Dear Celia, I Killed Your Hamster

Dear Celia – Mommy and Daddy have been a bit preoccupied lately and, well, we forgot about the hamster. Although we’re both fairly sure we checked on her in the last few days, when I went in to check on her today, well, she was just flat out gone. The cage door was opened and she had escaped the 3-weeks worth of little hamster poos that were strewn around like clothes hastily removed after too much beer and not enough good lighting. Someday you can tell the therapist that I said that, it will explain a lot. More than just telling him that the hamster died while you were at camp.

LUCKILY, as well written as this letter was in my head, I don’t actually need to write it. For the life of me, I can’t imagine how she got the cage door open, but I guess she did. I looked everywhere for her, and didn’t see her anywhere, so I was pretty sad, and afraid that I was going to have to write you this horrible letter saying that I had lost her. So, just to be safe, I decided to go through every nook and cranny of your room, and figured I may as well clean out and throw stuff away while I was at it. (Lil one, we have to talk about the amount of stuff you save, just in case it’s early warning signs for being one of those hoarders who saves everything including used tissues and cat poop.)

Anyway, I grabbed your orange trash can, and it made a strange sound. Now, I don’t know about you, but I’ve never heard your trash can make noise before. So I pulled out the bag, and, well, you can guess what I saw. A little Oreo sitting there looking at me. CRAZY! All I can guess is that after she broke out, she jumped down to the chair, then jumped down from the chair and landed in your trash can. That must have been a rude awakening, thinking she was escaping, only to land in the plastic hammock of death that is an old grocery bag slung in a child’s trash can. She chewed her way through the bag and then couldn’t get out of the trash can because it is too tall and there’s nothing to climb on.

Which made me think it was the perfect place to leave her while I cleaned the cage. (And remembered why I make you clean her cage. I thought I was teaching you responsibility, turns out it’s just nasty, and I’m kind of lazy.) I mean, she couldn’t get out, so she’s safe there, once I made sure the cat wasn’t in the room. I threw some food in there for her and held the water bottle in for her. I have to admit, that was cute. She just upped on her hind legs and started drinking, looking up at me with her little hamster hands clasped in the prayer position. I liked that very much. God to the rodents, that’s me.

So, I cleaned her cage and put her back, in and I don’t think she’ll be doing any more adventures for a day or two. I think she’s happy just to be home.

And I’m happy that I can check this off the list of possible reasons that you’ll be going to therapy. As of today, the hamster is still alive.

But damn do I miss you. This probably all would have happened even if you had been here, but you would have been laughing so hard. I love it when you laugh. You laugh a lot.

Maybe you won’t need therapy later. I didn’t learn to laugh until last year sometime. You are so far ahead of the game.

I’m glad I didn’t kill your hamster.

I love you baby girl!

I Want Her Back Now

Celia went to summer camp the other day. Her little almost 10-year-old self took an airplane – alone – to Boston where my cousin Shawn picked her up at the airport. Then drove her to Vermont where she is at Farm and Wilderness Camp for a month. A MONTH!

WHAT THE HELL WAS I THINKING?

For weeks leading up to it, she was bouncing around listing all the great things she was going to do – milk cows, swim in the lake, sleep in the woods, sing songs…… We packed together, wrote her name a jillion times (have you ever tried to write inside the stretchy band of of a pair of little kid socks?). So it’s not like I wasn’t prepared.

But when she waved good bye, walking down the gangway with the Stewardess, as soon as she was out of my eyesight, I started bawling like a child. The child she is quickly evolving away from.

She’s gone away for a week at a time before, but this time she’s gone for almost 6 weeks. I spoke to her yesterday on the phone, and as soon as I hung up the phone, I cried. Again.

I have nothing intelligent to say, but I miss her. A lot. I want her back now.

I don’t know if you’ll ever see this blog, but I miss you baby girl. You have no idea how much light you add to our lives. How much music and rhythm and joy. I am so happy for you and our adventure, but I miss you. I can feel your absence.

More than that, I can still feel your presence. I am so happy to be your mommy, no matter where you are.

Braces and Sexual Activity, OH MY!

Here’s how the conversation goes with Celia, almost daily….

