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| March 3, 2008
I have just been busier than a one legged man in a butt kickin contest. I keep looking at the year and wondering just where the hell it's gone because there are only 3 months - tres meses - left until the school year is OVER. Holy crow, I am going to be over run with nubbers in nothing flat and all I've done so far with the time I've had is run around like a chicken with its head cut off. Of course, it didn't help that just when I was about to start wearing a trash bag for a dress and skinning squirrels for fun and profit over the Winter break when I was going insane from complete kid saturation, came the following week of kids being out of school because the stupid electricity was off. Mind you, I love my little baybees to absolute pieces, but the fact remains that I am an old mom and old moms just do not hold up as well, as a rule, under total kid infiltration. Why did I have children milliseconds before my ovaries were set to dehydrate into useless little raisins, screaming incoherently about "shrinking" and "melting," much like the Wicked Witch herself? Well, because I married a handsome, strapping young lad (a very highly recommended practice, I can assure you) who was absolutely determined to procreate and my mother had (incorrectly, as it turned out) informed me that after 3 kids, they all start to just run together anyways and you don't so much notice if you have 3 or 6 or 10. I should have considered, before following her advice, the pertinent fact that my mother only had 3 kids, so what the complete hell did SHE know? Regardless, we happily set about the family creation, made easier by the fact that my other children were practically grown and gone with the exception of Delena, who at the time was so much of a hellion that we figured we had likely used up a good bit of our "but what if we have a really apeshit kid?" karma.
Delena was just total hell on wheels from the second she emerged from my quivering womb, took a second to assess the situation, drew in a sharp breath and let it out in a gale force, wall-shaking, blood-curdling, spine-shattering wail that made the denizens of advanced level of hell wonder if the price of poker just went up considerably. That child was a mass of fury and defiance (but just cute as a little bug's ear) and energy and wildness until she turned 11, at which time some kind of switch threw and she became a totally different person. Guess she just got it all out of her system, because she's 15 now and the best teenager I've ever met. The only problem - and I do mean ONLY problem - I ever have with her is getting her to clean her room. Other than that, she's a total joy. Yessir, I count my blessings.
Dylan was born right away and he lulled us into a false sense of security by being just the best little baby, toddler, preschooler, etc that was ever created. He smiled and cooed and never complained and was cuddly and just absolute perfect baby. That made us feel confident to try one more time (resulting in #6) and along came Nathan, who was very similar in nature to how Delena had been as a little child with a slicker element of shrewd included. Nathan was constantly in motion and he has this weird scientist brain that absolutely must know how this works or what's inside that and was forever taking things apart and breaking everything we owned and constantly getting into something he had no business touching. For 3 years, every time I went to the bathroom, I would come out looking for whatever tragedy had befallen while I was in there. I fully expected to have some kind of bizarre aversion to peeing by the time the kid started school. We have a semi-aquatic turtle in a tank and one time in particular, I sat him down in front of the TV, gave him toys to play with, went into the bathroom to pee and came out to find him standing over the turtle tank having dumped in a container of cayenne powder, a bottle of Stacker 2, 4 pencil erasers, a pair of scissors and 2 wooden ABC blocks. Mind you, all I did was pee. Not even a number 2 in the works. Any rational person would wonder how a 3-year-old could get to all of these dangerous things in such a short amount of time. Was my house not babyproofed with a 3-year-old and a 5-year-old running around? Why yes, it was. The pencil erasers, an obvious choking hazard, were in a box in the very back of the kitchen junk drawer, as were the scissors. The drawer had a child-proof lock on it. The cayenne powder was in a spice rack on the wall behind the stove. The Stacker 2 was in the medicine cabinet in my bathroom. The blocks, of course, were his own. After I found him standing on a kitchen chair, staring intently down into the turtle tank waiting to see what would happen, I quickly summed up the situation, snatched the turtles out of the tank and gave them a brisk and thorough bath, cleaned their tank and hoped for the best. Once the turtles were safe, I went around and collected all of the items he had stacked up to get to his weapons and returned them to their rightful place. Mind you, all of this had happened in the less than 5 minute span it took me to pee. No telling how long he had been planning, marking in his mind where the different things were located and devising his battle strategy. Sound unreasonable? If I'm lyin', I'm dyin'. That kid could sure pitch a fit too. I remember one time in particular, I took photos of him. That really made him mad:
Yeah, buddee. He could pitch a fit. Here's a photo from another time:
