When Liam and Caleb were little, they both loved Going on a Bear Hunt. Remember that?

Going on a bear hunt.

We’re going to catch a big one.

What a beautiful day!

We’re not scared!

And then there’s the long tall grass to get through, swishy-swashy; and the mud, squelch-squerch…and pretty much every other obstacle known to human kind, each with its own sound effect.

And the refrain, of course is “we can’t go over it, we can’t go under it… oh no! We’ve got to go through it!”

They do get through it, find a bear, are afraid of the bear, run back through all that crap, and climb into bed with the covers over their heads.  Very satisfying. Except for the poor bear, who is left alone to wander the seashore.

I’m thinking about bear hunts these days as older son tries to adjust to his new school.  It’s his second new school in six months–not easy to do, by a long shot, I know–and he’s pretty clear that we’ve ruined his life.  I don’t have the heart to tell him that he’s only eleven. The life-ruining hasn’t even begun. Wait till he’s sixteen and I show up at some party where he’s all cool with the hair gel and the soccer jersey and then I trill from the front hall that it’s time to come home and practice the euphonium. That will be life-ruining.

He has forgotten the lesson of the bear hunt. He can’t believe that he won’t be in the middle of a rocky transition forever. As far as he’s concerned, his new school is an abysmal failure, a prison, a nightmare from which he will never, ever awake. And we’ve ruined his life.

School is stupid and British spelling is stupid and English history is stupid and oh by the way, we ruined his life.

Here’s the thing about Liam: he hates not knowing. He’s a perfectionist in pretty much everything and as a result of that (says moi, armchair shrink), when he explodes because of all the pressure he puts on himself, he explodes BIG and DRAMATICAL and WITH BAD WORDS.  Let’s keep in mind that his mamma is a card carrying member of the Good Enough Club and Husband aims for perfection but then he can’t ever remember where he put it, so we’re both quite puzzled about Liam’s need to be perfect.  Fortunately–or unfortunately–he often comes quite close: perfect report cards; chosen for this honor or that selective program or that elite soccer squad.  He works hard; he pushes himself; he’ll kill himself trying to get something right.  And also manages to be goofy and silly and dance around in his underpants to Kesha songs.

“Passionate” is the word I always use for Liam and I am reminded again, in these past few weeks, that passion is a double-edged emotion.  The highs are really, really high, and the lows are cataclysmic.  He’s in a cataclysmic low right now as he tries to suss out the new system, tries to remember that gray is now grey, and color is now colour.  There have been sinkers–not quite as epic as when we first arrived in Abu Dhabi, but close–and as usual, I try to deal with them with some ad hoc mixture of empathy, firmness, listening, berating, whispers, shouts, hugs, threats, and bribes.

Yes. My parenting has lacked consistency lately.  Thanks for that insight.  And Husband and I aren’t always on the same parenting page at the same time, which adds a whole ‘nother level of wonderfulness to the situation: he wants to cajole when I want to be firm; he berates when I want to offer hugs. I don’t know if we’re complementing each other or just muddying the already swirling waters.

I am trying to remember my own bear hunt lessons, oh yes I am. I tell myself we’ve just got to get through all this swishy-swashy grass–and my sister (so wise and yet…younger. How can that be?) reminds me (and I then remind Liam) that it won’t be like this forever. But. When your adorable boy in his navy blue blazer is whisper-screaming at you that you’re an idiot and (say it with me) you’ve ruined his life–in the elevator of our building–with other people on the elevator- AT 6:50 IN THE MORNING…well, let’s just say it’s hard to hang on.

For a brief nano-second I thought, what if I just smacked him? Just flipped his cheek with my hand to jolt him out of his hysteria?

I didn’t flip his cheek. In a triumph of will over emotion, I hugged him close and told him it wouldn’t be like this forever.

I am not sure he believes me. I am, after all, the woman who has ruined his life.

Going through it. That’s the thing that sucks, about life and bear hunts, both.

squelch-squerch-squelch-squerch…

image source

this post is linked up with the new improved (probably lemon-scented) blog formerly known as lovelinks: yeah, write. so yeah, right, click on over, read some fabulous writing, then come back later in the week and vote vote vote.

