Tag Archives: things you don’t think about until you are a parent

Nobody ever told me

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About a year ago, my son grew to my height, and he has not shown any sign of slowing down ever since. He’s about half a foot taller than I am now, taller than his father even. It is a very complicated feeling whenever I am startled by having to strain my neck in order to see his face. It also makes it very difficult to hold his gaze and reprimand him when he sort of hovers above my head.

Up until now, I still see him as my baby. Well, secretly anyway. On paper I am all, “You are a teenager now. You have your freedom and independence. You need to learn to take care of yourself.” Honestly though? My heart does a toe touch jump when he lets us tuck him in at night as he lies in the bed that’s barely longer than he is now. He has to sleep diagonally.

They didn’t warn you that this day is coming. Probably because, well, one is supposed to have known better. Babies grow. Everybody gets older every day. Why are parents caught by surprise at all when their children all of a sudden stop being children?

Still, I marveled, “Nobody told me to be prepared for this! I am not ready yet!” when my 14-year-old announced from the bathroom as he brushed his teeth, “Mom! I need to start shaving! Kids at school have been making fun of my mustache.” I ran upstairs and we both stared at the shadow just above his lips in the mirror. Him of pride perhaps? I of shock. Did it sprout overnight? How come I did not notice it until this moment? I was at a loss. “Dad’s coming home tomorrow. He could teach you how.”

Lately he’s been full of surprises. Only that he did not recognize these to be significant watershed moments in his life. One never does, I guess, and leaves the commemoration and the commiseration over them to one’s parents.

“Hey mom, you need to sign me up for driving lessons. Ktahnksbye.”

“I am going to the [school dance] with [girl’s name unintelligible],” he announced casually and went back to reading his Mad magazine, leaving me breathless.

I am at a disadvantage as I did not grow up in this country. Many of these rites of passage taken for granted are completely foreign to me. My knowledge is to the extent of John Hughes movies that I’ve seen. (That, and Porky’s which was, coincidentally, the very first American movie I’ve ever seen on a VHS tape at a friend’s house when the parents were away…) I knew to remind him to find out the color of the dress the girl will be wearing. But that’s about it.

“Geez. You really need to help me out here. I’ve never been to a dance in my life!” I started to panic.

I did not know any men (or boys for that matter) until I was in college.

I did not learn how  to drive until I was over 25.

I have never shaved in my life.

I have never brought up a teenager before.

I have never had to watch somebody grow up so fast. Too fast.

I have never known this subtle, almost imperceptible yet keen once noticed, restlessness inside my gut of pride and fear and joy and sorrow.

 

Nobody ever told me.

No. They don’t.

How to show your kid what the 80s is about. The hard way.

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By taking them to the exhibit dedicated to the 1980s at Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, of course!

 

I am kidding on the square, seeing how this is a hard glance back at the 1980s with a critical eye: feminism, gender politics, race politics, AIDES, political upheavals in the Latin America, Disappeared, Reaganism, NEA, Robert Mapplethorpe. How do you explain to a young child what happened in the 1980s when all they heard nowadays was how in the 1980s everybody was happy because the economy was great?

It’s kind of scary how little the kids know about what really happened in the 1980s.

It’s also kind of difficult, as a parent, to gauge “how young is old enough” and “how much is too much”. I don’t like to shelter my children but I also want to make sure what I share with them is “age appropriate”…

 

Race politics. Passing. Stereotypes. Racism. Gender politics.

I believe I screamed, just a little, when I saw Adrian Piper’s My Calling (Cards) on display since I’ve used this often as an example of how one performance artist has chosen to deal with racism in mundane, daily life. MCA has them on display, in multiple copies, free for the taking.

 

Coming off from my high, I was immediately put on “high alert” when next we walked into the wing dedicated to “Gender Trouble”. Because of the in-your-face shock value of the protest art, I felt I had to prepare Mr. Monk, who’s in 3rd grade, even though he’s a mature 3rd grader, for the images on display. Here’s what I came up with in a panic:

The rise of feminism means that women artists started questioning the social orders in the society: why are men given more power and authority than women? What makes a man a man? What makes a woman a woman? And that’s why they show the anatomy of human being to confront the man-made meanings and differences between men and women, and that’s why you are going to see a lot of penises.

He dutifully nodded, and laughed to mask his discomfort. Nobody wants to hear their mother utter the word “penis” in public even at a whisper.

