Guilty as Charged

I spoke to my mother for the first time in eight months yesterday. Well, spoke, is putting it lightly. Rather I screamed my head off like a crazy person, engaging in a battle only familiar to those who’ve been in the love-hate tangle of the mother-daughter relationship. About 15 minutes into the phone call I realized I was within ear shot of my 3 and 5 year-old boys. I’m generally not a yeller, and when I hung up I knew I had to talk to my kids.

They were in the living room watching Little Bear in their pj’s still at 11 a.m. They didn’t look up when I came in. I knelt down and called them to me – asked if they’d heard Mama raise her voice, explained sometimes people feel really angry and yell, asked them how it made them feel. My five year old said ‘sad’ and my three year old said ‘scared’. I apologized, kissed them both and made a snack. Depositing goldfish crackers and grapes in front of them, I noticed the wet stain on my younger son Solomon’s pants – that’s when my old archenemy strutted in and sat down on the couch – I like to call her Guilt.

I’m not going to mince words, Guilt is a bitch. Her eyebrows are perfectly plucked, her car is not full of old fast food wrappers and she never yells in front of her kids or forgets to brush their teeth. She is the uninvited guest in every mother’s delivery room. She starts by telling you not to take the epidural, the first night you have your new baby she whispers a reminder that you have no idea what you are doing and then she goes home with you. Her presence is fairly consistent and her daily lectures sound something like this: “Here is the greatest joy and love and challenge of your life and along with the highs I’m going to make sure that you stress over every mistake you make. I’m going to double-check that you never feel that you are giving enough, playing enough, being enough of a mother.”

She raises her eyebrows at you over her Cosmo when you are frustrated at a crying baby, she wags her finger when you turn on Dora so you can take a nap or forget shin guards for soccer practice.

Staring at my little boy’s wet pants Guilt leans over my shoulder and lovingly informs me that I am indeed the worst mother on the face of the earth and should immediately report myself to Child Protective Services. This is the point I usually head for the Ben and Jerry’s or try to remember if my credit card is maxed out because a little shopping therapy would do the trick. Instead I change his pants quietly and move on with my day.

Later that night, I’ve successfully lured Guilt into the guest room with a triple nonfat latte and a book on home schooling. In her absence I remind myself that the day my first son was born mothering became my religion. I think about every game I’ve ever played, trips to the park, spontaneous art projects and living room dance parties I’ve shared with my boys. I think about how I can just look at them and make them laugh. And as I meditate on these little moments my three-year-old approaches with his big brown eyes and cowlick covered head and says with a quivering lip, “Mama, when you were yelling today, I was terrified.”

There is a drop in my stomach, a mixture between those magical first trimester butterfly kicks and a rollercoaster that seems much tamer from the ground. I feel myself reel a bit, and before I call Guilt back in and admit to her that I only ready half of What to Expect When You are Expecting and that a week after Solomon was born I walked into the post office and waited in line for five minutes before I remembered that he was still in the car, I catch myself and take a breath. I glance past his angel-face and notice Guilt is now on the couch, smiling smugly with her shaved legs and designer handbag filled with homemade baby food and signed permission slips. I swallow my confession, smile and face my little boy. “Thank you for telling me that son. I’m so sorry I scared you but sometimes people just get upset and it’s not something to be afraid of. But I really love that you will talk to me about your feelings.”

The lip stops quivering and he hugs me now, hard with his delicate little body and as he draws back he puts his hand on my cheek and says “I love you Mama, even when you’re loud.”
I think of my own mother now and how Guilt must’ve looked in her tube top and platforms sitting in our avocado-green kitchen thirty years ago. I say a silent prayer that I will never allow any disagreement with my children to create eight months of silence between us and decide that tomorrow my son’s and I will have no uninvited visitors in the house. We’ll color and do a little gardening and maybe even watch a little TV. in the afternoon while mama enjoys a much deserved afternoon nap.

First Love

Love comes in many forms. A scruffy white puppy, a new black sports car with leather interior, a man who never forgets to take out the garbage. For my five year-old son Cai, love was once Scooby Doo movies and a 64 pack of Crayola crayons with a sharpener. But after five long years on this earth his love has taken on a new form and her name is Sophia.

