That Omelet Doesn't Threaten Me

A Tip for Mothers. Or Fathers. Or People.

This is a public service announcement.  Probably kind of a long one.  But here it goes:

At least a year ago, a mom I know told me a story about the day her teenage son made himself an omelet.  She told the story to illustrate that he is more capable than she had previously imagined.  I'll admit it: I was impressed.  My teenage sons can barely make toast.  And there she was, waxing eloquent about the vegetable chopping, and the spice using, and the whisking, and the this and the that and the competency.

I won't go so far as to say that my confidence in my children -- or in my ability to raise them to be capable adults -- plummeted just from the story of the omelet.  But I do remember thinking: "Man, I wish my kids could do that."  And I've thought about that kid every now and then over the past year or so, especially when I make frittatas for my family, which I do with some frequency, giving me occasion to ponder the big questions: Will these boys ever know how to feed themselves?  Will their palates, and imaginations, and basic attitudes toward food ever move beyond Subway being the pinnacle of gastronomic delight?

Who the hell knows?

All I can be sure of is that that kid made an omelet.  It could have gone one of several different ways.  Herewith, I suggest just two:

Scenario One: 

Kid: I'm hungry.
Mom: Why don't you make yourself an omelet?
Kid: That's a great idea!  Do we have any dill weed? Fresh basil? Feta cheese?

Scenario Two:

Kid: I'm hungry.
Mom: Why don't you make yourself an omelet?
Kid: Phhht.

Kid: I'm hungry!
Mom: Why don't you make yourself an omelet?
Kid: Ugh! Whatever!  I'm not THAT hungry.

Kid: Gaawwwwd…I'm…so…hungry…I'm gonna die…ughgrrrrraaaaaghhhhh...
Mom: Why don't you make yourself an omelet?
Kid: FINE WHATEVER FINE JEEZ FINE.  Crap.  Where the hell is the frying pan thingee?  How do I do this anyway?  Do we have a flippy tool thing?  I can't BELIEVE you are making me do this.

* * *

See, just hearing that someone did something tells you NOTHING.  There are so many ways to do something: quietly, angrily, enthusiastically, peevishly, piously, deviously, pleasantly, like a teenager…the list goes on.  Let's go back to the kitchen for a moment, shall we?

Scenario One:

Kid: Mom, do you want one?  I've got tomatoes, basil, feta, a little mozzarella if you prefer, I'm sautéing some onions first, adding a little garlic.  The kitchen smells fabulous!  Do we have any organic, whole wheat, HFCS-free bread I can toast to go with it?
Mom: Sure I'll have a small one, as long as you're offering.

Scenario Two:

Kid: (picture all of the following being said while the kid is using 10x the necessary number of dishes and utensils, dropping half the ingredients on the floor, and gyrating like a Woodstock attendee.) You mean I have to CHOP stuff?  Forget that.  Ewwwwwww: eggs are slimy and gross.  Do we have the cheese that's already shredded, cuz no way am I gonna use that flesh ripping thing you call a grater.  And by the way, we have barely enough salt: there's only like half a cup in that Morton's canister.  How do you flip this?  I can't flip this! This is fricking IMPOSSIBLE.  OH MY GOD THIS IS A MESS!  And everything's burning! UGH, NO WAY NO ONIONS.  Whatever.  This is stupid.  Why can't we just go to IHOP like normal people.
Mom: (She's actually pretty quiet.  The only thing you can hear, if you listen very hard, is barely audible weeping into a coffee cup spiked with whisky.)

* * *

The result in both scenarios: The kid makes an omelet.  Truth.

Here's the thing: that mom, the one who told me about her son making an omelet, if I were her, I am sure I would have told the story the exact same way.  The damn kid DID make an omelet, and to a mom or dad, that is MON-U-MEN-TAL.  A Scenario 2 mom gets to tell the story just like the Scenario 1 mom gets to, because in the end, it may not be pretty, but the omelet does get made, which is proof positive that someday the kid will be OK, or at least, that's what we are hoping like hell it means.