Me: Honey, can you please stop growing?
Celia: Mom, we’ve been through this before, I can’t stop growing.
Me: But you’re growing too fast, I don’t think I can handle it.
Celia: First of all, mom, you can handle it fine. Second of all, we’ve been through this before, in order to stop growing, I’d have to stop eating, if I stop eating, I’ll die.
Me: That would totally suck.
Celia: Yah. Any other questions?
Me: Can you maybe just slow down?
Celia: Maaaaaaa-uuuuuuuummmmmm, no!

So I’m dealing, because she says I have to. But then things happen, that are just way to grown up for me. First, she got braces in May. I’m not down with this. There is no denying the adolescence – and therefore impending teenagehood – of a kid with braces. The whole experience was just surreal. When I was of brace-wearing-age, they did it AFTER you were done growing. Now, they try to catch a major growth spurt so it’s more like the braces are guiding your organic growth, rather than trying to undo completed growth that didn’t go quite right. It makes sense…..

But, get this, they are seriously changing the shape of her face. They expanded her upper jaw almost 1/2 inch – so she got these killer cheek bones. (Yes, I asked, it won’t work like that for me at this point.) Then they pulled her lower jaw forward almost 1/2 an inch, so that she didn’t have such a bad over bite (or is it underbite?) It’s like they sculpted her face. It’s so funny. (For the record, her teeth were a mess. I swear that some of them were coming in horizontally and diagonally, more than one tooth snuggled up like they were trying to keep warm together in her crowded little mouth.)

Anyway, getting braces nearly killed me. Toooooo grown up.

But that was nothing compared to her 10 year-old check up yesterday. Our beloved Dr. Hatfield asked her all the usual questions about food and exercise and if her parents are crazy maniacs. (To which she said “yes.”) Then he asked if she had close friends, how she felt with them and how many she had. That was different. My Goodness, I thought, they’re gearing up for the psych check-ups, this is different from just checking on immunizations.

Then it came.

Dr. H: Now, this may seem early, but I have some precocious patients, so I have to ask, have your parents talked to you about safe sex?

She looked incredulous. Eyes rolled back , sideways glances back and forth between Dr. H and I.

Celia: Um, ya, NNNOOOOO!
Me: Do you know what Dr. Hatfield is asking you when he asks you that?
Celia: No, not really.
Me: You know how babies are made, right.
Celia: That? Yah, I know all about that.

And she does, she’s a scientist this one, she even asked me how the sperm got in if the penis is al soft and smooshy. When she was 5. I’m way over my head with this one.

Me: Okay, well, there will probably come a time when you want to do that just for fun.
Celia: Um, no. I don’t think so!
Dr. H: Well, actually, you might, and our job is to make sure that when you do, you will be happy, safe and healthy.
Celia: Um, ya, NNNOOOOOO!

And that was that. But I nearly died. Not so much because there are, apparently, 10 year-olds who are having sex, (GASP!) but because my daughter is at the age that smarter people than me know they need to talk to her about it. EEEEk gads.

But there will come a day she’ll do it, just because it’s fun. I just hope she has her braces off.

Maybe I ought to go back to that not-feeding-her plan.

Nothing Says Independence Like….

I kind of love the 4th of July. Mostly because it is a virtual guarantee that I will get to eat Doritos and drink soda, which is what I think the holiday is all about – freedom to eat crap for the day. Yummy, greasy, salty crap. And crunchy.

The day started like any other – coffee, then more coffee, then a trip to the gym. I had to stop at Walgreens for some reason and they were playing a special 4th of July endless loop of patriotic music. Not being an afficianado of patriotic music, the only one I remember is “Proud To Be an American.” Which really is bad enough all by itself. But what really sucked was the number of people who were singing along. People knew the words, and were compelled to SING THEM. And then have discussion about who was more patriotic (it was a long line…… lots of stories. All of which involved either being in the military or supporting the military or kicking them sissies asses. Not sure who the sissies were.) Then, of course, a raging dialog about the “assholes” who bought the Sonics and moved them to wherever they were moved to. According to the guys in line, we have a “right” to have a basketball team. (I’ll be checking the constitution, because I think we have a right to guns, but not basketball, education or healthcare. Then, of course, there’s a lot of discussion about what exactly “liberty” and “pursuit of happiness” means.)

