the talk

I've noticed that my eldest daughter Elizabeth seems to be going through a new phase lately. I call it her roll her eyes and argue with everything I ask her to do phase. Which is usually followed by her shouting that I am not fair and stomping off to her room weeping phase. Anyway, Saturday I decided I had had enough. I was feeling somewhat fragile myself, having just kicked off day one of my menstrual cycle, and it occurred to me that while Elizabeth is only nine and hopefully a few years away still from being initiated into the joys of being a woman, ha ha, she may start to exhibit other symptoms of the oncoming hormonal onslaught. Like, oh say, being in one hell of a bitchy mood and then flipping over into tears moments later for little to no apparent reason. So I figured I should be a proactive mom and have a little talk with her about her recent crabbiness etc. I grabbed a fresh cup of coffee and invited her to come and sit on the deck with me for a chat. As we headed outside my husband spotted us and said "oh, hey, I'll come sit with you guys too, it's such a nice morning." I hesitated - don't get me wrong, he's a great dad, and pretty valiant when it comes to girl talk, but I wasn't sure I wanted him present for her first girl talk. Especially since I wasn't entirely sure what I planned on saying in the first place, and didn't really think I was up to any cute comments on the state of my own mind at this particular time of month. So I switched gears and suggested that Elizabeth and I go sit on the front porch instead, while trying to not hurt my husband's feelings too much in the process by assuring him that he could be part of any future girl chats. We had just made it to the front door when her sisters popped around the corner and asked where we going. I told them we were just going to have a little chat on the porch, and of course they immediately asked if they could join us. Sigh. I guess I could have said no, but I had a feeling I wasn't going to get away with saying no to anyone else that morning. So I found myself a moment later seated on the front porch with three captive listeners, eagerly awaiting me to impart some great words of wisdom. Crap. I started by discussing how grumpy E had been lately, and how sometimes you can have good reasons to be grumpy or sad, and sometimes you don't seem to have any reason at all, and then attempted to segue into an explanation of hormones and feelings, and getting your period, and at that point just when I was thinking I was doing pretty well Elizabeth raised her hand. "So okay, Mom, you've explained before about the whole egg and sperm thing, and I get that, I mean it's like salmon, right, the boy salmon fertilizing the eggs that the girl salmon laid, but what I'd like to hear is more about exactly how Dad fertilized your eggs, like how does he get his penis in there, how does he make the sperm come out, you know, that kind of stuff?" And before I could answer Emily says "Oh, I know, he puts it into her vagina, because she keeps her eggs in there instead of laying them like a salmon or say, a chicken, right mom?" And then "But wait, a chicken! How does the sperm get into that hard egg shell anyway?" "Yeah mom, how, are our eggs like that, boy that must be hard work for Dad to get his sperm to break through those shells" and that was it, conversation officially out of my control and over. I suppose I could have reeled it in or at least attempted to at that point, but by then I realized that my neighbors were on the other side of the fence enjoying their morning coffee, and our voices were carrying nicely in the morning breeze. Plus it was all I could do not to break out into hysterical laughter.  Fearing that I might be about to mentally scar them all for life on the subject of sex, I had sudden visions of them saying things like,"my mom says that my dad has to use his penis like a battering ram to break through to her eggs..."or something along those lines being shared amongst their friends at the playground, only to be passed along to all the other parents in our neighborhood, and my phone would start ringing off the hook with calls from outraged mothers wanting to know what kind of disgusting obscenities I have been teaching my children, and I would be thrown off the Parent Advisory Council in shame, never to be able to show my face at school again...so I smiled and said well, I just wanted to talk about feeling cranky and sad, and so if you have any questions about that don't be afraid to ask, and we'll save the rest for another day...and went for another cup of coffee. Maybe I should have let Mike have the talk with her after all.

time out

Although I haven't written often this summer, this week I find myself looking at my blog from a slightly different angle. I know that usually I write of the more humorous moments of my mothering experiences, but now and then something happens to remind me that there is another side to it all. Today I am thinking about another mother of three daughters who I know. She is actually my sister in law's mother, and I sometimes call her my "other" mother in law, as we have gotten to know each other fairly well over the past few years. Anyway, something happened this week, something that I am finding has wrenched at part of me somewhere deep inside, and I think it's because I am looking at this something from a mother's perspective. I find myself being constantly confronted throughout my day by it, in my routine dealings with my daughters, and it literally makes me catch at my breath for a moment as a wave of what I can only describe as sorrow washes over me. What happened was that my other mother in law's oldest daughter died on Tuesday, after losing an amazingly courageous battle with cancer.  And while I knew her daughter, and have been great friends with my sister in law for many years now, what strikes at me the hardest is how my other mother in law's life is forever changed because of what she has lost. I keep thinking of things like Mother's Day, how it will never be the same for her again, that it will always be tinged with some sorrow, no matter how happy and grateful she might be for her remaining two daughters. I guess that is part of life, learning how to live with that and carry on, but what a hole it must leave in your heart.
I am not one of those people who believe that "everything happens for a reason". I don't believe that at all. What purpose does taking a wonderful loving person away from her life serve? None that I can see. I do believe in free will, and making conscious choices to cope with the curve balls that life throws at you. That being said, I find myself holding my girls a little tighter this week, and counting my blessings a little more carefully. I suppose the only good thing I can take away from this tragedy is that it does give one pause; it nudges at me to stop and smell the roses, spend some extra time just enjoying my girls. I'm just sorry that it sometimes takes something terrible to remind us of something good.