Middle school mayhem

Throw away every kind, thoughtful or genteel thing you’ve ever learned. Do not offer your hand upon introducing yourself. Never hold the door open for anyone — especially not for a girl. No, strike that, boy or girl, same story. And whatever you do, never, ever admit to liking, respecting or even tolerating your parents.

This is a page out of our middle school preparatory training manual. My 12 year old son, Levi, starts middle school at a new school in four days. It’s his first foray into the public school system and he doesn’t know a single soul. So we’re all a little nervous about how he’ll like it and whether or not he’ll fit in easily, etc…

For those of you who don’t know Levi, he’s not your ordinary 12 year old boy. He’s delightfully chivalrous, amazingly mature, deeply thoughtful and incredibly sensitive. Having these traits has necessitated some serious middle school tutoring.

My best friend in LA told me a horror story about her eldest son holding the door open for other students the first few weeks of his middle school experience. He was “dork” labelled and alienated for three quarters of the year. Luckily he found his niche and figured out that kindness and consideration were not attributes a middle schooler ought to display.

Another friend of ours was horrified upon meeting my son that he had warmly extended his hand, smiled broadly and happily introduced himself using his first and last name. “He’s not gonna do that in middle school?” My pal asked anxiously.

“No,” I stammered. “Of course not. He can be just as unfriendly and ill-mannered as any other child.” I grabbed Levi and fled the scene.

Once we were safely ensconced in the car, I clarified to him that going to middle school was a lot like going to a foreign country. It’s important to observe the culture and learn the language so you don’t inadvertently find yourself in the middle of an uncomfortable international fiasco. No standing out. No drawing attention to yourself. “Middle school is like a water color painting,” I advised, “Best done in muted shades that blend together easily.” What can I say? It was the best I could come up with on short notice.

“But I thought I was always supposed to be myself?” My son curiously inquired. “You’ve always told me to let my unique personality out and if people don’t like me it’s their problem, not mine.”

“Yes. Yes, I did,” I conceded. “But that hasn’t worked out all that well for us thus far. And all bets are off in middle school. Fitting in, laying low and not rocking any boats — that is our new M.O. By the way,” I added, “Do not, under any circumstance, admit to liking your parents or enjoying our company. That is a number one middle school faux pas.”

“I don’t think I’m going to like middle school, mom,” he said with the resignation of a soldier being sent to the front line.

“That’s okay,” I told him. “In fact, that’s perfect. Because no one likes middle school. Good job, buddy. Way to fit in.”

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Why did the boys cross the road?

Long pause filled with uncertainty.

To get smoothies from A.J.s and scare the bejeezus out of their mother.

It may not be the funniest joke ever, but my two tiny, helpless, toddlers… okay, they’re not really tiny anymore, and technically they’re not helpless. I guess you could also argue that nearly 13 and 9 no longer designates them as toddlers. But they’re crossing a busy street and I’m not with them and this is freaking me out!

It’s summer vacation, camp is over, I have no help and I’m feeling like a dried up piece of sand paper. So I made an appointment for a manicure and pedicure. I thought my husband would be off work this morning when I originally made the appointment. But he had to work at the last minute. I didn’t want to cancel. Does that make me a monster? My heels are coarse and leathery, and my feet look like they’ve been through a Crayola blizzard with so many splotches of colors on my toenails because I’ve been layering over my last pedicure for a month. The salon I go to is across the street from AJs. So the boys convinced me that they could come along with me and venture off alone to get smoothies while I soaked peacefully in the pedicure tub. I gave them money and instructions, several times. “Be careful crossing the street!” I said. “It’s a busy street. And call me if you need me. Maybe text me once you get there. No, that’s silly. You don’t have to text me. Yes, text me.” Okay, seriously, they’re only going across the street. Motorists are cautious around here. I mean it’s a residential neighborhood. But there are a lot of elderly folks in this area. Maybe they wont notice two innocent little tykes, one toting a beloved stuffed polar bear, darting across a four lane freeway. Okay okay, it’s not exactly a freeway. But it gets really busy sometimes and it can be as treacherous as the 51 on a Friday afternoon.

Why is it so hard to let kids grow up? I know this is good for them. It teaches them responsibility. It allows them to learn independence. When I was 12, I used to peddle my bicycle 10 miles across town to the local Bunny Hutch to meet friends and enjoy the best french fries in town. What were my parents thinking? Did it scare my mom that I rode in the street? Did she just not think about it? Why does it freak me out so much?

