I’ve Been Down That Road Before

Psst… Hey! It’s Back to School Night at TD’s high school and guess what?! Guess!

It’s last period and TGIM and I just totally ditched P.E. class!

I know, right?!

“MEMORY!” (end impromptu belting out of Memory from Cats…)

Suppertime Non Sequiturs

ALLI: (out of the blue) I wonder who was the first person to ever do the pee-pee dance?

CAT: Okay… Because that’s a completely normal thing to wonder.

ALLI: (shrugs) My mind is a mystery.

We Don’t Need No (Sex) Education…

Alli, my fifth grader (I KNOW, right?!), has been enduring Family Life Education (FLE) class at school all week long. I say “endure” because she has been dreading FLE ever since Hannah went through it last year when she was a fifth grader. FLE is described as “a K-12 program designed to provide students with age appropriate knowledge, attitudes, and skills to make healthy, responsible, respectful, and life-enhancing decisions related to human growth and development, human sexuality, relationships, and emotional and social health.” So, really, FLE is just the school district’s sobriquet for, wait for it… wait… yes, SEX ED. And Hannah told Alli there would be PICTURES! Graphic PICTURES! And words like PENIS and VAGINA! And long conversations about S-E-X! And PICTURES! Mother of all that is sweet, the PICTURES!

So, Alli? Not on board with the whole FLE thing.

The first afternoon she walked into the house with Hannah and TGIM and silently handed me a colorful packet that contained a few sample feminine hygiene products and brochures with titles like “A Girl’s Guide to HAPPY Periods” and “Talking With Your Daughter About Puberty” and “It’s a HAPPY Thing!”

“I’m supposed to ask you about your experience, you know, goingthroughpubertyandstuff,” she explained with a strained, almost shell-shocked expression on her face as she handed me an FLE checklist I needed to sign.

My first thought, naturally, was… it’s a HAPPY thing? Okay, I dare the author of that pamphlet to say that to a woman during a few key days every month! I’m only saying. Honestly.

TGIM, who was sitting across the room, asked, “Hey, did I ever tell you guys how Papa Neal taught me about sex?”

“YES!” we all yelled.

Undeterred, TGIM continued, “He said to me, ‘Son, have you seen the bulls with the cows out in the field?’ I said, ‘Yes, Dad,’ and he patted me on the back and said–”

“‘Good talk, son’!” we yelled in unison.

“Oh,” TGIM said, eyes wide with feigned innocence, “have I told that story before?”

Hannah, ignoring her father, asked, “So, did they make you yell ‘vagina’?” She rolled her eyes. “They made us yell ‘vagina’.”

“Yes,” Alli said and shuddered dramatically. “And penis, too. It was disturbing.”

I did my best to assure her that using those words should not be disturbing, that they are just words to describe parts of the body, like “mouth” or “knee” or “elbow,” but I must admit that the vision of a room full of fifth graders yelling “vagina” and “penis” over and over again was a bit disturbing. You know, just a scoche.

As the week went by, a pattern emerged. Alli would approach me after school and, with a deer-in-the-headlights expression, hand me yet another parent-child FLE conversation checklist to sign. I would gamely buzz through the questions, Alli would stare glassily ahead, I’d sign the checklist, and with a gusty sigh of relief Alli would shove it into her backpack and run off to play.

Friday afternoon Alli came home and told me that they had discussed making babies in FLE, which, first of all, gross, and second of all, GROSS. “I mean, the pictures, Momma? WAY too detailed. I get it! I did NOT need to see that!”

Hannah patted her on the back. “I know, right?” she agreed with sisterly camaraderie.

That night there were no more checklists. Yes! Happy day, FLE was behind us! We had made it through FLE relatively unscathed! Yay, us! So there we were, sitting on the bed in my room, just playing… a game, NOT Pokemon or anything, just a normal, age-appropriate, not-Pokemon game. The companionable silence of a mother and daughter sitting and playing said game which was not Poke– Okay! It was Pokemon! Soul Silver! FINE! Shut up!– was interrupted by a sudden revelation from Alli.

“Hey, Momma?”

I paused my game. “Hmm?” I looked over at her and I was immediately intrigued by her serious expression.

“You know what I’m going to do when I grow up?”

Oooh! Life choice! Fun! “What?” I asked, curious if she was still dead set on being an actress and/or astronaut.

“ADOPT.”

Random Dinner Conversations at the Cheesecake Factory

Random DWM family conversations overheard at the Cheesecake Factory:

TGIM: Okay, while we’re waiting for our food, let’s talk about something. How about taxes? Who can tell me a situation in which you would have to pay taxes?

Allison: Thanks for the strawberry, T! (to me) Oooh, I bet that’s what his girlfriend will call him… “T”! Because it’s a really good nickname?

Tanner: Well, she wouldn’t be my girlfriend for long.

