A young writer in residence - or, the handwriting on the wall

Published in The Fauquier Times-Democrat, Weekend Edition on February 24, 2012


Recently, I learned that we have a budding writer in our home.  You may think, generously, “Oh, it’s in the blood.”  Or perhaps you saw the article that mentioned my eldest son winning the annual speech contest held by the generous Rotary Club of Warrenton.  Maybe you remember my children’s poetry when this paper ran the Kids’ Page or that my eldest daughter won the “Why I Love Warrenton” contest in the student category years ago in The Warrenton Lifestyle Magazine. Perhaps you heard my daughters give their speeches at their respective graduation ceremonies from Fauquier High School in 2008 and in 2010, or my middle son’s speech before becoming President of Warrenton Middle School’s student council.

That traditional kind of writing is not what I’m talking about.  My new writer in residence has found a far more interesting medium.  You know how some things are revealed to you only when you see the handwriting on the wall?  That’s what I’m talking about.  Literally.

Last weekend, because we are a super fun loving and partying sort of family, my husband worked with me on assembling some electronics.  That’s to help me keep in touch with my “inner engineer.”

Last weekend also being an extra-long weekend, we decided to do some fun things, such as have the children remove wall marks with that amazing Mr. Clean Eraser.  This sort of household activity can be lots of fun, especially if you don’t frequently overdose your children on things popularly construed to be fun, like going to the movies or to parties.

Hopefully, you know I am writing tongue-in-cheek.  Of course, we enjoyed the glorious sunshine at Rady Park on Saturday.  We brought in lunch and considered driving to the movies, but chose to watch one at home, where everyone could snuggle or lounge as necessary.  My husband worked on projects with each of the children too.

That’s when the handwriting on the wall came to me as clearly as if it had been written on the wall.  It was, actually.  Naturally, everyone denied doing it.  No matter.  Lately, my mothering has degenerated to tyranny.  It’s not “innocent until proven guilty” around here.  They’re all guilty.  I know it.  I live with them, remember?

The writer at large had written in teeny, tiny letters.  One phrase, on a bathroom door said, “God bless America, my home sweet home.”  My discovery coincided with President’s Day Weekend.  I should be proud.  All of this was compressed to a size that could easily be hidden by an adult thumb.  Does this mean I keep my children under my thumb, or that I suppress patriotic writing?  Not at all.

This may surprise you, but we have loads of paper in the house.  We have whiteboards and computers too.  We even have grains of rice, if someone insists on specializing in tiny writing.  Any of these are acceptable places for writing, but apparently, they are just not as appealing as the walls and the doors. 

In another “inconspicuous” spot behind yet another bathroom door, there is a “Hello, is anybody home?” penciled there.  This one, I learned from the young writer, was inspired and done years ago after watching “Beauty and the Beast.”  At least for that one, I got a confession.

For the patriotic musing, I simply chose the most likely suspect – someone with a track record for wall-writing, someone with a similar handwriting, someone who had attended a school where this song was sung every morning just after the Pledge of Allegiance to our flag.  That’s the candidate who gets my vote. They can have a taste of democracy when they leave home.  Hopefully, their new home will have more accommodating walls.

It reminds me of a school day years ago, when only the two youngest were at home with me.  I heard alarms of, “Mom!  Mom!  The Baby is writing on the wall!”  I dashed upstairs.  (I weighed less then.)  I had a habit of referring to the youngest child as “The Baby” even when that child was toddling about and speaking.  Everybody’s had a turn at being The Baby.

I saw that, indeed, The Baby had made a huge swirling scribble, right on the bedroom wall.  I shouted at The Baby to arrest any further artistic impulses he might have.  I turned to thank the older child for alerting me.  There she stood, with pencil in guilty hand, and an entire mural on the wall ahead of her.  There was a little house, the straight line for the garden and a few flowers popping up.  The picture was complete with that charmingly childish sun shining its warm and loving rays straight down onto the scene.

I shouted that child’s name out, in full, as written on the birth certificate.  “You said The Baby was writing on the wall, but you were doing it too!” 

She shrugged her helpless little shoulders and widened her innocent, four-year-old eyes.  “Well, The Baby was writing on the wall!  Then, I had to do it too.”

There is no longer a baby in this house.  The writer, however, apparently still lurks among us.

Tackle the Toilet: Take the Plunge! (PG-13)

published in The Fauquier Times-Democrat Weekend, February 20th, 2009

This is it. I’ve had it. I’ve completely had it.