After 8 years of not getting his way by pitching a fit, he is finally starting to get the idea. He's a great kid, really smart and still with his head working to the point of steam rolling out of his ears about 98% of the time. I swear, that brain of his never stops cranking. For example, he is currently grounded from using the internet. I got a call in the middle of the day while he was at school from a grown man and it went something like this: MAN: Hello, may I please speak to Nathan? ME: *pause* Who is calling please? MAN: This is blah blah blah. He contacted our office online to inquire about a life insurance quote. ME: *blink*blink* Hmm. You do know that Nathan is 8, right? MAN: ...years old? ME: Yep. MAN: I wondered why he listed his height as 3' 11". ME: I'd say yes. It's true. He could have been a vertically challenged adult, but the fact is, he's still in grade school. MAN: Oh. I see. Sorry to have bothered you. But while I have you here, do you... ME: NO. Then I got a call from a company wanting to offer him a kickin rate on insurance for his Mercury Marquise. Then I got another life insurance salesman. So this warranted a very sincere and firm talk about filling out info in pop ups. He was completely understanding and wholly repented. Then I found out he used my credit card to order a career planning kit. Granted, it was only $1.99, but still. The principle and all. Hence, the grounding. (That is graveyard true). Dylan used to like to crawl into boxes and call them his "nest." I can't tell you how many times we found him curled up in some tiny space, sound asleep. I give good womb, I tell you. It stays with you.
I have been raising kids for easily more than 3/4 of my life. I started with my two brothers when I was 10 and they were 2 and 4. Mom was in and out of the hospital constantly and I took care of kids and the house. That segued into me starting my own family in 1978, so basically, I've been mothering for 37 years with about 10 more to go before I am fully mothering adults. Good lord, Joe will be 40 by then. Wow. I will be 56. I love being a mom very much and I'm pretty good at it by now, but since I've gotten older, I really treasure my alone time more and more. When you're young, you have more energy and less patience and when you're old, you have more patience and less energy. Eric and I started having babies right when McClellan Air Force Base was closing. I was a civilian employee there (if you called the base and spoke with Operator 12, that was me) making decent money and we decided that when my job at McClellan ended due to the closure, I would enter the world of "stay at home mom," which I did. After a while, I began doing web site design, but I have been fortunate enough to stay home with my kids since 1998. I can't even begin to say how grateful I am for that opportunity. We have driven used cars, sacrificed family vacations and given up a lot of luxuries that other families enjoy by having a working mom. We do not go to Tahoe in the summers or have a boat to take on the lake or send our kids to camp, but so far, the kids seem fairly untraumatized by the sacrifice. I can remember 3 actual family vacations we have taken in the 11 years we have been together. We have taken day trips here and there, but mostly, we are home. When Nathan was going into kindergarten, we had only recently moved here and Dylan was getting insanely ill any time he would ride down the mountain. There was no room for Dylan in Grizzly Pines, but Nathan made it in. Dylan was stuck with Pioneer, which is a fine school, but the bus ride to and from school caused him to get violently ill. I ended up home-schooling him from September through December and then begging, and I do mean begging Dick Williams to please, please, for the love of all that is HOLY PLEASE let this kid into Grizzly Pines. He did and in January of 2005, I spent my first day alone in a house, any house, in my entire life. All at once, both kids were gone the entire day. Nathan had been on half days since school started, but up here, kindergarten goes to full days after Christmas break, which is when Dylan started. Everyone told me, leaning in sympathetically, "Poor dear, you won't know what to DO with yourself." Bulllllshit! I'd had a list for about 10 years' time. I was like Tom Cruise in Risky Business, sock skating across the floor in my underwear (which took work since we had carpet), dancing on the furniture, playing air guitar and inviting hookers in to party. It was glorious. That was (do the math) 3 years ago and I have yet to have even 5 minutes of wandering around in the day thinking, "What evah will I DO with mahself?" I am infinitely thrilled by my own company and can spend hours and hours entertaining myself, then run around like a woman possessed cleaning for about 20 minutes to ready the house for the return of the masses. I love my kids, but honey, I love my quiet time too. So losing almost an entire school year to running around and doing errands makes me a little pissy. Three months to go. Mind you, summer break has its charm as well now. Back in the olden days, my kids actually required monitoring, but now, having been raised to be independent and self-entertaining (no, dammit, I play with them, but let's face it, too many people do NOT know how to have a good time on their own, so I make sure my kids do), my kids are perfectly happy to go do their own thing, coming to visit me at respectable intervals to give me those wonderful