Tag Archives: Parenting

Pandemic with a Puppy: A Day in the Life of Lees

Posted by Britt in Uncategorized and tagged with , , , , ,

Brodie told me yesterday (in the 12:30 to 3pm window of interruptions) that he rejects the idea of a “new normal.” I get that. I want life as we knew it to return, too. And it will. Sort of, and eventually. And because, as Father Michael Dangelo reminds us twice daily and on Sundays that “this will pass,” I wanted to capture a typical pandemic day in the Life of Lees. Teenage boys are wrapping up a year of high school. Hero is still a puppy. Bernie is WFH. And I’m doing All of the Things. My guess is most of you (especially the mommas) could white-board a similar schedule.

8 – 9:30am Wake up, walk dog, make puppy breakfast, drink coffee, wake up boys (WHO SHOULD BE WAKING THEMSELVES UP), make them breakfast, drink more coffee

9:30 – 10:30am Listen to Morning Prayer while walking Hero all over the neighborhood

10:40am At least one boy wants 2nd breakfast

11:20am Snackish children emerge from rooms for lunch, but it’s too early for lunch for everyone but the puppy

Noon Quickly frying dumplings because now everyone is starving and school starts again in 20 min but we had sandwiches yesterday

12:30 – 3pm Interruptions for political commentary of the day from Brodie, chitchat with Bernie, query from shirtless Teddy about his “gains” from a slightly altered workout, conversations with various contractors/painters/vet all while trying to OMG ANSWER JUST ONE EMAIL

3:30pm Boys need differing snacks/protein shakes after workouts. Hero hangs out on the deck half-heartedly barking at golfers, other neighborhood dogs, turkeys, the wind, and ghosts. Bernie emerges from Zoom purgatory asking if it’s too early for cocktails. It is too early for cocktails.

4:30pm We have decided it is no longer too early for cocktails. We listen to Evening Prayer and walk Hero all over the neighborhood to give the ghosts a break so they don’t start planning retaliation hauntings.

5:30pm Start preparing dinner during which the boys wander in and out looking for pre-dinner snack offerings and play with Hero for maybe 3 minutes and 45 seconds even though this is the only time of day he really needs lots of attention and the only time I ask them to watch the PUPPY THEY WANTED

6pm Dinner is ready. Not everyone else is. They eat anyway, because they are constantly starving anyway and also are good like this and will sit down right away and eat up every last bite while making yummy sounds and I just adore them. Bernie sneaks Hero little morsels even though the puppy eats like the princely puppy he is and already had his supper.

7pm Hero has the “zoomies” and cannot decide if he should be inside or outside or doing crazy figure 8 races around the furniture, so he does all of these. More barking at ghosts.

8pm What day is it? If Thursday, Friday, or Saturday, we’ll probably continue cocktail hour. Scroll on demand channels for 27 minutes, realize neither of us wants to watch the same thing, so we watch something meh that is too girly, too violent, or puts both of us to sleep.

10pm Hero is a sleepy puppy and does the cutest slow walk to his crate. The tell tale puppy plop signals bedtime for everyone except teenage boys who suddenly appear for dessert.

11pm – ??? Teenage boys are doing Internet things that might be for school, but who are we kidding. Only the ghosts know.

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Hero, adorable… and also sees dead people… probably.

Summer Without Camp… by Steve Safran

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What all of us need this summer is a place for the kids to go where they can play, swim, and just be outdoors with their friends. A place with a lake, a baseball diamond, goofy songs and goofier crafts, paths through ancient pines… a place of their own.

They need summer camps. For parents trapped with school-aged kids, the need is bordering on desperation this year. And like so many of the things that could make any of this more bearable, they’re closed.

“Out of an abundance of love for everyone in our camp community, we cannot compromise the safety of our campers, teens, and staff … ” was written in a Camp Tel Noar email. Disappointed parents who had hoped their children would be able to trade Zoom screens for canoes in a few weeks opened similar messages. Tel Noar is a New Hampshire institution: a 75 year-old camp I attended as a kid from 1977-1981. It, along with Camp Tevya and Camp Pembroke are part of the Cohen Foundation camps, all three of which have announced they will be closed. This will leave them in serious financial trouble.

Summer camps don’t generally have endowments. Tel Noar (translation from Hebrew: “Youth Hill”) shared that they already “spent $3 million in facility maintenance, repairs, staff salaries, insurance (and) utilities.” At the same time they’re breaking the news that camp is canceled, they need to ask for donations to make up the shortfall. But, let’s face it, only a super-generous donor is going to mail the full tuition while their kids stay home. It won’t happen. Like some small colleges, a few of our beloved camps won’t survive.

However, summer camps are historically resilient, possibly because they are managed by people who provide a yearly respite from the worries of the world. Cape Cod Sea Camps in Brewster, MA is nearly 100 years old. It has seen its share of world-changing events: “Cape Cod Sea Camps has provided a camping experience every summer since 1922 and have held camp through the Great Depression, World War II, the polio epidemic and numerous other global events.”