So I, of course, started thinking about why I am proud to be an American – because make no mistake, I am. I’ve lived in other countries, I’ve traveled in other countries, and I’m always glad to be home. Say what you want, but no one will tell my daughter she has to quit school to fetch water for us and care for her siblings. I’m psyched about that. I can marry who I want (even a woman!) and divorce who I want. That’s a good start. I can start a company if I want. No one is telling me they’re gonna help me or make it easy, and I like that too. We have our issues – for sure – but all in all, it’s the leastest of political evils that I’ve found.

So as Dorito time drew nearer, we all gathered at the house of some friends who have a roof deck and 360 degrees of views of every single municipality between the Cascades and Puget Sound. This couple happens to be two women. (Two of my favorite women in the world, comforting, smart and hysterical all in one!) These two women who have been happily coupled forever, have two daughters that they adopted from China. Their house is cluttered with artifacts of a life lived with love and joy. I’m getting happier….

Other friends arrive. The two artists (straight couple) and their stunning daughter with her short hair and funky looks. Another Lesbian couple and adopted child. Another “straight” couple and their two kids. The 2 gay guys with their adopted son from Camodia. My dad. The single mom with her bi-racial daughter who left a miserable marriage in pursuit of both liberty and happiness. People – artists, doctors, lawyers, city workers – who are wildly divergent in their careers and life patterns, but integrate freely, just because they want to.

Summer days are long, so there was lots of time before fireworks. Kids walked to the park down the streets. Parents talked and drank and ate and….

There wasn’t, I’m pretty sure, a single one of us who would say anything positive about the Bush administration. I’m not sure how we resisted saying downright mean stuff on this of all days. Except that I am pretty sure we all found our perfect US up there on the roof deck. Look around, we were young and old (7 – 75), every color of the rainbow, every sexual orientation, every type of relationship.

Somehow, seems to me that most of the constitution was up there on that deck. This was a collection of people who chose their lives and have lived them to the fullest. Not because it was easy, not because it was mandated, not for any reason than because it was what they wanted.

I won’t belabor the point. But I was proud to be an American. Openly and freely. I love my friends.

Except that no one brought Doritos. Damn healthy intellectual types with your cheese platters and Halibut. (Delicious, by the way.) But, on the bright side, we were free to hand our small children rods of metal that were burning at nearly 1,000 degrees and say, “here ya go, have fun with that.”

I love the 4th of July.

Sparkline Celia

Bathing Suit Reality

Have I mentioned in the last few weeks that I HATE BATHING SUITS? I recently took a little trip to the sun with friends, and had to wear one. But I got over it. I love my body. I really do. I just don’t love having it compared to all of the younger, firmer, tighter and air-brusheder bodies in the collective consciences of our beauty obsessed culture.

Whatever, it is what it is.

The irony is that, given the chance, I’m pretty quick to get naked. I like being naked. I like being naked outside. But that feels all playful and natural. Bathing suits, on the other hand, feel like someone is saying, “here, make yourself fit into this.” And I’m a natural rebel, I don’t want to fit in to anyone else’s anything, thank you very much. Inappropriately naked, no problem. Appropriately squeezed into a sausage wrapper of a swimsuit, no thanks.

Anyway, over at BlogHer, they’re having the 2008 Brigade For Honest Swimsuit Photos. The idea is simple, if we all look at enough photos of REAL bodies, we’ll “real-ize” that we are all not only normal, but right in line with what we should look like. (Okay, well not all of us, but most of us. Bodies come in lots of shapes and sizes, they do NOT come with airbrushing and taped backs that lift our tits back where they once were.)

In the spirit of being a feminist and a “joiner,” (stop laughing, I have my moments,) I looked for photos of me in a bathing suit. I don’t have any. For countless reasons we are all glad there are no photos of my recent weekend away with friends that involved bathing suits. But I did find some photos of me scantily clad in public, which must be good enough.

All of them are at Burning Man, 2007. First, me in a bikini looking at the mushroom village.

And me in a “fur” Bee-Kini that I made for toodling around the playa on our Bee Car. (It’s really cool at night, it lights up… so, obviously, I needed a bee-kini!)

And my favorite, though we can all debate the appropriateness of it. For the record, here in Seattle, we have a great Solstice Parade, at which hundreds of people bicycle through the streets completely naked except for elaborately painted bodies. I’ve never done it because the logistics of biking naked cause me to chafe just thinking about it. But here’s my homage to them, at Burning Man, a place where I feel totally comfy being who I am, and wearing next to nothing.