kid cuddles and tell me how much they love me. It's the kid equivalent to Eric carrying me around on a little satin pillow all day and feeding me chocolates. During the school year, I have to get up at 5:45am to get Missy Dee on the high school bus. Mind you, I don't HAVE to since she pretty much gets herself ready. I was hearing the other day a friend telling me that her daughter, the same age as Delena, takes two hours - did you get that? TWO HOURS - to get ready for school in the morning. I call Delena once, she gets herself dressed, packed and out the door and is on that bus exactly 30 minutes from the moment she first opened her eyes. I make her lunch, but she is fully capable of doing that, so technically, she could get herself out while I loll around in bed, but let's face it, who wants to leave a cold, dark house and not have some warm love to see them off in the morning? That's our special girl time where we connect at the beginning of the day and get the love out there that we are going to need to carry us through. In the summer, mind you, I'm a sleeping fool. So that's a good thing about summer. After Delena leaves out in the morning, I make a pot of coffee for Eric to wake up to a couple of hours later and then I may or may not collapse back onto the couch to snooze until the boys have to get up at 8am to get ready for school (it takes them 45 minutes from first rise until bus sitting). My life is set up to happily accommodate me falling onto the couch in total re-sleep. First of all is my wardrobe. Several years ago, I started purchasing my clothes with the condition of, "Can I sleep in this?" The next consideration is that I have a second, battery operated alarm clock downstairs pre-set to 7:50am. The third consideration is that when I bought my couch, I stretched out fully and completely on absolutely every couch that I didn't hate in Albertsen's Furniture store to find the one on which I could best sleep. That was my #1 criteria for couch selection and if you are ever fortunate enough to spend the night on my couch, you'll know exactly where my money went on that one. After Delena leaves, quite obviously, I am all set up for sleep or not sleep. Since I work until 10pm and need about 30-45 minutes to wind down before sleeping at night, that extra hour or so in the morning can make or break a day. Long gone are the times when I could go on 4-5 hours' sleep. Since I hit 40, if I don't get in my 8 hours, it's not going to be a happy day. While I was digging up kid pictures, I found some others you might like. This is Eric (left) and his twin brother, Edward:
This is me with my real estate agent hair, circa late 1980's:
This is very, very proud Dylan with the chess board pattern from the first time he beat Eric at chess. (Legitimately too, Eric doesn't fudge for kids):
If I had to chose something to take up so many years of my life, I'm good with where fate has led me. I won't say it hasn't been challenging and downright impossible at times, but I do love being a mom and seeing what wonderful people I was able to produce, despite some pretty formidable challenges. Having Eric be such a wonderful stepdad has been my saving grace. I can't imagine anyone else who could come into an established family as patriarch when his stepsons were almost as old as he was and still manage to come out of that situation best friends with all of them. He is very, very close with all 3 of my older sons and I am eternally grateful for the relationships they have forged together. He and Delena are, for all intents and purposes, father and daughter and she has a wonderful relationship with her birth daddy as well. I can feel that I am coming out of the many, many years of hands on mothering and getting to the place where you stand back and watch the parental seeds you planted either take root and blossom or sit on the hot sidewalk and dry into dust. I don't have any regret and I am good with this transition. I have had a lot of people, even those who know that I have 6 children, ask me if I wish I could go back to the times when they were tiny infants and truly, I don't. I have not felt one single little quiver of my ovaries since I had my tubes tied in 1999. I never had a moment when I had baby envy or felt that ominous, motherly stirring. I enjoy my grandchildren and look forward to more of them. I love where my kids are now and look forward to where they go. In many ways, as any parent of older children will tell you, it's much, much more scary to have children out there in the wild as adults, away from your watchful eye and hovering presence. They are doing their own thing, making their own choices (some of which are wretched and stupid mistakes) and paving their own way. All you can do is hope you did enough, said enough, loved enough and taught enough. Then you hope you pray enough. The time goes by so quickly and you really have to just drink it all in and savor every moment because you can't ever get it back. I wish I had known with the first boys' childhoods how essential it is to be very present, very grounded and very in the world, investing in each precious memory fully as they happen. I was so busy being young and feeling bulletproof and immortal that I missed a highly regretful portion of what made them into who and what they are today. I'm good with that, even if I never accomplish anything else in my life. (But I *am* going to lose 100 pounds by January 2nd!)
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Oh
child, please.