Before I begin my diatribe, I will spend a final sane moment and warn you that today’s column is NOT for the young reader. This column is rated PG-13: Pretty Gross, even for 13-year-olds. (Now that I have perked up the interest of those who are too young to ordinarily be interested in what I have to say, I will begin.)

Someone has habitually been breaking into our home. The doors and windows, as flimsy as they are, show no signs of forced entry. No alarms go off. Our dog never makes a racket. If either dog or alarm were operational, we could catch the villain in the act, but s/he always gets away.

Yet, I am certain that someone has been entering our home.

How do I know this? I have evidence, that’s how. It is a very nasty sort of evidence, but the intruder always leaves something behind. Man or woman, boy or girl, s/he always leaves the same crappy calling card.  It is a clogged toilet.

Why not pin the blame on a member of my own household, you say? I see. You, too, are a simple-minded thinker like me, because I had initially come to the same conclusion. Simple minds are so easily distracted by the obvious.

We are happily and simple-mindedly going about our own business. Sometimes this business involves the lifting of the toilet seat cover, either for personal use, or to facilitate the planting of a young-one, pants down, for a little visit until they call to be wiped when…simulate music from Jaws here…we discover that Something is rotten in the Town of Warrenton. And it’s right there, in the toilet bowl! Paper is puckered into the little hole that apparently just couldn’t chug, chug, chug this stuff away, no matter how much it thought it could or how much we wished it would. There is a disturbing lack of water in the bowl, and an even more disturbing proliferation of solid material.

Back when I thought like a simpleton, I would see this and fume. “All right! Who clogged the toilet this time?”

In a household of this size, it is hard to keep track of who has gone, or when, or in which particular bathroom. So, when I bellow like a beached beluga, I get one of two responses. The most common response is no response. When you sound like an animal in your own home, people refuse to condone that type of behavior and simply ignore you. Sadly, this is a system of which I was a big proponent. It works wonders on shrieking two-year-olds, but is even more maddening when applied on a full-grown adult with a bloated bladder.

The other response I’m used to hearing is a series of sweet and innocent-sounding “Not me’s.” Of course, it couldn’t be you, with your angelic face. I carried you within my own body for nine months, where you proceeding to squash and smash my bladder. I carried you and cared for you from the earliest times of your infancy, when you controlled my every waking moment. You controlled when or whether I was allowed to eat, sleep, or use the bathroom. And, no, it couldn’t be you, who as a toddler followed me everywhere, and made me suffer your constant company even when I needed a few moments of privacy with the toilet.

You have caused me nothing but suffering in the toilet department all your life, so of course, it couldn’t be you. That’s too obvious! It must be Mystery Man on the Go…again…and again who breaks into our house, feels the urge, begins to purge, and either forgets to flush or is unsuccessful in doing so. He has to be the one who ends up clogging the toilet.

I don’t know a lot about toilets, but I have learned how to plunge them. Being the sort of person who is interested in life-long education and an educated youth, I have trained everyone in the double-digit age range in our house in this simple plunging exercise.

Our home was a new construction, so our American Standard toilets are 6.o Lpf or 1.6 gpf. I’m no do-it-yourselfer, and I know very little about toilets, (except that there should be a bowlful of clear water in them before each use and after each flush). Regardless, I will venture to say that 6.0 Lpf means each flush consists of 6.0 liters of water, which is the same as 1.6 gallons being tossed at whatever you can send its way. I don’t know what the “old” flushing standard was in the good old days when we didn’t care about our food, our water, our planet, or whether the pollutants we left behind could make a tear trickle down from the eye of a weathered Native American man on commercial television in the 1970’s.

How much water does the new flushing standard save? I’m not sure. I suspect the data is skewed, because some people in our house routinely flush multiple times after a single visit, desperately hoping that the next 1.6 gallons will do the trick that the earlier, lethargic one could not.

Once upon a time, when I was a kinder, gentler person, I would have sighed after the chorus of “not-me’s.” I would have picked up the trusty implement and taken the plunge. I had resigned myself to the fate of ACP (anonymous clog plunging) forever, and wrote it off as one of those petty or unpleasant tasks that falls upon the sagging shoulders of the happy homemaker.

But then, something snapped. Perhaps it was being forty-two years old, and still having to routinely perform ACP throughout the house. Perhaps I had achieved and exceeded my lifelong ACP quota at a relatively early age. Or, perhaps, like stores who shower the nth customer, I had performed an ACP for the nth and final time, and now it was time to pass along the baton (or plunger) of knowledge.

