Celebrating 'Interdependence Day' instead

Independence? That's middle class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.


- George Bernard Shaw

I've been thinking a lot about independence recently.

I find it strange and contradicting how our society craves and covets it; we seek it for ourselves, we demand it of others, we hope to instill it in our children, we even toy with the possibility we can squeeze it out of oil.

As a group, we define Independence as freedom.

Dependency, on the otherhand, is little more than loathesome. Yet in trying to avoid it we tend to forget what it is that really makes us strong -- the fibers that weave us together.

Maybe I am focused on this line of thought because I am a mother, and as a mother my success is largely based on my ability to raise children who are capable of making their own way in the world. Without me.

From the moment they take their first steps, they are essentially walking away from us.

Maybe I'm angry at Disney for always killing the mother (or in rare instances, the dad).

Maybe I'm just jaded, thinking the real desire for independence is all about money.

We are so focused on money - acquiring wealth and accumulating stuff - we don't see what this "savings" cost us.

Maybe it's as simple as realizing one person's independence is another person's lack of purpose. Planned obsolescence engineered by progress. We are all just one modifier away from becoming a dangling participle.

It's not as if I want my children to need me to tie their shoes or balance their checkbooks when they return from college to live with me for the requisite 2.75 years until a low-wage job or ill-advised significant other takes them three states away. But I don't want them to forget they are part of something bigger.

I'm just not sure that independence has anything to do with capability or capacity for success. Ultimately, I wonder if this passion for independence has more to do with the erosion of those qualities. I wonder if in trying to set ourselves apart we are tearing ourselves asunder.

Standing on our own two feet gives us the courage and the strength to do amazing things. Yet, we fool ourselves if we think we're untethered. It has been through the strenth of groups, such as unions fighting for fair labor practices, that has made it possible for individuals to experience independence.

Yet we declare independence from the drudgery of everyday life with the same convictions. … We declared independence from agrarian society and got factory farms; we declared independence from caring for grandmother in her old age and got squalid nursing homes. We declared independence from the cost of someone else's efforts and we end up finding ourselves unable to support our way of life. We declared independence from paying a living wage and found our jobs outsourced.

We demanded automation and declared independence from thing from which we can never be free: Each other.

Freedom has a price, and it's steep.

Red states. Blues states. Me states. You states.

Maybe, on this day, it's time we celebrate our Interdependence for a change.

Because in the end, perhaps now more than ever, we are all connected. We're all in this together.

I think about all of this as I watch my kids grow into themselves. They may walk away, they may run, but I will always be a part of them. And the fact that I am in their DNA will dawn on them when they least expect it. They will have their "Oh My God, I sound like my mother" moment one day, too.

Wherever I am at that moment, you can bet I'll be taking some of the credit

Places, like newspapers, need people

I found this picture recently as I was searching for a travel photograph to call my favorite.

It was Ittybit's first plane ride. The year was 2004, and we were going to Boulder, Colo. to meet her new cousin. The young man in the picture was traveling alone and had what some might describe as the misfortune of sitting next to a baby on the plane. Now, I could be mistaken … it was a long flight, but I don't think he minded.

People can surprise you if you let them.

I have to admit, even to myself, travel photography isn't my favorite. No matter where I go or what I do, the pictures I take might have been taken anywhere: A street scene in New Zealand could be one in New York City for all the details my lens leaves out.

There are brief moments of awe, of course, just as there are an infinite number of interesting places we can go, and people we can meet once we get to our destinations.

But once we return home, unpack and get around to organizing and printing photos, the results never seem as brilliant as the memories we were intending to capture.

Trees aren't as lush. Mountains aren't as majestic. Oceans aren't as deep.

For me, family always ends up the focus, while the travel becomes a prop or just a blurry backdrop. Places, I think, need people.

So, here's where you come in ...

As some of you may know, The Record is embarking on an interesting exercise to create a newspaper — both in print and online — that is meaningful to the community but that uses little or no proprietary software.

None of that really means much to you, I imagine, since what we do behind the scenes is hard to picture, let alone explain.

The part we are more excited about, however, is the part that harnesses the power of the collective voice — you, the readers.

My piece in the initiative is to entice you fine people to send me photographs and thoughts about your travels in life from the literal to the figurative.

