Diary of a SubUrban Housewife

I am in the process of shopping for a new car. As a result, the entire family is keenly aware of everything on the road these days. The top choices right now are the Infiniti G35 (sedan, not coupe), and the Lexus GS300. So it is not unusual for Zoe to see a car and ask what kind of car it is. If she thinks it’s cute she thinks we should get it. Not cute results in an instant no vote from the princess.

So this morning on the way to camp Zoe sees a car up the street and asks what it is. I tell her it’s a Jetta. “A Jedi?” she asked. No, I told her a Jetta. She told me that’s much better, because if you have a car and it’s a Jedi then you’d have to worry about having to defend everyone from Darth Vadar, and that it would be difficult to drive and use a light saber at the same time.

I know I’ve talked about how much Chuck and Zoe love Halloween before. And the fact that I hate it. But they (most she) love (s) it, so I endure.

Truth be told, I’m a Slacker mom, but when it comes to certain things I’m actually Got My Shit Totally Together Mom (or GMSTTM).

And one of the things I’m GMSTTM mom about is Zoe’s Halloween costume. I’m thinking that the one of the many underlying reasons why I hate Halloween so much is that I always had kinda crap costumes put together at the last minute, and that was because my mother was never GMSTTM when it came to stuff like Halloween costumes, sewing my name on the back of my gym suit and hemming it, or sewing badges on my brownie uniform.

So there are long, heart-felt, protracted discussions around here about what Zoe is going to be for Halloween. There have been more than several years when she/we couldn’t decide what she wanted to be so we’d get several costumes. These discussions long, heart-felt, protracted discussions often start on November 1 — because it’s never too early to start thinking about what you’re gonna be next year.

I am pleased to say that when Zoe was little all the costumes were worn and loved year-round It would not be unusual for me to go off on my errands with Zoe and have her dressed as a cat, mermaid, mouse, or sugar plum fairy, complete with wand.

So when I checked my e-mail this evening and found a the Lillian Vernon online catalogue hawking Halloween costumes I was more than a bit excited.

But Zoe is at that funny age now. She’s nine and going into the 5th grade. Not a little girl anymore, but not a teenager. So, she’s a tween. As a result, she’s a bit too old (and jaded) to be a mermaid, but … she will be wearing any of the costumes they’re offering for tweeners over my dead body.

The time to have “The Talk” with my daughter is quickly approaching. You know which talk I mean. Yes, the talk that mothers have had with daughters for generations.

My daughter is only nine, but kids develop younger and faster than generations before. And Zoe is in a class with girls one to two years older than she is, so many have started developing (egad!) and their mother’s have had the talk with them. And we all know how really really bad it would be for my daughter to get her information second-hand from a bunch of 10 and 11 year old girls. Lord knows what kind of damage that could do to her poor little psyche.

Times have changed and I guess that it’ll probably be easier for me to have this discussion with my daughter than it was for my mother with me, and certainly her mother with her, but I’m scared to death. It’s a really big step and not one I could, or would for that matter, delegate to Chuck. (Let’s step back and think about that one for a minute. I know my husband is reading this and sticking his fingers in his ears and going lalalala to block out the noise.)

In anticipation of having the talk we had the pre-talk. The talk that says I think it’s time we had the talk but not the actual talk itself. Zoe clearly knew exactly which talk I was referring to because she told me she was too tired just then (it was bed time), and couldn’t we do it another time. It was painfully clear that she is as anxious about getting the talk as I am in giving it.

That was Thursday night. Nothing more has been said on the subject.

So Zoe had a friend over today to play. As I was walking through the backyard toward my veggie garden I hear her friend going on, in a tres dramatic way, to about something or another to Zoe. I teased the friend and told her she was being a drama queen, but then she told me she’d been having nightmares for days. Come to learn, her mother had just had the talk with her.

While I was in my garden I listened to Zoe and her friend talking. Zoe was saying that her other friends Zoe and Lily had already had the talk with their mothers and they had assured my Zoe that she wouldn’t have hear it until next year. And now Zoe was lamenting that it wasn’t going to be next year, but in a few weeks.

The thing is, since Zoe is a year or two younger than all her friends I worry that she’s behind them in some respects. And while on one hand I think she is horrified at the prospect of getting the talk I think she’s also secretly delighted that she’s right on schedule with the other, older, girls.

The resident princess turned nine yesterday. And as is only fitting, festivities ensued.

Birthday party agenda:
1. Pick up Zoe and friends from school.
2. Run around the house and backyard screaming like little girls.
3. Wait for arrival of other friend from other school.
4. Arrival of the fourth Musketeer.
5. Attend the 4:50 showing of Robots.
6. Eat copious amounts of crap at the movies.
7. Come home and run around the house screaming like little girls some more.
8. Make pizzas.

