Nurture This
It’s sad to admit, but bearing and raising five kids has dampened my need to nurture living things other than the five kids, my husband Matt and our golden retriever Ruffie. I see this in contrast to our daughter Jenna who nurtures slugs, baby birds and used to coddle fallen green leaves and uneaten lunch components.
I once cared as she cares. I offered nightly prayers in third grade that God would protect all 18 newborn black mollies in my ten-gallon aquarium, and then cried over each three-millimeter ebony fry that got sucked down into the under-gravel filter, ultimately blaming God and prompting an early faith crisis.
I even defied my fisherman father by casually leaning over the aluminum boat’s edge and unclamping the hooks holding his day’s catch on the submerged stringer. I smiled in true World Wildlife Federation member defiance as each trout wriggled off the death-chain and swam away, my smile ruefully incriminating. Despite punishment, I later hoisted the five-gallon minnows bait bucket to the lake’s shore and dumped it, too.
Fish were just the beginning. I kept a Petco employee’s list of creatures and loved them all like offspring, so my eventual resistance to allow our younest kids–twin boys–to keep pets alarmed me. Were older kids’ pet mishaps to blame?
- Ball python Jaws escaped to defend a fugitive’s barricade in the baby’s room. An other-worldly, under-dresser hiss incited a high-stepping parental panic, but the real wonder was how an otherwise slow and docile Python transformed into a mythical, snake-on-a-plane predator, fierce in defense of his new lair as he coiled and struck.
- Hamster 007’s unintended liberty lasted four weeks and produced a starving Tasmanian devil that would dart out from closet shadows and bite the exposed skin of kids on the floor playing Nintendo–ironically 007 Nightfire. Post capture, 007 never neared my hand without bloodlust, like Monty Python’s white rabbit of Holy Grail fame.
- Bearded dragon Hannibal waged a hunger strike that required daily force-feeding for a week. Like prying open a squirming edamame pod that bites, force-feeding a dragon seemed outside my idea of reasonable mom responsibilities–as was racing to clean out full-grown Hannibal’s asphyxiatiting defecation. Who knew a diet of meal worms and crickets could produce such a deadly smell?
- Corn snake Darth Maul traumatized all of us by writhing his face and length all over each blind, baby rat’s body in an extended–almost perverted–orgy of massage before rearing up like a cobra and striking. Feeding time felt like rodent erotica-horror with far too much lead time before victim demise.
- Shelter pet adventures included a testosterone-saturated, cryptorchid wolf mix named Backjack whose anxiety disorder and Shere Khan-like aggression endangered neighbor kids; a hound named Yogi Bear whose separation fear prompted prolonged and ear-splitting Banshee yelps if I left the room, and a lovable boxer mix that promptly ran away.
- I also answered an add for kittens “well-handled by children.” At home I realized I had adopted a feral, flea-infested wild cat, when kitty’s adamantium claws shredded my arms and she dropped to the floor, arched and spit a hissing charge toward kids, a tabby demon.
With the birth of our twins, round-the-clock feeding schedules, biohazard diaper messes and surround-sound screaming officially precluded the introduction to our home of any additional life forms beyond neighbor kids and the occasional relative, until the twins turned twelve. Matt and I then lifted the pet moratorium, assuming that although it’s nearly impossible for kids to reliably dip into a 50-pound bag of Pedigree twice a day for Ruffie, somehow two green anoles (miniature velociraptors) could survive in the twins’ room.
Thankfully, our anoles Zika and Ebola have achieved a tameness so reliable that they lounge on hand, arm or face without escape attempts, and haven’t created a single smell in a year. It’s also nice to see people other than Jenna nurturing living things, as we’ve welcomed a Japanese Fighting Fish named Isis to our family, and kept Socrates the hermit crab for two weeks until the boys realized why the crab is called a hermit, not a celebrity. The boys believe Zika and Ebola love them, and while I’m pretty sure lizards just love the 98-degree warmth radiating from human skin like a basking stone, I’ll let the boys believe in reptile devotion.
NOT a Middle School Wildebeest
I learned to avoid bullies the hard way, having decided to step aboard the bus to junior high wearing barrettes I had made at camp, barrettes featuring jelly beans with Sharpie-markered happy faces and eye-catching ribbons. I sat a row ahead of the meanest boys in the school.
