parenting

STFU and Other Thoughts about Children’s Christmas Concerts


Dee’s school Christmas concert was last night. She was in a tizzy earlier this week because she missed school Monday and Tuesday with the flu and there was rehearsal every day.

“I’m missing rehearsal,” she wailed at one point. “And the count-down calendar!”

I don’t remember if this was before or after her delirious paranoid ramblings about the Christmas tree which apparently was behaving in a sinister manner or perhaps it was while she was lying on the couch moaning about how hungry she was but that she wasn’t going to eat again until she was sure that she wouldn’t vomit it back up. Fun times.

“I’m glad I’m not a woman,” Rob remarked. “I am pretty sure I couldn’t do all that maternal stuff.”

And by “maternal stuff”, he meant – holding a child’s head while she puked and being able to be comforting as opposed to not puking on the child himself.

“It would suck to be the mom,” he told me.

It does sometimes and that is a fact.

But Dee was recovered enough on Wednesday for me to take her a bit late and she was positively bouncy on Thursday because the whole day was literally taken up with performing – for the other kids and with two parent shows.

Having been a middle school teacher, I can assure you that nothing of any academic consequence goes on the week before school lets out for the holiday. Nothing. It is containment only. But since I don’t buy into the notion that children go to school to supply the workplace with simple, obedient drones, I am fine with this. Rounding out a child is what schools should be about and there is nothing like a week’s worth of excitement over practicing for and performing in productions to help smooth edges.

The Christmas concerts in Canadian schools are heavy on Christianity. There is no attempt to whitewash the actual origins of the holiday to mollify those who don’t practice or don’t care or don’t believe. Christmas began with the birth of Jesus (not really – but let’s pretend anyway) and gosh darn-it, the little guy is going to be represented. Because of this, we were treated by the grade oners to the story of the Nativity with a stage full of angels, shepherds, three wise men, Joseph, Mary and a baby doll in a manger.

The gym was packed. And noisy. I can’t recall a performance there where the parents have ever been quite this rude. In fact, most of the people who hemmed Rob and I in chatted at normal conversational tones on and off for most of the 50 minutes it took for the lower grades to perform.

The prize winners though sat on Rob’s right and just ahead in the next row.

A family of five. Mom, Dad, toddler, pre-schooler and a pre-teen American gangsta wanna-be. Mom and Lil’ G were hands down the most obnoxious audience members I can ever recall, and I taught 13 years olds for years so that is definitely saying something.

They had snacks. It was just 6:15 and presumably most people eat their supper before these evening school events, but Mom and Lil’ G may have had some metabolic disorder that didn’t allow them to go more than an hour without soda. Lil’ G pulled on a bottle of Pepsi like a newborn on the tit every ten minutes without fail.

Lil’ G was the end product of the brilliance of commercial television conditioning if ever I have seen the species. Ball cap with New York City stitched on it and a hubcap sized gold medallion hanging off a chain around his neck. Pants that bagged prisoner bitch style, he had the cocked at the elbow arm pump movements down and he shouted out to his friends as they passed with the appropriate finger wiggles. He couldn’t shut up and he couldn’t stay seated. The latter was a good thing because it meant he would leave the gym periodically and his absence actually quieted his mother down too.

Mom kept the two chairs on either side of her open despite the standing room only crowd. I couldn’t tell if this was on purpose or if the fact that she overhung her own seat by a bit discouraged possible seatmates from attempting to claim a spot near her. It was telling that her husband chose to sit in the row behind her and Lil’ G with the toddler, who was better behaved than his older siblings.

Rob usually brings the camera to record Dee’s concerts. We haven’t played it back yet, but I think we will have captured Lil’G’s rambling commentary more than Dee’s class singing. More than once I wanted to lean over and whisper to his mother,

“Can you please tell your kid to shut the fuck up?” But I didn’t because she looked the type to haul off and smack me down, and since she was bigger than I am, I decided to endure.

Later, Rob commented on the crowd in general.

“I look around at these things and wonder if we have Dee in the right school,” he said.

“Did you see the guy in the wife-beater?” I asked.

“Yeah, where did he come from?”

He came late. I saw him, his wife and baby slip in during the grade three performance and was amazed that he’d gone out on a cold December night so scantily clad. There weren’t any coat racks in the hall, so I knew he had to have come from his home or vehicle with just the t-shirt on. A no-sleeved undershirt. And I don’t think the tats were keeping him any warmer than his boot camp issue haircut.

