THE DODGEBALL TEST

It all started with my nephew at a family dinner.  We were grilling him about a kid his age, someone we vaguely knew.  “He’s an OK guy,” offered Collin, chewing his burger.  “But he cheats at dodgeball.”

 

Instantly, we all got it.  From that moment on, how you played dodgeball became our family’s insider character test.

 

Since my Ked-clad camp days, dodgeball has enjoyed a resurgence in cool.  It’s not quite the same bully’s nirvana it was in my gym class. You don’t try to nail the chubby girl in the back row who eats paste or the nosepicker with knocked knees.  Dodgeball is a process of elimination; a survival of the fittest.  Initially it’s organized chaos, with dozens of balls flying around simultaneously.  Get hit anywhere below the neck and you’re out.  It’s pretty black and white.  And in the craziness of the game’s first few minutes, it can come down to one person’s word against another’s. 

 

There are the people who get hit and deny it.  There are some who challenge the call, and still others who give in and slink off when questioned.  And then there are those who do the right thing.  Even when no one is watching, they pull themselves out of the game and onto the sidelines.

 

I aspire to raise one of those kids, the ones who self-police, no matter who is looking.  It’s hard work to install a moral compass that stays relatively true.  You have to be willing to nag and stay the course and remind and nag again.  But the payoff is huge.

 

A few years ago I rented an R-rated movie with my daughter and two of her friends.  It was mostly inappropriate humor, bad language and some cheesy violence, but when I saw the rating I made sure to ask both kids if this was OK with their parents.  I was impressed when both girls called their mothers to double check.  They could have easily lied.

 

When I complimented my daughter on her friends’ stand up nature, she immediately jumped on me.  “Mom, I’ve never seen an R-rated movie ever.  And I’d check with you first,” she huffed defensively.  She’d passed the dodgeball test on that one.

  

I’m well aware that sneaking R rated movies or cheating at games aren’t gateway activities to cooking meth or serial killing.  But doing the right thing starts with emphasizing the minor stuff.  It’s about being vigilant.

 

By trying to be our kids “buddies” and shying away from boundaries, too often we let the little things slide. And that means we pass up lots of small but precious opportunities to teach good old-fashioned citizenship and manners.  Respect for the elderly, giving up your seat on the train, looking people in the eye, delivering a firm handshake, where else will our children pick these things up? I have a warm spot in my heart for a young man who calls me Ma’am, even though I wasn’t raised anywhere near the south.

 

I want my children to understand that there are consequences for actions. That means we need to follow through with our threats. There is a famous parenting story about a family traveling to Disney World. Exasperated by the dreaded “when will we get there?” question, the parents told the kids if they asked one more time, they wouldn’t be able to go to Disney World.  When little Johnny broke the rule, they stuck to their guns. The miserable parents went to the park sans kids, hiring a sitter for the hotel room. 

 

 

Yes, I sound like the grannies of a previous generation, cluck-clucking at that hip-swivelin’ rock’ n’ roll music. Or, heaven forbid, I recall how ridiculous Tipper Gore sounded to me in the 80’s calling for music labeling on records, until I had my own kids and really listened to some of the misogynist bondage rap stuff on the radio. I took back everything I’d muttered under my breath about Tipper and freedom of speech that day.

 

When my children were very little, in the span of three weeks I left my wallet on top of our station wagon twice and drove away.  Those were exhausting days with two kids under age four and a home business.  The second time it happened, after I’d just replaced all my credit cards and license, I burst into tears at the realization. I’d just been to the cash machine and withdrawn my weekly budget.

 

The phone rang a few hours later.  A man had found the wallet.  He lived 20 minutes away in what I knew to be a somewhat sketchy neighborhood.  I was making bets that the money was gone. Planning on giving him a reward, I also bought a 12-pack of beer, figuring he could turn the night into a party in his ‘hood. 

 

When I rang the bell, the man who answered the door was in flowing robes, with a top knot of hair.  I quickly reached into my limited knowledge of Eastern beliefs and dimly recognized that he was a Sikh.  As I thrust the beer at him in gratitude, he practically recoiled.  “We don’t drink in our religion,” he said.  And he proceeded to invite me inside for a cup of tea.  My humiliation at my sanctimonious neighborhood profiling was complete.  The wallet was intact, with every dollar untouched.

 

There are basic things we all wish for our kids that include good health, the capacity to love, intelligence and common sense.  But I think about some of the other characteristics I hope we’ve instilled, as they sit on the lip of our nest, poised to fly. My hope is that I’ve raised kids to be considerate and upstanding, to do the right thing on the sidelines, not just on the 50 yard line in the floodlight’s glare. I want them to be the kind of people who would return the wallet with every cent intact.  I want them to defend the underdog and play fair, to be the person who takes himself out when he gets hit in dodgeball because the rules apply to all of us, whether or not anyone else is watching.

