Once again, Stasha’s Monday list is being made on Tuesday night, but that’s because I couldn’t figure out how to write this list until I read someone else’s post. And then I decided to plagiarize. Although, is it plagiarism if I tell you my source? I borrowed this idea whole cloth from the Sisterhood of Sensible Moms, which is a blog you really should put in regular rotation.  They asked their kids to make this list for them, and so I did the same thing – I even got one kid to make his list while we were driving, just like they did. Lest they be insulted, I will remind them that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

The original prompt for this list came from Mommy Padawan, with whom I feel a special affinity because Star Wars pretty much rules my entire household: her prompt was for us to list either 10 things we’re good at, or what we’d do for 48 hours with unlimited money and no responsibilities.  Well, writing that list would simply make me cry, having not enough of the former and WAY too much of the latter; so I went with “what I’m good at.” And then punted and asked my kids to make the list for me.

Caleb gave me his five items when I was driving him home from soccer the other night.  He was in the back seat trying to read Order of the Phoenix by the light of the streetlights; I told him not to try to read because he’d strain his eyes in the dark; he said YES I CAN TOO READ IT and held the book pretty much on the tip of his nose. And then, as if by HP magic, I was suddenly my mother, saying the exact same thing to me, when I was about the same age. As if on cue, Caleb said, look the light looks like water, mommy, and I knew exactly what he meant: speckled windows do cast a watery light.

I say, Caleb, I need a list of things I’m good at. I need five things.

You take care of us.

I wait, drive a little bit. Resounding silence from the back seat, pages rustling.

Um…Caleb? Five things?

Five?

Clearly five is a ridiculously exaggerated number. There is another pause.

Well. You’re a good cook. Of homemade stuff that you get from recipes on the internet.  And you’re good at driving in Abu Dhabi.

A signficant achievement my friends; that one is huge because driving in Abu Dhabi pretty much terrifies me.

More silence. I say “and…?”

Uh…homework. Helping with homework. And good at costumes. But not as good as daddy.

Clearly I should’ve stopped after “driving.”

So then, at home, I ask Liam, my child who has never met a test he doesn’t love; who wants to do everything perfectly, no matter what.

I say “Liam, I need a list of five things that I’m good at.

Liam panics, leaps off the couch: Why? What for? When do you need it?

It’s just a list, I say. Not a big deal.

He sits back down. Oh. Well. Pottery, you’re good at pottery. And that thing with the oar?

Paddleboarding?

Yeah. You’re good at that. And cooking.  Pottery, paddleboarding, cooking…And being a mum.

Did you say mom or mum?

Mum, he says, in flawless fauxbrit.

Anything else?

Oh. And you’re good at being on time.

Great. I’m punctual. I suppose that’s a skill. Not up there with, say, hang-gliding, playing Chopin, or knowing Mandarin, but hey. I’ll take my compliments where I can find them.

They’re beautiful, these boys, even the ones who aren’t particularly “cute.” Their skin stays close to their bones and gleams with health; when they walk they inhabit every inch of their bodies. They’re intent on their work; their arms wave with enthusiasm when they have something to say to the class and sometimes when they talk, their words come out so fast, they get tangled in their ideas and have to start again.

They’re no longer children – they’re at college in Abu Dhabi, which for all of them is a long, long way from home – but they’re not quite men, either, despite the fact that some of them have wispy little beards or long what-do-you-think-about-these sideburns.  I only went to Boston for college, from Illinois – and it felt like an epic distance, so how are these 18 year olds handling entire hemispheres of distance?

I remember the tearful phone calls I made to my mom during those years about how strange and weird it all was, that my sheets smelled funny, the food was weird, and my roommate was from some entirely alien planet called New Jersey.

These not-quite-men boys from all over the world – I have students from Hungary, Russia, California, Pakistan, Colombia, and yes, New Jersey – do they call their moms and sob? Did someone teach them, when they were young, that it’s okay for boys to cry and that frequently you feel a whole lot better after a good sob?

I think about their mothers, spread all over the world and wonder what they think about their distant children; do they imagine their boys huddled over their work, tongues gripped in the sides of their mouths as they write down their thoughts, many of them using a language that is not the language of “home?”  Curved as they are over their work, the napes of their necks are exposed; the tag of one boy’s shirt is sticking up and it’s all I can do not to walk over and tuck it down, as I imagine his mother would have done, were she in the room.

When my boys were babies, I would nestle my thumb in that little divot at their nape and feel their pulse inside – incredibly fragile and incredibly strong at the same time. I miss that neat match of thumb to neck; I miss that babyhead smell.

