I Just Wanted Hugs and You Farted in My Face

I set my alarm clock this morning to give myself time to wake up, eat breakfast, drink a cup of coffee, take a shower and shave my legs, drink another cup of coffee, put on make-up, put together a decent- looking outfit, and leave to make it to church by 1000.

I’d missed the last two Sundays because of a case of ‘the crud’ which I didn’t want to spread to our older congregation, and I was determined to make it to the service this morning.  There’s something comforting for me about the ritual of a traditional service, and I missed my community of people.

It’s a cold and rainy day. As I grabbed my sweater from upstairs, I gave Xavier a kiss goodbye.  He was lounging in our bed, watching YouTube videos in his usual Sunday morning routine.

He turned the TV off and gave me a big hug.  

“Momma,” he said, his voice quivering.

I hugged him back, nestling into the bed with him, for what I thought would be a quick goodbye.  

“I’ve got to get going, buddy,” I explained.  “I’m going to be late for church.  Do you want to go with me?”

He declined the invitation (as he always does), and hugged me harder.

“I don’t want you to go to church today,” he said, very serious.

“Oh,” I replied, curious. He’d also been fighting a case of the crud and maybe just needed extra snuggles, I assumed.  

“Is it because you don’t feel good?”  I asked.

“No,” he said, “it’s just a feeling in my gut.  I don’t want you to go.”

I try to teach my kids to trust their intuition.  If something doesn’t feel right, seem right, smell right, I want them to lean into that.

I contemplated for a moment. My reasoning went something like, it’s a cold, rainy day, I’ve already missed two weeks in a row, what’s a third one? Besides, I still had a lingering cough, and my kid was sick.  Sure, why not, I’ll stay home.  Besides, it sets a good example of me trusting Xavier’s intuition.    

I told him I’d stay home today, and we snuggled for another twenty minutes in bed watching YouTube videos together.  

Rob walked into the bedroom. “No church?” he asked.

I explained that Xavier had a gut feeling and didn’t want me to go, so I went with it.

Rob shrugged and headed to the shower.

Xavier waited until Rob left and then whispered to me, “It’s more than that, mom.  I’m afraid of an active shooter.”

And there it is.

This week, our country has had another horrific surge of deadly gun violence.  

And it’s gotten to the point where a ten-year-old boy is afraid for his mom to go to church.

Rob and I tag team the boring household stuff that needs to get done.  I’m currently in the process of getting quotes to fix a leaky window. He’s been in touch with a plumbing company to deal with a pesky leak that is causing sewage water to spill over into our bottom floor.  Needless to say, the raw sewage in our living room is a more pressing issue.

Since I’m now in a lull between jobs, I have the luxury of staying home all day.  Rob’s been dealing with the plumbing company on the phone from work, and I’ve been patiently waiting, doing boring domestic things like baking cakes and investigating the requirements for an immigrant visa to Portugal.

The plumber showed up about twenty minutes ago and one of the first things he asked was if my husband was home.  Now, given, Rob’s been the one taking point on dealing with the plumbing company on this, and I’m the random person to answer the door.

I explained that my husband was at work, but I could get him on the phone.  

The plumber said that he’d need Rob to give the okay for whatever needed to be fixed with the pipes.

I tried not to lose my cool and explained, very poorly, that I’m fully authorized to make any decisions when it comes to repairs.

After all, the house is in both our names.  After all, I contribute significantly financially to the cost of running our house and family.

Oh yeah, and after all, I am perfectly capable of making financial decisions.  Don’t let my vagina fool you.

The plumber mumbled something about needed Rob to approve any work.  Maybe it’s because Rob was the one who called the order in.  Maybe it’s because Rob has a penis.  I don’t really know.  

I replied that he can be reached on the phone if needed.

It’s very hard not to feel like a second class citizen right now.  I get it, I live in a red state where I no longer have the right to bodily autonomy.  Maybe I should also assume I no longer have the right to authorize repairs on sewer lines for the home that I own… that I need my husband’s approval to put a charge on my credit card.

Xavier, my nine-year-old, came home from the first day of school with a request.

“Mom, can I dye my hair?”

My initial reaction was a knee-jerk hell no, kid, you are in the fourth grade, that is way to young to consider any sort of body modifications, permanent or temporary.  

But I somehow managed to keep my cool composure and did the usual parenting trick of saying, “I’ll think about it and let me talk to your dad.”

I had to ask, though, why he wanted to dye his hair.  It turns out that his BFF, Oliver, showed up to school on day-one with blue hair. About half a dozen other cool kids were sporting green, red, and jet-black dyed looks.  

“And they didn’t even get in trouble, mom,” Xavier told me, surprised.  

I gave him the parental, “yeah, yeah,” realizing that Xavier really wants to be one of the cool kids and fit in by standing out.

When Rob came home, I mentioned to him that Xavier wanted to dye his hair (complete with the explanation that the cool kids are doing it these days), and that I told our kid that mom and dad would talk about it.