Ironically, despite all this photographic evidence to the contrary, I am still terrified to put a bathing suit on in public. But I think that says more about expectations than anything else.

Perhaps I ought to just expect people to think that I’m as fabulous as I do. Because I am.

Fried Lice for Mother’s Day

“Mom, ya know, what could be a better mother’s day than this? A nice head massage, a bath, someone washing your hair…..” I laughed to myself. My daughter was saying this to me, as I washed her hair, having just spent more than an hour “massaging” oil into her scalp to pick out absolutely countless head lice and nit sacks. (This, in case you were wondering, is the genesis of the phrase nit picking – finding itty bitty little things and meticulously harping on them.)

Yes, a massage and new-do would indeed be a fabulous mother’s day!

But, I wouldn’t trade an hour or so of nit-picking for anything. For more than an hour, she and I sat together, in relative stillness and talked. Her (incredibly thick and golden) hair spilled over my lap and my fingers stroked her scalp with precision and love. I can’t remember the last time she had her head in my lap for that long… (Yes I can, actually, and there were lice involved then, too.) One section at a time, we douse her hair with baby oil, killing lice in their tracks, and loosening up the nit sacks so that they come out with the comb.

I am reminded how lucky I am to have this child, this amazing girl who loves and trusts me to guide her through life until she is on her “own.” This firebrand of creativity and power who is willingly limp in my lap to be loved and cared for. I am her mother, after all.

With a head full of oil, we head to the bathroom to “dry” her hair with the hottest possible setting on the hair dryer – they can’t take the heat, die quickly. “We’re frying them, mom.” “Yup.” “In all that oil, deep fried lice. Yum!”

I am reminded how much I love her sense of humor. She’s smart and witty – and has a truly sardonic sense of humor. She loves Monty Python as much as I do.

Next step, the bathtub, to try and wash out the oil – that’ll take a few tries. Her body is still all little girl. Thank goodness. But at the same time, it is so much like mine – she has my broad shoulders, my butt exactly, my toes, my fingers…. (and the freckles I always wanted but do not have.) Her narrative continues and I tune in and out, I’m not sure exactly what she was saying the whole time she was talking (she is always talking) but I do know that her aimless chatter anchors me in a way that I can’t explain.

“Mom, ya know, what could be a better mother’s day than this? A nice head massage, a bath, someone washing your hair…..”

I take that as gratitude. She doesn’t realize the irony that I am the one “working” and not “receiving.” Nor does she realize that her unspoken gratitude is the thing we most want and need. At least I do. I don’t need cards or gifts or fancy dinners, I just need the people I love and care for to be glad that I love and care for them.

Got that in spades today.

Curled up in bed with Myles, all three of us and an alternating collection of cats, and watched Groundhog Day. (A perfect movie. Seen it a thousand times and still love it.)

“I don’t get it mom, does he just have to keep trying until he gets it right?” “I think so.” The movie rolls on, and Bill Murray is finally released from the endless loop of February 2nd. He wakes up at the end of the movie on February 3rd. “So, all he had to do was stop being so crabby, learn how to be nice and do stuff, and then he can move on? Just keep trying ’till you get it right?”

Yes, Celia, that’s it.

Keep going. Keep learning. Keep loving. That’s how we go forward. On to the next day.

Though I’m not sure I want to leave this one behind. I cannot imagine a better mother’s day.

Fried Lice and all.

Cookies and Dough

I’m almost done delivering girl scout cookies. Thank God. I’ve decided that I hate Girl Scout Cookies. For a few reasons.

1. Samoas are clearly made by the devil – whoever that is – for the soul purpose of undermining my will, stability and perpetually “almost where I want it” body. They are irresistible little deathbombs laughably shaped like Liferings (proving that irony is a fickle bitch.)
2. They are a time suck. It takes a ridiculous amount of energy to sell these things, collect money and deliver them. And even when we kid ourselves into thinking that our daughters are doing the work, we really are.
3. They make virtually no money for the troop. 50 cents of a $4 box goes to the troop. What is that, 12%. That’s a crappy margin given the fact that we do all the work.
4. I don’t like teaching my daughter that crappy margins and negligible profit attained by executing on someone else’s vision and on their terms is a good way to approach business. Doesn’t work for me. Where’s the innovation? The disruptive technology? The creativity?
5. They never change. These are the same cookies I was selling 30 years ago. Or would have been selling if I hadn’t been kicked out of the Girl Scouts for insubordination.