But this year, even their cabins will be empty.

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Waterfronts are usually the hub of the summer camp experience 

In the overall scheme of world events that include a rising death toll of a global pandemic, canceling a season of camp isn’t at the top of the headlines. But it is heartbreaking for the thousands of children for whom camp life is an escape from their own world worries. It’s also a rite of passage, often the first time a kid tastes freedom and learns how to steer that privilege. Camp is where time does funny things, where the days go on forever, but it all ends too fast.

I had the joy of returning to Camp Frank A. Day in East Brookfield, MA last summer to teach podcasting, and it transported me right back to my counselor days in the mid-’80s. Everything was the same: the boathouse, the waterfront, the cabins, the dining hall– it was eternal and ruggedly beautiful. Teenage counselors haven’t changed, either, happily sharing the camp gossip once they realized I was one of “them.” I made new friends. Never before did grilled cheese and tomato soup evoke so many memories. Is there such a thing as “camp sandwich griddle grease” they order in bulk?

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Stevie teaching budding podcasters last summer

For the summer of 2020, Camp Day faced the same agonizing decision as their colleagues. The staff and its board debated, looked at the current environment, acted with the caution of the day, and emailed its community: ” …that there is too much uncertainty surrounding COVID-19 for us to confidently operate a safe and high-quality residential camp this summer.”

I still have friends from summer camp, friendships forged 40 years ago as we shared bunk beds and bug bites for only eight weeks of a handful of summers. Think about that. I’ve had co-workers whose names were forgotten after years in the same offices, if I ever knew them at all. But camp is different. It’s intense. Your bunkmates are your brothers. And the girls? So many firsts all crammed into the time it takes a ChiaPet to mature.

The first time I asked a girl to dance was at Camp Tel Noar. (It was followed shortly by the first time a girl rejected my offer to dance). The first “date” I had was at camp. I was nine. We had a field trip to Canobie Park and I asked Ellen G. if she would go with me. She was very nice. About halfway through our time there, I lost our ticket. It was a harbinger of dates to come.

Camp builds independence and the kind of self-confidence that emboldens a nine year old to ask a girl on a date. College shouldn’t be the first time a kid is really away, feels the pangs of homesickness, and learns to overcome that. Over the years, I became a happier kid at home from spending a summer in the woods.

All of these rites of passage and moments of joy and firsts are on hold. Camps that weathered wars and economic collapse have been felled by a virus. The waterfront will be still. The baseball diamond will remain pristine. The bunks, the dining hall, and the lake will be as still as they are in January.

Sound taps.

See you in 2021. I hope.

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Stevie (far left in the shorty-shorts and Hawaiian shirt) and his bunk on his first tour as a counselor.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Killing Grandma

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The children are beginning to break. Brodie is quoting from Joe Rogan podcasts and Teddy is suggesting we’re the last family on the block actually enforcing social distancing. They’re very tired of screens and…us. They are looking to adults for answers and assurances, and we don’t have them. With summer right around the corner, they fear this stunted life is going to drag on and on: a purgatory without restaurants or movies, spike ball or sleepovers. School is being overly optimistic (when they aren’t being completely cagey) and hints school in September. So if they’re going to be sharing desks and germs in the fall, why can’t they play videogames together in our basement now?

Friends, the because it could kill grandma argument has worn thin. The invincible teenager trope endures. We need a plan and real answers to the repeated question:

“When can friends come over?”

My kids have fantasized about having a “chicken pox party” emulating our own moms from the ‘70s who organized play dates with our spotty classmates so we would “get it over with.” They mused that if all teens purposely contract COVID-19 and become immune at least they could return to some sort of normalcy? In their fantasy no one gets particularly sick, goes to the hospital, dies, or inadvertently kills grandma. In this fantasy they’re also willing to sacrifice their friends with underlying conditions or other hidden and unknown risk factors. I guess. It’s just a fantasy where the invincible teenager trope is reality.

One of their friends is saving money to pay for his own antibody test, desperate for some proof that he should be allowed the free reign usually afforded high school seniors in the last marking period. The odds that any sort of tipping point of teens are antibody positive and immune are probably low; but then again, they were swapping pathogens freely until mid March and could have been asymptomatic. If we don’t test them, too, we won’t know. And because we don’t know, we’re acting out of the abundance of caution necessary in these unprecedented times—which they hear as “because I said so.”

So what do we do? Children sense hypocrisy and inconsistencies more keenly than my puppy hears the rustling of snack wrappers. Right now a reasonable person could ask why golf is allowed, but not tennis? As beaches and pools, restaurants and salons, summer camps and daycare centers open, it will get more and more difficult to justify why my kids cannot play NBA 2K on the same couch with their buddies.

SO WHAT DO WE DO?

