Outa control

You know, it's bad enough that I can't control my pee, but at least it just drips out, a drop here, a dribble there. In contrast, my verbal peeing constitutes a torrent; my words, once firmly restrained, now gush forth like a creek after the first real thaw, bursting past dams and over levees, pouring foul-smelling water into basements, engulfing innocent passers-by.

Take the other night: Hugh was on the phone to his on-again, off-again girlfriend. Think of a strobe light, a disco ball. That's Hugh's relationship with this girl. Onoffonoffonoffonoff. Sometime Sorta Girlfriend finds Hugh's large number of "girls who are friends" very upsetting. Sometime Sorta Girlfriend thinks Hugh should hang out with only one girl. Ever.

A few nights ago, then, Hugh and SSG were talking on the phone. (For reasons I've never been able to discern, Hugh bellows when he's on the phone. In other words, I was not trying to listen. It was impossible not to listen.) They were arguing. Hugh had gone to the movies the night before with two girls from his church youth group, girls he's known since he was a baby, girls who fill the roles of cousins/sisters in his life. Now I'll admit, I find SSG hard to take and I'm revolted by her "I should be the only double X chromosome in your life" stance.

But what sent me over the edge was overhearing Hugh cajoling, wheedling, even pleading. My confident, assertive, beautiful boy, reduced to sniveling. Plus I was on Hour 56 of the Headache From Hell, and I was tired, and my damned old-lady foot hurt. So, really, is it all that surprising that as I walked past yet one more time and heard yet one more round of this awful, endless phone conversation, that I thought to myself, "Oh, geez, just tell her to fuck off, would ya?" Except I didn't just think it. I said it. Um, well, actually, I pretty much shouted it. Hugh just stared at me, then muttered into the phone, "I'll call you right back," and ran upstairs. I went into our bedroom, shut the door, lay on the bed, and said to Keith, "Really Bad Parenting Moment."

The next afternoon, Hugh came into my home office. "You know last night, when you told me to tell SSG to fuck off?" "Oh, Hugh, honey, I really--" But before I could launch my apology, he continued, "I told all my friends at lunch today. They said, 'Dude! Your mom is awesome!'" And he grinned at me.

Shit. Now what?

And here's to you. . .

In earlier posts I've likened menopausal women to toddlers and to teenagers. And to my dog. But lately I'm feeling more like Benjamin Braddock in the early scenes of The Graduate. (As opposed to the later scenes with Mrs. Robinson. I am not looking for my own young Benjamin. Nor my own older Mr. Robinson. Just to be clear.) You know, the scenes where he's floating in the pool, or sitting underwater in his scuba diving equipment. The aimlessness. The detachment. The lassitude. The disengagement.

I keep waiting for someone to stick their face in front of me and whisper, "Plastics!"

So it's my fault?

So my husband just said to my son, "You're acting like a real son of a bitch."

Hey, umm, hey, wait a sec. . .

Bad Hair Day

How much does hair grow in one night? I mean, really?

It's Sunday. You have normal hair. Even attractive, if slightly funky with a tendency toward frizz, hair. You're happy. You have a satisfying career and a charmingly insoucient adolescent son. Life is good.

It's Monday. Your hair has grown exponentially. Flips, waves, cowlicks, erratic curls, bizarre bumps, and random poofs now adorn your head. You face a bleak and pointless future. You wonder why you ever dared have children.

I'm friggin' 50 years old. I thought I'd be better than this by now.

And I will be. Tomorrow. After a haircut, color, and highlights.

Supernanny

regret (verb) : 1)to feel sorrow or remorse for; 2) to think of with a sense of loss.

I'm watching Supernanny. I love Jo the Supernanny. Tonight she's dealing with a poor, lost, clueless young Houston widower and his three out-of-control little boys. (All with shaven heads; they look like concentration camp kids.) One hour. Total transformation; complete healing. Screaming, biting, hitting, kicking, emotionally autistic, junk-food addicted, horrid hellions transfigured into banana-bread-baking, mom-remembering, veggie-adoring, well-disciplined little troopers.

OK. A bit unrealistic. Yet, watching Jo, she does make sense. You can see the hows and whys and what ifs.

Damn. If I'd only had had a supernanny. I didn't feel the need, actually, with Owen. I could read and he conformed to the baby books. You stuck Owen in timeout; he jumped out; you put him back; he got it: "Oh,right, here I stay." You gave him a reward chart with stickers; he thought, 'ooh stickers! nifty-keen!'; he performed accordingly. But then came Hugh. You stuck Hugh in timeout; he jumped out; you put him back; he jumped out; you put him back; he jumped out; you put him back; he jumped out; you put him back; he jumped out; you put him back; and on and on and on until you're screaming and you realize you're about to throw Hugh out the window. You gave Hugh a reward chart with stickers; he thought, 'who gives a shit about stickers?' and careened on to his next act of destruction. So, given the data at hand, I concluded, umm, ok, timeouts and reward charts don't work with this kid. Umm, now what?

And then, years later, I watched Jo the supernanny cheer a mom on through four hours--four hours--of firmly but gently placing a toddler back in timeout. If only I'd had someone like Supernanny saying yes, yes, you're doing it right, it's ok, you can do this, yep, this is it, this is what moms do. I watched that episode with Hugh, Hugh, who kept saying, "Gosh, a kid like that would drive me nuts."

