I wrote this a few years ago for GoodHousekeeping.com, and thought I’d share it now that my boys are experienced hand shakers:
I wish I had a milestone sticker book for my tweenage sons tonight. You know, like the one you used to keep to mark all of Baby’s achievements worth noting, such as first smile, first tooth and first step. Because if I had a tween milestone book, I’d record something that few parents probably even note at all: the first unprompted, totally instinctive handshake. And it’s making me even prouder than all those silly stickers in both of my kids’ baby books combined.
It all seems so ridiculous now that I think about it. Why did I take the time to register in my kids’ baby books what was simply inevitable? First tooth? Well, of course they’re going to get a first tooth – and 19 more after that. First laugh, first solid foods, first doctor’s visit? Check. Check. Check. Even their first giggly bath with suds on their heads was virtually undeniable. (C’mon. We all have that photo.)
But only now do I realize that all that was the easy stuff, the things that happen regardless of what we do as parents, as long as we buy the bath bubbles. The uncertain, yet substantial milestones come later and in such a subtle way, you might miss them altogether, when really, you should celebrate them.
Today, I took the boys to our vacationing neighbors’ house to feed the fish and the cat. When we arrived, my neighbor’s father was in the kitchen, watering the plants.
Instead of scampering down to the basement to play with the cat, my sons stood behind me and watched me greet the man. Then – to my amazement – they each reached out their right arms and shook his hand, as though they were grown-ups at a dinner party, rather than boys who had just spent the afternoon chasing each other around the front yard with sticks.
And yet, I had not muttered, “Ahem,” while making a handshaking gesture. I didn’t even implore them to “Say ‘hi,’ boys.” I just stood there, slack-jawed, wondering when my giggly bath-time babies had turned into fine young men.
In that milestone of a moment, years of impromptu manners lessons finally paid off. The “Say bless you” when someone sneezed. The “Open the door for the nice lady” commands. The “Don’t push your brother into the mini-van” sighs. All that steadfast, relentless parenting came down one moment – one milestone that will carry them well into adulthood. Certainly, farther than their first teeth did.
When my husband got home from work, I told him the good news: Our sons had made their very first unsolicited handshakes, and with eye contact, even. And, just as the nights I told him about our sons’ first steps, he grinned with pride. This time, though, we both took a little of the credit. You know, before the boys started running around with sticks again.
Share, share: What do your kids do that surprises you?
What day is it? I’m not sure, because I spent the last few days in a blur of BlogHer conference meetings and Project Mom casting calls, followed by crabbing and tubing at the Jersey Shore (the place, not the show, though I was near where the show is filmed. I did not run into Snooki.)
On Thursday, I dropped the kids off at the neighbors’ house where my friend Mary seemed surprised that I could clean up so nice. Granted, she normally sees me in ratty shorts or soccer cleats.
Anyhow, I was all dolled up because I was heading into the city (New York, that is) to film a segment with Today Moms of the Today Show.com. (It’s not up yet, but I’ll link to it when it is.)
The lovely and talented Alicia Ybarbo of the Today Show didn't seem as surprised that I sometimes wear makeup and a dress.
Then I headed over to the Bloganthropy Awards Dinner’s On Us, where I met lots of fantastic mom bloggers.
Corine Ingrassia of Complicated Mama knows how to pose for a photograph without holding your phone, business cards, purse and drink in the shot.
My 11-year-old son, by the way, said that my dress could serve as camouflage on Pandora in the movie Avatar. I predict a blog in that boy’s future.
The winner was the lovely and talented Katherine Stone of Postpartum Progress, which helps mothers deal with postpartum depression.
And that was just Thursday. On Friday I went to the Hilton for BlogHer ‘10, the ginormous conference for the 2,500 mom bloggers who showed up. I didn’t get a lot of photos there, but picture lots of “Oh my God!” and hugging and swag and tweeting all in one place, including the lines to the bathrooms. And I got to have a tasty Smore up in the Hershey’s suite (or should I saw “sweet”? Nah, too corny.)
