Gbot, this morning, scowling in front of the mirror and wildly smoothing down his hair, which I’d just brushed into floofiness: “No! I look like a baby!”
Gbot, seconds later, after I’d help smooth his floofy hair flat against his head: “Noooooo! I look like a rich old man!”
Personally, I’d go for the baby look over the other any day of the week.
This timely T-shirt availabe at Amsterdam Gifts on Cafepress.com!)
The week between Christmas 2012 and New Year’s Day 2013 will be remembered in this household as the week of Underpanting the Piddle Producer. Next Monday, Gbot merges with preschool, and dropping the diaper is part of the deal. And so we are working on becoming a four-underpants kind of family. We’re almost there, but I admit to procrastinating. Diapers are easier. So an all-out effort to direct piddle into the potty had been postponed. Yesterday we were a nine underpants family, but as Noah knew, things must get wetter before they get drier.
As we gain underpants, we are also gaining pedals. Mbot received a letter from Santa this year:
A handwriting analyst would nail Santa as a kind, patient, tired, right-handed forty-five year-old woman.
This morning, the pedal bike was under the Christmas tree.
“I am the luckiest boy in the world!” Mbot pronounced.
And that’s a take.
Other things that happened today that probably will not occur on New Year’s Eve, 2013:
1. While making Gbot’s bed, with his help (in theory), I found under the bed a.) Gbot and b.) twenty-six Swedish fish beside an empty bag labeled “Swedish Fish.” I had been wondering where my Swedish fish had gone.
2. In an unrelated incident, while oohing and aahing over Mbot’s new bike, I heard plaintive calls of “Mama, Mama,” from the bathroom. Investigation revealed that Gbot had climbed onto the bathroom counter, where he’d conducted a thorough investigation of the medicine cabinet and, apparently, brushed his teeth, and could not get down.
3. In a completely unrelated incident, except that it again involved Gbot, Gbot applied my new concealer, which I’d had heart palpitations while paying for last week, across his lips in an effort to make him “as beautiful as you, Mama.”
Am I beautiful when I’m angry?
4. In another completely unrelated incident, except that Gbot was found at the site of the incident, Gbot was caught, before breakfast, standing on a toy suitcase in order to reach the gold-wrapped chocolate coins on a high counter. When he was told to get down, he replied, “I was not getting into trouble. I was just doing my exercises.”
5. In a fifth and completely unrelated incident, except that once again, Gbot was there, both bots embarked on a “Look, it’s raining small, clean clothes!” extravaganza, and so instead of going outside to ride a new bike, they sat on their beds without talking (in theory) while I picked up, folded, and returned to the drawers so many miniature shirts, pants, and pajamas that, by the time I was finished, both guilty parties had fallen asleep.
Exhaustion sets in after the fifth misdemeanor.
May safety, happiness, and peace rain in your home in 2013!
I went inside Amazon last week. That’s right: Santa’s distribution center and birthplace of the Kindle.
Approaching and entering the behemoth windowless block of Building Three was an experience similar to what I imagine boarding the Millenium Falcon would be like: momentous and foreign. Disappointingly, Harrison Ford didn’t greet me at the door. In fact, no one did.
In spite of the presence of two uniformed personnel behind an elevated desk, and several others busily working the airport-like security exits, bag search windows, and two full-body turnstile entries, no one acknowledged my appearance in any way. I looked down to check if I had turned invisible on the I-10 somewhere between my front door and theirs, but no, there at the bottom of me were the comfortable shoes I’d been instructed to wear in the email from Mbot’s school PTO leader, who’d organized this fundraising event which involved a five-hour stint wrapping gifts, $.75 apiece to go to Montessori to buy more turkey basters for turkey basting works, or materials for books about the biomes of the wetlands.
I had happily agreed to participate, imagining a relaxing yet enjoyably competitive afternoon around a large conference table making friends with other mothers while we honed our folding and taping skills. I shrewdly estimated that I could wrap perhaps seventy gifts, that I’d be a better gift-wrapper by the end of the afternoon, and that I’d have more friends. In my fantasy, the mothers were sipping mochas, but I thought maybe those wouldn’t be allowed, what with Amazon’s strict “no stains on the presents” policy.
