Category Archives: Parenting

September 13, 2011 · 3:19 pm

It’s My Birthday Today. Please PLEASE Don’t Get Me Anything!

Happy Birthday to Me!

Today is my birthday. For one day out of 365 and a quarter days I get to have my cake and eat it too. Unfortunately, I have a lot of wonderful friends who want to give me more cake, and as much as I appreciate the thought, effort and financial exchange, I don’t want to eat their cake too. At 49, my metabolism isn’t what it used to be.

My husband Tom asked me what I wanted for my birthday. “Your homemade jambalaya and a funny card,” I answered. I’ve now made it to the age where that answer doesn’t secretly mean: “And dinner at a really expensive restaurant this weekend. And something sparkly. And flowers.” I can’t afford the money or calories for the dinner, we’re not going anywhere that requires any bling, and in just two days that bouquet will be dead and stinky. However I will probably give my husband the pseudo-silent treatment if that funny card is something lame like a zany cat hanging upside down.

My kids asked me what I wanted for my birthday. For a few years now, I’ve been giving them the same answer: “I want you to be really REALLY nice to me all day.” Too bad this isn’t the kind of gift that just keeps giving. But it’s still what I wish for every year when I blow out my candles.

I have friends who want to buy me gifts, and I try to nix that one before it pops out of their well-meaning mouths. Here are my reasons:

1. I’m trying to get rid of the crap I already have. I don’t need new crap to add to it (not to say that your gift is crap, but frankly the formula is: GIFT + TIME = CRAP).

2. If you give me something, I will feel inclined to buy something on your birthday, and I’m pretty broke. It’ll probably be something from the Dollar Tree in the line of that lame and zany cat hanging upside down and it will immediately fall into your crap category. Let’s just not do that dance.

3. If you buy me something, I will have to send you a thank you card. That means $3.95 plus tax for the card and the 44 cent stamp, and that’s about the price of a venti café mocha from Starbucks, which I can’t afford. There’s also the time to drive over to the drug store, park, pick out something better than a lame and zany cat hanging upside down, and then the real clincher – trying to think of something funny to say on it when I’ve already used up my funny trying to write this damn blog.

For the three previous years, between work and getting my MLS, I was very VERY busy on my birthday. So busy that I didn’t answer the phone or look at one email. Throughout the day I heard various slightly off-key voices singing: “Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday dear Cathy. Happy birthday to you.” I didn’t want to take the time to figure out how to turn the volume down, so I just put a pillow over the answering machine. No offense to any of you who sang to me last year. I wasn’t talking to you. Your voice is lovely.

It took me over a week to get to the emails, and I don’t think I even answered them. I believe I was just visualizing a virtual high-five as a response. The Facebook messages were long gone out of the Facebooksphere by the time I read them. I felt like a very bad friend.

Happy Birthday Facebook notifications

This year I’m answering the phone (and unfortunately hearing the entire happy birthday tune without the ability to fast-forward), glancing at emails and reading my Facebook responses. Although I’m still very busy this year (rather than very VERY busy) it is a high quality problem to have a lack of time to read birthday wishes from your friends. I am lucky to have so many great friends, or at least people who claim to be my friend on Facebook.

My good friend Lisa just popped over with some flowers and a card. Fortunately the card has a pair of Renaissance angels instead of a lame and zany cat hanging upside down. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that the flowers will be dead and stinky in a couple of days, and she could have got herself two Starbucks venti café mochas for the price.

I think I’d better not inform my good friend Lisa about my latest blog.

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September 12, 2011 · 2:20 pm

Confessions of the Oldest Kindergarten Mom

Lots of kindergarten parents are anxious about the first week of school. Will their little post-preschooler make friends? Will he know his ABC’s? Will she be able to count to 20? Will he hold his pencil like a madman wielding a knife?

I have actually had some low-grade anxiety about kindergarten for exactly five years now. I gave birth to my son Jake the day after my 44th birthday, and almost from the moment the doctor clipped the umbilical cord, I’ve been worrying about being the school’s oldest kindergarten mom.

I remember as a child reading the Guinness Book of World Records and studying the photo of the world’s oldest mom, circa 1950. With her prune-like face, she looked more like the girl’s great-grandmother, and I imagined the mom teaching her daughter how to churn butter and scrub clothes with a washboard while the poor daughters’ friends were sampling new-fangled tv dinners and learning how to do the twist.

This Tuesday is my 49th birthday. My mom had me at 19, and by the time she was my age she already had seven grandchildren. My two younger sisters have three grandchildren between them, with another on the way. The norm of my upbringing taught me that mothering is a job for the young. Very young.

Since my nieces and nephew started having kids in their early 20’s, I was sure that I’d be joining young parents like them who hang out at Usher concerts and only write in lower case abbreviated text.

Fresh-faced 20-somethings are still blessed with a young metabolism, a chest that is naturally at attention, and strong bladder control. It’ll be at least two decades before they can relate to my menopause symptoms, perpetually gray roots or the fact that my right knee cracks every time I try to squat. They’re still paying for auto insurance up the wazu in the young driver category while I’m a year away from getting my AARP card. Would I have anything in common with these new parents besides our 5-year olds being placed in the same kindergarten class?

