UnchartedParent.com

Well, how to guarantee good behavior at my house.

All it takes is the promise of the imminent departure for a vacation to the children’s favorite destination.

For the three days prior to the beginning of our current vacation in the White Mountains, my children behaved like they were crowned by halos and soft, sweet hymns would be sung wherever they showed their faces. Seven-year-old “Jack” didn’t whine for three days—a recent record, and responded to every request for assistance with packing and other chores with a cheerful, “Okay.” Four-year-old “Emmie” mostly did what she was told and barely argued with me at all; for a while, I wasn’t sure she was well. And she even remarked at the improved atmosphere in our house by telling me how much she liked the facts that I wasn’t yelling and she was listening to me. (Now if I can only figure out how to make her remember this cause-and-effect relationship . . .)

Now we’re in the White Mountains, breathing in the pure air and keeping an eye on the cool, damp weather. (Fellow New Englanders: isn’t it nice to be reminded what a blue sky looks like for a change?) My next post will most likely appear on Thursday, July 2.

And for those of you who have been reading along since last year or before, no, we will not attempt to drive up to the top of Mt. Washington again. Never. Ever. Some mountaintops are just meant to be admired from afar, and I’ve learned my lesson on this one.

So there you have it. All it takes to guarantee good behavior is the preparation for a family vacation. If I can just figure out how to do that every other week or so, I’ll be all set.

Last week, I blogged about the dizzying web continually spun from four-year-old “Emmie’s” brain. I don’t even try to answer all the questions she asks me; I’m lucky to emerge from a few hours in this mental blender with my own gray matter intact.

Every now and then, however, Emmie will interrupt her parade of random associations with a probing question and then, she’ll stop talking. The silence almost always catches me by surprise, as by this time I’ve generally shifted my own brain into autopilot to survive the hours-long monologue. My mind rewinds the conversation and replays the last sentence, at which point I realize that Emmie has asked me a question about life or love or death or sex, something I definitely was not expecting. For example, last week, she babbled on and on for ten minutes in the car and then capped her ramblings with this gem:

“What would happen if you got a broken heart?”

“Um, what?” (Lucky Emmie to have such an intelligent, articulate mommy.)

“What would happen if you got a broken heart?”

“Um, well, you would be sad.” How the heck does this kid know about broken hearts?

“But what would happen? What would make you have a broken heart? Would it hurt in your body? Would you have to go to the hospital? How would they fix it? Who can get a broken heart?”

And so on. Emmie switched from randomness to full intellectual exploration without so much as stopping for air, and I did my best to explain this somewhat mature concept to my four-year-old.

But then, as suddenly as the investigation began, it ended. Without missing a beat, she returned to standard Emmie-speak. “When I have a broken heart, it isn’t in my bodies. I saw a chipmunk today. It was so cool. Is it the middle of the day? Can we have a picnic sometime? A long, long time ago, like yesterday or the other day, I ate pickles.”

Whew, I survived the journey through that set of thoughts. There’s no telling what question or comment will confront me next. Despite the fact that I know Emmie will challenge me again, there’s no predicting the form that challenge will take. Overall, there’s no question about it: with a kid like Emmie, every day is a journey into uncharted territory.

So often as parents, we wish for insight into our children’s minds. What are they keeping from us? What propels their brains from one thought to another? What really goes on in there?

My own insight into my two kids’ minds could not be more different. Aside from matters mathematical and scientific, most of the cogs of seven-year-old “Jack’s” brain are well encased in an opaque, blond-covered skull. The tricks parents employ to convince other kids to talk rarely work on Jack, and most of his thoughts and emotions remain a mystery to me.

Four-year-old “Emmie,” on the other hand, possesses a skull made of crystal-clear glass through which we are required to observe her every thought on a regular basis. Emmie thinks out loud. If the track is running in her head, it’s out in the world for us to see and hear. And following that track can leave breathless an adult accustomed to coherent thought. Here’s a typical glimpse of a conversation with Emmie:

“How many minutes is it?”

“It’s 11:54.”

“Is that a long day?”