Mostly, though, when I look at the boys in my class, I wonder about touching. Not in the professor-is-a-cougar sort of way, but mother-child, all those things I do with my boys now. My boys still curl into my lap, sidle up to me and lean on my shoulders, clamber up my legs for a monkey hug. Sometimes, true, I want them to leave me alone, but then I remind myself that these days of easy intimacy are numbered. Girls, I think, get to stay in physical contact with their moms forever but somewhere, somehow, at least in the West, we’ve given our boys – and ourselves – the idea that too much touching is unmanly, inappropriate, wrong. I don’t want to give my sons the idea that “men don’t hug” – and then again, I don’t want them to be teased (or worse) for expressing affection.  Somewhere, I suppose, there’s a balance – but why do I have to teach my boys that hugging is only for “little kids?”

I wonder what will happen when these boys return home at the end of the term. Will their mothers hug them – but quickly, stepping away before they want to let go? Will a mom want to stroke her son’s curly hair at night as he falls asleep but content herself instead with a light kiss on his cheek?

I look at these boys in my class, intent on their work, so far away from home, and I wonder if their mothers were ready to let them go.

Erica, the most-excellent curator of yeahwrite (and a great writer in her own (w)right), wants us to guess the incoming baby’s arrival stats, so because my most recent child (he’s almost 8, so “recent” is a relative term) was big and late, I’m going to wish for Alison that her second baby is small and slightly early: so let’s say 8 May and 6 pounds I mean, 2.7 kilos. (Damn that U.S. school system and their failure to teach me metrics.)

Stasha the best list-maker (and photographer) in the Pacific Northwest asks us to find baby presents for Scrumplet on Pinterest. Okay, I don’t pin. No clue how to pin, don’t really need to introduce yet more screen-related interactions into my life, so I will add my gift here, the way we used to do it in the good-old-fashioned steal-a-photo-and-paste-it days.

My favorite baby read-aloud book, which I read to both my boys until the book’s edges were frayed and curled. Wynken, Blynken, and Nod.

“The old moon laughed and sang a song,  As they rocked in the wooden shoe, And the wind that sped them all night long, Ruffled the waves of dew. The little stars were the herring fish, That lived in that beautiful sea—Now cast your nets wherever you wish—Never afeard are we”; So cried the stars to the fishermen three: Wynken, Blynken, and Nod…“  It’s a lovely little poem, just the right thing to put little babies (or their big brothers) to sleep.

Ado, from The Momalog, is currently on a screen-free week, which makes her not only a better mom than I am, but a better person too. Of course, I sort of knew that already but now she’s proved it. Something about a screen-free week campaign and an organization called Commercial-free childhood . AS IF. Okay, true, my kids basically watch no commercial TV but that’s because  A) we’ve always just watched taped programs or videos, so we either skip the commercials or it’s “just” a video w/no ads.  And now we don’t really have “tv” here in Abu Dhabi other than a variety of streaming soccer channels. Plus, B) my kids would rather play computer games, which is why achieving screen-free space is something I’m just too weak to attempt. More on that later.  For the shower, Ado asks for our favorite baby photo and quote about parenting, so I give you my sweet Caleb, about a week old:

And given that this is an online baby shower, it seems appropriate to use a blogger’s comment about parenting. I read this comment a long time ago on Mom-101; I think maybe it was her mom who said it, or perhaps she got it from somewhere else, but the advice is this: “remember that everything you do as a parent will be right and everything you do as a parent will be wrong.” I figure that about sums it up: we do the best we can with what we’ve got; we’re bound to screw up hourly some of the time, but mostly, if we get down on the floor and play with our kids; if we (yes, Ado, I hear you) look up from our screens long enough to pay attention and listen, then probably (fingers crossed) everything is going to be okay. Well – all of that and lots of naps. Maybe the occasional Pinot, too.

Happy baby, Alison; happy shower; and many thanks to our lovely internet hostesses (which I’m afraid makes you all sound a bit like you work for an escort service).

So here’s the thing. I swear. Like a motherfucker. Pretty much could make a sailor blush what with my f-bombs and whatnots.

I loves me an Anglo-Saxon curse word and think that fuck is like the little black dress of language: always appropriate, goes with everything, accessorizes nicely.

Long ago, waaaay before Go the Fuck to Sleep, on those days with babies when I was pretty much light years beyond the end of my rope, those days where you’re so fried you can’t really remember what it felt like to be an adult in conversation with other adults, what it felt like to have an actual shower of more than 2 minutes, to be free of spit-up and burp cloths and back-aches, gut-aches, shoulder-aches, wrist-aches–on those days, I had a particular lullaby I used to sing.

To whichever baby had sent me so close to the edge I could look over and see the abyss, I would sing, in the softest, sweetest, gentlest voice you can imagine, something along the lines of “you’ve ruined my life, I can’t do this any longer, fucking shit, what am I going to do, I am so tired, holy fucking shit what am I going to do please just stop crying for one goddamn hour…”

Okay – I wasn’t suicidal or PPD or infanticidal – I was just a standard-issue exhausted new mom. And I had a lot of love and support and everyone survived, so it’s okay.