As we move forward, we are going to need to be personally responsible for our own safety and for the havoc our kids might wreck on suppressing a second spike. Are you, or do you live with, someone who has risk factors that would predict a more severe or deadly course of COVID-19? You should probably continue to WFH if you can, limit grocery runs, hold off on social situations in confined spaces, and know if your kids are acting in less socially distant ways. If you feel like your nuclear family is at a lower risk, you might feel more comfortable getting that pedicure, braving the beach bar, or letting little Jenny’s friend sleep over. But a short week after we begin to do these things, a lot of us are going to get sick. And the ones who don’t know they’re sick–and are shedding virus all over the place– could easily be our kids.

Once we start doing normal things, we’re going to forget that the goal of social distancing was never to prevent us from contracting coronavirus at all… just not all at the same time. Basic psychology predicts that we’ll erroneously assign a lower risk of contagion among people we know. I mean, they’re our friends! No one has symptoms! But coronavirus is the honey badger of diseases: corona don’t care.

Parents are already allowing small, local quaran-teen groups, swear they are shielding them from the at-risk and elderlies, and trusting them to self-police a group with no assurances that it is COVID-19-free. Is this advisable? Low risk? Nope. And though it may be inevitable, the safety of this is pure fantasy. Also, though I love them deeply, teenagers lie all of the time. The children, and unfortunately permissive parents who let them share recycled air in rec rooms and basements, are going to push the boundaries of what is safe. Epidemiological models and tales of super-spreaders at clubs, cocktail parties, and churches predict that it only takes one asymptomatic carrier to kill grandma.

Even the strictest mandates won’t prevent everyone from contracting COVID-19: it’s too contagious. As those rules are lifted, it’s up to all of us to protect each other. Here’s what we’re suggesting for Summertime at the Lee House:

No hangouts inside. It is safer to meet up in the fresh air (on the deck, around a pool, in the backyard) where the likelihood of swapping spit droplets is minimal. Activities need to be limited to ones where they can stay 6 feet apart. Tennis? Yes. Spike ball? Riskier.

No car-pooling. If absolutely necessary, everyone is wearing a mask.

Chemo precautions. When I was in treatment, the kids had to change their clothes and wash their hands before they could see me. After (outside!) hangouts with their buddies, they need to decontaminate when they come indoors. Let’s be honest, teen boys need daily if not more frequent showers. They should also be carrying Purell in their pockets.

Honesty. This will be the tough one. Grandma & Pop Pop and A-Ma & A-Gong have been quarantining since early March and miss their grandsons. Right now we’d feel comfortable having them visit because the only place my kids have been is Zoom School. But if our boys aren’t honest with us about their own vigilance to social distancing and hygiene as opportunities arise, the elders cannot visit… not without risking killing grandma.

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My boys have already grown tired of me suggesting a walk on the beach as an activity… and it’s not even June. Good luck with your kids. xoxo

And Hero is his name

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The decade has seen us weather the toddler to teen years, from kindergarten to high school. Facebook memories from 2009 portray an exhausted mom who yearned for adult conversation and bubbly. A fairly big chunk of the 2010s included diagnosis, treatment, recovery, and the never-ending aftermath of breast cancer. The past few years, Lees agonized over standardized testing, essay writing, and the sleep-depriving anxiety that accompanies high school admissions. Stevie navigated divorce, dating, neuropathy, migraines, college application stress for three children, and got cancer. More recently (because God is good) he’s experienced the miracle of new love and marriage. Steve wrote about all of these moments candidly and with humor. More often, I just complained about cardio. Our shared bloggy pursuits even went viral twice this decade. As 2020 begins, there is more good than awful in the accounting, but we’ll take “boring” for the next 10 years, please.

Boring, it won’t be. In the dark days surrounding the solstice, the Lees felt keenly bereft of joy. The stress of the holidays piggybacking onto an overly long and expensive home renovation project and three (minor, but still) car accidents and midterm exams plus a brief but serious consideration of a new job and move was enough already. Taking a hard look at all of the hard work all of us were doing—board meetings, conference calls, Latin declensions, concussions and cross country meets, fundraising, editing, international meetings, and too much travel that did not include umbrella drinks– we realized there wasn’t a lot of FUN happening. And so in what appears like the Lee Family’s Most Impulsive Move, we got a dog.

Decidedly not boring.

After years of insisting that I “am allergic” and “refuse to pick up poop” and “will never budge,” we got a puppy. A tiny, sort of hypoallergenic (y’all are really overselling this notion), absolutely adorable mini Bernedoodle is sleeping at my feet right now. Is this just more work? Maybe. But with teenagers doing the lion’s share of puppy play and taking the night shift, so far it seems like we adopted a big dose of joy in the softest, cutest, littlest package. And Hero is his name.