Through Flickr, Facebook and Twitter, I've asked folks to send me photographs from the places they’ve seen, as well as photographs from their weddings. I've asked for brief accounts of memorable moments from each event to share with our readership.

I've been honored with a small but healthy response. I admit, reading what’s come in so far has been a treat.

I hope for more. There is still a week left and I want to ask you a favor.

I want you to become part of the story I've been telling here these past few years. Please send me your photographs and thoughts. If you need assistance — scanning old photographs or even putting your thoughts into words — I humbly offer my help.

I promise to treat your memories with even more care than I give my own.

To participate, e-mail Siobhan Connally at siobhanconnally@gmail.com or call 518.270.1285

No dancing around it, the devil’s in the details

I unzipped the garment bag and released an explosion of white, feathery fluff.

"Is this it?" I wondered trying to recall the catalog photograph the dance instructor had shown us months ago when she’d decided on a costume. This puff of polyester seems a little too small, a little too sheer, a little too … risqué for a student recital.

As Ittybit stepped into the bodice, I helped work its straps over her shoulders, trying to figure out where the feathers are supposed to go. I was about to give up when another parent motioned in pantomime … 'Oh … over her head.' ..

Tongue out and holding my breath, I struggle to get the thing into place.

When I step back to check my work it just seems … wrong. Had she really grown that much? I wondered, trying to tease out a little more length from the tiny dance costume.

The mental picture I ended up with was from a different sort of catalog.

Immediately, I close my eyes, blotting out the light.

"Don’t go there," I tell myself. "Just let it go."

Think "happy," think "pretty," think "they are just having fun" thoughts.

Truly, it has been difficult for me to think happy thoughts when it comes to dance class.

I try to be positive but I stumble over the business model and the months-long preparation for recital.

I don’t really care about the details and I make no pretense of hiding my disinterest. In not caring, though, I know I am as bad as the mom hissing angrily to her child from backstage: "Pay closer attention to what you’re doing."

Have I learned nothing in these years? I don’t care about dance, but I don’t want her to think I don’t care about her.

"She is what matters," I think to myself as I write a check for the studio … and the costume … and the photographs … and the $12 per ticket for the recital … we need six, I think.

On this particular day, however, the torture for me is standing by as she has her pictures taken by someone else. Because I know when it arrives in our mailbox in four to six weeks, I will barely recognize the girl in the photograph. She will be wearing a smile I only see through the glassine windows of large envelopes. They are smiles she gives to other people.

But I’m not jealous.

It’s just a mindset. It’s just money. It doesn’t matter if you don’t let it. Breathe in. Breathe out.

I tell myself those things, too, before I open my eyes again.

She is twirling, flicking her legs from one side to another. Jumping up and down.

She happily dances to the beat of their drummer, but I know she’s more likely to get lasting joy from the tunes playing in her own head.

I don’t need to worry.

She may have gotten taller, more muscular, but inside she hasn’t changed. Ittybit is still the sweet and curious, little girl with wildly mismatched clothes and hair like an unmade bed. She’s still asking questions and figuring it all out for herself.

When it’s her turn to go before the camera, she tells me she feels silly in the dress.

I wonder whether she’s seeking reassurance or trying to reassure me.

"Well you don’t look silly," I tell her. "You look like an angel with wings."

Begging a thousand pardons is easier

I'm not good at being right.

I don't think many of us are.

Now, I'm not talking about the kind of right that takes courage. The courageous kind of right requires fortitude and endurance. It takes a willingness to subject one's self to the majority belief that you are, in fact, not only wrong, but that you are SO wrong that you must therefore be completely and totally dangerous to all you encounter.

That kind of right is important. But being good at that kind of right isn't something a person always decides for themselves. More often than not, that kind of right gives you no choice. It latches on to you when you are praying it will find someone else and it makes you choose a direction before you even know where you are going.

No, the kind of right to which I'm referring is the kind of right that so often leads a person to being just plain wrong.

It's the kind of right that requires noisy acknowledgement from everyone who's ever met you, including the little creep from fourth grade who teased you mercilessly until you punched him in the stomach, which was also his fault. He still owes you an apology, by the way.