The fact that of the ten or so unacknowledged and confused looking-individuals milling before the entryway, I recognized none, made my fantasy flicker, as though somewhere in it, a wire had come loose. Like in The Matrix, when there’s a break in the continuum. A bit perplexed by this, I followed the crowd, shuffling past a log book in which I listed the personal electronic devices on my person. No one actually told me to do this, and there wasn’t a title on the book, like “Personal Electronics Device Log,” but flipping back a few pages I saw that that is what I was expected to do with my allotted line. I then passed through a metal detector and stood with the group, whose members were finally communicating with one another, mostly to express how strange an experience it had been so far, even though we hadn’t actually started.
I spent several minutes of watching employees running (literally) past us across the concrete floor of the massive space, whose skylit metal roof was higher than a field goal kick and whose north wall I could not even see, it was so far away, and contemplating the wonders of contemporary engineering like a medieval peasant who lived in an earthen hut probably did upon entering Chartres. Then a woman appeared and ushered those volunteers who had “done this before” out of sight into the indecipherable maze of the machine. After a few more minutes, a tall man arrived, did not introduce himself, mumbled a few indecipherable words, and passed out nondisclosure agreements. I dug for a pen and wondered if I was breaking any rules by leaning my piece of paper on a pallet of hardcover copies of some book I’d never heard of. I read both sides of the agreement and signed it. In doing so, I promised not to blab about any of Amazon’s secret processes. I would not reveal what made the reindeer fly.
The tall man led us–and we walked for well over a minute–through a door and into an office, where we were instructed to leave our personal items (we could keep our cell phones, but were admonished that talking on a cell phone and gift wrapping were not to be done simultaneously). Then we were led–again, for well over a minute–back out into the main space and into a maze of high aisles of segmented, numbered, metal shelves that continued into infinity. Each held items of all description and groups of people moving with carts, moving among clusters of low-tech machinery, tables, ramps, etc.–the main impression I’m left with is of movement, but when I caught a glance of an enormous banner across a wall reading: “No Running Allowed,” I realized that the running was just an impression, too.
Our small, confused group came to a halt across from loading bay #126, where a small, businesslike and perpetually moving person named Dolores introduced herself (actually), and proceeded to briskly and impressively demonstrate The Amazon Way of gift wrapping. There’s a way to wrap a Kindle, a way to wrap a CD, a way to wrap Boxed Items, a way to wrap books, and a way to wrap Large, Unwieldy Gifts. So as not to disclose an nondisclosable details, I will just note here that The Amazon Way involves neither a conference table nor any props of the traditional sort, like snowman-festooned rolls of paper, scissors, and small plastic rolls of Scotch tape.
Dolores, perhaps simply because she had a name and a smile, endeared us to her immediately. I speculate that our reaction was completely engineered by Amazon, their goal being to intimidate us with The Machine so that we would pledge undying loyalty to our immediate superior. Without her, none of us would be able to find a restroom, much less our personal belongings or the way out.
I imagined myself tripping or taking a wrong step and ending up in one of the giant blue bags designated for Large, Unwieldy Gifts, taped into a box and sent to Scottsdale. Perhaps with a card like one I affixed to a beribboned something-or-other, labeled, “Merry Christmas Fartpants and Sophia.”* At the end of the day (but when do the days end, inside Amazon, at this time of year, when employees work eleven-hour shifts around the clock?) some astute security personnel might blearily notice that a volunteer had entered, carrying a personal computer and a cell phone, and never left. They would assume I was still at my wrapping station. By the time the shift, and the next, rolled around, the narrow line containing my name and descriptions of my personal electronic devices would be lost within the book. I would only be discovered, lifeless but not yet bloated, thanks to Amazon’s amazing coordination with United Parcel Service, the next day or the next. Fartpants and Sophia would never be really the same again.
Each volunteer found a station for him or herself, checked for the appropriate tools, and went to work. I was again reminded of The Matrix, where Keanu Reeves’ real body was plugged into a giant power plant. My station was beside two stations shared by pregnant best friends, the only others, I’d learned, who were also wrapping for Mbot’s school. One had a son attending the morning session, which is why I hadn’t recognized her. We three formed the end of the line, literally.
For those of you considering such a diversion yourselves, I can reveal the most important secret without breaching my nondisclosure contract, and it is this: take the station as close to the front of the line as possible, so you can pick and choose what to wrap before undesirable, difficult, time-consuming items get rolled down to you. One woman, obviously a veteran, was up at the front hand-picking the Kindles. The Kindle, and I hope I’m not disclosing any nondisclosable details here, arrives via roller belt at your station accompanied by its own custum wrapping box with a pre-taped ribbon. If you get to exclusively wrap Kindles for five hours, your school will be swimming in quarters.