I ran into loads of friends, new and old, including:
Dawn Sandomeno and Elizabeth Mascali of PartyBluPrints.com, who rescued me at the right moment.
Katja Presnal of Skimbaco, who understands English quite well, thank you very much.
Liz Thompson of This Full House, who will never live down grabbing my hand and dragging me to the E.L.F. table while exclaiming “C’mon Jen! You need makeup!”
Tracy Beckerman of Lost in Suburbia (You know when you can hear a dog vomit story coming from down the hall, it’s Tracy.)
Joanna Dreifus of My Mom Shops (Thanks for making me feel like a rock star for stopping me in the hall and making sure we met.)
Thanks to Dawn, I was invited to a showing of Secretariat (two thumbs up!), and got to thank the producer for making a hero out of a middle aged woman, Penny Tweedy, Secretariat’s owner.
I am not certain why Mark Ciardi and I appear to be listing, as if on a boat. It was too early in the party for that.
Speaking of boats, I snapped this pretty sunset shot on my way home to New Jersey:
If it's called the "New York Waterway" ferry, how come they name the boats after Jersey boys?
On Saturday, I had to return the Windows 7 PC laptop that the nice people from Microsoft had let me play with for 24 hours, leaving me to groan at my own four-year-old laptop every time I boot it up now.
I met tons of talented bloggers and I’d list them, but I’m certain I’ll forget someone and that would be bad. Hopefully we’ll all wind up on a TV show together anyhow.
The "Shhh" part was hard, what with dozens of mom bloggers passing through the green room and a two-hour backup for interviews.
Then I found myself on a boat again, this time with my family on my sister-in-law’s boyfriend’s boat on north Barnegat Bay, watching the sun set:
Yeah, that's Jersey.
In just 12 hours, I went from schmoozing with Today Show producers and Hollywood producers and getting interviewed for a reality show to crabbing with my sister-in-law in my pajamas and college soccer sweatshirt.
Hmmm. I wonder why my friends and family are so surprised when I get all dressed up?
Luckily, the boys woke up and took over:
All those hours of watching "The Deadliest Catch" finally paid off.
You'd be crabby, too, I suppose.
And we took the kids tubing, too.
I wish I could bottle their laughs and smiles and dab on a little bit each morning just behind my ears.
Here it is Tuesday (right?), and I’m still a little hungover from all that activity. So, I’ll leave you with the video I made that snagged me one of the coveted spots in the Project Mom casting call, and the hope that next weekend is a tad quieter. At the very least, I hope I don’t have to wear a name tag.
“That dog has cat ears,” my son, Nicholas, then four, observed outside the supermarket one afternoon. Sure enough, the dog had triangular, upright ears, like Garfield, and not oval, floppy ears, like Goofy. That’s when I knew my son had inherited my, er, affliction. I hope he will use it for good, and not evil.
See, I have ADHCIT: Attention Deficit — How Cool is That? It’s something that can either fuel creativity or land you in after- school detention. It has spawned novelists, artists, musicians, comedians, video game producers, bloggers, inventors, entrepreneurs, Bill Gates and stars of the stage and screen. But it has also created a fair share of 29-year-olds sleeping on their parents’ couches at 10 a.m. on a Tuesday morning. The trick is to corral it, focus it, wrestle it into something useful, and, preferably, money-making. But that’s not so easy. (more…)
The end is near! Or maybe the beginning. I’m not sure. All I know is that the news on Friday seemed to signal the end of American life as we’ve known it for, oh, my entire life and then some.
This is it: The week I’d find out what kind of mother I really am. It’s the week both of my children are away together at sleep-away camp for the first time ever. And it’s the week I find out whether, seven years from now, I’ll be the kind of empty nester who:
A. turns the kids’ rooms into shrines where I cry myself to sleep at night.
OR
B. sells the house and leaves no forwarding address.
I miss them. I do. But not in the weepy, lost-without-my-kids kind of way. I mean, it’s not the first time we’ve been apart. They sleep over at my in-laws’ house fairly regularly. But unlike at camp, they call every night with the run-down of their day. As a bonus, they sometimes arguewhile I’m on the other end of the line, all smug in the knowledge that my mother-in-law will have to break up that fight.
