Those natural consequences

Last year Lauren and I had lots of run-ins about things. Things she felt entitled to own, things we either couldn't afford or couldn't justify.  Every "no" was received like we were denying water to the thirsty.  Or stingily holding back oxygen.

On one level, Greg and I both understood how she felt.  We both remember those desperate teenage feelings, the conviction that this one thing will change my life, my status, my very self.  (For me, it meant "borrowing" sweaters from my dad's closet even though I knew he'd be angry; G remembers throwing a fit in a shoe store [not as a teenager though] when he couldn't get the cool shoes).  But still.  The constant hunger for the next thing, coupled with a sense of entitlement and lack of gratitude, was driving me crazy and coloring many of our interactions.  Oy.

So at the end of the summer, we introduced a new plan, Lauren's New Deal.  We would pay Lauren a fairly nice monthly sum of money (not that much, not too little) but she would be responsible for purchasing her own things.  We would cover food and lessons and essentials but she would buy the extras: clothes, social activities, texting charges, clothes, little incidentals.  She could fritter it away on little things or save it over time for big things.  It's up to you, darlin'.

Exhibit A: See her cell phone up there?  It's taken a beating (an outright understatement). She's dropped it (multiple times), put it through some heavy conversing and texting, left it where Louie could try his chops on it, even lost it a couple of times.  It's not pretty but it still works. Since replacing it would come out of her funds (and when weighed against a new dress for the semi-formal or a new ipod or jeans)--she doesn't feel the desperate urgency to get a new one.   It makes me laugh every time I see it.  And proud.  

The unexpectedly hardest part for me is letting her live with the consequences of her choices without swooping in and saving her, supermom with amazing + heroic spending powers.  At this very moment, she has no jeans that fit.  None.  They are all high-waters, bless her heart and growing limbs.  She has spent her funds on lunches out with friends, shirts, gifts for friends. Doo-dahs, forgetting her one real need: new pants. This is the hard lesson, the one that I desperately want to soften.  But softening it would only undo the learning, right?

So I keep my unhelpful rescue superpowers to myself, letting life teach her a few lessons while she's safely nestled under our rafters.  Unless there's such a thing as the outgrown jeans fairy?  

I guess not.

Keystone parents

Sometimes I'm worried about who's minding the nest around here.

Last night was one of those weekend evenings where everyone in the house was headed for different activities:  G and Maddy to her basketball practice, Lauren at fencing and then a school dance, Sam here with me.  Later G and I headed to a movie and Maddy and Sam stayed home together.

When we got home just before 11 all the lights in the house were ablaze.  (Maddy does that when she babysits.)  We checked in on Maddy in her bedroom, kissed her good night, and headed to our room to read and wait for Lauren.

me:  What time does the dance end?

G:   Hmmm....I don't know. The usual 11?

me: Maybe this is something we should find out next time?

G:  Sounds good.

We read.

11:30  We text Lauren "when will you be home"?  No response, although she said she wouldn't have her phone with her during the dance so we're not too concerned.

{maybe the dance goes until midnight? didn't she say she didn't need a ride home?}

We read.  I snooze a little and wake up "Isn't she home yet?"

12:15      We text her again.  "time to come home...when will you be here?"

 Still nothing.

{it starts to be time to be worried.  Should we call her friends' parents? She was getting a ride home with A, right?  We debate calling A's parents} 

This is so unlike her!  We haven't even had to talk about curfews yet.

We fret, we stew, we wait--confident in Lauren's good head on her shoulders but increasingly worried and puzzled.

1:00 (I know!)  Greg grabs his phone and heads downstairs to call around.  First he tries one more phone call to Lauren.

{I start to envision walking through the streets and alleys, calling Lauren's name.  A sleepless night in a hospital waiting room.  Her face on a milk carton with one of those sketches of what she'd look like, 5 years older.  Oh, Lauren! I'm really good at working up a good worry, can you tell?}

Bzzzzzzzzzt.  I hear a phone vibrating nearby so I get up to check it out. Maybe Lauren's finally calling us back.

Bzzzzzzzzzt.  It's coming from Lauren's room...what? Shoot! Did she leave her phone home?

Bzzzzzzzzzt.  I open the door to a drowsy Lauren fumbling to answer her phone.

Oh, hello!!

So she was home the whole time, got home from the dance before we got home from our movie.  G had looked in her room but it was dark and he didn't see her.  So, so funny. Yes, we waited up two hours for a daughter who was already home.

That's us, the keystone parents, reporting for duty...

{Although this morning we had a little talk with Lauren about the principle of checking in with the parents when you come home, leaving a note to say "I'm home" or saying hi when we get home.}

Brace yourself, son

Today was not one of my finest mothering moments. Sam had an orthodontist appointment, a follow-up to his getting spacers last week. The office said he would be getting bands and a headgear (remember headgears? I can't believe we haven't progressed orthodontically enough to come up with a better solution than those torture devices). I was a bit fuzzy about the details of the appointment but told Sam he was getting bands around his back teeth where the headgear would be attached.

He came out of the appointment just under an hour later with a betrayed look in his eyes. He opened his mouth and showed me the source of his displeasure: braces! What?! Somehow I had missed the idea that he would have brackets across his top teeth. Worse, I hadn't prepared Sam AT ALL for the possibility. He managed to make it through the little braces indoctrination session with the dental assistant (what not to eat, how to brush, the scared-straight pictures of gross mouths who didn't take the hygeine advice) but the minute his feet hit the blacktop of the parking lot, the tears came.

Have you ever heard of a worse surprise? Ever? What a spacey Mom. Oy.

So, of course, he took the rest of the day off from school. To go to lunch. To choose books at the library. To look in the mirror and adjust to a mouth of silver.