Now my twelve-year-old twin boys–the last of five kids–board a middle school bus to public school seventh grade, Dante’s lowest level of adolescent social Hell. Dan made the fatal mistake of wearing the same white NIKEs worn by a bus-bully’s grandpa, that kid sitting across the aisle from Dan and able to see his notebook in which Dan wrote in DRAGONSCRIPT. That’s an ancient Celtic language through which dragons communicate with each other and with select humans.
How many times do I have to tell my middle school kids not to chant Professor Snape’s EXPELLIARMUS hex, not to converse in Gollum’s mythical voice, not to write in Dragonscript near a bully? We can discuss how much a kid wants to buy Draco Malfoy’s Mom’s magic wand on Amazon at home, but not in public.
Likewise, I prohibited our daughter Jenna from crotchet and embroidery in class. My job is to help kids learn to associate with members of society in healthy ways–not to be targets of ridicule or recrimination. When bullies zero in, their relentless and systematic criticism tears apart the target’s psyche to exert control and establish dominion. In junior high I painfully discovered it’s much easier to avoid these people than to make them stop the abuse.
The jerk started hassling Dan about his grandpa-shoes, about Dan’s shirt that too closely resembled a picnic blanket, and then when Dan replied in a non-chalant, “Thank you,” started calling Dan a queer. His jerky friends chimed in, and suddenly we had a problem.
As the incident unfolded on a Friday, we had weekend time to buy the new school shoes we had meant to purchase sooner, and I endeavored to impart my hard-earned bully-avoiding wisdom.
Like hyenas and all predatory animals, bullies attack prey that appear separated from the group, stragglers. Stay with your 7th grade herd. Do not sit alone reading THE DEATHLY HALLOWS near the angry and solitary EMO-girl who yells directly at her book. Stand with other kids at the bus stop, and do not practice round-house kicks, or attack-swing a stick like Gandalf vs. the Necromancer–unless you can convince your friends to do so as well. Standing near the group and acting like those in the group affords seventh-graders the safety in numbers bullies avoid. Don’t be a hyena’s straggler wildebeest-target.
In addition:
- No wearing nerdy clothes like the elementary school’s CONGA CLUB T-shirt. You must officially disavow elementary school until your senior year in high school.
- No carrying or studying an APPLIED PHYSICS textbook when you are not taking that class.
- No blabbing inane facts like plot lines from off-shoot STAR WARS novels nobody has read. Darth Bane may be the most powerful Sith Lord in print, but his powers elude you when mentioned on the bus near a bully.
My husband Matt also encouraged Dan to defend himself to avoid further abuse, and told twin brother Stu to step it up and defend Dan if it happens again. Stu makes friends by breathing, so is never a target. Perhaps someday he’ll get hassled in English class by a gang of errant Shakespearean Sonnet-writers, and Dan will come to his defense.
Monday morning the boys stepped aboard the bus, and when the head bully didn’t say anything to Dan, Stu lead off with his latent defense, “Hey. You’re a hundred times more gay than my brother.”
Okay, nice gesture, Stu, but not what I had in mind. Did I forget to mention we don’t pick fights with bullies on purpose–especially when the bully isn’t hassling you? And why mirror his discriminatory language?
It surprised everyone. I imagine the shocked kid’s expression like a hyena taking a hoof in the chin, but without his wing-man on the bus, he cowed with a few mumbled curse words and the bird. Dan followed up, launching a debate about the kid’s grammar, ultimately silencing him.
Mission accomplished, sort of.
The Power of Boo
Optional Sound Effects
Angry? Frustrated? Don’t camp with the Occupy Wall Street crowd when you can express your displeasure immediately with a one-word commentary–Boo. Succinct, Boo conveys dissatisfaction, irritation, even moral dissidence with a colloquial tang difficult to heckle, because it is, itself, a form of heckling. There is great power in a well-spoken Boo.
For instance, when steering your WalMart cart toward check-out, a fellow shopper snakes his cart in front of yours. You:
A) Avoid eye contact and slump into line behind him.
B) Ram him with your cart.
C) Declare, “Booo” with furrowed brows and a slight and slow shake of the head.