(Thinking.) “Um, what do you mean?”

“A long, long time ago, like when I was a baby, I had a birthday.”

“Yes, and you had a birthday three months ago.”

“Why are there roofs?”

“To keep houses dry.”

“Can we get a roof?”

“We have a roof.”

“Oh. Can I watch a movie?”

“We’ll see. Maybe later.”

“I want to pick the movie.”

“We’ll see about the movie.”

“I don’t like all movies. Movies with pictures are scary for me. I like movies with Mickey Mouse. Mickey Mouse is not scary. Where does Mickey Mouse live? Can we go visit The Wiggles? The Wiggles live very far away. It will take a few minutes to get there. Can we go today? Jack used to like The Wiggles when he was a baby, like maybe four or five, but now he likes dinosaurs. Dinosaurs don’t live anymore. Can we see a T-Rex sometime? I’m hungry. I like salami. Some kids don’t like salami, but I do. K____ likes salami, too. Every day, I ask her if she has salami for lunch and she asks me and we say, ‘Yes, I have salami.’ It’s so funny. I like cupcakes, but not snakes. Snakes are not good pets. Does K____’s house have an upstairs and a downstairs? K_____ has a brother. He is a baby brother. My brother is not a baby brother. My teacher has a baby. She was borned a couple of whiles ago. When are we going to Storyland? Cinderella is my best friend. I love her. Can we get ice cream?”

My typical response at this point is simply to remain motionless for a few moments while the smoke resulting from my own brain’s fruitless attempts to follow this conversation clears.

Trying to see inside Jack’s mind can leave me feeling like an invader pounding on the heavy, locked iron gates that enclose the moat that surrounds the castle. Encounters with Emmie’s brain evoke the physical weariness that might come from repeatedly being run over by a particularly verbose steamroller. I sometimes wish I could push the two kids together to find some sort of judicious and manageable middle ground.

That idea, however, is naïve. Rationality and balance are staid adult ideas; they have nothing to do with kids. And they’re boring, right? After all, if I wanted rationality and balance in my life, I should never have become a parent.

Any mom who works from home knows the story: you can set your schedule and your workspace up any way you like, but keeping the rest of your life from interfering is, to be honest, like keeping squirrels out of the birdfeeder. You can hang that damn thing anywhere you like in your yard, you can add the latest contraptions, chemicals and organic rodent repellents, but the squirrels always manage to find their way around the obstacles you set and eat the bird seed anyway.

When my husband and kids leave the house four mornings each week, that’s supposed to be writing time. School and other volunteer obligations, doctors’ appointments, snow days, sick days, contractors repairing my forever-disintegrating house, etc., all interfere with that schedule until often, all I’m left with is a seed or two of time to work. It’s frustrating.

More maddening than the predictable interruptions of schedule, however, are the interruptions that confront me even in those rare moments when I actually find myself sitting down to a treasured stretch of several writing hours. The biggest perpetrator of these distractions: the cat.

My adorable little black-and-white kitty is fifteen years old and has never quite gotten over the fact that I found a husband, much less that I brought two children into our (that’s my and my cat’s) home. Though she did warm up to my husband once she saw how much affection and time a child would steal from her, the only thing that would truly satisfy her is if I kicked all the other people out of the house and returned her world to the population it is supposed to contain: her and me.

The cat has reconciled herself, however begrudgingly, to the fact that she’s not going to get much attention from me when the kids are around. So when they go to sleep or leave the house in the morning, she figures, it’s her turn. At that point, she attaches her meowing, jealous self to me like Velcro, except she’s much harder to peel off. And she comes back to me constantly throughout the day, interrupting my writing to the point where I can’t concentrate at all.

I write best in my office at home, but things have gotten so bad with the cat that I found myself last week checking out the hours and potential success rates for sneaking in coffee at several local libraries. I identified the best candidate and was all set this week to move my entire operation.

But then it hit me: I was about to allow myself to be kicked out of my own house. By a cat.