9. Run around the house some more screaming like little girls.
10. Have birthday cake.

11. Yes, you guessed it–more running and screaming.
12. Beauty treatments for all.

13. Relaxation time.

14. More running and screaming but slower and softer because the sugar is leaving their systems.
15. Put Charlies Angel Full Throttle on continuous loop on the DVD player for all night viewing.
16. Wake up and scream for breakfast.
17. Laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh, and oh yeah, run around and scream.
18. Mother takes her 15th dose of Advil in a 12 hour period and father pokes his head around the corner to see if it’s safe to come out yet.
19. Send the girls home.
20. Call in the HazMat team to clean up the wreckage.

So yeah, pretty much your typical 9 year old birthday party sleepover.

I often look at my daughter and wonder where the time has gone. There are days when I can see the hormone-filled evil spawn teenager lurking just around the corner (which is totally not fair since it seems like just yesterday she was a tiny baby).

But then I go to check on her at night and find this

and I know I still have a little more time.

There are times in life when adults need to have a discussion and it needs to be kept from the children, but for whatever reason the children are present.

To illustrate my point, say you’re in the car with the whole family. Mom and dad want to discuss the possibilty of letting their spawn go on the Love Ride with dad, but they don’t want little Pinky in the back seat to know what they’re talking about.

Growing up for me it meant hearing my mother speak Yiddish. When she and my grandmother would talk, particiularly in the car, when they didn’t want us to understand, they would switch to Yiddish. They would jabber back and forth. It eventually got to where I could pick out words here and there and get the gist of their discussion, but I was never actually taught to speak it.

And to digress for a moment here, does anyone actually speak Yiddish anymore, I mean besides my mother and her friends down in Florida? And does anyone actually get taught Yiddish, or is it something you just either know or don’t know?

Anyway, I always wished my husband spoke either French or Spanish, or at least had a rudimentary understanding of either so that I could communicate the secret adult messages that must be kept from the small person. Alas, this is not so.

But the hub is positively fluent in Pig Latin. So when we need to have those top secret mom and dad discussions and the spawn is present we use it. Chuck is much quicker at it than I am, but I manage.

It seems lately Miss Spawn has been picking out words here and there in our discussions. Frankly, it’s gotten to the point where it’s no longer safe to speak in Pig Latin around her. It made me wonder if the princess has a facility for foreign languages.

Now, I’ll give you that learning Pig Latin is not exactly like learning to speak….ummm…..Latin, but unless someome explains to you how it works, it’s pretty much….ummm….Latin.

Well, today I was cleaning out Zoe’s backpack, and discovered this:

Ustedbay.

When I was a little girl I begged my mother to get me a training bra. All the other girls were wearing them. I wanted one too. I’m still not quite sure what we were all in training for, but a training bra was a must have.

I remember finally getting one. It was a 32AA. It was white, with adjustable straps, and had absolutely flat cups. That’s OK because I was absolutely flat as well. I was so proud of it. I wore it the minute we got home from the store under my absolutely positively spanky bright yellow jumpsuit. (OK, it was somewhere around 1968, cut me some slack here.)

The thing is, I was absolutely flat, as I mentioned, so there was nothing to actually hold the bra in place. So, whenever I lifted my arms over my head, the bra rode up and ended up somewhere under my armpits.

Thank goodness that spanky yellow jumpsuit zipped up the front, because I was then able to unzip the jumpsuit and pull the bra back down to where it was supposed to be. Down to cover my wanna-be breasts.

Then came the 70′s and while I finally developed enough to actually hold a bra in place, we were all about burning our bras. So off went the bra. And now my mother wanted me to put one on because she was certain my perky little plums would start sagging.

Fast forward to the 80′s and Madonna when underwear became outwear and I was all about black lacy things that were minimally supportive, but that was OK because there still wasn’t all that much to support.

Now we’re well into the new millennium, I’m 45 years old, and nursed a baby for a year. Let’s just say that support is no longer optional, lest I care to give myself a black eye.

But, yes, now I’m 45 and I have an 8 year old daughter. An 8 year old daughter whose new best friend is 10 and let’s just say, slightly more developed than my daughter is. This in no way suggests that the new best friend has any use for a bra either, but like me at 10, I’m sure she talked her mother into getting her one.

Zoe returned from a sleep over at her friend’s house on Saturday morning. And as well all know the term sleep over is a gross misnomer as no sleep actually happens, so she tucked in for a little nap Saturday afternoon. I went to check on her and adjust the covers and noticed something that looked alarmingly bra-like on my daughter. On my baby who was so tired she needed to take a nap in my bed and had fallen asleep watching Mickey Mouse.