1. “because I said so, that’s why.” Yes. That was me. And more than once. The phrase of parental last resort–and it’s not a resort that I’d like to visit as often as I seem to be doing.

2. There was a time, back in the day, when I thought team sports were the exclusive realm of the Great Santini and his offspring. I didn’t play a team sport growing up (me and hand-eye coordination were strangers for a long, long time); I don’t follow a particular team; I don’t get the whole “team” thing. Mostly I just don’t play well with others, is what it boils down to.  But then Liam fell in love with soccer and there I was…standing on the sidelines in the freezing cold, driving all over New York to games, and here in Abu Dhabi, I’m back in the shlep-wagon, out to soccer school, over to practice…And you know what? Being on a soccer team (and having the great coaches he had in NYC–thank you, Sean and Marcus) — it’s the best thing that could’ve ever happened to him.  Of course, my weekends are shot to hell, but hey, who needs a weekend away, right? Rah rah rah go team.

3. “do you know how many starving children there are in the world who would eat that?” I have a very clear memory, when my mother would say that to me, of saying back to her “well why don’t you mail my food to the kids in Biafra then, hmm?”  Funny, she didn’t seem to appreciate that idea. I remember also thinking to myself “I will never, ever say such a stupid thing to my kids.”  Yeah. Well. Um. What can I say. It’s true, dammit. So eat your carrots!

4. In graduate school, I spent a lot of time thinking about feminism, poststructuralism, gender theory, and other stuff that now makes my early-middle-aged brain hurt to even contemplate. At the time, however, my friends and I sat around talking learnedly about how gender differences were really just socially constructed ideologies that could be done away with if parents would just be a little more, you know, thoughtful.  I believed my own words until the first time my little boy picked up a stick and said “pwang pwang pwang…”  I’m still a feminist but now I’m a feminist who has to accept that she has sons who will, for reasons known only to their DNA, step over or around the socks on the floor, leave the toilet seat down, and look at her blankly when she says “why did you knock that over?” Let me be clear–they are made to put the socks in the laundry, wipe off the toilet seat, pick up the thing they knocked down. But I’m fighting against genetics, here, people, which means that, yes, I’ve been that person who smiles and shrugs and says “well (nervous giggle), you know, boys…” Ugh.

5. Related to 4: when my boys were toddlers, I’d watch their adorable chubby selves playing “bakery” in the sandbox and look in horror at those ill-bred “big boys” playing chase and I’m-gonna-shoot-you-with-my-triblatteringlaserpistolgrappler.  I’d be all smug and judgey and decide that the mothers of these boys had utterly failed. I mean really, what mother would let her children play such a violent game? Um…hi. That would be me. And I’ve even said “run around and chase with your friends,” because I recognize that children are like puppies. They need to be exercised regularly or they’ll just wreck the furniture. .

6. MY children will never be like those OTHER children who walk around surgically attached to their screens. Cue hysterical laughter here. Computers, e-readers, DSi, iPod touch…the electronics in this family could stock an Apple store. I think we manage their computer time pretty well but the sad fact is that when screens are up, bickering is down.

7.  You know how when you were little and your mom would spit a bit on her shirttail or (worse) her fingers and smootch at your cheek to get off the remnants of your last meal? And remember how you thought “god that is gross!” Remember how you thought, nah, you’d never do such a thing? Yep. I thought so too. And then just yesterday, I grabbed Caleb’s arm just before he got on the school bus and swiped–with my shirt and some spit–at the glob of jam on his cheek. He said “MOM THAT’S DISGUSTING” and squirmed away.

8. I never thought I would have sons.  How’s that for hubris? I always wanted to have children but in my mind’s eye, it was always me and charlottedoralucyameliaruby reading Little House on the Prairie and playing dress-up and then later, when they were grownups, my daughters and I would hang out and have long conversations about Life and Shoes and Relationships. They’d tell me what to wear so I didn’t look too dowdy and we’d be the best of friends.  But noooo, the gods have a larky sense of humor and so I am the mother of boys, which means I don’t sit on the beach and flip through magazines. No, it’s SWIM and DIG and PLAY BALL WITH ME and DIG and SWIM.  And when I’m an old woman living alone with a hundred cats, the boys will buy me the valu-pak of Depends and the high-grade cat food, and congratulate themselves on being good sons.