Yes, the kind of right I'm talking about requires those who wronged us to beg a thousand pardons and sing our praises to the rooftop. It begs the question: 'Here's my chest, where's my medal?'

It's the kind of right that leads to hurt feelings and road rage, ulsers, lost friendships and long, long silences or even estrangements between family members.

It's the kind of right that turns good people into demons and lawyers into ambulance chasers.

That kind of right is never satisfied. It just festers in the memory of being wronged and chokes out any hint of what might have been wonderful.

It's the type of right that hangs on to every thoughtless act and turns it into reasoned and intricately planned treachery.

"She did that on purpose."

"He only does what he wants to do."

"So inconsiderate."

It tarnishes both sides of the coin.

It places every word ever uttered in your general direction under a microscope for examination, where in your expert (though completely biased opinion) will be found anemic or potentially deadly.

Suspicion will fester.

"You don't want to help me," we say, "You want to do whatever it is and have me thank you for doing something you want done anyway."

That type of right keeps a running tally. Until the score is even, at which point you might apologize and go along your merry way.

It's easier to be wrong. Of course, that's not to say we're any better at being wrong, it's just easier to put our wrongs behind us.

"Oops, forgot the turn signal. Sorry, my bad. …

“I didn't see you waiting for that parking space, or crossing in the crosswalk. You Ok? …

“Were standing there waiting for me. For an hour. While I forgot I was supposed to meet you. Whoops! …

“Did I forget your birthday again? I feel terrible.”

We may feel bad about our stupidity, but we don't let being wrong haunt us for years. We hardly let it haunt us for minutes.

Maybe it’s because deep down, when we really think about it, we tend to come to the logical conclusion that it (whatever it is) really isn’t our fault.

Seriously. He should have reminded me it was his birthday. He knows how absent minded I am.

Still hanging on to dog with an iron stomach

Do you know how many people don't give their pets the same consideration they would give their children when it comes to keeping them safe from potentially poisonous household products?

No?

Well, you might if you were on hold with the ASPCA's poison control hotline like I was recently.

They are happy to lecture about all the things you’re probably doing wrong as you wait for an operator to tell you whether you are going to be making a trip to doggy emergency room. But only after you hand over a major credit card, promising to pay $65 for their invaluable service, which might help keep your obviously unloved pooch from perishing.

Of course.

It all started when my husband noticed the toilet bowl was empty save for a stain of blue on the bottom.

"Did you clean the toilet," he asked sheepishly?

"Uhm ... I ... don't remember. I think I did."

Well ... I don't think you flushed.

So there I was, on the telephone holding a bottle of "natural" toilet bowl cleaner, ready to read off the ingredients to the person who would save me from the pre-recorded lecture I was getting instead of muzak.

The minutes ticked away.

Why is "WON'T HURT THE ENVIRONMENT OR YOUR FAMILY" prominently listed, in large print, on the front of the bottle and "in case of ingestion do not induce vomiting, contact poison control and your doctor immediately" in teensy-tiny print on the back?

For the same reason shampoo bottles still give instructions. The dolts among us wouldn't know whether to "wash, rinse and repeat" or "brush along gumline in a circular motion" without them.

I had called our vet, whose after-hours message instructed me to call the veterinary emergency clinic, you know ... in case of emergencies.

Which I did next.

The folks there said there was "probably" nothing to worry about, but to be sure I should "probably" call the ASPCA's emergency hotline and they would have the definitive answer.

Still on hold.

Do I let her drink clean water, flush it out?

Do I make her eat food?

Do I have to get her stomach pumped?

OK, ew. Don't want to think about that. ....

Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap.

I'll go online and check the ingredients myself.

“Sodium Lactate” is sandwiched in between "if this is swallowed" and "call a doctor."

Let's check with the Doctor Google School of medicine on that substance, shall we?

Preservative.

Food additive.

Naturally occurring salt in fermentation process.

The dog starts to bark her usual FEED ME bark.

This is a dog who has eaten her weight in chocolate, onions and grapes in the 15 years we've known her. She has chewed through countless sneakers, eaten carrion and dead crabs off the beach. I've lost track of all the literal garbage that she's ingested.

I hang up the phone.

"What'd they say?" my husband asks.

