Your mother will always look out for you no matter how old you get it seems. Since I just moved here from that Stepford Wife state of CT, I’ve been temporarily staying with the parental units until my new house is ready next month. So I was humorously reminded of the protective bond a mother provides over the years. Let me explain a recent chain of events on how it goes on down the line through the generation tug of war.
Last week at dinner time my pre-schooler grumbled that he didn’t want to eat his food. He got down from the table and screamed, “Mommy, I want oreo’s for dinner.” Didn’t sound like a bad idea to me - heck, I wanted cookies for dinner too. Oh, but then the mother instinct took over and I told him “no” of course and he went off stomping his feet and yelling, “Bad Mommy”.
So after putting him to bed I dressed up and was leaving the house to go to a late dinner with friends but had popped my head into the TV room where my mother and grandmother were watching, “SuperNanny” that horrid little show with unruly children you wish to ship off to Guam. “You should watch this show, Carol, you could a learn a thing or two,” says my mother. “That little guy of hers could be an episode himself,” jokes my Grandmother. So I roll my eyes like any good daughter would and try to escape for my night out but too late – mom is out of the chair and scrutinizing my outfit. After a frown the size of half a hula hoop, she reaches over and buttons my shirt, “Look at this – you have cleavage showing for goodness sake.” Immediately I’m thrown back to high school hiding a pair of 3” red suede Candie heels in my back pack that I would change into after I got off the bus at school. So I let her do it knowing full well I’m going to unbutton it again when I leave the house. On the way out the door I overhear my grandmother complain to my mother, “You’re gonna let her go out at 9:00 at night?” “She’s 40 years old, Ma,” my mother replies. “I don’t care - What is she doing at 9:00 at night,” my Grandmother continues to apply pressure. I just know my mother is rolling her eyes at her own mother.
So the stress gets passed on down the line from mother to mother across the generations. Always looking out for your best interest with that mother hen instinct to protect their young even though you are a parent yourself. The next day my mother wheels my Grandmother into the Adult Day Center to spend some time with her friends. (93yrs. old and still kicking, God Bless her cranky little self) As she leaves she overhears my grandmother say to her friends, “Damn kids! Sixty years old and she’s still giving me aggravation!”
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Life in the Emergency Room
The local hospitals know my father on a first name basis. “Hi, Ron, what did you do this time?” is a popular phrase heard in every Emergency Room in the Hudson Valley. He’s there so often they need to name a wing after him from all the business he’s provided them over the years. What’s the problem? He’s either accident prone or just really bad at starting a career of suicide attempts.
Starting from my childhood I can count the years on what accidents Dad had. When the teacher asked me to recite the alphabet I’d say, “E-R”. It started when he was showing me how NOT to open a car’s radiator after it was running for awhile. “See this, Carol? Don’t ever open the radiator cap when it’s hot -- watch what happens.” You guessed it - facial burns that rivaled the Joker’s. That was my first experience in the ER. There was the time he was showing me how to ski down the slopes of VT. “Now it’s very important to watch where you’re going, Carol, so you don’t hit a treeeeee”. He looked like a cartoon character with his face smashed into that tree, arms and legs wrapped around it and various ski equipment strewn about the mountain. I just shook my head and wondered how he survived hitting a tree and Sonny Bono didn’t – they’re both the same size I thought.
Chainsaws! There’s a hot button. I can’t tell you how many body parts he’s cut up with a chainsaw over the years. Dr. Frankenstein must be his doctor one would think with all the sewn up appendages he has. As an adult whenever I hear the sound of one I immediately begin to twitch as if I have cerebal palsy. When I got my drivers permit he made sure I got full use out of it driving him to the hospital. “Hi Carol, can you drive on over here I need your help.” “Sure, Dad, let me finish eating my sandwich and I’ll be there in a half hour.” “You better come now because I’m lying under a tree.” WHAT??!!” “Yeah, the chainsaw got away on me and I sliced my arm just about off but I can’t tell because the tree fell on me so I’m a bit stuck underneath it right now. It’s a good thing the cell phone was in my other pocket,” he laughs while bleeding to death. Sixteen years old and I swore like a trucker at him all the way to the hospital as he faintly kept telling me to slow down or I’d get a ticket. Can you believe that?!
