A Cupboard of My Own

I had a "discussion" with my husband the other night over my need to have a room to call my own. No, I don't mean in the Virginia Woolf sense. I'm not looking for a space where I can sit and lock out the world and create paragraphs and stanzas that will set the masses a-swooning. I just mean a space where I make all the decisions--where I decide the color of paint on the walls, the kind of furniture to tuck into the corner, the books to arrange on the shelves, the hangings on the wall. And then I don't want anyone touching anything or making complaints or suggestions or rearranging or saying, "Hmm.... I was thinking maybe . . ." No. I just want something that's mine all mine all mine.

The "problem" is that this isn't my house. It's our house. And I have a husband who has opinions--often very strong ones. And I can't say, "Well, that's just too bad. Just close your eyes when you come in here from now on."

I was telling my mother about this, and she said she completely understood. And she also understood how it's an "and never the twain shall meet" sort of situation.

When my oldest son was little, he once asked me, "Why is everything in Grandpa's house brown?" I looked around and realized he was right. My parents' house was decorated in shades of brown thanks to my father's collection of antiques--most of which my mother gave away or sold after he died. It wasn't that she was trying to erase all memories of him. It was that those had been his things, his idea of home decorations. Hers? The delicate little cups and saucers she'd accumulated from various antique shows over the years. Only you didn't see those cups and saucers because the butter molds and trenchers and hog scrapers overshadowed them. Mom knows what it's like to have one spouse fill the house while the other sits by and shrugs and says, "Fine, whatever."

"That's what my purse has always been to me," Mom said.

And I finally got it.

When I was a kid, my mom would go ballistic on any of us kids who dared open her purse for so much as a mint. "That's mine," she would growl.

Just last week, I did the same to one of my kids. "I just wanted to see if you have any mints," he said. "Then ask me," I told him. "That purse is mine."

I also have this cupboard. I've told all of my kids there is no reason ever why they should feel the need to open it.

And it's mine all mine all mine. I have my Jolly Ranchers on the top shelf. (I hardly ever eat them, but when I want one, I want one right at that very moment.) I have my candied ginger on the middle shelf--two containers, in fact. I have a few work folders (more organized that it may look to you). I have my index cards, my index file, Christmas receipts from last year, my mini Boggle game, my incense sticks, school calendars.

Okay, so it's not a room of my own. But I do own what's in there . . . just like my purse. And as long as I'm sharing a house with someone--five someones, and I'm grateful for every one of them and wouldn't trade a mansion of my own for the absence of any of them--a cupboard and a purse will do just fine.

Do you have a space of your own? If not, how do you manage without one? If so, what is that space?

Truth or Consequences

When I was a kid and my friends and I would play Truth or Dare, I always chose Truth. In part, I was a chicken . . . afraid to embarrass myself in a dare. But I also didn't have anything to hide. Never have. I'm the proverbial open book. If you know me, there isn't much you don't know about me.

Which means I'm nothing like my mother. Sure, I look like her. Our senior pictures are eerily similar. Of her four daughters, I'm the only one that ended up with her green eyes. We're built alike. We have the same voice, both singing and speaking. And as I've gotten older, I only look more like her.

But my mom is a private person. She doesn't like talking about emotional issues. She doesn't like confrontation. Heck, when my husband and I have an argument (and I mean over something as benign as which TV show to watch), she hurries from the room like she might get dragged into having to choose sides if she sticks around. She's never offered me parenting advice--even when I've asked for it. She's never suggested I lose weight, gain it, wear something different, change my hairstyle, or try less blush next time. She figures my life is my business and hers is hers. Frankly, I find it all rather . . . quaint. Cute, even. She makes me laugh.

Sometimes, though, her tendency to keep everything quiet brings me up short.

A number of Christmases ago, I was telling her I hadn't gotten a card from my Aunt Ruth, who had been sending me a card every year for as long as I'd been married. Mom said, "Oh . . . didn't I tell you? She died." Months earlier.

Then just a few years ago, we were talking about twins, and she said, "Y'know, you started out as a twin." What?!?! "Yes," she went on. "But then the next time I went in for an appointment with the doctor, it was gone." Yep: two heartbeats one visit; just one--mine--the next. Apparently, either Mom or I reabsorbed the twin after it died, and I went on to be just fine.

I wonder a lot about that twin. How would my life be different? Would we have gotten along? Would my parents still have had my younger brother and sister if he/she had survived? It's not something I obsess over or that upsets me. It's not as if I feel part of me is missing. I just wonder, y'know? Same as I wonder where different paths in my life could have taken me.

