UnchartedParent.com

Long-term readers of this blog will recall that I began renovations on it some time ago.

Almost a year-and-a-half ago, actually. 

Well, they’re finally done.  (Okay, so I’m not Bill Gates.  Are you surprised?)

You’ll notice that the links on the top do work now; clicking on them will actually bring you somewhere related to the name of the link.  If you hit “Contact,” you can send me an email.  And the “About the Site” box that has served no purpose since the dawn of this blog now actually tells you something—wait for it—about the blog.

There have been some other minor changes, and, to be completely honest, I still have a few more I’d like to make.  (Real honesty also requires me to confess that I did not do these fixes on my own.)  But none of those remaining alterations should be obvious to you, the reader.  And if you’ve got suggestions for improving the site, please share.  (You can break in that nifty little link at the top of the home page and email them to me.) 

Okay, back to fiddling around with HTML minutia while praying that I don’t accidentally delete the two lines of code that secretly control the whole blog.

Maybe for my next trick, I can learn how to operate my TiVo while switching between high-definition and standard broadcasting signals on the widescreen TV.  Nah, let’s not overreach on this technology stuff . . .

In Edgar Allen Poe’s classic horror tale, The Tell-Tale Heart, a man is haunted by what he perceives to be the still beating, pounding heart of his murder victim beneath the floor boards where he has hidden the dismembered body.  He is driven to insanity by the sound he cannot escape—or is he already insane?

Poe knew nothing.  Poe wasn’t a mom.  If you really want a tale of lunacy and madness, how about “The Tell-Tale Poop”?

I remember this episode from now six-year-old “Jack’s” preschooler days, when it took place in the gift shop of a nature museum and I wanted to shrink behind the stacks of “natural”-dyed gemstones and racks of pygmy marmoset puppets so that no one would know that I was the disgusting child’s mother.  Now I’ve been through it with three-year-old “Emmie,” except this time we were standing directly in front of a Sears salesclerk paying for our purchase, and there was no visible means of escape or way to pretend that the small offender belonged to someone else.

Here’s how this scene goes down.  I, the mother, am in some public setting with my child who really, truly is old enough to be potty-trained, but for some inexplicable reason, isn’t.  The kid expresses opinions, engages passersby in sophisticated conversations, can practically drive a car and do your taxes.  Then, in what is until that moment a perfectly acceptable social interaction with the world at large, the kid decides it’s time to poop.  So he/she does.  Right there.  In the middle of wherever we happen to be.  Crouching in an unmistakable position, the kid either grunts loudly (Jack), or actually announces it to make sure that everyone around knows (Emmie), as if inhaling the suddenly changed air wouldn’t clue the nearby population in on the event in progress. 

Personal, adult mortification aside, the silver lining in this foul cloud when Jack did this was that it wasn’t long afterward that he decided that he was in fact ready to be potty-trained.  So I’m hoping that my maternal embarrassment is just the necessary prelude to this long-awaited milestone for Emmie, the “tell-tale poop” that indicates that things that ought to be done in private over the age of two will finally be so accomplished.

It’s hard to know, though.  Especially with Emmie, who lives to push her parents’ buttons.  If she could read this, she’d be pooping in her pull-up until she was in high school.  So if you see me and Emmie in public, keep an ear—and a nose open.  You might just need to make a quick escape from the Tell-Tale Poop.

As kids, some of us got A’s and B’s in school, wanted to please our parents and teachers and in general were good students.  Others of us harbored similar ambitions but struggled for every decent grade we got.

Members of a third category did not aim so high.  These kids affirmatively believed that doing well in school was not “cool,” that kids who got A’s were “dorks” or “geeks” (I’m dating myself, aren’t I?), and that the absolute worst thing that could happen in school was that their peers would think they weren’t fun.  As for brains; who cared?  That’s not what was important in their eyes anyway.