9. I would never make separate meals for my picky eaters. If they don’t want to eat what I cook, then they’ll go hungry. HAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAAHA My children’s eating habits keep me in a state of perpetual humility. I have failed here and here and here and will probably fail again at dinner tonight.

10. God. Some people just can’t shut up about their damn kids. That’s what I thought. And then I started a blog.

Double-dipping this week: this post also links to the wonderful lovelinks site–it’s like Cheers bar for small bloggers (or micro bloggers, in my case). It’s where everyone knows our (screen) name and they’re always glad we came, where everybody can see that all our troubles are the same…and now everyone knows that I’m old enough to remember that show when it wasn’t in reruns! Click on the button below to find some great reading–and then come back on Thursday to vote for your favorites. I won’t even be mad if you don’t vote for me!

We’ve been away from New York for five months and in many respects it’s as if we’ve never left: the same buildings are still under construction, the same sirens scream through the streets; the same lines form at Trader Joe’s during peak times.  I’m reunited with my beloved iPhone (which doesn’t work in Abu Dhabi) and like all the other New Yorkers, I walk through the streets making phone calls—after all, what could be more private than a busy Manhattan street? Our wonderful community of friends has carved out time for us in their hectic holiday schedules and our conversations seem to have picked up exactly where we left off last July.

Everything is just as it was.

And yet. We no longer have an apartment in the city, so we’re bouncing around: hotel, family, friend’s apartment (thank you Carey!).  The boys look wistfully at our old building and Caleb has asked more than once why we’re not going “home.”  I can still do the city-street hustle, but at the end of the day, I’m exhausted—I’m out of practice, I guess: my life in Abu Dhabi moves more slowly than my (former) life in Manhattan.

In lots of good ways, these past ten days have been a compressed version of our old lives—but the same downside still exists: Husband points out that once again, here we are in New York, where there is so much to see and do, and he ended up having to take the boys to see “Chipwrecked,” which he says may quite possibly be the worst, most cynical piece of film-making in the history of cinema.  In New York, there are a gazillion things to do and we used to be able to do about four of them; in Abu Dhabi there are only about twenty things to do, but we can manage twelve.

Hectic schedules and singing chipmunks aside, however, being here makes me homesick…for here. It’s a strange feeling, to be homesick in the place you call home.  Don’t get me wrong –I like our life in Abu Dhabi; I like the warmth and I’m fascinated by the complexities of modern Arabic life.  It’s where I live, but I’m not sure it’s home—so you know what’s happened?

What’s happened is that this entire visit has me channeling Neil Diamond, circa 1971. I’ve got about the same hairdo, actually, and a version of his eyebrows.  Who knows. Maybe I’m actually a Jew from Brooklyn. But in any case, Neil has it pegged: “LA’s fine but it ain’t home, New York’s home but it ain’t mine no more.”  Swap AD for LA, and Neil’s singing my Christmas tune.

photo source: http://www.portclydeme.com

click here to listen to Neil (and go ahead, sing along. You know you want to)

Neil and I are connecting this post to Erica’s lovelinks. You should click over, sing a bit, read around, then come back Wednesday night to vote.

no, I’m not pregnant. it’s just that in the beginning of the fourth month, if you are pregnant, you can kind of let your breath out. the worry of the first trimester is over and now (usually inshallah and knock on wood), you can just settle into the “new normal” of losing your waistline and growing your appetite.  It’s our fourth-month anniversary of moving to Abu Dhabi and I’m feeling myself let my breath out…but this time, part of why I can do that has to do with these boys–not babies any more–who have helped ease my own transition. This letter is for them.

My dear boys,

Today we have lived in Abu Dhabi for four months.  In that span of time, we’ve had to evacuate our building in the middle of the night (down 37 flights of stairs, on September 11th, no less!); we’ve traveled in India, explored the oasis city of Al Ain, kayaked in a mangrove swamp during a lunar eclipse, and one of us (lucky dog sixth grader) spent a week in Ephesus.