Also?  The good news, for all parents and other people out there, is that we get to narrate our own stories.  Every single one of them has a germ of truth in it.  Sing that song as loud as you want to. As soon as it starts to make someone else feel like crap, that germ of truth is dust, but until then?  GOLDEN.  Stories are meant to lift us up and show us what is possible, not prove how lame we are and how together everyone else is.  I don't begrudge my friend her omelet story, for two reasons. First, it shows me that I can tell my own stories, with their germs of truth, any way I want, and I can decide what those stories really mean.  And second, I celebrate the fact that on my good days, I can see beyond the halo cast by that story and realize the essential truth: kids grow up and learn how to make omelets and it isn't necessarily pretty along the way, but eventually, we won't have to make them frittatas.  Which reminds me of an image I saw recently:

I heard the omelet story IRL, from an actual person.  But the reverberations of it -- the fact that I think of it sometimes when I'm yet again making frittatas for 14 and 16 year olds who can't boil water -- reminds me of the scourge of Facebook and the like.  I am 100% sure that while social media is keeping us connected to family and friends near and far and making all kinds of powerful social movements possible, it is also responsible for a crap ton of anxiety and neurosis, as we find ourselves staring at screens depicting in word and picture how wonderful and well-adjusted all of our friends' families are.

So.  Here's the public service announcement:

• No one knows the price a mother paid to get her kids to pose like that.
• No one knows the many twists and hair pin turns, the set backs and restarts a father endured to teach his daughter to drive.
• No one knows just how loud those kids were screaming at each other, or with what degree of vitriole, mere moments before mom snapped that Back to School photo.
• No one knows what went down in the omelet kitchen.  All we know is that an omelet emerged at the end.

Tell your stories.  Don't let anyone else's bring you down.  See the germs of truth and let them inspire, not hen-peck, you.  The long road of raising children, of life, is not pretty, but there are fantastic views along the way and we get to frame the photos.

It doesn't hurt that just recently, the omelet maker got in trouble with his coach for coming to soccer practice high.

Nope.  Doesn't hurt at all.

* * *

Farmer T

We are chicken sitting.

A neighbor down the street is away for a couple of weeks, and since we never go anywhere, we are taking care of her chickens.  This means fresh eggs for us!

Confession?  I inwardly groan every morning when it's time to go "do the chickens."  I described the whole thing to a friend like this: "Yet another thing I should not have said: 'Sure!  That sounds fun!' to."

Sigh.

Little T is thoroughly enjoying it though.

Will this exposure to local chickens just complicate my life?  Am I going to be dealing with Pleasemommypleasemommypleasemommycanwehaveourownchickenspleasemommypleeeeeeeese?

Oh dear.  I hope not.  I'm not quite ready to walk my local food talk in that particular way.

But oh-so-yummy were the fried eggs we had for breakfast!

* * *

Raising Kids Takes Common Sense

As my kids get older, I am having to negotiate the world of popular culture more and more, and no one issued me a road map back when the kids were born. I get all these questions like "Can I buy a song by Eminem? The Lonely Island? The Black Eyed Peas? Lil Wayne?" I am forced to give some thought to artists (and I use the term loosely) upon whom I'd really rather not expend brain cells.

Take Lil Wayne, for example. I do not live under a rock, but I spend a lot of time moving mountains of them, and thus, I have not been able to keep up on exactly who Lil Wayne is, or whether or not I should or would object to his music. And I use that term loosely too.

So today, when I received a text from my boys, asking if they could purchase the song How To Love, by Mr. Lil Wayne, or Mr. Wayne, or however one formally addresses this person, I really wasn't sure how to respond. On my own, I am ill-equipped to answer questions like this from my kids; who has the time or the desire to keep on all this stuff?

Enter Common Sense Media, an online resource "dedicated to improving the lives of kids and families by providing the trustworthy information, education, and independent voice they need to thrive in a world of media and technology." I took that text right from their mission statement, on their About Us page, which also has a listing of CSM's 10 Beliefs about media, all of which I can get behind.

CSM hosts an interactive site where parents and kids can find useful information about all kinds of media, from movies and websites, to books and music. I've used it for years to look up movies and see what people are saying about them. CSM offers a suggested age for which a movie or song is appropriate, as well as extensive written reviews. Parents, educators, and kids can also sign up to provide their own age-ratings and written reviews. I usually read the reviews written by CSM; my son gravitates to those written by young people. I find it incredibly helpful to read these reviews; they help me feel like I am armed with information, not flying blind while making decisions that matter to me about what my kids see, read and hear.