I enjoyed the challenge of a thirty pound a La Crueset dutch oven, but the Lady Gaga coffee table book almost bankrupted Montessori. In a fascinating paradox, while the Kindle is the easiest item to wrap at Amazon, home of the web-order book, an old-fashioned book is the most difficult. As old-fashioned books come in all those inconvenient sizes, they do not arrive on the roller belt accompanied by custom wrapping boxes. And they have all those pokey, pointy corners. Eight of them, to be exact. Each one ready to tear your carefully folded pre-cut sheet of wrapping paper. Again and again.
Tears are not allowed.
“Biege goes with everything.” –Burberry and Dolores (www.dailymail.co.uk)
Neither are more than three pieces of tape per gift. Nor is crinkling. Nor is unevenness or crookedness of paper, ribbon, or card. Nor is the blue ribbon on the green paper. Or the blue paper with the biege ribbon. But when in doubt, use biege. “Biege goes with everything,” says Dolores. She and Burberry know.
As the two pregnant ladies and I toiled, giggling over each other’s wrapping skills and high-fiving our ultimate triumph (if I do say so myself) over each superbly turned-out gift, Dolores appeared among us, one arm raised above her head. In her hand was a gift. One that had been tracked via a nondisclosable computer code to our row. It looked like something Mbot might have wrapped. It’s gold paper was crumpled at one end, tamed by three large pieces of tape.
“The Box of Shame,” I intoned. The pregnant ladies agreed. We watched, without shame, to see who the culprit was. We muttered not quite quietly that it was one of the women handpicking the Kindles. That they needed the Kindles because they had no genuine wrapping skills. Since no one fessed up, Dolores picked someone, at random, although I don’t think completely at random–Dolores was on the ball–and gave a lecture and wrapping demonstration as the rest of us guffawed. We toiled to avoid producing a Box of Shame ourselves.
Twenty minutes later, quality control arrived again, in the form of Dolores holding above her head a small, blue-wrapped box. I squinted to see what was wrong: aha: the tag had been applied sideways. Again, the Montessori mothers denied responsibility with smirks of superiority. Half an hour went by. I wrapped a felt pocketbook-making kit, a history of war, and a block of suet.
Dolores appeared again, now shaking her head and threatening us. In her upheld hand was another gold package; this time, it featured a large tear on its side. Even worse: the tear had been taped–thus indicting the culpable party not only of shoddy wrapping but of trying to hide it. I was by this time beginning to feel sympathy for the poor sucker who was really, really bad at wrapping presents. Give ‘em the Kindles, we agreed. With those genes, their kid would need the $.75 more than mine.
After three full hours of wrapping, and quite a bit of standing around because the gift volume was down that afternoon, I counted thirty tags to add to the Montessori pile. I’d made $22.50.
I was chaperoned to the turnstiles but no Amazonian knew how or where I could retrieve my personal belongings. My chaperone had to be called back to lead me to a small office far away. Then, because no one told me what to do, I bungled the exit procedure. I made every mistake in the book. No one helped. The entry personnel let me try to go through the turnstile instead of the X-ray. They let me almost get through without giving them my bag. And then my cell phone. And then not turning on my cell phone to make sure it wasn’t hot off the shelves. It was an extraordinary example of what happens when a slice of the population comes to take their way of being (The Amazon Way) as The Only Way. It was as though, although they were aware there were volunteers in the building, they could not fathom our not knowing The Amazon Way.
As I drove home on the I-10 just before rush hour, I thought about The Amazon Way. The pregnant ladies had repeatedly expressed their amazement that Amazon was raking in from $3.99 to $5.99 extra for each item we wrapped. I did the math. On the average, this left Amazon not only the $4.24 per gift after Montessori’s take, but also with whatever it was saving by not actually hiring people to gift wrap. ‘Tis the season for giving to Amazon. But Amazon is also giving back to our community. The company doesn’t have to have a program that obviously no one there quite knows how to deal with.
I do applaud Amazon for giving it a go, although it is far from perfect. And maybe my $22.50 will result in an education that cannot fail to catapult Mbot into a chair in Amazon’s boardroom.