These adventures are nothing, however,  compared to the everyday adventure of establishing our new lives in Abu Dhabi.  The little things were, in some ways, the most difficult: we couldn’t find the right sheets for your beds, or the right pillows (note to self: when repatriating family, bring your own linens, even if you’re moving into a furnished apartment).  Our great quest for Toys R Us was a bust: no up-to-date legos, no Nerf basketball.  On the other hand, the Toys R Us is linked to a Tru-Value hardware store, so we didn’t find Nerf but I found all-important bathroom hooks and a new spatula.  We sorted out grocery stores, bookstores, and spent more hours than I’m sure you care to remember wandering the aisles of Ikea.

In four short months, the two of you started a new school, made new friends, joined new soccer teams, learned to love butter chicken from Moti Mahal Deluxe and any form of Lebanese chicken shish tawook.  You found the humor in our endless quest to find decent pizza, and you’ve found the joy in walking to the naan bakery for fresh bread.

You settled in. You figured it out. And then a few weeks ago, we asked you to change again and start a new school in January. You grumbled, you griped, there were tears.  Maybe even a few slammed doors.  But the other morning, when I dropped you off for your “come meet your new teacher day,” off you went, smiling, heads held high, arms around each others shoulders.

The two of you have spent more time together in the last four months than you have in years.  There aren’t as many friends clamoring for attention, or as many activities—we move more slowly here than we did in New York.  Together the two of you could fuel a city with your creative energies: building lego ships and towers more elaborate than any store-bought set; writing and illustrating stories, creating computer games, building sand castles that stretch half the length of the beach.  And okay, sometimes you use that creative energy to annoy the living crap out of each other, which is probably to be expected, right?  But do you really, really have to argue debate—in ever louder voices—about the possibility of a mouse surviving a sandstorm?

Bicker McBickersons notwithstanding, the two of you have astonished and impressed me over the last four months. Your curiosity, (relative) good humor, and resilience have helped me to survive this transition.  Even when you’re making me angry—as when one of you screamed “shit head” the other night—I’m still impressed: you yelled it in Arabic.

I hope you both feel as proud of yourselves as I feel of you.

Love, Mommy

ps: say “shit head” again, in any language, and you’re toast.

it’s lovelinks time! i’m linking up and you should too! click this nifty button and bring your blog over to the linkup! Or don’t bring your blog, just come read some funny smart writing…then come back on Thursday and vote for your three favorites. It’s a lot easier than holiday shopping, I guarantee!

We told them yesterday that after the winter break they’re going to switch schools.

Husband and I are calling it a “mid-term correction” but the boys don’t appreciate the humor.

Here’s the thing: the boys are at a school here in Abu Dhabi that to the eyes of jaded New York public-school veterans like us looks like paradise: lots of patios and terraces, lovely playing fields, shaded areas where kids can sit outside and study.  Classes are small (no more than 20), elementary school teachers have classroom assistants five days a week, there are computer labs, and a swimming pool.  Amazing, right? Even more amazing? The school has virtually no poverty–it’s a private school and many people have the tuition paid by their employers. No one gets free lunch because no one needs it; there are no kids bouncing around in foster care programs; no kids come to school without having had breakfast; there are almost no students with IEPs. From my perspective as a former high school teacher, teaching at this place looks like a pretty good gig, like teaching at Patio Central.

The school organized a sixth-grade week-long trip to Turkey (the 7th grade went to Capodocia, the 8th grade to Thailand)–parents had to pay for this adventure, but what an amazing experience, right?

When we started the school, our hopes were high. We knew going in that the school was not perhaps as crazy-rigorous as the Tiger Mom Academy that they went to in New York (and let me be clear: they went to TMA because we couldn’t be sure of getting a variance for Caleb to his brother’s school; Liam was enrolled at this school for 6th grade because the school goes through high school and he would be guaranteed a spot. In other words, public school pragmatism drove our decisions, not a belief that eight thousand hours of homework is a badge of distinction.)

Anyway. Off they went on the first day of school, a bit nervous with the newness of it all and…it was fine.

Fine.

Now, sometimes fine is…fine. And sometimes fine is not fine.