"I was still on hold when I hung up. I found their household cleaning list on the website and I figured she'll be alright. It's diluted and she's an iron stomach. Right now I bet she'd like a dish soap chaser."

The dog wagged her tail in agreement.

I think she was trying to tell me "Mountain Fresh" is her favorite.

Her bags are packed, she’s ready to go

I don’t remember what things I packed, but I remember the red plaid and black vinyl, soft-sided suitcase I’d dragged to my first ever sleepover at a friend’s house when I was in third grade.

It was the same piece of luggage I’d hauled to the mailbox the evening I ran away from home a few years earlier. The mailbox was as far as I’d gotten since I was only in Kindergarten and not allowed to cross the street.

Historic occasions, I figured, call for handbags with a history.

Nevertheless, the things I assembled and squashed into that old suitcase were probably similar to the possessions Ittybit packed into her princess backpack with the telescoping handle and rolling wheels.

I couldn’t help but smile when I unzipped the top and found the little pink mouse she calls "Mini" sitting atop two changes of clothes, a favorite night gown and about a half-dozen books. No toothpaste, no hairbrush anywhere.

Although, I must admit she’s probably more prepared than I ever was as a traveler.

She is only six, after all, and she thinks about outfits and spills and changing her mind.

I’m *cough-cough-clears-throat-much-older-than-six* and I’m patting myself on the back for checking her overnight bag and inserting the missing items for basic hygiene. Last summer we asked her to pack her own bag for a family vacation and, because I didn’t bother to check her work, I didn’t realize until we got to our destination she’d packed nothing but toys, books and winter shirts.

Sleepovers, however, always seem to be more of a kid-pestering readiness decision for parents as opposed to something that is based on chronological age.

Geography is also a likely determining factor as to whether a child is ready to drag their blankets and other lovies to some strange house and sleep there the night.

After all, no one wants to drive too far at 2 a.m. to retrieve a crying child. Likewise, no one wants to impose a lengthy period of waiting while another parent has to sooth your homesick sprog.

Parent readiness can’t really be overlooked in the decision, either.

Which brings us to where we stand now, quivering on the bank of new territory as Ittybit dips her toe into the shallow waters of independence.

(OK. That's a little dramatic, mom.)

"It's not a big deal. It's just a few hours," I tell myself.

But there's no denying this waking desire for independence is also a trickle in the river of emotion that will one day separate us.

(Again, with the drama!)

It’s not as if she’s packing for college or moving to Tibet. This is more like taking her first big-kid amusement park ride all by herself.

I could have picked some age as a benchmark that she would have to reach before she could ride this particular ride.

Yet, unlike an amusement park regulation, I know any measure I create would be arbitrary.

She's ready now.

She is brave and willing to explore — now.

She’s confident and comfortable with her friend’s people. She knows she can tell them she’d like to go home and no one with think "the worser" of her for it.

I figure the excitement of the novelty may keep them awake and giggling far longer than will be humorous to the other parents, but when she finally closes her eyes, she'll likely sleep through until morning.

If I'm wrong, it's only a few minutes of lost sleep and a few miles in the car.

But I am not wrong. When I go to pick her up the next morning she’s happy to see me … for only a moment. I recognize the expression on her face immediately as the best kind of "I can do it" pride. And then she remembers why I’ve come.

"Just five more minutes, mom … please-oh-please-oh-please-oh-please?."

"OK. Five more minutes then. I’ll get your bag."

Leaving the future in her hands

As soon as I saw her with the paper contraption my breath caught in my chest.

Where did she get that, I wondered wordlessly when I saw the most feared thing in the history of pre-adolescent feared things — A paper “fortune teller” — twirling around in her fingers.

And here my daughter was wielding it with the skill of an expert.

"Pick a color," Ittybit said to her friend, who promptly selected pink and sat patiently as my daughter opened and closed her fingers, silently spelling P, I, N, K.

"Now choose a number."

"Seventeen."

Surprised, I looked over Ittybit’s shoulder as she started the arduous task of counting to 17, reciting the numbers faster than she could open and close the flower-like origami game.

Whoever made this particular device, which was now fuzzy and frail from use, had decided against the predictable one to eight sequence, opting instead for double digit numbers on every flap. Extended play or drawn out torture, depending on how you see these things.

