Bittersweet Mother's Day

I need to read over what I have written so that I don't repeat myself.  Being the procrastinator that I am, I haven't bothered to actually do that yet.  If I am repeating myself and anyone can tell the difference, I'll bake you a cake.  However, I'm pretty sure I have not written about this before.

My brother was born the day before Mother's Day in 1968, on May 11.  She always joked that he was the perfect present.  When he grew up, his only child, a son, was born on my mother's birthday, Nov. 1.  It was pretty special, and by far the best birthday present she ever got.  This formed a strange kind of triangle for  us all when she died on May 11, 2004.

That day I called my brother and he spent his birthday driving as fast as he dared on a motorcycle for 3 hours trying to get home in time to be there.  He didn't make it in time, and I spent those hours feeling horrible because I hadn't called him sooner.  I should have insisted he come sooner. I should have known this was it.  I should have.......if only..........maybe I could have............well.  It's just a thing I have, a heartache you could say, that is still tied to my raft on the river of life.  I've let it out so that it follows a distance, I've set it on fire and even filled it full of bullet holes, but I have yet to cut that particular heartache loose.  I am working on it.

That was 9 years ago, and yet every time I pick up the phone to call him on THAT DAY, it all comes back to me.  I tell myself that I just have to keep doing it, and eventually it will not be strange anymore.  Eventually we will have more memories of it not being THAT DAY, and it won't be strange anymore.  Because I'm THE OLDER SISTER and our dad never could remember our birthdays, even when we were little, and I cannot just let his birthday pass without calling. That would be.........unacceptable to my mother.  This is what I tell  myself, and I think it's probably what my brother tells himself, too.  After 9 years it's still hard for me to make the call, and I am afraid it's still hard for him to get it, because usually I leave a message and he calls me back.  The next day.  I guess we will never get over THAT DAY, but I also know that on THAT DAY we are both aware, every second, of what day it is.  We have no need to actually talk to each other, we are brother and sister.  No words are necessary.  

Thankfully, I have 4 children, plus a bonus daughter and 2 pretend grandchildren who made my Mother's Day this year much easier to get through.

Friday night the boys and my other "adopted" 4th son decided to help my get some limbs cut and make a bonfire in the backyard.  I did pretty well when I came out to find one cutting limbs that the other one in the tree above the limb.  I took it in stride.  Don't look a gift horse in the mouth is my motto, so I acted like it was all normal.  It was a big jump, without the lower limbs, for the one up the tree, but boys will be boys and  there were no injuries.  It was a good day.  We roasted hot dogs and made s'mores and sat around the fire till late, when it had burned down so that we didn't have to worry about setting the neighborhood on fire.  Those boys told me that was my mother's day present and I told them it was THE BEST present ever!

The next day I made meatballs, marinated in the blues by Stevie Ray Vaughan, and took them to my bonus daughter's reception for graduating college. So exciting!!  The Beautiful Redhead was supposed to be at the reception, but was not, despite repeated text messages.  Just as I was about to leave she called and said she had fallen asleep but was awake now and wanted me to come there.  This is so.........her.  And I love her.  And she is my only daughter.  So I drove to her apartment and we went to the Olive Garden, even though I had just eaten, and we had a really good time, just us girls.  She had to work Mother's Day anyway and couldn't come home for the actual day, so this was good.  It was good mostly because I was really tired, had had a late night, early morning, busy day, and still an hour and a half before I would be home and able to collapse.

This brings us to Mother's Day, when The Rock Star was coming with his beautiful and wonderful girlfriend. They brought me candy and we got some time at home without the house being full or me having to cook, which is the perfect Mother's Day in my book.  

After they left I sat and drank in the quiet and realized that I could relax now.  It was over. I told Mom I had made it through another one, but that it was just never going to be the same as it used to be.  

She smiled her quiet smile and said "That's true. But you already knew that a long time ago, babe."

That's what being a mother means.  Going on, even when you don't want to, carrying all your memories and making more and never letting anyone know any different.  It's just the way life works, when you're a mom.

Crazy Mom Strikes Again

I am still saving to get enough wire to electrify the fence.  While the dogs have been very happy in the house, they are not so happy tied up.  They have betrayed me too many times for me to trust them again, but the boys are a little more gullible.

I got home Friday night and the dogs had been untied in the back yard all day and not gotten out.  I figured they must be happy to be free and able to watch the boys as they roofed. I even had the thought that maybe they had learned their lesson, although my luck does not tend to run that way.

On Saturday morning I was fool enough to trust them when I put them out in the morning.  It wasn't 20 minutes before I heard the chain link rattling, looked out the window and saw them making a break for it.  I was sorry to wake up the entire neighborhood at 7 am by yelling in my scariest voice, but I did.  Sincere apologies to anyone who was still asleep.  

Down the street they came running about 30 miles an hour, hell bent for leather, grinning at each other with their  soft ears flying in the wind.  They came back to me, and were promptly put back on their chains.

A few hours later I noted that my Youngest Baby let them off the chains.  I let this go, thinking that they would stay in the yard as long as they could see the boys.  Also, I must admit, and you don't have to believe it if you don't want to, but with the grown man there they seem to mind better.  This holds true for dogs and boys, and I cannot tell you why but I have just come to accept and even depend on it.  Is it the low voice?  The fact that men act rather than speak?  I don't know why, I just know that men seem to have some authority that women with all our nurturing do not.

In the afternoon I had to take the barricades off one of the fences so I could get the wheelbarrow to the back yard.  Like a fool, I just latched it back so that I would be able to get the wheelbarrow back and forth.

