A friend bought me Bill Cosby’s book, Come On, People for Christmas. A line, early on in the book, hit me between the eyes:

But as much as mothers love their sons, they have difficulty showing a son how to be a man.

Intellectually, that makes sense to me. But in practice, it doesn’t. I might not be able to show my sons what it means to “be a man”…but I sure as hell can (and do) show them what it means to be responsible, caring, accountable, loving, generous and strong.

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Happy Father’s Day

He’s had an interesting time of it this year because he’s fighting to catch up in the general sense, and also in the more specific sense because he got a bad case of gastroentritis in late September that kept him out of school for a 9-day stretch, and a couple additional relapses since have his total number of days missed up to around 15. When you’re carrying a full, 7-hour load of college prep classes, missing that much school in the space of six weeks really sets you back.

He’s sixteen now, and one of the other goals he’s working toward is getting a driver’s license. Being the mean mom that I am, I have set conditions on when he can even go take the test and try: when he has a 2.5 GPA. Not unreasonable, in my estimation. And he was really looking forward to progress report time to show me that he had achieved that, and then some – and then the gastroentritis hit.

Throughout this catch-up process, I have made myself available to assist him with homework, and we’ve covered everything from neural transmitters in Physics and Anatomy to allegory in English III to ecosystems in his Environmental Science AP class. He’s made comments about how smart I am, always with an element of surprise in his voice, but also a bit of resistance to the idea that he might, too, have those kind of smarts because that would be entirely too geeky for the jock persona he’s cultivating for himself. (And, let’s not mention the accountability issues…)

But the other night took the cake and, in the process, he made my day.

He was working on Geometry, and like him, that’s one of my least favorite subjects. I can’t to this day tell you the names of the concepts taught, or show you a congruent angle to save my life. But I can work the shit out of some geometry problems by applying simple logic.

Here’s the problem he was trying to solve:

He had to determine the number of degrees in angle A.

So, I asked him what he knew about the angles in the diagram. He just kind of looked at me, like he was thinking, “Look at the diagram, Mom – that’s what I know.”

So I said, “Angle A is 32 degrees.” (Admittedly, I wanted to impress him.)

Incredulous, he looked at me and asked, “How the hell do you know that?!?”

And here is the Geometry-according-to-a-middle-aged-mom-living-in-the-real-world answer I gave:

“Ok, son – here’s what I know when I look at this:

The corners of the outside rectangle are right angles which mean they are 90 degrees.

The lines creating the 4 triangles in the middle of the rectangle meet in exactly the middle, and if this were a perfect square, that would make angle A 45 degrees, because it’d be exactly half of 90. But this isn’t a square, so it’s not 45 degrees, it’s probably less, because just from looking at the diagram, angle A looks more squished than the one that, when added to it, makes up that right angle in that corner of the rectangle.

I also know that because the lines cross in the middle of the rectangle, whatever angle A is, the angle that makes up the opposite corner of that particular triangle is the same number of degrees, whatever that is.

Finally, I know that the total number of degrees represented by all 3 inside angles of a triangle is 180, because if you rolled its three sides out flat they’d be a straight line, and the number of degrees in a straight line is 180.

So…180 minus 116 (the angle I know) is 64. And since the other two angles have to be equal, I just divide 64 in half….so…angle A is 32.”

Contemplatively, he took his paper back, turned to walk away, stopped, looked back at me and said, “You’re the smartest person I know.”

And with that, he made my day.

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Geometry According to Mom Logic

Let me rewind.

Monday morning, while PDD was getting ready for school, I was drinking my coffee and checking my email. I saw a PayPal payment receipt for a registrant for a teleclass I’m holding next week, so I logged in to my PayPal account to check it out.

Imagine my horror when I saw a pending charge for $174.92 from…get this…Build-A-Bear Workshop dated 10:21am Sunday morning!!!

In a roar that could be heard for miles, I called PDD to my office. She’s been harping on me to get her a Build-A-Bear ever since Christmas. She denied any knowledge of how such a charge could have appeared. Given that it was pending, not cleared, there wasn’t much for me to do but wait.

And I didn’t have to wait long. Tuesday afternoon, the FedEx truck pulled up in front of the house and delivered a Scruffy Puppy and not one, but NINE…count them: N-I-N-E outfits! All delivered Next Day Air to the tune of $50.90!!!!!