I have come to the conclusion that I am just going to figure out what the troop would have made on Celia’s 112 boxes sold and write a check to the troop next year for that same amount. Then, instead of her getting a prize from the scouts for selling the cookies, I’m going to buy her something way better for NOT making me deal with the cookies.

In any event, they’re almost all delivered now. I’ve paid for all of them, so if people don’t claim them, I guess we can just eat them. Which will suck.

But, I was feeling that sigh of relief knowing that it was almost over, until Celia came home from school announcing that they are doing a fundraiser (to pay for basic stuff, because she goes to a public school and they are so underfunded that we have to make up the difference rather than have our government figure out how to fund the basic needs of its citizens. Who needs public education when we can have more highways?) Guess what the fundraiser is? We’re selling cookie dough.

Yup. What’s the only thing more irresistible than Girl Scout Cookies? Cookie Dough.

I’m just going to write a check. It’s better for my health.

Finding Something Else To Do….

Celia was bad. In almost 10 years, Myles and I have never had to discipline her. She never stuck anything in an outlet, never tried to drink drain cleaner, never really does anything that involves needing to be disciplined. We are pretty strict parents, demand manners etc…. But she’s a good kid.

As a result, I was pretty stunned when I heard that she, along with her friends, did something that horrified and REALLY angered me. On a lot of levels. It, however, is not the point of the story. It’s aftermath is.

The result of her actions was that when she got home from school, her TV and computer were gone. As were her phone privileges, and the ability to hang out with her friends for a week. Harsh.

None of that, however, was as bad as “the conversation” we had to have as a result. As a mom, it’s easy to know that these moments we share are magical, even when they’re sparked for unpleasant reasons. We sat close to each other, looking in each others eyes (hers filled with tears and occasionally averted with the knowledge that she had really let me down.) The leather seat of the sofa between us quivered slightly as she shook from her sobbing. I knew it was special, but had to stay stern. My job, at that moment, was to remind her that there are swift and sever repercussions when one makes decisions they know are bad that turn into actions they know are wrong. (Later I’ll tell her that we all keep doing that forever, but now was not a time for nuance.)

She went to her room. Time crawled. I wondered what she was thinking.

Until she came back out and announced that she wanted to paint. She wanted to paint a picture of our friend’s cat George. (We call him George the inferior, because, well, he’s inferior to our cat George.) So we set her up on the floor, by my feet where I was still working. We talked a bit about blending colors and shades, a bit about perspective, and off she went. Soon she was smiling, humming as she painted. Soon she was happy.

Then she read a book. She was clearly happy.

At dinner, she was downright bubbly. I commented that “grounding” her didn’t seem to be doing much good. (I said it with a smile on my face.) And she said, “mom, just because I’m grounded doesn’t mean I have to be miserable, it just means I have to find something else to do.”

I could have cried. That lesson is SO MUCH MORE IMPORTANT than anything I meant to teach her. And she got it all by herself.

Her painting of George is beautiful. As we speak, she is at my feet again, reading a book about Matisse while practicing “blending” on a painting that appears to be balloons in a cloudy sky. A 9 year olds version of Monet’s Water Lillies? And proof that the lessons in life are rarely the ones we set out to learn.

Gallows Humor, OR a Cyst Named Maurice

By the time I arrived – 15 minutes early – for my uterine ultrasound this afternoon, my bladder was exploding. I was feeling like one of those little kids squeezing my legs together, bouncing up and down. I am sure that I was whining when I explained to the nice guy at the check in desk that I “really had to go, bad!” He seemed a little unsettled to have a grown woman discussing such thing with him, but I had been given explicit orders arrive with a full bladder at 2:30. It was 2:15 and I was more than full. He checked with someone behind the curtain and came back to tell me that I could do a “partial elimination” and it would be okay. “So, just pee a little?” “Um, yeah.”

Right. Have you ever tried to pee JUST a little? That’s right up there with being a little bit pregnant or eating only one girl scout cookie. Whatever, I had a bottle of water. I peed, a lot, and then started drinking.

