Category: Motherhood

. . . and I don’t even have a license.

Catch-up

Friday, August 31:

Friday . . . one student in school, two students awaiting their start-date of September 17. One preschooler who alternately yearns to grow up and then tells me she is never going to school. Ever.

My husband has decided that every Friday night will be Date Night, and so every Friday afternoon has turned into Frantically Clean the House and Listen to the Preschooler Cry About the Babysitter Coming Over Afternoon. Which, believe me, is as fun as it sounds. Our 9-year old went to spend the night with his best friend and the neighbor came to spend the night here, just ensuring balance in the universe. (Four kids under the roof at all times. The universe demands it.)

We went to dinner at Applebee’s (we had a gift card!) and then we walked on a local 3.5 mile trail.

Saturday, September 1:

I took my daughter with me to run birthday-party related errands. First, the grocery store to buy the balloon she saw a week ago that I had previously refused to purchase. (A Sesame Street bus balloon, of all things, a show she has disdained for at least three years.) Then to the Dollar Store for more helium balloons and then onto Costco to pick up the cake and a hundred bucks’ worth of other stuff I didn’t know we needed until it jumped into the cart while I wasn’t looking. This is why they check the receipts at the door, you know, because the merchandise is always hitch-hiking in unsuspecting customers’ carts.

The birthday party started at 3 p.m. and although the weather forecast was iffy in previous days, on Saturday, the sun shone and the temperature hovered around 75 degrees. The pool was mostly deserted, so Grace and her four little friends swam to their hearts’ content.

100_1391.jpg

The only glitch occurred when my husband lit the birthday candles (five candles!) and the wind blew them out before she had a chance. (Our rendition of Happy Birthday was slow, I guess.) My husband said, “You only brought two matches!” which was true. The big box of matches I keep in the kitchen was down to two measly matches, but I thought two matches for five candles was a pretty excellent ratio. I failed to consider the velocity of the wind. And so, she watched in horror as the wind blew out her candles.

100_1397.jpg

Lucky for us, one of our guests came up with a lighter. Hooray.

Yes, that’s a stork on her cake. She picked it out, despite my best attempts to persuade her to choose a princess on her cake. She thought this was a duck and a duck was just what she wanted. She is five and she knows her mind.

Sunday, September 2:

We entered church and half a dozen people said with great enthusiasm: “Happy birthday, Grace!” And she looked puzzled because I had neglected to explain that we were celebrating her birthday a day early. So, during a quiet moment, I explained that her Real Birthday was on Sunday but that her party was on Saturday. She accepted this explanation. And then we took a bunch of pictures in the fellowship hall while my husband preached in the sanctuary.

100_1429.jpg That’s her new dolly, Emma, and her new kitty that purrs.

I cannot believe that five whole years have passed since I gave birth in my bedroom to this long-fingered and long-toed baby. I cannot believe that she’s so much like me and I’m not sure whether to be amused or alarmed. (My husband finds it hilarious to watch me dealing with my Mini-Me because his Mini-Me, our 9-year old, is such an easy, delightful, sweet child and my Mini-Me is sassy and talkative and did I mention SASSY? And the talking? The never-ending TALKING PLEASE MAKE IT STOP!? I am not that talkative, though I might admit to a wee bit of sassiness.)

Okay, where was I?

Oh yeah. I have a five-year old now. For the first time in fourteen years, all of our children are five or older.

A funny thing. On the way home from the pool (she and I went alone), she insisted that she wanted to walk home. WALK HOME! I said, “No, it’s too far!” which is true. She went on and on about walking home and tried to wheel and deal: “Okay, fine, next time, tomorrow, I’m walking home!” I laughed to myself because when I was about four years old, I spoke from the backseat of our car. “I want to walk!” I told my dad. He totally called my bluff and stopped the car along a city street in Tacoma and told me to get out and walk. So I did. I began to walk down the street, unconcerned about being alone, unaware of the danger of a darkened city and then he pulled the car up alongside of me and said, “GET BACK IN THE CAR!”