She rolled over and I saw it. My baby was wearing a training bra. My baby who makes an ironing board look full-figured was wearing the same sort of contraption I had worn nearly 30 years ago. I asked her where it came from and she told me that her friend had given it to her.

Part of me wanted to laugh. Another part of me was sad because I didn’t take her to get her first bra. And yet another part of me wanted to ask her if her bra rides up when she lifts her arms like mine did.

You know, there’s a very good reason they call them crushes. Inevitably, your heart is crushed.

On one hand, crushes are great. There’s a really cute guy/girl at the office/school/Starbucks that you see every day. You have a crush. You go out of your way to look your absolute cutest every single day on the off chance that he/she will notice you and maybe even talk to you.

When you’re a grownup and you have a crush you understand all the dynamics. You’ve been down this road once or twice and chances are you’re not going to be totally devastated/embarrassed/horrified/humiliated/demoralized when things don’t turn out quite like they did in your little fantasy.

When you’re eight and you have a crush it’s a whole other thing. And when you’re the parent of the eight year old with said crush and you see the writing on the wall….probably before the wall is even built….you want to do everything in your power to protect your baby from the impending heartache.

But can you really do that? It’s a natural instinct to want to protect your child from anything and everything. But is that the right thing to do? Did anyone do that for you? Chances are the answer is no, and look, you’ve managed to grow up into a (somewhat) functional adult. But still, as a parent, the urge is there.

So yeah, Zoe has a crush. A big crush. On the aforementioned Mr. XXX.

This weekend she got him a card. And a huge chocolate bar. She spent a lot of time working on the illustrations inside the card, and she signed it: Love ?.

She provided some clues as to her identity and wrote a message, the gist of which was: if you know who this is please don’t tell your friends, and if you do please don’t laugh at me.

Chuck saw the card before she sealed the envelope and had a little father/daughter chat with her. He broached the subject of possible heartache with her. Intrepid little bugger that she is she said that she would be just fine.

Chuck told me all about it and I cried. I cried about her message. I cried because she’s so willing to just put herself out there, as raw and pure and humanly possible. And I cried because partly I’m jealous that she can be so “out there” with her feelings and partly because I don’t want to see her get her feeling hurt.

I want to surround my baby in bubble wrap and keep her safe. Keep her heart pure. Keep her open and kind and loving. But I can’t do that.

And I’m crushed.

When you’re a young girl and you have a crush on a boy one of the many silly things that you do is write your name with his last name. If you look in the notebook of nearly any tween- or teenage girl, you’ll find a page like this (usually in script but I’ll let you imagine that):

For the sake of my example:
Girl: Sally Smith
Boy: Fred Plumeria

Sally Plumeria
Mrs. Sally Plumeria
Mrs. Sally Smith Plumeria
Sally and Fred Plumeria
Mrs. S. Plumeria
Mr. and Mrs. Fred Plumeria

All i’s are dotted with little hearts. You’ll find Sally & Fred 4 ever in a little heart in the margin of virutally any given page of her notebook. Or you’ll find doodles of Fred’s name circled in hearts.

I know every woman reading this is nodding her head knowingly.

(Sorry ladies, I’ve shared one of the great secrets of the sisterhood.)

Tonight I was in with Zoe as she was getting ready for bed. She left her room on some errand of major importance and I was just sitting there minding my own business. I glanced at the inside of the boxtop from her Converse All Stars. (The box was open and it was just out there, I wasn’t snooping, not that I’m above snooping).

Inside the top of the box was Mrs. XXX.

When Zoe returned to her room I asked her what the last name is of the boy she has a crush on. She told me it was XXX. I said, oh, hi Mrs. XXX. She blushed and asked me where I saw it. I told her. She was clearly embarassed.

Then I told her we all do it/did it.

She seemed relieved. I smiled and felt all warm and fuzzy.

Signed,

Mrs. Chuck Atkins
Beth Atkins
Mrs. B. Atkins
Mrs. Beth Atkins

As is our custom, when I tuck Zoe in for the night we usually lay down together and chat. We chat about all manner of things, and I use this time to hopefully get a deeper glimpse into her day and what’s going on with her. We also spend a fair amount of time talking about the kittens (Zoe’s favorite topic).

Well last night’s conversation was one I was so not ready for. Out of nowhere Zoe (who I will remind you is eight and in the 4th grade) asked me what a wet dream was.

Oy.

I asked her why she wanted to know. She told me that one of her classmates (a boy) has asked her if she knew what it was, and she said yes she did, even though she didn’t, and now wanted to know what it was.

I explained that it was something boys had and excused myself in search of her father, as I felt this was more his area of expertise than mine.

Clearly in the shock of the situation I’d lost my mind. Chuck was having none of it. He mumbled something to the effect of telling her it means wetting the bed and then he ran for cover.

Mercifully by the time I returned she was on to new and different topics.