Entries Tagged 'Growing up' ↓

My four year old left for his first full day of Pre-K today. And my seven year old is already on day three of second grade.

But today is my first day, at home, without my children. No kids, people. No kids until 2:30 in the afternoon!

What to do with myself.

*Silence*

It’s so quiet. It felt great at first. And then, pretty damn lonely too. No noise? …Does not compute.

I can hear the cat snoring on my bed in the other room.

It’s so very quiet.

But there is a strange pang within that I am trying to come to grips with.

No, it’s not a weepy, “oh I miss my boys” pang. It should be, right? I know. So throw in a side of guilt. I SHOULD miss them. And of course I do. But I’m ok with this moment of their new found independence. How am I so calm? Well, my wonderful kids did a fine job over these last few days of summer of making SURE I wouldn’t miss them too much. They did what they could to get under my skin just enough so that I would simply smile and wave, rather than weep and sob, as my husband’s car pulled out of the drive way. They’re thoughtful kids like that. And I love them so.

(And they were so damn ready for school. With beaming grins they practically whooped and hollered as they climbed into the car. How can I not feel happy and at peace about that?)

No there is another strange non-weepy pang within that I am trying to tease apart and figure out.

I think it does partly have to do with guilt. But really it’s this feeling that I need to be doing something productive with myself.

I have all of this time here. And it’s quiet enough to actually think. And nothing is getting any messier. I have the day at my finger tips. Most sane women would throw the laundry in the air, grab that box of bon-bons and dive into a whole round of soaps, dammit. After seven years of wiping asses and making sandwiches and ducking plastic toys – a little relax time is well deserved, right?

*wringing my hands*

I can’t quite get there.

You see for so long I have dropped any and all expectations of myself and my productivity to an all time low. If I can get myself showered and clothed well then YAY for me. Quiet time in the bathroom? It’s a lot to ask but weeee, its a nice bonus when it happens!

But now I can spend as much quiet time in or out of the bathroom as I’d like. At least until 2:30pm. Every other day.

But you see, I feel obligated to get my ass in gear. To DO something CONSTRUCTIVE already. Maybe something that earns money? Posts? Follow ups? Maybe start being more aggressive about ways I can pimp myself for some fabulous, oh so sought after writing cash?

*drumming fingers*

I’m still figuring that all out.

Or maybe actually get this place cleaned up for once? Laundry in its place. Dishes done BEFORE dinner. Oh, plan and MAKE dinner AHEAD of time! Clean out my closet. Change that damned kitty litter.

Or maybe I can finally be that mom who makes muffins and cookies and has them ready when they get home! And maybe I can be that mom who is calm and loving because I’ve HAD my “ME” time for the day. I can feel refreshed and ready to *bing* (cue cheery, June Cleaver smile) be that wonderful mom I swore I could be before I got knocked up.

What to do.

I can’t just do nothing anymore. I can’t just wallow in time to myself. My husband works his butt off all day, everyday (weekends too, I swear) all for us. SITTING AROUND just doesn’t seem… right.

But it’s weird too, you know? Just weird. Weird for me to prioritize my schedule the way I want to without any distractions from 8:00am – 2:30pm three times a week.

(That may not seem like that much time but, my friends, it’s a lifetime to me… a lifetime I tell you!)

So what have I done today so far? I have been productive but its been all about catch up and follow up and just doing things I should have had done days or weeks ago.

I didn’t even do the bills.

I didn’t make those muffins either.

And it’s 1:30pm.

Maybe I can squeeze those muffins in right now.

This new time to myself world is a strange, odd, unfamiliar transition for me. But I had better get used to it. Whether I make myself super useful or put myself first in whatever way – my kids are going to be spending more and more time away from me.

(Oh that weepy stuff WILL catch up with me, don’t you worry about that.)

Next year they will be in school all day, every day. Then it’s middle school and sleep overs. And then high school and driving. And then college.

My eldest is ONLY ten years away from COLLEGE.

Time to get my ass in gear and figure out what the hell to do with my time. Time to finally establish myself as a useful human being, capable and ready to make my mark on this universe in so many other ways than parenting.

Because I am more than a mommy. I am.

*soft kitty snoring*

*silence*

It’s time to go make some muffins.

While looking for some old toys for my kids to play with up in the attic of my family’s Cape cottage, I found a fantastic back to school treasure. I found my old third grade book bag. But what makes this bag so unique? Well it’s a book bag from the American School of Mogadishu. As in Mogadishu, Somalia – which is where I lived for almost two years as a child.