I offer this story only to explain that me and swearing, we’re pretty much besties.

Here’s the thing, though. My babies are now old enough to hear my foul mouth and parrot it back, not in a oh-isn’t-that-cute-a-toddler-saying-”shit,” but with full force and understanding of the words coming from their mouths. And hearing my children’s sweet voices lilt around foul language is upsetting, to say the least.

So I had to stop. At least in front of them.

I’ve swallowed hard and reserved my love of four-letter words for solely adult company. Now, in front of the kids, I say “fudge” when something drops on the floor and breaks, or “holy cats,” or sometimes, “crap.”  But “fudge” has become my default word, when children are present. I figure they might know what I’m wishing I could say, but at least I’m not saying it.

Husband, however, disagrees with me. He says that the boys know I am saying “fudge” instead of “fuck,” and so I’m not really disguising anything or fooling anyone. I say I’m not trying to “fool” them, I’m just trying to ride herd on my fouler impulses. Husband is unconvinced.  He’s wrong, the fudge head.

I’m not sure what the boys think – they don’t say “fudge,” but I have heard Liam mutter “holy cats” under his breath (and, truth be told, he’s become fond of English-isms: bloody this and bloody that, and then “wanker.” We asked him to explain what wanker meant, and he insisted he didn’t know – but his dimples and embarrassed grin said otherwise: he does know but is too abashed to explain).

So what do you think? I should stop saying “fudge” and say…”fooey?” or “rats?” or “christ on a stick?”

Okay, that latter is probably an ix-nay.

But seriously – even if the kids know what I want to say, isn’t it better that they hear me not say it than that I let that f-bomb fly?

And by f-bomb, of course, I mean exploding fudge balls.

photo source

Then, one day, we were in the back of a taxi together, and whammo, there it was.

“Mommy, can I get a facebook page?”

Crap. No. Of course not. You’re not old enough. It’s a hideous time-sucker (which I know from experience, darling, let me tell you).  Plus there are wicked predatory types out there who would love to know where your innocent boyflesh can be found, or who would send you messages about “free offers” and “cool games,” and then all of a sudden I’d be in a Lifetime horror movie where my sweet boy drapes his room in black raincoats and spends all his time in desperate online chat rooms.

But I didn’t say that.

I said yes.

In fact, I set up his account for him, putting on every privacy setting I could find and warning him that I had the password to his account and would be checking it regularly for inappropriate content.  If he were to change his password without telling me, I warned, his computer privileges would be revoked altogether.

Husband said, you love facebook, so isn’t it a tad hypocritical of you not to want him to have an account?  I said, I love my glass of wine at dinner, too, but that doesn’t mean I think Liam should be swilling the sauvignon blanc yet. (Full disclosure: I used to have a wee facebook addiction problem but it’s better now. Now I have twitter. Facebook is just the gateway drug.)

Why did I say yes? I said yes because Liam said some of his “casual acquaintances” at his new school have Facebook and I want to encourage him to make friends there.  Maybe, I think to myself, he can use facebook to connect with these new kids while he maintains connections with friends from New York and the school he attended here last fall.

Of course, my plan could backfire, as parenting plans so often do. Maybe he’ll use facebook to cling ever more fiercely to the past or spend all his time online moaning about his terrible life at the new school—thus pissing off his FB friends who go there too.

In the meantime, I confess that I’ve been checking his page.  My findings? Pre-teens communicate primarily with three-letter capitalized acronyms (LOL OMG), exclamation points used in groups of ten, and emoticons. As near as I can tell there are very few actual words exchanged.  My son’s profile page indicates that his “religious views” are Christian, which is strange because to my knowledge, my son has no religious views. As recently as last Christmas he wasn’t even quite clear on the details of that whole birth-of-Christ thing. I suppose, though, that in this country, where religion is everywhere, he feels the need to define himself in the eyes of god and facebook (are they really separate entities?)

Nowhere on his page do I see any evidence of dating of any sort – not girls, not boys, nothing.

I’m sure he’s curious about dating, but he can’t be that curious yet, can he? I mean, he’s not old enough, and it wouldn’t be at all appropriate, right?  I’m sure I’ve got years before he’s ready to date.

Wait. Where have I heard that before?

update! for reasons that seem eminently appropriate, my post about lurking on my son’s facebook page won the yeahwrite #46 lurker’s favorite prize!  if you don’t know yeahwrite, you should be spending time there every week, either to read the funny, wise writing that gets posted there, and/or to post your own work. it’s a great place to read and be read.

What? You say you’d like to friend my son on FB? NO WAY BABY. But here’s a much better way to make friends: link up with yeah write, or at least, go read the writers on yeah write. They’re much more interesting than my son and most of them even speak in complete sentences, using a minimum of emoticons.  Click on through…then come back to vote for your three favorite writers.