As parents, we don’t want our kids to fall into this third category.  Regardless of our kids’ intelligence levels, we want them to learn to work hard, to strive to do as well as they possibly can in school and in life and not to fall prey to the trap of selling themselves short by burying any innate intelligence they do have beneath the trappings of today’s version of socially acceptable underachievement.

So here’s a question that’s been on my mind lately: if we don’t want our kids to hide their intelligence or to aim for the lowest common denominator, why in bloody hell do we seem to want this for our political leaders?

It’s the same mentality.

I’ve long believed that in presidential politics, the candidate who scored highest on the “beer test” was the one most likely to win the election.  (Yes, yes, I know I’m hardly the first person to think of this, but go with me for now anyway.)  In other words, between two candidates, with which one would you most like to sit down and share a beer?  Who’s the most fun?  Who seems more like “a regular guy?”  (Or girl?)

Why does this matter?

Of course we want our president to understand us; we’re “the people,” and he or she is our leader.  If he or she has no clue what our lives are like, then he or she won’t really be able to appreciate our needs and the needs of our country as a whole.  (Sorry for all the pronouns, but even they are political.)

But I’d like a little more from our president; from all of our leaders, in fact.  I know lots of regular people—I even like many of them—but if I’m being honest, I don’t think many of the people with whom I’m personally acquainted are qualified to be President of the United States.  Heck, I want my president to be smarter than I am, maybe better educated.  I want someone at the helm who can understand complex policies, see both the forests and the trees, and wade through a tangle of issues and bureaucratic red tape, international tension and domestic pressures, and then emerge from that morass with an idea that seems so brilliant that even if I don’t buy into it hook, line and sinker, I’m impressed enough that I’m willing to see where it will take us.  Then I want my president to navigate the diverse and turbulent waters that make up this nation and, using his or her intellect, charisma and whatever other phenomenal tools he or she has at his or her disposal, bring us together to travel the long, hard road from point A to point B.

I want the smart kid to be president.  I want the kid who knew all the answers, who studied, did his or her homework and worked hard.  That kid had to know how to have some fun, of course; otherwise we’re talking about a kid who’s now probably insane or at least on multiple medications for migraines, ulcers and high-blood pressure, but I really don’t care if he or she was a blast to hang out with or not.  I don’t plan to party with my president.  I’ve got other people to fill that function.

So let’s take a few moments to think about what it is we want, both out of our kids and out of our presidents.  At first glance, the two might not seem related, but it seems to me that with some of the pandering we’ve seen in this long, long election so far, we’re really talking about the same thing.

What sort of lesson are we teaching our children by showing them that when it comes to presidents, being smart isn’t cool?

This blog is all about going places and experiencing events that we have never gone through before.  That’s one of the very definitions of parenting, isn’t it?

But every now and then, we take a night off from shaping the future to step back into the past, to take a look back at who we used to be and marvel at how far we’ve come.  And when we step into those time warps, we damn well are taking the people we used to know with us.

I’m writing, of course, about high school and college reunions.

This past weekend, I attended my twenty-year college reunion.  Depending on how you feel about your particular college experience, I’m guessing that sentence shoots either excitement or dread straight into your heart.  For me, the approach of this milestone resulted in mostly the former.  I loved college and treasured the friends I made there.  Moreover, as I told one friend this weekend, “I didn’t know anything about anything when I got here.”  I first began to learn who I really was in college, and you can’t beat a credit like that for inspiring misty-eyed nostalgia. 

(On the other hand, just try to get me to a high-school reunion.  Unless you’ve got a million bucks for me—and I mean cash; I’m going to have to see it in front of me, divided into easily countable bundles—you won’t even find me in the same state as a horror like that.  I’d feel like I was walking into a Stephen King novel.)