I bet its one of the only one of its kind left.

And I would bet the school where I spent so much time is no longer standing either.

My father laughed when he saw it. It’s a crazy thing to look at now. The American School of Mogadishu. As if it was the most normal thing in the whole world. And to me, as an eight year old, it was. I told my father I actually missed Somalia and would love to go back someday. He looked at me like I was insane. And I looked at him like he was insane – HE is the one that brought my family over there in the first place. But nevertheless, Somalia was my adopted home for two years of my childhood.

Like any school, we had a playground. There were swings and big iron monkey bars where I spent most recesses, preferably hanging upside down, gazing out at the orange sand covering the grounds and the dry brush and acacia trees beyond that.

My classroom was like any classroom but with a cement floor and glass louvered windows on one wall. I practiced cursive, learned fractions and read about the nomads in social studies.

Our library was a cool reprieve. We were read “The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe” during circle time. And I would sneak off to read on my own. It was there where I learned to love to read. I think I must have checked out every donated Nancy Drew book they had at least twice.

I brought my lunch to school along with my water – which had been boiled and filtered to make it safe enough to drink. And like any other American kid, I brought peanut butter and jelly to school too. Granted that was easy to ship over and store. Our house had an entire air conditioned store room filled with canned, jarred and powdered foods. And all the Christmas candy was hidden far up on a distant shelf. My brother and I considered sneaking it down on many occasions. So we didn’t care how stale it was once we found it buried at the bottom of our stockings months later.

I thought it was cool that I didn’t have to walk to school. But I didn’t think it was cool that I went to school Tuesday through Saturday. Who goes to school Saturday? The traditional American schedule was changed to match the Islamic calendar. And we also went to school from 7am – 1pm. Because it was too damn hot to be out and about after 1pm.

I didn’t use the bathroom that often. I had a bad experience with a wasp hive nested under the toilet seat. I got away unscathed but my best friend ran out of there screaming once when a rat swam up the toilet to say hello. So I preferred to just hold it.

Once the sun had a set a bit, my brother and I would climb up the wall around our house and sit. We would watch herds of goats and sometimes camels go by. We waved at the kids. My brother knew some Arabic. I did not. Sometimes we would jump off the wall and run down the dusty road to find a local tea house. We’d duck inside and be given sweet, creamy tea made by a Somali child’s mother. It was delicious. Or other times we would jump off the wall and head towards my friend’s house who had lots of Barbie stuff. She also had a Dik-dik in her yard – which was very cool.

We heard the call to prayer five times a day. It was extraordinarily comforting. In the distance. Like a song. The world would stop. And we would watch. And wait.

I had a wallet with Mecca on it, I thought it was so cool, I felt so grown-up using it. I found that in the attic too this summer.

I also discovered rock music in Somalia. An unlikely place it would seem. But thanks to a crew of totally rad 8th graders and a tape deck left next to a pool at the local American compound, Joan Jett declared that she, indeed, loved Rock and Roll. And she sung also about Crimson and Clover. Over and over. So I decided I loved Rock and Roll too. And Joan Jett and the Blackhearts. Poolside. In Mogadishu. Nothing better.

A few times my mother would take me to the market for fresh food. We would have to look carefully. We never went to the meat section. I saw the carpet of flies before it lifted to reveal what meat they had. Apart from fish, we stayed vegetarian most of the time. But I still managed to catch a decent case of dysentery. I think most kids did.

I didn’t have a concept of how safe we were – or not. Somalia was at war with Ethiopia at the time. I remember hiding under the stairs when mortars would fly into town. It never felt close. I was never too worried. But the Somali people I knew protected and cared for me. So tall, beautiful, flashing smiles, kind and patient.

Once in a village far from Mogadishu, I was surrounded by so many children touching my hair. I didn’t understand. The translator said they had never seen blond hair before. Oh. Cool. No big deal.

As my father says, “Those were the good days of Mogadishu”. Good days. Even at eight I understood the depth of poverty there. Of all the places we lived, I never saw anything like what I saw in Somalia. Distended bellies, hunger, disease, flies, drought, muddy wells, nothing.

A woman tried to pass her baby through our car window once. She thought he would have a better life with us. With a house and electricity and an air conditioned store room filled with food, and clean, filtered water – he would have. My mother never forgot that little boy and used to wonder if she should have taken him. She also wondered if he was still alive.

So my children are heading back to school now. I am packing up their Target bought book bags and sending them to school with sandwiches, cheese-its and juice boxes. Their daily routine is as normal for them as mine was in third grade. Relatively speaking, and in the mind of a child, neither seems more extraordinary than the other.

