily eats a healthy balanced diet and she only eats when she's hungry. Incredibly to me, if I offer her a cookie, she won't accept it if she doesn't feel like eating, rejecting it just as she would if it were a banana. Physically and mentally, she's fine, and I know it. She dances, and plays with her friends, and hikes with me, and gets a reasonable amount of exercise. She won't have anything to do with ball sports, but neither will I, so I can't really hold that against her.

Ultimately, I know that I am projecting my own ostensibly-worked-though issues on Emily, yet the question remains: How do I help my young daughter stay fit and healthy without crossing a line and pushing her into the land of negative body issues in which so many of us have had to dwell?

Take a hike, baby

By Terry

Remember my recent post about an exchange program designed to get me to Florida for a while? You know what? Thanks, but forget it. I've changed my mind. Chalk that notion up to a too-long winter, too many too-short days, and a mild and self-diagnosed case of Seasonal Affective Disorder. Call me a fair weather friend, for that, my friends, is just what I am.

You see, much to my delight, the sun has begin to shine on Southern New England. I'm scared that just saying this out loud is going to jinx it, but we are going on our third week of perfect days. The snow is melted and we are enjoying, sunny, breezy, humidity-free days. It's like living in paradise, and we're all making the most of it.

My house is a mess and dinner is pizza or macaroni and cheese, anything that doesn't require my spending the afternoon inside to chop, sauté and bake. My kids are grubby and our every-other-day shower schedule has been revised to a daily filth-and-stink-removal plan. I'm plugged in to my ipod and chugging down the road, trying to do something about those six winter pounds that seem determined to stick around. My kids and I are on the road… we're riding bikes around the neighborhood, walking by the river, and hiking at our local nature center.

Emily is 7 now, and able to really keep up on tougher trails. I took her out this week and helped her challenge herself crossing small streams and making it up tall hills. Every "I can't!" was met with an outstretched hand and a "You can!" We saw animals, hunted for tracks, and talked about the life cycle of the forest. We stuck our toes in the cold stream and wondered how much lower the water level would be in August.

Best of all was the chance to really unplug and spend some time with Emily, listening to what's on her mind, answering her questions, and maybe even slipping in an object lesson or two. We've recently discussed tolerance, diversity, recess etiquette, and my long-ago trip to Key West. It was a great chance to get to know each other, as people, just a little bit better. And it didn't even feel like exercise!

So, next time you're thinking about yet another trip to another playground, sitting again with the other mommies, talking the same old tired talk on the park bench as your kids make yet another trip up and down the same old slide, how about opting for a hike instead? How about a moment to reconnect with the planet and with each other? You just might be surprised at what you learn.

My secret slumber party

By Terry

When we were first married, before we had kids, we used to spend a not inconsiderable amount of time with my cousin Rachel and her family. We liked it -- she was funny, and her family was nice to watch together. The kids were active, but polite and well-behaved, and Rachel and her husband rarely fought.

But, truth be told, we also enjoyed this slightly superior feeling we got from spending time there. You see, we knew their secret… the place where their good parenting fell apart… the failure that Andrew and I snidely judged in the car on the way home… their kids didn't stay in bed at night. These two girls, ages 5 and 8 back then, routinely got up at night and climbed into their parents' bed.

Oh, no, said my husband and I. We'll not be having any of that particular nonsense. When we have children, our bed will be sacrosanct. If our children wake with a bad dream, we will simply comfort them and return them to their own chambers. Yes, dear readers, it's true: despite the fact that we had not yet so much as engaged in sex without rigorous birth control, we had it all figured out.

Fast forward to, say, last weekend.

On Friday night, Andrew was working late in his home office, as he often does. I folded laundry and watched a movie. When I went up to our bed, Emily was already there, wrapped in the quilt and snoring softly. Did I move her? Nope. I quietly turned on the television and, when she woke up, we watched a few minutes together and whispered quietly before going to sleep. Andrew carried her to her own room when he came upstairs later.

Saturday night, Jonah woke sometime in the middle of the night. Andrew walked him back to his room, but he cried and came right back to us. When Andrew suggested that I take a turn at comforting him, I suggested –- because, truth be told, I don't like having my always-precarious slumber disrupted and I pretty much suck at the "nighttime parenting" stuff –- that we just put him between us and get back to the business of sleeping. Thirty seconds later, the boy was sound asleep. He stayed that way, frequently lying horizontally between us, until morning.

But, see, here's my secret: I like it this way.

I like sleeping with my kids. I like their clean, warm, pajama-clad bodies near mine at night. I like the way that they curl into me in their sleep. I like the way that they breathe softly near my ear. I like the way that they smile as they see me looking at them when they wake up.

I don't like any of this enough to advocate a formal family bed program for us, but I like it just enough that I'm returning that copy of Dr. Ferber's book, unread, to the library when I go this week. I figure, when they're 14 or so, raging and screaming and hating my guts, I'll remember them years before, small and delicious and hugging me in their striped pajamas, and I'll know that this, too, shall pass.

Snow joke

By Terry

As I do every year around this time, I have left the relentless snowbound confines of my home in Connecticut for a week in the warm and loving embrace of my mother's house in Florida. It's great. I understand that we're on vacation here, and that this isn't real life, and that swimming, shopping, and eating in restaurants are simply not as taxing as packing lunches, carpooling, or the drudgery that is forcing a reluctant child to do her homework. Nonetheless, in only three days, this much has become unavoidably obvious to me once again: It is empirically easier to deal with the logistics of children in warm weather than it is in the middle of a New England winter.