Last Wednesday my son started kindergarten at Colfax Charter Elementary School in Valley Village, and my fears were… totally unfounded. It’s true that I very well may be the oldest kindergarten mom at the school, but the other parents didn’t look like they recently attended their senior prom either. The class was filled with parents in their 30’s, some in their 40’s and one dad who might actually be in his 50’s. If there were 20-somethings in the room, they didn’t seem to be bothered by sea of fine lines. Instead of feeling like the freak of nature mom who got knocked up despite having eggs full of cobwebs, I felt like I was in a room with parents who might actually have been alive long enough to hear the original versions of the Glee remakes.

The other lesson that became immediately apparent: It’s not all about me. No one was looking at me – the ancient mom – and wondering why I crashed their party. The other parents were admiring their beautiful children. Some kids were excited. Some were scared. Some cried, hanging on to mom’s pant leg. One even threw up (the child – not the parent) she was so nervous.

I glanced across the room and wondered which of these moms might end up becoming my very best friends for the next six years. We might actually have some interests in common besides having five-year olds in the same kindergarten class.

Eventually they’ll all become as old as I am today and I’ll be able to share my experience, strength and hope about getting rid of gray roots. Many of them will give birth to more children. And some day one of them will enter their future child’s kindergarten class as a card-carrying member of the AARP.

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September 6, 2011 · 11:05 pm

Road Trip With Kids – 40 Years Ago and Today

Road trips sure aren’t what they used to be.

In the early 1970’s, my family took a road trip to San Diego, Tucson, the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas. We were four kids, aged seven, eight, nine and 10, all sitting in the back seat of a four-door sedan. There may have been two safety belts, possibly three. If we did buckle up, at least two kids shared the lap belt.

This past week, I took two separate road trips with my children and a variety of other kids. They all not only had their own safety belt, but the youngest one was perched in a booster chair. Booster chair? That used to be for babies at the kitchen table. In a car, the youngest child just sat on the lap of an older sibling.

In 1972, the only manufactured sound came from whatever easy listening radio station my mom or stepfather tuned in to, and fortunately for the kids, we were out of range for most of them. Yet on my most recent trip, we used a variety of entertainment devices… simultaneously. I listened to the latest editions of NPR’s Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me downloaded on my iPod, my 4-year old played Angry Birds on my iPad, and my 10-year old and her cousins and friends each brought their own smart phones and spent the trip listening, chatting, playing or texting – often to each other even though they were an inch away from each other.  They watched a variety of DVDs on players with two video monitors – one for each row of seats. My son complained that he wanted to watch his own movie, so I set up Scooby Doo for him on my laptop. Isn’t technology truly amazing? Almost as amazing as today’s kids’ constant need for amusement.

On my childhood trip, we played In Grandmother’s suitcase (“In Grandmother’s suitcase I found an apple, a ball, a cat, a dog, and egg”… continuing through the alphabet) and I Spy. We announced to the entire car every time we spotted a beetle bug (AKA Volkswagon bug), and we sang camp songs and 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall several times. We would all face in one direction and draw pictures on each other’s backs and try to guess what they were. We argued a lot. The most prevalent conversation included the whiny sentence, “He/She is touching me!”

Although my minivan is 14 years old, it still includes many of the creature comforts that didn’t exist 40 years ago: dual-air conditioning, a dozen or so cup holders, arm rests, seats that tilt. When I was a kid, if we were allowed to eat or drink in the car, there was a guaranteed mess (usually melted chocolate), and the only leaning back we did was on one of our siblings (hence the “He/She’s touching me” chant). Air conditioning cooled the front of the car quickly. The back seat waited for the front vents to eventually waft a few feet or we just rolled down the back window and sang 99 Bottles even louder.

Navigation is downloaded on my Android, so no matter where I am, I know where I’m going. Years ago, this used to be accomplished by something called a map. I’m not sure if kids today would even know what N, S, E, W stands for. And forget about trying to fold it properly.

When I was a kid, it was a big deal to see the big plaster dinosaur on the I-10 or get a date shake at Santa Claus Lane. But multiple sequels of Jurassic Park have made the imitation dinosaur kind of cheesy-looking and my kids would definitely prefer a Slurpee at one of the 600 or more AM/PMs we pass on the Interstate to the now-obsolete date shake stand.

Some things never change though. There’s always a point in a road trip when a filthy roadside bathroom can’t come fast enough. However, with the invention of the Double Gulp they’re in even greater demand, and of course, much appreciated over a bush on the side of the road.

If given the choice, travel by car today is infinitely more pleasurable than 40 years ago, even if a speeding ticket and the rise in auto insurance now equals a monthly mortgage payment. The only thing I really miss is the first dozen or so bottles of 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall. It’s just not as fun teaching my kids the new politically correct version 99 Cans of Red Bull on the Wall.

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