But note that little hole I left in my emotional state two paragraphs back.  My predominant sentiment was one of excitement, but there were a few other bits and pieces lying around as well.  I write this in full knowledge that some of my renewed acquaintances are going to read this—I gave out a lot of cards with this blog address on them—but what’s the point of writing if you’re not going to be honest?  So here’s the truth: I was eager to catch up with everyone, to discover who’d be there and to compare lives, but I also carried with me enough insecurity to hug every fellow alumnus or alumna in the pub until my cheeks ached from smiling, and still make it into the ladies’ room to puke.  (No, I did not actually do this.)

Why?  Let’s see: ten years ago—the last time I saw many of these people—I was thirty-one and had, during the course of the two years prior to that reunion, completed law school and grad school, gotten married, worked a year in one job that sounded impressive but really wasn’t and then taken a job that actually was nearly as interesting as its title led one to believe.  I’d had some setbacks in my life, but who hadn’t?  It was, to quote a classmate from this past Saturday evening, “all good.”

Fast-forward ten years.  I quit that time-intensive career when my son, “Jack,” was born, and began life as a stay-at-home mom.  Then I entered into that common stage of early twenty-first century American female life wherein I felt guilty and conflicted about my choices.  You know this dilemma; if you haven’t actually read the shelves of literature written about it, you’ve heard about it on CNN or Oprah.  Becoming a writer should have alleviated some of this neurosis, and probably has.  But beginning a new career in one’s late thirties with no training, no experience, no connections and which virtually guarantees a long future of rejections and low income comes with its own special brand of discomfort.

So, you’re saying now, cut to the chase already.  How did it go?

It was mostly great.  I saw a bunch of people I wanted to see, a few that I didn’t, and rehashed some classic stories that will and should live forever.  (Ask me someday about “the popcorn caper.”)  And if I participated in one or two exchanges I could have done without, well, I survived.  After all, I’m still married to the same phenomenal guy, I’ve now got two kids I’d handpick if I had all the children in the world from whom to choose, I live in an area I love and I spend my non-childcare time doing something I love even more. 

But thank God I’ve got ten years until the next reunion!

“Jack” is six.  He’s also a boy.  In America, in springtime, that generally means one thing: T-ball.

As the snow began to melt a few months ago, I asked Jack if he wanted to give this venerated institution a try.  Having once hit a plastic, baseball-like sphere out of his aunt’s backyard, he immediately envisioned himself being recruited to join the Red Sox and answered with an enthusiastic “Yes!”

So I visited the website of my little town’s recreation league to obtain the relevant information and sign Jack up.  One, two, blog post over.  Right?  Right?

Not so fast.  Apparently there’s a secret code for T-ball, and I don’t have it.

To my surprise, there was no information available on the recreation league website.  I called the office, and was told that the town little league had the information, but sorry, the recreation office didn’t have any contact information for the town little league.  Not to be deterred, I decided to use that most universal of currencies: the Connection.  I personally know a mom whose son played T-ball in my town last year.  I emailed her and received this response: “yes, this was a mystery I unraveled last year when J___ wanted to play.”  Excellent, I thought.  This mom is my ticket in!

Connected Mom, as I will now call her, steered me to my local town little league website.  I searched the front page of the site and located a link for T-ball.

Clicking on this link brought me to the following statement: “Welcome to the 2008 T-ball season.”  My eyes searched right and left, up and down on the page, but no other information was forthcoming.  So I shifted into sleuth mode and began hunting for clues that would lead me to something useful.

The most promising link was the tiny “Contact Us” at the very bottom of the T-ball page.  That link brought me to a list of FAQ’s, the first of which was, “I have a league related issue – who do I contact?”  Grammatical errors notwithstanding, I was pleased to find something so direct.  The answer: “Please use the Board Members link found at the bottom of each page.”  Okay; I can follow directions.  I clicked on “Board Members” and found my first real data, including a Coordinator for T-ball with an email link.  I sent an email requesting basic information.

A few days went by.  Nothing.

No problem.  Maybe the coordinator was out-of-town.  It happens.  I returned to the Board Members page and sent an email to the president of the league requesting, again, basic information.

