Tag Archives: sons

Bomber mom

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The Boston Marathon bombers’ mother swears that her boys are innocent. “It’s some kind of hoax,” she keeps repeating. I’m watching her words tick across the bottom of a muted television in my Dentist’s office. I can only read the larger headlines from across the room, not her actual words. Why do they silence the volume? We’re all sitting here struggling to read the small type. She is gesticulating madly and I manage to surmise that she truly believes her boys are good, solid citizens, going to school, chasing the American dream. Who could actually believe their offspring were capable of killing and maiming hundreds of people in a violent, inhumane terrorist attack?

I think I could. Honestly. I think I pretty much can assess my boys’ capabilities to do evil rather accurately. At this point in their young lives I can sincerely boast that terrorism is not on either of their agendas. But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe if your kid commits a heinous act of violence, your only means of self-preservation is denial.

I have a friend who takes pride in asserting that her kids are average. She says it all the time. Laughs when she tells people. “My kids are average looking, average intelligence, average in every way.” I used to think she said it to stun other parents who were gloating about their children being intellectually gifted or having some kind of superior artistic or athletic prowess. But now I think she actually believes it.

I don’t see my kids as anywhere near average. But maybe that’s my version of bomber mom’s denial. The other night we went to my 12 year old son, Levi’s, Spring Showcase at school. I can tell which teachers recognize his unique inner sparkle and which do not. Some of them see him as average and I know they are missing the boat entirely. They seem more focused on what he inadvertently blurts out in class or his messy hand-writing. I feel sorry for those teachers. They don’t see his quirky creative mind or his sunny, delightful disposition. They want him to fit in, to act like everyone else, to be…average.

I try to teach my kids how to “act” average so that they do fit in in school, with peers, in life. It’s a challenging task for a mom who believes whole-heartedly in shining your inner light and allowing the world to see you for who you really are. But the world of kids celebrates “average.” I can’t tell you how many teachers, administrators, and therapists have warned us about the ever-encroaching middle school madness where fitting in is the only way to get by and standing out in any way makes kids automatic bullying targets. I want my boys to know how to fit in.

But the more I teach them to fit in, the more I remind them that it’s only an act. That in society we all learn tools to make our lives easier, more comfortable, less stressful. Fitting in is one of those tools. But it doesn’t mean you stop thinking, acting and believing in all of the charming inner traits that make you unique and extraordinary. That’s the louder message I hope to convey. And if that puts me somehow in the same category as my pal who really sees her kids as average, or bomber mom, who’s incapable of seeing who her children have become, so be it. I’ll live in denial. Recognizing indubitably that my children are spectacularly gifted with a sense of kindness, a creative wisdom, and a flair for the eccentric that sets them apart from the pack, and that if used well, will bring them success, inner fulfillment and joy as they share it with the world.

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Motivation

Sometimes we all just need a little push from a big supporter.

“I don’t want to do it” she said. “ I have been too busy”.

“but you love to do it!” I exclaimed!

I told her to think about how much she loves to do it. If you love something you will work hard to do it. It teaches us a lesson to do what you love and work towards that. If there is something you love to do, your life should include that in it.

Even if things aren’t working out for you in this thing, you love it. You will work hard for it even when you are busy. It is so important! No matter how hard it is, it is important to your life. Think about this thing in your life, Just think.

This was a recent conversation with my mom. She has been behind on blogging. I helped her stay motivated.

- Levi Rich Gettleman (Age 12)

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My son the RINO: Responsible In Name Only

“Personal accountability!” My husband, Mark and I chimed out in sync at a Saturday morning family school session at our synagogue. “Taking responsibility for one’s actions.” We’d been asked by our Rabbi to name something we’d learnt from our parents and hoped to pass along to our kids. Lots of parents had good answers; “work hard,” “be kind,” “give to charity.” But we liked ours best. It was, after all, the central theme of our parenting philosophy. Having both been raised in families that harped upon us to “make your own breaks” and “pull yourself up by your bootstraps,” we were committed to passing those tenets on to our own offspring.