I could do it better now. Really. I'd be really good at it now.

Have mercy on me, a sinner.

Goddammit. Bloody hell. Bugger all.

In the past few weeks I've signed contracts to write two books. Let me be clear: I want to write these books. One might actually be read by ordinary folks and even make me a wee bit of money: It's about Margaret Thatcher; I mean, who's not interested in Margaret Thatcher, total she-devil and anti-feminist persona?

The problem with signing book contracts is that then you actually have to write the damn book(s).

Which means: one must not lose entire work days because one has a headache. Even if it's a nonstop motherfucking killer I'm gonna die headache.

Sooooo, what does one do, when one loses several entire work days because one has said nonstop etc. headache?

One gets depressed. One gets tired and cranky and bitchy. And one feels really really sorry for one's self.

Except:

Ordinary men and women and (God help us all) children are fighting for their freedom and their lives in Libya. And oh dear God, those beautiful Bahrainis are being mowed down by Saudi troops. And Jesus Jesus Jesus, entire cities destroyed and hundreds of thousands on the move and a nuclear holocaust impending. . . and one's heart and one's soul and one's spirit reaches across continents and oceans to Japan. . . . and I bet not a one of those Libyans or Bahrainis or Japanese cares about their literary legacy or their professional careers right now. I bet "Damn, my head hurts" is not a phrase of much meaning out there, on the edge of cosmic significance, right at this moment.

And yet, there's the Lucipherian ego, the Satanic self, the demonic part of me that screams, "Excuuuuse me!!!! I'm having a rough time here! My head really hurts! I don't wanna think about you people." And I feel so guilty for such horrible, self-obsessed, oh-so-trivial thoughts, and then, in the ultimate confirmation of Original Sin, I find myself utterly absolutely furious at the Libyans and the Bahrainis and the Japanese for making me feel so goddamned guilty. . . .

Jesus Christ. Oh dear God.

Have mercy.

Sabbath

When I remember, I tune into WGN at 9:00 pm. The wonders of cable tv: I sit in my south Louisiana living room and watch the local Chicago news. It tickles me every time. (I'm a simple soul, obviously.)

This past Wednesday, Keith was on the couch as well, so we both had a good chuckle when one of Chicagoland's ace reporters told us that because Easter is late this year, Lent is longer than usual: 46 rather than 40 days. Ummm. If Easter is late, so is Ash Wednesday and there are always 46 days between: 40 days of Lenten observance and the six Sundays which are Feast Days, and therefore not part of Lent. But you knew that already.

Sundays are Feast Days.

Gosh. Not quite the way I was raised. Certainly the Christian Reformed Church regarded Sundays as special but its interpretation and enforcement of that specialness translated not into festivity but rather into tedium: two lengthy somber church services (no children's sermons or any such levity), compulsory afternoon naps (required for everyone, adult and child; we took "Day of Rest" literally), and a variety of bizarre prohibitions. These prohibitions varied by family. My family was on the liberal end--unlike many in our church, we could watch tv and do homework on Sundays. But the list of what we could not do was still lengthy. Most importantly, we could not earn money (I still remember the face of the "Hickory Farms" manager at the mall when she asked my 15-year-old self if I could work on Sunday in an emergency and I replied, in utter and absolute sincerity, "Well, yes, but I couldn't accept payment for it."). But we could also not spend money (no shopping, no movie-going, no dining out), do housework or laundry or yardwork (not a much resented prohibition, actually), or join in any neighborhood activities (definitely no Little League or any kind of organized sports). More confusingly, we could not play catch or ride bikes or jump rope but it was ok to play inside with paper dolls or stuffed animals or board games or even consumerist secular fashion-obsessed Barbie and Ken. In other families, the prohibitions were similarly odd: one friend could not use scissors.

Things got really bizarre, however, during summer vacations. There we'd be, at the cottage--no air conditioning, sweltering heat, the lake glistening before us. But swimming on Sunday was forbidden. Unless, that is, the temperatures rose above 90 degrees. Then we could swim; evidently heat wiped out the sin. So we'd cluster, sweaty and forlorn, around the outside thermometer, desperately willing the mercury to climb. My friend Cindy had a different Sunday swimming rule. No matter what the temperature, they could swim out to the floating deck and lie down there. But no splashing or jumping or overt enjoyment. Just, you know, sober reverent holy swimming.

Slowly, gradually, the prohibitions lifted. My mom began buying the Sunday paper at the White Hen Pantry (but not from the White Hen just down the block from the church, in case a church member saw her). We stopped going to the cottage and started taking hotel vacations that required us to use restaurants on Sundays. I went off to college and--even tho' it was Calvin College, where the library was closed on Sundays and where we all got up and went to church, even without our parents' presence, and then went back to the dorms and took naps--we quickly grew used to Sunday laundry stints and pancake suppers out at the IHOP. By the time I graduated, even my grandmother was ok with buying a nice dinner out at a nice restaurant after church. God seemed ok with it too.

But, you know, it's a slippery slope. We're a church-going family, but the rest of Sunday is just like the rest of the week: hectic, disheveled, crammed with the detritus of daily living. No rest, nothing special, nothing sacred.

Still no Feast.