Or maybe the money will just buy more paper to make books illustrating the biomes of the wetlands. “There are the plants that reach and reach high and high to the sun,” Mbot had said when he brought home the first book he’d made. “There are plants that stay down under,” he told me when he brought home the second book he’d made. “Wetlands are stinky!” he announced, when he brought home the third book he’d made.
I love them. I will keep them all forever. It’s my way.
What’s your way?
*Sophia was not her real name; I changed it here to protect the wife of Fartpants
methodlogical.wordpress.com
After Gbot and I stopped at the third home-improvement store in two days, in search of proper track lighting, proper bulbs, an adequate fan, and a dimmer switch in the right size plate in the right color (the less off- of two off-whites), I was waiting in line at the Starbucks. I deserved, I thought, something I had not made myself. I was pleased to see there were four cars ahead of me, because of the new gift I’m giving myself, the time to read. I reached across to the passenger seat where my copy of Pamela Druckerman‘s Bringing Up Bebe was optimistically waiting.
Last night, I got to the part in the book about waiting. That is, making your child wait. Not too long. Just long enough to begin to teach him how to deal with small frustrations. The theory is, if he learns to self-distract, if he learns patience, he will be happier and more successful in dealing with the old frustrting world which certainly, on a daily basis, makes you wait. Having a child wait also has the happy effect of keeping the constant requests that ricochet off a mother’s skull fourteen hours a day from actually penetrating bone and causing the gray matter to dribble out onto your blouse. “Attend,” the French mothers simply say. “Wait.” And, astoundingly, the demand is met, according to Druckerman, with actual waiting.
I thought I’d been effectively saying Wait. But in the past few days, we’ve been practicing more. I have said it twenty times today, in situations ranging from “I want a drink of water” to “I need a pencil.”
Needless to say, in the past sixty “waits,” I’ve become acutely aware of how immediately my children want things, all the time.
As I was waiting in the drive-through, reading as fast as I could, I remembered the famous marshmallow test of the sixties–and then, several paragraphs down, Druckerman brought it up. She not only discusses it, but she goes to the source–one reason I am enjoying this book so much. She meets the man behind the marshmallows, Walter Mischel who invented the famous marshmallow test.
The marshmallow test isn’t a way to choose the best filling for your s’more–it was a longterm study on how the ability to delay gratification in childhood relates directly to an adult’s longterm success in school and a career.
Briefly, the marshmallow test involved watching on hidden cameras a child left alone in a room at a table with a single marshmallow on it. The child has been told that if he doesn’t eat the marshmallow right away, he’ll get another soon (in fifteen minutes). Then the child is left alone in the room. Just he and his impulses and the marshmallow. Seventy percent of the time, the results were the same as when Walter the Farting Dog (not, apparently, named after Walter Mischel), was left in the cruise ship’s hold with the cheese. (Walter the Farting Dog Goes on a Cruise.) (Walter eats the whole cheese.) The children who didn’t eat the marshmallow–who waited and got two–proved to be more successful in school, have significantly higher SAT scores, and feel more fulfilled in their careers later in life.
The marshmallow test revealed not only that the children with self control would learn to fare better in the world, but how they did it. They weren’t just better at being patient–merely sitting quietly with their hands folded–but at–lo and behold–distracting themselves while they waited.
After waiting in the drive-through for nearly ten minutes, I got my coffee, and I got a reading fix. (I was distracting myself from waiting for my coffee by reading.) Gbot and I returned home with our bounty of electrical gadgets, and the electrician announced we would have to wait ’til Monday for him to finish the job. No lights in the bedrooms for four days. Waiting. It’s for everyone.
But I have too many things to do to let lightless bedrooms faze me. And–not married until thirty-nine–I’ve got a lot of years of practice under my belt.
For the bots, this waiting thing hasn’t been easy. As I type, Mbot is slouched in a chair looking at The Tortoise and the Jackrabbit, by Susan Lowell. He doesn’t want to be looking at the book, or sitting in the chair. Husbot has told him that it’s time to sit quietly in the chair with a book. The moment Husbot leaves the room, Mbot slides off the chair, his feet touching the ground, and makes eye contact with me over the edge of the book. He points to the sofa. His mouth quivers. Tears begin to fall. “Mama,” he wails.