Monday, September 3:

Labor Day. Sleeping in . . . how much do I love having children who are old enough to let me sleep in? My husband took the kids to the pool for a couple of hours and I shopped the Value Village fifty-percent off sale. I saw a movie. Oh! And my son? The easy-as-pie 9-year old? He spent the whole weekend at Hood Canal with his best friend . . . his entire report to me was this: “Oh yeah, we had fun. We could bullheads with a net! About eight of them! And then we let them go!”

Oh wait! I remember one more thing! At about 8 p.m., I went outside to collect an errant water bottle and noticed how still the air was. I thought it was an ideal time to spray the weeds and grasses in the back yard with RoundUp. And that, my friends, is how I single-handedly brought about the largest rainfall on record for that day in history. Oh yes, and not just rain, but thunder and lightning. (You’re welcome, Pacific Northwest. I will try to use my power for good.)

Tuesday, September 4:

Back to school, except for the teenagers who sleep like hibernating bears. I appreciate the quiet mornings, perhaps because they argue so endlessly when they are awake. (Including just now, while I type this . . . I responded to their argument by unplugging the cable that connects their computer to the Internet. That was quite effective in getting their attention. Now one of them lingers behind me, clearly wanting to say something . . . wait. I’ll ask. “What do you want?” “Well, two things. One, I heard something. Two, I’d like to plug the Internet back in so I can get that thing unlocked and get you to put in the password because tomorrow you’ll be busy with all those kids . . . ” HA HA! I didn’t even say “yes” but he plugged it back in . . . and I let him because he wants the password to the local Christian radio station’s website.)

Oh kids. What fun.

I put in the password and overhead them saying, “Okay, I’ll forgive you but only a hundred and fifty-two times.”

“Actually, in the Bible, it’s seventy times seven.”

Even about this, they must argue. It’s in the Teenage Handbook of Behavior To Drive Your Mother Nuts.

Well, so, we’re caught up. I had imagined I’d opine about giving birth, about my dad’s birthday (he would have been sixty-five on Saturday if he hadn’t died of melanoma when he was forty-seven), about the end of summer and the passing of time, but . . . no. Time swept me along and I failed to narrate my way through the days and now they’re gone.

And so it goes.

Back to school, I wish!

School starts Thursday. And my 9-year old will be going, but alas, my almost 5-year old will not and neither will my 14-year old twins. High school at the virtual academy (not to be confused with pretend academy) starts on September 17. (SEPTEMBER 17?!) My soon-to-be 5-year old misses the cut-off date for kindergarten by a day–never-mind that she is emotionally unprepared for kindergarten as separation from me still troubles her–and she’s going to participate in a preschool-like thing but not until the middle of September or later.

And this brings me to admit that I wish I were one of those mothers who gets to ship off the kids to school each day and then Have Some Time. I want to have some time! I want to have five or six hours that I divide into little segments devoted to work and play. But no! I’m not one of those mothers! I am NEVER ALONE and IT’S KILLING ME, one tiny bone in my ear at a time. (They shatter, you see, from the constant drone of noise in my house. Stress fractures of the teeny ear bones, a little known hazard of stay-at-home mothering.)

Well, okay, not never. My husband sends me out of the house on Saturdays, unless other things interfere. And so last Saturday I left at noon and returned at 6 p.m. but it’s not the same as sending the kids to school every day. That’s the life I thought I would have when I envisioned myself as a mother. My own mother had a small circle of friends. They had a moms-only secret life when we were at school. I’d come home to find remnants of a Crafts Day spread out in the family room or maybe a stack of coffee mugs and crumbs on a pretty plate.

My mother had friends and she had time to see them during the day while we went to school.

I want friends and time to see them during the day while my kids are in school.

But my teenagers aren’t going to go back to school, public or otherwise. School-at-home suits their needs and I do think it’s the best option open to us. So, it’s not like I’d choose any differently, even though the personal cost to me is great. This is a sacrifice I’m willing to make.

One day my house will empty out and I’ll run errands by myself during daylight hours. And, if my current behavior is any indicator of the future, I’ll probably be complaining then, too.