As I went through the internal struggle of whether to impose “censorship” on the fly, I instinctively shielded him from an open, video screen room [Later, The Husband told me that the room came with a warning sign outside so I guess my instinct was correct]. Then across the room were these:

 

Robert Mapplethorpe.  The artist that embodied two main Reaganism in the 1980s: the government’s willful negligence towards the Aides epidemic and  its fight to censor what it deemed as “obscene” art. Without thinking, I had strategically positioned myself between these photos and Mr. Monk’s sight line. To this moment, I am still questioning myself whether I had done the right thing: If I disagree with the conservative’s accusation, why did I shield Mr. Monk’s gaze from these pictures, esp. the leather-encased penis? [In my defense, I was not worried about my 13-year old; he roamed through the exhibit without a chaperon]

 

Lots of questions were asked: Why was Reagan’s portrait there? Was it for sarcastic reasons? Why? What did he do? Why were people upset?

What is AIDS?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I think Mr. Monk understands this picture or at least walked away with his own interpretation.

Photo Courtesy of The Husband

[After all, he got it when Jack Donaghy said, about Kenneth the Intern, “He’s a white male with hair, Lemon. The sky’s the limit.”]

 

Even though this is a child who is extremely mature for his age, sensitive and observant of the world around him, has watched possibly all episodes of The Simpsons, and Weekend Update on SNL with me, I left the museum still questioning myself: Was is it too much? What is too much? Have I shown my child “age appropriate” material?

 

Photo Courtesy of The Husband

This is such a difficult picture to look at straight on. But it is not difficult to grasp the messages. Should I have shielded him from the ugliness of the world?

 

 

So… 1980s. I almost forgot. It’s not just about the cheesy music, leg warmers and big hairs.

 

 

More pictures from our visit to MCA that day here:

Cool Parents. Oxy. Moron.

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Confession: I have been obsessed with this website I came across from my 13-year-old’s Facebook wall. It is aptly named “I Waste So Much Time“. Unfortunately for my reputation, it is not a philosophical statement born from my existential angst. They omitted “On the Internet” in the name. This website is “curated” for middle schoolers… And I spent two hours the other night reading the posts and laughing out loud to myself when I should have been in bed. What can I say? Deep down I am a 15 year old boy. *cough* (Only that I do not “take long showers”…) Anyhoo, I saw this post, and it gave me pause.

 

 

This was of course said with pride. On this website and the others popular amongst the Facebook teen generation, such as My Life is Average, being normal means boring, a conformist; being weird means you know who you are, awesome. In fact, the kids who post on MLIA are so unabashedly geeky, smart with a great sense of humor, (and granted, a bit Harry-Potter-obsessed, but hey, they all hate Twilight and that means a lot to me) that I often read those posts to give myself some hope: “These are our future. Maybe one day high schools will not be dominated by drones of jocks and cheerleaders.” And that makes me want to give all those kids a big giant non-creepy bear hug.

I once thought too I would be the weird, cool parent. How many of you thought the same?  I did not even think. I just assumed. No way was I going to be like my parents. My kids are going to love me for how cool I am and we are going to have so much fun together!

The reality is, of course, my kids do not really want cool parents. Or rather, they do not want parents that out-cool them.

They do not appreciate being told that rad was a term popular even before my time.

They do not want you to teach them the correct pronunciation for Meme. (And definitely not the history of it. Who cares that Richard Dawkins came up with this idea in 1976 in his book The Selfish Gene?)

They do not want to admit that you introduced them to Spotify.

They do not want to listen to the cool songs you share with them. But of course they told you about “Pumped Up Kicks” a week after you sent them the song on Spotify.

They do not want your playlists.

They do not want to hear about the latest YouTube sensation from you.

They do not want you to be better at fixing computer than they are. Or to know how to use iTune.

They do not want you to know how to use “I took an arrow to the knee” correctly. (My apology to Skyrim players who are pissed by how this meme has been conveninetly co-opted by those who, like me, have not earned the “right”… Blame websites such as knowyourmeme.com, they have made it way too easy)

They do not want you to know every single Meme or Internet joke or LOLcat, and definitely not before they do.

They do not even want you to be able to say LOLcat correctly.

When you twirl like a crazy child in the living room to whatever music they are playing, they eye you with a bemused expression and possibly even shake their head, and for one moment, they look older than their age.

When you think you are being cool and awesome, you are actually being weird, weird, like really weird, not the cool weird, and you embarrass them.

“Why can’t you be like the other parents?”

