In Praise of the Average Child

One time one of my best friends, Shelley, was doing a project for grad school. She asked, "What are you most afraid of?" I am pretty sure she wanted something like global warming or poverty, but I answered, "Not having kids." Having children has always pretty much summed up what I wanted from life, and every man I ever dated was evaluated LITERALLY on the first date as to whether he had father material. Fortunately, I managed to pick a husband who was oblivious of all the tests he was required to pass, and he has helped me create three amazing small people.

I supposed I should have been more honest with my friend and said my real source of terror was "Not having a daughter." Even though I have two boys who are as necessary to my life as the air I breathe, it is my daughter who was? is? the culmination of my life's goals. Before we found out the gender of the baby, I told Hubby Dear that if it wasn't a girl, we were going to keep going until we had one, stole one, found one on the street corner. He was the opposite of the "Man needs son" stereotype because he was so relieved our daughter came first. The pressure was off him.

When they handed Bunny to us, I remember feeling like I couldn't breathe. I could not believe that I had created this absolutely unattractive, giant, bald baby that looked exactly like my husband's brother at birth. Then she opened her eyes and looked at me, and it was all over. I have always heard people say "he is an old soul," but our daughter had "old eyes." I honestly believed she already knew more than I would ever learn. The first logical thought I had beyond "DANG! THAT IS A HUGE BABY!" was, "I know why Jewish women volunteered to go with their children to gas chambers." What a joyful introduction to motherhood those thoughts were.

Bunny spent the first hour or two of her life just looking and, in particular, staring at us, and her intense abilities to focus continued for many months. All babies study things intently, especially things like window panes and ceiling fans, but with her it was more like she was watching things we couldn't see. I read somewhere that babies can still see angels, and the more they connect to the world, the more they forget heaven. I truly believed that she was talking to heavenly creatures that I could no longer experience. To this day, she still fervently believes in all things magical, and she has a depth of spirituality that it took me two decades or more to develop.

As she has grown up, I naturally have learned to love her more. Because school was always so easy for me and Hubby was a college professor, I just assumed that my children would find school a piece of cake. Bunny has shown me that you should never assume anything. School was never easy for her, and even now she struggles to make a C in many subjects. Intelligence isn't the question because she already is a true scholar about First Ladies, and I am pretty sure she was the first Eleanor of Aquitaine most people had ever had trick-or treat at their home. Wait until Elizabeth I shows up this year. I imagine she will surprise a few folks this year, too. It is just everything that interests her isn't a part of school or ever evaluated. In addition, she is continuously confronted with the slightly younger brother who thinks school is a joke, plays on a select soccer team, is always faster at understanding and mastering things, and who has never had to struggle for anything in his life.

She is not particularly coordinated, she possesses the artistic skills of her father, and she has the attention span and inability to multitask of her mother. She is just the average kid. She is not the prettiest, tallest, or sweetest. I have always struggled to find a way to communicate to her how absolutely marvelous she is, and how even if all of her friends can swim better, make better grades, draw more elaborately, sing better, and have cuter clothes and cooler parents, she is still the most amazing person I have ever met. She will probably never finish first, play the winning play, or be the star of any show, but she has taught me how to look beyond the flashy, obvious things kids do to find her real worth. She is able to forgive her own flaws in ways I still haven't mastered for myself. She remembers we should call her grandmother to cheer her up. She is the one who notices that the birds are using the dog's dish to take a bath. She can hold a group of toddlers in her thrall when she reads a book. She is never demanding and has more patience with me than I deserve. She is the only one of my children who cares about third world orphans or how to start a laundry machine ("I will need to know this someday, Mom!"). So, as a result of having the blessing of being her mom, I am always going to make an effort to find the kids who never shine the brightest and talk to them. If my daughter is any indication, they will be far more interesting anyway.

Is it possible to have a phobia of buses?

So, I have nothing new to report. Decided to control my ADD by eating an entire bag of York peppermint patties that were also chock full of BRIGHT ORANGE mint filling, so I also got my carcinogenic food colorings in there.