Things change.

I wonder, with my 37th birthday looming, if it is a little late to learn this lesson. I am thinking it is.

As a child there are constants in your life. People. Places. Things even. There are traditions and cycles and schedules we depend on. This is where we always go for groceries. This is the bowl I always eat from. This is how my grandfather’s garden smells. This is where we go on summer vacation. This is what my mother always says. This is how it is.

I think as children, we fixate on these constants. In the first years after we arrive into our world, we experience extraordinary change. There is so much to learn and realize and grow up into. As our world moves and shudders under our feet, we steady ourselves with what is always there. What we know. If I walk into my home, my room will be up the stairs and straight ahead. The Cheerios are always kept in the cupboard over the stove. The house key is kept on a string inside the hall closet door. Always. And, as children, if we find our constants change even slightly, we panic.

My boys depend on routine. It is their religion. They move in their cycles, they are comforted by them. I joke about their OCD tendencies but completely understand them. What do you mean a fat man named Santa comes into my home once a year to deliver stuff? Are you sure thunder is perfectly ok even though it sounds like the world is exploding above my head? Wait, we’re floating on a planet in the middle of a wide unknown called space? *breathe* Mommy will have my favorite yogurt ready for lunch, we always drive this way to school and I get to stay up until 8:30pm on weekends. All is well.

But then there are life changing moments. You move. Your school changes. Your friends are far away. What was constant is no longer. A new normal is established.  I understood these changes well as a child. And, because children do learn new things quickly while clutching onto remaining constants, I assimilated when needed.

Because there is always some familiarity somewhere. My grandfather’s garden still smelled the same, no matter how many years had passed before I stood in it again. My mother always said those same kinds of far too annoying but strangely comforting things. And decades later, that very same grocery store I shopped at as a child still exists – with the same graying employees smiling down at me in line.

Death does a fairly good job at ripping most constants (the constants that were always always there no matter how far or how often I moved) apart.

Voices that soothed and moved you through a new world are gone. The world’s they created, the homes they kept, the things they bought to fill them, the foods they made, the gardens they grew, the traditions they kept, the sayings they always said over and over again… that is immediately gone.

You can’t return.

You can’t hear the door creak the way it used to and slam behind you. You won’t find the Cheerios kept where they always were. You won’t hear the sounds of your mother – her certain clicking, scuffing pace down the hall.  And, when you wake up far too late on a Saturday morning, you certainly won’t hear your grandmother singsong from the kitchen:  “Good morning Merry sunshine, how did you wake so soon? You chased the little stars away and shined away the moon!”

It’s gone.

And that is how the world is.

Things fall apart.

Things change.

Nothing is constant.

And as adults, we regroup and reshape and recreate our families. We make new constants. We surround ourselves with new everydayness. The Cheerios find a new home in your pantry. And maybe you redo what they did. You recreate it subtly with every hope that the constant in some quiet, private comforting way remains.

I miss those people. I miss those places. I miss those things.

With a nostalgic, regretful, desperate ache rooted and wound into my gut – I. Miss. It.

Still. I have new people and new places and new things.

Apparently this is how life goes.

Things fall apart. Things change.  But they renew again. And move forward.

Breathing and hoping.

But missing.

And eating Cheerios for breakfast every single morning.

I remember seven.

I remember plastic bobbled ponytails and faded iron on t-shirts and socks with colored bands around my calves.

I remember dancing with my friend in front of her record player, the Bee Gees pumping night fever, night fever, we know how to do it. And collapsing into bean bags chairs, gulping down Kool Aid out of sticky McDonald’s glasses.

I remember roller skating, crunching over sandy sidewalks, rolling around and around the playground while my brother pushed his cars in the sandbox.

I remember cramming into the back of my parent’s station wagon with friends, a faded green swimsuit, powdered rubber swim caps, piling and pushing each other out and lining up in front of a freezing swimming pool.

I remember testing out a quick kiss with a boy named Matt under the jungle gym and wondering what the big deal was.

I remember speeding through the neighborhood on a banana seat bike with glittery orange and pink fringe whipping in the wind from the tips of my handlebars.

I remember car trips and train trips and camping with my family. I remember Disneyland and climbing trees and learning how to dive under waves at the ocean. I remember figuring out how to wash my own hair and standing on a chair backed up to the sink helping my mother wash dishes. I remember asking if driving a car was fun and what it felt like to be tall. I remember believing in the Easter Bunny and Santa, kind of.