My boys went back to school today. On the 2nd, because their school is totally finger horns metal when it comes to the calendar. When Brodie brought a whimpering puppy to me at 4:30am, asking me sweetly to take over, I did this happily… but I’m still drinking coffee in jammies and have been up for FIVE HOURS. Am I counting the minutes until they get home? Maybe. Is Hero checking couches for napping humans because so far that’s all he’s seen us do? Yup. But those of you who are likening this stage to having another baby never experienced Brodie as a baby. This is hardly the lonely and exhausting time suck that was stay at home parenting with a newborn. And I could probably take Hero with me to get a pedicure. Perspective.

It was thought- and conversation-provoking timing to get a tiny new family member as the decade closed on such a huge portion of my boys’ lives. Will it be so sad to leave Hero when they go to college? Will Hero be alive when they get married? What will life look and be like in 2030? For the first time since my boys began high school, and now a handful of their friends started college visits and dove deep into application stress, we’re looking at the future with more what if/what’s next optimism. As my boys focus less on have-to’s and more on could-be’s, Bernie and I are clearing the calendar of stuff that doesn’t really need to be on it. We have a sleepy, fun, soft, love me love me love me puppy to Instagram. Together. And that makes him a Hero, indeed.

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Please note my utter RESTRAINT in only posting one puppy pic

Mrs. Garrett

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Bow tie pasta with Vidalia onions sautéed with champagne and tomatoes; Marinated grilled chicken; Green salad with avocado and bacon, fresh herb vinaigrette

Beef stroganoff over egg noodles with grilled lemony asparagus

Three cheese tortellini with prosciutto, tomatoes, fresh herbs; Tuscan herb marinated steak tips

Grilled salmon (the good olive oil, S&P); Ina Garten’s corn salad with sherry vinaigrette

Breaded veal cutlets (lemon/egg bath), Linguini with red sauce; Green salad

Flank steak with soy ginger marinade; Pan-fried ramen noodles with shitake mushrooms and sesame caramelized onions; Cucumber salad with rice vinegar soy dressing

Burgers, every fixing, but absolutely pickles and Williams Sonoma Burger Bomb

Garlic ginger soy marinated pork tenderloin; Grilled, garlicky haricot verts and white rice

Chili lime grilled shrimp skewers

Vanilla French toast with cinnamon sugar, berries, syrup

New York crumble coffee cake

Toasted bagel with scrambled egg, pepper jack, honey ham

The best oatmeal cookies on the planet (because white chocolate and butterscotch chips)

Still warm brownies with vanilla ice cream

This is the rotating menu Chez Lee, and I’ve had anywhere from 2 to 9 teenagers in my house for breakfast, lunch, and/or dinner and dessert almost daily since the beginning of July. I’m Mrs. Garrett, running a boarding house for boys who are never not hungry.

And it’s awesome.

Summer is ending, as is my seasonal stint as a short order cook. And it is, indeed, short order. I am insufferably boastful about my ability to get a meal onto the table in 17 minutes. But the real gem of it all is the Family Dinner tradition that lends itself to fantastic conversation, often quite unguarded, as these kids break bread together. Something’s lost over a box of pizza. Scooping heaping mounds of bow tie pasta onto plates, fighting over the Asiago, and bargaining for the last steak tip or shrimp skewer is the backdrop for 100 discussions about girls (big time mysteries), horrible math, tennis triumphs and losses, embarrassing anecdotes from years past, and what movies can arguably be considered “classic.” (Not one of them has been on the planet more than 18 years, but they still think they have valid opinions, bless their hearts.)

The other moms have been checking in all summer to ask if I’m cool with them spending another night (and morning) around my dining table, and the answer is always, “Yes!” I love knowing where they are, what they’re doing, what they’re eating, and especially what’s on their minds. It’s a summer tradition that begins Memorial Day Weekend, and wraps up in only a few weeks. It’s already getting darker sooner, it’s chilly when a cloud passes, and the boys have begun talking about school, SATs, college visits, “Honors” this and “AP” that… and all the accompanying stressors.

Very wise (and equally beautiful) Sarah, who was the church school director for a generation of lucky kids, offered this sage advice when my boys were little and I was blissfully unaware of what parenting teens would entail:

Sometimes it’s our job to provide the space where the stress is lifted. Sometimes that meant we told our girls that no one was doing homework, and we were going out to dinner together.

Just because everyone is vying for competitive team spots and Ivy League acceptances doesn’t mean it doesn’t suck for them. I’ve watched an amazing kid with an already incredible SAT score study hours a day all summer in an attempt to inch up to the 99%ile… and no one is telling him not to do this. It’s not surprising that some of these kids are already burned out before they get to the quad. Probably I was a less motivated high school student, or maybe things were easier then, but I’m worried about these kids, these boys around my dining table. I feel protective of their youth.

Here at the Lee’s, summer is for talking and eating and being together. And though the shortening days and faded hydrangeas mean it’s time… there is still time for a bit more grilling, laughing, negotiating for the last brownie, and introducing these kids to Spicoli. There are a few more days to protect the space where the stress is lifted, where meals are shared. Just a few more moments for them to memory bank a time when we require very little of them… before we inevitably ask them to be perfect again.