Levi, my nearly 13 year old, went away to sleep-away camp for a full month this summer. He managed to brush his teeth without my constant reminders. He got dressed by himself and handled a litany of daily responsibilities without a single word from me or his dad. (Although I do confess to putting a few brief instructions into the loving letters I wrote on a daily basis.) But he probably ignored those.

I really don’t remember my parents being this over-protective. I don’t think it was that much of a safer world back then. I’ve even read numerous books and articles that insist there are not more child abductions or mass killings today than there were back in the day. It’s just the way the media covers them that makes them all seem so looming and prevalent. But parents’ levels of angst have sky-rocketed since the time of my childhood. It’s like we’re so scared of something happening that we don’t want to ever let our kids out of our sight.

I think it ultimately cripples both them and us. It keeps kids in a perpetual state of childishness. We protect them from anything that even hints at grown-up responsibility which keeps them completely void of the experiences they need to grow up and become responsible adults. In turn, their neediness and inexperience prevents us from letting go and keeps us stuck in perpetual parenting mode without any hope of escape or eventual freedom.

The funniest part of all this is that we’re only doing it because we love them so much. We just don’t want to see them hurt or watch them struggle or worse, possibly fail. But that’s really the only way to learn anything, isn’t it? To fall down. To make a mistake. To err. Without error, life poses no challenges, no opportunities for growth.

So take a deep breath. Love your kids. But let them cross the street by themselves once in a while. It’s really the only way to get from here to there anyway.

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Bus #108

What would happen if you took the school bus home ?
The police would make you bring it back ! (Well, we all need a little levity these days.)

As a parent, one tries to prepare her kids for everything. Especially if you have one of those kids for whom spur of the moment adjustments can be earth-shatteringly upsetting. Take the first day of third grade for example. New school. New teacher. New kids. New campus. But the biggest anxiety; taking a bright yellow school bus for the first time ever.

Who knows why certain things are scarier than others. But for my 8 year old son, Eli, his fears seemed to circle around taking that bus. There was the question of which one to get on, which one to take home, who will he sit with, what if he misses it? There were countless worries and fears floating around his new school mode of transport.

So what did I do? I was determined to prepare him accordingly which I knew would allay all of his fears. I checked the written parent packet and it was bus #108 that would daily carry my boy to and from his new school. We drilled the number into his head. We played silly games to test his memory. “Should you get on bus #115?” we’d ask, trying to light-heartedly trick him. “What about #37?” “Let’s say there’s a pink school bus and the number is #138 and the driver, whom you’ve never seen, says, ‘come on the bus, little boy. I have candy.’”

We did a couple of dry runs to school from the bus stop and taught him where to meet the bus after school so he’d have no concerns whatsoever. We even practiced walking to and from the bus stop, even timed it so we’d know what time to depart each morning. I was pretty proud of myself. But as all good mythologists know, it’s always pride that comes before the fall.

First day of school and we wait for nearly a half hour at the bus stop. The bus never arrives. We drive Eli to school and he ends up being tardy on his first day, which freaks him out and raises his anxiety level exponentially. After calming him, straightening out the tardy situation, and getting him situated in class, the day went surprisingly well. That is, of course, until it was time to come home.

They shuttled the bus-riding kids out to the parking lot and guided Eli right to bus #105. That’s when all hell broke loose. “I can not get on bus #105!” he insisted. “I’m supposed to be on bus #108.” Bus number 108, however, had broken down earlier in the day (which was why it didn’t come in the morning) and was in the shop torn up and awaiting repair. Bus #105 was taking its place. Of course that didn’t sway my son who had been practicing this drill for over two weeks. I can only imagine his focused little mind as he walked out to the bus. “Bus #108, bus #108, bus #108,” he likely repeated like a mantra as he headed out of school that first day. It eventually took two drivers, the teacher, the vice principal and finally the kind and compassionate principal himself to convince Eli that it was okay to take bus 105 to get home.

“Why was he so upset?” my 11 year old son, Levi, asked. “Because,” I answered, “He did everything right, just the way we practiced. Only sometimes, life changes the rules on us in the middle of the game. And it just isn’t fair.”
So here’s to a new school year filled with busses that will break down, schedules that will be changed, and routines that will be altered. But hopefully, amidst all the chaos life throws in his path, my youngest will learn to sway in the wind like a sturdy Elm and not snap at every formidable gale.

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Parental wisdom

So we’re dropping my 11 year old son, Levi, off at overnight camp in Northern California, (We should all be so lucky), and I find myself lamely trying to instill upon him every life lesson I can think of in the two hour time span it takes us to drive from Oakland airport to Sonoma.