I thought for sure Rob would have my same reaction of hell no.  Instead, he surprised me with a much more measured response.

“Why don’t we make him wait a week to think about it, and if he still wants to dye his hair after that, he can,” he reasoned.

Sure, okay, a week. By then, the fervor would have died down, maybe the principal will have cracked down with a dress code, maybe the kid will change his mind.

I presented the compromise to Xavier with my own added caveat.  Wait a week, and if after that time, you still want to dye your hair, we can try it with temporary dye, that way, if you don’t like how it looks, it washes out.

He agreed to my terms.

And then I added one more. I’d buy the first round of temporary dye.  If he still wanted to color his hair after that, he’d have to pay for the material.

I thought for sure reaching into his hard-earned tooth-fairy money would give him pause.  But he only nodded, agreeing to my additional terms.

And a week passed.  At the end of which, Xavier informed me that it had been a week and he still wanted to dye his hair.

So, last Saturday, we headed to Sallys, and with the help of the clerk, selected some not-to-bad-for-you temporary hair dye.  Xavier had chosen the colors red and black.

Now, I’ve done my fair share of my own hair dying, like any woman over thirty-five.  I know a thing or two about what to do and not to do.  I know that what you see on the box is not ever what you get on your head.  And I was pretty sure the temporary dye wasn’t going to give Xavier his desired results. We were applying black and red color on already brown hair; at best, it would be a bit of a tint, not something vibrant.  But I kept quiet, and that afternoon, we spent a good hour in the bathroom, crisscrossing strands of red and black dyed hair, while he sat patiently on a stool borrowed from the kitchen.

When I had rinsed and blow-dried, Xavier looked at the results, and was not happy.  Sure enough, at best, the black dye made his brown hair a few shades darker, and the red dye looked… well… pinkish.

He asked me to fix it, to do it again, visibly upset.  And I explained that this is what we were going to get with the temporary dye, and why don’t you give it a few days to see if you like it after all, and if you really, really want bold-reds and jet-blacks, then we need to bleach your hair white first and then use permanent hair dye.  

He studied his reflection a bit more and decided that he did like the faded tint colors after all. Even though they clearly weren’t what he was after.  

His brother told him his hair looked pink.  And the fighting ensued, with vehement denials that it is not pink.

The week passed, and by Thursday, the temp dye had pretty much washed out.  Xavier declared that he did indeed want to permanently dye his hair and he asked me to go to Sallys and pick up hair dye.  

I reminded him that he’d have to pay for it, and that it would be around twenty dollars.  He agreed.  Later that night, I plopped two tubes of permanent dye down on the kitchen counter, and Xavier handed me a twenty-dollar bill.  (The total was $19.96, so, I made a tidy four-cent profit off the transaction).

And today, Xavier and I spent the greater part of our Sunday in the bathroom.  First, I bleached his hair, which totally turned out Donald-Trump-Orange, but I told him not to worry, we were just getting it ready for the color.  Then, after a two-hour interlude for video games, he sat patiently while I painted his strands with a mix of red dye and black dye.  It made a huge mess, and I’m pretty sure that the staining on the back of his neck and ears will never come out.  

When the job was over, he looked at his reflection.  His face was beaming.  “I’m so happy I made this decision!”  he exclaimed.

His hair turned out pure jet black, but the red parts… well, they look more of a… how shall I call it… um… magenta.  Don’t dare call it pink.  It’s not pink.  Don’t even suggest that it is pink.

But Xavier is happy. He has been posing in front of the mirror all night and bouncing with the energy that comes from feeling really good about how you look.

I can see firsthand how we got here.  How there’s an epidemic of prescription and non-prescription opioid abuse.  It’s no secret that opioids are addictive.  It’s no secret that doctor’s offices are willing to hand them out like candy.

I have chronic nerve pain and neuralgia.  I’ve tried a number of drugs and treatments, and what seems to work are a series of injections to the site.  The treatment will last for 6-8 weeks and is non-addictive and relatively harmless (once you get over the fear of needles going into your skull).

However, to get these, I need to see a specialist.  Because of job changes and health insurance changes, I’ve had to re-establish care at a new PCM.  I’m eligible to also receive care through the VA (long story, not relevant).  So, I’ve been trying to get someone, anyone, to make a referral for me to get more injections for the pain.

The VA’s first available appointment for a consult (no guarantee that they will give me the injections) isn’t until September, six weeks or so for now.  Separately, I called my PCM on Monday to request a new referral and waited patiently and patiently and patiently.  Finally, today, Friday, after my insurance said they haven’t received the referral yet, I called the PCM office back and the referral is still sitting in someone’s inbox, but she’s not in the office yet, so they couldn’t give me any more details on the status.

I’m estimating another week before my PCM gets the referral in, a week for my insurance to approve it, and then another week or two to get the appointment for injections.  So, a month of really bad, debilitating pain.  About the same length of time before I can get seen at the VA.

I’ve been very vocal to the VA, trying to get seen earlier, because I’m in a lot of pain, and the best my care-team at the VA can offer is a short-term prescription for opiates.  