Unfortunately the woman called me right back. Ooooops. Shuffled me into a little shower-stall style room and handed me two gowns. I am grateful that they finally figured out that even the immodest amongst us (and I am certainly one) cannot consider ourselves covered up enough with just one. “you can close one in the front, the other in the back, that way you’ll be covered.” Good thinking. I like it. Then she added, “and you can leave your socks on.”

That’s a neat look, 2 hospital gowns and a pair of mens black knee-socks with gold toes. I don’t think so. Even in a hospital, a good pedicure trumps warm feet, thank you very much. I took my socks off and tucked them into my boots with my underwear. Flashed back to gym class in high school. Hated gym class. (Hated high school.)

So anyway, off we go, on to the table with my bladder surprisingly full again, and on to the external ultrasound. We were looking, just so you know, for a blob I had been calling “Maurice” for about a week. I know my body pretty well, and about a week ago, something just didn’t feel right in the part of my body loosely referred to as “my girlie bits.” I’m never quite sure what’s what in there, but went to see my doc and, sure enough, found an odd lump.

Hmmmm. Don’t like lumps in the bits. That exam, which was hysterical, with my very good looking and very gay doc probing around in there, more than just your average exam. We discussed the fact – with his hands deep inside me – that this is PROOF that sex is an emotional thing. “Because,” I told him, “if you were some really hot guy, this would be making me crazy.” Then I had to clarify, a very hot straight guy that I had a thing for. My doctor is, in fact, a very hot guy.

Anyway, lump found, ultrasound ordered. I did loads of research, decided that although there was a 98% chance that it was nothing, the 2% chance that it could be a rare and cancerous tumor complete with fleshy hair bits of living DNA merited naming it Maurice. So Maurice it has been.

Now, however, Maurice was nowhere to be found. Sneaky bastard. And had he been in there, this rather large and slightly curved device that was inside of me would have found him. Seeing as it has a flashlight at the end of it – something none of the toys to which it looked familiar have. Flashlight, that’s cool.

So the ultrasound tech and I were chatting and she told me how great everything looks “in there.” “You are scanning so beautifully!” she exclaimed. “Um, thanks, I guess.” What an odd thing to say. But it turns out there’s a reason. She had been doing ultrasounds on fat people all day, she told me, and apparently that is very hard.

Think about it, the sound waves have to go zipping through all kinds of matter in order to hit their target and send back an image of what they hit. Sound waves do not transmit through fat very well. Amazing. There is no area of life unaffected by being fat. So fat people, who are inherently at greater risk for a variety of health issues, have an even harder time getting tested to determine how healthy they are or aren’t.

In any event. Maurice was nowhere to be found today. Meaning it was probably a routine Ovarian Cyst that comes and goes. Why am I retelling this tale? Because I take my health and my body very seriously, and did not know that ovarian cysts are a routine thing. (I still would have insisted that it be checked out, even if I had known.)

As goofy and moderately unpleasant as pelvic exams and ultrasounds are, they are important. And my ability to stand up and ask for medical help is important. And I think that more people should be able to not only get a good doctor, but talk to them openly about sex, sexuality, sexual habits and sexual health. (Granted, the conversation about love nad sex while he’s probing around may have been a bit over the top, but that’s so me.)

So, to that end, here’s some info from the Mayo Clinic about your ovaries, if you have them that is.
And here’s a link to Planned Parenthood, because not everyone can have a doctor like mine, but everyone should have access to something. I love Planned Parenthood – they were there for me long before my great health insurance took over. Support them, please.

And all of you out there – get to know your body. Know when it’s not right, know when it is, and don’t be afraid to talk about it.

Thanks! Now, I have to go pee. It occurs to me that I may have taken that full bladder thing a little too seriously. But hey, I’m healthy, no diseases, nothing to worry about, so that’s good. Let’s keep it that way!