“Levi, this is Berkely, California. This is where UC Berkely is. It’s a great University; a bastion of political liberalism though. You know it’s important to educate yourself on the issues and never blindly follow anyone else’s rigid political agenda.”

“Levi, are you going to scale that huge climbing tower this summer? Remember, just one foot in front of the other. Even trying something that terrifying counts as a success. You have to constantly push your boundaries. Only by stepping outside your comfort zone can you ever truly grow as a person.”

“By the way, make sure you write back at least once to everyone who writes to you at camp. People need to feel like their efforts are appreciated. Positive reinforcement goes a long way to securing the behavior you want to encourage.”

“And I did mention that your body is yours and yours alone to control, didn’t I? You’re a very handsome young man and you look much older than 11. No one should ever touch you in a way that feels weird or uncomfortable.”

“Don’t forget to share your things with your cabin-mates. Never let someone else go without when you have more than enough.”

I think I blathered on incessantly the entire ride up to camp. I’m pretty sure I threw out a few sincere “Don’t worry about anything!” and “Just have fun!” comments from the window as we were pulling away. About a mile up the road I started weeping inconsolably. After my husband reminded me that this was why he normally did camp drop-off duty solo, I managed to pull myself together.

“Do you think anything we try to teach him will ever matter?” I ask, not knowing whether or not I really want to hear the answer.

“Yeah,” my husband assures me. “But we just don’t know which lessons will stick. Some will mean a great deal and save him a lot of pain and heartache. But there’s no way to know which ones will resonate and which never penetrate the surface.”

I suddenly think about my own dad and all the things he taught me. How to accept everyone, no matter what they believed or where they came from. That it was always better to be over-dressed than under-dressed. That what was sexy was what wasn’t revealed. Never to salt your food before tasting it. Read ingredients in medications. If they’re the same, choose the generic. If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. It’s always okay to ask for what you want, as long as you do it with grace and humility. Be true to yourself. Mix your wasabi into a smooth paste by adding drops of soy sauce slowly while rapidly mixing with a chopstick (some pharmacist mumbo jumbo about solvents/solutions). Never let the weather discourage your adventures. It’s always darkest before the dawn…

The list goes on seemingly forever. I think it grows exponentially as I narrow the gap between my middle age and his final 68th year. I suddenly remember the Mark Twain quote he recited at my Grandfather’s 70th birthday party.

“When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”

Parental wisdom surely grows stronger with age. I just hope I live long enough to see my boys recognize and acknowledge some of my own.

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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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Seattle shivers

When I first visited Arizona, I remember my dismay at having forgotten my swim suit back in Chicago. I rushed over to the local Target to pick up a new one and was stunned to learn that, although it was a balmy 80 degrees outside, it was March and out of season so no swim suits were available. I found that to be odd. After all, coming from 30 below zero weather in the Windy City, 80 degrees was not only swim suit temperature to me, it was “sit out by the pool with a virgin strawberry daiquiri reading Cosmo and bathing myself in Bain de Soleil” weather.

I’d nearly forgotten the episode. Until this afternoon, when my shivering son, Levi, and I wandered into store after store here in Seattle looking for anything resembling a coat to protect him from the icy rain and frigid winds we were facing. I found it beyond baffling that in a city where summer temperatures routinely range anywhere from 60 to 75 degrees, not a single store sold jackets. We couldn’t even find a heavy sweatshirt at all of the big-box stores. By the time we wandered into K-Mart, which shows you how utterly desperate I’d become, I was fit to be tied.

“Excuse me,” I waved down a sales associate. “Where are the men’s jackets?”

“We don’t have jackets,” the surly young woman snipped. “It’s summer.”

“Thank you for that clarification,” I amiably replied. “But it’s freezing outside and practically hailing. Is there nowhere in Seattle to purchase a coat in June?”

“No.” she answered with an almost lilting rise of her voice that felt eerily similar to the tone my son uses when he rolls his eyes towards the ceiling to indicate that I am, without doubt, the biggest goon in the universe.

But I persisted. “I’m just curious, what do people from here do when the weather is this chilly in June?”

“They wear coats they bought in the winter,” she curtly snapped. Then she turned on her heel and strode off towards the patio umbrellas and outdoor chez cushions.

We did finally locate a rather large wind-breaker on a clearance rack near the sporting goods aisle and decided to count our blessings and buy it immediately. On our next day’s boating expedition, we would simply layer up our son in every item he’d packed, stuff him into the over-sized wind-breaker, and hope for the best.