Personally, I think he rocks the braces and looks very handsome. And after a bit of talking through it, he's on board for the whole braces thing.

And now for the traditional first-day-of-braces poem, now on its third generation (I had to call my mom to get the complete verse):

Children with braces
Should wear happy faces
Because it is easy to see
That sooner or later
When their teeth are straighter
What good-looking people they'll be!

(Yeah, it didn't make me feel much better when I got braces and it probably didn't help Sam much--since he already IS good looking and all!--but it's part of the circle of life, that poem. The tradition continues.)

Annie Woebegon

Saturday Maddy and I went to the violin store to switch her rental violin for a larger size.  They brought out a bunch of violins for her to try and left us in a little aisle to decide which one she liked.

Two aisles over, a father was buying a new cello for his son.  He evidently knew the salesperson a little and they struck up a conversation.  First he talked about his astoundingly talented little young cellist, who is wowing everyone who teaches him, everyone he meets.  Then he moved to discuss another of his kids.

"Did you hear about my oldest?"

"No..."

"He's in Paris this year.  Having a wonderful time.  He wrote a ballet for his girlfriend, can you believe it?  She's a ballerina there and he's head over heels."

"Wow.  A ballet?"

"Yes, he just wrote it on a whim.  Young love, eh? Well _____ showed it to _______ at the Boston Ballet and now they're thinking of performing it."

"The Boston Ballet? That's amazing!"

"I know.  Think of all the composers who would die for that chance. And then Johnny just writes his first ballet...That's not even the best part.  Somehow _______, the department head at Yale's School of Music, got his hands on it and sent Johnny a letter saying 'We want you.  When you get back to the States, you've got a place at Yale in the composition program.' He said he wanted to go to NEC and I said, 'Johnny, this is your decision but it's a great chance for you.'"

"That's....quite remarkable."

* * *

I hear this kind of thing all the time.

You know the Prairie Home Companion line about Lake Wobegon, "where all the children are above average"?  Well, where I live apparently all the children are stellar.  Extraordinary.  It used to send me into paroxyms of anxiety: should I, too,  be taking my kids to more lessons? pushing them to compete more? enrolling them in study courses for the study courses for the standardized tests? sending them to NASA camp and MIT science camp and Yale drama camp and Tanglewood music camp?

The answer is no, of course not. I believe in downtime and childhood and non-regimented exploring. But sometimes it's difficult not to get caught up in the competitive energy of it all.  I do believe in education, in interesting experiences, and in supporting talent and hard work. Actually, I'm proud of that boy who wrote the ballet.  That's pretty cool!  I just have to remember I'm raising people not college applicants, not just someone's future employee. I'm raising someone's best friend, someone's spouse, someone's mother or father. 

I have to remind myself that what I want for my kids is a good life, with challenges and joys.  

To find something they love to do and develop the work ethic to do it well.  

To find someone to love and to know how to be loving.  

To use their imaginations and create ideas and passions to follow. 

To be able to articulate their thoughts.  

To be involved citizens and engaged neighbors.

And, really, the camp for those things is called home. 

Leaving letters

Today I was talking with a friend. She mentioned that when she was growing up she loved finding little notes to her from her stepmother, J--in her lunch box, in a box of cereal, inside her backpack. J worked full time as a professor and this was one way of connecting with her kids when she couldn't be there. For my friend, the lasting memory was that moment of glee, in finding something unexpected from someone who so completely loved her and told her so often.

Recently J received a cancer diagnosis, a blow to their family world. My friend has decided (in addition to giving support with rides and visits and food) to sneak into J's house and leave notes in her cereal box, makeup case, purse. To give her that moment of glee in finding something unexpected from someone who so completely loves her. Full circle, now.

It reminded me of an article I chanced upon in Esopus magazine about a dad who wrote daily letters to his two children. According to the Esopus 10 website, "exhibition designer Robert Guest has been getting up at dawn every school day for the past 15 years to write a note to each of his two children, Joanna and Theo. Included in Esopus 10 is a sampling of the thousands of letters written by Guest and collected by his wife, Gloria, from lunchboxes and laundry piles." Here's the text from one of them (above left):

"The world Joanna--you can't imagine how beautiful it really is. Think of the different places--tropical islands, snow-capped mountains, deserts of sand, miles and miles of green fields. It's awesome! Think of the kinds of weather--bitter cold - blinding sun - stormy wind and rain - cool breezes - warm winds. It's awesome! Think of the people in the world --black & brown, yellow and red, and white - old, young and babies of each. It's awesome! And just think. You get to be here in the middle of it all. So what do you do? You smile, you say "thanks" and you live! Love, Dad"

Every once in a while, I come across an idea that makes me wish I could go back and start parenting all over again. Looking through a couple of these letters, this is one of those ideas (click on the above photo to get a closer look). What I love about these is that they aren't just about his love for the children (which of course is important) but it's also about sharing his thoughts and perspectives about the world and life.

Luckily, it's not too late to write something, even if it's not the fantastic, letter-a-day idea. Maybe starting with notes or drawings on napkins. Or a yearly letter. Or a shared notebook to exchange thoughts we might not be able to say face-to-face. Or a post-it.

Here's what I believe: Writing it down has power and longevity, more than the earnest lectures on responsibility or the new shiny birthday bike. Those tucked messages to our kids eventually nestle in pockets and fists and musty shoeboxes carried from home to apartment and home again to be pulled out and remembered. Or at least that's what I do with mine.

p.s. This is cross-posted at Letters to a Parent today (but I wrote it last week when I didn't have writer's block).  I haven't pitched/fished for essay submissions to Letters to a Parent for a while so here goes:  Please consider sharing your encouragement or a lesson learned or a belief about parenting on this project, a collection of letters and essays by parents and for parents about the joys and challenges of raising kids.  I'd love to hear from you!