After we’d finished, our kids were invited back into the room and the Rabbi asked them to go and pick out which value on the list their parents had written. Oh, this was gonna be easy. We snickered to ourselves silently as we waited for Eli to ace this assignment.

“Accept everyone?” he questioned proudly pointing to the third value listed on the white board.

“Well, that’s certainly a good one,” I answered. “But that’s not the one daddy and I wrote. Why don’t you try again, sweetie.”

“Treat others as you would like to be treated?” he confidently corrected.

“Um…no, honey,” I stammered a bit surprised by his error. “Guess again. It’s something that daddy and I make you think about all the time.”

“Be kind!” he shouted with a victorious lilt.


When he trepidatiously pointed to “Ride bicycles together,” I lost it.

“Eli,” I said in a voice much louder than I’d meant to, “None of our bicycles even have tires. We haven’t ridden bicycles since last Halloween. Really?”

Then I pointed to our all capped “PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY.” “Oh,” he calmly voiced, “I didn’t see that one.”

I was furious–at him, at myself, at my husband. What did all our work add up to if he couldn’t even pick the right parental value out of a line-up of usual suspects that seemed blatantly obvious to us?

I tossed and turned over this all night. Then I woke up and recreated the list on a small poster board and asked our older son, Levi, who wasn’t at the family school event, to peruse the list of parental values and tell us which one was the one we had listed.

“That’s easy, mom,” he answered in less than a nano-second. “Personal Accountability.”
I breathed a heavy sigh of relief. “That’s what you’re always saying,” he went on, “That’s pretty much the whole premise of how you parent.”

I wondered if Mark had tipped Levi off and prepped him for my experiment. But my husband firmly denied providing our eldest with any pre-test coaching. The bigger question became; why hadn’t Eli been able to identify our parenting platform?

After much deliberation, we realized that sub-consciously we’ve been giving Eli a pass on a lot of things, in large part due to his younger sibling status. It’s just easier and less of a struggle to ask his older brother to help out. This was a text book birth order pit and we’d stumbled right into it.

As parents, it’s easy to declare loving all of your children equally. But that doesn’t mean we treat them all the same way. Finding those inequalities and managing them is a critical challenge that every parent of multiples needs to face. It’s not a pleasant reality. Maybe you do expect more from one child. Maybe you coddle the second. Maybe one’s easier to manage so you rely on him or her as more of a helper.

It’s not a simple issue. But it is one that’s worth examining. What do you think? How equitable are your parental expectations?

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Celebrate the smothering!

Have you ever had one of those stunning moments of recognition that leaves you both horrified and utterly delighted simultaneously? Well, here’s one for the record books:

I’m snuggled up on the couch with both boys watching our new favorite show “Shark Tank.” My oldest has his head on my shoulder and my youngest is curled deliciously into my side. And it suddenly hits me; no one will ever love me as much as I am being loved in this current moment.

What a stark realization. I mean, I see it every day. The separation that has to happen with boys and their mother. They need to individuate. That’s critical for their own development and growth. They need to find girls and then women who appeal to them for romantic relationships. I know all of this. But I’m not sure we ever stop to really appreciate the few years we have where we are the all powerful love force in our kids’ lives. Cause I can see the edge of the horizon, and it’s approaching way too rapidly.

While our kids are and will always be the individuals we moms love more than anyone in the world, the reciprocal is simply not the case. We may be the central love interest for a lot of years. But ultimately, if we want our kids to be happy and healthy people, we want to see them paired off with someone of their own age to build a life and develop a future. That means we need to fade into oblivion in a sense. Ouch.

So once again I need to slow down, take a deep breath and stop getting irritated every time my boys fight like Ali and Frazier over who gets to sit next to me at a restaurant. I have to appreciate the smothering attention that often accompanies our late afternoon dips in the pool when all I really want to do is swim laps by myself. I must promise to put on a smile when one of them demands a band-aid and kiss after a mere flesh wound that interrupts my dinner prep schedule.