But isn’t this a little odd? I mean, who makes these kinds of decisions? If it’s cold, chances are someone is going to need a jacket. Who cares if it’s May or December? Likewise, if you live in the Dessert and it’s hot, the strong possibility exists that tourists are going to plan on sunning themselves next to various bodies of chlorine-coated H20. So why wouldn’t you have a few swim suits on hand?

There are undoubtedly people getting paid a great deal of money to make these types of inane decisions. I found myself deeply disturbed by this and stepped into one of the 80,000 Starbucks that surrounded me like an army of java zombies.

“I’ll just have a decaf coffee,” I pled, knowing that the barrista would get it and hurry to accommodate my stressed-out state.

But lo and behold, I was mistaken. Instead, the young man behind the counter smiled a vacuous smile and said, “Sorry, we don’t sell decaf after 4pm. It’s a company wide policy.”

I shall leave you to puzzle that out on your own, dear reader. For somehow, in some fictitious universe somewhere, it is thoughtful, prudent and a good business decision for the largest coffee house in the world to refuse to sell caffein-free coffee after 4pm in the afternoon.

I give up. Guess I’ll keep pondering that one tonight when I can’t sleep after my unintentional afternoon caffein injection.

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Yes, chef!

I’ve hired a a personal chef. I know, money is tight. Times are tough. We’ve got a Bar Mitzvah coming in a little over a year. But, cooking’s never been my thing. My husband, Mark, loves to cook. He’s a great chef too. So I never bothered to force myself into culinary improvement mode. But with the economy plugging along like a slow train through Arkansas, Mark has had to work longer days and later hours and doesn’t have time to practice the culinary arts much anymore. So I did what all smart, savvy women of my…um…religious persuasion do. I hired someone to help. (Okay, its a joke. Don’t get all bent out of shape. I just felt like funning on the “jap” stereotype for a moment.)

But here’s the best part. I don’t have to pay him; the chef I mean. He loves to cook so much that he’s thrilled to have the position. He’s young and hungry and wants desperately to please us. In fact, the reason I offered him the job was because he was complaining so bitterly about summer boredom I just couldn’t take it anymore. It’s really a win/win for all involved.

His first dinner was roasted chicken in whole wheat pita pockets with an arugula pesto. It was served atop a bed of bright green arugula with scattered heirloom cherry tomatoes, then drizzled, ever so slightly, in an olive oil and aged balsamic reduction. The next night he grilled fresh lake Trout and served it with home-made garlic mashed potatoes and steamed broccoli. (I admit, I passed on the potatoes. I’m watching my carbs.) Tonight he served a fresh cucumber salad with rainbow peppers, grilled eggplant and Kale. Il primo piato was bruschetta, and our secondo, a four cheese tortellini lightly bathed in a tomato puree.

Jealous? I bet you are. But don’t hate me because I’m a genius. I just borrowed a page from Dale Carnegie’s archives and used my plethora of summer citrus to make a big old vat of that proverbial lemonade everyone’s always talking about. You see, my new personal chef is my 11 year old son, Levi. If you’ve been loyally following the blog, you know that the summer camp boycott is still underway. Levi and his 8 year old sidekick, Eli, (Remind me some time to explain our logic in choosing to name both of our children using a limited alphabetical roster of no more than four letters), categorically refused to attend any form of structured day camp this summer, opting instead for the joy, mirth and frivolity of hours and hours of backyard fun, pool play and summer reading. Needless to say, they were bored to tears within the first few hours of summer vacation.

Since we had already committed to our sitter, who had bypassed other job opportunities to work with our boys, we really couldn’t veer the ship and alter our course. Plus the whole “Love and Logic” approach we’ve been taking, insists that successful child-rearing occurs only through children making choices and living through the consequences that result from those choices. By making a poor, albeit harmless, choice to stay home all summer, their boredom might propel them towards finding something they truly would enjoy doing next summer. No, the “no summer camp” decision was one we were all going to have to live with, even if it necessitated me renting a small condo on the coast to save my ever dwindling sanity.

But lo and behold, I was visited by some angelic presence that bestowed upon me the greatest idea I’ve ever had; use my son’s natural talents and simply offer him some tools, (ie. money for groceries, minor instruction, a few healthy cook books), then let him go. And that is exactly what we’ve done.