BOOK TOUR BABY - Part 6

(cont) This last flight leg is a small prop plane. We are delayed an hour and by the time almost everyone has boarded, a family straggles on. They are Pakistani from what I can tell. They are exhausted, two kids in tow, one an infant and the other about three. I silently close my eyes and recite the airplane mantra. “Please don’t let them sit near me, please don’t let them…..” Lo and behold they are seated somewhere else. I relax. But no. A skirmish ensues. Two people have the same seat and now the flight attendant bustles by me with a withering glare. They go back and forth in high anxious voices. The family claims they bought four seats, one for the car seat and infant. The flight attendant says no, you didn’t. You can feel the tension on the airplane rise. It’s humid outside and the air conditioning isn’t working while the plane is grounded. “No one is moving”, the flight attendant announces, “until somebody comes clean!” She glares over at the Pakistani family and at the slight man with the gelled hair and wire rims who has been claiming the seat is his. Someone who was on the waiting list has gotten on board, which is completely possible given the chaos of boarding all these regional flights from the same gate just minutes apart. Finally, a student-type with a pony tail and back pack slinks off the plane, and the Pakistani family settles in. The father is way up front separated from the other three, who are now, naturally, seated in the row directly behind me. The three year old immediately begins kicking. The mother has the baby on her lap and the car seat, gets its own entire seat. Separated from his father by a half a plane and from his mother by an aisle, the three year old begins crying, and then screaming. The mother, inexplicably begins to reason with her three year old. “You must stay in your seat,” she says in stilted English and then switches to her native tongue. “Stay there. We are taking off….. this is the law--- you must obey….big boys obey the law.” These are some of the phrases I hear and I cringe, knowing they wouldn’t work on my teenagers, let alone a sobbing three year old. The father, about ten rows ahead, seemingly oblivious to the rest of us on the plane, begins yelling at the top of his lungs back at the child with what appears to be his name…….”Dooda, Doo Da”, he screams. And then he barks something unintelligible in his native language. The rest of us are stunned into silence, blinking, as we flinch at the sound of the yelling and stare straight ahead during the runway taxi. All of a sudden the man begins to rise and head back toward his son. “Sit down” screams the flight attendant. She has the simmering “pleasure in pain” look of the Ukranian lady at my nail place, just before she rips off the hot wax. That kind. The father is now torn, follow the law or get up to console the screaming Dooda across the aisle from his wife and ten rows back. His wife continues to numbly repeat airline regulations to her son, who is now kicking the back of my chair as he screams so that the back of my head comes off the seat and flops back down Where are the happy meals, the teething rings, the bag of Skittles? This doesn’t look like a Skittle kind of family but when you are packing for a flight with multiple young children you bring freaking syringes filled with morphine if that will help. I don’t care if you are vegan, you bring a giant box of Pop Tarts and chewy bars and a Costco sized bag of goldfish or lollypops. When you are on a plane with a child you bring any forbidden food that will shut them the hell up. You break every rule because this is a COURTESY thing.  This is an issue of YOUR sanity and the people around you in a confined space. Now the little boy is crying so hard he is choking on his own snot, making disturbing, gulping sounds as the mother keeps trying to reason with him. She still doesn’t seem to have produced one toy, one book, or one distraction. She is sticking with the airline regulations bit, hoping logic might still work. All I had wanted was a 15 minute nap and as my head continues to rocket forward with each kick of the kid’s sneakers I can feel my blood pressure rise. I try to channel my own days, my own mortifying moments when an entire plane looked at me with the “why can’t you control your own child” glare. Now the mother is yelling at the father to come back, the father is yelling back to her, as if none of the rest of us exist. It’s time for an intervention. I can’t believe I am about to do this but all of the other passengers on the plane seem to have been turned into zombies. There is an undercurrent of ill will for this family amongst the other travelers that borders on insurgency. If this was a reality show, this family would be voted off the island first. “Let me have him,” I blurt out as I swivel around and face the miserable mother. She hands me the infant on her lap so that she can console the boy behind me, across her in the aisle. “He misses his father,” she says simply. I fight the urge to take out my own keys to find an old piece of gum, anything to show her the technique of distraction with a small child. I have nothing. The seatbelt sign comes off and the father now bolts for the back. He has the sudden erratic movements that in a post- Sept 11th world remind all air travelers of a hi-jacker. You can see the other passengers startle in their seats as he races past them all and dives for his son’s seat. The son quiets. The baby on my lap, whose diaper is so wet my fingers leave indentations under his clothes, begins to realize that I am not his mother. He scrunches up his face preparing to cry and emits a blast of gas that sounds somewhat like a muffled gun shot. After I hand the child back, I silently thank Jesus that I made it out of that part of my mothering life alive. As the plane begins to prepare for its descent, I can see the many twinkling lights of the New York metropolitan where I live. I’ve made it. Made it on the plane ride, on the book tour, made it almost home. And when the taxi finally pulls into the driveway, there is that moment after I get out, before my nostrils fill with the familiar scent of my house, before the kids and the dogs and my husband see me and come running to greet me, that I will fight the urge to fall upon my knees, like along-ago arrival to Ellis Island, and kiss the asphalt. END

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Where Oh Where is my Baby Girl?