Why is it so hard to appreciate the precious few moments of joy and adoration we’re afforded as parents? We’re all so damn busy making sure they grow up to be good, kind people, that we manage to miss the parts of the job that might actually feed us and give us the energy we need for endless more loads of laundry and eternal dishwasher emptying. Well, I for one am vowing to pay attention to the good moments, to accept the love my kids are offering so freely right now, to embrace their neediness, whining and overwhelming demands. Because one of these days, I’ll have a lot less dishes to empty and a lot less laundry to complain about.

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Random acts of Starbucks

So we ran out of coffee beans this morning. This is a bad thing. My children stayed conspicuously absent during our usually chaotic morning routine. They knew that a mommy void of caffeine was not to be trifled with.

We all marched into the car at the ridiculously early hour of 7am so we’d have time to stop at Starbucks, get to the eye doctor to pick up Levi’s new specks, and still get to school by 8. The drive-thru was packed so I decided to run inside for my fix. But alas, the number of customers in line so far outweighed the number of baristas, I made the call that waiting was not an option.

I got back in the car, sans java, my children were horrified. But then a ray of sunshine emerged. The drive thru lane was nearly empty. I revved the engine and high-tailed it into the line, nearly running over a crossing patron and a family of quail. But it was all an illusion. By the time I turned the corner and got sandwiched into the line, I saw that there were still four cars ahead of me. I calmly ordered my double tall non-fat cap and a bagel for Eli, who had once again forgotten to eat breakfast. I tried to breathe deeply and still my anxiousness. The boys remained silent in the back seat.

I nearly lost it when the woman in front of me seemed to be carrying on a deep and thoughtful conversation at the pick-up window. “Come on,” I thought. “Are you never going to drive away?”

Finally she did and it was my turn to secure my caffeinated drug of choice. I held out a $5 bill, knowing that my total was $4.18. The window lady just smiled at me. We were late and getting more behind as she vapidly flashed her pearly whites. Why wouldn’t she just take my money and free us from this eternal hell?

“The lady before you paid for your stuff,” she happily announced. I was dumbfounded. “She did?” I stammered. “Why that’s…unbelievable.” My kids started giggling gleefully. My fin waved freely in the soft windy breeze. “Well, take this and pay for the guy behind me,” I asserted rather joyfully in spite of my previous grumpiness.

Some random stranger had miraculously altered my entire morning by surprising me with coffee and a bagel. The Starbucks lady told me it happens all the time. My eldest son insisted that he hears stories about this very occurrence frequently. I guess I must be out of touch. I couldn’t actually remember the last time a stranger even smiled at me.

As we buoyantly pulled away, my son reminded me that in the Jewish religion, anonymous giving was way up there on the mitzvah scale. I wondered if the chain we’d started would go on indefinitely. Maybe the guy I popped for did the same for the gal behind him. Maybe the cycle of giving had been going on long before we ever arrived, and maybe it would continue forever.

I fantasized about that for a few seconds. But then reality came crashing back. No, someone somewhere was going to break the chain. But that’s okay. Because I’ll remember this day, and so will my kids. And we will most definitely be the ones who start the chain next time. It will be we who remind some poor soul in line behind us that today has the potential to be outstanding, if only we choose to make it that way.

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Vote for…mom?

I ran for Vice President of the Student Council at my son’s middle school this week. I lost. But that’s not the point of my story.

Well, technically, it wasn’t me that ran. I just felt like it when at 4:00 on Tuesday I picked up my 11 year old son, Levi, and he informed me that he was running and that the election was in two days and the forms and posters were due before school the following morning.

My plan for the afternoon had not included a mad dash to Walgreens for poster supplies and a creative campaign brainstorming session. I had mapped things out a bit differently since I had to scoop up the boys, drive them out to my husband, Mark’s, office in Glendale, eat something on the run and get to rehearsal by 6. But, as usual my schedule was foiled by two small urchins who rarely pay any mind to my neatly ordered, pre-established agendas.

