Two weeks ago I was in a hotel in Colorado for the weekend and a Mormon friend of mine had posted a link to a blog called “Single Dad Laughing.” I hate the title. Sorry, “Single Dad.” It just doesn’t work for me. Although, I guess “Mrs. Odie 2” shouldn’t throw stones in the glass house of uninteresting blog names. In any event, I was terribly moved by this entry called “You Just Broke Your Child. Congratulations.” http://www.danoah.com/2010/09/you-just-broke-your-child.html
I haven’t been a mother for very long, so I’m no expert. And I will admit to you that one time I was driving to a friend’s house for a play date and the street I usually take was closed because workmen were cutting the trees. So I got a little lost and it scared and frustrated me. Baby V was strapped in her car seat and she got bored of being in the car, so she started screaming. Not crying loudly, but screaming, like she was auditioning for Halloween. After many minutes and many wrong turns, I yelled, “BABY V, STOP CRYING!” and she went silent for about twenty seconds. Then, she burst out crying the most pitiful, wailing “YOU HURT MY FEELINGS!” cry, and I started crying from guilt.
Yeah, I’m kind of a mess.
But I never yelled at her again (she’s 18 months, and this was when she was 15 months, so it’s no huge accomplishment yet). I know what it feels like to have an out-of-control, raging mother (sorry, Mom, but you were, and you know it). When I get frustrated at her whining or screaming or crying, I remember that she’s just a baby. She doesn’t have the vocabulary or maturity to explain her emotions. And I’m the adult. It’s my job to keep my shit together. She’s a toddler. She gets to fall apart.
I was painfully reminded of the “You Just Broke Your Child” article twice in the past two days. I’ve been watching DVRed episodes of “Teen Mom” on MTV, and there are nothing but sick, sad relationships there. Of course there are. It’s “reality t.v.” Reality t.v. has no use for “happy and normal.” In one scene, a teenager who was smart, generous, and mature enough to give her baby up for adoption a year prior was shopping for a prom dress with her crackhead mom. The teen is Catelynn, and the mom I’ll just call Cracky. Cracky’s appearance is the stereotype of a crackhead. She’s emaciated. She looks dried up. She’s constantly sucking on a cigarette and as a result her laugh is a dry witch’s cough-cackle. This woman was so selfish, that when her daughter made the impossible choice to give up her infant for adoption so that she wouldn’t grow up in a household with a teen mom, a chain-smoking grandma, and a stepgrandpa who is in and out of jail constantly for cocaine (the parents of the adopted baby are step brother and sister) Cracky refused to consent to the adoption, so poor Catelynn had to carry her baby out of the hospital to a nearby parking lot and give her to the adoptive parents in the street. You see, the hospital can’t have a disputed adoption exchange take place on the premises. Try to imagine a seventeen year old girl, who has just given birth, and made the most unthinkably painful and selfless decision ever: to give her child to a couple who couldn’t conceive on their own, and give her daughter a better chance at life than she, the mother, ever had. Picture this poor girl, a day after giving birth, hauling her infant in a baby carrier across the street to hand her over to the parents while Cracky smokes a cigarette and scowls. It makes me so mad, I could spit nails.
Most parents dream of a better life for their children than what they themselves had. I’ve never understood the “What do you mean what I had isn’t good enough for you? What, you think you’re better than me?” attitude toward one’s children.
A year later, shopping for a prom dress, Cracky doesn’t like it that Catelynn disagrees with her taste. I know teenage girls and their moms can fight a lot, but I also know that those fights should not include a mother saying “Fuck you, bitch,” to her daughter. Ever. Never, ever, ever. But that’s what Cracky did. Repeatedly.
On the same show, there is a girl named Amber who physically abuses her corpulent on-again/off-again/on-again/off-again, etc. fiance and father of her strikingly beautiful daughter Leah. In the episode I watched yesterday, mommy Amber (who is around 17 or 18) put her daughter in the crib to cry because she was tired, yelled at her and called her a “brat” repeatedly, and after fighting with Gary, the boyfriend, and striking him several times while cussing him out and calling him a fat ass (in FRONT of the toddler), told baby Leah, “Daddy’s leaving you again,” while the baby sobbed.