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Dinnertime at the Lee house… 

 

The Cat’s Ass

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Those of you who know me have heard me talk about Paddy. I call him The World’s Most Irish Man, but he’s actually my contractor, my can-fix-or-build-anything, filth-talking, manic, fiercely loyal, and endlessly entertaining friend. With three coffees and a full strength Coke on board, he’s unstoppable. Last month his car was stolen, possibly by joy-riding teens, leaving him without transportation or his tools. I asked Father Mike and Zealot Sister for prayers and find no coincidence in the fact that Paddy’s car was located a few days later with minor damage and all of his equipment. But in aftermath of the theft, when the outlook was bleak, we lent our SUV to Paddy, who almost immediately wrecked it. In retrospect, I’m happy he hit the curb instead of the pedestrian backlit with sun glare. In the moment, I couldn’t understand a thing that was happening because voice-to-text cannot translate brogue. Even in person, a caffeinated, pissy, excited, happy, or most often joke-telling Paddy needs subtitles.

“Paddy, my friend Nicole needs help with something.”

“Ya, Monahan? Happy to help a fellow sun-dodger.” (Insert your best accent)

With my car in the shop, and the building permit finally signed by the architect, we’ve embarked on an expensive entryway redesign. Should I be worried that bad things happen in threes and there is something skulking in the shadows after a stolen car and a crashed one? I am. But Paddy assures me that it’s all right and good and the house will look like “the cat’s ass” when completed. Apparently this is an enviable outcome.

Meanwhile, back at the Cape, the boys and I are enjoying days that still feel long. And by “boys” I mean a tangled mess of teenagers that varies from my own 2 up to 8 each night. Because I have known and cooked for them for nearly a decade, possibly because I used to be a doctor type of person and still carry antibiotic ointment and Tegaderms in my beach bag, and mostly because I’ve spent a billion hours with them at this point, they tell me (almost) everything. One of my favorite kids, who could always charm the Dickens out of any minivan mom, has convinced some pretty little thing his own age to be his one and only. In their world of SnapChatting Instagramming nonsense, it’s refreshing to hear that stomach butterflies and actual, in person dates with park walking and car kissing can still be attained.

Watching them grow up and begin dating themselves makes us (ok, just me) ridiculously nostalgic, and this week I recalled the first time I had to make my sort of secret but definitely official relationship with Bernie public. As a 4th year medical student, it wasn’t exactly kosher for the Chief Resident to be dating me. Maybe. We didn’t ask, and back then human resources didn’t bother themselves with the shenanigans of surgical trainees. But one late night on call in the ICU, the very pretty and super smart intern confessed to me that she had a major crush on the boy I would be engaged to 6 months later. My boys and their friends (and oodles of you) have heard the story of how I met Bernie many times, so you already know how goddamn charming Dr. Lee is on the job. I wasn’t surprised when Sarah asked,

“Do you think he’s dating anyone?”

Umm, yeah. Sarah was tall, gorgeous, everyone’s favorite intern, and liked my boyfriend. A more normal person might have felt a bit intimidated. Or jealous. But I’ve always been me, and frankly, it just made me like Bernie more (if that was possible). Sarah manned the guest book at our wedding.

“Wait. So Bernie is dating YOU and this hot doctor girl is into him? We gotta start talking to Bernie more.”

That was Markie’s take from the teen peanut gallery. He’s not wrong. It’s just that if you’ve met Bernie, you know he doesn’t talk. Throngs of friends and patients and teachers and students and residents and neighbors probably feel like they’ve talked to Bernie, like, had an actual discussion with him. But Bernie is a genius of facial expressions and well timed hand gestures. He’ll pour you a drink, but have me tell the story. If you’ve had a heart to heart with Bernie, you’re in a small circle. He’s not giving up trade secrets.

Like Paddy, Bernie needs subtitles… for everyone but me.

Is being around all of these teenagers with their obsession with Love Island and hardly guarded gawking at physically perfect bikini beach teens throwing me into soupy sappy appreciation for my own husband of nearly two decades? Yup. And it’s the cat’s ass.

Happy still summer, friends.

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Missing Teddy

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“It’s kinda lonely up there without Teddy.”

No kidding. Blessed with wanderlust, a growing proficiency with Japanese, and an indulgent, adventurous, and spry grandfather, Teddy has embarked on his second “buddy trip” with A Gong. They left over a week ago and I’ve received not one single text. NOT ONE SINGLE TEXT. The scores of pictures uploaded onto Facebook and the LINE group chat for the Lee Clan tell me he’s in some Japanese equivalent of hog heaven. But we miss him.

