Category: The daughter

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Happy Birthday USA

On the West Coast, where I am, it’s the quiet before the cacophony. If you have only celebrated the Fourth of July in an East Coast town, or the Midwest, I venture to say you don’t know what noise is. You cannot imagine the noise, the joy, of absolute celebration that starts last week and continues on for days after in a place where there are large swatchs of people from cultures that brought with them to this place a history of celebrating with fireworks and explosions, and an absolute love for their chosen country. And I think we ought to say, whether the United States of America is the country where you first took a breath or the country you came to later, to stay here, or to be here always, is a choice, and so it is the chosen country of even those for who it is the first and only country they have ever seen.

When I was a child I loved the Fourth of July. I had sparklers, and my patriotic clothing, and I decorated my bike, and the fathers and sons of Ridley Park played baseball in the field behind our house, and the mosquitoes chowed down, and we lit punks from the crick to ward them off, and had Pepsi’s in glass bottles, and hot dogs and potato salad to eat, and we wound through the working class streets to the fire department for the fireworks after the sun went down. I don’t think I had any idea that my neighbohood was very much a place where everyone was the same. I don’t think I understood, aside from the notion that some of us were Catholics and some of us were Methodists, how much all the families were just alike, and living in carbon-copy twin homes, and eating the same meals each day, with fried eggs for breakfast, Lebanon bologna sandwiches for lunch, and pork and beans from a can for dinner.

When my mother moved us to the town where her sister lived, the sister who had married the cardiologist, we found ourselves working class among people who were not, among people who were wealthy and never made a sound outside of their houses beyond the sound of their lawnmowers, among Methodists who didn’t have potluck suppers twice a month. Some of the neighbors were Jewish, and I didn’t know what that was until we read Anne Frank’s diary in sixth grade. Some of the kids in my school grade, about eight of them, came from the tail-end of the town, down around the train tracks, and they were Black, and they lived in clapboard houses that had been cut up by floor into apartments so that they could be stacked on top of each other, and the houses had been surrounded by train tracks and truck routes and second-hand stores, and they had a long walk home after school. There was one girl in my grade who was Korean, but her parents were white. There was another girl who told me she was adopted, but she looked just like her parents. And still another friend was Morman, and her mother sent me home from her house when, as all of us played on the trampoline her family had in the yard, I bounced off and yelled out, “Oh my God I almost died!” Her mother told me I was a bad girl, and had to leave. Because we went to church, in my opinion, all the time, and my mother and I sang in the choir, and my parents, my “churchy” parents, said, “Goddamit!” whenever they dropped an egg or spilled something, I did not understand at all exactly what had gone wrong.

When I commuted into Philadelphia for college, on the trolly and then the El, and finally the subway, I could watch the demographics change as I moved from my quiet quiet town closer to the most left-behind part of the city. It was noiser, dirtier, and a lot more people said, “Goddamit,” pretty much any place at all, even in the offices of the school, even in class, or yelling on the subway. Once I was walking to the subway before the end of fall term on a very cold night, and the row homes lining the street had metal sheets over the doors and windows, and one house had a chink missing out of the metal over the window, and I saw a tree inside with Christmas lights on it.

In college I met Rick and Randy, my first gay friends, so handsome, so fun, rommates and friends with benefits, who ironed their jeans (!) and patiently explained to me that sometimes men loved other men.

I could go on with my brief summary of how I learned about difference in the world, but really, it’s not that interesting.

Sometimes the difference has challenged me, and I’ve had to recalibrate my thinking and tell myself that someone who is noisier than I would prefer is still a human being, or someone who tells me I can’t say “Oh God!” in their house is not mean, or someone whose food is comprised of animal parts I would never eat is not weird, and the women holding hands and kissing at the bar where I kissed my boyfriend the prior night are not wrong for their PDA if I was not wrong for mine. And all of us can love this country.

No one owns the flag more than anyone else (except maybe Betsy Ross: seamstress extraordinaire, who is also from Philly!). Yet sometimes I feel like people among us are redefining patriotism in a way that leaves me out. I was so excited for the Foruth of July when I was a young girl, and I still think this country is pretty great. Yes, it’s messy, but all experiements are messy. Everyone who first opened their eyes in this country, and everyone who chose to emmigrate here, is part of that experiment, is part of the tweaking and re-working all experiements go through.  And my life was great as a kid in that small working class town, and it is better for each new experience my path through the world has brought me. Each new place, experience, person has enriched my biography, not ruined it because it did not stay static.