* * *

Click here and make me happy. (That’s my other blog, you know, the one that pays me more money the more readers I have.)

I Quit

I quit. I quit because I am unqualified. I took this job when it involved nothing more than cuddling babies, changing diapers and offering the appropriate amount of formula per day. I wasn’t required to make conversation, enforce rules or deal with teenage lapses in judgment.

I was good back then. I could blink awake at the first whimper of a baby and rush in silence to a room, cradling a baby by the glow of the nightlight, shushing him back to sleep even when my arms turned into limbs of stiff pain. I could distract a crawler from a ledge, shuffle a schedule to accommodate naps, sit on the floor for hours at a time, clacking blocks together and reading board books.

Now, I am the Queen of Overreaction. For instance, today, as I drove my teenagers to their friend’s house, they asked me, “Can we go to youth group with him?” And I said, “Are you kidding me? You’re asking now, on the way?” And he said, “I asked yesterday.” But here’s the thing, the match that lit the flame of my annoyance. HE DID NOT ASK ME.

He does this with alarming frequency. He says, “I told you,” or “I asked you,” but he doesn’t. Perhaps he breathes the words into the air, but he does not make sure that his words land in my ears so that I hear and understand and respond. Does he not realize my brain is like a colander and people are continually dumping stuff into it? The important stuff sifts through and sinks in, but the big chunks, the rocks and noise and blabbering just filter right out.

I said, with indignance, “YOU DID NOT ASK ME!” And he made the mistake of insisting that he did. In essence, he insinuated that I was lying or mistaken.

So, I yelled at him . . . you may have seen me in that blue van, shouting into the rear-view mirror.

I hate myself when I overreact. Even when I’m right.

Tonight, all is well and then the phone rings and it’s someone who loaned us something for our trip. We returned the something, but without the power cord. Uh, duh. So, I ask my boys about the cord and they dance around the information I need. They avoid telling me. They blame each other. They deny knowledge of said power cord. They were the only ones who used the cord and they emptied the van of their belongings when we unpacked it.

However, apparently the power cord vaporized into thin air because they were baffled by what might have happened. So, I’m asking questions like, “Do you remember unplugging it from the van?” and “Did you pack it into your backpack?” But here’s the main problem at this point. While I am interrogating one of them, I call him into his room which is filthier than a homeless person’s cardboard box (no offense to homeless people). I am sifting through video game boxes and sticky glasses and find a broken mug, but no cord. I am shooting questions into the air like bullets and this kid next to me, my son, is giving me the old, “YOU NEVER LISTEN TO ME!” accusation, which is probably true. I don’t need to listen because I already know what he is going to say. And also, I’m rude and disrepectful and have I mentioned, unqualified for this job?

I hate myself when I behave worse than my kids.

The kids never did answer my questions, although he did finally admit that he knew they lost the cord, but they didn’t offer that information to me. HELLO? I am infuriated at this irresponsible shirking of responsibility, this withholding of important information, this teenageness.

I found the power cord on the kitchen counter.

I overreact. I know I do. I am at an elevated level of pissed off-ness just by walking into their disgusting pig-sty of a room. I blast like a rocket into fury instead of giving them the benefit of the doubt or gathering information without freaking out. I suck.

I simply must stop it. STOP IT. STOP IT! Get a grip before I cause them permanent, irreversible destruction. What I want to know is this, though. If nothing I have said to them to this point, fourteen years of parenting hasn’t made a dent in their behavior (TURN OFF THE LIGHT! STOP FIGHTING! PLEASE QUIT LEAVING EMPTY MILK CARTONS IN THE FRIDGE!) then why do I think that I can affect them negatively? My positive influence hasn’t had any effect at all.

I don’t want to be one of those screaming moms that kids plot to get away from. I don’t want to be a bitter old biddy that no one can stand sitting next to in church. I don’t want my kids to hate me.

(Will they ever stop driving me crazy? Can I stop acting like a lunatic? I want a do-over.)

Really, I quit. I can’t do this. Hire someone else with qualifications.

