Poor Parenting

written 8/18

So far my complaint about excessive use of cell phones has centered on the Instant Gratification Generation. (Even though I admitted later to being dependent myself.) Today, it occurred to me, as I sat by the pool (of course) while a mom was talking a mile a minute on her cell—on her second call since arriving at the pool—and her six year old son stood neglected and seeking attention in the shallow end chanting, “sh*t, sh*t, sh*t,” that grown-ups use them too much too. That cell phones have contributed to the downfall of parenting.

Earlier this summer I started (but never finished) a post about how parents shouldn’t take it personally when a kid screws up. Rather than get defensive and take it as a personal affront when a teacher calls to recount an unacceptable event, they should take it for what it is: a reprimand for something the kid did that was wrong. We’re not necessarily calling to say your kid is spawn of the devil, ergo you are Satan. Rather, we’re calling to say your kid screwed up. But you know what? That’s what kids do. They screw up. They‘re trying to find their way and they’re looking for boundaries and I’m doing my part. So often the reaction of a parent says to me, Oh no you don’t! My kid is not a bad person and I am not a bad parent or a bad person. But now I wonder if maybe parents speak in defense of their children who were truly at fault and caught in the act because they failed them to begin with. Maybe it’s the least they can do to keep them out of trouble. Or consequences.

I’m thinking out loud here, not speaking in absolutes, but I wonder if maybe years of being ignored by parents (when, say, they were taking their first strokes across a pool and their moms or dads couldn’t be bothered to put on swim suits and put down their cell phones) led these kids to raising their voices, to misbehaving to have some attention paid to them. Today at least it was so clear to me that this poor boy wanted his mom to pay attention to him, and it took everything for me not to scream, "Get off your cell and in the water!"

I am sorry to say I have seen more poor parenting this summer than Hallmark moments, more parents walking the length of the pool deck rather than splashing along with their kids in swimmies, more empty threats of “one more time and we’re going home!,” than fair but stern discipline and interested involvement.

I know. Who am I? How dare I? I don’t know what it’s like because I’m not a parent. Right? Well I am an intelligent adult and a teacher and aunt and an observer of people who has collected a cache of What Not to Dos/How Not to Parent anecdotes.

Letting my six year old chant SH*T, which draws the attention of the lady with the nice tan reading her book and makes her head spin like Linda Blair in The Exorcist while I’m on the cell phone is one of them.

My Peaceful Place

By the Grace of God

please don't let me jinx myself...

I have been writing longhand, by the pool or sitting inside, jotting notes everywhere, and as much as it has been a good thing that I have continued to write, it has been frustrating not to be able to transcribe my notes into published posts or Word documents in the evening or first thing in the morning. And even though I knew that I'd really be without a computer for only a week, and maybe I was meant to take a break, it has been awful.

I have been stubborn, trying relentlessly to get my computer working again. I have been rebooting every day, every five minutes when I'm in the mood, never getting enough time to do the things people have recommended: defrag, delete photos, start in safe mode, go to HP Care Advisor, etc etc. I try and my computer freezes before I have a chance to do anything corrective. Or diagnostic even. But I keep rebooting, thinking maybe the problem will go away. (Was it Einstein who said insanity is doing the same thing over and over but expecting a different result? Yep. Well this week I have been certifiable.) I wondered if it was my wi-fi connection, or my remote mouse. And I thought maybe, if enough people know how devastating this has been, I'll create a powerful prayer circle of a sort with their sympathy and my computer will work again. Well Amen. I believe in miracles. Again. Thank you, God!

Please, please, please let this technology(-less) nightmare be over. And thank you, thank you, thank you to you all for putting that healing energy out there.

Now let me try to catch up on all those things I've been dying to tell you.

Technical Difficulties

I sat down to write this morning, and my computer kept freezing. I kept rebooting, but no luck. My laptop has been a bit temperamental since I got back from my trip, but today it looks like it bit the dust. Of course I'm hoping it's just in a mood, but I'm afraid it must have some sort of virus that is going to require attention that I can't give it until after I go back to school on the 24th of August. Just when I was on a roll...