They eye you with suspicion or confusion when you slip in a few “youth-oriented” lingo in your conversation.

Do not try to be that cool parent because then you are just a try-hard.

It’s what demarcates the “boundary” between youth and age. We’ve got the experience. We’ve got the dough. We’ve got the authority. Without the coolness factor, what’s left for the young to claim as their own?

 

I have been pondering on these for a long time now but am not able to formulate a cohesive thought around this subject. As I was working on this draft, my 13-year-old walked by and read it out loud, “Our generation today will be the weirdest grandparents… Yup. That’s true.”

“You know,” I said, “When I was your age, I thought I was going to the coolest parent.” Just to burst his bubble (because that’s how we show love in this household).

He laughed. There was a silence.

“Well, you are kind of a cool parent.” He said quietly.

I was made speechless.

Well played, young padawan. Well played.

 

 

 

On a related note, I saw this posted inside the high school my son will be going to. Somehow I know that he will be ok there.

 

Leaving

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Whenever I think of my trips home, I think of the last moment as my parents watched me walking away

 

 

I started getting it, bit by bit, that the thing between parents and children, the thing that ties you together is that all your life, you are forever watching them walking away.

[The inadequate, rough translation mine]

I read this in a book by Lung Ying-tai, a renowned cultural critic in Taiwan, on my plane ride back to Chicago in December 2009, and I have not completely stopped crying ever since…

 

It has proven difficult for me to write about my trips home because whenever I think of them, I think of the last moment as my parents watched me walking away.

The last moment, at the airport, right before I turned around and headed towards the exit, ironically named “the entrance of emigration” in Chinese on the airport sign.

The border always carries something more than simply arbitrary and abstract. The pang was so visceral that I found it hard to breathe right before I steeled myself and determined that this hug was going to be the last hug. I turned. I walked towards the police officer, handed him the passports and boarding passes. I told myself every time, “Don’t cry this time,” before turning back with a raised hand towards my parents merely a dozen steps away, my mother waving with a smile on her face saying goodbye to the kids, my father teetering on his cane, his figure stooped, his expression stoic. He looked so small even though you could still see traces of his healthier self when we made fun of him by comparing him to the Happy Buddha. I squeezed my heart into a smile on my face. I waved one last time and quickly stepped into the customs area. And then, they lost sight of me.

This is always the moment when my tears start beading along the edges of my eyes until they get so heavy that they roll down my cheeks. I cry because I know my father is crying at this moment as soon as we are out of sight.

My family has learned to have the tissue at ready because, like me, my father is especially susceptible to crying.  I didn’t become privy to this family fact till when in college, we watched Graves of the Fireflies together, I turned around at one point and saw my father’s face wet with tears. I moved the box of Kleenex that I was holding in front of him. He acknowledged it by pulling a handful of tissues from the box and blowing his nose throughout the movie.

I tried to wipe the tears away so I was not embarrassing myself in front of the airport security. Perhaps they have gotten used to seeing people in tears as they pretended not to notice the fact that I was heaving and hicupping from trying to act normal. My 12-year-old patted me on my back, “Mom, are you ok?”

I nodded and gave him an embarrassed smile.

“You cry every time we leave.” He said, perhaps not quite understanding the possibility of such heartache.

I am always grateful that the act of leaving lasts only until the x-ray machine. I will soon be sufficiently distracted by the procedures, the logistics, and the anticipation for the dreadful 20-hour trip back to Chicago.

 

CODA: If I were writing in Chinese for a Chinese readership, I would have mentioned this prose essay, “Retreating Figure” (Bei Ying, 背影) by the famed Chinese poet/essayist in the early 20th century, Zhu Ziqing, which has become part of the collective cultural memory. The title is literally “Rear View”: you can understand why it is not really the best choice in this case. You could defuse the unintentional comedy by calling Zhu’s moving essay about his father “Seeing Father from the Back” but it detracts from the one-two punch the short Chinese title delivers. Sometimes there is simply no easy translation. In “Retreating Figure”, Zhu described his leave-taking with his father as the older Zhu saw his son off at a train station. The father crossed several train tracks to purchase some tangerines for his son for the train ride. The writer vividly described his father’s endeavor as he climbed down and then up the platforms, crossed the train tracks, and then back, stopping in between his arduous journey to wipe the sweat off of his brows. No emotions were transcribed into words between father and son, or on paper, and yet this is one of the most moving pieces of literature I have read. I close my eyes and I can see the back of the older Mr. Zhu walking away as this image is overlaid with the image of my father, standing there watching me as I walk away.