And MTV just films it, and nobody intervenes. It makes me want to barf my face off (thank you Brittney from Big Brother 13 for that most excellent and descriptive metaphor).
But here’s the worst of it. Remember when I wrote the other day about my student who was crying? Today I asked her how she was, and the tears came afresh. Uh-oh, I thought, I really needed to go to the bathroom during this break. Cut me some slack. I’ve admitted that I struggle with empathy. I’m WORKING ON IT! She told me in her broken English (I teach ESL) that she was failing a class because she has trouble understanding the teacher. She’s very bright, and is doing well in my class. Her mother got her progress report and became very angry. The mother basically said to her daughter, “I wish you were not my daughter. I hope you are not in my next life.” And she broke her. She broke her little girl. Litigation, shmitigation, I threw my arms around this poor girl and told her that she was a delightful, smart child and that as a mother I would be PROUD to have her for a daughter. In any life.
I asked her if maybe her mom was going through some personal stuff, and didn’t really mean it. I assured her that we adults sometimes say things in anger that we don’t mean and that I’m sure this was the case here (I’m not sure). It made me think of Single Dad Laughing’s blog post, and I began to wonder, how many kids are out there, being abused like this every day? Way too many.
And shame on me for watching a reality show about it, and feeding the societal sickness that considers child abuse “entertainment.” My only hope is that it leads to awareness.
I, for one, am extremely careful what I say to my girl. Words have so much power to destroy. She is the most precious, innocent little being, and her psyche is in my husband’s and my hands. Thank God I’m 38 and not 18. I wish I could transfuse some of my wisdom into these knuckleheads. Cracky has no excuse. She needs to get to rehab, and quick.
Tonight, I cuddled my daughter close to me as she nursed, and she placed my hand on the side of her face, and held it there with her own. Like the Grinch, my heart grew three sizes. Some day, she will be a teenager and want me far, far away. Tonight, she couldn’t sleep without my hand on her cheek. I know I have no idea what is ahead (although, I have a decade of experience with teenagers), but I can promise her this: I will not speak to her like she is not a person. I will not say things in anger I can never take back. I will not break my child with my words.
The Friendly Pedant by Mrs. Odie 
Monday Potpourri
I ask your indulgence of what are sure to be bumpy transitions between paragraphs.
How does anyone get a toddler to eat healthy green foods? Or even yellow or red ones, for that matter. Baby V will only eat cheese, macaroni and cheese, and the occasional piece of fruit (with cheese is a plus). And chocolate. I gave her M&Ms during our flight home from Colorado, and since my girl is a precocious talker, she remembers what “chocolate” is and asks for it by name.
Today was a rainy, gray Monday. I adore this kind of weather. I was made to live in Seattle or Dublin. We rarely get this kind of delightful dreariness in Southern California, so I cherish it when it does happen. Sunshine bums me out. Nothing puts a scowl on my face like the sun shining on it.
My students are the opposite. Everything I did and said today was met with whiney, “Do we HAVE to?” looks and heavy, long-suffering sighs. Apparently, my students feel they should NOT be expected to work or pay attention under the following conditions: when it’s raining, when it’s Friday, when it’s a minimum day or an assembly day, or some other non-typical schedule day, when it’s Monday, when it’s Tuesday after a three-day weekend, and when it’s the first fifteen minutes of class or the last fifteen minutes of class.
Good to know. I need to revise my lesson plan book. You see, I left work on Friday afternoon with the White Board Configuration prepared for Monday (for you non-teachers, that means I had an agenda, learning objectives, state standards, and a “Do Now” activity all posted on my board in my perfectly neat “teacher” printing, using various colors, natch). I had the “Do Now” activity posted on the main board, ready to be copied. My lesson was planned for the day, my materials gathered, and my desk tidied. I made sure that I could walk in first thing Monday morning and begin teaching. Heck, I could even have started my lesson from the hall as I walked in the door.
Were my students equally prepared? As Will Smith would say in every one of his movies, “Oh HELL, naw!”
When I inquired, quite exasperated, why no one was doing anything I asked, one girl replied, “It’s MONDAY,” as though I were mentally ill.