Husbot returns. “You’re old enough to practice sitting in the chair,” he says. Tears. More “Mamas.” It is uncomfortable being me right now because my heart has migrated across the room and is in that chair while the rest of my body perches, feeling heartless, on my own chair. “I’m just waiting and wating,” wails Mbot. “I really just wanted to hug Mama…”
I know this is best. I know he must learn to distract himself. I know it is harder for Mbot to learn this than for many children–Gbot, for example. I don’t trust myself that I know the best way to teach him this. But surely practice cannot hurt.
“I want to get out of this place.” Pause. “Mama.” Pause. Big gulp of air with the hint of a yawn. “Mommy, mommy.”
He never calls me Mommy.
“Malcolm, that’s enough,” says Husbot, striding in. “I want you to sit still and read your book.”
“I don’t want to read my book….” Wail, wail, wail, sniffle, bawl, gulp, cry. How many sounds there are for self-pity. The wind chimes clong and gong from outside the screen door. The wailing stops. The soothing tones have changed the subject, at least for several seconds.
“No, I wanted to hug Mama. I’ve been sitting here for these many minutes…I want to go…”
I remember again the clock my sister recently bought for her twins. Not just any clock: the Time Timer:
This model is suggested for children with autism or ADHD. A list of various models can be found on Friendship Circle Blog.
I order it. Husbot leaves the room. Mbot sits quietly for several minutes. “Can I come out now?” he asks.
Husbot lets him, telling him he’s been a good bear, telling him he’s old enough to learn to read quietly for thirty minutes while Mom works.
And I’m thinking this is working only because Husbot and I are working together and Gbot’s got the croup and is in the bedroom lying down. I have found it impossible to enforce a quiet reading time while running interference between the bots.
But it is rewarding to see that Mbot can do it–can sit in a chair with a book for thirty minutes, even if it’s thirty whining, wailing minutes. It’s a start. We will work on it. I will wait.
While the Bots and I were making the transition from Idaho to Arizona, cool to warm, play days to preschool, Lance Armstrong was making a transition from winner to loser–at least loser of his seven Tour de France victories after the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency released a 200-page document implicating the cancer-survivor-cycling-hero as a key player in what the press is calling the most systematic and sophisticated doping system in the history of professional cycling. Bloomberg Businessweek reports that he will lose out on an estimated $200 million in speaking fees over the next ten years. He’s not quite the hero he was thought to be.
It made me stop and think about heroes.
I found that, although I take my blog’s name from them, I know little about heroes as a group, except that the fictional ones appear on a lot of underpants, and that my children love them. Loving them is the point, right? Aspiring to be like them–the perfect, moral, strong-of-heart, body, and mind-betighted beings–is what it’s all about, right? But when heroes disappoint, time and again, it’s time to dig deeper into our need for them, our expectations of them, and our expectations of ourselves.
So, what, exactly, IS a hero, these days, anyway?
In an article called The Seven Paradoxes of Heroism, Scott T. Allison and George R. Goethals, psychology professors at the University of Richmond, list some interesting findings from studies they did that asked people about their ideas of heros. Here they are:
This was all very interesting. But the article that pulled it all together for me was written by Scott LaBarge, a philospher and professor of philosophy at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, in California. In his article, On Heroism: Why Heroes Are Important.
LaBarge writes, “We largely define our ideals by the heroes we choose, and our ideals — things like courage, honor, and justice — largely define us. Our heroes are symbols for us of all the qualities we would like to possess and all the ambitions we would like to satisfy….And because the ideals to which we aspire do so much to determine the ways in which we behave, we all have a vested interest in each person having heroes, and in the choice of heroes each of us makes….”
He goes on to say that many kids today haven’t even heard of the likes of Ghandi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Susan B. Anthony. And so their choices fall to baseball players, rap musicians, movie stars, and professional cyclists. Which is detrimental largely because when these heroes fall, it leads to “pervasive and corrosive cynicism and skepticism.”
Is there a fix for such cynacism? Yes, and it turns out it’s an important lesson in how to view–and treat–our heroes.
“The best antidote to this cynicism is realism about the limits of human nature,” writes LaBarge. “…We need to separate out the things that make our heroes noteworthy, and forgive the shortcomings that blemish their heroic perfection.”
I agree. I’m not arguing for forgetting Lance’s vast deception. But I am a proponent of continuing to appreciate all the good things he’s done.