The country is in a bit of a mess right now, and that mess, to me, means that something is being worked out, the wheels are turning to make a change. I feel like, given its track record, this country will find its way to a good, new version of itself, even as some of the forces try to push it back to the summers when only the men played baseball in the field on the Fourth of July. As good a time as that was, it left me out. Now, not that I’m a stellar second baseman, but this experiment was begun, all those years ago, by people who wanted a chance to create a place were no one as left out. Of course, at the time, they meant only men, but the experiment was set in motion to see if it was possible to create a place that would have fairness as its guiding principle, as its ultimate goal.

Fairness as a guiding principle? Count me in for that!

Happy Birthday USA.

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RIBALD HUMOR FOR THE PARENTING WIN

Ahhh… snackAballs!

If I could tell you how to say it I would say that you have to say it

Snacka… BALLS!

It sounds like sack-a-balls; you know it does.

Sophie is my daughter, and a funny person, and one of her first jokes was when she only had a few words. I think her first word was, “Up!” said as an absolute command. Sophie has pretty much been commanding from the moment in China when, taken off to a random hotel room by two complete, white, strangers, after being stripped of her peed-on, sweated-on clothes, cleaned-up and put in fresh new jammies, she grabbed the Baby Mum Mum from my fingers, bit into it, and was like, “All right people, you got more of these? Good. Let’s do this family thing bitches!”

Her second word was some version of, “Da-da,” and the word Mom, not Ma-Ma or anything like Mommy, just Mom, came about five years after. 😉

But her third word was, “Ball!” and every time she said the word ball it came with two things at the end: an exclamation point, and hysterical laughter, the kind little kids get where they hiccup with glee.

Because she so enjoyed the word ball, and we so enjoyed her laughing her little diapered tush off about it, we encouraged it. We told everybody that our seventeen-month-old daughter had a joke, and then we would say to Sophie, “Tell them your joke.”

And she would say, “Ball!” and crack up, and it was so cute, the gusto with which she said it, and the cracking up, that everyone laughed, even if some people didn’t get it.

I remember, once, a humorless person saying to me, “Wait, is there like another part, and that is the punchline?”

Nuh-uh. Nope. The punchline is my kid is funny as hell, and you are not interesting enough to “get” her. Am I right?

I guess you could say comedy is taught, but Sophie was just funny, and we just put some fertilizer on that. Maybe that’s why she busted out of China, a country not known for its humor.

As a teen, she has progressed to funnier, and sarcastic in just the right way, and irreverent, all characteristics of good comedians.

She’s also a teen.

And I’ll tell you now my one-liner about her being a teen that I have said to anyone who will listen, and, funny as it is (it is funny, trust me on this), hopefully this will be the last time I attempt to get miledge out of this old clunker:

“I know you’re a teenager,” I said to her, “because you smell bad and you’re mean.”

Sophie has always been so sweet, and kind, and even her teachers have sometimes said things like, “She is the nicest person I know.” I mean, it’s true, and….
You know, teachers don’t get out a lot.

She’s fourteen/fifteen now, and, I’m gonna say that, now, she’s not that sweet. Or she’s less sweet, in any case. And she don’t wanna be with me. Oh ho ho (shakes head) oh no. Or Dad. For more than a few minutes anyway. We hear racous laughter coming from her room, the kind she is almost hiccuping from, and it is shared with friends, live or in text, and not us.

I admit I am struggling a little with this phase of parenting.

And I see it on the faces of the other parents picking up at school: they look sad, desperate, dumped. And I see it on their kids faces: their faces change from absolute liveliness to dead-inside when they leave their friends and climb into the parental vehicle.

I think my only advantage is deciding, all those long-lost years ago, to teach Sophie that “Ball” was a joke, because it may be the only thing saving me: that she has a sense of humor, that she likes to laugh, that she likes stupid jokes.

This is the daughter who, back in our old house where we had one of those wonderful soaking tubs, would walk in on me in the steamy bath, strip down, get in, and cuddle. It was never an ask. It was, “Where’s Mom? In the tub? I’m getting in.”

I remember my mom making us walk in on her when she was in the bathtub, so she could give us chores or ask us questions. She laid there, in the shallow tub, washcloth over her nipples, and it was just… weird. Soooo awkward. Sophie walking in on me in the tub was never like that. She started as soon as she could walk, and she kept it up, though it was petering off, right up until we moved and the tub was gone. Plus, we had bubbles. I mean, c’mon, you’re gonna need some bubbles so it’s not “weird washcloth on nipples thing.”

Now Soph is fourteen/fifteen she still doesn’t seem to mind walking in on me getting dressed, but she really doesn’t want it the other-way-around. Which I think is normal, and I am more than fine with, and, honestly, I wish I could get a little privacy back on my end.