At any rate, one fine day I decided my plunging services, like me, were exhausted. I allowed a clogged toilet to fester, because no one would ‘fess up. (Naturally not. We all realize it was Mystery Man.) I realize that this has not been a pleasant thought. But I assure you, the sight is far worse than the thought. If you were just enjoying a nice snack or a drink, I apologize.

Day One. I announce that I have retired from ACP. Some other heroic, altruistic soul is going to have to step up to the plate (or bowl) and do the duty, even though it had not been his or her fault. No response.

Day Two. Would the guilty party please just go and plunge the thing, because that bathroom has become entirely unusable. No response.

Day Three. Assemble the children. (It was close to Christmas at the time – perhaps that might have explained the little present?) “Hey, guys, you know how in some families people choose names to give each other presents?” Yes, yes – their eyes light up. To this I actually get a response, and it is in the affirmative. I sense excitement and a keen desire to participate. All people of plunging age have their names written down, and the youngest child in the house drew a name. “Here,” I say, “you get plunging duty on this one.” It was not a pleasant task, but I must say that I admire the fortitude with which the unlucky child approached the task – with plunger in hand, he almost looked like a soldier going off to war.

Yesterday, it happened again. So at night, I allowed each potential plunger to draw lots. It was very Biblical, I thought – just like when Jonah was on the ship and no one knew why they were having horrible weather problems, or when they needed a quick replacement for Judas Iscariot’s twelfth disciple position. Each paper had “Freebird” written on it, save but one. That one had the dreaded “Clogger” written on it. The children hesitatingly drew their lots. A sudden cloud of doubt fell around the child who pulled “Clogger.” The others viewed him with a sense of sympathy and doubt. (His name had been pulled on the Christmas name-drawing as well.)

Experience is a great teacher, and this one thing I have learned: you don’t have to wait three days before drawing names. I just wish I had learned this technique years and years ago.

The Big Sigh – Summer is Over

From three years ago, when five kids went off to school, leaving me and the youngest (then two years old) alone at home to fend for ourselves...

If I had had any sense, I would have been like normal moms who are relieved that school has started. I would have planned mid-morning solo shopping excursions or a “coffee with the girls” celebration as we all exchanged the Big Sigh that marks our emergence from the long tunnel called Summer.

In that tunnel, your kids camped (or cramped) around you, while you made constant social connections for them in order to temporarily eject a child or two and enjoy a little extra space. (About midway through your child’s first school year, you realize that he or she has a far more active and exciting social calendar than you do.) There’s no sense in getting jealous over their social appointments; if you’re going to get anything, it had better be the car keys.

The Tunnel of Summer is long, so traversing it without gnawing on each other calls for injections of entertainment along the way. If you can afford to be at home with your kids, it usually means that you ARE the entertainment. “You want to go to the pool…again? Why don’t you kids whip up a batch of cookies instead?” This might explain why the stay-at-home contingent in my family puts on pounds in the summer the way a good hiker packs on gear. By summer’s end, our tunnel is so snug that the first evacuee has to pry the others out.

No matter how short or long a tunnel is, it is sure to be peppered with sibling squabbles. In such tunnels, each spat echoes more. Twice, in separate years and for separate pairs of kids, I have had to enforce a no-communication for a day rule to quash the bickering. (“Don’t look at, play with, or talk to each other!”) But that’s another story.

Somewhere along these annual tunnel tours, it has dawned on me that I am not normal. (Or did the kids implant that idea?) “Mom, why can’t you be normal? Why do you have to be such a hawk, watching what we do all the time?” I realize that watching those home/fashion improvement shows on TLC aren’t entirely deleterious to the teen girl’s health, but why can’t they go and simultaneously improve their room’s décor and their wardrobes by picking up the clothes in their bedroom? Or perhaps they could learn to fix their beds properly, so the fitted sheet isn’t hair-triggered to spring off at the slightest provocation, such as breathing or shutting the door?

And then there are the middle boys, with an uncanny and almost clairvoyant ability to detect every movement of SpongeBob SquarePants on the Nickelodean channel. Not that all TV is bad, but again, that is another story. After the first half-hour’s dose of that poriferan’s million-dollar monotonic laugh, my response is to turn off the TV and have them grab a sponge and bob over to the sink to help with the dishes. (Then it’s my turn to laugh.)