LaBarge points out that while the “frailties of heroic people make them more like us…that they seem to reduce the heroes’ stature,” but, paradoxically, this might give us hope that we, in all our own weakness, might to accomplish “deeds of triumphant beauty.”
The biggest problem I have with Armstrong’s deception is that it perhaps robbed others of the opportunity to accomplish “deeds of triumphant beauty.” But isn’t simply finishing a 3,500-mile bike ride over twenty-something mountain passes in twenty-three days that has resulted over the last ninety-nine years in sixteen deaths (wwww.letour.fr) in itself a deed of triumphant beauty?
We don’t have to forgive Armstrong for cheating, or for deceiving us. But we can still admire his Live Strong campaign, his althleticism, her perseverence, and his work ethic. And we should admire our own ability to seek heroism in others and in ourselves.
My greatest concern is how to teach the Bots this stuff. LaBarge maintains that it’s pretty easy. “Heroic lives have their appeal built in, all we need to do is make an effort to tell the stories….Tell your students what a difference people of courage and nobility and genius have made to the world. Just tell the stories!”
Katy Abel, in her article, From Spiderman to Mom: How Kids Choose Heroes, writes of a teacher who does tell the stories. Her students spend over a month each school year studying the Odyssey. They learn that “ancient heroes, unlike modern ones, were warriors who also cried and made mistakes.”
But Abel contends that ”if students are asked to write about a hero, but aren’t expected to emulate the hero through good deeds of their own, then the effect is minimal….”
“Start by going home tonight and listing your five most important heroes,” advises LaBarge. And so what will I do? Beyond my own parents, my in-laws, strong women in general, peacekeepers in general, scientists in general, brave artist/writers, and the best teachers I’ve had, and the be-tighted guys on the booties of the Bots, I find I come up short when it comes to knowing much about many heroic figures in history. So here’s what I’m going to do: I’m going to the library. I’m going to the children’s section. I’m going to check out biographies. The Bots and I will read them together. We’ll learn about heroes. And we’ll talk about how we can be heroes, too.
So I thank you, Lance, even while Nike is cursing you, for expanding my sense of possibility about how I might teach the Bots about heroes, and about how to be their own heroes.
Sorry it’s so dark. But it IS a cave. Mbot is modeling the giant bat ears that demonstrate how well bats can hear. So here he is hearing the story of the unlucky sloth, told over and over again, really really loudly.
For those of you who read yesterday’s cryptic post before I discovered that most of it was missing, I apologize. Now, in today’s few bot-free minutes, I will try to recreate it:
11,000 years ago, a sloth fell through a crack. It fell into a cave. It couldn’t get out. It died in the cave.
The kind docent in the Shasta Ground Sloth cave at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum told us this story on Sunday when we were admiring the fossilized skeleton and the ancient sloth poop that I managed to not delete in yesterday’s post.
The bots listened with great concern and then baraged the docent with questions. “Why did he fall through the crack?” (I was going to answer, ’because it didn’t come when it’s mother called it’ but she beat me with ‘Sloths don’t have very big brains.’) “Why could he not get out?” (There was no door.) “Why did he die?” (Because he couldn’t get out of the cave.) While Mbot tried on a giant pair of bat ears which magnified all the cave sounds, Gbot stood rooted in place beside the docent, craning his neck upward to look at her and repeating the questions. Perhaps hoping for different, better answers. But the answers didn’t change.
On the way home, he retold the story many times.
Gbot: “The three-tailed ground sloth fell through the crack. He fell into the cave. He couldn’t get out and” (voice lowering sadly) “he died in the cave.”
Over the next few days, the story was told over and over again. To Daddy, to Aunt Susan, to Grandma, to Nanny over the phone, to Miss Mary the music teacher. It was obviously sad and disturbing. How was I to know it was going to turn into a story of rescue and redemption?
On Wednesday, from the backseat, Gbot told the story again. “But Mama,” he said, “we could use Bob the Builder’s tools!”
“You’re right!” I exclaimed. “A jackhammer can cut through concrete and rock.”
Gbot: “Yeah, and we could make a door and he would say, ‘What a wonderful door you made, Mama and Gbot,’ and he would go through the door in the cave and he would go home to his mommy. And we would go home and talk about how the sloth fell into the cave and got out the door. And the sloth would say, ‘Thank you for making my door in the cave.’”