I also wonder what else my mom hasn't told me--not because she's hiding things but because she just hadn't thought to tell me already.

As for me? My kids probably wish I told them a little less. A happy median may have been nice. I bet that would've been my twin.

Cruisin'

My family and I went on a four-day cruise to Mexico this past spring. I loved visiting the Mayan ruins and I admit the food on the ship was pretty darn wonderful at times. But otherwise? I'm just not a cruiser. My in-laws love cruises. We have neighbors here who love cruises. My husband's close friend from high school feels it's the best money spent on a family vacation. Most of the time, I just felt like I was in a redneck bar on the waves--not that I have anything against rednecks, having grown up in southern Virginia and having been labeled a redneck a time or two (or twelve) in my life. Still, it wasn't my cup of herbal tea or near beer or whatever. I felt claustrophobic most of the time, and I think seeing a literal boatload of inebriated people in their swimsuits (and entirely too many of those were Speedos!) for the better part of the day is just, well, less than appealing.

Obviously, I'm not a commercial for Carnival.

So when the news broke this week that a Carnival ship was stranded off the coast of California, I felt a little for the passengers. A little. Not a lot. And then when the reports came in about the people having to eat Spam and Pop-Tarts . . . ? I have to say my sympathy pangs dropped off completely.

Look, I hate the stench of a backed-up toilet as much as the next person. So, yeah, that aspect of the cruise-gone-bad surely sucked. Then again, I grew up about half an hour from a paper mill. Ever smelled one of those? Even the thought of it can still make me sick to my stomach.

As for Spam and Pop-Tarts? Heck, some college kids live off those things. My brother, bless his earnest soul, ate hotdog buns with ketchup for dinner many a night when he was putting himself through college. He worked at a convenience store, and that was as nutritious a 10-cents meal as he could come up with. And I've eaten a tin or two of Spam in my day (see the above paragraph about my roots) not because my family loved the taste but because it was cheap. And Pop-Tarts? We couldn't afford them. When we did eat something approximating them, it was the cardboard store brand. Even then, who's complaining? Not me. It was still a treat. I also had my share of Velveeta and Miracle Whip and cube steak (I challenge you to find a cheaper cut of red meat)--none of which you'll ever find on a cruise ship.

Cruises are for privileged people, whether it's an economy cruise on Carnival or a first-class cruise on Crystal. I know that. Redneck or not, that bar I was on was on the ocean, for crying out loud. And someone else was making me my meals and cleaning my room and even babysitting my kids a few hours a day. I may not pay for all of that again, but it wasn't exactly the worst experience of my life. To utter any kind of complaint, really, is the equivalent of saying the seat-warmer in my make-believe leather-interior luxury car is a tad too warm on my equally make-believe well-toned, personal-trainer-trained gluteus maximus.

And had I ended up stranded for a couple of days, without air conditioning, and with only Spam and Pop-Tarts to eat? Well, I'm pretty sure it still wouldn't have been the worst experience of my life.

Look, we all have reasons to complain. And we all have reasons not to. I'm just saying perspective is a lot healthier than getting drunk off free alcohol and then complaining the beer wasn't cold.

Whatever Gets Me through the Day

I'm not a perfectionist. Yes, I like to do things right if I'm going to do them at all, but I don't believe there's one right way to do things--even in editing. Sure, there are rules I'm rigid about. Others, like ending a sentence with a preposition, don't rile me up much.

I also like to be a better person--healthier, smarter, kinder, more patient. Not healthier, smarter, kinder, and more patient than the next person . . . just healthier, smarter, kinder, and more patient than my natural self.

But now and then I get tired of it all. Don't you? Tired of trying to excel, tired of smiling when you just want to bark back at the dog, tired of pretending. It's not the same kind of tired that turns me into a miserable old hag that no one wants to be around (I hope; though I do tend toward that personality occasionally as well). It's the kind of tired that makes me say, "Y'know what? Not today. I'm me. This is it. I'll try harder tomorrow. Get off my back."

And on days like that--on days like this, I require certain things (not necessarily all at once or on the same day--to just get me through:

1. Diet Wild Cherry and/or Diet Lime Pepsi over ice with a straw. I don't need two liters. A glass will do. I know the caffeine isn't good for me, and the acidity is even worse. I've gone weeks without one, so I know what life is like without my soda. I can survive without it. I just don't really need to at the moment.