So here we are.  Me, a 48 year old, respectable mom, wife, veteran (long story, not relevant), getting opiates from my doctor.  No because they are the most effective treatment.  Not because they will necessarily work.  Not because I want them.  I know there’s a non-opioid effective treatment out there, I just can’t access it because of the nightmare of referrals, wait times for appointments, and me being caught in a gap because of switching doctors because of changing insurance.  

It’s been a harrowing month. I’m now a second-class citizen and have, in the deep red state in which I live, been stripped of my right to bodily autonomy. My church, my weekly sanctuary and retreat and place of peace, is considering measures like hiring security because of the epidemic of gun violence. The planet is literally on fire, and where it’s not actually burning, it’s baking in temperatures that have ground historic cities to a halt.

 Even glimmers of hope fade - no sooner was a deal signed between Russia and Ukraine for the exporting of grain to keep the world from starving, than Russia shelled the port city of Odessa, with the ink still wet on their agreement.

 It’s enough to make me afraid. Very, very afraid. How can I raise my kids in this?

I’ve told my husband that we will no longer be engaging in any sexual activity that involves sperm. It’s just too risky. Sure, I’m on birth control… but who know how long I’ll continue to have that right. Besides, it does occasionally fail.

Perhaps I’ll seriously consider forms of sterilization. Maybe get my uterus removed (which my OB/GYN seems eager to do to mitigate heavy periods), or suggest that Rob get castrated (vasectomies fail and can be reversed). We better hurry though, because the right to have or reproductive organs removed to keep from breeding is no longer guaranteed.

In the meantime though, as I no longer have agency over my own body or the choice to terminate an unintended pregnancy, my only recourse is to take every step I can to avoid getting pregnant. So - no sperm.

He can go down on me all he wants. We will probably explore pegging. But no sperm. Too risky. My loving husband of thirteen years, with whom, up until today, I had enjoyed a healthy sexual relationship, will no longer be allowed to deposit any of those potentially baby-making swimmers anywhere near where there might be an egg.

Sorry, Rob. Today’s Supreme Court Decision matters to you too. I’ll get you some lube and a porn magazine so you can Jack-off by yourself in the bathroom. But don’t you dare let any of that jizz near me.

I’m closing up shop. Right now, it’s the only way I can still have some control of my body.

Ladies, let’s start something - join me. Tell your male partners sperm related sex is verboten. Take back our bodies by shutting down the baby-making glory-hole.

Until we have full control and agency, the sperm strike must continue.

An open letter to the young black girl in my son’s elementary school

 It was the next to last week of school.  The teachers and staff had pretty much stopped instructing and were finding ways to keep the kids occupied.  Movies were an almost daily event in the classrooms.  The school was having a field day, with potato-sack races, kickball, and other fun activities.  I was one of the parent volunteers doing face-painting in the Elementary School Art Room.

You were at my table, waiting to get your face painted.  I was the cool-mom painting dragons and skulls, while the other tables offered butterflies and hearts and University logos.  I think you opted for a simple heart or maybe a butterfly.  I don’t remember.

But as you were waiting your turn, I overheard a snippet of conversation you were having with one of your classmates.  

You said, “My ancestors picked cotton.  I’m ashamed of that.”

I was speechless.  As a white-lady who grew up with all the privilege that entails, I didn’t know what to say. I felt I had to say something, so I muttered, awkwardly about how you shouldn’t be ashamed because it is what it is.   That’s not what I should have said.

What I should have said was something like this:

“Young lady, you have absolutely nothing to be ashamed about.  

“I don’t have your family history.  In fact, I come from a line of Southern crackers, generations of white people in the South who have had the advantage of being white.  And while my ancestors were mostly of the laboring class, they had the ability to move around, to own land, to vote, to get an education if they wanted one.  They had all the advantages, culturally, that the color of their skin afforded them.  The advantage they had because of their skin color eventually led to my generation, which had the opportunity to go to college and live a comfortable upper-middle class life.

“So, I know it’s not my place to tell you how to feel about your ancestors.  But please consider this.  Your ancestors endured hardships that mine never knew.  They endured the brutality of slavery -- physical abuse, sexual assault, forced family separations.  They endured the Deep South under Jim Crow, with labor conditions that were deplorable, and a culture that used the threat of lynching to continue with the oppression. They endured a system of education that was anything but ‘separate but equal,’ a structure that systematically deprived your ancestors of the opportunities that mine had.  They endured segregation, voter suppression, and innumerable instances of systematic racism, from bank lending practices and housing discrimination to the racial profiling and police brutality that continues to this day.  

“And you, young lady, are here.  Living breathing proof that no matter the injustice and hate, no matter the discrimination and systemic racism, your ancestors endured.  You are here.  You are proof of an indominable human spirit that persists in the face of a cultural evil.

“My ancestors…. they were the active and passive participants in that cultural evil.  By their complacency and silence and acceptance of inherently racially discriminatory system, they supported that evil.  They benefited from it.  