I know this is going to sound old-fashioned, but when my kids are home, I tend to extract work from them. How else did I have time to fritter away, writing silly columns? Maybe that is why I dread summer’s end more than any recalcitrant pupil. All these years, my children have been my labor of love. At this stage, I’m hoping they’ve developed a love of labor.

My seventeen-year-old was Chief Laundress, in charge of getting all the laundry done while the nine year-old was her noble aide, bringing down heaps of dirty clothes and occasionally putting away clean towels. Very often, the noble aide would forget to empty just one hamper…usually that of the Chief Laundress. Too bad we couldn’t have harnessed the sparks that flew; they could have dried an entire load of towels. Ah, it was a summer with no laundry to do and someone else to blame if it wasn’t completely done. (In over twenty years of marriage, I have never been able to accomplish this feat.)

At night, the Chief changed gears and dramatically read aloud stories to the youngest two until everyone else, including parents with such urgent matters to justify offloading all domestic duties onto their kids, stopped what we were doing to listen to Roald Dahl come to life.

Or did I dread the end of summer because my fourteen-year-old daughter loves to cook and had taken over lunch and dinner duties? Of course, there was the small matter of that yearbook debt she was working off. (Her high school yearbook was $85. The first used car my father bought in 1972 cost him $75.) At any rate, this girl has expanded our menu beyond the four things I repeatedly make. Everybody was excited at each mealtime. Was I jealous? Please. I was the most excited one.

Also, for some reason, my second daughter is the only one that my stubborn (oops, I mean “strong-willed”) two-year-old boy listens to. She doesn’t threaten or pinch him to extract compliance - at least, I’ve never noticed any marks. (Just kidding, friendly Social Services people.) It’s just this frightening eye/voice thing she can do that I thought my father had a monopoly on. One night this summer, she extracted Cling-Boy from my body and got him in the habit of going to bed on a schedule. Not only does he now actually go (away) to bed, he even sleeps through the night. Why is everybody smarter than I am?

I miss my twelve-year-old son with all the food allergies who unloaded the dishwasher (sometimes three times in a day) and loaded the breadmaker to prepare his own dinner rolls. He even entertained the two youngest with this original “play” dough. And I also miss my nine-year-old boy who put out all the trash and diligently sorted all the recycling. He would put on puppet shows and make all the voices to delight the little ones. And although there was always an uncomfortable element of danger, the boys could keep my five-year-old girl and the two-year-old terror engaged for hours.

I can’t believe I put my tiny five-year-old who has only just hit forty pounds onto that gigantic school bus. The little guy feels his kindergartener sister’s absence the most acutely. Not only do they share a room (and now a bedtime), they also share a little table for snacks and coloring, and giggles and games all day long. Even if they fought, at least they kept each other occupied.

On the first day of school, when five of my kids headed out the door, excited to see old friends or thrilled to greet new adventures, the little guy and I were left at home with each other to get reacquainted with some household chores. It’s the sudden emptiness and the quiet, together with my now friendless and therefore clingy boy, that feel altogether too much to handle. Left behind to survey the disaster zone left in the wake of everyone’s rush to leave, that’s when I feel the jealous pang.

To be honest, there are certain things I don’t miss: chiefly, the inability of any of these gifted and mechanically inclined kids to replace an expended roll of toilet paper. Who am I kidding? What was I thinking? Summer is over.

My Big Sigh is not from relief; it is one that selfishly misses the kids and their charm, their rascally personalities, and their chaos and commotion. Maybe I should have made plans to take the little guy out or to get together with friends, after all. At least in that, I could have appeared to be normal.

Grandma Strikes Back

“I see you finally found your mommy,” the lady cooed to my youngest when she saw me washing his hands in the restroom. He had been crying for me earlier on the campus where I was checking on some things. My friend was entertaining him, and although he is so fond of her that he plans to “marry Miss Rose,” he still suffered (or made me suffer) from separation anxiety. The lady in the restroom now recognized him as the owner of the wailing lungs.  Then she paused to re-examine my face.

Whenever strangers stop to look at me, I become fearful or vain. Self-conscious that I might have spinach (or realistically, candy) lodged somewhere in my teeth, I shut off my crooked-teeth exposing smile and looked down to discreetly perform the tongue-as-a-toothpick probe. Feeling safe in this regard, I allowed a small and sad thought to enter my small and sad mind. Dare I think it? Did this lady recognize me from this column? Sometimes people do, and are kind enough to stop me and say so.