In the words of Second Son, “This must be one of those times that your kid screws up SO BAD that you can’t even get mad about it – you just have to laugh.”

Uhh….yeah.

Needless to say, my darling PDD and I had a heart-to-heart conversation upon her arrival from school Tuesday afternoon.

Thanks in large part to my parent coach (and HELL YES, I have a parent coach! I’m a single mom, for cryin’ out loud – I KNOW I need the back up!) – I have resisted the urge to kill her. So far…

I let her stew in her own guilty juices for a day or so before issuing any kind of edicts as to consequences and restitution.

All the other issues aside, I have to say I’ve got a pretty damn smart 9 y/o daughter. She managed to get through and complete 3 checkout screens, figured out how to upgrade the shipping to the quickest (and most expensive) option available, and completed her purchase using my PayPal debit card. Had she chosen another card, I might not have known about it until FedEx showed up.

Even Oldest Son was impressed. He said, and I quote, “Damn, Mom! She’s got bigger balls than either one of us (meaning he and Second Son)! There’s no way he or I would have had the nerve to try and pull off a heist like that!”

And let me assure you – that’s sayin’ something coming from him…

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PDD: E-Commerce Expert

It’s programmed to cry, fuss, suck on a bottle, burp, poop, pee, and sleep (very much on it’s own schedule) and has sensors that detect pressure, gravity, movement, noise, rocking, patting, (and yes, blunt force trauma. LOL) There is a little sensor bracelet that Second Son wears which keeps him from pawning parenting responsibilities off on anyone else (including in the wee hours of the night), and when the little bugger starts it’s antics, he must “chime” the baby with this bracelet by putting the bracelet up against a particular spot on the baby’s back. When he does that, the baby makes a “chime” sound…hence the word “chime” as a verb.

He “brought the baby home from the hospital” yesterday morning before school (which means he picked it up from that teacher before 1st hour) and so started his 48 hours as the baby’s daddy. He returns the baby to the teacher tomorrow morning. As you can see from the picture here – the first 24 hours have been…well…just look at the expression on his face. LOL

He tried to get me to have the baby sleep with me last night, but I said, “Oh no, sweet pea…this is your grade, not mine.” This morning, he did NOT want to get up for school and when I asked how many times the baby woke him up through the night, he said, “I lost count at 6.”

Oh yeah…this is an effective teaching tool we’ve got here. LOL

I was asking him what his plan for tonight was if the baby tried to get him up as many times as last night, and that’s when I snapped that first picture.

Ohhhhh…did he pay for doing that!

That baby started fussin’ and cryin’ like nobody’s business, and kept at it for about 45 minutes! Second Son was just about at the end of his rope when it finally quit crying and “went to sleep”. He looked at me with such relief on his face, I almost laughed out loud…almost. I told him he better take his behind to bed along with baby so he has a shot at getting more than three hours of sleep tonight. At first, he looked at me like I was crazy, but then it dawned on him that the trick to getting any sleep with a newborn is to sleep on their schedule when you can. He said, “Mom – was I like this? I mean, was it really this hard?”

I said, “Yes, you were like that. And yes, there were days that were that hard.”

“Wow,” he said.

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Second Son as Baby Daddy

Am I surprised? No.

Does the baby look like him? Well, sure, as much as babies generally look like anyone but themselves when they’re a week old. But so did Ex-Girlfriend’s first daughter the day she was born and for a long time thereafter, but he’s not her father. Hell, her 4 y/o son looks crazy-much like him, and he didn’t even know her 4 years ago. So what’s it worth to say she does or does not look like him when trying to determine if he’s her daddy? Nada, that’s what.

What I’m trying to figure out is why it matters so much to me? Apart from the obvious, that is.

Seriously, folks – I’ve had a parade of children come into my life calling me both “Mama” and “Grandma” in the last 15 years and I never once really cared if there was no blood tie between us. PDD’s Big Sis had her baby shortly before Completely Clueless and I split, and I’ve been more “Grandma” than he’s been Grandpa, and that’s his daughter, for crying out loud. And you’ve been introduced to Ex-Girlfriend’s older two kids here when they stayed overnight at Grandma’s.

So why now do I feel such a reluctance to invest? Merely because this one might actually be a descendant? Or because the others have been given and taken away, given and taken away so many times?

