And Now, The Weather

So right now we’re waiting for Irene to arrive. No, that’s not a cousin or a long lost friend; it’s the Category 2/Category 1/Tropical Storm (depending on whom you ask, and when) that is “barreling” up the East Coast today.

And, apparently, there is nothing else going on in anywhere the world. No other news anywhere. It’s sort of like Superbowl Sunday, only wetter.

Listen, I get that a hurricane is a big thing: it’s dangerous and destructive. I get that people are actually harmed by wind and water – some lose their possessions, and some lose their lives. But the breathless anticipation on every news channel is rapidly wearing down my nerves. We’re at the point where, having talked about Irene intensely for about five days now, newcasters have started interviewing each other. Two or three days ago, it was all about FEMA representatives and governors of states warning people about potential evacuations and advising about emergency measures. That was helpful. I think there was a passing comment about Irene hitting the Bahamas and “flattening houses.” And by passing, I mean not even a full, stand-alone sentence.

Since then, there’s been this anxious Paul Revere-esque alarm going on no matter which station, whether TV or radio, you turn to. By Friday night, residents in the Northeast were warned to stay indoors for the weekend, to fill our bathtubs and gather our flashlights in case the water or electricity was lost. “Stay tuned for our continuing coverage of Hurricane Irene,” the news stations said.

It occurs to me that there is big business in keeping the population nervous. People tuning in to CNN or MSNBC or network news will sit through commercials to get the latest updates. They will skim web pages, including the advertisements, as they work on their computers. That all translates to money in the network’s pocket.

Now, I’m not saying that there is anything evil going on here. But in the time of 24-hour coverage, there’s only so many ways you can say the same thing (“hey, there’s a hurricane coming”) before you start ratcheting up the rhetoric. If you start just repeating yourself, people will turn the channel – in search of “news.” Or, as I’m tempted to do, they’ll just stop listening.

It’s still fairly early morning, and we’re all already bored from being inside all yesterday. It doesn’t help that, when you look out the window, it just looks like a regular rainy morning. We were supposed to drive to a beach house yesterday about an hour up the coast; we’ve put that off until Monday, agreeing that we’d rather ride out a big storm in our own house rather than in a strange house in walking distance of angry high tides.

I’m listening to National Public Radio this morning (instead of getting the kids ready for church), trying to get a sense of when the worst of the storm will hit. The anchor is talking to the reporter who, like so many reporters before him, stands on the beach, being buffeted by wind and pelted by blowing sand, as if we wouldn’t otherwise believe him. (Guys, it’s radio. You could be sitting in the studio using sound effects; we wouldn’t know the difference.) “Uh, what’s it like out there at this hour?” asks the anchor. “It’s starting to get gusty,” the reporter replies. “The clouds are moving across the sky from left to right.” No, seriously, that’s what he said. Well, that clears it up nicely, I think disgustedly, since I couldn’t possibly tell that from my own window.

Flights are cancelled. (Obviously.) People are advised to stay off the streets, which will probably flood. (Yes, got that.) A couple of tree limbs have fallen on some driveways. (You don’t say.) There are power outages. (Right, flashlights and candles, got it.) All of these are reported in the same overwrought, stumbling-over-words urgency.

You know what? They just got the number two guy in Al Qaida. Syria is doing stuff. And there’s a devastating drought in Somalia. I’d like to hear about those things, too, please.

Oh, right, there’s a hurricane coming. I guess everything else can wait.

The View From The End Of Summer

First, a joke.

Knock, knock.

Who’s there?

Woo.

Woo who?

Yeah. I’m excited too.

Come on, that there was funny. Okay, say it out loud. See? Funny. (Admit it.)

So, what am I excited about? Well, not much, really. I was being sarcastic.

It is the latter half of August, which means only two and a half more weeks until school starts. That, of course, means back-to-school shopping, both for school supplies and for clothes. I’m finding it a little bizarre that Doodle, a fourth grader, has to have a 4 GB thumb drive. I don’t think I even had to buy notebooks in the fourth grade. I’ve already started saving up for the ridiculous graphing calculator I know he’s going to need. The indelible memory of elementary school, for me, is bringing home those heavy, hardcover text books, science and math and grammar, and covering them in brown paper bags decorated in crayon. These days, you can’t even find brown paper bags in the supermarket.