It wasn't 30 minutes until I heard the chain link rattle.  I had my head under some bushes picking up shingle riff-raff, and by the time I got straightened up I caught Shadow trying to squeeze under the gate.  I whopped her on the back with the rake a few times and she cowered right down and got back to where she knew she belonged.  The boys heard the commotion from the roof and asked what was going on.  I just asked them if they could see Jack from their superior vantage point.  They could.

The angel happened to be in the front yard and Jack went right to him.  I came around the house with a face like thunder and a voice to match, telling Jack to get back in the yard NOW.  He decided he would not do as I asked.  What a mistake that was.  He went into the garage, where I grabbed his collar, took off one of my gloves, and beat him about the head and shoulders about 15 times, telling him all the while that if he EVER did that to me AGAIN I would BEAT him half TO DEATH and NOT with a GLOVE either because he had HAD IT with him getting OUT OF THE FENCE and if he got SHOT he would have HAD IT COMING!!!!

Or something to that effect.  When I lose it, which I try not to do, I have no clear memory of the exact words I use, and often no clear memory of what my exact actions were during my fit of rage.  I call it morphing into Crazy Mom.  All I remember is a blank.  I can tell you the general feeling behind what I did, but that is about all.  I never do it unless provoked and I never do it unless I have tried everything else I can think of to teach the lesson.  Sometimes I just snap.  That's just the way it is.  The good thing is that I don't have to do it more than once with anybody who has even half a brain.  It's a great time saver that way.

I want to assure you that Jack was not hurt physically by a soft glove coming down however hard on his head.  His feeling were hurt very badly, though, as they should have been.  And should PETA try to come down on me, I will tell those worthless, money wasting, idiotic people the same thing I would tell DFS if they dared to show up at my door and question my authority as a parent.

 It takes discipline to raise responsible adults. And no, I do not need your "help", if that is what you insist on calling it. My definition of help differs quite markedly from governmental agencies.  There is more to raising kids than checking boxes off a list.  Those checklists are ruining our country and have been for at least 35 years that I can testify to personally.  I am responsible for their lives and their actions up to a certain age.  It would help if grown adults would quit looking the other way and enabling children to do things that they are in no way ready to do.

Just one example of this, and there are many, is allowing children have babies and think they won't have to worry because the government will give them money.  It does not take much money to raise kids, but it DOES take discipline.  Every single day and night.  You have to take a look at the big picture, and kids are simply not capable of seeing the big picture.  Believe it or not, there are rules in the world.  I try to make sure they know 1) what the rules are and 2) better than to break them.  If you think you are helping a child by not making them mind the rules, never mind the law, I would have to ask exactly what kind of "help" that is going to be for that child. Look at the big picture.  Adults are supposed to be capable of that. I'm not saying they can't come out of it, I'm just saying they are going to have to work twice as hard to do it because they didn't learn the rules in the first place.

Anyway, I got Jack back into the yard, and when I turned around the angel had a big smile on his face.  I heard laughter drifting down from up the street, where several neighbors could not POSSIBLY have missed the whole scene.  The angel took it all in stride, saying "Well, Melinda, you throw quite a little tizzy fit when you need to."  He said it with approval in his voice.  I just grabbed a kleenex.  For some reason it makes my nose run when I give a beat down, and said "At least this time it happened immediately enough for him to put the two incidents together."  Get out of fence=get a beat down.  This is surely clear enough for even a dog to understand.

I was telling my favorite ex-step mother the story this morning and she laughed and said I was the same way with the kids.  I would ask several times in a nice voice, and then Crazy Mom would appear and everybody in the room would start paying attention real fast.

All I can say is that eventually I learned with the kids to just ask once and then get up.  Kids and dogs are remarkably similar in that you can talk and talk and wonder how much they are taking in, or you can just get up and get their attention real fast.

Actions speak louder than words.  Even when kids or dogs do not understand your words they know exactly what your actions mean.  You know this is true, right?

There is a Crazy Mom in all of us, or at least there should be.  Crazy Mom can take many forms, but nobody argues with Crazy Mom.  As embarrassing as it was for me to have done that for the whole neighborhood to see, in the end I do not care.  It was worth it.  I have very good neighbors and I think part of that is the fact that they know I will make my kids/dogs mind, even if that means giving them a beat down in the front yard. I don't like to do it; I will do everything in my power to keep from doing it, but I have my limits and when you breach them, hellfire will be  loosed upon your head and body until you understand just exactly what is simply unacceptable.  Right is still right, and that is something that is never going to change.  At least not in my house, and not in the world either if I can possibly help it.

It worked with kids a lot better than it has worked with the dogs, but I think getting shocked will take care of that.  My kids know to listen with respect and take people seriously because Crazy Mom can come out of nowhere, strike with impunity, and leave an impression that you will never forget even if you are in the nursing home with Alzheimer's.

I am actually proud of this, and I have learned that the sooner they learn this, the easier all of our lives will be.  I consider it a vital part of their education, and if done right, parenting is much easier from the ages of 2 to about 14.  The teenage years bring about a lot of challenges, but the memory of Crazy Mom will only work in your favor.  In fact, teenagers will do almost anything to avoid Crazy Mom making an appearance, at least in the front yard.  She may have to make a house call now and then, but that's ok.  Crazy Mom keeps the world within your house running like a train on time.

The one good thing about it is that when the dogs get shocked, I am not going to feel sorry for them.  Mothers have to guard against their soft hearts in order to raise good people.   It is hard to punish the ones we love.  But it's much easier when you know that your punishment will not hurt them nearly as much as what will happen if they continue in their bad habits out in the world.  Their lives will be at stake then, and you will probably not be there to protect them.

And now it is supposed to rain.  We are all thankful for the rest and will be taking naps this afternoon.  I think the boys have already learned to appreciate time off, not to mention naps.

Mission accomplished, at least for today.......tomorrow will be a new one.  I, for one, am ready.