My son wants to move to New Zealand.  It’s not because of an obsession with Hobbits or a desire for kiwis.  My eleven-year-old wants to move there because they have reasonable laws on the ownership and use of firearms.  On the world scale, New Zealand ranks number 39 on murder by firearms per capita.  The US, well, we are number 10 on that world-wide list.  (Source:  nationmaster.com).  New Zealand’s laws have been in enacted in response to gun violence.  For instance, after the massacre in Christ Church in 2019, they passed laws to restrict the magazine capacity of semi-automatic weapons to 10 rounds.  

Here, on the other hand, in response to gun violence and mass-shootings, we offer our thoughts and prayers.  

I had to explain, twice in ten days, to my two kids, that a crazy person has killed people with guns. First, in Buffalo, where an 18-year-old white-supremacist used an assault style rifle for his racist hate killings.  And then yesterday, in a small town in Texas, where a disturbed teenage used an assault style firearm he purchased on his 18th birthday to end the lives of nearly two-dozen children and destroy their families and the community for generations.  

As a mom, I’m tired of it. I’m tired of my kids having active shooter drills in their elementary school.  When I was a kid, it was fire drills and earthquake drills (I grew up in California).  We’d drop under our desks to protect our heads from potential falling debris.  And now, my kids are taught to cower silently in a darkened classroom in hopes that the active shooter passes them by for… what, another target?  Their classmates?  

I’m tired of talking to my kids about these events.  And I talk to them about it.  They need to know how fucking crazy fucked-up things are here (I don’t use such strong language when talking to them, but maybe I’ll just drop twenty bucks into our family swear jar so I stop sugar coating how fucked-up things are).  

I’m tired of silently wondering, as a mother, if today is the last day I will see my children as I send them off to school.  

I shouldn’t have to worry about this shit.  I shouldn’t have to worry about my kids being shot at school.  My kids shouldn’t have to be having active shooter drills in their classroom.  They are in the third and fifth grade.  

When I told Xander about the slaughter at Robb Elementary School, he got angry.  “This is why I want to move to New Zealand,” he exclaimed.

I’m angry too.  And I’m tired that things haven’t changed.  I’ve marched, I’ve signed petitions, and I watch, with a sort of paralyzed numbness as these mass-shootings happen again and again.

But hey, let’s offer our thoughts and prayers.  

This week, I’ve successfully earned the moniker of the black sheep to one side of my family.  Given the circumstances, it’s a title I’ll wear with pride.

Two years into the Covid pandemic and over a million Americans have died.  I lost a very dear friend to the virus in January 2021.  And, even living in the Deep South, in a state so red and regressive they have a law that bans the removal of Confederate memorials from public grounds, in my house, we still take the threat of the virus seriously.  My kids still wear masks every day to school (they are essentially the only kids who do – good for them), and I carry hand-sanitizer and mask up when I go into public spaces.   I know that our insistence on following CDC protocols places us in a minority down here, and I could easily, socially, disregard the mask, the precautions, the worry.  Everyone else does.  I’ll occasionally get an eyeball when I’m masked up at Publix (or maybe it’s my crazy haircut), and I don’t care.  

I keep tabs on Covid rates, if they are rising or falling, and we calculate our risks accordingly. Rates are going up, especially in the south.  We decided not to do any traveling this upcoming Memorial Day weekend.  Too much of a risk.  And when Rob and I go on our Saturday date-night, we’ll probably opt for a place that has outdoor dining.  

I’ve got extended family nearby states.  I wouldn’t say we are particularly close.  Second cousins and the like.  The sort of family I’ll happen to see once a decade and keep in what I call “Christmas Card Contact.”  I’m aware if they are alive, if someone got married, if there’s a baby or two, but that’s about it.  

A set of southern-cousins (my mother’s first cousin and her husband, which makes them my… um… generic cousin.  In the south, if it’s too complicated, everyone regresses to “cousin” status). These cousins happen to be driving their RV up to the city where I live (in a set of circumstances even I’m not sure I understand), and so, via my mother, who is staying with us while she buys a house, I asked if the cousins would like to come for dinner while they are in town.  After all, they are family.  I send them Christmas Cards every year.  

It was only later that I realized that they are, by choice, not vaccinated.  Given the increasing number of Covid cases, I made the request that they take a rapid test before coming into my house for dinner.  

My mother relayed the request.  She had rapid tests available, so there would be no expense and only the minor inconvenience of providing some buggers.  And my cousins said that they were not comfortable taking a Covid test; they gave my mother the grounds that “it’s the principle of the thing.”

The principle of the thing? You’ll avoid seeing family because I asked that you take a test mitigate the risks of exposing myself and my kids to a pandemic virus?  That principle?  

Copy all.

So, they didn’t come over for dinner.  I relayed my greetings and expressed that I hope to see them sometime under different circumstances.

