On Boys Being Boys

I took my leave of #5 on Sunday at a Scout camp somewhere in the pretty part of New Jersey. For the first time ever, he wouldn’t hug me goodbye.

He’s a month shy of eleven. I’m pretty sure that he would have hugged me goodbye had he not been surrounded by other similarly-aged boys.

However, he was, and he didn’t.

It happened like this:

Me: So, hey bud, I’m gonna take off now, ok?

#5: {turns away from me, jams fists in pockets and kicks the ground} Bye.

Me: {torn between trying not to cry from my heart breaking and trying not to laugh out loud at his transparency} Bye. See you next week.

And I drove over an hour back home alone, contemplating this stage he has entered into:

Little-big.

He can still fold himself up into small spaces: under CC’s arm on the couch for movie time, in between CC and I when we’re napping, into a tiny sliver of his twin-sized bed when I read him Harry Potter, behind furniture so he can jump out and scare his sisters. But gone are the days when his face and my elbows were the same exact the height and he was always getting whacked in the eye from hovering behind me in the kitchen. His pants are all at least three inches too short, and he can hide his candy on the second-highest shelf in the pantry.

He was still four years old for a couple days when he began kindergarten. We debated whether to start him or keep him out, but his mind was so ready. He pulled out pads of paper when his sisters were at school and played school by himself. He covered our driveway with the powers of ten in chalk and when he ran out of driveway, used the neighbor’s next door. Starting him in school also guaranteed he’d be around other boys. He’s a little outnumbered in our house. It was definitely the right decision for him, but it did take a while to catch up socially.

He’s totally caught up. He’s making up for lost time.

He’s digging holes, building forts with zip lines to and from, riding his bike on a ramp that has broken the wrists of three friends, and “accidentally” kicking over nests of ground bees; he’s pulling snapping turtles out of the lake, always looking out for ways to earn a buck, and getting in trouble for pushing his boundaries. A lot. With friends. In short, he’s being a boy. Rejection is inevitable.

Back at the camp, I didn’t force a hug out of him, though I was caught totally off guard. I felt like I was in middle school again when suddenly the boy I was “going” with wouldn’t talk to me in front of his friends. Someone wisely suggested to me that I switch to the goodbye fist bump; it’s the best I’m gonna get out of him until he graduates high school. When he’s way past Little-big.

This camp allows no electronic devices, not even radios. It’s one of the reasons we sent him there. I can’t reassure ~~him~~ myself with a goodnight text. I think he must be homesick. Then I laugh at my own transparency.

Being a stepmom gives me an edge in handling the rejection. After all, it isn’t as if all five kids accepted me wholeheartedly from the get-go; as the Roger Clyne song goes, “I’ve seen a slammin’ door a time or two before.”

But there is one thing I really wish I could tell him this week, right now while he’s there. One thing I really wish he knew, and it’s killing me that I can’t. If I could text him, I’d say this:

Dude. I just found out: they filmed the first Friday the 13th movie at your camp. Chh-chh-chh ahh-ahh-ahh. Lookout!

One Leo Sunday

We experienced a great loss at work last month: Leonardo died.

I’ve been asked to say a few words about him.

Despite his fierce reputation, he never got into any fights at work.

He brought the office together in much-loved games such as Fish Taco* and Where’s Leo**?

While he enjoyed the occasional treat and a bit of travel while his home was being cleaned, he really preferred the simpler things in life. You could pretty much always find him relaxing on the water.

I mean in the water.

Leo, you are missed. The picture we have in place of your mini-aquarium is a poor substitute for your former glistening presence. I will always fondly remember you crossing your fins as you lounged in your leaf, mere days before your untimely demise.

leonardo — Leonardo, pre-death. Note the leaf. Photo: Davis Duffield.

Just keep swimming, Leo. Just keep swimming.