Mens Size Small

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This Sunday I dragged my kids shopping.

I would like to emphasize how unusual this was: I am not crazy. I do not go shopping with them any more because I treasure my sanity and I dislike turning into a banshee inside the store. My secret banshee identity is reserved for inside the house, away from prying eyes. Thank you very much. I shop online. I shop online for everything, including shoes for everybody. But there was a rumor that it would start snowing on Sunday night. And that it would continue to snow the whole week. (Later I checked online and could not find any evidence of such a rumor even existed. I decided to change my radio alarm clock away from the classic music station because Mozart must have given me that piece of false intel when I was still groggy at 6:45 am on a Sunday morning… I was perhaps extremely susceptible to such intel because of 20 Prospect’s pictures of snow-covered MLPS which is only, after all, 7-hour drive away.)

I was on a mission: Winter jackets. Snow shoes. Snow pants. Gloves. Besides, Gap and Old Navy was having the 30% off everything sales.

Like almost all 7th grade boys, my son does not want to be bothered with his outward appearances. T-shirts. Sweat pants. If I ask him to dress up, he wears jeans. He does not own clothes with collars except his band uniform polo shirt. Don’t get me wrong: this coolness towards fashion, I am pretty sure, saves us a lot of money and I am not complaining.

But there was a sale going on at Old Navy! I practically had to beg him to let me buy him some clothes since Christmas is not far away and I prefer not to have to pay regular price for “emergency good clothes” later. As soon as he granted me the permission, I realized that he has outgrown the Boys’ Department.

We are now in Men’s territory. My son, according to the fashion industry and the arbitrary sizing chart, is now a young man.

A rite of passage. Right inside the dressing room at Old Navy. He is now Mens Size Small.

I am not sure whether he saw this as anything significant, but he clearly was energized by the clothes that I brought into the dressing room: Military-inspired Dress shirts (which by the way was $15 plus 30% off. SCORE!). Zip Pullover Cable-Knit Sweaters.

He looked all of a sudden so grown-up in these men’s clothes and he himself noticed it too. For the first time, I watched him “modeling” in front of the mirror, soaking his new image all in, feeling self-assured, proud, and probably a bit cocky too.

He showed me the latest dance moves. (When did he learn these things?) The pop singer hair flip. Then he did what he called an “ab roll” (Huh?) and I realized that my son actually has a six-pack or at least the sign of it and he clearly has developed some nice biceps. When did this happen? Is this the same picky eater who is able to put on and take off his jeans without unbuttoning first? He topped this all with that famous dance move by MJ. (At this, I had to roll my eyes and tried hard not to laugh while giving him the tsk tsk appropriate amount of disapproving look)

He’s growing up so fast. Noooooo. 12 is still a small number in the scheme of things right? Right?

All of a sudden I regretted ever forcing him to look less like a bum. Looking like a bum is fine by me now, really. I swear!

“Do you really think I look good in this?”

“No you look absolutely awful!” I said with exaggeration.

He laughed. “Good. Could I get these please?”

The new shirts and sweaters are now hanging in his closet away from his day-to-day clothes (t-shirts, sweat pants and jeans) which are crammed into his dresser. I wonder how long before he actually remembers the older him that he had a glimpse of and decides to wear the Men’s Clothes we got him this Sunday.

Update:

One tricky thing about parenting boys during the awkward period (say between 12 and 18?) is that you never know which one you are going to get at any given moment, the boy or the man?

My son is sitting here at the kitchen table doing his math homework. I thought I head him humming, “It’s raining men. Hallelujah!”

“What? Are you singing ‘It’s raining men’?” I chuckled.

“Oh yeah. So that’s it. I thought it says ‘It’s raging mad’…”

Last Day of Innocence

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He may not know it but today marked an important milestone in my oldest’s life, and also in our life as parents.

My husband walked the boys to the bus stop this morning and he even took some pictures of them together waiting for the bus albeit with his phone*. This will be the last time they do this. My children will no longer attend the same school at the same time. It is kind of strange to realize this.

Today is the last day of grade school for my oldest child. After the summer, he will be a 7th grader, going on to junior high. I am dreading seeing it more and more as the end, or the beginning of the end, of childhood innocence for him. For us.

I am terrified. To me, junior high is alien territory. A murky space between child and teens.  Where the physiological development of your child propels them across the threshold of adulthood when they are still babies.