So I now have a personal chef, an often reluctant sous chef (Eli), and a shred of sanity left. Sure the kitchen is never quite as pristine as I’d desire. Yes, I may be ingesting a few more calories than I’d like. But my kid is happy, engaged in something he loves, and he’s a really awesome chef! I wonder if this is how Gordon Ramsey started?

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Stressed out summer

I just read a blog about summer camp for at-risk youth and I realized that that meant mine. Because as of today, their third full day of summer vacation, they are at risk of being throttled, pummeled and bound and gag by none other than their delirious mother who is truly at the proverbial end of her rope.

Summer sucks. It’s hot. I feel perpetually lethargic. Stepping into my car is like being rolled through an easy bake oven. AND THERE’S NO SCHOOL!!!! Help me someone.

About two months ago, while I was furiously researching summer camp options for my 8 and 11 year old sons, my husband made the case that the boys did not want to go to summer camp and he insisted that they were too old to be forced to go. While I vehemently disagreed, I also have a very keen memory of my nephew, several years back, who ran away from summer camp and refused to ever go back. Besides, according to my husband, all the boys wanted to do all summer was frolic happily in our newly added swimming pool in the backyard.

“They’ll be bored,” I asserted. “Nonsense,” he proclaimed. “They’re kids. They just want to play. We need to let them be kids for once. Enough with the over-programming and the rushing between activities. They need down time. It’ll be good for them.”

Fast forward to today. They are mopey, depressive, and completely unimaginative. They don’t want to do any of the myriad of activities we had earlier outlined. They find each other positively detestable, so the idea of even being in the same room with each other is wholly unacceptable. They wont read, (an activity they cherished up until three days ago.) Board games are out because they can’t agree on which one to play. The only shared activity that will be endured is watching “Myth Buster” reruns over and over ad nauseum.

Yesterday my 11 year old son, Levi, decided to put together a professional resume so he could go out and seek employment. Anything would be better than being at home all summer. I have to say that his CV is really rather impressive. But his research was discouraging. He’s still got to wait at least four years to even be considered for a bagger position at Safeway.

My full time summer sitter seems to be sprouting grey hairs even as we speak (and she’s 20), and I haven’t been able to do a stitch of work since this awful summer break began. It’s like I’ve become this powerful magnetic suctioning device. They wont leave me alone for one single nano-second. I work out of my house most days. This is impossible. I even fled the domestic abode for a few hours this afternoon to work on a project at the Coffee Bean. But I was inundated with phone calls about who said what to whom, who wont stop talking, and what kind of gelatin is kosher. It’s too much.

I texted my husband that my life had become unbearable. I haven’t heard back. I’m thinking he’ll find a way to work late tonight.

I know there are moms who are good at this. I’m just not one of them. At a certain level, I accept that about myself. I have a lot of good traits. Parenting full time is just not one of them. But why isn’t that okay? Why do I feel so gosh darn lousy about myself because I need time to work and to be with adults and to challenge myself artistically? I need alone time. Why don’t they?

Look I am fully cognizant of the fact that in a few more years they wont want to have anything to do with me — ever. But right now that actually looks rather appealing. This clingy, needy, unable to walk to the mail box themselves thing is suffocating me.

I love them. I do. I would easily give my life for them. (Which at this point is also sounding rather attractive.) Taking a bullet would be preferable to 3 more hours of uninterrupted “Marco Polo” in the pool.

So I know this is asking a lot; but if anyone of you could tell me that this is normal or at least not identifiably psychotic, I would owe you a debt of gratitude. And if I don’t write back right away, don’t worry, I’ve just checked myself into some insanely expensive sanatorium near Sedona where they don’t take insurance or allow children visitation rights.

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Vacation? I think not!

We’re going on vacation! No, let me clarify that. We are going on a family trip. They are two completely different animals. When I think of vacation, I think of me lying face down on a massage table in the middle of some exotic rain forest, sipping a strategically perched piña colada out of a coconut shell. There are no people below the age of 15 allowed anywhere near my “vacation” locale. No worries about meal preparation, because we dine at gloriously adorned, trendy island haunts where there are no kid menus, no sippy cups and no whiny little people demanding your constant attention.

In contrast, we are heading to my home town, Chicago, for 4.75 days of family, old friends, and celebrations. Btw, our schedule really is optimized, based on many years of past research, to facilitate family familiarity and closeness, while desperately attempting to avoid the inevitable familial fighting, frustration and frenzy. Several years ago we concluded that the 5th day of any family visit resulted in me sobbing for hours in a corner of my old childhood bedroom and swearing to never return to the Windy City ever again. But 4 days wasn’t quite enough time to see all of the warring factions of family members who for whatever reason, can’t manage to be in the same room at the same time. Hence we schedule all trips back east for the carefully calculated 4.75 days.