I feel for Oldest Son. All my questions echo his own, but he wants to just accept her as his and go on with life. Great! I’m all for it – except for the crazy Ex-Girlfriend, who appears to be not so much of an Ex at the moment. I mean, am I supposed to just forget Seriously Left of Center – Part 3? Actually, this all might be easier if I could forget because then I wouldn’t worry about my first little grandbaby being cared for by a crazy girl who uses her children as pawns to try to get what she wants. Eventually, she’s going to tell Oldest Son to get the hell out for the gazillionth time, and then where’s he with respect to having a daughter? No paper to show he’s Daddy, so no rights unless the crazy girl grants him some.

We – his dad and stepmom, his brothers and sisters, his grandparents and I – we’re all left out, unable to celebrate the birth of a new member of the family. Why? Because we’re not sure that’s what’s happened, and her knotheaded parents have no plans to find out for sure. Oldest Son invited me and his dad to pay for the DNA test if we want to know so badly – he doesn’t require a test.

Yeah. Ok. And we got who pregnant, his dad and I?

There is a huge part of me that is reeling at all this madness, thinking, “Ok – NOW I understand why others believe in no sex before or outside of marriage. These kinds of ambiguities don’t happen then.” And just that thought crossing my brain is enough scare the shit out of me. Do I really believe that?! Holy crap – NO! A missing marriage license is definitely not the problem, here. What this baby needs is some stability in her little life, and a marriage license for her parents is certainly no guarantee of that.

So, I guess I just have to get over myself and go with my fallback plan of being as positive an influence in her little life as I can with the access I’m allowed by her parents and circumstance. I’ll have to find a way to make that enough for me and my little maybe grandbaby.

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My Maybe Grandbaby

They are both potty-training, and were brought to me with underwear and no pull-ups. So, my first act of Grandma-defiance was to get pull-ups for their little butts. No amount of cute makes up for peeing Grandma’s bed, sorry.

I pushed my bed against the wall and we all piled in like three bugs in a rug. Amazingly, they slept until 10am. But they were, after all, very tired from kicking Grandma all night long. And like most munchkins of 3 and 2 years old, respectively, they have no respect for the difference between the head and foot of the bed. They are, in fact, much happier sleeping sideways. Works for them…not so much for Grandma’s kidneys.

Then the most amazing thing of all happened: Oldest Son and girlfriend showed up by 12:30pm to pick them up! He’s starting to “get it”, that one…’tis much better to surprise Grandma by picking up grandkids earlier than expected. Tends to make her more likely to say ‘yes’ next time you want a kid-less night when you leave her wishing she’d had more playtime this time.

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Overnight at Grandma’s

Just a Mom?

A woman, renewing her driver’s license at the County Clerk’s office, was asked by the woman recorder to state her occupation.

She hesitated, uncertain how to classify herself.

“What I mean is, ” explained the recorder, “do you have a job or are you just a …?”

“Of course I have a job,” snapped the woman. “I’m a Mom.”

“We don’t list ‘Mom’ as an occupation, ‘housewife’ covers it,” said the recorder emphatically.

I forgot all about her story until one day I found myself in the same situation, this time at our own Town Hall. The Clerk was obviously a career woman, poised, efficient, and possessed of a high sounding title like, “Official Interrogator” or “Town Registrar.”

“What is your occupation?” she probed.

What made me say it? I do not know. The words simply popped out. “I’m a Research Associate in the field of Child Development and Human Relations.”

The clerk paused, ball-point pen frozen in mid-air and looked up as though she had not heard right.

I repeated the title slowly emphasizing the most significant words. Then I stared with wonder as my pronouncement was written, in bold, black ink on the official questionnaire.

“Might I ask,” said the clerk with new interest, “just what you do in your field?”

Coolly, without any trace of fluster in my voice, I heard myself reply, “I have a continuing program of research, (what mother doesn’t) in the laboratory and in the field, (normally I would have said indoors and out). I’m working for my Masters, (first the Lord and then the whole family) and already have four credits (all daughters). Of course, the job is one of the most demanding in the humanities, (any mother care to disagree?) and I often work 14 hours a day, (24 is more like it). But the job is more challenging than most run-of-the-mill careers and the rewards are more of a satisfaction rather than just money.”

There was an increasing note of respect in the clerk’s voice as she completed the form, stood up, and personally ushered me to the door.