My baby.

I did not grow up here and all my education of the American high school experience and culture came from watching high school movies produced in Hollywood, starting with Porky’s. It suffices to say that Porky’s is not very helpful, nor is it reassuring, in preparing me for junior high because, well, all these movies are about senior high schools. Junior high schools are way under-represented in Hollywood. The only movie about junior high school in my recollection is The diary of a Wimpy Kid. A movie so unsettled me that I repeatedly asked my husband, “Is it really that bad? These kids are only 12?! How can they be so mean?” until he lied and said, “No, it’s just a movie. Now stop being so crazy,” and forced my children to promise me that, yes, they WILL tell me if they are being bullied in school because “I WILL GO KICK SOMEBODY’S ASS!”

Oh, yes. I am on full-patrol bully alert. I am sharpening my shuriken and start my 12-step training as a ninja assassin because God forbid if I make it worse for my children by giving those bullies a chance to retaliate.*

I went to an “Introducing New Parents to What Junior High School is All About” meeting a few months back. The principal gave us a rundown of the curriculum, the classes offered, the extra-curricular activities available, the amount of homework expected – “Two hours minimum, and more if they take a foreign language class”, and the rules especially regarding electronics – “NONE allowed. Don’t even bring them to school.” There was a walk-through of the school property, which I missed because my son did not inform me of the meeting until that afternoon, and from what I was told, an attempt to explain how the kids will be divided into two groups because there are too many of them, the Switch and Swap between classes, and something about the homeroom not being really important since the kids are based off of their lockers.

Lockers? You mean lockers from which things inadvertently fall out and the owner of the said locker will be ridiculed and thus be relegated to the Purgatory of the Uncool? You mean lockers where the smaller kids get shoved into by the bullies all the fucking time and nobody ever stops them or at least alerts the authorities?  Is it just me? Nobody else sees these lockers as potential hazards and should be purged from high schools? Or are the movies completely made up?

Good. Now I feel better. I should also stop remembering each and every high school torture scene I have seen.

Then there was the cafeteria. The pièce de résistance in every high school movie.  Although I mocked myself for taking the movies too literally, I soon realized, much to my dismay, that the significance of the cafeteria is not an exaggeration by Hollywood. I spent half an hour listening to moms rehashing and reviewing the cafeteria seating assignment process and policy shared with us new parents.

The kids will have a few weeks to sit wherever they want. The day before the designated day, an announcement will be made. “Tomorrow is the day!” On the designated day, wherever the kids are sitting and whomever they are sitting with, THIS IS IT. They have to remain in that seat for the next 3 months.

The moms seemed to be satisfied that there will be quarterly rotations. So I was too. After I made this mental note…

Note to Self: Child MUST attend school on THOSE FOUR days. Even if he is coughing up blood.

All this pressure to be COOL. To NOT be uncool.

I seriously admire all of you who have grown up this way, who have gone through and survived this unscathed. Just sitting here thinking about it, the pressure is getting to me so much that I want to slit my throat.  Because the boundary between COOLNESS and UNCOOLNESS seems so… fickle and arbitrary. One has no control over it. You become the hostage of your peers who are just as confused as you are.

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As I watched the children at their 6th grade party having the time of their life, I wondered whether these kids knew that their carefree days were naught:  Did they know that this might be the last time all of them would be hanging out as a group and stay in such proximity to each other (for 100% innocent fun), no cliques in sight?  That this would be the last time the D.J. did not need Bill Pullman’s speech at the end of Independence Day to rouse everybody to participate equally, more or less?

My heart ached.

For almost all of them this was probably the first “dancing” party they have been to. They were excited. And awkward at the same time, not sure what to do with their long limbs when the music started pounding. While I wearily noted down a few kids that could be easily pegged as “future jocks and queen bees in the making” and I mentally gave them the Robert De Niro “I’m Watching You” hand sign, short and tall, small and big, boys and girls, they all acknowledged each other’s existence. They were all hanging out and being uncool together. Crossing that mile marker. And that made it totally cool.

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*I started out wanting to write a sentimental piece about how my baby is all growing up and no longer a child. Apparently, my school of parenting is Unsentimental Parenting. Somehow this turned into an exercise in mental anguish and pre-battle prep and I am psyching myself up like Mr.  “I Pity the Fool” T.