As it turned out, fine at Patio Central turned into dull. Boring. Homework got finished in an eyeblink; classrooms seemed devoid of  “differentiation,” or at least it didn’t happen in any way that our kids seemed to notice. (“Differentiation:” the bureaucratic way of saying give individual kids what they need to feed their minds.) Day after day, week after week…no spark, no “wow.” And we’re not saying we needed teachers to be putting on a song-and-dance revue here. We were just looking for one kid, one day, to come home interested in something other than what happened at recess. We hired a tutor to do extra math with both boys and you’d have thought we were offering to connect Caleb to a chocolate IV drip, he was that excited. When a seven-year-old boy is jonesing for a math tutor, you know that “fine” is not fine.

And yet. The boys started to make friends. Patio Central is close to our apartment. It’s an established school, been around for almost twenty years; it’s got a good reputation. It’s easy and comfortable; a little U.S. oasis in the middle of the Middle East.  Husband and I went round and round: what makes an “education?” Should we limit our definition of education to only what happens in the classroom? So okay, the classrooms weren’t hotbeds of dynamism.  Isn’t the sheer fact of living in another country an education, in and of itself?

I kept asking myself how we could ask the boys to undergo yet another change, after they’d handled this first big change so well.

And yet. We saw Caleb starting to talk about school being “lame” and saying that he didn’t need to concentrate on his handwriting or his punctuation because the teacher “didn’t care.” (And we saw no evidence to the contrary). We saw both boys getting terrific grades without really breaking a sweat, and while we are proud of the fact that despite all the changes in their lives they were able to get such excellent report cards, there’s something a little out of whack if a 6th grader can pull a 4.0 while spending maybe–maybe–30 minutes a night on his school work.

Well, yes, it’s true. My children are geniuses. They’re also magnificent humanitarians, infinitely kind to one another, and deeply concerned about the fate of the planet.

Or at least they would be, if they could stop trying to kill each other over whose turn it is to play “Age of Empires” on the computer.

On a whim last week, Husband and I went to tour the new K-12 British school that opened this fall. It’s very British, albeit housed in a brand-new sprawling faux-Spanish-tiled complex just outside of town. Kids wear uniforms; Prince Andrew visited last week. It’s got a lot to prove (it’s an offshoot of a big-name UK school) and wham, it seemed they had seats available for January; boom! the boys didn’t hate it when they went to visit!; zipzapzoop, they were admitted; and zing! the decision was made.

Because we are toys of the gods, however, on the same day that the boys got letters of admission to Neckerchief Prep, Liam made the soccer football team at Patio.  All he’s talked about from the moment he found out about Patio is making the school team…and now he was on the squad.  Now we’re supposed to say, “um, sweetie? Don’t get too attached to that football uniform…”

Argh.What do you do? What’s “best” in this situation?  People talk at business meetings about “best practices.” So what’s “best practice” here? Choose brand-new Neckerchief Prep because we think the classroom experience will be challenging and creative? Remain at Patio because, eh, it’s fine, and Liam is over the moon about being one of 5 sixth graders chosen for the middle-school squad?

Well, dear reader, Neckerchief won. We told the boys the other night and now…they’re mad. Not furious, but mad. And sad. And nervous about yet another change. Caleb said “mommy, I have a lot of feelings right now.” Fabulous that he can articulate himself but I gotta tell ya, in terms of acting on those feelings?  He might as well be Bette Davis telling us to fasten our seatbelts because it’s going to be a bumpy night.

We reassure the boys that this decision is for the best, that we know this shift will be hard but, in the long run, they will be happier at Neckerchief.

(what if we’re wrong?)

Hey! look at this cool badge! click on it and be introduced to some great writers whose work maybe you’ve missed as you search for cute cat videos and stuff: click over here and read…then come back and vote for your fave three (pick me! pick me! pick me!)

I am half-asleep, wheezing and coughing because I have a cold and maybe a sinus infection, shuffling around making the boys breakfast before school.  Why do they have to eat every morning, anyway? Why can’t they just get a to-go cup of coffee and get on their way, like normal people?