Loud

I’ve turned into your great-grandmother, you know, the one who lives alone in a tidy house who can’t stand sudden noises or even the general loudness of children at play? (Oh, wait, maybe that’s just my grandmother–she’s 101 now.)

Anyway, I am her and when my 14-year old moves all the kitchen chairs so he can sweep (not of his own initiative, no, his dad directed him), he bangs and drags them and then I hear the unmistakable crunch-crunch-crunch of someone chewing and some little circuit in my brain immediately went haywire and I said, “WHAT ARE YOU EATING?” and he, the other 14-year old, looked startled and said, “Nothing?” and I raised my eyebrows and he said, “Popcorn. What?”

The television was on and my husband was clanging silverware in the sink (doing dishes, good husband, good boy!) and the loudness soaked into my brain like radioactivity.

All I want is peace and quiet. Although, I would settle for just quiet. Peace is overrated, anyway, but quietness? I can never get enough.

There was a day when all I wanted was a baby with pudgy cheeks and downy hair. There was a day that I lamented the childless rooms in my house, when I only wanted someone in the back yard who’d run through the sprinkler and pat together mud pies. There was a day when I took for granted tidiness, and never, ever removed an empty milk carton from the refrigerator.

Today, though, was full of life and kids. I slept in (as much as one can sleep in with a four year old in the house) and then when a phone call alerted me that my obligations for the day were canceled, I rounded up the kids and took them on an adventure, which was not much of an adventure but that’s only because the U-Pick strawberry farms had no U-Pick berries to pick. So, instead, we drove out to a working farm and bought some fresh strawberries, cherries, rhubarb, beans, and onions.

The kids didn’t care a whit about the produce, though. Four year old Grace asked the lady behind the counter, “Do you have any more animals?” (Two donkeys and two turkeys were fenced in by the parking lot. A dog wandered out of the produce stand.) The lady directed us back to see two goats, who eagerly ate feed we purchased for a quarter. Then, “Do you have any more animals?” and she said, “There’s a horse out at the end of the driveway.” So, we walked the other direction. A most hilarious donkey trotted over to us, wiggled his lips into a grin and then hee-hawed in cartoon fashion at us. We all burst into laughter. Then we admired the chickens before returning to buy produce.

After that, we headed back to civilization and Costco where my plan was to let each child pick out a snack food to take to the pool. This is preemptive shopping on my part. The kids always want to feed the vending machines at the pool and at 85 cents a snack, I cringe. So, now we have our own private stash of junk that I can dole out, saving money in the long run.

(We will have Jolly Ranchers until we die. The bag is huge.)

We sort of got lost on the way back and I have to confess that I have an admirable internal map, an innate sense of direction. And also, I realized once we hit a main drag again that our new van has a directional display, which is mighty cool.

At Costco, we had lunch, after spending way too much money. (That is so easy to do at Costco.) The kids each had pizza and I had a salad, but I had eaten only four bites of my salad and my 14-year old son was done eating his pizza. I couldn’t help but wonder if he had actually chewed or if he merely wadded it into balls and shoved it down his throat. I will never cease being amazed at how fast a teenage boy can eat.

We were home long enough to change into swimming suits. We were among the few, the brave, the crazy at the pool. I sat under a beach umbrella at a table and read a magazine as the children swam despite a light smattering of rain. That’s right. I sat by the pool in the rain. Welcome to summertime in the Pacific Northwest. They swam for two hours and Grace protested when I said it was time to go, but she realizes she has no power and so she reluctantly swathed herself in her giant pink towel and followed me to the van.

Then dinner.

Then exercise.

Then bedtime for Grace.

And then the kids finished their chores, my husband finished the dishes, and the kids went to their rooms.

The only sound now is the occasional cough of my 9-year old and the gurgle of the dishwasher. I hear the murmur of teenagers somewhere, but this is what passes for silence in my house.
Tomorrow, I’m taking the day off. I can’t wait to spend eight straight hours without once being called “mom” or having someone argue with me about whether I will or will not allow a particular computer game to be purchased or have someone debate with me the merits of having sleepovers on Tuesday nights because otherwise, “What is the point of summer if you can only have sleepovers on Fridays?”