I praised his creative solution to the sloth’s big problem. Now, perhaps, we could stop hearing about the sloth in the cave. Although it was awfully cute.
But of course, as all answers do, this one led to another question. After a brief pause from the back seat, Gbot asked, concern edging his voice again,
“What if we were sloths, Mama?”
“We would be careful sloths, Spice Bear,” I said. “And we would always carry jackhammers, just in case.”
More about the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum later this week. There were many moments to savor. Today’s recommendation, which would have been yesterday’s recommendation if my post hadn’t fallen through a crack, is: Go there!
“
I just read my friend, Nancy Sharp’s, blog, Vivid Living. The post was entitled, A Dark Night For Parents. I didn’t know what it referred to. I feel like an idiot. I have been so out of touch, ushering a toddler and a preschooler through airport security, home to Phoenix, into naptime, and around the block, that I hadn’t heard the news. That everyone but I had heard. I even used the word “dead” in my blog post title. So much for keeping current.
My husband is, at the moment, in the bots’ bedroom reading to them while I sit, blindsided by the news I just learned on Nancy’s blog. Her son, a college sophomore, was at a Batman premiere last night. In Denver. Different theater. I have other friends in the area. One I just emailed a “you’re all right, right?” note; the other had left two phone messages that she was okay–but I hadn’t checked my messages.
And here I was this morning on a plane from the beach back home, looking past the face of my two year-old to the mountains ten thousand feet below afraid vaguely of engine trouble, having to use those ridiculous oxygen masks (a hand on my shoulder, “You first, then them,” and I, wondering if I could do that). Not knowing. Husbot didn’t mention it on the drive home. The talk was all about no naps and fleas. I am angry at him, probably undeservedly, for not mentioning it. If I had known, it would have been the first thing I’d have said. Did you hear. Do you know any more…I would have called Nancy.
Instead I wrote about Gbot’s indignant rebellion against wearing his bear suit. Which is the stuff of an easy grin, and it’s real life at its best, at its very, very best.
But this death is real life. This death that springs from shadows in the places we feel safest. And Husbot is calling me to read to the bots. He is tired and fleabitten. My family needs me. But they are safe–I think–for the next five minutes. And I need to share this grief.
Husbot and I have spent the last two weeks taking the weebots to the theater, trying to help Mbot feel more comfortable with the dark, with the noise, with the crowd. They are so young–we will not need to mention the death of twelve people, the injuries of fity-eight more, to them. But I do not think I am overstating when I write that the whisking away of this safe haven will be with us forever.
I cannot help but wonder how many rounds are fired in the actual movie. I am not blaming the film, or the director. Or the gun. All that is the subject for another day.
Today, I extend my deepest sympathies to the loved ones of those who perished in Aurora this morning. Your grief is not mine. It cannot be. But I harbor grief of my own. I do not know your names. But I am crying for you.
Last Saturday evening, twenty minutes before leaving for a family graduation celebration, as I bent over to retrieve the bots’ sandals after a frolic under the hose, my phone fell out of my bra and bounced through the grate into the gutter, landing softly on a bed of leaves and probably spiders below.
As I rushed to get the bots (not to mention myself) ready for the evening, Husbot, already in his dress clothes, disappeared outside and reappeared five minutes later, with my phone (announcing, “I wish I could do this sort of thing for a living,” to which I replied he probably could). I don’t know how he did it, something to do with a coat hanger and duct tape.
But the moral of the story is, I Was Right. About not carrying my phone around in my bra. it would have served me well to have recently reread The Girl Pocket, and so I am reposting it today. (You will notice that the reason I note for not carrying the phone in my bra is not that it might fall into a gutter minutes before an important family gathering, but still. I Was Right.)
The Girl Pocket
As I was getting ready for bed a few nights ago, the eyeball in this picture fell out of my bra. For those of you familiar with Fall Apart Chubby (posted 9/13/11), you already know that I consider my best, most convenient pockets to be the two in which my breasts also happen to reside. If men can carry a Man Purse, why can’t women have Girl Pockets?
A miniature Batman figure fell out alongside the eyeball. The night before, it was a paperclip and a twist tie. Talk about the Great Pacific Garbage Vortex (You Can’t Shoot the Toy Fairy, posted 9/24/11). This happens every night, except the detritus doesn’t usually stare back at me like, “It’s not my fault women don’t have pockets.”