Alas, this may be my last summer post (written from my sister's computer). Maybe it's a sign. Maybe I'm supposed not to write for a while, to take a break from everything....Although, in the words of Gloria Steinem, "Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don't feel I should be doing something else."

Please, though, just in case, check back often.

Jobs

I didn't always enjoy the luxury of having summers off. Believe it or not, I am no stranger to work. Hard, dirty, back breaking work. Of course I am fortunate that those jobs have been offset by some pretty cushy jobs as well--like working as a racquetball club receptionist during my senior year of high school and (my hands down favorite position) as a dental receptionist for my family dentist (and dear friend) during college summers.

Dr. Bauerle let me take breaks whenever I needed to “go to the bank” [read: smoke a cigarette] and whole days off to go to the beach if a banner day was forecast. I learned my love of words from him and our mutual friend, the dictionary, and gained confidence in my writing from him. He saved every letter I ever wrote to him and my other friends in the office—Mary B, Maureen, Janice, Colette. My musings made him laugh. He thought I was clever. In fact, I remember when once he told me he couldn’t understand why I was majoring in Biology. “You could be the Erma Bombeck of [your hometown]!” he said. If only I hadn’t thought then that what I wanted to do was find the cure for cancer, or understood what a daunting task that would be, I may have changed majors. After college, he kept me on as an honorary staff member so that I could continue to attend Christmas parties and summer get-togethers. From all accounts he still has my letters with him in Florida, where he and his wife retired. And I continue to have connections with The Bauerle Bunch as we call ourselves.

But long before I got to show up late and start answering phones when I was good and ready while surrounded by supportive friends, I was more practiced at the aforementioned hard labor.

The summer after 3rd grade I went to work on a broad leaf tobacco farm with my grandfather and sisters. It was my great aunt’s farm, and therefore didn’t seem obscenely cruel or illegal. I was 9. I worked there every summer until I turned 14, and could work for legal farm wage with my friends from town on a shade tobacco farm. So I did. And I loved it. I have fond memories of those summers, waiting for the grey bus to lumber down the street early in the morning, having to wash black, sticky tar off every hair on my arms in the afternoon, then napping in the one air conditioned room in our house. I also remember having money to pay for fried dough at the local firemen’s carnivals and admission tickets at Riverside (now Six Flags), and having Levi cords in every color when I went back to school.

Of course you already know about my days saying “Howdy Partner” in the Roy Rogers Drive Thru, but there was also a yet undisclosed summer I spent as a housekeeper at the local Howard Johnson’s with Jill. Only they called us chambermaids back then. “Tick tick tick [our keys would forewarn] Housekeeping!,” we’d say, feigning cheer, hoping that we wouldn’t key in on anyone, hoping against hope that at least one room would be untouched, that the flight attendant to whom the room was registered had fornicated with the pilot next door, so that we would have one less room to clean and finish with a spritz of bubble gum scented air freshener. (I swear. Bubble gum.) How we survived that summer I don’t remember. But think it had something to do with Haffenreffers at night.

More often than not, and until fairly recently, I worked two jobs at the same time. During high school summers I worked on tobacco during the day and at Roy Rogers at night. I worked as a Resident Director full time during full time graduate school, while working part time at Crate and Barrel. And I worked part time there when I was a text book editor, too. Then, when I began teaching, I waited tables at a seafood restaurant two nights a week and weekends. I took on more shifts during summer.

I clocked a lot of hours in all sorts of jobs before I took my first summer off at 35 and I appreciate every hour I spend by the pool these days, not working. In fact, I think I have earned them.

Spending

If you know me or have been following my blog, you know I like to travel and eat out (often). I use room service. I buy books in hardcover. I pay to have my nails done because they look nice and my eyebrows waxed because I cannot stand to pluck them myself. I love my shoes and handbags and shop at Lord and Taylor—although rarely pay full price for anything there. Still, by many people's accounts, I am a snob. Extravagant. A spendthrift.

Have a seat.