I have small dreams and none of them has a soundtrack or dialog.

We’ll Saturday laugh more than half of the day*

At one point this afternoon, all three of my boys were unconscious, asleep in that drool-on-your-pillow kind of way because they “slept” over last night at their friends’ houses. My 9-year old reportedly went to sleep at 1:00 a.m., while my 14-year old twins stayed up all night long. When they came home at 2:00 p.m., they went straight to bed without even eating a bowl of cereal or dirtying a glass in the kitchen.

They are all awake now-the 9-year old went to a birthday party and the teens roused themselves to play with their neighborhood friends.

My daughter has become the perfect garage sale partner, with one unpleasant side effect: stuffed animals. She bought one at nearly every garage sale . . . finally I said, “NO MORE STUFFED ANIMALS!” and then, wouldn’t you know it, at the very next garage sale she found the cutest CareBear (pink, wearing a diaper) and even I wanted to buy it. She stood for a long minute, staring at it, while I pretended not to notice her. Finally, she asked if she could have it and I said, “Yes,” thus ensuring an ample supply of stuffed animals for the rest of our lives.

I pointed out to her afterwards that I had said “no” and then changed my mind and she thought that was quite funny. I did, too, but after that, really, I didn’t buy another stuffed animal.

She’s been wearing plastic Barbie skates since we returned home. For a year, she’s longed for roller skates and finally, her dream came true. (Only $3, including knee pads, elbow pads and wrist guards.) I wouldn’t be surprised if she wants to sleep in them.

My husband has a cold and spent most of the day in our empty, quiet home. He is a lucky duck . . . well, except for the part about being sick. I have rarely been alone in my home for 14 years. Is it pathetic that I have a little fantasy involving being home alone? And that the fantasy involves cleaning out closets and sorting through boxes of stuff? Yes, it is. I know.

Well, there you go. A whole post without a single mention of the contest. (Go vote. It’s not too late.) (Scroll down, click on the picture labeled Melodee H. and I promise never to ask again.)

*can you sing that song?

Haphazard

1) My feet got bigger when I got fatter. Go figure. Usually, even when you’re fat, you can still shop for shoes, right? My feet went from a svelte size 8 to a hefty size 9.5. I can’t figure out which Clearance rack to browse these days when I go to Famous Footwear, the shoe store I love. (They shrunk and now I’m back in an 8.)
2) My 4-year old has swimmer’s ear, which I diagnosed myself. (I remember last summer.) I know that a few drops of vinegar dripped into her ear will cure her, but she acts as if I am dripping hydrochloric acid into her head. Even after I prove to her that she will not die from vinegar, she still cries because the drops are “very cold.”

3) My husband has a cold. He insisted that it was “allergies” for the first twenty-four hours. He’s never had an allergy a day in his life.

4) My 9-year old burst into tears this morning. Upon questioning, he admitted that he lost library books and owed “thirty dollars, probably!” I realize now that he has suffered from his secret knowledge of this mistake and subsequent guilty conscience for the past two weeks and that explains his somber face that I wondered about from time to time. He will receive only mercy, no punishment–his regret is punishment enough.

5) A few years ago, one of my other sons lost a library book about the moon. I searched relentlessly for that book. Three years later, it turned up. On the bookshelf.

6) Speaking of books, I finished Anne Tyler’s Earthly Possessions tonight. That woman is master novelist. I want to be Anne Tyler when I grow up.

7) The race for $500 is neck-and-neck . . . won’t you please click here and vote for me (Melodee H.) again? And, if you really love me, will you ask your friends to vote and put a link on your blog (if you have one)? Oh, you don’t even have to love me . . . just take pity on me . . . next month, we’re going to California with the kids and it would be so nice to drive our van rather than hitchhike.

8) Did you watch Tarzan when you were growing up? Remember the giant spider web? (1939 Tarzan Finds a Son!) Some days I am struggling in a giant spiderweb, just stuck while a pizza-sized spider heads my way. Oh, if you’ve ever seen that movie, you understand my dismay.
9) Five more days of school until summer vacation. But who’s counting?