2. A Mounds bar. I don't know what most people in the world have against coconut. I take offense on the coconut's behalf. And draped in dark chocolate, it's 230 calories, 13 fat grams (10 of them saturated), and 5 minutes of well-earned and over-too-quickly bliss. I have a brother who is trying to only put good things into his body. He drinks kale for breakfast. Drinks it. Kale. He blends it with blueberries and then holds his nose so he doesn't have to smell or taste it. Why? So he can add another ten years to his life in which he'll get to drink kale for breakfast, snack on it for lunch, and then saute it with garlic for dinner? I'm not an eat-drink-and-be-merry kind of girl. Never have been, never will be. So I get the idea of taking care of yourself--just not that well. I'll do the dinner portion with him a couple of times a year. That's my compromise. In the meantime, it's the occasional Mounds for me.

3. A nap. I have a friend who schedules a nap into her day. I hope she still does since I count on her every time I close my eyes for more than two minutes. I don't recommend combining the nap with the Diet Pepsi or the Mounds, however. More than a nap, I like a good night's sleep.

4. A Battlestar-Galactica (or Buffy or Firefly or Dexter) marathon while I fold laundry . . . or just sit there and pretend I'm doing something vital like catching up on old magazines so I can recycle. Recycling is important. Or sometimes I pretend I'm crafty, and I'll make something out of felt and thread and ribbons and buttons, give it a name, and set it on one of my kids' beds. "Really, I sacrificed my afternoon for you. Battlestar Galactica was just something to play in the background while I sewed love for you into every stitch."

What do you do when you just need to get through the day? What are your indulgences, your guilty pleasures that you know you deserve?

Needing

I adore my children--so much that I sometimes ache just thinking about them. I volunteered in my son's kindergarten class yesterday and was tempted to take him home with me after my hour there. I'm the one with separation anxiety, not him.

There are moments of mothering, however, when you feel like you don't like your own children. They're not pretty moments or proud ones. They're not ones I advertise regularly or admit to very often. But they're there.

Yesterday afternoon, my daughter's Brownie troop needed carpool drivers. I volunteered. And that was a mistake. It's not the three hours of my day it used up that was the issue; it was seeing a side of my daughter that made me wonder how I could have raised a child who could act like that. Is she like this more often than not, and I only see the sweet and loving side of her because I'm blinded by my love for her? How much is fair to expect of her? Is she a typical eight-year-old? If so, heaven help all of us mothers of eight-year-olds. If not, have I screwed up? Do I have time to fix her?

I recently gave up demanding thank yous from my children. It wasn't helping any of us, and I read somewhere that kids need to learn real gratitude, not just when polite society requires a show of gratitude. So I didn't expect a thank you from her. I did, however, expect more kindness from her than I received.

I've been thinking about this a lot, obviously. I even had a hard time sleeping last night because I couldn't let it go, this notion of my children being unaware of what my husband and I do for them. I don't expect, as I said, constant thank yous and "Mom, you're the greatest" and "Wow, I'm so lucky you simply gave birth to me!" But shouldn't kids be at least somewhat cognizant of the fact that they're parents do a thing or two for them in the course of the day?

But here's the realization that is going to help me get some work done today and then sleep better tonight: I don't want my children to be aware of everything I do for them. I don't want them to have to bear that kind of burden. And I mean that completely seriously.

When people do something nice for me, whether it's a family member or a friend or even simply an acquaintance, I'm often overwhelmed by the selflessness of their actions. When my father died, I was blown away by the food that filled up my mother's house. I still get choked up thinking about it. When my now-eleven-year-old son had surgery over a year ago to correct a medical problem he'd had since he was three, a new friend I had hardly even gotten to know yet brought me a care package of chocolate. I had another friend recently offer to help drive my kids around if there are times I can't manage everyone's schedule this fall. If I had to stop and be fully aware of everyone doing me a kindness in the course of a day, I would be an emotional wreck.

And young kids need those kindnesses more than anyone. They can't drive themselves. They can't provide their own food and clothing and shelter. They can't pay for their piano lessons or acting or dance classes. They depend on their parents for 100 different things every single day. By 9:30 this morning, I had made 5 lunches, dropped off one, taken two kids to school at two different times, cleaned their breakfast dishes, emailed one of their teachers, filled my car up with gas so I'll be able to take them to their activities after school, and then ordered a couple of gifts. Their dependency lessens as they get older, but it never really goes away. At least I hope it doesn't.

I want my kids to need me, and I don't want them to feel guilty and beholden to me for all of those needs. I don't want them to feel they're taking out loans they can never pay back, because they're not.

So I'll probably be a carpool driver again. And I'll probably (definitely) be disappointed at some point again in how one of my children treats me. But I won't remind them of all I do for them. That's not one of the things they need.