I don't always adhere to the suggestions on CSM and that's not the point. CSM wants to give us information we can use to make our own decisions for our families. I especially appreciate that they include Consumerism in the list of things they rate; I like to know what products are going to be in my kids' faces and how they will be marketed to by what they watch. CSM also rates things like drinking and drug use, language, sex, and violence. Plus, they answer the question "Is it any good?" which I also appreciate, because I had to sit through that stupid hamster movie a few years ago and it was dreadful.

Today was the first time I've ever used it for music; I looked up that Mr. Wayne song my boys wanted (on my smart phone with CSM's mobile app, no less!), and got the following:

common sense media says: Cleanest song yet from notoriously raunchy rapper.

Parents need to know that "How to Love" is one of the cleanest singles released to date by Lil Wayne. There's no profanity or violence and just one muted reference each to sex and drinking. Moreover, the song offers a positive message to girls and women, encouraging them to have high self-esteem. For younger teens who just have to listen to Lil Wayne, this is the best choice around.

See? I learned that Mr. Lil is one of those "notoriously raunchy rappers," which I did not know, and I also learned that this particular song has some good features in it and little to object to.

Still, I was on the fence. Because my kids certainly do not need Lil Mr. in their lives or their ears, but we are trying to give them enough exposure to popular culture so that we don't turn it into something absolutely forbidden and therefore even more attractive.

Did they get to buy the song or not? Well, that's not what this post is about. The point is, I realized today how much I appreciate what Common Sense Media does, and I thought that other parents like me, who wish they had more information about the media their kids are interested in, who want to navigate the world of popular culture, not hide from it or be passive in it, would want to know that this kind of help is available. And there's more: I noticed just today that CSM has tools and resources for helping kids become savvy internet users, including how to use Facebook wisely. They also engage in advocacy, providing a needed, independent voice to the debate about media in our culture. They do much more than I knew, even though I've been clicking around on their site for years.

In this media-saturated culture, when our kids are bombarded by so much more than we were and so much more than we even know, a resource like CSM is invaluable. CSM isn't making any decisions for us, but it is giving us what we need to feel good about the decisions we make for our kids.

Check it out: one more tool in your arsenal can only be a good thing, right?

Because raising kids? Is actually warfare.

* * *

Confidence

One of the other parents on my son's soccer team is a bridge engineer. He is working on the re-design of the Bay Bridge, which connects San Francisco to Oakland and the rest of the East Bay. At a stiflingly hot soccer tournament this past weekend, I had a chance to talk with him about the rebuilding of this important local bridge, one I and all of the other parents there are used to traveling over. Among other things, we talked about how there is not enough steel produced in the United States to build the Bay Bridge, necessitating that we contract out to China to build it. But China buys all of our scrap metal from our junk yards and refuse centers, right down to our discarded man hole covers, which they melt down and use on things like...bridges they build for other countries.

Over the course of the conversation, he told us about another engineer he knows who worked on retrofitting the Bay Bridge following the 1989 earthquake. During that quake, an entire section of the upper deck of the bridge fell down on to the lower deck.

It turns out that the pillars of the bridge were reinforced in only one direction. They were not built to withstand the kind of torque produced by the Loma Prieta quake. They needed to be redesigned so that they could withstand movements north, south, east, and west, as well as up and down. This one particular engineer, the colleague of the soccer dad I know, is one of maybe 5 or 10 in the country that have the knowledge and expertise to solve that problem, which he did, making the bridge safer for the rest of us.

That got me thinking about confidence. Can you imagine working in a profession where the success of your job performance impacted the safety of hundreds of thousands of flesh and blood human beings?

I, for one, cannot. I cannot fathom doing anything with stakes that high. I also have a hard time fathoming the confidence it takes to say Yup. That's it. This design will protect the daily commuters. I'm sure of it; go ahead and build it this way.