See, I have a few principles as well.  I believe in principles like science.  I trust vaccines and that they work.  I follow the principle of community and recognize that by getting me and my kids vaccinated, we are not just protecting ourselves, but those around us.  So, I’d rather offend family members and not have them in my house when they willfully will not get themselves vaccinated, nor take a simple rapid test to help ease my mind as I try to mitigate risks.  They have their principles.  And so do I.  

About two weeks ago, my eleven-year-old asked me what abortion was.  Xander is not immune from whatever is making its way to the surface in the news cycle, and no doubt, the issue being argued at the Supreme Court somehow came into one of his YouTube news feeds.  (Yes, my kid watches the news on YouTube).  

I explained that sometimes a woman is pregnant and there is something wrong with the fetus (I try to be very deliberate in my language, using the word ‘fetus’ and not ‘baby’), like it won’t have a brain or a heart that works, and so the pregnancy needs to be ended.  I also explained that sometimes a woman is pregnant and just doesn’t want to be for a number of reasons.  Maybe she is not ready to be a parent.  Maybe she doesn’t want to be pregnant because it is hard on a person’s body.  And so, when that happens, she may also choose to have an abortion, which is where the pregnancy is ended.

Then Xander asked me the very hard to answer question, “Then what happens to the baby?”

I told him that the baby isn’t there anymore.  It was clear my answer didn’t sit well with him, but I didn’t have anything better to offer.

My kids know about sex, about reproduction, how babies are made and how a fetus develops in utero. I will often joke when Xavier, my nine-year-old, is trying to borrow into my belly that he can’t get back in, he’s too big.  My kids have a very real sense that I am responsible for their existence because I carried them around in my uterus for ten (long and tedious) months.  And I think, perhaps, as kids, they somehow connect and relate to an existence in utero that most of us adults have lost touch with.  

I was once very ambivalent on the subject of abortion, and I recognize there are nuances in the debate. But having been through two pregnancies and two childbirths, I would not wish that experience on anyone who didn’t want it.  I came to the logical conclusion that only someone who is going through a pregnancy should be the one to make a decision about it.  About whether to carry the pregnancy to term.  About when and where and how to give birth.  About deciding to parent (or not).  About whether or not to breast feed.  And about whether or not Kraft Mac-N-Cheese is sufficiently nutritious enough to constitute a decent meal for a three-year-old.  

As a parent, though, I want my kids to think for themselves.  To reach their own conclusions on whatever the issue of the day is.  Which is why I didn’t offer an easy answer to Xander’s question of “what happens to the baby,” because there is not an easy answer.

We live in a very red state, one that most likely will all but outlaw abortion should the leaked Supreme Court decision stand.  The current law is poised to severely restrict access to anything past six-weeks gestation.

A few days ago, Xander told me about a dream he had.  He said he dreamed that he was pregnant (he’s eleven) and he couldn’t get an abortion because he was past six weeks.  

I asked him how he felt about being pregnant when he didn’t want to be.  He said he didn’t like it.

Then he asked me if boys can get pregnant.  I told him no, they can’t because they don’t have a uterus.  (I didn’t get into the possibility of ‘yes’ given that someone could have a male gender identity and biologically have a uterus).  He breathed a sigh of relief.

I wasn’t going to let it go, though.  “Do you think it’s fair that anyone should have to be pregnant if they don’t want to be, whether they are a boy or a girl?”  I asked.

The dream he’d had clearly made an impact.  “No,” he answered fervently.

I asked him to think about that when he thinks about the issue of abortion.  About how he felt in the dream, being forced to be pregnant when he didn’t want to be.  I could tell he was churning the issue in his brain.

Early this week, we received a thick, high-quality paper envelope in the mail.  It was addressed to “The Parents of Xavier Husmann.”  Inside was a very fancy, glossy brochure and a personalized letter explaining that Xavier had been nominated by his third-grade teacher, Mrs. RXXXX, to attend an exclusive, by invitation only, “STEM Preparation” week-long summer camp, offered through a well-known state university.  The package included things like a very thick, frameable, certificate of STEM Preparation Program acceptance (with Xavier’s name in fancy letters at the top) and a form to send to the local paper for a press release.

Now, I’d already signed Xavier up for another summer camp I found via a flyer at his school.  It’s a standard Meatballs summer camp with bad food, lots of shenanigans, and hopefully, a place where Xavier will create life-long memories.  That camp was a whopping $680… a good chunk of change from our family budget.  But it seemed to be about the going rate for a week of getting the kid out of the house and giving him the chance to get sunburn and poison ivy while having a week of total independence from mom and dad.  

Before I showed this fancy “STEM Preparation” camp invitation to my very gullible nine-year old son, I continued to read the fine print in the brochure.  My initial inclination was ‘sure, why not, Xavier will have fun at this camp.’  It was only a week, it had a number of dates available that worked with our schedule, and it seemed like a fun summer camp for my kid.  Maybe I could get a refund from the first camp I’d signed Xavier up for. Or maybe, if the price was right, he could go to two camps this summer.  And then I got to the tuition part of the package.  For a week at this exclusive, by invitation only, STEM Preparation summer camp, the tuition was just over $2,700.  That’s right.  Nearly three-grand.  