We spent the drive to the West side discussing my son’s political platform and how he wanted to market himself. After all, I kept insisting, this was his campaign, not mine. Yet somehow, when the time came to create the posters, it was me who found herself cutting, pasting and painting, while Levi and his younger brother, Eli, did their homework and dashed playfully from room to room in Mark’s office. In my defense, I did finally note that this was unfair and tasked Levi with peeling the adhesive backs off the sign letters so I would feel less like an indentured servant and more like a collaborator.

The posters came out fairly well. And I don’t honestly think our defeat was due to my lack of artistic talent. But here’s the thing, I was and am still deeply conflicted about my choice to do the bulk of the work on these posters myself. A multitude of internal voices were clamoring about this issue in my head as I worked. The  more sane and practical voice kept insisting that this was Levi’s campaign, and that I had no right or obligation to be taking on the responsibility of art director. But there was also the helicopter mom voice that repeatedly reminded me about Levi’s fine motor control challenges. If left to his own devices, he might create unintelligible posters that would not only assure an election defeat, but might also cause him to be a target of teasing and ridicule.

Other voices declared Levi’s graphic talents on the computer and wondered why I didn’t encourage him to create something electronically. Still others suggested I get myself fed and to work on time and simply allow his dad to handle the poster debacle. Of course that triggered a memory of the time Mark sent Levi to school for dress-up day, costumed in a bed sheet and kitchen mop wig, which wasn’t a disaster I cared to repeat.

In the short run, it was just easier to do this myself. So that’s what I did. I’m pretty sure that by most traditional parenting guidelines, I did the wrong thing. Most of the time I live by the doctrine that kids need to succeed or fail based on their own actions and behaviors. This just seemed…well…like an exception.

What would you have done?

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Window of opportunity

Don't let the window of opportunity close!

My window of opportunity is shrinking. I can actually see the pane of glass quietly closing as I struggle to manage work, home and kid responsibilities. You see, I never actually thought this would happen; that my kids would one day become self-sufficient. But I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. They’re needing me less and less. And honestly, I’ve been dreaming of this very scenario for over a decade. But, much like the Chanukah let down of being gifted with a Dyson vacuum cleaner a few years back, this feels shockingly depressing.

Because along with not needing me as much, comes the accompanying reality that they also don’t want me that much anymore. That’s what hurts. Sure, I’m still they’re ticket to play dates, after school activities and the mall. But they can do almost everything else by themselves. Suddenly the threat of obsoleteness is overwhelming.

I do understand that this is a necessary part of growing up. My boys are separating from me. The ironic thing is that I loathed a lot of the clingy neediness that colored their early years. I felt guilty and trapped and could never seem to do or be enough for them. It was frustrating. But I guess there comes a time when we moms have to realize that individuation really will happen and it’s up to us to find new ways to interact and relate if we want to keep the connections with our kids strong and viable.

It’s not an easy adjustment. You need to be there for them emotionally, just as they’re needing you less and less for the routine, day-to-day physical tasks. That means finding new ways to have fun with them, and different techniques for connection. It also means taking what you can get whenever it’s offered.

The other day I was driving to rehearsal around 6pm. It had been a long day and I was already running behind as I endured my trek out to the Theatre in Peoria. My phone rang, and I saw that it was Levi, my 11 year old son. I flashed back to the way my dad used to answer the phone whenever I called him during the last few years of his life. No matter what pain he was battling, he always picked up the receiver with an exuberant tone and a lilt that made me feel like I’d just made his day by simply dialing his phone number.

“Hi Sweetie,” I chirped. “What’s going on?”

“I just called to talk…I was missing you,” he added.

The words felt like honey dripping into my soul. I knew the truth. That his “missing me” was more a function of the fact that our nanny had taken my younger son, Eli, to karate and Levi was likely a bit anxious about being home alone. But that didn’t matter to me at all. This was my moment of connection and I wasn’t gonna blow it. I pulled into my parking spot and noted that I could be right on time if I hurried up the steps and into the theatre immediately.