Caleb looks at me. His eyes scan me up and down, like he’s Tim Gunn’s mini-me.

Caleb: Mommy, why don’t you wear make-up?

Me (about dropping the pancake pan): Make-up? You mean like those fancy moms we used to see at your old school?

Caleb: Yeah. I think you should.

Me: Uh…why?

Another full-body scan.

Caleb: Well….you’re a little bit…wrinkly on your face.

Liam (eager as always to be the expert): No, Caleb. You don’t get it. She only wears mascara sometimes. She told me. The other night when she was putting on mascara before they went out to dinner.

Me: standing slack-jawed staring at the panel of Glamour judges who are suddenly sitting at my kitchen table.

Caleb: Why she wears mascara?

Liam: She said she wears mascara when she doesn’t feel well because it opens up her eyes so she looks more awake.  (He fans open his fingers–sort of Bob Fosse jazz hands–next to either eye, to demonstrate this opening-up process.)

Caleb looks at me again: Yeah. You definitely need mascara.

The people who really know how to work this here newfangled internet thing did pinterest and instagram and all that stuff, and others simply posted lovely, wonderful photos, probably culled from their immaculately cataloged digital archives.

Yeah. Well. Yay for them. Me, not so much.

Husband has done an admirable job of cataloging many of our photos but many (most?) are scattered around any number of hard drives, any number of photo file systems.  So some things are right there where they should be but, for instance, most of 2005 is missing.

So I can’t put my hands on my favorite photos, or not all of them anyway, but here are some photos that could be seen as wishes…

1. May your diapers never account for most of your total body weight:

two year old Caleb

2. May you know the joy (mostly) of an older sibling:

boys, City Palace in Jaipur

3. May you know the joy of silly hats (and silly walks, also fart jokes):

4. May you have the gift of imagination and the empty time in which to exercise that gift:

5.  May you have the gift of music:

Washington Square Park, NYC, 2010

6. May you have the gift of art:

sand painting, Union Square Park NYC, 2011

7.  May you have adventures:

8. May you have mysteries…

a screened window, Humayan’s Tomb, Delhi

9. …and beauty…

Rub-al-kali, The Empty Quarter

10. …and peace:

Sedgewood, New York State

Well. I have two boys. That’s the equivalent of a houseful of meerkats.  When I feel overwhelmed, I think about my next-door neighbor here, who has FIVE. Boys, not meerkats.  She’s the calmest human I know. My head could explode in flames while we’re in the elevator together and she would dump her water bottle on the fire, wrap a bandage around the worst injury, take my pulse, and feed me an aspirin before we reach our floor.

Let’s just say the baby-making factories are closed in my house. I would love to have a daughter—in fact, I always assumed I would have a daughter—but instead, boys. My sister has two daughters. I have considered swapsies, so we each could have a matched set, boy & girl, but for some reason she wants to raise her own kids.  Can you imagine? Selfish, selfish, selfish.

But this list offers me a chance to write on a marginally related topic: the problem with men named Perry. Or Peri, as the case may be.

Oh yes, you heard me. We’re talking about the fabulous Presidential Perry, Rick O’Texas, and that other Peri, Peri Men O’Paws.  Both are a nuisance, but only one will be gone (hope, pray) for sure in 2012.

Bad memories:
1. The governor of Texas would like to abolish several key Federal agencies. He just can’t remember which ones, exactly. Click here to watch him fumble. Hardest I’ve laughed in a week.

2. Peri Men O’Paws can’t remember when you’ve had your last period and doesn’t care. He just shows up, willy-nilly.

Abstinence:

3. Rick O’Texas thinks abstinence is the only form of “sex ed” that should be taught in schools, even though statistics show that Texas (which mandates abstinence education) has the third-highest rate of teen pregnancies in the U.S.  Despite these statistics, however, he is sure that abstinence works.  Click here to be convinced.

4. Men O’Paws maintains an irregular schedule (known perhaps only to the moon) which makes abstinence frequently necessary, rarely convenient, and difficult to teach.