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*Correction: I forwarded my husband the email version that Feedburner sent me and he would like it to be known that he actually remembered to bring an ACTUAL camera with him that morning to the bus stop. That’s more than I can say, honey. You know how I only take pictures with my iNotPhone now.

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* Yes, I email my husband selective blog posts of mine to 1. inform him what’s going on in this household because chances are he has no idea (and this may or may not have something to do with him being a road warrior). 2. prevent him from reading posts that I don’t want need him to read.

What I learned from the Olympics*… *Not what you think

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We have been watching the Winter Olympics. I didn’t plan to. But what’s not to love really? Finally something on prime time that does not involve dead bodies, sexual predators, or its own mythologies.

Naturally I gravitated towards Ice Dancing and Figure Skating. (No, I don’t really want to engage in a debate about how Ice Dancing does not count as a sport and should not even be included in the Olympics. Thank you very much).

Last Sunday though, we caught a glimpse of the Super-Combined and the boys and I were hooked. We don’t ski. Skiing has never entered my mind as a recreational option despite our proximity to some relatively inexpensive hills in Wisconsin. The word “skiing” conjures up images of Vail and the fancy schmancy aura surrounding “Skiing resorts” in my psyche. Memories of seeing people refusing to do away with their lift tickets still hanging on their zipper pulls long after their last skiing trip without any hope of ever going back again this season.

What was shown on TV was exhilarating. The commentators were talking about Bode Miller as this Comeback Kid. Everybody loves a good comeback story. So we held our breath as he rushed downhill. The camera at one point cut to his mother, I assume, with her hand to her mouth watching her son intently, perhaps with a bit comprehension. The camera zoomed in further to try to catch an emotional moment. Everybody loves a good human interest perspective in the games of sports.

With his eyes still on the screen, my oldest commented,

“You know, when I or [my brother] go to the Olympics? You have to remember that you are always on camera. So you have to remember to look good all the time. Don’t let the camera catch you tweeting or Facebooking! That’s the lesson we should learn here.”

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Our job goal as far as our kids are concerned as parents is to never embarrass them. I am sure with me as a mother THIS is constantly on his mind. Later when one of the athletes crashed on the snowy course and thus dashed his dream for any medal, for yet another human interest angle, the camera mercilessly zoomed in on the father who buried his face in his hands, leaned his forehead against the fence, visibly shaking.

My preteen reached across the sofa, grabbed both of my hands, and besought me,

“Promise me. You will never do that! Don’t cry like that if we lose. Promise me!”

I simply laughed. For sure, this is a promise I will not be able to keep…

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I also learned that athletes for Winter Sports live on the wild-er side, and they either have no mental filters because they are so adorably honest, or they are simply really really high, like “high”, when they are on the high mountains…

Read this quote from Norway silver medalist Odd-Bjoern Hjelmeset as reported in Sports Illustrated… and tell me if it is not one of the best…

“My name is Odd-Bjoern Hjelmeset. I skied the second lap and I f—– up today. I think I have seen too much porn in the last 14 days. I have the room next to Petter Northhug and every day there is noise in there. So I think that is the reason I f—– up. By the way, Tiger Woods is a really good man.”

(Sports Illustrated Writer’s note: By far the craziest quote released by the VANOC information desk over the past 13 days.)

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Or this quote from Graham Watanabe, a snowboarder from the U.S.

“It’s feeling a lot more like this is my first Olympics. Try to imagine Pegasus mating with a unicorn and the creature that they birth. I somehow tame it and ride it into the sky in the clouds and sunshine and rainbows. That’s what it feels like.”

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Update: Naptime Writing had written in a post “Lessons from the Olympics” which has a list of the things she learned about human nature from this Olympics that was observant, profound, hilarious at the same time. Knowing my readers, I just want to emphasize hilarious. I was grateful that she commented on the “fake flesh-colored” costumes worn by the skaters to make them look like they are wearing skimpy outfits when actually they are not. So it’s not just me.

Shoes

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shoes

These shoes CANNOT be for my child, can they?

Self-denial.

This post was supposed to be written last summer, but I got sidetracked. Or it could be that I simply did not want to deal with reality.

Up till this summer, I still ordered shoes for my oldest from Lands’ End, BOYS department. I buy almost everything online not wanting to go shopping with my boys in tow, ever, yes, including shoes for everybody even myself. Lands’ End only makes shoes for BOYS up till Size 7. Anything larger falls under MEN’s department. My boy was wearing Size 7 then. He never complained about them being too small. I never gave it any thought either because I wear size 8.5, and of course, his feet were smaller than mine. Right?