The next day, I received an email from a third person at the league.  He claimed to know everything about T-ball and stated, “please let me know what specifically you would like answered and I’ll work with you . . .” 

At this point, I resisted the urge to write back, “Something resembling anything would be appreciated.”  Instead, I sent him a bulleted list of eight exceedingly basic questions, seven of which began with the words, “what,” “when” and “where.”  He answered each of them, though most of his responses boiled down to one or both of two phrases: “we don’t know yet,” and “it depends.”  He did, however, reveal to me the name of the park where practice would take place.  I felt like I’d uncovered the first of the nuclear launch codes.

I completed the registration form which I’d managed to procure and sent it to the league’s address (I never found any evidence of a phone number), along with $50.  Then we waited.

Several weeks later, an email from the first person who never responded to me rang into my inbox, subject-line reading, “T-ball update.”  I eagerly opened it and found that I was now on a list of T-ball parents!  The email spoke only about waiting for the snow to finish melting and a clean-up day for the fields, but that was okay; I was part of the club, and I waited some more.

Over the next few weeks, a couple of emails straggled into my inbox about needing coaches.  Then, I got what I’d been waiting for: an email that laid out teams, coaches and a first day and time to meet: Monday, a few weeks hence.  Jack’s name was listed on one of the teams.  Yes; we’d made it!

But here’s where my neurotic side kicked in, because I still had a few questions, like would T-ball be every Monday for a month or will we be doing this straight into the fall soccer season?  The rumors were by now flying through my mom-networks around town that T-ball had been known in past years to meet two days per week, and I wondered whether that would be the case given that only Monday had been mentioned.  After all, it’s much easier to make the commitment to T-ball or any other activity if you know when you’re supposed to be at the ball field.  So with no small amount of trepidation, I emailed back with my follow-up questions.  The response this time: six weeks, and of course it’s Mondays and Wednesdays.  Glad I asked.

The information-extraction process continued, but the bottom line was that by opening day, I knew where to be, when, with whom and what I needed to bring with me.  So on the appointed day, I packed sunscreen and bug spray into a bag as directed, picked up Jack from school and, with three-year-old “Emmie” in tow, headed out for our first t-ball experience.

Tune in next time for Part II, wherein I discover that showing up isn’t everything.  I may have broken the secret code, but I still don’t know the handshake.

Please click below to read my two latest articles, published today at InterfaithFamily.com.

In “But Mommy, Why Do I Have to Go to Religious School?,” I offer an answer to six-year-old “Jack’s” proverbial question, one that has been repeated by innumerable children for years and, no doubt, in many religions.

In “How Many Pieces Does It Take to Make a Person?,” I review A.M. Homes’s The Mistress’s Daughter, a memoir of the author’s journey of meeting her birthparents and coming to grips with the multiple layers of her identity.

Happy reading!

Welcome to my first-ever post co-written by six-year-old “Jack.”

As we devoured our chocolate ice cream at the just-opened local farm next to Jack’s school  (you can’t beat a school that’s a three-minute walk to top-notch ice cream), Jack asked me why we now had to don bug spray to engage in any outdoor activity. 

I referred him to the swarm that had greeted us the second we stepped out of the school.  “It’s black-fly season, buddy.” 

“Black-fly season?” he repeated.

“Yes.  Here in New Hampshire, black-fly season comes after mud season.”

Jack considered my explanation.  “So what comes after black-fly season?”

“Summer.”

“No, no, what bug comes after black flies?”

“Mosquitoes.  And they last until the first hard frost.”

“Okay,” said Jack.  “Let’s name all the seasons.”  So Jack came up with what he believes to be an accurate schedule of our southern New Hampshire seasons, with only a little help from me:

• Mud season
• Black-fly season
• Mosquito and road-construction season
• Apple-picking season (a.k.a., the “nice” season)
• Snowblowing and roof-shoveling season
• Snowblowing and roof-shoveling season
• Snowblowing and roof-shoveling season
• Back to mud season

It doesn’t sound like much fun, does it?  But we actually love it here in any season (well, almost any season).  And yes, the black flies are out now, but it’s also ice-cream season, and nature-walk season, and T-ball season, and school-is-almost-out season . . .