I remember being seven.

And now my oldest child is turning seven.

I know memories are being created and carefully slotted into his mind everyday. And I know I am charged with tending to his childhood, tilling his experiences, allowing him to grow and be and explore and eventually remember it all. Hopefully fondly.

But in a mind blowing, “this is the meaning of life” kind of way, my seven does not seem that long ago. Only a few years back even. The taste of Kool Aid and feel of ponytails and fun of climbing trees and trust and wonderment and identity of seven only just happened. It seems.

Yet now here’s his seven. His childhood has arrived.

This small boy who I gave birth to on a rainy May evening is now experiencing his world in ways that will create the person he will become. And while fighting off my own self indulgent tendencies to insist that I am still a child in fact and any child of mine could not possibly be… seven. While I’m doing plenty of that, I hold tight and steady myself. It’s on me to make sure that his seven counts. That these years are good years that he will look back on and laugh and wonder and ask who remembers Wii and the 2010 Tampa Rays and Little League and chocolate milk after school and popcorn during Friday night movies and swimming for hours at the local swimming pool.

His seven is right here, right now.

But my seven is still here too, reminding me what it means, what really matters, and insisting that I cherish all of what seven should be about.

I wonder. Has he ever heard the Bee Gees cranked at full volume? It may be time that he does.

I don’t claim to be much of a gardener. But by no means should that imply that I don’t love to garden. I’m not sure how it happened actually. I fought it for years, but it’s joy lay deep below, patient and waiting.

As a child, my mother had a garden plot a few blocks from our home. She piled my brother, myself and her garden tools into her station wagon and hauled us all over there. We didn’t particularly like going. We were bored. I would wander down the mulched paths in between stringed off gardens boasting lovely heads of lettuce, squash and snap peas lost in whichever fantasy I had currently replaying in my mind. My mother would call me back, and could I bring the wheel barrow over while I’m at it.

I remember the year she had grown so many tomatoes. Heaps and heaps of them. She was given a book about “Too Many Tomatoes” and set to canning. I remember the smell of vine ripened tomatoes and then stewing tomatoes. I didn’t even like tomatoes. There were just so many of them which she found very amusing and clucked on about daily. *Shrug* I was six. What did all of those tomatoes really matter.

When I finally moved into my first apartment with a little bit of land, I never expected to consider gardening. But as the cold months finally passed and green buds piqued the trees, something unfurled within. As if some gene which I had no control over had finally matured itself and pushed through. Maybe I should go pick up a few bulbs? Maybe a trowel. Maybe some better soil.

But I am missing the skill portion of this gardening gene. And so my first garden was a catastrophe. Bulbs had been placed too close together, enormous plants grew on too small a plot of land and then one flower took over like a weed and spread everywhere. Things were leaning, nothing matched, hopeful flowers were strangled and started dying. I forgot to water. What’s the difference between and annual and a perennial, I had no idea.

Years have passed and I have my own home now. Usually I tend to my small garden of children so I spend less time heeding my temptation to grow much outside. But I try every few months to make an effort with my garden. It is a Florida garden however with extreme heat and humidity and then occasional damaging freezes. We have horrid sandy topsoil which is regularly overturned and dug through by a local armadillo. And then there are hoards of fire ants ready to strike any flip-flopped foot that happens to misstep. I don’t know the names of what grows here so growing any of it is some version of garden Russian roulette. But I dig a hole, plant one in there and certainly try. Sure, only about 50% of what I have put in has had lived on with much success, but I try.

Today I put in sod. Last year our backyard was bulldozed suffered at the hand of a wild boar and five of her babies. The weeds whooped and hollered as they crowded in and took over. But today my husband and I trucked in slab after slab of sod and threw together a patch work of grass which we hope will make its mark and regain the upper hand. As we stood there coated in dirt and sweat, watering and stomping at the ground, I felt good. The dirt felt good. The soil and water and all of it combined in a muddy green grassy mass smelled divine. I am growing something.

A few weeks ago, I tentatively planted a tomato plant in a pot on my back porch. Because, you guessed it, I like tomatoes now. I adore them. I wish I could ask my mother how she did it but I would bet the care and the organic mulch and the specific zone she lived in had everything to do with it. Nevertheless, I am trying it. And so now I go out onto my porch everyday and stare at my plant. Would you believe one of those lovely papery tomato flowers bestowed a small gift the other day? Yes, a small green tomato has shown itself. I hardly have too many tomatoes – but I have one. One and maybe another as I tentatively water it’s soil and will the next papery flower to produce a friend.