But, right up until she was about fourteen-point-twenty five, she would, pretty much, any time I was sitting down, crawl up onto my lap for a cuddle or a squeeze. With Dad too, but this isn’t about him, lol. He can cry his own damn tears.

Getting into our laps has stopped. I know she still loves us, and the love is very affectionate, but not physically so. The regular old hugs have stopped. If I want a hug before school, I ask for it before we leave the house, because once she is out of the car she doesn’t want to hug me. She wants to go see her buds. And if I try to get a hug, even in the most private moments at home, like before bed, sometimes I only get a side-hug, the worst hug in creation!

Growing Up, you bastard! How I hate you!

And so I look for small wins, wherever I can get them.

We cannot seem to spend time together well, the three of us, anymore. The lure of texting with friends is too much, and if we declare phone-free time, the enthusiasm is really low.

We still play board games well together, but just to eat dinner, talking, is a streeeeeetch.

She will still come to see the pets do cute things, and snap a photo to show her friends, but it’s quickly back into her room, which must always have the door closed.

I mean, what do I care? Her room’s a mess. I don’t want to look in there anyway. Go ahead and close your stupid door.

*sob*

I think I need more sugar in my coffee.

I probably need a cookie, desperately.

Or a whole sleeve of McVities. The chocolate ones. For digestion purposes only. Not at all because my life is less sweet.

…I’m starting to realize she’s going to leave me.

I need a minute.

I’m starting to realize she’s going to leave me, when she can pry herself free of my cold dead fingers.

I’m starting to realize she’s going to leave me, for real, in life, in a few years, but, if I can keep it together, not be too cloying, she may still like me and hang-out occasionally.

My husband and I are taking more walks together, because we need to, and not because our asses are widening because of all the McVities, so we need exercise. Because we need to have a reason to hold hands. Because we need to hold hands with someone, because the little hand we held is big now, and it doesn’t need to hold on. And we’re both sad about it, husband and me, but this isn’t about him. This is about me.

…And her.

As teen girls and moms do, we shop together, and we do it well, as long as I do what I am supposed to do: watch, encourage, be completely present as an audience, and not shop for anything myself: silent witness.

But I am used to being the center of her orbit as she is the center of mine. A nice little bianary system. I won’t go gently into my good irrelevance. And so I make attempts.

This week we were happily wandering Home Goods when I spotted, god love them, Tom’s Snackaballs. The package at our Home Goods only had Tom on it, not Luke too, as pictured up at the top of this post. Perhaps Luke was his father, and Tom jettisoned him. “Tom,” says Luke, “I am your father.”

“That can’t be!” says Tom, and drops into the cold vastness of space rather than be stuck with his parent.

And so I had to point them out to my daughter.

“Hungry?” I said, “How about some balls? Snackaballs!”

“What the hell?” she said, and graabbed the package and erupted in laughter.

We imagined we were Tom, creating the snack. “What are you going to call them, Tom?” asks a friend.

“Balls,” Tom proudly replies, “Snacka balls!”

And, being two bawdy women, we imagined Tom saying something like, “Everyone likes putting balls in their mouths.”

Eeeewww.

LOL

OMGosh, we laughed so much.

And because I am the worst, and don’t know how to or when to stop, and because I am already missing my child who will leave me one day which makes me desperate, I said, “Ewww. Why are they lemon-flavored? Zesty lemon. Zesty Lemon SNACKABALLS! I bet testicles do taste like lemon, all sweaty and sour.”

I knew, as soon as I’d uttered it, it was a step too far.

And yet, my daughter lost it. She giggled and sputtered and laughed out loud and held her stomach and put her hand over her mouth to try to quiet herself even a little.

And, just like that, she was two years old and telling the whole world her great joke, “BALL!”

Later I walked past her room and heard her telling her friend the story. I don’t know if they were in a call, or talk to text, but the giggling was there.

Success.

Ribald humor saves the day.

I don’t think Sophie knows the word ribald. But it’s a pretty funny word, honestly. I mean, bald is just funny. There’s a certain something about it, like ball, that makes it funny. Ribald, pronouced ribbled, and not like bald or ball, is even funnier. I think I’m going to have to tell her about it, and we can work up a joke on it.

In the meantime, enjoy some delicious Snackaballs, won’t you? They’re lemon. And, just like childhood, their expiration date is fast approaching.

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PiGhEtTi

It’s corn season! And I feel duty-bound to report to my fellow pigness owners that not only do piggies LOVE corn husks, they go crazy for corn silk, which, in our family, we call pighetti.

Yes, you read it here first. When it gets into the dictionary… it’s mine: pighetti: corn silk for pignessess.

Just trim off the yucky brown bits, and there you go! Happy pignessess! Pighetti season!