We went into the sporting goods store with my husband one night. At the sight of the bargain-bin sneakers, my husband suggested that we get new shoes for our son. He asked one store employee to measure my son’s feet.

“What size are you wearing?” He asked.

“Size 7.” I answered since the other two did not seem to have any clue.

“Yah… Let me see.” The man took one look at my son’s feet and shook his head in disagreement. He proceeded with the metal instrument. “Size 9. He is a size 9!” He said it with too much glee, if you ask me.

“No. It can’t be! He is still wearing size 7 shoes. Look at these!” I picked up the shoes from the floor and shoved them in his direction.

“No, ma’am. He is a size 9. And in fact, I’d recommend that you buy him shoes in Size 9.5 to give his toes more wiggle room.”

I sat down on the bench in the middle of the aisle. Dejected. Surprised by how emotional I was feeling towards this. THIS.

Still clueless, My husband chuckled. “A size 9. Whoa!” He slapped my son on his still-bony shoulder. Turning towards me, “I think you are scaring the guy!” He whispered loudly.

I bet he was indeed scared: He walked away quickly when I burst into tears.

My son’s feet, upon their release from BOYS’ shoes, have been growing quickly. He is now wearing size 10.5.

BUT he is still one of my two grade school kids. At least until this June. And he is still about a head shorter than I am. Probably not for long now, I know even though I am not sure I am ready. When the day comes I hope I won’t be caught off guard like my shoe store revelation.

Left-Handed

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I have been thinking about my parents a lot lately, especially yesterday. Thanksgiving does that to you, I guess.

In all honesty, I try not to think about them because when I do, the sense of guilt soon becomes too overwhelming: I have been lost to them since 1993 when I came to the U.S. for graduate school. The originally temporary stint abroad that was supposed to last only two years became the reality of me and them separated by the Pacific Ocean. And, oh, yeah, the land mass from here to the West Coast. Tenuously connected through phone calls, calculated according to a 14-hour time zone difference.

I sometimes wonder whether my father had regretted telling me, “Don’t come home for the summer. Travel around the U.S. You will be home less than a year anyway.” THAT was the summer I met my husband…

Sometimes I get upset at myself on behalf of my parents. Then I turn towards my own children and warn them, abruptly,

“When you grow up, if you move to a different continent, I am going to be really, really, really mad at you!” My teeth gnashing.

I’d walk away and hide myself in the bathroom, work myself into tears, remember this is probably how my parents feel, then become even more upset and turn into a hysterical mess.

Oy.

I did not realize my father is left-handed until this March when we visited my parents. They noticed that Mr. Monk was writing with his left hand.

“He’s left-handed? I guess it is ok nowadays to write with your left hand. Your father is left-handed too.” My mother said over the phone when I was back in the U.S.

“No. He is NOT!” I defended myself, against an accusation of inattentiveness that was not there.

“Oh yes he is. He is supposed to be left-handed. He writes with his right hand, indeed. But, you have never noticed? he uses scissors and knives with his left hand.”

Of course I have never noticed it. I left home when I was twenty-four. I was too young, too educated, too busy to live my life to notice my parents. As I get older and know better, however, I am not there to catch up.

Ever since that exchange, I often try to remember my father opening a letter with a pair of scissors (He does not believe in letter openers) or dissecting a pork shoulder roast (his favorite) with a cleaver. I imagine him using his left hand.

I don’t know how to explain to my husband or my boss that I really need to fly home because I need to see my father use his left hand…

Towards a Discussion of Religious Pluralism with a First Grader. Gingerly.

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Seriously. This is how I feel every Saturday now...

Seriously. I fear this is true.

Scene 1

On our way home in the car, the 11 year-old lodged an official complaint against his younger brother for embarassing him in school: He talks about God too much. He said things like, “God created everything” in daily, random conversations, without prompting. On top of that, he also sometimes sports a British accent, according to his older brother, “Like Charlie and Lola!”

(Trying very hard not to laugh out loud since both kids were visibly upset).

“People don’t talk that way. It is rude. You can’t assume that the person believes in what YOU believe in.”

“He was telling Miss [Babysitter] about the Ten Commandments!”

“Well,” I attempted to smooth things out, “Miss [Babysitter] is probably not offended. At any rate, it is very possible she is Catholic since her family moved from Poland when she was in high school.”

“Isn’t it rude to assume?” Once again, he got me right then and there.