But I had little to fear here.  The main advantage of being published in a family hometown newspaper is that you can continue to be just as anonymous as you might have ever hoped to be. The cooing lady halted and checked herself after conducting her facial cross-examination. She addressed my son again, “Oh, or is it Grandma that you found?”

Grandma? Grandma??!!! Too bad “Grandma” wasn’t equipped with her walking stick, or she might have executed a few deft, eyesight-improving maneuvers. Too bad Grandma was showing additional signs of aging and was too slow to retort with, “Oh, I’m not his grandmother, but thank you for the compliment. I’m actually his great-great-great-grandmother, arrived here fresh from the crypt.”

I realize that at 42 then, it is conceivable (pun intended) that I might be a grandmother. A young mom of 21 whose child repeats the feat, could very easily be a grandmother. And being an “older mom,” I should be used to comments like this.

I was 23 when my eldest was born, but after all, I was 38 when my last child was born. A few years before that, when I was 35 and expecting my fifth child, I had noticed an “AMA” stamp on my chart at the ob-gyn office. I might have been flattered to be included in the American Medical Association by virtue of being an experienced mother. Remember those old cough-syrup commercials that had taught us to appreciate the value of “Dr. Mom” with her maternal, medical wisdom and her keen ability to select the appropriate cough syrup?

But alas, AMA is no compliment. It is a red flag to alert medical personnel that the woman this chart represents is risking childbirth in spite of her Advanced Maternal Age. My nurse-midwife, in the initial interview, had asked, “Have you had a change of sexual partners?” No. “Are you now, or have you recently been using drugs or other illegal substances?” No. “Alcohol?” Again, the answer is no.

I’m sorry to disappoint people, but my life is just not that exciting. If I go to the grocery store and can actually find and use a coupon to save a dollar, that’s excitement. Getting a “real” handwritten piece of mail in the daily deluge of bills that pepper our junk mail, that’s excitement. If someone else changes a roll of toilet paper in the house, then that’s excitement, bordering on delirium. Getting my 3-½-year-old (who still wears 2T clothing) to actually eat a complete meal – that’s just about as giddy as my life ever gets.

Whether I seem young or middle-aged or incredibly old to you will depend on your vantage point on the great number line of life by which we define our time-strapped selves. It doesn’t matter one way or the other to me what my age is, because as long as you’re in circulation on Earth, I figure, you have to land somewhere on the number line. I must admit to paying closer attention to obituaries nowadays. If I may borrow the words of Arundhati Roy, the 1997 Booker Prize-winning Indian author of The God of Small Things, being 42 is like “Thirty-one. Not old. Not young. But a viable, die-able age.”

There are people whose every hope for happiness hangs on a number. What’s my age? What’s my salary? What’s my GPA and class rank? What’s my weight? What’s my car’s mileage? What’s my SAT score? What’s my credit score? How many kids do I have? How much money is (oops, was) my retirement account worth? I would like to pretend that numbers don’t really matter that much to me, because I know the One who holds my life in His hands. But in spite of that, I haven’t been able to achieve that state of sublime philosophical detachment from the numbers that shape and quantify my life.

So the other day, when I stepped out of my car and caught sight of a puffy-faced, middle-aged woman, it bothered me to recognize it as my own reflection. I don’t mind being 42, but I don’t necessarily want to be instantly pegged as being 42, if not older, as Ms. Grandma-Detector seemed to have done.

Fear and vanity are not only the pathetic plight of the middle-aged woman, they are the basis of a booming, billion-dollar industry of make-up, weight loss, tooth-whitening, de-wrinkling and cellulite-defeating agents. According to James M. Rubenstein in An Introduction to Human Geography (the textbook for an online course that I took through NOVA- Northern Virginia Community College), the United Nations reported that “Americans spend more per year on cosmetics ($8 billion) than the cost of providing schools for the 2 billion in the world in need of them ($6 billion), and Europeans spend more on ice cream ($11 billion) than the cost of providing a working toilet to the 2 billion people currently without one at home ($9 billion).” A sad and sobering thought, is it not?

So what’s the lesson in all this? To rise above self-absorption and not worry what I look like? At this age, apparently, the three B’s of basic hygiene (bathing, brushing teeth, and brushing hair) just don’t seem to cut it. Or is it to never venture out in public without eye make-up? On any given day, it depends on my resolve and my mood. Either way, though, I’m definitely going to look into that walking stick.