There is a magic in growing. A small, dry seed can become something real and green, stalked and hardy. Soil and all of it’s rich substance anchors the potential of food and beauty and shade. Water. Have you ever seen what a good soaking rain will do to a garden? It all stretches to the sky and reaches and reaches. It greens and buds and flowers and creates fruit and color and hope.

Clearly, there is also therapy in gardening and growing. We lose ourselves, find our thoughts and enjoy this quiet peace while tending and tending and tending until it exhausts us. We place our attention on something which doesn’t take anything away. We find creativity in growth and life while reigning in and respecting all the possibilities of the natural world.

It is certainly no coincidence. I have snuck back into my garden because it offers a careful promise of life and hope. A promise I tend to, hoping my love of gardening which was passed on to me might actually heal me.

Its a phenomenon to be sure.

And again, it’s not one I claim to have much of a handle on. Don’t expect bright swaying trellises of bougainvillea and enormous bushels of Birds of Paradise or hearty fruit trees weighed down with orange treasures or even a lawn that grows one type of grass (as much as I lust for all of this). But you might expect a small tray of sunflowers poking their way up on the sunny side of the house. Or one clump of Bird of Paradise make a respectable run for it in the front yard. And a fairly successful patch of petunias keeping my mailbox company.

Oh yes and one small green tomato, which smells exactly like my mother’s garden plot. You’ll find me next to it, staring it down and finding pride in it’s possibility. I’m here remembering my mother and hoping to find all the same amusement and joy she plucked out of her own garden. And also, like my mother from 30 years prior overwhelmed by her harvest, I am here clucking on about my one dear tomato daily. Because this first tomato does matter.

Magic is always pushing and drawing and making things out of nothing. Everything is made out of Magic, leaves and trees, flowers and birds, badgers and foxes and squirrels and people. So it must be all around us. In this garden – in all the places.

- The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett

Nothing spells out a fabulous day of preschool like a sweet little face covered with glitter.

While so trying so very often – I do adore this age. Where life is a curious and carefree collection of moments such as circle time, ABCs, sitting criss cross applesauce, line leaders, elmer’s glue, juice boxes, hand holding, being happy and you know it, peering at ladybugs, make-believe, washable crayons, swings and slides, freeze dance, squishing play-doh and falling into an exhausted heap at nap-time. They are old enough to have thoughtful conversations but still too young to be self conscious about any of it. They make wild leaps of logic with adorable statements such as a headache while eating an apple would be “apple brain” (as opposed to “brain freeze” while eating ice cream). They hum and swing their arms and live for the present – assuming there is not a bad thing in this world. They trust, they adore, they snuggle, they are much more than wee toddlers but hardly true, rough and tumble, “whatever, mom” kids yet.

Glitter on your face. Such is the wonderful world of a three year old.

(However, I will say that an enormous tantrum erupted from this child once I did try to wipe the glitter off before nap-time. Kicking and screaming and “No wipes! I NOT TIRED!!!!” and wrestling and wrangling until he was in his bed, clutching his bear and weeping about how I wasn’t being nice to him. So. This post was a therapeutic reminder of the glorious, gleeful glitteriness he was only an hour ago. I do adore him so.)

What the hell are Silly Bands?

I had no idea. I guess I had vaguely seen brightly colored kinked plastic bracelets on kids in passing at Little League, at the grocery store, just around. I thought they were just some new kind of jelly bracelet. And something girls were into. I have two boys who have zero preference about what they wear EVER. So bracelets just weren’t on my radar screen.

Plus my six year old is kind of a serious, by the book, I want to do my own thing kind of kid. Peer pressure has yet to sway him too much.

But recently he has been untethering his independence. And shrugging on the language of a grown up kid.

“Mom that is so awesome, did you see that play? So cool. Dude.”

And I’ve been seeing him goof off in the dug out and wrestle his friends to the ground at the park and yell out the open car window at friends: “Hey! Ryan! Matthew G.! Hey you guys!!! Over here!”

This is nothing like my timid, skirt clinger who hid under a table for his first two months of preschool.

And this is a good thing.

But the other day, my boy watched a pack of kinky braceleted kids walk by. He turned and looked up at me.

“Mom. You know those Silly Bands?”

“Those what?”

“Silly Bands. …They’re cool.”

“Oh yeah?”

He had grabbed my attention. Because in my mind, my sweet boy was perpetually hiding under the world’s table, yet to really peer out. His teachers describe him as very quiet. A good boy. Bright, straight As, certainly the least of their concerns. But my husband and I always worry about how it all goes down with his peers. We fret over his “cool” factor. And were we doing anything at all to encourage or maintain it?

