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Eliyore

“Want to go to your friend Jake’s birthday party next month?” I casually asked Eli, my just-turned-7-year-old son, as I perused a stack of overdue bills and snailmail invitations. “It’s a magic party.”

Making your kid attend a festive event looking like Eeyore on Benzies just doesn't quite feel right.

“I don’t really like magic,” he countered.

“But Jake is a really good friend. He came to your party, and I know he’s not that into sports.” I calmly reasoned.

“Whatever,” he seemed to concede. “Can I go outside and play football, mom?” and just like that, he was off, bounding around the backyard, tossing himself buttonhooks, streaks and his very own version of a “hail Mary.”

I quickly emailed our RSVP to my friend, tacked the invite onto the bulletin board and entered the event in my iCal. As a recovering scatterbrain, I need to follow this type of rigid protocol to keep my life and my family in some semblance of order.

Fast forward to the day of the party.

Eli is ready. Gift is wrapped. I have my GPS set to the birthday location. All signs seem to be a go. “I don’t want to go,” says Eli.

“Well, the party starts in half an hour. You already said you would go. You cannot back out on a commitment,” I answered unwaveringly.

“But I don’t like magic,” he added.

“Well, you should have thought of that when you agreed to go in the first place. Come on, let’s get in the car.” I felt I had adequately squelched potential rebellion and Eli and I drove across town to the party.

When we pulled into the parking lot, Eli, becoming more insistent, said, “I really don’t want to go, mom. Please. Can we just go home?”

I’d already eyed and acknowledged the birthday boy’s father at the front door, greeting guests. “Eli,” I firmly stated, “We said we would go to this party. Please get out of the car and let’s go in.”

His dejected, slumped stance as he exited the vehicle was heartbreaking. Was I doing the right thing? Jake was a friend, and sometimes you have to do things for your friends. Wasn’t that a valuable lesson? But making him attend a festive event looking like Eeyore on Benzodiazepines? It just didn’t feel right.

As usual, I told that still, small voice shouting inside my head to just be quiet and I escorted Eli into the party. There were tons of perky, playful youngsters all giggling gleefully as we entered. Jake saw Eli and came rushing up with a big hug and a hello. By this time, Eli was sobbing into my side while desperately clutching onto my leg.

“Please mom, I don’t feel right being here. I want to go home.”

Jake’s mom approached and offered a plate of Eli’s favorites, (fresh strawberries and grapes), and suggested we sit out in the hallway for a few minutes to help Eli regain composure. We followed her advice. When the last berry was gone, Eli asked for more fruit. “We can only have more fruit if we go back into the party,” I quietly asserted. Eli loves fruit more than anything in the universe. I thought maybe this would get us over the hurdle.

He slowly stood up, dumped his plastic birthday plate in the trash, and said, “Can we please go home now?”

There’s always a point in childrearing where the parent comes to the sad realization that whatever battle she is waging is simply not worth the energy she’s expending. This was my moment.

I held out my hand. Eli grasped it tightly. We left the building and headed for the car. “I’m sorry, mom,” he said with heartfelt sadness. “But I don’t like magic and I didn’t want to go.”

Suddenly the memory of my asking him about attending the party grew hazy. Had I asked him? Had he told me he didn’t want to go? Had I simply ignored him and followed my own wishes without his consent? It all seemed blurry and vague to me.

“Are you mad at me?” he asked as we pulled out and headed towards home.

“No,sweetie,” I answered. “I think I’m just…mad at me.”

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When I stand up for myself I feel…

The Supermom action figure: She does everything, but nothing well

…selfish, self righteous, wrong, scared, intimidated, unworthy, alone, untethered. I don’t like to stand up for myself.

Funny, I spent years working as an anti-bullying trainer to teach students and teachers to stand up for themselves. I’m finally facing my own ugly truth. I can’t do it for myself. I can’t even return things I buy that I ultimately decide I don’t want.

I’m not kidding. I never take anything back. I throw out moldy Trader Joe’s produce. I donate defective electronic equipment with tags still intact. I won’t even return clothes that don’t fit me.

I’ve made progress lately though. And I owe it all to Zappos. Somehow the anonymity of mail order allows me to order heaps of different foot wear options and, through an ardent process of desensitization, I’ve conditioned myself to send back every pair that doesn’t suit me. This is a big step in the right direction (pun intended.)