“Wanna talk?” he asked invitingly, “Or are you in the middle of something?”

“No, sweetie,” I answered. “I’ve got all the time in the world. Tell me about your day.”

We talked for 5 or 10 minutes and hung up when he felt secure enough to get back to his homework. Then I gathered my stuff and ran into the rehearsal hall.

No one even noticed my tardiness and I was thankful that I’d accepted my son’s invitation to chat instead of neurotically focusing on being a few minutes late. Because when it all comes down to it, it’s not about being on time. It’s about being where you are, when you are, with whom you are.

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Oye, he’s a man already?

Yesterday was a milestone day for me. My almost 11 year old son, Levi, got his Bar Mitzvah date for 2013. That may sound a ways off to you. But to me, it sounded a lot more like a speeding train careening out of control. I laughed. I cried. It was totally surreal. I mean, how could my baby, who I’d swear was just born last week, be approaching the Jewish equivalent of manhood. Yikes.

In addition to that, I had to take both boys to the orthodontist for their first appointments. Learning that braces are in our future was another minor shock to my system, and not just because of the impending financial commitment these wire jaw molders will require.

Finally, I took Levi shoe shopping and was astonished to learn that the petite paw that once fit easily into the palm of my hand, had reached the substantial size of 9 mens, surpassing my impossible to fit size 9 and a half AA in women’s. Honestly, my 11 year old son has shoes that are bigger than mine? How could that possibly be?

We went to the pool that same day. Levi begged to race me across it. Suddenly I flashed back to my youthful self, a summer’s day, at the pool with my dad. “Oh, come on,” the tween me begged. “Just race me once, the width of the pool!” Finally, my dad acquiesced and we prepared for one all out swimathon across the Olympic sized public swimming pool in Prosel Park, across from our home in Lincolnwood, Il. “On your mark…get ready…set…GO!” I tore across that pool with the determination of a Gold Medalist. When I reached the other side, winded and panting, I emerged from the water to a horrible sight. My heart sank as I saw my infallible pop swimming the final strokes towards me at the side of the pool. At first, I gleefully chanted a few bars of “I won! I won! I finally beat you.” But after a moment, I saw clearly what that victory actually meant. That time was passing. That life was fleeting. That one generation makes way for the next. It was sad. Heartbreaking in a way I will never forget.

“No racing today,” I announced definitively. My fragile heart couldn’t take one more jolt. No. I was still faster, stronger and physically omnipotent in a way I wasn’t willing to risk losing. There’ll be time for more races. Time for his growing body and soul to surpass me in all of its endeavors. Just not today. Not yet.

Instead, I grabbed him and twirled around as fast as I could. I spun him round and round madly until he was giggling hysterically, all the while reciting the familiar hymn from years past, “…Motorboat, motorboat, go so fast. Motorboat, motorboat, step on the gas!!!!”

Granted, it was silly, I’ll even admit it was cheap. But at that moment, I would have done anything to hear that boyish giggle and watch his sweet eyes flicker with glee as he let go of his body and fell deeply into my strong embrace.

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Back to school roller derby

Who will be the next School Supply Roller Derby Queen?

Lace up your skates, moms. It’s time to hit the aisles and go for the gold. If you’re fast and tough, you might actually secure that Justice League lunch box and water bottle your kid’s been pining for all year. Show no mercy. It’s back to school time.

God help me I hate school supply shopping. I hate everything associated with school supply shopping. I hate hordes of people fighting over number 2 pencils, I hate trying to find wide-ruled notebook paper amidst piles and piles of college lined loose leaf. I hate having to buy 4 large glue sticks when they always come 3 to a pack. I hate that despite the fact that every school in the world insists on kids bringing ziploc baggies and disinfectant wipes, they never put that stuff with the school supplies and you have to traipse through the entire store with a million other people to get to the cleaning supply and home storage areas before they run out of the items you need to complete your list.