Moody:
5. At public appearances, Texas Perry sometimes seems comatose, and then sometimes he’s aggressive (as when he crowded Ron Paul’s personal space during a September 2011 debate):

photo via AP on Huffington Post

Sometimes, though, O’Texas is just downright loopy, as he was during a campaign appearance in New Hampshire recently, when he told the audience bring their gold into his campaign manager.  Having a moody Texan with his thumb hovering over the nuclear button just can’t be a good thing.

6. Peri Men brings hormonal joyrides the likes of which I haven’t experienced since high school, when I regularly spent at least one day a month sobbing in my bedroom because the world was just TOO AWFUL.  Now those joyrides include snapping at my children, wishing Husband should take up residence on a houseboat in Lake Winnipesaukee (in the winter), loathing my late-mid-forties wrinkles, popping Advil as if they’re candy corn, and thinking that writing a blog is the stupidest goddamn thing I’ve ever done.

Bad hair:

7. Rick O’Texas has hair like a Ken doll. It manages to be both fluffy and immobile, just like Ken’s hair helmet.  I hope for his sake that Rick doesn’t smoke, because you just know that entire helmet is coated in flammable material.

8. Peri brings the gift of gray. Gray hair that refuses to play nicely with what’s left of the curly tresses from my youth.  The gray coils up out of my head like antenna, as if Peri is trying to talk to compatriots on the moon to make plans for pushing my body even further out of whack.

Flooding:
9. Texas Rick thinks that floods and other natural disasters are acts of God. Actually, he thought the British Petroleum explosion was an act of God, too. In other words, human actions ain’t got nothing to do with the environment and the science of climate change is “shaky.” His Texas agencies so deeply censored edited a scientific study of Galveston Bay that all the scientists who contributed to the study asked to have their names taken off the report.

10. Peri Men brings on floodwaters so profound that endless trips to the pharmacy are required for reinforcements against sartorial damage. And you don’t know what fun is until you’ve gone into a pharmacy filled with customers in abayas and headscarves, staffed only with men, and dumped your boxes of super tampons at the cash register where they practically scream out HELLO I AM A MENSTRUATING WOMAN AND PROBABLY UNCLEAN STAY AWAY.

Parenthood:
11. O’Texas thinks that while abstinence is best for teen-agers, married folks should have babies galore. He wants to strip all funding from Planned Parenthood and promises to appoint only pro-life appointees to the Justice Department, the Attorney General’s Office, and the National Institutes of Health.  The fact abortions only count for about 3% of what Planned Parenthood actually does (as opposed to, say, things like blood-pressure screenings, cancer screenings, STD testing and treatment, or prenatal care)—well, that’s just a pesky detail.

12. Peri O’Paws seems to be suggesting that this old late-mid-forties married lady will have to stop at two babies.  The married lady in question thinks that probably this is a good idea, as a third child would only complete the fund-stripping process begun by first two children and then render the mother incapable of remembering any details about anything.

There you have it folks, a point-by-point analysis of why Perrys are to be avoided. I can take comfort in knowing that by November of 2012, the entire GOP sideshow will be over, one way or another.  Unfortunately, however, Peri Men O’Paws doesn’t operate by any calendar that I can deduce.   But you know what? I’d still rather be governed by O’Paws than O’Texas.

hey…yes, double-dipping again. This post linked to Monday’s Listicles and now I’m linking up over at Lovelinks, where you will find lots of funny smart writers. You should read around on the lovelinks page and then come back Thursday (after your turkey or your lentil loaf or your baloney sandwich, whatever) and VOTE for your top three. Probably you, unlike Rick O’Texas, can remember three things.

I’m the mother of two boys.  Sometimes this fact seems like karmic revenge for a crime I didn’t know I committed in a past life. How can I be the mother of boys? I mean, does a tomato plant suddenly sprout beans?

Two days ago, Liam turned eleven, so I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be a boy, a subject that obviously has me at a tremendous disadvantage: I’ve never been a boy and at this point I think it’s safe to say I never will be. As much as I’ve always wanted a daughter, there are times these days when I hear stories from friend with daughters the same age as Liam and I breathe a sigh of relief—the world of pre-teen girls (as I remember all too well) is fraught with pitfalls…pitfalls I was still climbing out of well into my thirties.