Despite your subsequent action, the errant shopper inevitably perceives your scrutiny with poignant discomfort, especially if adjacent shoppers have heard you. People tend not to dispute Boo. Boo expresses displeasure with no further explanation required. It is more effective than the over-used Ouch, the nebulous Brutal, and the socially-alienating curse word. Boo also does not engender violent rebuttal like a curse word or ram of a shopping cart might, thus avoiding physical altercations which commonly arise during the festive holiday shopping season.
Additional applications of Boo include:
When you catch your teenage son drinking from the milk carton: Boo loudly enough to startle him, then hand him a mop-up towel.
When your significant other walks out mid-argument: Boo while propelling a decorative throw-pillow at the door.
When opening a sub-par holiday white elephant gift: Boo with a half-smile as you set it at your feet (effective only if said party is not work-related with a chance that said gift is from your employer).
When children bicker: Boo with a frowning head-shake while escorting them to time-out.
When the dog is caught lying on the couch: Boo in a guttural growl with bared teeth and frantic arm-flailing as you rush toward the dog.
When your dentist informs you that the filling replacement he performed on your molar has just become a root-canal-crown procedure: Boo subtly, so as not to offend, but to convey concern regarding the ensuing $1,200 financial hardship; then ask about a payment plan.
When you come upon a group of middle school boys surrounding one single boy wearing a terrified expression: approach the group on foot, invading the leader’s personal space, and Boo several times, loudly, leaning forward with crossed arms, staying within the child’s personal space as he backs away. Booing may subside upon the group’s dispersal.
Perfecting the use of Boo affords you the ability to express your dismay without social or legal liability. Caution must be taken, however, when using Boo in regard to the I.R.S., law enforcement officials, mechanics, food service workers, and members of the Tea Party.
Opportunistic Correspondence
Worth a pack of Red Vines and some Smarties
Our oldest son Jackson has attended USC now for two months, and although our empty-nest days won’t arrive for another decade, our nest still feel a little bit empty. We just don’t hear from him enough.
Seasoned parents advise me to savor Jackson’s reticence, because (they say) boys call home for three reasons:
1) They need money
2) They are in trouble (myriad kinds and degrees of which friends say I do NOT want to know)
3) They are failing to adjust
Friends say these three purposes for contact leave moms strung up and tortured, paralyzed for weeks with anxiety. Meanwhile, Johnny runs off to the football game, meets a cute girl, and forgets he ever called to unload his problems.
Jackson calls once a week or so, Skypes with us a few times a month, and seems to exude an I-am-so-glad-I-went-away-to-college vivacity, about which we are thrilled–er, I mean, pleased, if the converse would be an I-am-a-screw-up-idiot-pot-head-college-failure update, or a my-new-nickname-is-insufficient-funds notice.
I would, however, appreciate just a little harmless deception. How about a hint of homesickness, Jackson? Not like you’re distraught, a moping loner or cipher haunting the food court, or even like you realize how much we’ve done for you, and suddenly appreciate all of my hard work surviving your 34-hour labor, the nightly three-hour colic fits (for seven months straight), the countless diaper explosions, acid reflux, potty-training mishaps, public tantrums, inclement weather sports practices, poster projects (last-minute panic, remember?), vats full of prepared food you and your friends inhaled, the snakes, the turtles, tarantulas, Hannibal the bearded dragon, pro-abortion dinner debates, the totaled car, the FAFSA, and you leaving. I don’t expect you to appreciate the sacrifice in all of that.*
But how about faking a tiny bit of Geez-Mom-and-Dad-you-guys-are-hard-to-live-away-from? Or, could you feign a little Dad-I-sure-miss-scraping-and-loading-the-dinner-dishes-with-you-because-you-always-told-the-greatest-jokes?
See, the astute college student recognizes the connection between charity-deception in parental correspondence, and care packages. Candy-loaded, money-laced, holiday-themed, middle-of-the-week and for-no-good-reason mailed care packages. Because, just as we loved you through all your mishaps and adventures, we love you now, and we want to show it. Just throw us a miss-you-Mom-and-Dad bone, huh?
So, Jackson, I’ll pretend you didn’t read this, and I’ll start on a new Flat-Rate Priority Mail box, awaiting your next email, phone call, or extended text.
*Mom, I appreciate your sacrifice in all of that with me. I love you.
jillwellock 