But I want to. I want that much confidence in my abilities and in the words that come out of my mouth. I want my children to grow up with enough confidence to build bridges for thousands of other people, in whatever field or subject they want. Bridges through art, or soccer, or dog-walking, or cheerleading. Truthfully, I have trouble picturing how a cheerleader might build the kind of bridge I'm thinking of, but the examples I picked in that last phrase come directly from the mouths of my kids, when asked what they want to be when they grow up.

* * *

We cannot give our children what we do not possess ourselves. Or can we? Isn't that part and parcel of the American Dream, to raise children who will have more than we grew up with? Is that limited to material wealth, or educational achievement? What about the intangibles that make up a happy life: confidence, hope, joy. How do we raise children to have more of those things than we do?

So much of a person's success in life comes down to confidence. If you believe in yourself, if you understand with every fiber of your being that your own hard work and best efforts will bring you farther than you can imagine, if you trust that you can go out into the world and conquer whatever comes your way, how can you be stopped?

And is it too late, at 40+ years old, to acquire that kind of confidence?

* * *

History Lesson

Yesterday, I took the kids up to Sonoma. On the way there, the subject of 9/11 came up, and the kids wanted me to tell them again what happened that day. Thus began Thursday's Social Studies/History lesson.

I told them the story as best I could, fielding questions about what the boys were doing that day, why daddy called me from work to tell me to turn on the TV, and whether or not the field in Pennsylvania was dry or wet. That question came from my 10 year old, who figured if it was wet, maybe the plane wouldn't burn up as badly.

We talked about the Muslim faith. About Osama Bin Laden. About the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that followed 9/11, and how those wars are different from each other. About the people who suffered and died that day. About why we went to war in the first place, or at least how the war was justified by our leaders. Was George Bush a good president? What was he doing that day when the attacks happened? Why do Saudi Arabians hate us? Is it true that we won't ever surrender and the wars won't be over until we win? My daughter asked "What are the names of the people who died?"

Later in the day, at my mom and dad's house, I went looking for an empty box for the kids to stash their creek-found treasures in. Up in the storage closet, I noticed a stack of newspapers. Leafing through the top five or so, I realized that my parents, probably my dad, has been laying important newspapers on top of that stack, in dated order, each time a significant event -- historical or personal -- takes place. Right on top was the local newspaper from the day our town's beloved Fire Chief, a good friend of my parents', was buried earlier this summer. Down through the dates, there were papers with headlines about Obama's Inauguration and his election, Barry Bonds' record breaking homerun, JFK Jr.'s death, etc. I rifled down nine years, and found a slew of papers from September 12 2001, and brought them out to show the kids. We looked at the pictures and talked about them. There were the towers, on fire but not yet collapsed. There were the people running through Manhattan, covered in ash. There was the field in Pennsylvania. There was George Bush, children's book in hand, 2nd grade class sitting in front of him, with an advisor whispering something in his ear.

Some of the photos were really hard to see, and I questioned if I should be letting the kids see them; I certainly haven't ever wanted to before. My oldest son found some video on YouTube, shot by a regular citizen who was visiting the city with family and who captured the smoking towers from a hotel room not far away. We watched that for a little while, until I decided I wasn't ready to talk about people leaping from 110-story buildings.

On the way home, we talked even more about that terrible day and the complicated mess of events that have followed, including the idiot Pastor Terry Jones and the proposed Community Center that everyone insists on describing as a Ground Zero mosque.

It was quite a History Lesson, and we stumbled into it. I had school plans for the day, plans I followed, but which didn't actually go all that well. It was difficult to get them to listen to me and to do the very simple 2 or 3 things they were "assigned." But it still ended up being one of the best school days we've had so far.

The ability to swerve into a topic and talk about it in depth, to read more about it in newspapers, to watch video of events unfolding, to listen to NPR discussions: none of this would have been possible last year, when my time with my kids consisted of rushing them to practice, and then rushing them through homework, dinner, baths, showers, teeth-brushing and bedtime. When my responses to their questions were 90% frazzled and 10% thoughtful. When I never would have had the chance to happen upon those newspapers in my mom and dad's storage closet. When keeping up with our life was getting in the way of living it.

So: Yesterday, we had a History lesson that will stay with them, I think, and one that is far from over I am sure. This is the model of homeschooling that I had hoped for. It's too bad I cannot plan for days like that, but I will happily welcome them whenever they arrive.