Cat: Really? Why not, T? Huh, T? What’s the big deal, T? Huh, T? Huh? T?

Allison: I hope our drinks come soon. I’m quenched!

Hannah: Tanner with a girlfriend? Ha.

TGIM: Nobody? All right, maybe a different topic. How about the weather? We could discuss the weather. Or global warming?

Cat: Sweetie, I think you meant to say “parched.”

Allison: No, because I’m REALLY thirsty, Momma.

TGIM: Fact: There is currently snow in every state in the U.S.

Hannah: Tanner is my big, strong potato man!

(giggles from the girls)

Cat: Um, what?

Allison: It’s an inside joke. Ha ha! (off my look) Oh, don’t worry, Momma… it’s VERY funny to us!

TGIM: Except possibly Hawaii. Okay, every state in the continental U.S.

Tanner: Those stone faces on the wall are freaking me out. Are the faces on the wall freaking you out? Because they are freaking me out.

Cat: Hey! Stop drinking all my Diet Coke! Who’s drinking my Diet Coke?! Stop it right now!

Hannah: Wow! This cheesecake is GOOD! I feel happy! I love this place!

TGIM: (paying the bill) Well, guys, there goes our food budget for the week! Yep, it looks like we’ll be eating a lot of beans and rice for a while.

Allison: No, because it’s Friday night, and Sunday is the start of a new week, so… I think we’re good, right, Momma? I mean, we’ll just shop for good food on Sunday, right? So… you know what I’m saying?

TGIM: (standing to leave) I know, let’s talk about this new show I discovered called Mantracker…

Hannah: Is that the one with the guy with the rope?

Allison: Oh yeah! Mantracker! I was very disappointed that he didn’t rope that guy.

TGIM: Me, too.

Cat: I have no idea what you guys are talking about.

Tanner: The macaroni and cheese here is NOT good. I’m just saying.

Yep. A night out with the DWM family! Chock full of food, and fun, and non sequiturs. And quite often, just a little bit surreal.

Previously on DWM: “Momma, can I read to you?”

Originally posted February 7, 2008. (Hey, I’m feeling nostalgic. So sue me.)

Alli stood at my left shoulder, resting her chin on the back of my chair to peek at whatever it was on my computer screen that held my attention. I could feel her there, fidgety and anxious, waiting as patiently as she knew how until I finished typing. Her warm breath tickled my neck, and I smiled to myself. I turned away from the computer (these days it is always the computer) to give her a smile, and that is when it happened. That is when I saw her.

Really saw her.

Of course you saw her, dipstick, you think to yourself. You were looking right at her. And you’d be right, of course, except for the “dipstick” part, because that is just plain rude. I looked at her. Of course I looked at her. But it was what I saw that startled me.

I’m not going to spout any hackneyed verbiage about seeing her “with new eyes” or “for the first time.” Nor will I wax allegorical about seeing beyond the outward appearance of those around us. Nope. It was simpler than that. I wasn’t seeing her anew; I was just… seeing her. Her sea green eyes, one magnified by a coke bottle lens, but both shining up at me, full of depth and warmth. The freckle on her chin. The wisps of unruly hair that danced around her hairline, escaped from the confines of her ponytail. The sweet little nose. The determined tilt of her chin, seemingly at odds with the amiable set of her lips. The almost palpable energy radiating from her body as her excitement and vitality threatened to spill over, to overwhelm me with, just… her, all of her, even as she struggled for composure.

She was so beautiful in that moment. Ethereal, yet so very real. I literally ached with the beauty of her. All of her. In that moment, she wasn’t just a spunky little mini-me with glasses and a propensity for chattering simply for chattering’s sake. I don’t know how else to say it. She was just… herself.

And it was breathtaking.

Alli shook my shoulder. “Mom? Momma?” She peered into my eyes, and a shadow of concern crossed her face.
Just a moment had gone by–seconds, really–but I felt both physically and emotionally exhausted, absolutely spent, as if I’d been traveling for weeks in some far off place and I was finally returning home. Trying to get my bearings.

I blinked a few times, fast, winking away any tears that dared to escape. I showed my tear ducts who’s boss, so to speak. “Yes, sweetie?” I finally answered.

“I love you.”

Now, I know for a fact that she had been about to ask me, “Can I read to you?” Because that is what she always asks when her homework is finished and she needs to read for twenty minutes for her reading log. But she changed the program.

“I love you, too,” I replied, then pulled her into my arms for a hug.

“I know,” she said simply. Then, “Momma?” she asked as she gently disentangled herself from my arms, arms which may or may not have been holding her a teensy bit too tightly.

“Hmm…?”

“Can I read to you?”

After a momentary glitch, we were back to our regularly scheduled program. All was well in the world.
But now, as I think back to that moment, I can’t help but wonder if Alli veered off-script because at that moment, that exact moment when she looked into my eyes… she saw me, too.

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