I continued to scan the brochure.  Nothing about tuition assistance or scholarship availability.  Just payment plan options and an additional $149 camp insurance in case you need to cancel for any reason.  

I showed the package to my husband, explaining the tuition cost.  

“What a scam,” he laughed.

We agreed that this camp was clearly targeting parents with an expendable income.  Parents who thought their kids were special and deserved to attend an exclusive, by invitation only, get your name in the local paper, summer camp.  Probably the same sorts of parents who send their kids to private schools and have a personal tennis-coach at the country club.  

And then the paranoid part of me wonders, ‘Does Xavier’s teacher think we are THAT sort of parents?’ Yikes!  Is it because we’re white?  Because we fit the privilege demographic of two college-educated parents?  Or did she genuinely think Xavier was a smart cookie and would have fun at this camp, and not consider that three-grand in tuition might be cost-prohibitive to whoever is nominated, or just flat out more money than parents are willing to pay?

We fall into the second category.  If I had to cough up three-grand for something, we could easily do so.  But we are fairly thrifty with our money and don’t throw it around on items that buy prestige.  Items like designer handbags, expensive watches, new top-end cars, or invitation only exclusive STEM Preparation summer camps.  

I continue to insist that my kids take weekly piano lessons.  We have an instructor who comes to our house each Thursday after school and he will patiently sit with each kid for half an hour while the play the same song, over and over again, poorly.

On Thursday, when I picked the kids up from school, Xavier, my nine-year old was limping.  He had somehow tweaked his knee, although he denied any sort of injury.  

Because his leg hurt, he claimed that he couldn’t do piano lessons that day.

“But you don’t need your leg to play the piano,” I argued back while driving home.  “You’re just sitting down.”

“Yes, but I can’t sit because my leg hurts,” he countered.

I thought I had him. Fine.  No piano lessons, no video games.  

“Well, if that’s the case,” I argued logically, “then you also can’t sit down for video games.  You should just go upstairs and rest.”

Like all children, mine love video games.  And I’m sure Xavier saw right through my reasoning and the veiled punishment.  

He replied, “But I can play video games, because the video game chair is nice and comfy and the piano chair is hard.”

I wasn’t going to let him get away with that argument.  And so, I continued the battle of wits with my nine-year old.

“Oh, well, if it’s the chair, then that’s no problem.  I’ll just carry the video game chair downstairs for you, and you can sit in it while you do your piano lesson.  No problem.”

But Xavier stuck to his guns and the battle of wits continued.

“But the video game chair is big and heavy, Mom,” he retorted.  “It’s too heavy for you to carry.”

I was really enjoying this match.  

“Oh, that’s not a problem,” I responded.  “I carried the chair from the store to my car, I put it in my car, I carried it into the house.  I can easily carry it down the stairs for you.”

Xavier began to get dramatic, with real feeling behind his voice.  “But if you carry the chair down the stairs, you could fall and bang your head and your eyeball will fall out, and I don’t want you to get hurt, Mom.”  

I couldn’t see him because I was driving, but it sounded like he was trying to make himself cry. I wasn’t letting up.

“Well, if you’re worried about me getting hurt, I could get the smaller computer chair from up-up-stairs for you,” I reasoned.

“No,” he was insistent. “Because you could still fall on the stairs and get killed.  And I don’t want you to get killed just so I can have a piano lesson.”  There were tears in his voice.  

So, I finally called him out.  “Why don’t we just say what we are really talking about here.  You don’t want to do piano lessons, and you don’t like that I say if you don’t do piano lessons, you don’t get video game time.”

The rest of the car ride was spent arguing about fairness, injury, and the cost of piano lessons (which I have to pay for whether they attend or not).  We finally reached an agreeable compromise that Xavier wouldn’t have do have a piano lesson this week, he could have video game time, but he would have to have a double lesson the next week to make up for the lost class.

After twenty-one years at, let’s call them a particular company, I’ve decided it’s time for a radical career change.  With much preparation and a good-sized savings account, I’m walking away from my current profession into the great unknown.

I don’t know what I’m going to do next, career wise, and my usual response when people ask me my plans is, “Nothing.  I’m going to do nothing.”  (I also will reply that I’m taking a professional sabbatical, which sounds more refined than “sit at home and watch Netflix.”).  I’ve deliberately decided that I need to allow myself some much-needed time off while I figure out my next move in life, whether it is to go to law school, write a novel, or run for political office, or work as a cashier at Target so I can get their employee discount.  

In my transition, though, I received a lot of responses from (male) colleagues who talk about how now that I’m not working for a while, I can be a “full-time mom.”

Let’s think about that phrase for a minute.  “Full-Time Mom.”  The implication is that while I was working, I wasn’t a full-time mom.  That I somehow was able to punch out of the time-clock of mom duties as soon as I left for work.  That I tuned out from the endless stream of dentist appointments, homework follow-up, field trip permission slips, piano lessons, and play date scheduling. That I wasn’t giving all that I had to my kids while I was working.  That I was, because of my professional job, a part-time mom and all my maternal instincts punched a time clock sublimated to my employer.  