One of those moms

A friend and I were having coffee yesterday, doing our best to photosynthesize in the rare Seattle sun – rare in February anyway. Sitting outside a cute cupcake shop in big wooden chairs, mellow, happy, a bit zapped meandering only slowly through a lazy conversation. On the curb in front of us stood a mom. Let me disparagingly say, “one of those moms” with perfect jeans, perfect designer bag, perfectly coiffed hair. (My own hair, for the record, was standing kinda up and kinda over, bed head I couldn’t be bothered to fix.) In one of her arms was a cute pink box that we all knew was filled with delicious cupcakes, in her other arm, a darling baby – sweeter than any cupcake. Behind her, like obedient ducklings (and just as cute) were two smaller kids, maybe 3 and 5. From my own haze, I heard her voice, saying to those bigger kids, “here’s what I don’t want, I don’t want to be one of those moms who has to stand in line with her kids saying ‘I want this, I want that,’ okay, I don’t want to be one of those moms.”

Yuck. And funny.

She was so caught up in her own “I wants” (and expressing them loudly to her children,) that she didn’t realize she was chastising her children for their own “I wants” and expressing them to her. But more than that, it’s not about her. And you certainly don’t want to teach children to modify their own behavior based solely on the wants of other people….

But even beyond that, she’s holding her children responsible for her own behaviors. The message, “I can’t control my own behavior, so don’t do anything that will make me behave that way.” Funny. Sad. Isn’t part of being an adult the ability to control your own behavior? Being able to behave in a way that you feel is right without blaming things on others. Much less your children? Being able to remember that there is more to yourself and your relationships than how it looks, that other people’s perceptions don’t matter at all. And that most people are smart enough to know that kids want things when they stand in line at stores – that is not behavior that will cause people to judge you. (Rude children, mean children, disrespectful children, on the other hand, that’ll rightfully raise ire from passersby.)

Funny.

Fast forward to today. I’m on a serious bunny hill skiing with Celia. Even calling it a hill is sort of a stretch. Celia, for the record, is a really good skier, when she chooses to be. She is also a drama queen (I have no idea where she gets that, hmmmmm,) and can psych herself out until she is positively frothy with fear and unable to function. Which she did, on the first run of the day. On the damned bunny hill. Fun.

I was so one of those moms. (But I was aware of it, knew I was choosing to react that way, and was almost amused at how this must look to the outside world.)

Here’s what it looked like. Celia was sitting in the snow screaming things that ranged from, “you hate me” to “I will die if I try that.” Fun. I listened for a while, tried to offer suggestions, all the “good mom” stuff. Then I said, “you know what, I know you can do this, I’ll meet you at the bottom.” “Noooooooo, mom, don’t leave me here. You don’t hate me that much. See, I knew you hated me.” “Celia, I don’t know what to do to help you. I know you can do this, you are choosing to freak yourself out and not do it, I know you’ll be fine, I’ll meet you at the bottom.” “I’m not a freak mom, you are, you hate me, you don’t think I can do this, you don’t think I can do anything.”

Did I mention that this is a bunny hill and she was doing black diamond runs 2 years ago?

“Celia, this is ridiculous.” “But I can’t do it.” “Yes you can.” “You’re mad at me.” “No, I’m confused and disappointed and don’t know how to help you.” “Seeeeeeee, I knew you hated me. You’re gonna leave me here and I’ll never get down.”

We are, at this point, maybe 50 yards from the bottom.

And I did, at that point, leave her. I’m sorry, it was ridiculous. She is an awesome skier, and my letting her sit there and flounder isn’t going to remind her that she’s a good skier. She had to get herself down the hill, in order to know that she could get herself down the hill.

And she did.

That must have all looked like quite something to all the passersby.

We got back on the chair lift. We talked. Well, I talked, she cried and called me names. I did my very very very best to explain to her that it’s all in the attitude. I don’t care how fast she gets down the hill, how many turns she makes, all I care about is her attitude. If you’re scared, you slow down and say, “I’m scared, what am I scared of? Okay, I can do this I can do this.” We talked about positive thinking. (No, my hippie friends, this is not the same as manifesting, i don’t care what you say. No Manifesting!)

The next run was okay.

The next run was fun.

The next run we were birds, with our wings in the air, making big swoops in the breeze.

The next run we were racing each other down the hill.

The rest of the day was AWESOME.

But I was so THAT MOM that left her screaming kid on the hill. I was also THAT MOM that told her if she could just adjust her attitude I’d buy her a Tamagachi V5.

Yup, I’m that mom. I’m me. She’s mine. Our relationship is unique to us. And I don’t care if people who walk by me think “she’s one of those moms.”

Because I am. And my kid is awesome.