This man has totaled more cars than at the Derby Raceway. Insurance companies lock their doors when they seem him coming. The kicker is that he can roll the best trucks several times over and STILL walk away from them. He’s driven one off a cliff, down a slope, landed vertically on a set of railroad tracks and made it out of the cab before the train plowed through it. Stunt men just look at him and shake their heads. Absolutely amazing! Now that he’s in his sixties, retired, and recuperating from 2 heart attacks back-to-back in July I figured his days of being Evil Knieval were over. Nope. Eating my breakfast and staring out the window at the rain last week I suddenly see his body fall from the sky. Bastard fell off the roof. He was working on the addition in the rain and fell off the roof and into the hole of cinder blocks. I told my mother to just pour the concrete foundation on top of him and be done with it. They say cat’s have nine lives but watching this episode I swear I saw a mother cat telling her young, “See that guy – he’s got 15 lives and counting.”
Starting from my childhood I can count the years on what accidents Dad had. When the teacher asked me to recite the alphabet I’d say, “E-R”. It started when he was showing me how NOT to open a car’s radiator after it was running for awhile. “See this, Carol? Don’t ever open the radiator cap when it’s hot -- watch what happens.” You guessed it - facial burns that rivaled the Joker’s. That was my first experience in the ER. There was the time he was showing me how to ski down the slopes of VT. “Now it’s very important to watch where you’re going, Carol, so you don’t hit a treeeeee”. He looked like a cartoon character with his face smashed into that tree, arms and legs wrapped around it and various ski equipment strewn about the mountain. I just shook my head and wondered how he survived hitting a tree and Sonny Bono didn’t – they’re both the same size I thought.
Chainsaws! There’s a hot button. I can’t tell you how many body parts he’s cut up with a chainsaw over the years. Dr. Frankenstein must be his doctor one would think with all the sewn up appendages he has. As an adult whenever I hear the sound of one I immediately begin to twitch as if I have cerebal palsy. When I got my drivers permit he made sure I got full use out of it driving him to the hospital. “Hi Carol, can you drive on over here I need your help.” “Sure, Dad, let me finish eating my sandwich and I’ll be there in a half hour.” “You better come now because I’m lying under a tree.” WHAT??!!” “Yeah, the chainsaw got away on me and I sliced my arm just about off but I can’t tell because the tree fell on me so I’m a bit stuck underneath it right now. It’s a good thing the cell phone was in my other pocket,” he laughs while bleeding to death. Sixteen years old and I swore like a trucker at him all the way to the hospital as he faintly kept telling me to slow down or I’d get a ticket. Can you believe that?!
This man has totaled more cars than at the Derby Raceway. Insurance companies lock their doors when they seem him coming. The kicker is that he can roll the best trucks several times over and STILL walk away from them. He’s driven one off a cliff, down a slope, landed vertically on a set of railroad tracks and made it out of the cab before the train plowed through it. Stunt men just look at him and shake their heads. Absolutely amazing! Now that he’s in his sixties, retired, and recuperating from 2 heart attacks back-to-back in July I figured his days of being Evil Knieval were over. Nope. Eating my breakfast and staring out the window at the rain last week I suddenly see his body fall from the sky. Bastard fell off the roof. He was working on the addition in the rain and fell off the roof and into the hole of cinder blocks. I told my mother to just pour the concrete foundation on top of him and be done with it. They say cat’s have nine lives but watching this episode I swear I saw a mother cat telling her young, “See that guy – he’s got 15 lives and counting.”
Back to school.....
Back to School….
Well all the little kiddie-do’s went back to school this week. You could almost hear the collective sigh of relief through-out the region as parents everywhere put those little ones on the bus. Half hour later what sounded like thunder was not your local weather but rather the groans of every teacher as they dealt with classes of crying kindergarterners and swearing teenagers. God bless those poor things as they struggle to help guide our offspring – I know I couldn’t do it. The fact that I kept my two children alive to the point of school-age is a miracle in itself. Ingrained upon my memory was holding my colicky daughter at three weeks of age and crying along with her thinking, “Why on earth did I do this to myself?” Five years later, with saggy body parts, ten more wrinkles and the loss just about every hair on my head I have to remind myself that in the end it is worth it. Ninety percent of child-rearing is living hell but the other ten percent is so wonderful it keeps you from jumping off the bridge.