It’s not that I don’t sympathize with her. She kept me company through lonely nights and countless late-night study sessions once upon a time, and I’m grateful for that. But she’s a cat. I’m a parent, and I know enough not to let my kids set the rules. So you would think it would be a no-brainer not to cede my workspace to the cat.

Well, I may be slow, but I’ve finally caught on. And it ends here.

This morning, when the three humans departed, the cat, as usual, approached and began her meow-laden, leg-rubbing pleas for undivided attention. I pet her once, then rose from my desk and removed the cat bed from my office. Her toys (which she never plays with anyway) were next. Finally, I picked up the unhappy cat and deposited her in the hallway, then shut the door in her face.

There will be retribution later, I’m sure of it, most likely in the form of cat puke on my pillow. I’ve yet to encounter the child or pet who can’t exact revenge if he or she is so inclined. But I can’t let that deter me. Writing is what I do, and the environment in which I write matters. It’s my house, it’s the best place to combine the responsibilities of pursuit and motherhood, and I won’t be driven from it that easily. Especially by a cat.

There. I’ve put my foot down.

And if I find myself writing my next post from the library, I’ll be sure to let you know.

A brief, extra post on yesterday’s murder at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.:

My children know nothing about the anti-Semitic murder committed yesterday by a man who in eighty-eight years on the planet couldn’t fill his heart with anything better than hate. But because I know what happened in the city I used to call home, in a building that should never be treated with anything less than reverence and respect, a question four-year-old “Emmie” posed today stopped me cold.

I was making Emmie’s lunch today when she turned to me and, with no context at all, asked, “Mommy, there aren’t really any monsters alive, right?”

I try to be honest with my kids, and I’m ashamed to say that I didn’t know how to answer her question.

My heart goes out to the family of Officer Stephen T. Johns. When he went to work yesterday, I’m sure they never suspected that he wouldn’t be coming home.

Last week, I blogged about how your kids can reveal who you really are.

Today I’m going to blog about how your kids—or, more specifically, my kid—can call out somebody else; namely, one of her preschool teachers.

As I gathered four-year-old “Emmie’s” mountains of belongings at the end of her last day of preschool (before the summer session begins next week), one of her teachers pulled me aside.

“I have to tell you a little story,” said A____.

Anecdotes that follow that sentence are almost always either amusing or cringe-inducing, so I prepared myself for either.

“Last week, on our field trip, I was walking down the sidewalk holding Emmie’s hand,” twenty-eight-year-old A____ began. “Out of nowhere, she suddenly asked me, ‘Why don’t you have a kid?’

“A million reasons ran through my mind, you know, like ‘I haven’t met the right guy yet,’ and so on. I thought about the fact that all my friends are married with kids already, and I’m not. I tried to think of something a four-year-old could understand. I came up with, ‘I guess I’m just not ready yet.’

“Emmie thought for a second and then said, ‘Well, L____ is ready.’” (L_____ is another of Emmie’s preschool teachers; she is presently on maternity leave.) “Why aren’t you?”

As I began to laugh and was about to offer my sympathy, A____ continued. “It’s so funny: that’s the first time I’ve ever been called out on that. Lots of friends and family members want to ask that same question, but they censor themselves. And now I’m thinking more about why this is. It’s funny.”

Oh boy. What do I do? Laugh? Cringe? Um, gee, sorry my four-year-old is way, way too precocious and can see right into the heart of an adult and draw her insecurities into the public for everyone to see? Hah. Funny. Wow.

“I don’t know what to say,” I finally confessed. “I’m glad she’s so amusing? I’m sorry my kid got in such a zinger at your expense?”

“It’s why I love working with kids,” she replied. “They’re so honest.”

No kidding.

Watch yourself around Emmie. If you’re not careful, she—or maybe your own kid—could send you on a journey of existential self-examination before you even know what hit you.

It’s that time of year—that crazy, paper-flooded, almost-makes-you-wish-you-were-a-kid-again time of year.

Each day, my calendar tells me which end-of-school year events to prep the kids for, which places I need to be when and my “Don’t Forget” board reminds me how I need to prep my kids. The end of the school year is filled with excitement for the milestone about to be achieved and anticipation of summer days filled with swimming and friends and summer nights that push back bedtimes and leave room after dinner for ice cream and s’mores.