So these Silly Bands. They are indeed a new version of jelly bracelets but apparently every one of his friends wear them at school. And when you take them off, they make shapes. And sometimes glow in the dark. They’re cool. I guess.

“Do you want some too?”

“Yeah.”

So after dropping him off at school yesterday, I pulled up to Walgreens. Their digital billboard outside blinked that they had just received a new shipment of Silly Bands. Huh. Am I the LAST person to know about these things?

I walked in. I couldn’t find them. I walked up to the twice my aged cashier, half dozing on his stool. “I’m looking for these… um…” and started touching my wrists. Before I could spit out the word “bracelet”, he pointed me to a bin at his right.

“Silly Bands. Oh I know all about those. Fastest selling things in the store.”

Even the guy two times my age at Walgreens was more current than I am. Ok then. I grabbed two packs.

And while the “letter” ones I had picked out apparently aren’t as cool as the animals or other shaped ones, my six year old carefully put each colored band on. He practiced walked around the house, staring down at his wrists. He kept stopping, taking them off, arranging them in rows, and putting them back on. We made a special ziploc bag for them. We talked about which ones the other kids had. And this morning, he put them all back on. Coolness checked and rechecked, he stomped out the door, backpack bouncing behind him. And I caught him glance down at his wrists one more time before he was gone.

I should know better. I remember jelly bracelets and slap bands and garbage pail kids and sticker albums. I remember how badly I wanted to be able to have some reference of cool in first grade. I remember wanting to “get it”.

So while I’m not rushing out buying every Wii game the other kids have or electronic whatever just so my kid maintains his cool, I think investing a few bucks in some strange little plastic bracelets so my kid feels like he can be part of something is absolutely worth it.

Silly Bands. Cool kid. Happy mom.

I declared Sunday a Pajama Day. It was pouring rain, we didn’t need groceries, so we stayed in. And while cuddled together on the couch under a blanket in our pajamas, my six year old and I played on my husband’s iphone. He has an app on there that is something like Boggle. A random collection of letters are displayed on a grid and the player taps connected letters to make as many words as they can in a limited amount of time. He’s as good as I am: Dog. God. Wet. Stew. Scold. Cold. Weep. Pew. We kept making words and racking up the points. A fun innocent use of a Sunday afternoon, no?

During one particular round, he found a word first. He tapped out three connected letters:

S…E…X.

…..!!!!!

Insert my garbled, surprised laugh here.

“Um hon, do you even know what that means???”

He just giggled back at me. And kept punching out words.

And what did this very brilliant, oh so intuitive mother do? Nothing. I kept on playing too. And I stuck to a favorite parenting standby: ignore the obvious and maybe it will go away.

But of course I haven’t stopped thinking about it. He knows the word “sex”.

Granted, knowing the word and understanding the word are two different things. But he’s SIX! How does he know this word!?

What, was I born on the moon? He can read. Sex and the word sex is woven into our mainstream culture everywhere we go. And my kid happens to have one of those steel trap minds for words. He read very early, he aces spelling tests, he has always soaked in much more around him than he lets on.

I would bet if I asked him to spell the word tampon he’d get it right.

But would he know what it is? …Would he???

I’m thinking.

I don’t know. They’re sitting right there in my bathroom. They come with instructions after all…

Oh dear Lord. I am not ready for this. He’s SIX!

There is a part of me that wants to say something. You know, something very cool and collected like “If you ever want to know what the word sex means, let me know and we can talk about it.”

Ugh, no. NO! He’s six! Just because he knows this word, doesn’t mean he wants to understand its intricacies or all of its “ins and outs”. So to speak. He’s too young still. He just knew the word, that’s all. I mean I know we’re supposed to talk to our kids about sex early and – don’t get me wrong – I WOULD talk to him about it if he asked. I just feel like… he’s a wee innocent boy. He really isn’t ready for this, no more than I am.

*wringing my hands*

Yep. I’ll leave it be. For now. Just a couple more years. We’ll revisit this topic no later than eight. Yeah that’s about when you should kind of sort of know where a baby comes from right? That’s about when kids should have more than a vague idea that “mommies and daddies make them”. …I think.