Now that Odie and I are back to doing the same job again, we struggle to “rah, rah, rah” for each other. Some days, the best we can do is agree that we’re lucky to have jobs and decide that we will be grateful for that.
The whole Odie family is on antibiotics for ear infections this week. What? Sorry, I thought I heard you say something. Yeah, it’s been like that.
One of my sisters is arriving this Friday from Greece. I haven’t seen her in three years. When she moved to the island with her Greek husband, my niece was nine months old. And they thought California was the worst place they could live economically. My sister has never met Baby V. I wasn’t even pregnant yet when she left. She is coming home with her daughter, my niece, and they are staying for the whole winter! Hello, Disneyland with all three cousins!!! (I’m not a fan of excessive punctuation, but each girl deserves her own exclamation point). Of course, this weekend I also planned our one and only camping trip of the year AND my friend Sara is coming down from Northern California with her baby whom I’ve never met, and I also scheduled a breakfast with THEM! Nothing happens in this family for weeks, and then it all hits on one weekend.
I peed on a stick today and found out I’m not pregnant. I’m like Dr. Jeckle and Mr. Hyde on this issue, and you’re probably like, “What the WHAT?” We’ve decided we’re just going to go for it. Life is meant to be lived, and to me that means family. I know I will regret not having a second child, or at least not trying. Odie and I have had very well-timed, careless whoopie these past two months, and no positive pregnancy tests. It’s been a long time since I got pregnant, and at my age, every year counts. What hurts a little is that if I were unable to conceive a second time, Odie would be thrilled. So, either way, one out of two of us will be happy. And that ain’t bad.
Some of you are wondering if I have any scathing commentary for Kelle Hampton’s blog. Not really. What could I possibly criticize about the Down Syndrome Buddy Walk? Except this: why “rock stars”? When I think of rock stars, I think of alcoholic narcissists with substance abuse problems. I think of Keith Richards talking about how he doesn’t remember much, and how he feels “embarrassment and shame” when reminded that he took his dick out at the party and wrapped a five dollar bill around it. Yeah, ya think? Rock stars are a troubled lot, generally. Yes, there are exceptions, but for the most part, they don’t conjure up images of fuzzy headed little babies. Except the ones they fathered out-of-wedlock with groupies. I know there is that expression, “I’m a rock star!” and I have similar criticism of the expression. You are? You’re a temperamental, spoiled, marginally talented front-man with rage issues? Bummer. I’ve read that it helps some people to chant this silently or out loud to themselves “I’m a rock star, I’m a rock star.” How about “I’m a Supreme Court Justice”?
The other associated expression, “Party like a rock star” is meant to refer to binge drinking and drug-taking likely to result in an ER visit where you get your stomach pumped full of charcoal. Not pretty.
And finally, Miz Hampton regales us with her husband’s theory that deja vu happens when you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be, doing exactly what you’re supposed to do in life. Something like the Universe giving you the big “thumbs up” sign. If that’s true, then my life’s purpose was to be sitting in my chair on Friday night, watching “Medium” and grading vocabulary tests. That’s so depressing.
Maybe it’s the Robitussin DM talking, but I can’t get enough of the show “Parenthood,” mostly because of Peter Krause. I was such a fan of “Six Feet Under,” I wept until my eyes were swollen shut when (SPOILER ALERT) Nate Fisher died. This is not hyperbole. I was a wreck. If Baby V had been a boy, I had every intention of naming my son Nate. On the season premiere of “Dexter,” I was so happy to see Michael C. Hall back in a funeral home, I cried.
“Parenthood” is a terrific show, but I would make two big changes. Monica Potter is a terrible casting choice. She’s WAY too blonde. No one with her kind of stress would be able to keep up a dye job like that. You have to be on those roots every two weeks. The chick from “Gilmore Girls” is a fine enough actress, but her character is annoying. I don’t like the way she’s written. And YES, I realize I just criticized the woman playing Peter Krause’s wife and the woman dating him in real life, and I tell you that has NOTHING to do with it. I had real and legitimate reasons for hating “Brenda” and “Lisa” on SFU as well. THEY WEREN’T RIGHT FOR MY NATE!
Sorry, I’m getting a little shrill.
I’ll just leave you with this: Is it really so hard to capitalize “I”?
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