Going Back

I got to chaperon my daughter's field trip today. The weather was beautiful, the setting perfect for fall, the timing good for my work schedule. A perfect morning, really. I even learned some things I didn't know before. And when I say that, I don't mean, "Wow! What a surprise! There are still things I don't know!" I mean that the type of field trip it was is the type of vacation I took many, many times as a kid with my family: back to the 1800s.

1800s. 1700s. Even a little of the 1600s once you hit Jamestown.

I often feel I grew up in several different time periods. I can thank my parents' supply of antiques and their insatiable curiosity about history for that feeling. When I walk into a building or room housing handmade farming tools or patina-touched porcelain dolls or braided rugs or chipped ceramic bowls, I feel like I'm home. It calms me more than anything else I can think of, and I want to shoo everyone else away so I can just sit there for a while and pretend that's not a plane I hear overhead or telephone wires I see outside the warped-glass window.

I don't romanticize these bygone eras. I know they were dirty times, ugly times, dangerous, sweaty, and hard times. I don't wish someone would take away my dishwasher so I can use a dry sink instead. I don't wish someone would turn off the power and let me light a lamp. I don't wish for a high child mortality rate or tuberculosis or the re-emergence of petticoats and shoes that had no right or left. I just feel that as we've gained the advantages of inoculations and paved roads and indoor plumbing, we've managed to give up our need for our neighbors and the pleasure of aching muscles that come with work rather than working out. More importantly, we've given up the joy of sharing a room--and not just a house--with our families at the end of a day.

I don't want to go back to 1800. I simply miss it.

What We Owe Our Kids

You may have seen or at least heard about the Florida father who stormed his daughter's school bus to yell and swear at (and threaten) the kids that were picking on her. He's now facing charges--and rightly so--for his outburst. So I'm not going to defend him. What he did was wrong. But it was also a little understandable, and I'll admit to many moments in my years of being a mother when I have wanted to throttle a child who has hurt one of mine. And each time, I've taken as many deep breaths as are necessary to calm down, and I've reminded myself it's not the child's fault completely; it's also the parents' fault.

I watched the video today, followed by an interview with, as she was labeled, the "mother of one of the accused bullies." She said that she didn't speak to her son that way, so it was upsetting to see this man do so.

And here's what I thought: "Maybe you should have spoken to him that way. Maybe that you never have is the problem."

Now, I'm not an advocate of screaming and swearing and threatening to kill your own child (or anyone else's), but I am a fan of discipline, which comes in all sorts of varieties: punishment, consequences, etc. And I'm an even bigger fan of making sure my kids have received that discipline at home so they won't have to hear it from strangers on a school bus. I owe it to them.

Because that's one of my roles as a parent--protecting them from the bullies on the bus.

I read an article today about how it's become popular to not just not have children but to, as the author put it, "hate" children. Seems a pretty strong word, doesn't it? So I followed several of the links the article took me to, and here's what I found.

1. Childless couples are tired of feeling pressure to have children.
2. Childless couples are tired of feeling overrun by ill-behaved children.

And I'm okay with their gripes on both counts. I think if more people felt less pressure to procreate, we'd have fewer unhappy children. And as a mother of four kids, I'm no more a fan of a screaming child in a restaurant than someone without any kids is.

And for those people who do simply hate children? Well, then I suppose we simply have to agree to disagree. I won't take offense at your opinion and I won't offer you mine. And if my child's mere presence is upsetting to you then we can both be grateful we have our own homes to return to at the end of the day.

But I digress.

What that article and the story about the Florida father have got me thinking about today is how we're too often afraid of our own kids. Afraid they won't like us if we ground them. Afraid they won't speak to us for a few days if we take away their privileges. Afraid the neighbor will gasp in horror if our raised voices carry over the fence and into her backyard. Afraid we won't be cool anymore. Afraid we'll be inconvenienced if they can't go to a friend's house, because that means we can't go out to dinner after all. Afraid we'll have to spend some of our precious and dwindling energy on figuring out how to deal with them. Afraid to admit they didn't come out perfectly in spite of their rich gene pool. Afraid of the possibility that their love for us doesn't extend to a desire to please us in all things always. Afraid--and this is a big one--someone will think we don't love our children if we sometimes can hardly bear to be around them.

I'm not begging for a return to the age of kids being seen but not heard. But I am begging for a return to the mentality that said it's okay to expect something from children--and from ourselves--regardless of how hard we think it might be. Because it's only going to get harder for all of us.