(Cue flashback sequence: I was eight years old and over at a friend’s house. She and I were innocently playing Barbies on her bedroom floor when her older sister pranced in. Her sister had just started menstruating and, deeming herself a new expert on all topics below the belt, she decided to tell us allll about it. Later that afternoon, I remember walking home in stupefied haze, kicking stones, shaking my head the whole way. Of course I had to come face to face with those guilty of such deeds: my parents. So when I sat at dinner and they passed me the peas, what was my reaction? I let them have it. I spat at them “How could you??? How could you do… that???? That’s just… DISGUSTING!” Granted, I’m still not entirely convinced that they actually did do that. The stork was most likely involved with my brother and I – just in this one instance. But I digress.)

The lesson learned here is that these six year old eyes and ears are absorbing the world around them. (A shocking realization, I know.) And we can’t take for granted what they are sifting out or what they deem as “must know information” vs. “stuff grown ups worry about”. We can’t expect them to make that distinction. I have to be ready and I have to do what I can to introduce this crazy world at an appropriate speed.

That sounds responsible and about what a parent should do, right?

Now to actually apply that practically. To make sure my kid learns and sees and hears just about what he can handle without being cut off from the world or without protecting him too much…

Um. Yeah.

Is there an app for that?

We are two months past Christmas and in the meantime, my six year old has been losing teeth and growing them back in faster than I can start weeping “I remember when you were just a drooling, teething, gumming mess!” And thanks to all the pasteled cardboard bunnies decking the halls of my local Target, I have been reminded that Easter is right around the corner. So what does this mean?

A whole lot of lying to my kid.

Why?

Because within a span of a few months, I will have told my kid that yes, one more mysterious magical being will creep into our home and leave him things.

Santa.

How does he get in?  The air vents? Why can’t we hear him? Do you promise he doesn’t come into my room?

The Tooth Fairy.

How big is she? Is she like Tinkerbell? Can she fly? How does she carry all this money and what does she do with all the teeth?

The Easter Bunny.

Does he lay these eggs? Does he like to eat plastic grass? Where does he come from? Why do I get jelly beans? What would the Tooth Fairy say?

And I come up with fascinating, complex responses to each of his questions. This year, I even managed to have the Tooth Fairy be in cahoots with Santa. If he does a good job brushing his teeth, she’ll let Santa know. His eyes were wide, considering all of this, hoping his rep remained in good standing for all of these magical home invaders.

And yet, those wondrous tales I weave? Lies. All of them.

Here I am trying to teach my six year old facts about the world. At school, he learns about gravity, liquids, solids, what floats, what sinks, where his nation’s capitol is and that Abraham Lincoln was our the 16th president. He helps me bake and bring his dishes back to the sink. He is learning responsibility and asks me questions about current events on the news. He is learning and processing and showing brief glimmers of (…I can hardly bare to consider it…) adulthood.

And then here I come along and throw in fat men squeezing into vents in our house (no “stranger danger” to worry about hon, I promise) and fairies flitting about dropping change and bunnies hopping through our home with an odd fetish for plastic grass.

It just feels a little… off.

But I try to back up and think of the six year old world I experienced some 30 odd years prior. I remember gleefully celebrating everything magical, fantastical and far from realistic. As fast as I learned about how serious and strange our world actually was, the hope of magic and fairies and gifts being left in the dead of night if I was a good girl absolutely appealed.

Because at six years old, magic still makes a lot of sense. Santa is about as real as some guy named Abraham Lincoln anyway. So let’s go with it.

But the guilt remains. I can’t help but feel like I’m lying. As much as he seems to enjoy these silly traditions…

Ok, wait. I’m lying again. He went through a faze at about 4 years old when the concept of some strange man coming into our home on Christmas Eve seemed more frightening than any spook left behind from Halloween. I promised he didn’t have to sit on his knee. I promised he wouldn’t go into his room. I promised that I was right down the hall. Yay for Christmas, isn’t this fun?

That has since passed. But during it all, I could not help but question why I had to shove this strange myth down his throat. Believe in Santa, damn it. After all, I believed – so YOU must too! Like some screwy rite of passage, you better be good for goodness sake.

And what will happen when my six year old learns about my litany of lies after all these years? Because what is all of this for? So that he can grasp onto some hope of magic only to have it dashed? I worry he will be so disappointed. Because he is wound deep into the tradition of it all now. He adores it all and takes it very seriously. I cringe a little while he solemnly places carrots for our reindeer in our driveway, making sure they are well fed for all their work. And then runs his pajama-ed feet back inside to find NORAD online and track Santa’s progress.

All of it is still so believable.

He believes because the barometer of all that is real and safe and ok  – that would be yours truly, Mommy -  said so.

Gawd, I am such a liar.