“These people are all so …”

“Working class?” I supplied.

“No, they are farther down the food chain than that,” Rob said.

True. Dee’s school is primarily a neighborhood one and the ‘hood is a poor one. Kids like Dee are bused in from the country and from the town’s suburban south side and they are out-numbered.

“If we end up staying here, we are going to have to rethink her schooling.”

I have been writing a bit over at the education blog about environment and it’s effect on school performance, and it reminded me that Dee can’t be left for too long around the off-spring of people who Rob and I wouldn’t choose to personally associate with. For the most part young children tend to be most influenced by their home environment and parents but at some point peers rule, and I don’t want these kids ruling my kid. Sure, they are cute now but that won’t last judging from the crowd last evening.

I don’t want a daughter like the mother of Lil’ G or a grandson like him.

My parents allowed my youngest sister to be ruined by her associations as a middle and high school student. Back in the day, Special Education rooms were often dumping grounds for the those kids who were lowest on the socio-economic ladder and poor BabySis, who is borderline MD, was exposed to a value system that basically ruined her as a person. I don’t think that this could happen to Dee, but childhood companions are important early influences.

On the upside, Dee performed with her usual serious diligence. She takes every aspect of school seriously, even the fun parts. After we got home, she sat at the table, drinking hot cocoa and reading her Junie B Jones book. Her nose is nearly always in a book these days since she graduated to chapter books. Reading is still a bit slow for her but she reminds me of me when I finally could read. I read all the time.

Not that she is always serious. A writer friend sent us one of those giant cans of flavored popcorn yesterday. When Dee got home from school, I told her the UPS man had left a package for the family and it was on the dining room table. I’d opened it already and the can was sitting on the table. The box it came in was on the floor.

Dee raced into the other room while I waited on the couch.

“Oh wow,” she exclaimed. “It’s a box!”

She still prefers the box. A good sign.

The Adventures of St. Nick*


Just about everyone we knew as kids celebrated St. Nicolas day but us. The leaving of small toys or treats in children’s shoes was not a tradition my dad had any interest in. If he or Mom were St. Nick recipients as wee ones, I can’t recall a single tale. Mom came from a fairly well-off background by comparison, but her father was a skinflint, who I highly doubt participated in the consuming side of Christmas any more than he was forced to. Dad’s family was dirt poor. Great-Grandaddy Christie lost the family farm in the bank crash after the first world war and Grandaddy and Gran were essentially the poor relations, who tenant farmed for years before winding up farming Gran’s family farm for first her father and then her sister. One Christmas, Dad and his four siblings got a single pair of skis which they took turns with until Uncle Leo ran into a pig and broke them. More than once I can recall Dad and his second oldest sister discussing how they each got an orange apiece in their stocking and that this was a rare treat. So, St. Nick? Not so much.

I may have put something in Dee’s shoe when she was two or three, but keeping track of holidays I didn’t grow up celebrating was not long on my list of necessities, so that good intention died before it had chance to take root. My sister, DNOS, however, has managed to instill the specialness of the day into N2 (Nephew2).

“But he slept over at Mom’s Saturday night and I forgot about it completely, ” she confided to me on the phone. “I hoped he would just forget about it, but nope, we were in the car on our way home from school and he wonders why St. Nick forgot him.”

“So what did you tell him?” I asked. DNOS is a great one for covering up parental faux-pas with stories that only an 8 year old could possibly believe. I admire that.

“I told him that St. Nick visits houses alphabetically and that he probably hadn’t gotten to the O’s yet.”

And N2 bought this as reasonable as any third grader would because “alphabetical” is how the world works.

After they got home from hockey practice later that evening, DNOS hustled N2 downstairs to strip him of his gear and pop him in the shower. According to my husband, hockey gear takes on an odor of its own and so, I imagine, does the child wearing the gear. As N2 showered, his father snuck upstairs and began stomping loudly about the living room. It’s a little house and BIL is a big guy, so let’s imagine timbers rattling.

“Mom,” N2 pops out of the shower, “There’s someone in the house!”

Eyes as big as saucers and shivering with chill and fear in his birthday suit, he began yelling for BIL.

“Dad! DAD! There’s an intruder upstairs.”