The problem isn’t knowing where I stand. I stand up for myself plenty, in private. I even know I’m right most of the time. I just lack the capacity to share that information with anyone else for fear that I may upset or disappoint them. So I opt instead for always being wrong. I’m so neurotically aware of every tiny thing I do wrong and I focus on it until it seems like I just don’t ever do anything right.

I remember the first time I learned that being self-deprecating could work in your favor. I was 7 or 8 and I’d done something minimally wrong at my grandparents house. I worked myself into a frenzy, crying hysterically, nearly hyper-ventilating. Then I ran into the dining room, where the grown-ups were enjoying the final tasty morsels of sour cream cake and coffee, and I told them all what a horrible, worthless cretin I was. I explained that I’d done something so heinous I could never be forgiven, that saying I’m sorry would be an absurdly insufficient act. They stared at me, jaws down to their knees. “Come now,” they each began, “nothing could be that terrible. Surely we can make this better. Just tell us what happened.” It was fairly a no-brainer. The harder I was on myself, the easier the rest of the world was on me.

I don’t think I did it consciously. But from that point on, I rode myself hard. Anything short of perfection necessitated a staunch personal rebuke. I was merciless. If I got a B on a test, I was an imbecile and banished myself to my room to study for hours on end. If I left my sack lunch at home, I deserved not to eat (for several days). If I disappointed my parents, I’d pack my little suitcase and honestly convince myself that I needed to leave in order to save my family from any additional horror and disappointment. (I remember doing that once or twice in the beginning of my marriage. It didn’t go over well with my husband.)

The sad thing is is that I am now a middle-aged woman, still living in this ancient model of self-reproach. I still cannot tolerate disappointing anyone. I used to stay in relationships forever because I couldn’t bear to be the one to end something and hurt someone else’s feelings. I remember going on a first date with this man who told me he’d recently left a relationship. I asked him, in all sincerity, if his ex knew about his departure or if it was still sort of unclear. He thought I was insane. I couldn’t really explain that I’d ended many relationships in my mind only to get home to my apartment and find dozens of sunflowers or roses and a card thanking me for being such a committed, loving partner.

It’s like the fear of disappointing anyone is my prime motivating factor in life. That’s not healthy. That’s why no matter what I do for my family, I chide myself that it’s not enough. If I force myself to spend a day doing mindless, depressing domestic duties, all I can see is the myriad of other tasks I’ll never manage to get to. When I spend money, I chastise myself for spending too much. When I crave attention from my husband, I berate my status as needy, dependent housemate. When I devote all of my energy to creative tasks that fulfill my soul, I feel guilty and evil that I’m not there for my kids. I basically have created a lose- lose situation in every arena of my life.

Being able to consciously see this pattern is kind of amazing for me, and baffling. Why would someone do this to themselves? Find themselves so faulty and guilt-ridden over every choice they make, they end up wildly pinging like a pinball between selfish needy people who continually ask for more and are never satisfied. The more I give, the more people want and the more I see how I’m always falling short of meeting their needs.

Yikes, this is way more revealing than I ever intended. Guess I was wrong to share it.

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Spring cleaning…in November

My Aunt Phyllis was legendary in child-rearing circles. A tough, smart, no-nonsense kind of woman with a voice like Marlene Dietrich and a will as unshakeable as an iron rod.

This woman was cool. She smoked long brown cigarillos and always looked like she’d just waltzed out the latest issue of “Vanity Fair.”

But I seriously feared for my safety and the security of my belongings whenever my mother spent time with her.

You see her most famous story was the one where she smiled beatifically and offered her cursory goodbye wave as her three children boarded the bus to school one day. Then, as soon as the bus pulled out of eye range, she went back inside and without an ounce of emotion, collected every single piece of clothing, school work, and various personal items that had failed to be put away by her children. She methodically went room to room. If it was on the ground, it went into the heap. It was as simple as that. There were treasured stuffed animals from bygone years, irreplaceable journals, records (back then that’s what we listened to), favorite hats, scarves, shoes. There was no selection process. If it didn’t belong on the floor, she took it.

Then, she carted all the items out of the house and dumped them smack dab in the middle of the street. Some blew into a neighboring park. Others were squashed by oncoming traffic. And some of the nicer items were happily adopted by local city workers, gardeners, and random passerbys.