(So I’m waxing idyllic; back off. I’ve got about ten minutes between events here. Allow me a little license!)

But before we can enjoy those summer days and nights, we’ve got to end the school year. My days right now are packed with teacher retirement parties, end-of-year ice-cream socials, picnics and art auctions and mad shopping runs each time I realize that my kids, who have grown in the past few months like spring weeds enhanced with steroids, are dangerously close to having to end the school year without basic requirements like pants that fit.

Evenings are no quieter. Last night, my husband and I spent some quality time in the bathroom, filling water balloons for today’s elementary school field day, and then I sat down to write a real letter to my son at his pretend camp in his first-grade classroom. I fill out permission slips for the last rush of field trips, write lots of little checks and read up on requirements for preschool summer session and rising second-grader camps (in less than two weeks, I will be the parent of a second-grader!), and sort through bucketfuls of egg-carton insects, wildlife research projects and artistic creations of every hue and texture that are now coming home in such great volume that my son carries an extra grocery bag filled with them off the bus each afternoon.

It’s crazy, but I love it.

It’s the bridge between two seasons, between two stages of our kids’ lives. Something is ending and something is about to begin. In all the craziness, we parents need to make sure we take some time to stop, notice and remember so that we get to have some fun, too. This is what it’s all about.

One of the things I love about watching my kids grow up is seeing the world through their eyes, even when what I see is their unique views of me. You can construct any vision you want of yourself, but sometimes kids have both the insight and the innocent honesty to that produce true snapshots of their parents’ habits, personality and character.

Seven-year-old “Jack” is becoming quite proficient at these micro-observations. For example, as we drove down a residential street last week, I commented on the particularly beautiful flower baskets hanging over one resident’s porch. “Look at those gorgeous hanging baskets,” I said, pointing at the abundant sprays of green, purple, pink and white flowing over the rims and framing the front door. “I wonder where they got those flowers? They’re prettier than the ones at our house, aren’t they?”

Jack responded in a matter-of-fact tone. “Maybe they take care of their plants. Maybe they actually water them.”

Busted.

Later in the week, Jack and I were again in the car, playing “list” games; e.g., name five state capitals, five presidents, etc. I asked him to name five famous people, and he easily came up with two or three names. Then he was stumped. He thought for a moment, then grinned and offered, “You’re famous for forgetting things.”

Busted again.

So Jack busted his mother’s chops twice, but he made me laugh both times. After all, I couldn’t argue with any of his points. He may be the child and I the parent, but he was right.

I love the intimacy these exchanges reveal. I love that Jack knows me this well.

What do your kids tell you about you? Listen carefully, and just make sure you’re ready to laugh.

So I missed a blog post last week, but I had a good reason. I was learning what goes through a mom’s mind as she waits for tests diagnosing the lump in her breast:

• My husband had to leave work to meet my son at the school bus, and I’m waiting a half-hour, now an hour for this damn test.
• I hope I don’t have cancer.
• What’s my son doing at home without me now?
• What would my son and my daughter do without me every day?
• How can they make people sit this long in a waiting room, breast hardly covered by this ironically named, backwards “gown,” when they know how anxious we are—I am?
• What will my kids look like when they graduate from high school? Who will they be? Will I get to find out?
• What am I going to make for dinner tonight?
• What if my kids have to eat my husband’s cooking until they grow up?
• If I read one more issue of Cosmopolitan, my brain will metamorphose into jelly and this whole test will be moot.
• I don’t care what the test says: I’m not going anywhere. My kids aren’t ready to be without me.
• The least they could do after an hour is offer me a damn glass of water.
• I need to finish writing my book.
• I have no interest in writing a cancer blog.
• If I need any sort of treatment, I will write through it.
• Today could change my life forever, or it could just be another day camouflaged by the colors of life.
• I love my husband and my kids. Nothing else really matters.

Fortunately, the worrying was unnecessary; everything turned out just fine.

But I hope I have a long wait before I again have another week like the last one.