I want to hurt her. OK, not hurt her. Maybe just dig my nails into the underside of her upper arm to shut her up. Was I ever this bad? Wait, don’t answer that, Mom. I was totally capable of downright disdainful, dismissive, and I had “disgusted” down pat. She is a teenager. And she is still capable of small moments of kindness, usually when my credit card is involved. This is adolescence. “We” are perpetually exhausted, run down, pooped, beat, dead. Everything always hurts or aches. “I’m tired,” she says, and she collapses into me; all long coltish bones and lovely curves. “I’m soooooo tired,” she says again for emphasis. “What about me?” I want to scream. “I rose at 5:00 a.m. to walk the damned dogs, packed lunches, started laundry and scheduled your ortho appointment. And that’s on top of my job.” But of course I don’t say anything of the kind. That would send her skittering in the other direction, eyes rolling like dropped marbles. She’ll find out soon enough when she is tending a flock of her own. “Keep it tender,” I think. “Make a false move and she will bolt like a fawn.” She is at least out of her room now, down in the public areas of the house, lured by the smell of a roast chicken dinner. When I ask her a question in my chirpy, Doris Day voice, she responds in a monotone, like those zombies in “Night of the Living Dead.” She couldn’t be less animated. Unless we are shopping. Is it wrong to dislike your child sometimes? Are we allowed to admit that? I know she is under there somewhere, like a kid hiding beneath a blanket, I’m waiting for my real daughter to crawl back out. This is the kid who had a joker-sized smile as a baby; wide and open as a boulevard. I can still see it sometimes, the echo of that little baby girl. I can see it when she finds something humorous, giggles, or decides to engage with me in a joke, something at the expense of her father or sisters. It is there in the flash of her eyes, a glance or an expression. We are colluding in those moments, co-conspirators, and it feels good. Like the old times. And then, abruptly, just when I think we are on that terra firma again, she pulls her head into her shell. “How did you sleep?” I ask in my most unctuous voice on school mornings . “Unnnnnggghhhhhhhhhhssssssss.” Is that an animal noise? Vegetable? Mineral gas? Does that even qualify as a response? I wonder, blinking my eyes like a cow. “I’m so tiiiiiiiiirrrrrrrrred.” She slumps onto the kitchen counter, refusing breakfast, eyes fluttering dramatically. Really? I want to say. You are? That’s a new one. But snarky aint going to get me anywhere. Naturally, I hold my tongue and quietly slip a banana into her backpack. I can wait this out. I can play “the teen whisperer,” biding my time until she has to appear for food. In these moments there is hope that I might be able to slip a noose over her neck and lure her into spilling one clue that gives me an insight into her psyche these days. I took Psych 101 in college. Darn tootin’. OK. OK. I’ll be the first to admit that the morning IS my time. I’m overly caffeinated and happy and I’ll talk to you about anything. I have enough energy to tackle America’s healthcare agenda in the morning, but ask me anything around 9:00 PM that requires a brain wave and I might chew your arm off at the elbow. I am a Type A obnoxious morning person. Everyone in the family knows this, and I forgive the others who aren’t. I really do. But just once I want her to stand up tall and say, “I had a great sleep. I feel terrific!” Perhaps I am being a bit harsh here. She is never the kid who asks for too much. On balance she is pretty good to her sisters. She’ll occasionally spend her own babysitting money on clothes without being told. She is a loyal and generous friend, has never come home drunk and doesn’t doesn’t do drugs (that I know of anyway). She is dutiful and self- motivated when it comes to school work and commitments. And she is sweet. Deep down underneath that teenaged veneer she is sweet as all get-up. I’ve decided that being a mother to teens is similar to being a Tibetan monk; waiting, patiently, for that one crucial moment when the Dalai Lama passes by in the procession to grace you with his presence and blessing. As a monk, you don’t get to just hang out with the Lama. You don’t get to make yak butter with him or bust out yoga moves and circle chant. You wait for the Dalai Lama to make his appearance. It’s not that he’s too good for you or too exalted or too…… Lama-ish. It’s just that he has really important stuff to do, like focus on World Peace and human rights. And I figure those monks understand that they can’t get his undivided attention. That’s just the way it is so they go out and do what monks do. So that’s me. I’m the monk. I’m waiting by the sidelines for the times that the Lama and his entourage pass by with the holy water or prayer shawls or however the Dalai Lama moves through his town offering blessings and eternal goodness. I figure it’s got to be worth it—waiting for the Lama to smile at you. It’s worth it because in that occasional smile my daughter throws out are a thousand sparkling suns. In her heart, so absorbed now with the stress of SATs and next year’s college applications and who might ask her to the prom, and a bundle of other unarticulated adolescent dreams and disappointments that she doesn’t realize I understand; in that teenaged heart still beats the very essence of my baby girl. And she will emerge again. It may not be tomorrow. Or next year. Or even until she experiences motherhood for herself, if that’s what she chooses. But I’m a monk. I hold my tongue and I prostrate myself. I wait for those moments of grace. Because in those moments, motherhood is all worth it.

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