* “Fish Taco” was a game in which, when one observed Leo reclining in his leaf (mounted sideways in his bowl and curved in such a way that if one really used one’s imagination one could see how it might be said to resemble a taco shell) one would then scream, “FISH TACO!” and then punch (pseudo-good-naturedly, as in a game of Punch Buggy) whomsoever happened to be within arm’s reach.

** “Where’s Leo?” is rather self-explanatory game, although one might wonder where exactly a beta fish could hide in an approximately one-quart-sized aquarium. The answer, of course, is anywhere he can.

Here are your links:

I thought this one was particularly cool: What a week’s worth of groceries looks like in 15 different countries, and what it costs. We spend $340, much like the family from the US, though what we buy looks very different. The lack of fast food makes our dollars go further, but it does cram our fridge full and lead to many refrains of “There’s nothing to eat!” (Technically we have more children than that family, but theirs are teenage boys, so I don’t think you can truly draw that comparison…I think it’s a safe bet that the parents don’t get any of the pizza the kids are holding.)

A photographic series showing what 200 calories looks like in different foods: Artfido.

This is a beautiful photo series: fstoppers- Portraits of the elderly as they once were.

Which is a nice tie-in to Long-Life Advice From 7 Centenarians. Real Simple.

A badass tutorial: How to Photoshop Your Gremlin Kids Into a Star Wars Poster on the Dimwit Diary.

Happy Sunday.

True Parenting Confessions

I remember the day it happened.

Our school district has an evil contrivance called “Winter Break”. Don’t confuse this with the break that happens in December, the one punctuated by good cheer and the type of good behavior that can only be brought about by the imminent threat of No Presents.

The “Winter Break” of which I speak happens in February, near Presidents’ Day. Around the time when you haven’t seen the sun for about three and a half months and would cheerfully set your winter coat on fire you’re so sick of it, were you not so entirely dependent upon it to keep from freezing to damn death.

Most years Winter Break is an entire week long, depending on hurricanes and teacher negotiations.

This is a vile break for several reasons, but the most important are these:

1) It’s smack dab in the middle of peak production season for new Broadway shows.

2) CC is always in production on one of said shows during this break and working double time.

3) I am not, and am therefore locked inside during the day with the kids.

Yes, “locked inside” because, remember:

4) It’s February in New Jersey.

The first year we had the kids, we were approximately 38 hours into Winter Break. I was five hours past sanity. But we had finally landed on an activity that made everyone happy: they made cookies while I unpacked CC’s family china and washed and dried it.

I looked at the clock and it was 2pm. We had all been so absorbed in our tasks that I had entirely forgotten to feed them lunch. There were still three boxes of china left to unpack, and all the counter space was taken up with it. I was holding in my hand a shallow bowl that had a weathered old note indicating the origin and the date “early 1710’s”.

Me: So, ah, you guys must be hungry, huh?

Them: Yeah!

Me: Do you want me to make you some canned beef stew, or would you rather eat cookie dough for lunch?

Duh.

So it began that I don’t feed my kids lunch when they’re home. Lunches to take to school are no problem–especially now that CC makes them pack their own lunches.

At first I continued offering no-brainer choices like the first one to get out of making lunch. Then I moved on to having to run an urgent errand at lunch time and leaving a responsible kid in charge of lunch. Eventually, I stopped even trying.

They don’t seem to be bothered by it.

We have enough things around that they can fix themselves, or graze upon, and every so often one of them will come to me and say, “I’m hungry!”… and if it’s one that I like that day, I’ll make them something.

Once I noticed the frozen yogurt containers that #2 and #3 were eating out of very near meal time. The ability to obtain junk food on a whim is, I believe, the most valued benefit of having both a drivers license and a job for a teenager.

Me: I take it you guys aren’t super hungry right now?

#2, smiling sheepishly: Not really.

Me: Good.

#2: Because you weren’t going to cook for us anyway, were you?

Oh wait, that was true. And it happened today. At dinner time. Nevermind, that story has nothing to do with this blog post.

What’s the lamest thing you’ve ever made for lunch?