10) Your turn. Tell me one haphazard fact about yourself. (And don’t forget to vote for me. Yes, shameless, pathetic, groveling . . . I know, I am.)

Introverted musings

Are there mothers in the world who do not crave time alone? Are there mothers who take their children everywhere they go because they want to be with their kids all the time? Are there mothers who do not dream about having an empty nest?

When I think about these sorts of mothers, I judge myself harshly because I am all about hopping in the car and driving away without looking back. I would no sooner take my children with me to the grocery store than I would wear my pajamas pants to Target.

Am I alone? Or should I nurture these feelings of shame?

Being a mother is harder than I thought.

My daughter is four and a half and as the youngest child and only girl in my family, she exerts her will on her brothers by crying.  Sobbing, weeping, screaming, in fact.  Which makes my ears bleed and my head spin on my neck.  Her brothers, ages 14, 14 and 9, cannot remember being four years old.  They can’t remember being irrational or whiny or unreasonable.  They demand that she act fairly, that she adhere to rules, that she not follow them around.  They accuse me of letting her get away with everything.  They critique my parenting and tell me how I ought to do it.  And they cannot get get along with her.  So she cries.

This dynamic is driving me nuts. 

They whisper something to her just to get her goat.  She wails.  I holler.  They protest.  She sobs.  I lecture.  They comply.  She stops.  Until the next time. 

I am a terrible mother, no doubt about it.  As I mentioned to someone in an email, I thought I would be a dandy mother, a singing in the kitchen, humming under my breath, eye-crinkling, smiling at all times mother.  But then again, I thought I’d give birth to Jo, Beth, Meg and Amy and we’d sit around embroidering, playing sonatas on the piano and conversing in quiet tones about Papa.  (In lilting British accents.)  I would have been a terrific mother to reasonable, sane, crafty, gentle girls.  (I would.  Don’t argue with me.) 

But I am the mother of whiners and kids who stink.  I am the mother of kids who have the temerity to point out my faults to me.  I am the mother of children who sass me on a regular basis and question my authority on the basis of my flawed human judgment.  I am the mother of boys who have devoted the spring to digging a coffin-sized hole in my backyard, the mother of a daughter who will not wear shoes outside even when it’s only forty-five degrees.  I am the mother of children who demonstrate no interest in contemplation or meditation or quietness.  And they leave wet towels and underpants turned inside out on the floor.

I am a mother with chipped edges and missing parts, a mother who lost the map and wonders if maybe she ought to turn around rather than forging ahead into the wilderness.  I am a mother who has no clue if I’m doing all right or if I am destroying my children with my temper tantrums.

Tonight I thought of that sunny afternoon in September of 1989 when my dad called my sisters and I into his brown-toned living room.  He sat in the rocking chair.  Terror filled me because we were not a family who had family meetings or a family who sat around and chatted for no good reason.  I knew this was a meeting with a purpose and that purpose would be bad.  I knew in my thumping heart.

The sun shone through the blinds marking a horizontal pattern on the carpet.  My dad took off his glasses, wiped his balding head and face with his hand.  His hands were always rough, his fingertips so dry they cracked and sometimes, I’d say, “What did you do to your hand?” and he’d shrug and say, “I don’t know.”  I couldn’t imagine that, not knowing where the blood came from, but now I’m a mother and my hands are worn, dry and sometimes, I find a streak of blood on my finger and I have absolutely no idea where it came from.  I don’t even notice the pain. 

He started at the beginning of the story, describing the time he noticed he couldn’t read some writing on a piece of paper.  This puzzling event led him to the ophthalmologist, who sent him immediately to a neurologist who sent him for tests which revealed a brain tumor.  That news led to a prognosis:  four months to two years.  As he told us this, he broke down and cried and I reached for him in an awkward hug–we were not a hugging family, but this news called for a hug, even an awkward one.  Some time passed while we sobbed, and then we stopped. 