Of course, I spent much of June/July 2007 battling cancer in the hospital where I ached for them every single day. I’d put my cell phone on speaker so the nurses and my roommate could listen to them play the piano for me while I stifled sobs in my pillow.
But this is different. This is the first big step toward wondering where they are and when they will come back with my car. It’s the portal to the white-knuckle-nights of their teen years, and the do-you-really-need-a-waffle-iron shopping trips for their dorm rooms.
When I drop them off at college, will I cry on the way home? Or will I crank up the radio, singing along, “Na, na, na, na, hey, hey, hey, goodbye”?
The answer, it seems, came at a museum. I had a few minutes on Tuesday (hell, I had all day…the kids weren’t home) to drop by the Museum of Modern Art near where I’d eaten lunch, only to discover that it’s closed on Tuesdays. So, I wandered next door to the American Folk Art Museum, where I saw lots of things that reminded me of antiquing with my mother:
Makes me want to traipse around a muddy Massachusetts field, lugging crap historic treasures my mother has purchased for her antiques business. But then I saw this:
Yes, that’s right: It’s a ball made from a Wonder Bread bag. This thing had to have rolled over from MOMA, where they are currently displaying such “art” as a bale of hay and a piece of wax paper that appears to have been scraped against a cheese grater and then framed and hung on the wall.
“This isn’t folk art,” I mumbled to myself. “This isn’t art.” And suddenly, I wished my kids were there, especially Nicholas, my 13-year-old artist who, just last week, snapped a well composed photo of the Cape May Lighthouse with the intention of painting that image upon his return from camp. No doubt they would have cracked wise about the Wonder Bread ball, turning it into a running joke whenever we buy bread at the supermarket or make grilled cheese sandwiches. Suddenly, I really missed my kids, because I would have shared that with them, along with this:
He is surrounded by Christmas Seals from 1960, as though some kindergartener had gotten into Mommy’s desk while she was watching “Guiding Light,” and defaced the painting willed to her by her grandmother, who had brought it to America on a ship from Italy a century ago.
Jesus Christ.
What kind of empty nester will I be? A or B? Or perhaps C. None of the above. The good news is that I have seven years until I find out for sure. Until then, I will stay out of the museums unless the kids can tag along.
No wonder.
Share, share: What kind of empty nester will you be?
Back when I was a full-time at-home mom, people would sometimes ask, “What do you do all day?” It was meant to be either innocently inquisitive or incredibly insulting, as though staying home with two children under three was some sort of vacation from “real jobs” involving unsticking the copier and raiding the leftover danishes in the conference room.
My answer was always the same: “I undo everything my kids have done.”
You know, putting away the 143 Matchbox cars snaked across the kitchen floor for a game called “Thanksgiving Traffic Jam.” Wiping peanut butter off the cat’s tail. Fishing the remote out of the toilet. Retrieving my bookmarks from behind the heaters. (more…)
If we listened hard enough, we could hear our hearts breaking knowing ng that Springsteen was playing just 10 miles away.
Here’s a classic one from my days as a GoodHousekeeping.com blogger…because it’s summer, and I’m having a hard time putting together anything longer than a tweet today.
“where r u” my brother, Scott, texted me as I was racing around the streets of Newark, New Jersey, in my mini-van, desperately trying to find the garage where I’d paid for parking in advance.
“mulberry,” was all I could thumb back before the light turned green and I pulled out onto the wrong street…again. I asked yet another police officer where parking lot “Yellow 2″ was located, and she gave me yet another wrong answer. Finally, my kids, Nicholas, 11, and Christopher, 9, and I found the garage. I parked before we ran to the Prudential Center, where the American Idol concert had already started. (more…)
Every late August/early September feels like a new year to me, with the school year approaching and all.