He was so indignant. Mr. Monk, my 6-year-old, started wailing. “I DID NOT! And why can’t I tell her about the Ten Commandments? She knows about them too!”

At the same time I was proud that we must be doing something right bringing up my oldest, I also felt panic. Surely my youngest is confused as hell. If we insist on him going to Religious Ed every Saturday morning, why can’t he talk about what he has learned there? And if there are people that do not believe in Jesus and God as taught in Religious Ed, for example, Mommy Heathen here, why does he have to believe? Of course, these were questions swarming inside my head as I sped home since the radio cranked up way high was not enough to drone out Mr. Monk’s indignant sobbing. He himself has not asked me those questions yet. Not that day. But they did come way sooner than I had expected.

Seriously? What kind of 6-year-old discusses religious pluralism with their parents?

Scene 2

“Why do people that were not baptized NOT believe in the same god as people that were baptized?”

The questions came. They came fast and furious. We were going to bed. Supposed to.

Not knowing how to answer this question, I decided to take the literal approach:

“Honey, you know that Muslims and the Jewish people believe in the same god that you do. [I am assuming he does for the convenience of having a conversation with him that would actually get us somewhere…] The main difference is that they do not believe that Jesus is the savior.”

Did I say it right? Is Jesus Christ the savior? I was sure I pulled that line out from one of the Christmas carols.

“Do you believe Jesus Christ is the savior?”

“No.” I said without hesitation.

I never talk down to my children. I made a conscious decision when I was pregnant with my first born and one day, all of a sudden, I realized just how heavy that burden is, to be responsible for another human being’s moral upbringing.

He turned away from me. I could see his shoulders heaving. He was quietly sobbing.

Oh my god. Was he fearing for my soul? Finally he turned to look at me in the eyes, very seriously, too serious for a 6 year old.

“Do you want me to learn that Jesus Christ is the savior? That GOD created the world?”

I explained that since his father is Catholic, and I am not, I would prefer that his father talks to him about this subject.

“No.” He said emphatically.  “I want to know whether YOU want me to learn about this.”

I started to explain why we decided to have them baptized and have them attend Religious Ed: Moral upbringing. It takes a village.

Growing up, I was never religious yet deep down I understood the expectations of me to be good. To do good. Karma. Reincarnation. It was never explicitly taught, but I knew. Everyone of us knew. It is embedded in the culture. I am certainly not suggesting Asian societies/cultures are more moral. Ha. Far from it. My theory is that the subtle permeation in daily life of the implicit belief in Karma, in What goes around, comes around, in you do reap what you sow, makes it easier to conform to a certain moral code without an explicit religious upbringing.

My husband and I were alone in the city. Far away from any “villages” that we could count on as a moral foundation for our children. We thought, Catholic Church! Besides, my husband went through the whole Religious Ed ordeal ritual thing and he turned out fine, it just seemed a natural conclusion to draw.

“I don’t need you to learn about God, which god, I am not sure. You will have to make your own decision when you grow up. But right now, I want to make sure that you can learn right from wrong. That you will know to do the right thing when we are not around.”

With a stroke of genius, I used Spiderman as an example to explain Karma.

“Remember when Peter Parker let the robber go because he was mad at the man for cheating him out of his winnings, but later the robber killed his uncle?”

I think he got it. I hope he got it. He turned his back towards me again. Silence. But I could tell from his breathing that he was not falling asleep. It was almost midnight. My child with an old soul…

“Are you worried that mommy may go to hell?”

“Not really. I don’t know.” His voice was calm.

I told him about how when his broher was his age, he came home one day after Religious Ed and asked us, “Are you and daddy going to hell?” Apparently the teacher had told him that his parents would be going to hell if they (we) don’t go to mass every Sunday.

“That was awful!” He commented. He did not sound traumatized. THAT. Seemed to be all I could have asked for that night.

How much do you tell your children when they are so young? Too little, you are sheltering them. Too much, you are burdening them. I decided I would make my one last pitch and let it be. Well, as much “let it be” as I could muster as a mother.

“I want you to remember this: there are people that will use religion as an excuse to try to get you to do things that you know are not right, to beleive things that you know are wrong. Anybody, ANYBODY, that uses religion as an excuse to talk you out of thinking for yourself…”

“… is wrong?” He finished the sentence for me.

“Yes.” I sighed and gave him a hug.

“Ok. I am going to sleep now. Good night.”

Then he was sound asleep.