Argh!!!! It’s awful. It was better this year because I took each boy separately. Trying to navigate two supply lists while maneuvering a shopping cart and corralling two young tykes was nearly impossible last year. At least I wised up a bit.

But the whole process is so utterly angst producing. I’m not even sure why. I love shopping, for almost everything. But this is…just…not fun. I spent over $300 for both boys. That sounds like a lot to me. I mean, that doesn’t even include text books or any real type of learning material.

I saw this one woman, who looked equally distraught, and she said that at her school you can pay extra money and they’ll do your school supply shopping for you. Unfortunately, she had flaked and missed the deadline this year. “Rest assured,” she bemoaned, “that wont happen again.” For a moment I wished our school did that.

But then, in some weird masochistic side of my brain, I heard a voice saying, “but you’d miss such a meaningful mom-son experience if you didn’t go school supply shopping each year.” The fact is, given the choice to abdicate all school related shopping excursions, I probably wouldn’t take it. Because even if I tell myself that instead of the crowded Target aisles, we could go to the water park or the movies or somewhere equally fun and carefree, something else would come up and we’d miss that time together and then it would feel just like every other missed moment I feel guilty and forlorn over.

So, I’ll keep body-checking 12 year-olds to get the last package of yellow highlighters and pushing distracted moms’ carts out of the way to retrieve that one Yoda pencil box that my son simply cannot live without. I will do this year after year after year. Because I’m a mom. And that’s just what we do.

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Kids say the darndest things.

Maybe stationary and writing utensils should be verboten at camp!

I stood there for a long time looking at the letter. It felt so light. I thought that was funny. How something as weighty as what could be inside could feel so…flimsy and insubstantial. I had just returned from the gym where one swollen-eyed mom had shared her devastating sleep-away camp story to a gaggle of us who hadn’t heard from our own kids since they jetted off to overnight camp for the summer. What could be inside this envelope? I was almost too fearful to open it. “Maybe I’ll wait till my husband comes home from work,” I thought. That was too 1950s subservient housewife for me though. No. The letter was to me. I needed to open it by myself.

Images of my 9 year old self flooded my memory. My first summer at sleep-away camp was devastating. I wasn’t ready to leave home for 8 weeks. But, that’s what upper middle class families in the Midwest did back then. Moms needed a break so kids were shipped off to camps in the North Woods of Wisconsin and Michigan and parents got two months of time off from parenting.

And some kids did great for those two months. Unfortunately, I wasn’t one of them. I wrote treatises to my folks, promising to do all the chores I could think of around the house, and agreeing to let overbearing relatives with boundary issues cuddle and kiss me without complaint. If only they would come and take me home. The letters must have been heart-breaking. I never once thought about how they would affect my parents. Until now.

What if Levi, my 10 year old, was lonely? What if he was sad? What if he hadn’t made any friends and cried himself to sleep? What if he wanted to come home? I couldn’t bear to think of him so far away and so unhappy.

I also wondered if there really was some kind of karmic poetic justice in life. My gut-wrenching camp letters coming back to haunt me as an adult. I did have a moment of levity, however, recalling the second year I returned to camp and copied letters from Art Linkletter’s book “Letters From Camp.” I plagiarized the wackiest pages of that book and sent ‘em home, signed by me. I never imagined my mom would actually believe the ridiculous scenarios I created in print. I hope Levi never saw that book.

I took a deep breath and opened the letter. It was short but moderately legible. He was happy. He loves camp. He’s got friends. He’s got great counselors. Hooray! This was a good thing. No tear stains. No pleas to come home. He did say he missed me. That felt kind of nice. But my boy is doing well on his own. He’s only there for 12 days. I think that’s plenty of time for now. If he wants to go for longer in a few years, I’ll be okay with that.

But for now, I can rest easy, knowing that my young man is safe, happy and not trying to torment me with colorful letters from someone else’s imagination. Btw, mom, I’m sorry I scared you by copying Art Linkletter’s books. I was just trying to make you laugh. Honest.

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