My friends and co-residents of the Northern states, our Southern sisters have been keeping a secret, and I'm going to let you in on it. Remember yesterday, when it was time to take your 3-year-old with you to the grocery store, and you put him in his pants and his T-shirt and his sweatshirt and his socks and his snow boots and his parka and his boots and his hat? Remember how it took eight minutes to locate his second mitten, stuffed in between the sofa cushions? Remember how he cried because he didn't want to wear them, and you more or less had to sit on him and put them on with duct tape because it was twelve degrees outside and his hands were already red and chapped from sucking his thumbs in the howling winter wind? Remember how you cursed because you forgot your gloves in the house and the steering wheel was so cold that it hurt to touch it? 

Keep all that in mind as I tell you how your best friend in Miami took her 3-year-old to the store: She put him in a pair of shorts, a tank top, and a pair of Tevas, opened the sunroof on her car, and headed out. Does that sound fair to you? Because it doesn't to me!

So, in the spirits both of fair play and of WifeSwap, I'm going to propose a new arrangement, a kind of antebelleum exchange program. I think it would be only fair if the East Coast women who live south of, say, Nashville, found pen pals north of, say, Baltimore. (Anyone in between is in kind of a neither-North-nor-South no-woman's-land and can just suck it up when it snows every four years and chalk it up to novelty, most of the West Coast doesn't get enough snow to participate in this plan, and I don't know enough about the geography in the middle to propose boundaries, so you all are on your own.) Then, once a year, everyone trades houses with her pen pal for one week. We'll take care of each other's houses and children so no one comes home to a mess, and the kids won't fall behind in school.

The moms from the snow states will get the break they desperately need and deserve. They'll dress light, barbecue, and feel the sun on their faces. And the moms from the sun states? I don't know… maybe they'll discover their Inner Snowboarders. Or maybe they'll think shoveling snow is fun! Or maybe they'll find evenings huddled around the fire with cocoa kind of sweet and fun and quaint. They are. For a week.

Girl stuff

By Terry

Emily is only 7, yet the girl stuff has begun much sooner than I expected. Much sooner than I was prepared for it. Much sooner than I ever wanted to deal with it, which was exactly never.

Which girl stuff, you wonder? The begging for Barbies stuff? Nope. The dressing like Brooke Shields in Atlantic City stuff? Nope. The onset of menstruation, with its attendant hormones and mess, stuff? Nope.

I can deal with that stuff. I'm talking about the other girl stuff. The real girl stuff. The stuff that we all remember from our youth. The stuff that we would give anything – anything! – to protect and shield our daughters from. The torturing each other at school stuff. The cruelty as sport stuff. The finding the most vulnerable spot of your most vulnerable peer and poking it with a sharp stick stuff.

One of Emily's classmates, a girl who is in our Brownie troop, and will stay there with us long after the school year is over and they have been separated, is being mean to her. The details are irrelevant and sound so trivial and stupid – "She wouldn't let me look at her American Girl catalog with her and the other girls!" – but the intent, and the pain, are the same as we remember.

As a child, I was on the receiving, rather than the giving, end of that pain, and Emily is so much like I was. I know why the other girl doesn't like her and where she shares responsibility in this situation. I know what she does that hurts her best efforts to be liked and to be successful socially. I want to tell her "Learn from my mistakes! You don't have to go down this road! I did it for you already!" But I know that my daughter is on her own journey, and will make her own choices.

I know how Emily feels when she collapses in my arms, crying "Everyone hates me!" One part of me shares her hurt; another is barely able to restrain myself from going to school and approaching the other little girl on the playground, getting down to her height and threatening her menacingly, mama bear style, "You want to mix it up with someone, little one? How about trying me on for size?" But, of course, I know that I can't do that, either. I know that the other little girl is a work in progress, and that she has her own learning to do, too.

For the first time in my career as a mother, I can't fix what’s hurting my little girl. No Band-Aid, no antibiotic ointment, no anti-itch cream, no kiss, and no placebo is going to make this one all better, and it's killing me.

Take a load off, Nanny

By Terry

We have a brand new Naughty Stool in my house. I instituted it a couple of weeks ago when I finally got sick and tired of Jonah getting frustrated and throwing things, of his insistence on touching things he had been told to leave alone, of his little tiny 3-year-old pushes, and of his not-so-tiny tantrums.

Andrew saw the Naughty Stool in action on the second day. Jonah misbehaved, and I picked him up, put him on the stool, got down to his level, told him what he had done that was unacceptable, and set the timer for three minutes. Jonah cried the whole time. Every time he stood up, I gently sat him back down. When the timer beeped, I gave him a kiss and he went back to playing. He didn't throw anything else that night.

Later, in bed, Andrew complimented me on the effectiveness of the Naughty Stool. He asked where I got the idea and, I swear to God, I was too embarrassed to say "SuperNanny," so I sputtered "Dr. Spock!" instead.

I was laughing so hard that he knew I was lying, but that was my story, and I stuck to it. I practically broke my arm patting myself on the back. With the help of reality TV, I had figured out the solution to the toddler years! My boy was now going to behave perfectly! Who needed SuperNanny? I was SuperMommy!

It was a great first week. The Naughty Stool did its job, and the boy, he was a-changing. Then, with no warning, things turned around. I don't know how or why the Naughty Stool has forsaken me, but forsaken me it has. In a move that has me shaking my head in utter befuddlement, my son has decided that he likes it there.

What am I to do with a boy who, apropos of nothing, asks to go sit on the stool? With a boy who, when placed on the stool, sits angelically, hands in his lap, and watches the timer? With a boy who, when threatened with, "If you do that again, you’re going to sit on the naughty stool, is that what you want?" cheerfully answers, "Yeah!"

The whole point is that he's supposed hate being on the stupid Naughty Stool, and he's decided it's where he wants to be.

The boy won't sit on the potty for love or candy, but the Naughty Stool? Best seat in the house.