I’ll drag Doodle and Scooby to the clothing store, maybe enlisting the help of my mother, who loves to shop as much as the little kids hate it. I’ll buy them all off with a lunch at Wendy’s, the reasonable going rate. Life’s a little easier this year, because Doodle, who is going to a new school, has the world’s easiest, no drama uniform (blue or white polo, navy or khaki pants), and Scooby is inheriting the school logo shirts that Doodle doesn’t need anymore. And just like in the olden days when I was a kid, my mother will insist that everyone get new school shoes.

We’ll push the kids to finish a couple more books, which is currency in our house. Boy is trying to make it through six books in order to earn a jacket (and is enjoying it!); Doodle found out three days ago that he has two assigned books to read before school starts, and should have read four more books this summer. Too bad they didn’t send out that little informational postcard in June instead of August, before he started his current 400-page tome. Even Scooby is making her way through a chapter book series, although not as willingly as her brothers.

I’m reading, as well. Books on ADHD, books on how to get my disorganized Boy organized for school, books on how to survive teenager-hood. No fiction for me.

I need to find a tutor for Boy and an after school activity for the kids, preferably one that is very active and has nothing to do with Dr. Seuss. I need to find a new pediatrician so I can fire my old one. I need to make an appointment for Boy for oral surgery so the braces he’s wearing will do some good. I need to map out a workable pickup schedule for the babysitter and figure out if I can afford to give her a raise for her extra effort.

Oh, and I need to take a vacation. Right at the butt-end of the summer, the last full week before school starts, I will cram seven days worth of five people into two cars, drive an hour or so up the highway, and spend a lot of time looking at and listening to the ocean. I may swim (not my favorite activity), but I will certainly tread water. It’s been non-stop motion for eight weeks; eight weeks of driving back and forth across the city, of praying that Boy will get through one more day of summer school, of packing and unpacking and repacking duffel bags and backpacks, of missing absent kids and managing present ones, of updating color-coordinated calendars just to keep track of which child is supposed to be where when.

So, between the busy-ness of summer and the madness of the new school year, I will take seven precious days, which may or may not be relaxing (I am, after all, taking the children with me) and just be. Maybe Rev and I will have some deep conversations; maybe we’ll just sit and look at the water together, silently.

One day like that, maybe two, and I’ll be ready to organize those supplies into those backpacks and send the kids off to face the new school year.

Woo hoo.

The Book On Boy

If you were to peruse the shelves of our household library, you’d have a pretty good biography of me. There’s still a few how to plan a wedding books, followed by several (marked and underlined) how to get pregnant books, then books on adoption strategies, and finally, the long-awaited pregnancy advice books (or, as I tended to call them, What To Expect While Expecting, If You Are Totally Unrealistic About Both You and Your Child).

And then there are the child-rearing books. At first, like most parents, I looked to the gospels of Dr. William Sears, Dr. T. Berry Brazelton, and Dr. Penelope Leach (who, as a bonus, had an actual daily chat show airing while my oldest was a baby). They advised me to understand my baby and attach to him – but always with sensible firmness. And they were rounded out by Dr. Richard Ferber (bless him!) who taught all of us how to get some sleep.

It wasn’t long before I began to think I had gotten the hang of this parenting thing. That delusion lasted about two years, until it became apparent that some more experts would need to be called in. The gentle titles (Understanding Your Baby and Child) gave way to grimmer, more problem specific names.

The Strong-Willed Child.

The Difficult Child.

The Explosive Child.

The Challenging Child.

Dare To Discipline.

Bringing Up Boys.