The optimist in me is excited about the trip. The realist, leery. I don’t think we ever stop wishing for the perfect family who loves each other unconditionally, would go to the ends of the earth for one another, and fights tooth and nail to grab the check first at the end of a meal. Well, one out of three isn’t so bad. And no, I’m not saying which one.

We’ve got a lot planned and the last week or two my kids have been on super-sensitive and whiny mode. It’s been maddening and I’m deeply concerned about how to muddle through the next week. My husband drew up a contract and challenged all of us to sign it. As I’ve said before, he really would’ve made an excellent attorney. For my part, I have to control my tendency to scream like a madwoman and curb my propensity for vulgarity. (It’s ugly, but I believe in full disclosure). The boys contracted not to whine, wail, wallop, and whimper during our travel time. They agreed to “go with the flow,” sometimes compromise and do what other family members want to do, and be respectful, kind and warm to everyone they meet (especially adults.) That is also the husband specific contractual agreement. It will be harder for him than the kids.

The consequence you wonder? Only those of us who honor the contract will be included in next month’s family outing to Seattle. We’ve discussed it and honestly have every intention of staying true to this. Zero tolerance. Anyone who breaks the contract stays home with a mean old sitter we’re on the prowl for who makes little boys eat liver and onions and doesn’t believe in chocolate chip cookies. If you know anyone, please forward her resume. I have a sinking suspicion that we’ll be hiring.

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Union busting

Please help me! My kids have unionized and taken a strict “no camp” position which they insist is non-negotiable. I, on the other hand, come to the mediation table with an equally undebatable policy that not only demands full-time summer camp, but also promises a complete maternal break-down and subsequent walk-out if my demands are not met.

Bottom line; I do not have the time, capacity or stamina to entertain my children 24-7 for 3 months of summer activities. I have come to believe that there are some women (even perhaps a few men) for whom this would not only be possible, but, dare I say, even enjoyable. Unfortunately, I am not one of them. I’m not even good at entertaining myself for unstructured stretches of time extending beyond 15 minutes. The combination of me and children for days at a time at record temperatures is like a highly combustible mixture of picric acid and sodium hydroxide. Not something you want happening around the house.

My husband has sided with the children. “You can’t force them to go to summer camp,” he admonishes. “Besides, it’s expensive. And you know how it’ll be to fight every day and force them to go against their wills.”

“Yes,” I concede, “It’ll be hell on a daily basis. But, if I were to put it in Dante-esque terms, I’d have to say that the daily tiffs were more like the first circle, while staying at home with them from June through August plunges into the ninth.” My husband stared at me in bewilderment. He’s not a big Alighieri fan.

“They’ll play together,” he proffers with the simplicity Jack the Dullard. “Yeah,” I reply sarcastically, “Until one of them gets mad and hits the other with a croquet mallet. This is a horrible idea.”

“OK, we’ll hire someone,” he concedes, realizing that unless he’s ready to reenact a modern day version of Medea, he’d better start coming up with a Plan B. “We can use the money we would have spent on summer camp to hire sitters and then they can hang out, relax and swim everyday. It’ll be awesome.”

At this point, I am virtually speechless. I do manage to spit out a single intelligible phrase. “They will be bored in three days time.” Then he slams me with the argument I abhor most. “Well, I didn’t go to summer camp and I managed to entertain myself all summer long. They’re kids. They just want to play.” Then to add insult to injury he adds, “You know, summer camp is an option, not a god-given right. You act like every kid is entitled to go to summer camp.”

“No,” I harshly retort, “Every reasonably sane mother is entitled to send her children out of the house for at least six hours a day. I don’t want to end up a gelatinous puddle of tears every day by the time you get home from work. Trust me, this will not make anyone happy.”

To be honest, I am used to getting my way when it comes to family issues. I often rely heavily on the “I’m the mom, and what I say goes” philosophy of family dynamics. But somehow in this case, I’m not feeling up to waging that battle.

So, we’re going for it. The boys and I will be hanging out at the pool this summer. Feel free to stop by…anytime. We’ll just be here…doing nothing…all day…every day. Dear Lord, please help me find some sort of mental sanity, internal patience, and emotional serenity for what I am about to endure. And please take note that I am on the record saying this may be the single most cataclysmic parenting decision we have made to date.