As I drove into our driveway, buoyed up by my glamorous new career, I was greeted by my lab assistants — ages 13, 7, and 3. Upstairs I could hear our new experimental model, (a 6 month old baby) in the child development program, testing out a new vocal pattern. I felt I had scored a beat on bureaucracy! And I had gone on the official records as someone more distinguished and indispensable to mankind than “just another Mom.”

Motherhood! What a glorious career! Especially when there’s a title on the door.

Does this make grandmothers “Senior Research associates in the field of Child Development and Human Relations” and great grandmothers “Executive Senior Research Associates?”

I think so!!!

I also think it makes Aunts “Associate Research Assistants.”

Happy Mother’s Day to all of you moms out there. I hope you have a great day spent in the company of those you love.

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Happy Mother’s Day!

Sunday night, Adopted Son called pleading with me to come and pick him up so he could go to school Monday. “You know she isn’t gonna get me a ride, Mama, and I don’t want to be here. Please come get me. She said it’s ok.”

Given that his clothing was still here, I knew eventually I’d be burning gas anyway to take them to him, but there was still the issue of his mom and the food stamps/permission for the school to talk to me hanging out there, and I wasn’t willing to do the Okie-doke, not even for him.

More importantly, my own kids are watching this, and I knew I had to be really careful what I did next so as to not set precedents that would be my undoing down the road with them. So, I told him to put his mom on the phone. I told her the same thing I’d already told him – that it seemed like I wanted him in school more than she or he did, that I wasn’t willing to continue unless she followed through with the support she had promised and that I had reached my limit.

She asked me to come and get him and said she would have to get her food stamp card replaced because she had lost it over the weekend, but that she would do that Monday or Tuesday, but please get him so he can be in school because he has to go to court the 16th and it would reflect poorly to the judge if he hadn’t been in school.

Ugh.

Since I had to make a trip either way, I told her I would come get him so he could go to school, but that she had until Tuesday to make good on her stuff, or I’d bring him right back.

Well, lo and behold, she called yesterday right after school to tell me she had the food stamps for me, so I went and got them – sure did.

And then this morning, Adopted Son calls me on my cell phone to tell me he’s been suspended for the rest of the year for leaving campus at lunch yesterday. Apparently the principal saw him and another kid leaving the grounds and told the office people if he showed up for school today to suspend his butt, which they did.

Even though I was at school subbing, I knew I had to leave, pick him up, get his stuff from my house and take him home – or I would find some reason to give him yet another chance. So I called my school’s office, told them I had an emergency but would be back, and went and did exactly that. When I picked him up, he was acting kind of embarrassed, like he knew that he couldn’t argue with what I was doing because he’d brought it on himself. When he got out of the car, he got his bag of clothes from the back seat and then stopped, leaned down, looked me dead in the eye and said a somber and sincere, “Thank you.”

I said an equally somber and sincere, “You’re welcome,” and went back to school.

When I got home, I had two messages from his mother – one around 11am telling me he’d been suspended and that she wanted me to bring him and her food stamps back immediately, and then another at 4pm cussing me, telling me that the food stamps weren’t to make up for what he’d eaten while he was here all this time, but to help for this month, and that if I’d already gone to the grocery store, since he was no longer here and wouldn’t be, she expected me to pay her back…today.

Sigh.

That’s the kind of ignorance I knowingly took that boy back to, folks. And if she’s really waiting on me to pay her back, she’ll be waiting a very long time, indeed, as I told her each of the 4 times she called cussing me out this evening. I guess after the 4th time she couldn’t get a rise out of me, she gave up. Her parting shot was for me to stay the hell away from her son and mind my own business.

So, if I could ask a favor of you all, it is this: if you’re the praying sort, send one up for Adopted Son, that he finds his way in this world, because he’s truly on his own with that, and then send one up for his mom, who at best, is a tortured, addicted soul.

I knew going in how this would probably end, and I’m ok with it, I really am. All I set out to do was try to show him another life was possible for him, and I choose to believe that the thank you I got this afternoon was his way of telling me I had done that.

I had to explain why Adopted Son wasn’t here to Second Son and PDD when we got home, and all I said was that he’d gotten suspended for the rest of the year, thereby breaking his agreement with me, which meant I took him back to his mom’s.

PDD accepted that at face value, but Second Son knows there’s more to what happened than that. I saw a new level of respect in his eyes this evening, along with a sadness for his friend that we’ll probably end up talking about sooner or later.