My boy is sheltered; I’ll be the first to admit it. Don’t get me wrong, he knows about reincarnation and stranger-danger and the perils of ‘grown-up drinks’ – but I have taught my son very little about romantic love and the opposite sex. I guess I just figured that I would answer questions as they came up. And the truth is the only one who has asked any questions is my three year-old Solomon.

Several weeks ago as I dried off from a shower Solomon looked up from his play-dough very earnestly and said, “Mama, you have a no-penis, right?” I kind of shrugged and agreed. He then asked if he could check and seeing no harm in it I dropped my towel and he leaned forward with a furrowed brow toward my crotch and then looked up at me, held up a finger in determination and decidedly said, “I’m going to check around back.” Standing there with a wet towel held to my chest as my toddler bent at the waist behind me and declared, “Nope, Mama, not here either,” I decided maybe I had withheld too much information.

As parents we want our children to know enough about the world to grow without ruining the blissful innocence they are born with. While Solomon hasn’t quite grasped the concept of boy parts and girl parts, both my boys understand that they are ‘gentleman’ if they open the door for someone and that when people fall in love they have babies together. However there are no kissy-noised taunts or teasing in our house about preschool girlfriends or love. This is not to say I think good natured teasing of this sort is damaging – but coming from a family where my father gave joking ‘hickey-checks’ to me and my sixth grade girlfriends, I guess I am trying to keep my baby a baby a little bit longer.

So romance snuck up on us, Cai and I. Love is a subtle thing and I think it was the authenticity of this first crush that really floored me. Not knowing about these kinds of feelings I have witnessed Cai experience romantic love in its purest form. My son is a clown and usually if he likes someone he puts on his best comedy routine for them. However, Sophia is different.

On a school field trip after most of the children were seated he leaned over to me as we waited in line and in a quiet and disappointed little voice said, “I really wanted to sit next to her Mama,” nodding toward Sophia and her Shirley Temple curls. Well, being the push-to-the-front-of-the-parade kind of mom I am, I made sure a seat was made available next to her and then I watched with fondness and a pang as my slapstick boy sat quietly with his hands tucked between his legs, stealing occasional glances at the little girl next to him. His smile was a mix between Mona-Lisa and Pepe Le Pew when his pupils turn to pulsating hearts and he faints. The feeling this gave me fell somewhere between utter love for my boy and heartbreak of the knowledge that he could love another woman.

So now it’s been three weeks since Cai has mentioned Sophia. And when I volunteer at his school there is no evidence of the shy fascination that I saw last month. Love is fickle and fleeting, even, especially for five year-old boys and I realize now that it is I that will crumble with each heartbreak, with each passing crush. So I think I’ll quit the sappy mom routine and pull myself up by my bootstraps. I’ve been thinking about telling my son about romance and butterflies and give him a definition for all these feelings that have cropped up. Mulling over his innocence yesterday and beginning a ‘birds and the bees’ lecture in my head, Cai snuggled next to me on the couch to watch an old episode of Scooby Doo. He then began to explain to me how two genies on the show were very different.

“See Mama, one is a boy and one is a girl. She’s pretty smart and he’s really dopey. Oh, and he’s ugly and she’s hot. Not like temperature hot Mama, like you know, like girl-hot.”

He looked up at me expectantly with an expression that was too-wise and a little smug. He knew exactly what he was talking about, and suddenly I knew that all I had tried to keep away from him had been there all along. “You do know, right Mama?” he waited.

I stared at his sweet five year-old face, and had a moment that we are all familiar with. It is a sensation particular to mothers, a visceral feeling, one that tells you time is passing too quickly and our babies are growing up. I snuggled a little closer to him and smiled my bravest smile.

“Yes, son. Yes, I do know.”

Statement of Intent

I find myself obsessively writing in my head and I am trying to put some action behind the busywork bullshit. So here is my statement of intent:


I want to create a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction by writing something everyday.

Ok, I came up with this five days ago and this is only the second day I've written - but that's something damnit. And this is something to. More tomorrow, I promise...