The other day I was thinking, and for once, it was an almost complete thought. It was a thought of how much I hate buses. Not in theory. In theory, I like them. I used them daily the year we live in Sweden, but to get me to use them most other places, I would have to be like Mr. T on the A-team and have to be tranquilized. I have valid reasons for this aversion. During college, I was one of the last people of the previous generation to not have a car. Periodically, my mother would issue edicts declaring that I needed to come home. This did not mean I could count on her to come get me; it simply meant I needed to be in Greenville by Friday night. Most weekends I could find someone to bum a ride with, but on those awful weekends that I couldn't, it meant the bus. The DELTA BUS line. It is really only about a 2 hour drive to Jackson from Greenville, but because it is the only means of public transportation for a vast amount of the state, it is required to stop at every four way intersection or largish gas station in the delta plus an extensive layover in Vicksburg, so generally it took a minimum of 4 hours. I was without one single exception during my many rides, the only "minority" on the bus. I am glad I did it for that reason, but the last trip I went on I woke up to some completely random stranger getting ready to kiss his drunken, drippy lips on me. Some random woman on the bus came to my defense and followed me around the Vicksburg terminal to keep potential molester away from me. I bought her Krystal burgers since she told me she would "protect me."

I recovered from this somewhat, except I noticed that I refused to ride the buses in NYC when I was a nanny. This was in the height of the crack/ice addictions time, and I would rather (and I did) sit near a man talking to his fingers and smoking crack on the subway than get on a bus. However, once again I was required to conquer the Greyhound Demon. When I was a nanny, I temporarily lost my mind (recurring pattern for the next 18 years) and got engaged to my best friend. Not Hubby, my best friend now, a previous best friend. Anyway, I decided that I would go from North Carolina to see him in Tennessee via Greyhound. It literally took 23 hours to get from Roanoke, Virginia to Clarksville, Tennessee. In the intervening hours, I visited towns I have still not found on the map- Brigadoon, Virginia, Butt Crack, North Carolina, and my personal favorite, Knoxville, Tennessee. I was dumped in Knoxville's bus station at 3 a.m. I had been entertained during the trip by the little boy who's mother fell asleep immediately after her butt hit the cushion. Everytime my head would fall forward, he would literally stick his finger between the seats and into my ear. He pulled out enough hair to stuff a voodoo doll. Finally, a soldier who had just been dishonorably discharged and was going home to confront his girlfriend who was sleeping with another man sat beside me, and I got to get my hair pulled out while advising this man that killing the man who was boinking his girl was just a bad plan. If I asked the little boy to stop, his mother would wake up and slap him, which would make him cry, which induced guilt.

So, we are dumped into Knoxville. Knoxville's bus station is not charming. It is even less charming when all the homeless people are using it for their bedroom and bathing facility. I decide that I will go to the bathroom since I had been holding it awhile so I wouldn't have to go in the bus bathroom that clearly had not been cleaned or aired out since the person vomited in it.

So, as I am hovering over the toilet seat (can't sit - this is pre the age of enlightenment about AIDS), I realize that there is literally a crazy (not PC - a mentally ill person not receiving proper care) person is in the stall next to me. She is getting increasingly irate over the fact someone had broken the 13th Commandment and gotten AN ORANGE COMMUNIST MEDAL for it. And she COULD NOT BELIEVE THIS COULD HAPPEN IN AMERICA. I am terrified to leave the stall. Finally, I bolt. I climb on the bus, only to have my friend, the con sailor, decide that I am right. He doesn't need his cheating ho, he is going to try to charm me for the next three hours. Yank - there goes another hunk of my hair. Then, I realize that the woman who is worried about the negative effects of Communism is sitting in front of me and she is still unhappy about it. She begins to cry, which makes me completely unafraid of her. And I realized that she was wearing an Andy Warhol wig, and it made me sad and sympathetic, too. It was the bus ride from hell. It was Knoxville's first nail in the coffin and I am still not convinced that this town isn't full of homeless, mentally ill right-wingers. I am starting to move away from the homeless belief, but the rest is still there. And I won't ride buses unless they have the word "tour" painted on their sides.

Stupid Computer Stalkers

I took a test today to see what my problem is. Not that it is caring for a house and 4 people, or anything, but it really must be an "outside" problem. And, the diagnosis is...I am suffering from adult ADD. Now this is based completely on a 20 question survey on the internet, but it wasn't like it was a waffling answer, it was a "yeah, you are an unfocused, undisciplined, needs to be medicated person. Seek help immediately" and a tiny little stick figure of me. Of course, I was horrified and I went and asked my mother and husband, and they were both like, "Yeah, obviously." Hubby made it worse by pointing out he told me this a year ago, but I thought he was being sarcastic then. I have always defined myself through academics, and I had no idea you could read well and have ADD. However, the "symptoms" do match what I have better than the gall bladder ones. So, if it turns out that I am not mentally ill but chemically challenged, I will be happy. Two years ago on Desperate Housewives, one of the wives started taking Ritalin because it let her get stuff done and at the time I thought, "Gimme, gimme, gimme." So, if it turns out that I am ADD, I will view Lynnette from DH as my personal Oracle of Delphi.