Maybe Jack will get to those in his next post!

Well, what did you do this weekend?

Me?  I learned to kick some ass.

Okay, now that I’ve gotten the irresistible urge to say that out of the way, here’s what I really did: I took a sixteen-hour class to learn how to defend myself.

I should have done this years ago; eighteen years ago, to be precise, after a friend of mine was brutally attacked.  She did not survive.  I’m ashamed to say that although I attended a few police-led, hour-long sessions on learning techniques to try to avoid becoming a victim, I never got around to parting with the cash or the time to take an intensive, physical course to learn at least a few ways to come out of an attack alive.

I finally did, and I’m advocating that every woman do the same.

The course itself was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before.  I learned to do things that “ladies” are definitely not taught as we’re brought up, and I learned, perhaps more importantly, that in a crunch I just might possess the fortitude to actually do them. 

I cannot and will not reveal specific techniques on the internet, but I will provide basic information on the program I attended.  It’s called R.A.D. or Rape Aggression Defense, and you can learn more about it, including where to find a program near you, at its website: http://www.rad-systems.com/.  R.A.D. is a women-only program, with the exception of some of the R.A.D. instructors whose participation adds significant value to the application of what is being taught.  It is also extremely low-cost to the participant, the only financial contribution being a voluntary, minimal one to offset the cost of materials.  I forgot to pay my $25.00, and I made a point afterwards of contacting my instructor to find out where to send the check. 

You don’t have to do the R.A.D. program, of course.  There are many courses like this out there, although I have never seen any other available at no charge. 

But please, consider doing something.  If you’re reading this, you’re either male or female, right?  (Just making sure you’re still paying attention.)  If you’re female, you could be a victim.  No one is immune.  And if you’re male, your wife-daughter-mother-sister-aunt-cousin-friend-colleague-boss could be a victim, too.  Everyone has an interest in learning something about programs like these. 

Yes, it’s an investment of time.  My husband had the kids all weekend, but if it saves my life someday, I’m quite certain he won’t mind that time a bit.  And I’ll be going back for more training when I can, because there’s more to learn and I want to remember what I’ve already absorbed, and I know he’ll be supportive of that time, too.

And if none of that convinces you, then let me tell you this: it’s pretty fun to respond to someone’s inquiry about what you did over the weekend by declaring, “I kicked a little ass.”

Remember an incident like this before you had kids?

You walked into some public location—a store, a museum, a public bathroom at a rest stop—and you stopped in your tracks, a look of horror one might expect to see at a viewing of The Blair Witch Project frozen on your face.  You wrinkled your nose in disgust and silently thanked your God for not making you that poor woman who stood in front of you.  You forced a smile of sympathy or muttered a sheepish, “Gee, I hope he/she feels better,” as you turned heel and slunk away.

Why?  What was this frightening scene?  It was an anonymous mother, standing in front of her vomit-covered child, possibly covered in puke herself, trying to figure out what the heck she was supposed to do next.

Well, now I’ve been that mom.

A couple of days ago, six-year-old “Jack” followed me into the women’s room at Target.  There was no warning.  I turned around to talk to him and discovered I was addressing Mt. Vesuvius.  Without going into unnecessary detail, I’ll just say that the hue, volume and spread was impressive, although I’m pretty sure that that employee who came in just then to use the facilities had a different adjective in mind. 

There’s no witty ending to this story.  In bold defiance of my spring ban on bugs, Jack contracted a stomach virus and I mopped him and myself up, stripped him down to his few remaining clean clothes and whisked him home.  (I should state that the staff at Target was extremely helpful and understanding.)  Nothing unusual here; just a mom with a sick kid.

But next time I walk into that scene—hopefully when it’s not my kid—I’ll have a lot more sympathy than I did before I was a mom!