Frankly, the phrase full-time mom is a backhanded insult to moms (and dads) everywhere.  Some parents choose to work out of the home, some parents have to work out of the home.  The phrase implies that the importance of parenting takes a back seat to those of us who work, that we are only able to parent part of the time.

The truth is, as anyone who parents knows, is that, regardless of work status, all parenting is full time.   And a deeper truth is, parenting isn’t at all any type of job that can easily be equivocated to an employment status.  No one seemed to suggest at work that I could now go and devote myself to being a “full-time wife.”  (And I doubt my husband would agree to any arrangement other than that anyway).  Parenting isn’t just something that you do, it is an identity and a responsibility that goes way deeper than any time or monetary commitment.  

I think part of the problem is that we are searching for language when we try to place a value on work done inside the home.  For too long, the labors and devotions of caregivers have gone unrecognized.  And the language we use in our capitalist culture, the one that we can most closely associate with value, has to do with making the labors and devotions of caregivers the equivalent of an employment status.  

There is no such thing as a full-time mom.  All parenting is full time, regardless of what one does (or doesn’t do) outside of the home.  

Never mind the fact that there are reports that Russia is using hypersonic weapons against Ukraine and blatantly disregarding the Geneva convention and the principles of armed conflict by blowing up hospitals and indiscriminately targeting civilians.

Never mind the fact that gas prices are now at over four dollars a gallon where I live and inflation seems to be driving up prices to the point that, despite having two incomes, we have switched our protein source from beef to chicken (and Costco chicken at that).

Never mind the fact that state after state seems to be following the lead of Texas and chipping away, if not outright squashing, the right to bodily autonomy.

Never mind the fact that civil discourse has fallen by the wayside and what passes for journalism has seemingly devolved into shouting heads with antagonist talking points.

Never mind all of the above plus a litany of other stuff that I probably should be worried or pissed off about.

What is pissing me off today is the fact that the play date Xavier had at the park was 52 minutes late.

52 minutes.

Late.

I get it, in America, we run late. I take it is a given that when we make dinner plans for 6 pm, it really means the guests will show at 6:20 and we will eat closer to 6:45. I build it into the schedule and snack so I’m not hangry.

But 52 minutes.

While I waited. With my kid.

I did get a ‘we are running late and will be there at 2:30’ text from the play date parent about twenty minutes before hand.

No problem, I sort of figured it would be closer to 2:30 anyway, American time, after all. Xavier and I took a Dollar Store detour and showed at 2:30.

2:30, exactly.

I shot a few ‘hey, we are here’ text her way, which went unanswered.

When the frazzled mom finally showed at 2:52, it was with a ‘my phone died, it’s been one of those days’ excuse.

I graciously gave her a pass and then retreated to the grass with my book, not feeling very social or chit-chatty with someone who doesn’t have the common sense to carry a phone charger when they are out and about. Or someone who thinks it’s acceptable to make plans for 2:00 (plans that involve kids) and then shows at nearly 3:00.

I get it, there are always reasons, there are always excuses. But right now, I’m pissed off at the lack of consideration.

Today, it’s not the impending demise of our rights or civilization that’s annoying me. It’s that we can’t even show each other the common courtesy of being on time.

I’m at a loss, really. Let’s begin there.  Because I can’t explain the horrors that are happening right now in the Ukraine to an adult.  So how to explain it to my kids who are nine and eleven years old?

I pride myself as a parent that my kids are pretty savvy on history and geo-politics.  They can find the Ukraine on any map, and can tell you who Putin is.  Xander, who is in the fifth grade, can tell you the countries, in order, that the Nazis invaded as well as the causes that lead up to the French Revolution.  

Today at lunch Xavier asked why Russia would invade the Ukraine.  We gave him the easy synopsis:  that Ukraine was once a part of the Soviet Union, but has been its own country for thirty years.  As an independent nation, it has tried to be more like Europe and less like Russia and that has made Putin mad because he wants it to be more like Russia, so Putin invaded Ukraine.  

But that doesn’t really tell the story.  That doesn’t really convey just how bad things are.

For as long as I can remember, I have told my kids that war is bad and should be avoided if at all possible.  I’m not a passivist.  And I know that sometimes ‘if at all possible’ just isn’t.  But I want my kids to understand that war is not something that should ever be sought or glorified.  Because anytime bullets are fired, there is a human cost that goes beyond the geo-political.

Last night, while reading on the AP news website about the war in the Ukraine, I screen-shotted a series of photos that had me trembling as a mother.  This morning, when Xander snuggled with me, I shared with him these pictures, as a way to explain the deadly toll of the Putin invasion.