Upon returning from school, Phyllis’ three children were mortified to find a plethora of personal belongings littering the lane in front of their home. Legend has it there were tears, tantrums and no lacking of hysterics at the scene of the incident. But Phyllis said nothing. In her mind she had already said too much. Too many frustrated reminders to throw dirty clothes into the laundry basket and not just leave them lying prostrate on the floor next to the hamper. Too many threats that something would happen if school work was carelessly left scattered across the carpet instead of neatly lining a safe social studies folder or securely tucked into a nearby back-pack. She was just done.

I get this. It’s taken me years and two children to finally realize what an amazing woman my Aunt was. The story goes that her kids didn’t leave their crap lying around after this jarring episode. Still not sure I entirely believe that. But I’m proud to say that I too have joined the ranks of merciless maternal maidservant.

Last night, while my eldest was at rehearsal for his Christmas show, I grabbed a green garbage bag and went to town. I threw out every random piece of paper, article of clothing, book, towel, foot wear, etc… The list is endless. I will admit that there were a few cords that looked really important that I hid in a cabinet in my husband’s office. But everything else landed in the Hefty. I took it straight out to the curb and left it for the morning garbage pick-up. As much as i wanted to throw it into the street for dramatic effect, the HOA is really up our butts about everything and I just figured it wouldn’t be worth the angst.

When my son came home, he went to his room to dump his stuff. Then he came joyously bounding into my bathroom where I was brushing my teeth. He thanked me profusely and offered warm hugs and kisses. “For what?” I had to finally inquire.

“For cleaning my room. You’re the best!” He smiled broadly.

“Well, you’re welcome honey,” I said, matching his buoyant tone, “But I didn’t really clean up for you. I just got tired of the chaos. So I threw out everything that wasn’t where it belonged. I love you.” Then I walked into my bedroom, climbed into the bed, turned out the light and did not utter a single word more.

Oh, he tried to get me to engage. But I stood my ground. I kept breathing and reminding myself that good old Aunt Phyllis only had to do this once. He finally gave up and went to bed about a half hour later.

I’m not sure if my actions will have any kind of lasting effect. One can only hope. But even if they don’t, at least it’s a jump start on spring clutter cleaning.

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DWS (Driving while sharing)

DWS

Listen; your kids might talk to you

A woman I know once told me not to talk on my cell phone while driving if my kids were in the car with me. The funny thing about it was that she wasn’t cautioning me at all about safety. She had older kids than me. And she said that driving in the car was always the place where her normally reticent children shared their most intimate life stories. She learned about bullies at school, first crushes, and all kinds of fascinating personal philosophies.

Lately I’ve really been working on this. And it’s paying off in spades! Last night, for example, I learned where my ten year old plans to go to college. It’s ASU, by the way, and he plans on only living in a dorm his freshman year because he wants to have a really nice kitchen where he can cook delicious meals. “Mom, did you ever eat uncooked Ramen when you were in college?” he asked me. “I’ve heard that lots of college kids eat that.”

“No, sweetie,” I smiled. “I always made it a point to take 30 seconds and cook the noodles before eating them.” But then, recounting my earlier days, I added, “But they sure were a great value. We used to buy 10 packs for a buck. That could feed you for a week back in the day.”

After discussing his future menu selections, we moved on to intermarriage; he thought it was not the right choice for him since he wants to raise his kids Jewish. Then he told me about a girl who wasn’t terribly kind in his class, his future career aspirations, what his perfect wife would be like, and how disgusting the egg frittata at school was that day.

It was a mixed bag of somewhat scattered thoughts, yearnings, and beliefs. On the more banal matters, I needed to read between the lines and ferret out the deeper truths that lurked within his complex psyche. Like his obsession with how he would ever be able to pay for auto insurance. It reminded me how much of a planner he is and how uncomfortable he is with uncertainty. His focus on having the consummate spouse represented his ever-growing anxiety around making mistakes; a topic we surely need to raise next week at the talking doctor.

I learned an inordinate amount. And by the time we got home, I felt certain that I knew him better. The mere 10 mile trip that could’ve easily been occupied with a phone call to my mom or a quick voicemail message to a friend, had served as a safe haven for a deep and meaningful dialogue. His off-handed sharing about the everyday facts of his life, his worries and future aspirations, had served to open a portal into his soul and I was deeply grateful for having been granted access to this private sanctum.