Here at the Cape, Brodie still shares a room with his slightly smaller, definitely stinkier, late-sleeping, Kanji work-booking little brother. And because Teddy is not here, but also living 13 hours into the future, we feel like he’s on another planet. His absence feels big. Last night the whole gang of Cape kids landed in my family room and we made fun of him and missed him together.

When Teddy was in 5th grade, he had a math assignment wherein he was given a mock budget of $5000 to plan a trip with a fictional friend. His travel plans included an 80-year-old travel pal named Jerry.

“Teddy, who is Jerry?

“He’s my travel friend.”

“Who is he?”

“I made him up.”

“Why is he 80?”

“For the senior discounts!”

Teddy sourced the seediest hotels and hostels and blew almost the whole budget on tickets to Hamilton. Money well spent.

According to my AmEx records, Teddy recently checked out of their hotel in Tokyo to spend a few more days in hot baths eating food that looks deliciously adorable. Next stop: Taipei. 22 more days without Teddy on this side of the world, 22 more days with his 80-year-old travel buddy over there.

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Parenting 2.0… the hyperventilating torture of the teen years

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Little kids, little problems… big kids, big problems. The sage parents of teenagers told us this. While we wondered if our little ones would ever wipe their own butts or fall asleep without 10 stories, 3 drinks of water, and the theme song to Pepa Pig, they had bigger fish in the fry pan. Those parents had sympathy for us, sure. But there was a wistful nostalgia for these sorts of complaints. I wrote plenty about the sweet spot of parenting when I was in it. And though I love these budding bursting embarrassing distracted delusional occasionally noble and often lying humans, they’re exhausting.

We’re taking the radical honesty approach to parenting. My own parents put forth hard rules and likely knew we were lying to them. How often does the movie reel “break?” I wonder why they let us keep throwing good money at a theater that couldn’t get us home before curfew. But while our own teens dip toes in the deep end of teenage shenanigans, we prefer they tell us what is happening. But they won’t. Not entirely. Who does?

The smaller sins are merely annoying. Anyone who has let more than a handful of high schoolers into the basement knows the tell tale stench of vaping. Their burgeoning nicotine addiction means that any room they leave smells like grape bubble gum, stale cupcakes, or sickly sweet mint (that they swear is from chewing gum).

“Ugh, at least we looked COOL smoking actual cigarettes,” I tell them. I’ll call them out for spewing toxic vapor into our shared spaces, make them turn on the air filters, and remind them that they’re not fooling anybody. They’ll give me the usual deflections and excuses like I wasn’t at least 43% naughtier at their ages. I recall how my sister and I got away with murder, but our younger brother (likely smarter than the two of us together) was wildly incompetent at subterfuge and got caught all of the time. Odds are (hopes are?) my own teens are taking after Uncle Patrick.

“Did you ever sneak out of the house?” Brodie asked. You bet. Back in the ‘80s, few parents in the ‘burbs set up elaborate house alarms with doors and windows that beep beep beep. I met up with my girlfriends to share a furtive Marlboro Light, or made romantic plans to rendezvous with my boyfriend under a moonlit sky. Those were magical moments of borrowed time in the peak of youth. Looking back with the lens of a teenage parent, I see a too young girl risking lung and Lyme disease and sexual assault. How lucky that cigarettes are gross and took a substantial commitment to yield real addiction, and that my boyfriend was probably more scared than I was to make any sort of mileage on the old baseball metaphor.

Keeping me up at night are the larger mistakes with huge, life altering consequences. We’re excitedly reluctant to let our kids drive. Are we really giving large machine operating privileges to half formed people that still spill and leave doors unlocked and socks everywhere? Though we (okay, mostly I am) constantly harping about consent and the role of boys to protect all girls everywhere, in the moment does a teenage libido override all sense (and their mother’s voice)? Is the sharing of salacious gossip (or videos!) too tempting? Will they begin to, or ever, weigh risks and outcomes before actions? Am I expecting far, far too much from their mushy frontal lobes? SHOULD WE START HOMESCHOOLING. Raise your hand if you considered locking up your teens until they turn 21.

Recently, a pair of wise physicians of kids on the “other side” of parenting spoke with candor of the random drug tests and mandatory meetings with the Discipline Committee invoked by the actions of their then high schoolers. (God bless the parents who share these stories.) Another mom described her delightful, accomplished adult daughter like this: “She was unlikeable and awful from age 14 until last year.” I’m full of dread and anxiety about what comes next. Or maybe that’s just the pseudoephedrine coupled with the pot of coffee I swallowed while in full Mom Mode dropping wisdom on my teen that is likely landing on deaf ears and against a please-let-this-be-over closed door. If my boys are going to make mistakes (and they will), it will not be because I didn’t lay down the knowledge. Aside from locking them up and homeschooling, it’s all I’ve got.