The fact that I’ve passed onto my 6yr-old bad habits like swearing better than any truck driver is a mute point. “It was bound to happen in her teens, anyway,” I reason. I fondly remember the first time my little darling picked up on this odd new slang of expressing one’s anger. We were driving in the “mama mini-van” (Lord help me I finally broke down and got one – oy!) when another driver cut me off in a very near miss. Without thinking I yelled, “You A$$hole!” From the her car seat my darling child holding onto her ducky for dear life asked, “Mommy, why did you call him that?” So I begin to answer her, “Well, you see he ran a red light and red means stop….” And just when I was beginning to wonder why I was explaining traffic laws to a toddler wouldn’t you know it but yet another car runs a stop sign and pulls out onto the road in front of me and I have to slam on my brakes to avoid a collision. Without missing a heart beat I hear a little voice yell out, “Look, Ma, there’s ANOTHER A$$hole!” Chip off the old block.
So with a big smile on my face I stood alongside my own mother and took pictures of her getting on the school bus and waved a tearful goodbye. I ponder what experiences my daughter will encounter in first grade this year and all the wonders her little mind will absorb and breathe a sigh of relief that she has a good teacher to guide her. Someone that will help un-do all the mistakes I’ve made thus far and set her on a steady path of good manners, education and ambition. The glow of the moment ended abruptly however when my mother, filled with the unique ability to inflict catholic guilt on everyone she knows, says “I just don’t see why you just can’t home school.” [Smirk] Till next time….
Well all the little kiddie-do’s went back to school this week. You could almost hear the collective sigh of relief through-out the region as parents everywhere put those little ones on the bus. Half hour later what sounded like thunder was not your local weather but rather the groans of every teacher as they dealt with classes of crying kindergarterners and swearing teenagers. God bless those poor things as they struggle to help guide our offspring – I know I couldn’t do it. The fact that I kept my two children alive to the point of school-age is a miracle in itself. Ingrained upon my memory was holding my colicky daughter at three weeks of age and crying along with her thinking, “Why on earth did I do this to myself?” Five years later, with saggy body parts, ten more wrinkles and the loss just about every hair on my head I have to remind myself that in the end it is worth it. Ninety percent of child-rearing is living hell but the other ten percent is so wonderful it keeps you from jumping off the bridge.
The fact that I’ve passed onto my 6yr-old bad habits like swearing better than any truck driver is a mute point. “It was bound to happen in her teens, anyway,” I reason. I fondly remember the first time my little darling picked up on this odd new slang of expressing one’s anger. We were driving in the “mama mini-van” (Lord help me I finally broke down and got one – oy!) when another driver cut me off in a very near miss. Without thinking I yelled, “You A$$hole!” From the her car seat my darling child holding onto her ducky for dear life asked, “Mommy, why did you call him that?” So I begin to answer her, “Well, you see he ran a red light and red means stop….” And just when I was beginning to wonder why I was explaining traffic laws to a toddler wouldn’t you know it but yet another car runs a stop sign and pulls out onto the road in front of me and I have to slam on my brakes to avoid a collision. Without missing a heart beat I hear a little voice yell out, “Look, Ma, there’s ANOTHER A$$hole!” Chip off the old block.
So with a big smile on my face I stood alongside my own mother and took pictures of her getting on the school bus and waved a tearful goodbye. I ponder what experiences my daughter will encounter in first grade this year and all the wonders her little mind will absorb and breathe a sigh of relief that she has a good teacher to guide her. Someone that will help un-do all the mistakes I’ve made thus far and set her on a steady path of good manners, education and ambition. The glow of the moment ended abruptly however when my mother, filled with the unique ability to inflict catholic guilt on everyone she knows, says “I just don’t see why you just can’t home school.” [Smirk] Till next time….
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