We had entered the Land of Boy, determined to assert our authority. Every morning was a struggle to get him up, dressed, and out of the house on time; every afternoon, we braced ourselves for the bad reports from caregivers and teachers, ranging from “he bit another child” to “don’t bring him back for two days.” (Really, how do you get suspended from day care?) Evenings ended in tears all around, as the battle to keep him in his bed escalated to nuclear proportions.

I scoured every volume, looking for just the right answers. I learned about picking my battles, about putting issues in separate “buckets,” and I began to consider organic brain dysfunction. We took Boy to a therapist who gave us the psycho-babble equivalent of, Eh, it’s too soon to tell whether it’s just him being a boy or something else.

Stanley Turecki’s The Difficult Child was a life-saver. Dr. Turecki basically said, Hey, stupid! Your kid is wired differently. Work with it! Stop fighting it.

I learned that Boy had sensitive skin (now I know, post ADHD diagnosis, that it’s all about stimulation), so I cut all the tags out of his clothes, and gave away anything with a turtleneck or long sleeves. He ran on a different schedule, so instead of Eat your food, now!, the rule became, You must sit at the table at dinnertime, but you can eat your (warmed up) food later, when you’re hungry. Likewise, I told him nightly, You don’t have to go to sleep right now, but you do have to stay in your bed.

I learned to count down to the end of activities, instead of expecting Boy to stop whatever he was doing on a dime. I still give ten, five, two, and one-minute warnings, even with Doodle and Scooby, and it still works. I learned to separate behavioral issues from disciplinary ones. (Don’t get me wrong; Boy sometimes does stuff that is absolutely and defiantly against the rules, and we come down on him like the Hammer of Thor.) And I learned too, when all else fails, to find humor in his over-the-top reactions, because, well, they’re funny.

One of Boy’s other nicknames is “Fred,” as in when he gives us this attitude, he stomps away down the hall on his big bare feet, and you can practically hear that distinctive descending-tuba theme from The Flintstones. It gives me the giggles every time.

But lately, I’ve been noticing some of the things I love about Fred, er, Boy. Oh, he’s still difficult, strong-willed, and, honestly, more sullen than explosive, but he’s also, smart, funny, and very, very cute.

This is the kid who, to pay for a jacket he designed online, agreed to read six books by the end of the summer, leading to the astonishing, breathless phone call I received at work from him: Mom! An Amazon box came with your name on it, can I please open it and get my book? It can't wait until you get home!

He’s the kid who, with indulgent amusement, let me hide my face in his shoulder during all the scary parts of Cowboys and Aliens (something Rev would never allow), and smiled when I insisted that I hadn’t really been all that frightened . . .

When he smiles, he shows his dimples, curiously at odds with the rumbling deep voice and stocky six-foot frame.

He politely holds doors open for people, and, without my asking, gives up his seat on a crowded bus.

He cooks for himself without complaint (a trait that his future girlfriends will eventually love him for), and does his own laundry.

He pulls up his sagging pants when I ask him to, struggles to master the Windsor knot as he dresses for church, and only pauses a few seconds before he mutters, “Lovey’too,” at the end of a telephone call.

Sometimes I can imagine additional chapters to Dr. Turecki’s book as I look at my teenaged son. Hey, stupid! Your kid is wired differently – he thinks that his new Mohawk and the attendant squiggles carved into his hair was a good idea, so keep your opinions about it to yourself. Hot sauce tastes good to him on everything, even chicken salad; stop nagging. Why do you care if he sleeps from 2 AM to noon on a Saturday, as long as he gets his ten hours?

It’s the twenty-first century, so my library collection has stalled. Now my research on how to do this parenting thing has moved on-line, and my current biographical status as a perplexed mother of a soon to be 15-year-old is told in the bookmarked and favorited websites on my laptop. I’m too embarrassed to even name them.

It occurs to me that life might be a bit easier for those of us navigating the shoals of teenager-hood, especially those of us with “difficult,” “strong-willed,” or otherwise adjective-challenged kids, if those kids themselves had access to their own library: The Strong-Willed Mom; The Difficult Parent; Dare to Be Different From Your Mom’s Fantasy Of Who You Should Be.

I know I’d read them.