I’m not deluded enough to think that this kind of sharing will go on forever. I’m painfully aware of what happens to heart-sleeved little boys who all too often grow into “strong, silent” young men. But for now, I’ll stay off the cell phone. I’ll keep asking the questions. And I’ll keep listening, hard, for the truth behind the words, the essence beneath the answers. Because after all, is there anything more important than that?

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Preview of coming attractions…

Frankly, I’m in the “I’d rather be surprised” school of parenting.

One of my best friends has a teenage son who consistently challenges both her and her husband in every imaginable way. Often as I watch their travails, I feel like I’m sitting at Harkin’s watching my very own preview of coming attractions. and much like I often feel at the theatre, the previews are too detailed, too graphic, and they ruin the movie by telling you exactly what’s “coming soon.” Frankly, I’m in the “I’d rather be surprised” school of parenting. I mean, what’s the point of preparation anyway? It’s not like I’m really gonna alter my child-rearing tactics in order to avoid a whole new array of potential parenting pitfalls.

So the latest one is this: Joey (not his real name), likes to dip into the alcohol and marijuana. Now we’ve all been 17 so that’s not really such an outrageous occurrence.  But they’re conscientious parents and have instituted random drug tests in order to curb the undesired behavior. Now Joey, as might be expected, lies about ingesting both the booze and the pot in order to avoid negative consequences. Hard to discern which is worse, but my friends’ have focused more on the lying than the actual drug and alcohol offense.

Well, the other day Joey comes to his mom and says that he’s been invited to his friend Scott’s house on Saturday night for a beer pong party. They intend to get good and hammered and then stay overnight to sleep off the stupor. Joey preempts his mom’s concerns by clarifying that no one will be getting behind the wheel of a car, Scott’s parents will be home, and he really ought to be rewarded with the opportunity of going to the party since he is, after all, telling her the truth while not yet under any type of guilt-ridden duress.

What to do? She asked my advice. I wanted to say, “Are you kidding? I have no frickin’ idea on this one. My kids are children for Gods sake. They’re never gonna be 17 year old man-boys who want to partake in ugly adult activities. How in the hell would I know what to do?” But I self-edited and just said, “Um…I guess you should let him go. After all, I do remember being a teenager. If you say no he’s just gonna do it anyway and lie about it.” Then I added something to the effect of “I guess a vice you know about at a supervised party is better than  one you don’t know about that drives around under the influence with five other teenage boys who all believe they’re immune to mortality.”

I’m not sure she appreciated my aphorism.

But the question hasn’t left my mind since our conversation. Eventually I too will have to make decisions of this magnitude. And frankly, I don’t have a clue about what the right thing to do is. I remember how my parents forbid just about everything.  Consequently, I remember lying –a lot. I know some people consider their adolescent kids to be pre-adults and rather than participating in long, drawn out arguments, would rather just be “friends” with their kids so they green light pretty much everything. I’ve even heard tell of parents who actually enjoy a few puffs of the cannabis  plant along with their youngsters.

I spoke with a teetotaler pal of mine the other day and she looked at me askance when I announced that in our house, a few sips of wine now and again wasn’t verboten. “We believed more in the European model of parenting,” I added, feeling more than a little ashamed to admit it.

What is right, I wonder. There will likely be scores of perplexing problems ahead. Yet I go through life wondering why I’m the only progenitor who missed parent orientation and is going through the experience blindly without access to that mythical handbook everyone else seems to have in their possession. It’s scary. And frustrating.

I guess that’s why I’d rather skip the previews and just be stunned by whatever reality awaits me.

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What I learned from the daily funnies.

There’s always a window that’s lowered by a millimeter, a woman’s hair is slightly shorter, a man’s polka-dotted tie turns to stripes. It’s really not so hard. So why am I blinded to these seemingly obvious differences?

I am obsessed with hocus-focus. No, that’s not a typo. And I’m not talking about magic, or the dark arts, or any kind of voodoo witch doctor stuff. I’m talking about that comic in the daily newspaper. You know, the one with two identical pictures and you’re supposed to pick out the six differences between them. They’re made for like five-year-old kids, so that parents can say something like, “Here you go, Junior, take a look at these,” and buy themselves a few extra minutes of quiet morning java time.

But here’s the thing; I can’t do them. I’m serious. I’m lucky if I can find 2 or 3 differences. But six seems totally unreasonable. I mean, how are children supposed to figure these out? The weird part is that it’s always the same stuff, and I still can’t figure it out. There’s always a window that’s lowered by a millimeter, a woman’s hair is slightly shorter, a man’s polka-dotted tie turns to stripes. It’s really not so hard. So why am I blinded to these seemingly obvious differences?