Then he mentioned a hidden two-pound bag of M&Ms and we broke it open and ate M&Ms in defiance of the certainty of his impending death.  Which is odd, but that’s the way it was.

I wondered for the first time tonight if he wasn’t actually crying for himself.  I don’t think he feared death at all.  But as a father, did he look at us and see orphans, victims of his cancer?  He knew that we’d suffer the loss, that we’d be broken, that we’d have to find our way through his illness, his death, his funeral, the grieving, the unknown.  He’d miss his grandchildren, his retirement, the vibrant changing colors of fall, Kringle at Christmas-time, hot-fudge sundaes, bratwurst you could only buy in Wisconsin . . . but he was a father and I think he cried because he knew that his death would cut us to the bone. 

Almost twenty years later, that occurred to me.  What’s shocking is how keenly I feel the loss of him the older I get.  He was the guardrail, keeping me on the road, keeping me from fall off a cliff to certain doom below.  And although I can stay on the road without a guardrail, I drive so much more carefully, I worry so much more, I fear sliding off the road entirely.  I resent the fact that my father was taken from me when he was so young, while I was so young, just when we were getting the hang of being father and daughter. 

I suppose that has nothing to do with the fact that I feel like a substandard mother on days like today when I said too often, “Please!  Go play!” and rushed to judgment instead of walking down the stairs and investigating the crying.  Being a parent is hard.  I thought that my parents were just not very good at parenting, but as it turns out, they did the best they could under the circumstances.  The job itself is just really difficult.  Especially when you aren’t parenting little women but real kids who forget to brush their teeth unless you walk them into the bathroom and point at the toothbrush.

Give me some earplugs!

I’m turning into my grandmother with her intolerance for noise.  Macular degeneration stole her sight, so she sits in one chair, mostly, listening to the silence when she isn’t listening to the Bible on tape.  I hardly ever take my kids over there because I know she can barely tolerate the noise.  She’s 101.  What’s my excuse?

I am a quiet type of person, one who wouldn’t turn on the radio or television if I were alone all day (which I never am).  I have no need for conversation or for expending a certain allotment of words per day.  I have had to develop my ability to make small-talk because chatting doesn’t come naturally to me.

And yet, I’m living with a bunch of people who just can’t stop talking to me.  My daughter is the worst of the bunch.  If I sit down, she appears like a pesky genie, begging me to get a snack from the “covered” (aka the “cupboard”) and asking me if I “bemember” when she was three and cut her hand on a barnacle.  She uninterested in snuggling or playing with Play-doh or lying down to rest, even if she tells me how tired she is.  No, she just wants to talk, talk, talk.

If I happen to be alone, thinking actual thoughts while washing the dishes, my sons will traipse through the kitchen on their never-ending quest to drink all the milk without my knowledge and they will ask me crazy questions, questions that spring from the murky space in their brains where they are piecing together the mysteries of life and plotting to get their hands on some Chinese egg rolls soon.  Just because I’m standing still, working, does not mean that I’m not occupied in my head, pondering something or another.  To them, I look like a fount of knowledge, the person who can answer any question which might flit through their heads.

I can’t have two coherent thoughts in a row which positively frustrates me and honestly makes me feel a little crazy as if I’m being tortured by the systematic drip-drip-drip of words. 

I want to spend my days stringing words together like so many fancy beads, but I can’t.  I can’t because I’m living in a madhouse with chatty kids.  And I’m complaining about it which definitely disqualifies me for the Mother of the Year. 

My daughter will turn five on September 2.  She misses the local kindergarten cut-off date by a day.  I never thought I’d do this, but I am likely to send her to preschool because she has turned into Miss Extrovert who asks every visitor who appears at our door, “Can I come to your house?”  She wants to go, do, talk, visit, play, and then go some more.  She’s wearing me out which makes me feel guilty and old.  Also, uninteresting and uncreative. 

Silence is all I want which is ironic because I spent so much of my twenties crying because all I wanted then was a baby.  I just can’t be pleased.  Now I just want to be alone.

*  *  *

Don’t forget to check out my other blog, The Amazing Shrinking Mom.  Every click counts!