* * *

Where I Try To Pick a Course of Action

See that house, Mom? The people who live in that house have a flat screen TV. I can tell.

We, in case you can't tell, do not. We were in a very beautiful neighborhood, where people like us go when we are providing a service to people who live in very beautiful neighborhoods.

Really? I said. You can tell that just by looking?

Yup. All of these houses have flat screen TVs.

This might sound unbelievable to you, kid, but there are people in the world who are wealthy enough to live in a house like that who are not interested in television, and wouldn't spend money on a flat screen TV no matter what it cost.

Not these people in these houses. They definitely have flat screen TVs.

Well, tell me this. Can you tell by looking at the houses if the people who live in them are happy?

Yup. See that blue one? They have a flat screen TV, and they are happy. And that one on the corner? They have a flat screen and they are really happy, because they also have those cool big soccer goals there.

He had me there. OK, the people who live in that house on the corner might very well be happy.

Most people have flat screen TVs, you know Mom.

That's not true, Sam.

Yes it is: almost everyone has a flat screen TV. Except us.

Do you mean everyone in the world? Or in the United States?

OK, well, just the United States. Most people in the United States have flat screen TVs.

At this point, I am impressed that he can insert the phrase flat screen TV into almost every sentence he utters. A pronoun isn't good enough for a flat screen, apparently.

Well, there are over 300 million people in the United States, and I'm willing to bet that fewer than half of them own one.

I bet you're wrong.

Oy, this kid is tenacious! So now I'm furiously googling census and household data, searching for factual, credible data to back up my completely baseless claim.

My pre-teen talks about many things these days: cell phones, flat screen TVs, the wii and wii games, his PS2, and cars. Mercedes, for some reason. I feel sorry for him, that he has a mother who is so utterly uninterested in cool technology or in anything that smacks of having social status implications. He told me today that some people have "these things" that allow you to plug your TV, your wii, your DVD player, your PS13, and your personal assistant all in to the same device and then control all of them with one remote.

He said this like he was letting me in on a big secret that he felt obliged to share with me, to better my life and help me see the light. I didn't have the heart to tell him I was aware of this fabulously convenient option but just didn't care enough about my TV watching/gaming experience to take any steps in that direction.

* * *

A little background. A long, long time ago, in what feels like a different life, I served as a volunteer with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps. Think Catholic Peace Corps. Sort of. Social justice action with a spiritual component. For a very short period of time, two years, I worked in homeless shelters in Washington DC and Boston. I chose to join JVC because I thought I could learn something from spending time with people afflicted by poverty and, as it turns out, by addiction and mental illness. The women and children I met during those two years gave me a glimpse into how poor people live in America, and it's not pretty. It's also not all terrible, as these people had children they loved, things they enjoyed doing, interesting things to say, and full, if difficult, lives.

When I left California to begin that work, my friends gave me a knickname. Or actually, they appended my full name with the initials O.S.J.M. If you are familiar with Catholic religious orders, then you'll likely know that initials like that after a person's name indicate to which religious order the person belongs. I was not actually in an order, but my friends, who liked to tease me that I was going off to be a do-gooder for a while -- slumming it, as they say -- created an order just for me: the Order of Social Justice Mamas.

ANYWAY (is this getting boring? I feel like this might be getting boring.), OSJM came to be a sort of joke-y way for my husband to refer to my interest in Things Social Justice and my lack of interest in Things Material. He marvels at what I do not want or need, and claims it is difficult to buy me gifts (although he always does a beautiful job). I don't think about things, and do not shop for myself much. When I do, it is usually because he has been badgering me to do so.

So. I have this kid, with a temperament vastly different from my own. And sometimes, when I listen to him talking about all of the material possessions he salivates over and believes will make his life complete, I feel like I have two choices: Either I bore him to tears with admonishments about what really matters in life and how a LG Neon will not make him a happier person OR I rip my ears off of my head so that I don't have to listen to what surely must be normal pre-teen behavior but which makes me feel like my kid must have been switched at birth or like I have failed to inculcate my values into his young mind and heart. The lecture option is not appealing, to him or to me. So I'm stocking up on gauze bandages.

Where is that middle ground? And why do I always seem to be searching for it?

* * *