Brodie has never been more excited to exit the house and go to tennis practice. I don’t blame him. Mom advice is invasive, embarrassing, obvious, unhelpful, trite, and irritating. Once a carefree Marlboro Light puffing teen swapping spit with boys on golf courses, I became the happy go lucky mom who enjoyed her sons’ adorable idiosyncrasies as they earned As and navigated nothing worse than the inevitable heartbreak of team sports and fickle friendships. Now all I can think about is Father Mike Dangelo’s motto for caring for these almost adults: “No life lost or created on my watch.”

In the end, I’ll need to trust my kids. They’re good kids, and if we paved the path and put up clear signage, certainly they’ll go in the right direction? (I can actually hear the snort laughs of seasoned parents just writing that.) As we navigate this next phase of parenting– the teen years– we’re also grappling with how tremendously stupid we were at that very age, how incredibly uncool our harpy warnings are to unsuccessfully thwart inevitable mistakes, how old this makes us feel in a way that crows feet and creaking joints cannot. As my kids stumble into adulthood, I admit that I thought this would be easier. Blaming an Internet-obsessed world for the shortcomings of our children feels like a cop out, and tolerating transgressions and exercising forgiveness are action verbs harder than any spin class. When once I wanted to fast forward to years when they wouldn’t need post poo help and could sleep until noon, now I’m wishing away the years until they can (legally) share a glass of Prosecco with me and confess all of the (minor) sins we never caught. Until then… no life lost or created on our watch… we pray.

 

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How do you clean a sex robot… and other dinner table discussions with teens

Posted by Britt in Uncategorized and tagged with , , , ,

“Let me just stop you right there with your shaming of sex workers…” was how the Facebook rebuttal thread began. I normally avoid anything even approaching politics on social media. Honestly, the only time I’ve been “called out” on line was for admitting I still make the boys’ beds. (Mom-shaming on Facebook is a thing, people). Clapback for admitting dismay to discuss the latest news cycle with my kids was interpreted as a judgment of women engaged in “the world’s oldest profession.” But I have two teenage boys. As the only woman in the house, as a mom, as a feminist, as a human being, I cannot let it go. These boys are gonna know my FEELINGS around this. And none of them concern women who freely choose this profession.

A few years back when the kids were gifted with old gen iPhones and there were many rules associated with them, it hadn’t occurred to me to strictly disavow porn. But one morning accessing one of their devices to check the weather—these were the salad days of knowing their passwords—I found evidence that they had stumbled into it. When they got home, I made them come clean.

I met their I’ll-never-do-it-again, don’t-tell-dad, and am-I-grounded pleas with calm assurances that they weren’t actually in any trouble. The only thing they had to do was discuss it with me. Given the choice, they would have happily handed over their phones. But there was no choice. Instead, three truths and some questions:

  1. We pay for the phones: my phone, my rules, no porn.
  2. Pornography makes me… sad. Don’t make your mother sad.
  3. You will never know if the women in these videos were coerced, bribed, threatened, cajoled, terrified, or even compensated. You will never know if they are under age.

Q. If there is even the smallest chance of #3 being the case, is pornography less enjoyable to watch? If #3 is more the rule than the exception, is pornography… ethical?

Finally, I wanted them to consider that no little girl imagines this life for herself. No parent dreams of this vocational future for her child. Nearly 85% of the women in this world enter it from foster care or homelessness… and that statistic doesn’t include the women trafficked from foreign countries into a world of prostitution.

“Let me just stop you right there with your shaming of sex workers…” was one woman’s response to Truth #2. I hadn’t been shaming anyone, merely expressing regret over having to discuss prostitution with my boys. They know my feelings around pornography, but we hadn’t discussed massage parlor culture. Not yet. And I guess it needs to be said: I’m sure there are sex workers who are employed legally, safely, and with proper pay and, just as important, joy for the work. I just also think they are the extreme exception. Trotting out that example now does a disservice to thousands of marginalized women and is not useful when trying to frame this topic for teenage boys. I’d love to know how your dining table discussions are going.

Being total teenagers, this weekend my own kids advanced this devil’s advocate position: “Should a dude buying pot be punished for a drug trafficking ring?” And I let them bat that one around for a minute. That is, until I pointed out that they were comparing a FEMALE HUMAN BEING to a JOINT and I hated all men with a burning fury for about 15 seconds. This led to the discussion of decriminalizing sex work—another argument I loathe because what is happening at over 600 “massage parlors” just here in Massachusetts is not sex work, but some odious crime straddling slavery and rape. In fact, advancing the legalization of all sex work as a panacea in this climate would probably only safeguard the monsters holding power positions in this seedy realm.

Brodie pointed out that many of the men who have been outed are affluent enough to buy SEX ROBOTS. This led to the unsavory discussion about how sex robots are used, and Teddy wondered, cleaned. Questions of improved AI and the ethics of using sex robots with some sort of consciousness were also raised more quickly than the existence of this practice with ACTUAL HUMAN BEINGS and I hated all men with the fire of seven suns for another minute. And now you know what it’s like to have dinner at the Lees of late.