Years ago a colleague of mine reported that his vehicle set afire. He returned to his Jeep after being out to find the fire department dousing what remained of it. I know. How freaky is that? But God help me, after ascertaining that no one was in the vehicle when it was ablaze, the first thought that crossed my mind was I wonder if he had a full tank of gas. That would really piss me off.

See?

God, how I hate to part with money and get no enjoyment or use from it! If it makes my taste buds dance, or feels good against my skin, looks pretty on my finger, I’ll spend the money gladly. (As long as the ring isn’t overpriced, being sold for three times its value at a suburban housewife jewelry party.) I’ll open my wallet because I will enjoy that meal, and I’ll wear that sweater and ring. I know that typically a tank of gas is useful, as it gets me around in my car, but it is especially painful for me to leave chunks of money at the pump. This, therefore, would qualify as one of my cheap pockets. Overpriced jewelry is another, I guess. But now I’m getting ahead of myself.

“Cheap pockets,” as Liz and Jimmy (sister and brother-in-law) call them, are those things for which we have trouble parting with money. For my brother-in-law it is ice. He hates to pay for ice, and he’s frankly somewhat obsessed with it—from making it in unconventional containers to packing coolers with it. I believe he knows precisely how many minutes it takes to chill a can of beer and a bottle of beer in a well-packed and well-iced cooler (they have different chilling times, he will tell you), which includes a combination of large blocks of ice (frozen in Rubbermaid containers) and cubes. If he can help it, he will never pay for those cubes. Even though it’s a pretty good bargain at less than 2 bucks for 10 pounds, he chooses to make trays of ice, even little Dixie cups of it, to complement the larger blocks of ice. He won’t pay for ice but has electric scissors.

Notice I did not make any claims that cheap pockets or spending patterns are logical.

Summer Harvest

I love this time of year, not just because I am on vacation and addicted to sitting by the pool, tanning and reading books. I love this time of year because despite all those fun things I keep in the fridge, I can live on cucumbers and tomatoes—both from my mother’s garden.

Before there was a Slow Food movement, before it was in fashion to be a part of it, there was my mother , Bogusia (her American friends call her Millie), feeding my family (and friends!) from the fruits of her labor—tomatoes, cucumbers, dill, green beans, squash, zucchini, onions, basil, parsley, chives, varieties of lettuce. Before my sisters and I became teenagers and got paid to work on other people’s farms [read: before we got an attitude], we used to help my mother with her garden, planted in part with seeds she brought with her from Poland in 1960. (Thereby also ahead of the heirloom curve.) Bugles and potato chips may have been in short supply, but I was never without a fresh sliced tomato (no mozzarella necessary, although awfully good) or a cucumber, peeled and cut in spears—4 or 6 depending on the size of the cuke—with a salt shaker close by. In the summer, mizeria, a cucumber salad made simply with coins of cucumber, salt, and sour cream is still a standard dinner side dish for me. Tonight, it was my main course.

What my mother doesn’t grow these days, she is—still, at 70—willing to pick at farms where such activity is encouraged (and sustains said farms). The two blueberry bushes in her yard are not enough for my parents’ blueberry consumption and her winter stock, so she finds pick-your-own places and goes with her friends. She does the same with strawberries. And raspberries. She bonds with her friends in the fields the way I do mine in the teachers’ lounge and restaurants. (And I guess the pool.) Moreover, she has friends with farms, bigger than her gardens (plural because she tends one at her house and one at my sister Mary's), who bring her samples of their treasures, sometimes by the bushel, so what she doesn’t grow she can barter, and fresh produce is never in short supply. And what is not eaten fresh is never wasted.

In the winter, I continue to savor her tomato soup (I know you miss it, Jill!) made from her summer bumper crop of tomatoes. Year round I complement sandwiches with something from a selection of endless jars of her pickles—delicious dills or butter and sugar. Honestly, nary a day passes when I am without something, some wonderful thing, that came from the earth and from my mother’s hands.

I'd trade my anchovy paste to keep it that way. (That's serious.)