BIL has stealthily slipped back downstairs without notice and asks, “Are you sure, N2?”

“There’s an intruder!! Dad, get the gun!”

BIL hunts. He keeps his arsenal in a locked cabinet in the basement and he dutifully went for a shotgun and went upstairs to “look around”.

“Oh my god, Mom. There’s an intruder! And I’m naked!” N2 was literally beside himself with horror at this point and how DNOS and BIL live with the guilt is beyond me. They are great actors though and neither one cracked so much as a smile, let alone snickered.

“I didn’t see anything N2,” BIL reported when he returned.

“Get the soap out of my hair, Mom! I need to get dressed!”

A few minutes later, sans soap and pj’d, N2 charges ahead of his parents to the upstairs.

“Hey Buzz, nice of you to go first,” BIL calls after him and N2 freezes in mid-step.

“Mom, you go ahead of me and Dad you go ahead of Mom,” he said.

They crept through the kitchen and into the living room to find, not an intruder, but three St. Nick’d shoes. N2 took the contents out and distributed them and sat heavily on the rocker, clutching his small toy.

“Mom. Dad. I have to say this how I have to say this,” he said.

And they waited with bated breath.

“Dad, you almost frickin’ shot St. Nick! He’s Santa’s brother, and I wouldn’t have got anything this year if you’d killed him.”

And no, they didn’t laugh. They are that good.

*This tale is told with the permission of DNOS, who I am sure recognizes that I didn’t get it word for word as she told it because I am not the story-teller that she is.

Ranting Mamas


UPDATE: This post got me unfriended on Facebook by one of the mommies who inspired it. I’ll leave you to guess which one.

There is so much about the mommy blogosphere that I am out of step with. I don’t worship at the Buddha bellies of my offspring (who are too old to be Gerber baby round and Downy fresh anyway). I don’t believe motherhood fulfilled me in a Frodo-esque LOTR’s type of way. I am not terribly concerned about how much time other women put in or out of their homes. Blogging for the trinkets of the marketplace doesn’t interest me and, generally speaking, my husband is for snuggling, bragging about and thanking God for (if I inclined in that direction and mostly I don’t anymore).

I can rant with the best of them. I have ranted. My dear readers will happily step up and attest to it, but I will disclaim for honesty’s sake anyway.

But  there are some places that the mommies go that I just don’t get or can’t follow along with like these recent examples.

The woman who greatly embellished her recent TSA encounter for instance. Being no fan of heightened security in any of its forms in the United States, I feel her frustration, but she didn’t really tell the truth. In fact she was so over the top that the TSA actually deigned to defend itself in the form of releasing the actual footage of the incident the woman, Nic White, ranted about on her blog.

And there was the woman who went ballistic because her honor student daughter’s feelings were hurt when she was correctly busted for a dress code violation. While I agree that the VP in question needed schooling in bedside manner – and for the record not being polite is almost a prerequisite for being a VP in most of my experience – her child was in the wrong, and the fact that schools have big issues to take care of these days doesn’t mean they should ignore things like dress code violations even when the offender is a good kid with excellent grades. It’s really beside the point.

In my experience, far too many “good” kids are taught that their academics and overall nice personalities somehow put them above the rules that lesser children/students are held to. That’s simply not real world. What is real world are superiors who blow up at you for minor things out of the clear blue even though you are a good employee. Or being pulled over for being 5 miles over the legal limit even though you were being passed right and left and are an exemplary driver. And generally not being immune from the occasional self-esteem ding even though it’s widely acknowledged that you are so incredibly wonderful.

The first rant example apparently backfired to the point that Ms.White had to close comments. The second resulted in a disturbing yet typical hen-fest of sympathy where almost no one bothered to point out that perhaps being an honor student did not exempt a child from the rules that the trailer park set are subject to and on a common sense level, no one held forth with the radical idea that summer wear is as inappropriate to the school setting as it is in the workplace because the way things are going economically most of our kids are going to be wearing some version of a work smock anyway.

“I don’t get it,” I said to Rob. “When I venture into the mom’s realm, I read about women who find motherhood so overwhelming and under-stimulating that they need to drink daily, shop excessively, pop antidepressants and Xanax like Pez and believe that husbands are snark targets for the enjoyment of their readers.”

He didn’t comment. He didn’t have to. As I have noted before, I am not a mommy-blogger and therefore I don’t understand.