The photos were taken by a journalist, Evgeniy Maloletka, in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, on 4 Mar, 2022. The army of Putin was shelling the city, but the photos weren’t of bombs blowing up buildings.  The pictures showed a man, racing into a hospital, clutching a small child in his arms.  The child was wrapped in a bloody blanket.  The mother raced desperately behind, a look of fear on her face.  The next photos showed the mom and the man mourning over the life-less body of the child.  The hospital could not save him.  The look of sheer anguish on the mother’s face, as she sat, inconsolable by her grieving boyfriend is something that, as a mother, I dread for myself.  The agony of losing a child knows no words.  This child was 18 months old.  His name was Kirill.  He was killed by the shelling of the invading army.

The last photo I showed to my son was the body of Kirill on a stretcher, surrounded by hospital staff trying, unsuccessfully, to save his life.  

Last Saturday morning, I took Xavier to The Pancake House.  It was a special mother and son morning, where I got some one-on-one time with my nine-year old.  Xavier got a stack of pancakes, and sides of bacon AND sausage.  

This Saturday, I wasn’t feeling the going out to breakfast vibe, so I made pancakes for the kids.  I don’t always make pancakes, they are a major production, and I usually end up burning one or two before coming up with something that the kids will eat.  

Xander always likes having a Micky Mouse pancake, whereas Xavier prefers the traditional round (or round enough) kind.  They are always chocolate-chip flavored pancakes, by the way.  (And by, by the way, when the kids were younger, I would tell them that the roundish pancakes were in the shape of the moon or the planet Uranus.  I don’t think I could get away with that now).

I presented Xavier the much labored over chocolate chip pancakes at the table, which were not very burnt and mostly cooked through.  He had a few bites while I putzed about in the kitchen.  After a while, I asked, “Which do you prefer, my pancakes or the ones from Pancake House?”

To which Xavier responded, “I like the ones at Pancake House better.”

In fairness, I even like their pancakes better than my own.  

But I replied, “Yes, but mine are made with love.”

So, I opened a Tinder profile.  I told my husband all about it.  He said it was a little weird.

I guess an explanation is in order.  

We have, as a part of our family, an Au Pair.  (For those who don’t know, an Au Pair is a cross between an exchange student and a nanny. It’s a young person from another country who lives with your family for a year or two and provides childcare in exchange for a stipend plus room and board).  I’ve been trying to encourage our AP to get out and do the dating thing. And, before I recommend a dating app to her, I want to make sure that it’s something that mom would approve of (or at least be able to warn her that she may see more crotch-shots than she’s used to if she uses it).

A quick search on the internet machine told me that Tinder is the dating app of choice for my area. And, as I’m of an older generation, I instantly associated that app with one-night stands, hook-ups, and crotch-shots. I met my husband before the on-line dating thing really took-off, and I’ve never used any form of social media for any of my pre-marriage dating dalliances.  As one of those crusty old people, I still sorta view them through a ‘they are just for sex,’ eye.  

But, I know things can change, and dating apps are how folks usually get to that first date these days. And these apps can also be used to meet people for coffee and book clubs and philosophy societies, so I thought I’d at least give Tinder the benefit of the doubt and check out this app myself.

So, I created a profile. I chose the most non-flattering picture I could find in my photos (no make-up, hair that was in the awkward stages of growing out a buzz cut, full face-mask) and described myself along the lines of “Late 40’s mom in CXXXX, very happily married.  Looking to make friends for occasional night-outs.  (Not interested in any romantic relationships, thanks).”  I thought I was being pretty clear that I was interested in things like going to a show or maybe a reading of the philosophical works of Heidegger.  And I also thought my photo all but said, “Move along, and don’t show me any crotch-shots.”

This very bland profile allowed me access to the app, and so I spent ten minutes scrolling through the options and profiles of people in my selected age range (I opted for both male and female, ages 37-57).  The app had options like ‘Need a Plus-One’ and ‘Let’s Meet Tonight,’ causing my mom-radar to go on red-alert warning that this was still very much a hook-up app.  But it also had some choices such as, ‘Just Friends,’ and ‘Really, Not Interested in Sex, We Mean It.’  

Most of the profile pictures for my ‘matches’ that I swiped through were male (even though I’d selected both genders), and some were, how do describe it… ‘truck stop creepy,’ maybe. But most were the typical middle-aged guy, trying to put his best face forward.  There were also a few crotch-shots.  Really, people posted pictures of their crotches in things like boxer-shorts for their lead-in profile picture.  Makes me wonder if they know where to aim a camera.  

I’d seen my fill of the site, and was ready to give our Au Pair an assessment of ‘This is what you get with Tinder.’  But before I deleted my profile, I gave into temptation.  I clicked the button at the bottom of the app and saw that, in the brief ten minutes from when my profile went live, with my awful picture and my, ‘Really, I’m not here trolling for sex,’ profile, I’d already received four ‘likes’ on my profile.    

That kinda creeped me out. I deleted my profile completely and removed the app from my phone.  

When Rob came to bed, I told him, during pillow talk, “So, I opened a profile on Tinder.”

His response was, “Um… do we need to talk?”