But I’m going to bed tonight knowing I did what I could and in the process, learned a lot about myself and what kind of parent I really want to be. And the comforting thing is this: anytime we’re ready, we have an opportunity to do better based on the experience we’ve gained. That’s true for all of us, in every area of life. I’m taking mine, and I’ll be praying Adopted Son takes his…as many times as it takes.

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No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

No stretch of days seems to pass here lately without some serious life lessons involved. Life lesson realizations, more accurately.

You know, when I made the decision to take Adopted Son in, I knew what I was up against bringing someone everyone else in the world might see as a juvenile delinquent into my home. I mean, with a 14 y/o son of my own and an 8 y/o so appropriately nick-named ‘Prima Donna Daughter’, did I really need the added drama? I actually did consider this before doing it, though my detractors would argue otherwise. And to be fair, I only have detractors in the sense that there are some who think I’ve got a screw loose for doing this. Others worry that I’ll get sucked in to the drama that is this kid’s life at the expense of my own kids’ lives, and honestly – if I weren’t me living this and were an onlooker, instead, I’d probably think the same thing.

But I am me and I am living this – in technicolor, I might add. Complete with Dolby surround sound. Meaning, I’m paying attention….loads of attention. And I’m realizing that, at the moment, the grand lesson I’m to learn with all this is to do what I can (not more) with what I’ve got (without over-extending myself) where I’m at and to be ok with that. To allow what I can do to be enough, even if it doesn’t solve everything.

Do I want to do more? Hell yes! Good grief – this is exactly what my detractors are worried about! My mother will tell you I have Stray Puppy Syndrome and it extends to people, too. And my idealism tends to make me a little Don Quixote-like, to boot.

But is it my place? No. And my detractors, bless them, don’t know I realize this.

My first priority is my own children and their needs, but what I have left over to give another, I choose to give to him. Where love and guidance are concerned, there’s plenty to go around. That’s where I choose to believe that what I have to give will be enough. That it will be enough to make a difference.

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And We All Lived to Tell About It

For parents, there are two most important things – money making and children…of course it is easier to say that we need to balance between the two…but how about the reality..?

Lord knows I’ve screwed up countless times in this department as a parent. I may be more of an expert in what not to do than what to do, but I’m learning, and I’m seeing some differences.

One of the things I’ve learned is it’s inordinately difficult to impact your children’s lives if you’re not spending time with them.

This is a picture of (from left to right) Adopted Son, Second Son and my dad taken a week ago Saturday out at my parents’ place. Adopted Son had been with us a total of two days before we inducted him into the work crew. That day we taught him how to use the chainsaw, how to split and stack wood and build and monitor a bonfire.

Just spending the time together makes a difference. My dad probably doesn’t realize that he made a difference in Adopted Son’s life that day (just like he has in his grandchildren’s lives) just being himself. Adopted Son has made a couple of comments since that day about how cool Grandpa is, how much Grandpa cracks him up. I’m sure if you asked my dad, he’d be hard pressed to come up with anything ‘life changing’ he did or said that day.

And all through the day, Adopted Son got to see me in the role of daughter, something that can only be seen and experienced by putting us in the situation of being with and spending time with my parents. It’s been integral for my own children to see me in the context of extended family, because there’ve been many times I’ve been able to draw correlations between what I’m telling them as their mom and what they’ve seen and heard in situations where I’m the kid.

I also think it gave Adopted Son pause to consider that this pair of ‘old white people’ gave a crap about what happens to him. As awkward as it was for him to be subjected to ‘one of Grandma’s talks’, something which I and my children have been given countless times over the years, you know what? She hit a nerve with him, too, by telling him that while she knew some of his ‘history’, she saw in him the good kid that he really is. Trust me when I tell you my mom doesn’t just say that kind of stuff unless she really sees it.

After dinner, we taught Adopted Son how to play pinnochle. My mom was helping him on the first couple of hands and he picked it up right away. She taught him her strategy and he paid attention. While my kids will tell you Grandma is ‘crusty’ (a family term of endearment which means Grandma tells it like it is and doesn’t too much care about what you think about her candor), to Adopted Son, ‘crusty’ is ‘cool’.

I could spend every waking minute of every day working because I love the things that I do for income, but I also know that it’s all for naught if these kids and I are merely cohabitants in this house. Time and attention are what make kids feel loved, not things. So, I try every day to give them each a little of both. That’s the best ‘I love you’ I know how to give.

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Finding That Balance Between Making Money and Parenting