The sex-for-money world needs its #MeToo moment, and I’m hoping this recent scandal heralds it. Until we hear their stories, there will be comment threads on Facebook urging you to champion the happy hooker– this mythical, empowered woman safely using her body to make an honest buck. Until we hear their stories, soliciting prostitution is a faceless “misdemeanor” of a crime likened to buying a joint. Until we hear their stories, we will believe customers of Orchids of Asia had no reason to question the wellbeing of its employees. Until massage parlor culture of all ilk stops, our most vulnerable girls and women are not safe from it.

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The kids’ first phones… used to play Angry Birds, text poop emojis, and navigate the titillating world of hotgirlspeeingdotcom

 

Lil Yachty, Aziz Ansari, and Tide Pods

Posted by Britt in Uncategorized and tagged with , , , , , , ,

My boys listen to a variety of rap music, the breadth of which I am only recently learning. Last night, Brodie magically connected his phone to the car stereo and DJ’d the ride home. As he and Teddy giggled and guffawed over particularly embarrassing lyrics to endure in front of Mom, I started earnestly listening to them.

Ick. Now my children were literally SUV-trapped in a parenting moment that I couldn’t let go.

“You guys realize how BAD this is, right? You understand misogyny? These lyrics are dismissive and demeaning and maybe a little violent and otherwise terrible. YOU KNOW THIS, right? You cannot possibly SING ALONG to this… right???”

“Yeah yeah yeah… we know. We would never. We just like this beat. It’s sampled by everyone. And mom, the next song is seriously only about it being cold in Minnesota.”

And it was. But between the sophomorically raunchy lyrics (that they totally know), Aziz Ansari (who they love), and Tide pods (WTF), I feel like our kids are being bombarded with troubling examples of intimacy and flagrant stupidity. If teenagers are eating detergent, what other things must we remind them not to do? And though my boys aren’t dating yet, I kind of need them to know that what they’re reading isn’t the norm, except that it is, only it shouldn’t be, and then beleaguer them with definitions of consent and power differentials… ultimately encouraging them to lean on their faith, or at least rely on how they see Bernie treat me. The mortified eye rolling and protestations to please stop ensued.

But I won’t stop. I have no idea how the fuck-the-insecure-girl rap message is playing on their pliant brains. They are also reading an un-nuanced defense of a grown ass man who is so awful at sex, it seems like he’s using these very wretched lyrics as some sort of primer. And when my otherwise lovely, kind child actually uttered, “but she could have left any time,” well, I died a little. And then another trapped-in-the-SUV parenting moment began.

It’s frequently exhausting being the only girl in the house. I mean, even aside from the fact that I’m the only one who ever knows where anything is. Though it is up to both of us to make sure our boys know what it means to be a man, they spend most of their time with me. Dammit if they’re not going to learn what it means to be a feminist, an ally, a chivalrous friend, and whatever the opposite of Aziz Ansari is, dating-wise.

I explained how it happens, how a woman could feel so gross after a date, she’d publish a play-by-play, effectively shaming him and attempting, I guess, to exonerate her participation in it or even alleviate the ick feelings of being duped. Every woman I know has had an Ansari date—hopefully few of ours involved someone with that much fame, or with all of the fingers in mouths. What do you think we’re talking about when we drink Chardonnay and make horrible paintings together? Why don’t mommy book clubs ever read anything? Bad sex stories can be hilarious.

Except this one wasn’t because of the power, fame, and even age differential between a woman hardly sprung from girlhood and a man acting like a teenage boy with a porn problem. Though few 22 year olds on a date with an actual, award-winning person would be savvy enough to memory bank his fumbling, creepy advances to make fun of them later, I think all of us wish she had had the wherewithal to high tail it outta there. But I know why she didn’t, and every woman I know gets that. But how do I explain that to teenage boys?

Teddy and I were driving home from the orthodontist. The campy fabulous REO Speedwagon just couldn’t fight the feeling anymore. Immediately I was transported back to the roller rink at the mall, where this song was usually designated for the couples skate. Preteens with sweaty hands and back pocket combs would hold hands and make awkward circles and conversation. It was a sweet memory that my children will never know. Teddy is 13 and I’m trying to explain what constitutes sexual assault and why firm lines around consent get blurred when people drink wine and get naked. Apropos of this conversation:

“Did you know Wilt Chamberlain said he had sex with, like, twenty thousand women?”

“I remember that! That was a popular sound bite in the ‘80s. I remember boys trying to figure out if that was even mathematically possible.”

“Yeah. Three times a day for 24 years.”

So, maybe kids really aren’t all that different.

I thought I had a few more years before I was teaching them that casual sex can be super lame, occasionally dangerous, and ironically requires an even higher level of communication than when you’re with someone you know well and love deeply. Thanks, Aziz. And just to be safe, I keep reminding them not to eat Tide pods.

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A more nuanced commentary…