Coming of Age, Again

So, it’s 11:30PM again.  The only sounds in the house are the rustling of sheets, soft snores and the occasional crash of a bedtime story book being accidently kicked to the floor.  It’s finally my turn to go to bed. 

Sometimes in the calm quietness of these late nights I get distracted from my bedtime routine by the bright over-mirror light highlighting my facial imperfections in the mirror.  I just recently noticed my once smooth forehead now sports the most delicate parallel lines across it.  I raise my eyebrows up and down and watch them deepen and flatten, but not quite disappear. Dang it.

Once in a while I spend so much time inspecting my puckering face that when I lay down to go to sleep, I realize that I forgot to brush my teeth, and back to the bathroom I go.

It’s my birthday this week, the “cute” half of the thirties is firmly behind me, and I’m sliding face first into forty faster than I am prepared for.  Why does 36 seem young and 37 seem so, so old?

To accentuate my new found oldness, my daughter’s 4^th grade class recently got “the talk” from the school nurse.  She’s been fascinated with the idea of puberty since she first learned about the concept last year.  This milestone event at school has re-ignited her interest in the topic.  

Seeing my little girl grow into a little woman as I’m slowly pruning from the head down, feels a little bit like taunting at my new ripe old age.  Don’t be surprised if you see me splashing water from muddy puddles in the area on my face hoping to find that the fountain of youth is somewhere in the Meadowlands area. Bog water ought to be good for something!

Maybe waiting on full blown wrinkles is like waiting for boobs.  Looking for them consumes your time in front of the mirror, until they show up and it’s no big deal.

But in case it’s not like that, and wrinkles end up being a devastating occurrence, I decided to come up with some reasons turning 37 might be great anyway:

1. No more wasting time at the liquor store trying to find my ID in my suitcase of a purse.  I definitely don’t look “younger than 30” anymore.
2. What you see is what you get.  I’ve been waiting years to discover my perfect hair and fashion style, like my put-together friends who have chunky necklaces to match each blouse and blazer, but it appears that jeans and cardigan with slightly frizzy, needs to be dyed hair is my style.  It’s almost liberating.
   
3. Searching for those vampire (because you can’t see them in the mirror) wiry chin hairs will give me something to do while waiting in lines. 
   
4. Friends aren’t afraid to be real.  We’ve got nothing to prove anymore in the friend department.  If we lose one, we can always pull a kid off the bench to spend time with.
   
5. When the early twenty-something girls are dancing, singing, and acting wild at the bar you can shake your head & roll your eyes, but if you want to join them you can just say it’s “Mom’s Night Out”  and those behaviors become perfectly acceptable.
   
6. After years of falling asleep in make-up and not religiously wearing sunscreen.  My face is now a test dummy for every kind of cream, gel, and crème that come in tiny, expensive bottles and tubes in an attempt to try and reverse my bad habits before it’s too late. 
   
7. I get to be the old kindergarten mom as my fourth and last kid enters school “for real” this fall. I know nearly all the elementary school teachers, how the buses and lunch accounts work, and where the elementary art room is, which in the eyes of the “new” kindergarten mom makes me a god.  I’m pretty sure.
   
8. If we run out of lined paper, my first grader can practice his penmanship on my forehead.
   
9. And… with a little math, I’m finally a 10! (3+7=10) …Which will probably feel just as legitimate now, as it did when I was 28..ha!

 This coming of age, again, isn’t as exciting as the first time around, but the result will probably be the same... hopefully – a new found comfort in my own skin – Now with wrinkles and age spots!… and a rogue chin hair, here and there.

My Mom is...Magic

When you’re a kid it’s easy to name the best qualities of your mom.  Usually they are scrawled in crayon on Mother’s Day projects sent home with your first grader or kindergartner.  Simple things like “she’s nice”, “she’s funny”, “she helps me”, or “she’s a good cooker” as my youngest says.  As you get older it gets harder to put into words what makes your mom great, because it’s less about what she can do and more about what she has done for you – how she made you great.

It's impossible to describe with words the amazing lady who made me.   I have one of those moms that’s good at everything, which makes it a real challenge to be “just like mom”.   She reminds me of Barbara Eden on “I Dream of Jeannie”.  Whatever you need she can wiggle her ears (instead of her nose) and get it done.

My mom raised four kids too, except she had three girls and one boy.  We were fairly confident kids, we new mom was there, but never overbearing.  I don’t ever remember my mom complaining either, even though I’m sure we were worth a “good long complain” a few times a week.