Of course that is not entirely true: women do have pockets. And we could use them. But stuffing chest pockets is unfashionable (witness the Pocket Protector); using hip pockets is uncomfortable; and using back pockets is unthinkable if not impossible.
But the bra? Now there’s a pocket—two, actually—in which only a few of us feel like we’re carrying enough. And, thanks to the forgiving physiology of the bra’s chief inhabitants, it seems like there’s always room for more. For years, even before giving birth, I found it a convenient repository for many of life’s necessities: credit cards. Driver’s licenses. Boarding passes. Lipstick. And now: milk bottles (for short periods, between car and house, for example). Diving sticks (or anything that you don’t want to forget to bring with you as you whiz around the house late to swimming lessons). Car keys.
The bra is not recommended for everything. A few examples spring to mind: sewing pins. Nail clippers. Half a cracker. Cell phones. (You sweat. They die.)
I am, admittedly, a slow learner. I attended a women’s college twenty years ago and didn’t become a feminist until I became a mother. I am not going to rant about the need in the western world for pregnant lady parking spaces and drive-through grocery stores, but is a pocket really too much to ask?
Aside from the cargo pant, whose pockets were never meant to carry cargo, not really, or athletic pants with a zip pocket big enough for a tampon and a ten dollar bill, women’s fashion is devoid of useful pockets. There is no sexy mommy equivalent of the safari vest. It’s not anyone’s fault; we can’t blame Dolce and Gabbana. It’s just a matter of evolutionary biology. A sexy woman is one who can snap her fingers and get what she wants. She doesn’t have to actually lug it around on her person. A woman with bulging pockets sends out one of several messages: 1. I am homeless. 2. I am desperate. Neither of these things signals a good target for childbearing. Thus: the human male has no biological imperative to find her sexy.
The Girl Pocket is my secret weapon. Now that I am the mother of two toddlers, though, the secret’s out, and not just at bedtime. At the grocery counter yesterday I looked down to find my keys dangling out the neck of my t-shirt. It’s a shiny, jingly clump, so maybe other shoppers just thought it was a brooch. Lady Gaga would go there.
The road to a world where useable pockets are socially acceptable for women is a steep and uphill grade. When I flew alone with Mbot, when he was first learning to crawl (read: he did not want to fly, or be held, or sit), I wore a thin, black wool cycling jersey. It looked normal from the front, and even lint-free, thanks to Husbot’s lint roller, but those behind me witnessed three kangaroo pockets bulging across the back. Perfect for two milk bottles, a wallet, some tissues, and two binkies (a fresh one and the one that had met the floor, in separate pockets, of course). Look ma, no hands!
“You look funny,” said my brother-in-law as we came through security.
“Smart,” I said. “I know you meant to say, ‘smart.’”
“No,” he said. “You look funny.”
But the eyeball in my bra says otherwise.
Where do you keep your stuff??
Quobot (noun) a quote from a bot, marvelous in any of many ways. Can be a single word (ie, “discoverment, the cross between an experiment and a discovery), a phrase, or a conversation.
I’ve started a new page called Quobots, and I’m looking for contributions! Let’s put the best quotes from our bots here for admiration and amusement. Please submit yours to me at betsy@betsyandrews.com. Contributors will of course retain full copyrights and get full recognition, links, and all the schwag that goes along with a good quobot (which isn’t, um, at this point, much. But a link is always good!)
I’ll start, and I’ll post this here on my main page, too, because I’m still figuring out how these different pages work.
http://www.islandhopper.hubpages.com
Yesterday:
Mbot: “Mom! There’s a bug on the bathroom floor!”
Me: “Thanks, Mbot. I’m coming to kill it.”
Mbot: “But it’s a living thing!”
Me: “Yes, but he shouldn’t be living inside.”
Mbot: “He might crawl up you and bit [sic] you, thinking you’re a tomato!”
Pause.
Mbot: “OR, it might be okay cuz he’d climb up and think,” (both hands raised here and shoulders shrugged emphatically) “‘Oh yeah. It’s just you, Mom.’”
And here is proof. (meta.wikimedia.org)
Yesterday, from the back seat, after an unusually long silence following a conversation about nothing in particular:
Mbot: “Mom, do ants have little, tiny books?”
Pause.
“Mom?”
The answer, after I succeeded in not choking on my coffee, was: Of course they do.
What was the best question you’ve heard lately?