I think there is something else going on here. Some kind of psychic rebellion, a repressed emotional resistance to noticing the blatant, the conspicuous, the glaring. Perhaps it’s just a trick being played upon my feeble psyche by Maternus, the omniscient goddess of all things maternal. Maybe she is mocking the fact that I meticulously note every out-of-place ringlet upon each of my children’s tossled tops and can’t help but comment on their faintly stained t-shirts and popsicle blue lips.

As a mother, I admit my compulsion to scrutinize every aspect of my kid’s personas. It’s like I’m unable to keep my eye on the bigger picture; my children’s kind hearts, their graceful spirits, their unending curiosities.

Maybe the message is to stop focusing on the minutia altogether. Because even when you do catch that missing bow-tie or slightly tilted picture frame, you still end up missing a whole bunch of other stuff and losing the game.

Hmmm…that’s a pretty lofty lesson coming from the daily funnies.

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Sometimes a cigar really is just a cigar

sometimes a cigar really is just a cigar

“I don’t want to get wet!” my six-year-old son Eli screamed emphatically as we entered camp on the penultimate day of the session.

“Shit,” I thought to myself. “I did it again.” It had been a hellish morning. We were already 20 minutes late, and I’d forgotten it was water day.

“But I’ll get you some extra clothes from the office,” I countered, trying to sound upbeat. “I’m sure lots of kids wont have swim suits. They always have extra clothes.”

“I don’t want to get in the water,” he insisted. “And I’m not wearing someone else’s clothes. Will you just forget it.”

After one more failed attempt to convince him that he could at least play in the water and let himself air dry, I gave up and kissed him goodbye, certain that if I’d been a better mother and remembered his water attire he’d already be happily frolicking in the baby pools outside his classroom. As I got into the car, I tried to talk myself down. “Everyone makes mistakes, Debra. Don’t make this into a bigger issue than it is. He’s probably already forgotten about it.” But much as I tried to let it go, my “you suck as a mother” gene kicked in and I knew I had to do something. I made a bee line to the nearest Old Navy. Hurrah for the end of summer sale. For 32 bucks I got a swim top, trunks, sandals and a beach towel. I was back at camp in a record 10 minutes.

When I arrived, all of Eli’s camp buddies were splashing with abandon. Eli was seated inside with his teacher filling home-made lava lamps. “Hi,” I smiled holding up my bag of swim treasures.

“Hi, mom,” he smiled with a deep sense of joy that told me I had done the right thing. I scooped him up and showed him what I bought. He hugged me gleefully. Then I started pulling off his shoes, socks and t-shirt. But he pulled away. “Mom, please!” he insisted. “I love what you got. I’ll wear it at home today, after camp. But I don’t want to get in the water right now. I already told you that.”

I stared at him cluelessly. “But I thought you were just saying that because I forgot to bring your swim stuff from home.”

He looked back at me with a baffled expression that questioned the logic of such a ridiculously flawed assumption. “Um…no. I just don’t want to get into a baby pool. I’d rather go in a real pool when I get home from camp.” He hugged me and returned to the lava lamp filling station. Then, with a dismissive way he added, “See you later, mom.”

“Um…okay…” I stammered, still holding onto my Old Navy paraphernalia. I’ll just leave it here by your cubby,” I went on, “You know, in case you…change your mind.”

“I wont,” he chirped cheerfully. And with that, I dejectedly slunk from the room.
Sometimes as adults we get so used to people not saying what they mean we don’t recognize the simple truth when it hits us squarely upside the head. Maybe listening better and taking my kids at face value is the lesson I should take from this experience. Maybe I just need to stop reading into everything my kids say and do. Maybe if I stopped projecting my own insecurities onto my children we’d all be a whole lot better off.

Maybe sometimes a cigar really is just a cigar.

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My two cents…literally

pennies

So we’re hanging at Z Pizza, me and the boys. Levi’s just inhaled his second humongous slice of za and Eli’s barely touched his first. “Mom, can I go get another piece?” my bottomless pit of a son asks. I sigh a bit hopelessly as I contemplate how we’re going to feed him for the next 9 years until he turns 18. “Of course,” I say, forcing a smile. I reach into my wallet and hand him a five. “This should cover it.” Of course the counter is 4 feet away, so if my fin doesn’t suffice, I can step in and cover the difference.