She taught us early how to do the dishes, sweep the floors and do our own laundry.  Maybe it’s because I have more boys, but I haven’t been as lucky in teaching mine.  They love to do the chores, but if left unsupervised, they go a bit overboard – using a quarter inch of water to clean the floor, or a half bottle of dawn just to rinse the dishes before they go in the dishwasher, and at least 18 paper towels to clean up the smallest spill.

My mom had patience beyond what I can muster.  As she created craft sale items, she’d set us up to make our own little projects – decorative pins, hair bows, painted things, boo boo bunnies, and she’d let us sell them at the show and keep the money.  I still drag out the a good ol’ glue gun and a tin of buttons to make a masterpiece or two with the kids, but when a button ends up glued to the table, and the tin gets tipped, spilling the rest to the floor, I’d rather call it quits than laugh it off.   She always let us decorate the cookies for the holidays, and painstakingly paint molds with candy melts to make fancy Christmas chocolates. She’d even put the splotchy, hideous ones we made out on the tray for Grandma’s house, so we could show them off.

My mom taught me the right way to play with your food – like creating pancakes in any shape we can imagine.   I’ve gotten pretty good at making pancake snowmobiles, 4-wheelers and princess crowns. I also remember all of us kids crowding around her, mesmerized as Mom carved a watermelon into an animal shaped fruit bowl and hand-decorated whatever we wanted on our birthday cakes.

Mom is quite the seamstress, making us clothes when we were little, as well as Halloween costumes, and  holiday dresses – letting us pick our own patterns and fabrics at the fabric store.  She even made our school uniforms and my wedding dress and all my bridesmaids’ dresses.

She walked me through crocheting a dress for my baby doll when I was about 12.  Taught me how to sew, cook, balance a checkbook, and even got us “jobs” at her jobs – mostly filing - during our Christmas and Spring breaks, but we loved feeling so responsible.

I realize now how my mom could have done things easier and faster by herself, but she always took the time, as excruciating as it might have been, to let us do and learn. I forget to do this sometimes, when dinner is already late, or I have a million things to accomplish and not a million hours to do them .  But the best way to learn is to do and my mom did this well – she continues her admirable patience with the grandkids now, letting them each add their ingredient to the pancake batter and mix it in, when she could just dump them all in at once.

Even now that we’re grown, my Mom is always there for us. In college my laptop wasn’t working and was sent in to be repaired.  When Best Buy wouldn’t fess up to what happened to it, it was gone longer than it should have been, and multiple visits to pick it up only resulted in lies and excuses,  my mom went to the customer service desk and in her perfected Queen Bee tone, told them they were producing my computer or getting me a new one.  After scaring the pants off the poor service guy, he confessed my computer was being held hostage due to a bankruptcy at the company that was supposed to repair it and I walked out of there with a new computer.  I must learn this skill!

And when my first child was born, she came to help for a few days, it was such a relief to have a pro on-site when you’re worried about doing everything wrong.   She came for the next three arrivals too, watching the siblings-to-be and keeping them busy when I came home with a new little one.  She stayed only a few days, as we settled into a new routine.  Then she’d float away like Mary Poppins leaving a well-prepared house behind.  I shed a few tears each time she left.  Partly hormones, I’m sure, but mostly because I was so grateful to have a mom willing to give not just her time, but care, comfort, and a clean house, at a time when I couldn't really give anything in return (unless you count the new grandchild).  And she always made it look so easy.  I hope I can return that favor to my kids someday.

Maybe the best way to describe my Mom is “Magic”.  I’m in the midst of this mom thing and I’m still not sure how the trick works. But I’m getting an idea.  As parents we have an audience all the time.  We are the show, and our biggest fans, who may occasionally get a little rowdy and throw tomatoes, are mostly mesmerized by what we moms can do.

The magic of mommyhood isn’t from fairy dust or some lucky kid rubbing a lamp to find an ear-wiggling genie.  It’s love.  Plain and simple.  It’s love in every handmade Halloween costume and decorated birthday cake.  In every time I didn't have to eat the Lima Beans.  And that night we spent changing each other’s scribbles into pictures.  In every time I pick up a crochet hook, sewing needle or spatula and think “my mom taught me this”.  And, when I sing to my kids and remember all of us in the living room singing “Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree”, trying to get my little brother, Ricky, to fall asleep.  Your actions, patience and all the effort you put into teaching us was the best kind of love, and it made us the capable and maybe even a little bit magical adults we are today.

Thanks Mom, for being “magic” for me, and now the grandkids. I’m still mesmerized