But there have been times where I have hinted that the magic isn’t there. I have forgotten to fill the advent calendar only to have him ask me to fill it, but could I do it when he’s not looking? He wants that candy to magically appear. And I have left the tooth fairy writing paper out, and the pen I used. He overlooks it. Maybe he didn’t connect the dots – or maybe he doesn’t want to.

I think I was close to ten years old before I was 100% sure there was no Santa. I held on for as long as I possibly could. I kept the faith, thinking the non-believers were totally losing out while I stubbornly bought into every last drop of Christmas magic. I knew that Santa and the Eater Bunny’s handwriting looked an awful lot like my parents. But I didn’t care. There were a lot of things we couldn’t explain, let’s just believe the magic is real.

And I think I still have to.

I need create magic for as long as he wants it. Because there is something special about believing. It fosters wonder and hope and possibility in their imaginations. If there is a tooth fairy hovering over my head, slipping change under my pillow, well anything seems possible, right?

Yeah.

Well, I hope you’ve enjoyed how I rationalize my lies. Yes, saying there is a Santa means my child will have a fantastic imagination. Awesome.

But I will continue with these traditions and routines. They are woven into our culture. Watching them believe brings us back to a time when we believed. And that feels ok and fun and, who cares, everyone enjoys it. So I’m ok with that.

But when my six year old puts it together that my handwriting is the same as Santa’s and the Tooth Fairy’s and the Easter Bunny’s, when he comes home telling me what they are all insisting on the playground, when he mourns the fact that all of this magic is just, you’ve got to be kidding me, his mom… well. I’ll be back on here. Oozing with guilt and parental self doubt.

Until then, I am wondering if the Easter Bunny should leave a new toothbrush too – a little something from his “cuz” the Tooth Fairy. With all of those anticipated jelly bellies, the Easter Bunny might need to encourage a little dental care too. Yep, let’s weave some guilt into my tale of lies. It just might work.

It’s Groundhog day! It’s my holiday. Cheers, a toast to me.

Well, its my holiday in the Groundhog Day MOVIE sense of the holiday. Do you remember that movie? With Bill Murray? From about 15ish years ago? I remember going to that movie with an old boyfriend. I thought the movie was kind of lame at the time. So did he. I don’t think I ever thought about that movie again. At least not for a long while.

However. Years later, this holiday – in the sense that it is in the movie – has become my day. And I am sure you can guess why. Or why any mother home with her kids might relate. Stuck in my own personal Groundhog Day, I wash the same damn dishes every day, I yell the same demands of “stop beating your brother on the head with a baseball bat” about the same time everyday, I ask daily that they eat their carrots, and pee in the potty, and pick up their underwear off the ground, and not slosh every drop of bathwater onto the floor, and stop jumping on the bed, and WIPE for God’s sake, and yes you DO need a nap, and look both ways. Its always the same. THE SAME. Everyday.

In some ways there is a certain comfort in it all. I know there is for my children. By nature, kids require adults to create predictable rhythms and army issue schedules which we can set our watches to. They need that routine. And parents abide. To a child, in an ever-changing world, that schedule is wholly welcome and needed and comforting. And who am I kidding – the guarantee that I will see my 6 year old at 3:45 everyday is assuring and wonderful and something I look forward to daily.

But while I look forward to 3:45pm, to see him bopping up to my car with his backpack on, it always seems that this day could be the same as the last or the day before or the next day coming. The same buses pass me on the way to school, the same cars line up and sit next to me in the car line, the same fights happen in the backseat on the way home.

Its Groundhog day. Everyday.

Ugh, so… do I really need to make a disclaimer here? And say that while this painfully predictable same same saaaame-ness in my daily schedule can be extraordinarily tedious… and even though I admit to that plainly here… even so, I do truly love being here for my children. Do I need to say that? I hope not. I hope it is clear that I cherish my time with my boys. Just because my job is mind numbing and exhausting, doesn’t mean I don’t love it. I know. It makes perfect sense.

But oh once just to throw nap schedules to the wind, to bust out of the car line, to not have dinner ready at 6pm. My children would be better off for some spontaneity now and then. Which we try to do. And succeed at now and again. But I will tell you this. While the crazy fun is exciting initially, they don’t do so well with unpredictability long term. And they are much easier to parent if they know what’s happening next. So the routine is a must. It allows them to grow, to flourish and to trust that their world around them is still the same and that dinner will be ready by 6pm, I promise.

But still. Happy Groundhog Day to me.

And if you forget to wish me a happy one today, well that’s ok.

You can always do it tomorrow.