Levi orders politely and pays for his pizza. Then he brings me the change. “Here you go,” he says, as he places a few coins in my palm. “Mom,” he adds, still gripping a penny, “Can I have this for the ‘take a penny, give a penny’ pot by the cash register?” I once again oblige and he bops back to the counter, penny in hand.

When he comes back to the table he looks really perplexed. I notice a penny still clenched between his thumb and forefinger. “I don’t really get this,” he says looking at the penny. “It says ‘take a penny, give a penny.’ But now I’ve just got a different penny. I mean, what’s the point?”

“Honey,” I say trying not to laugh, “they don’t mean ‘exchange’ a penny. The idea is that if you have an extra penny or two, you can leave them for someone who might need a penny sometime in the future. Does that make sense?”

“But why would anyone ever NEED a penny? You say all the time that they’re just worthless pieces of copper that ought to be done away with.”

“That’s true,” I concede. “But people do still use them and sometimes it’s easier to borrow a penny and not end up with a fist full of change.” I quickly realize that this simple concept is morphing into a complex dissertation. “Like if your bill comes to $20 and two cents, you’d rather just pay the two cents than walk away with 98 cents.”

He’s a smart kid, but I can see he’s having trouble wrapping his mind around this. “Whatever,” he harumphs, eyes grazing the ceiling, “Grown-ups are just…weird.”

“Yes they are,” I concur. “Now why don’t you sit down and eat your pizza.”

“Actually,” he announces without a trace of regret, “I’m not really hungry anymore.”
And with that, he tosses his perfectly good slice of uneaten pizza into the trash and I erupt like a verbal volcano. “You just wasted four dollars. We could have at least taken that piece home, or your brother might have wanted it. Why would you do something like that?”

“Because mom,” he reasoned, pointing to a sign on the wall above my head, “It says ‘please discard all uneaten food into appropriate trash container.”

I thought about explaining that sometimes grown-ups don’t actually say exactly what they mean. But I let it go this time, too tired for yet another foray into the realm of his intellectual curiosity.

“Come here, you silly boy,” I said opening my arms for him to snuggle into. He obliged at first and then pulled away.

“Come on, mom,” he said quietly, as he wiggled out of my embrace, “someone might see us.”

I let him go, a bit sadly I must admit. Guess my little guy’s growing up.

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If crime doesn’t pay, then honesty should be rewarded!

I am too honest. I really am. I’m the kind of person who corrects the cashier at Safeway when she charges me for cheap, ordinary Gala apples when in fact I’ve purchased exceedingly expensive Jazz apples.

I’ve always been this way. I can’t keep things I find on the sidewalk. I never cheated on a test in my life. And I actually feel compelled to return that extra nickel when the young man at Dunkin Donuts makes the wrong change from my $20. (Well, in my register-ringing teens, our pay got docked for every penny we fell short.)

C'mon TJ's. Give me a break.

But today I feel genuinely ripped off. And it’s all because of my insane honesty. I went to Trader Joe’s. (Yes, I’m obsessed about shopping there. I go there at least 5 times a week. But that’s another issue we can contemplate in the future.) Much to my delight, I remembered to bring in my reusable grocery bags. I normally end up running back to the car to retrieve them just as I’m entering the check-out lane.

As you probably know, Trader Joe’s offers a kind of incentive program for bringing in your own bags. Every time you use your own, you get to fill out a ticket for a chance to win a $25 gift certificate. I’ve been entering this weekly lottery for over a year. But much to my chagrin, I have never won. This seems odd to me. For someone who enters as often as I do, I was fairly certain that I would have been victorious by now. And for some reason, I really want to win this. It has taken me a great deal of energy and effort to consistently remember to bring in those dumb canvas bags, and now I want to be rewarded for it.

When they first started the program, they always gave me a ticket as I checked out. But, over time, they have become a bit chintzy with the tickets. I sometimes go weeks without being given one. I know that I could ask for one. But I’m kind of embarrassed about it. I don’t want to seem too needy or competitive. So I generally smile a little less brightly and just head out to the car disappointedly with my cadre of environmentally protective reusable bags.

But today, the gentleman ringing me up actually remembered to give me a ticket to fill out for the auction. My face lit up. I smiled and murmured some hopeful remark about it perhaps finally being my time for the big win. He affirmed my wishful philosophy by reminding me that somebody has to win. Why couldn’t it be me?