The pitfalls for boys seem different, in part because they have been inscribed into our culture so deeply we almost don’t see them as problems: our ideas about manhood, about masculinity: boys don’t have deep friendships, don’t cry, don’t feel. And so we forget to give them the language to talk about their feelings, forget even to give them the space to have feelings. We don’t even notice it’s happening, or if we do, we chalk it up to “growing up.” Maybe we stop giving our boys as many hugs, or the bedtime tucking-in ritual starts to seem “invasive,” or maybe we don’t hold their hands when we’re walking down the street. John Wayne died a long time ago, but his machismo lives on.

Liam may think of himself as a grown-up these days (there’s hair gel applied in the morning, sometimes so thickly that his head looks like a decoupage project; there’s a thin silver necklace around his neck and a swagger in his walk that wasn’t there last year) and sometimes he yanks his hand out of mine when we’re in public, but when the world gets too hard, he still climbs into my lap to tell me about his travails.  And that’s how it should be; it’s what I want him to do. There’s plenty of time for adolescent sullenness and withdrawal—and, truth be told, some of that is already happening: Liam, we say, what’s wrong? NOTHING, is the response, accompanied by a slammed door.  What can I say? He’s always been precocious. But given his pre-adolescent angst, I’m all the happier that he still finds comfort in my lap.

Where else does he find comfort? In the world of the computer games he’s designing (writing code, writing stories, creating worlds filled with the sort of minutiae that will probably lead him to spend his college years in a dark room playing Dungeons & Dragons); in books, which he devours like chocolate (The Hunger Games were the Best. Books. Ever. Until he finished The Lord of the Rings); and in soccer—excuse me, football—which has unfortunately led him to speak in faux-Brit accent drawn from his English soccer coach, the team’s Irish manager, every British football announcer he’s ever heard, and the entire cast of the “Harry Potter” movies. It’s atrocious.  He trots off the pitch field and says “mummy, I think I need new boots.”  Is it wrong that I pretend not to know him?

No matter what he does, Liam goes at it full tilt. I wonder sometimes if the sheer accident of his birth—being so tiny and having to fight so hard just to stay alive—created his forceful character: he’s still not much taller than his seven-year-old brother, but he’s got a personality the size of Russia.

Liam’s mind moves at a gallop; he says he resents sleeping because it’s a waste of time. I imagine that inside his brain it would be positively baroque, that it would look like a piece of music by Handel sounds: arpeggios, swoops, curlicues, all repeating around and around, building into something magnificent, symmetrical, and mathematically perfect.

This is a boy who never met a test he didn’t like (and master), and who believes in himself to a sometime absurd degree.  When he was six, after his first-ever ice skating lesson (during which he let go of the wall exactly twice) he said “mommy, I think I’ll make my living playing hockey.”  Hockey never materialized, thank god, but his confidence remains (mostly) unshakeable.

And while his competitive intensity does wonders on the playing field, or when it comes time to study for a school test, it’s a little less attractive when all you’re doing is gathering for a family game of Monopoly.  All games, for my darling boy, are blood sports. He doesn’t know how to turn it off.  If I have a specific worry for Liam—and parenting involves both the free-floating “what if” horror stories as well as child-specific anxieties–it’s precisely his intensity.  There are times when all his energy turns into anxiety, even a kind of frenzy:  forgot a math assignment? Death spiral. Can’t find the mouthpiece for his instrument? Utter disaster.  Forgot to bring in cookies for the bake sale? DESPAIR.  At some point, he’s going to have to find a bit of slacker in his soul—and when I tell him to relax, that maybe his quiz in gym (in gym??) doesn’t matter, he stares at me as if I’m the stoner hanging out in the bathroom instead of going to class. “Of course it matters, mommy.  Everything matters.”  His eyes fill with tears, his lip trembles, all the big-boy stuff melts away and for whatever reason, he’s worried and sad, and so I take him on my lap and rub his back.

I wonder how much longer he’ll let me do that?

a friend recently wrote a good book that challenges conventional wisdom about boys. It’s called Deep Secrets and it’s about the importance of deep, intimate friendships in boys’ lives. You should probably click right on over there to the Amazon portal and get yourself a copy…