I bagged my groceries as he continued to ring up the items in my cart. That’s when I saw it. There was a second blank ticket just barely visible underneath a stack of brown paper bags. “OMG,” I thought. “I could fill that out too and then I’d for sure end up winning.” I unobtrusively palmed the extra ticket and secretly slid it over to me. When the cashier was distracted, I picked it up. (I had already dropped the first one in the little tin at the front door.)

We talked cheerfully and he helped me bag the remainder of my groceries. “Just fill it out and drop it in the tin,” I said to myself. But I couldn’t do it. What if I did actually win and it was under this kind of false pretense? How could I live with myself?

After I was bagged and payed for, I held up the bonus ticket and announced, “Hey, here’s an extra one. I just found it lying up here.” “Thanks,” he said as he collected the still blank ticket. And that was it. He didn’t thank me for my honesty. He didn’t say, “Listen, just go ahead and fill this one in too. It’ll give you better odds for winning this week.” Nothing like that. He just thanked me and stuck the ticket in the register.

I am now certain that that ticket was the winning ticket. I deserved that ticket. I bet I enter this drawing more often than anyone else in the valley. How come I never win? That’s just weird. I’m starting to think it’s all a ruse. Maybe they don’t actually pick a winner every week. Maybe they do it like once every four months or something. Whatever they’re doing, they are pissing me off and I’m one of their best customers.

If Trader Joe’s is going to reward people for protecting the environment, you’d think they’d also want to positively reenforce the kind of honesty I displayed this morning. I mean, being green is one thing. But without good, old-fashioned honesty, this planet is seriously doomed.

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Watch out, those birds and bees can sting!

As you’ve heard me say numerous times, my 9-year-old son, Levi, is one of the most giving, thoughtful, compassionate individuals I’ve ever known. He wants to help, to rescue, to take care of people. He is also fully versed in the academics of sexual reproduction. Now who’d have thunk those two characteristics could create such an incendiary combination.

Here’s the thing about sex; my husband Mark and I are very open about the reproductive process with our kids. We’ve always taken the approach that they will ask for as much information as they’re ready to handle. When they were younger, the simple explanation that mommies and daddies decide to have babies and then the baby grows inside the mommy’s tummy, easily sufficed. As time went on, however, more in depth answers were required. (Ironically, as things got more detailed and specific, the questions always seemed to come when my husband was working, at a meeting or out of town for a few days.) But I carried the torch and explained the mechanics of sexual reproduction using the correct anatomical names of all body parts. I never stammered or stuttered so as to suggest any amount of nervousness or discomfort. I simply told my son how babies were made in as much detail as his curious mind was ready to digest.

Flash forward to a few nights ago. Mark and I got home from our weekly date night and found our regular babysitter a bit undone. Reluctant to share the reason for her discomfort, we assumed that the boys had behaved poorly or that she’d gotten a bad grade on a final or something along those lines. But as she started to leave, she turned back and said, “I think I need to tell you something.”

We were concerned. We sat down expecting the worst. A few words of background here; this young woman has worked with us for nearly two years. We love her as if she’s a part of our family. The boys treat her with love, admiration and respect. She is a smart, thoughtful, religious young woman who wants to be a mother in the worst way. But she’s careful and responsible and is waiting to find someone to share her life with. So in the meantime, she mothers my kids and everyone wins.

She doesn’t hide her maternal longings, and her desire to have a baby had come up in conversation that evening while we were out. Eager to please, and now fully cognizant of the process, Levi leapt at the opportunity saying, “I can make a baby with you!” When she politely declined, he pressed on and said that it was really no big deal. His mom had told him how to do it, and he’d be more than happy to give her the baby she longed for.

It’s moments like these that make me really thankful for people who possess a sense of humor. Our sitter smiled as she watched our horrified expressions. Then she giggled a little. My husband and I both sighed in relief and started giggling too. We all knew that Levi’s offer had been completely innocent. But we’d both still shared a moment of panicked hysteria imagining our 9 year old offering his “services” for hire.

There are innumerous blessings in having smart, curious kids who want desperately to make others happy. But every once in a while, those kids get a little too knowledgeable and a little too helpful. As Confucius once said, “he who possesses the answers is sometimes better off holding them back.” Okay, I said that. But I think that’s the next lesson we’ll work on at home.

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