"Pick another number," she continues.

Her friend obliges … this time. I can tell she has had enough of the suspense. The next time a number choice is offered she declines. "I don’t want to pick another number" a great deal more sweetly than I would have if I were in her place.

A strange de ja vu washes over me as I watch my daughter lift the flap. My whole body tenses.

Nothing has been written inside.

"Oh, It says here you have no future," she chirps gaily.

THAT was what I was afraid of.

How many times in my primary school years had someone opened one of those hateful things and told me I smelled? Or that I will be married to a garbage man, have 300 children and live under a bridge? Too many to count.

It all came rushing back.

“WHAT?! That’s a terrible thing to tell someone," I rage at my daughter as I snatch the thing from her hands. "Where did you get this?"

She is silent. Confused, probably.

She didn’t see anything wrong with the reading. She didn’t mean to hurt her friend. She was just stating the obvious.

The paper was blank. Blank meant nothing. There’s nothing wrong with nothing. It’s just … nothing.

But to me, nothing can be everything. It is why, for no logical reason, I allow an intricate series of superstitions to guide me when fate disables control … it is the ladder I walk around, the salt I toss over my shoulder, the wish I don’t say aloud and the fears I voice over and over.

Her friend’s father, who has been a good sport about it all, offers us both a way out. "You could say, ‘Your future is what you make of it’. … Or you could say, ‘Your future is wide open’."

Ittybit, as a matter of course, apologizes and hugs her friend ‘goodbye.’ She disappears for a while after we close the door.

We’re not done talking about the incident, though. As we start the journey upstairs, into her room and toward the Land of Nodd, I remind her about how easily disappointment comes and how hard it can be to smooth hurt feelings.

Later, after she is tucked in and sleeping peacefully, I realize this is just the beginning of all the secrets that will be in our future. No doubt we will be blindsided by what’s underneath our flaps, be they hurtful things or empty spaces.

With this in mind, I go searching for the paper device with half a mind to rip it to shreds. I find it in the center of the dinning room table. But instead of crumpling the thing, I am drawn to lift a flap. And then another … to find underneath each one she’s colored in crayon hearts.

In our house, love and hate play side by side

"I don’t like you any more," he tells me without provocation one morning as I’m making lunches and trying to coax some breakfast into the kids. I look at him blankly and he quickly rephrases: "I hate you."

The way he says it is curious, "I hay-te yoooo."

I probably should feel hurt, but as he stands there with his hands on his hips the right side of his face twists into a squint of cartoon proportion and I have to force myself to swallow a choking amount of laughter.

"It’s NOT FUNNY!" he rages. "I HAY-TE YOOOO."

"You don’t hate me," I say as matter-of-factly as possible and turn back to slathering peanut butter between two slices of bread. "You don’t hate anyone."

Technically, I know that’s not true either.

He hates a lot these days: the dog who steals his food and the cat who wakes him up at night; he hates the slightly mean characters on his favorite television show, as well as the charming ones; he hates pizza when he wants pasta and pasta when he wants pizza; he hates wind and rain and glaring sunshine. He hates pretty flowers and flowers past their prime. He hates taking baths and changing his clothes and wearing socks. He hates being barefoot.

I’m not the only one who has caught his wrath, either. He hates the babysitter and his grandparents. He hates his sister, who hates him right back. He hates when people "bother" him. He tells his sister from sun-up until sun-down he wants her to leave him "a-woan" as he cheerfully goes about playing with her things.

Hate, he’s learning, can be some powerful stuff.

Hate gets a lot of attention.

Of course, he also hates being alone, which is usually what happens when the smoldering volcano of animosity erupts between siblings, spewing fiery words back and forth until mom or dad is forced to use the nuclear option of peacekeeping techniques: "Go. To. Your. Room. NOW!!!!"

Afterward - for a moment - there is silence followed, usually, by the sound of four angry feet pounding up the stairs.

And then the screaming resumes.

I can tell from the direction of the insults hurled from one to the another, what the problem is now: They’ve gone to the same room — HIS — to serve out their sentences.

"It’s my room!"

"But I sleep here, too. These are MY stuffed animals."

"Go away!"

"No, you go away!"

"ROOOOOAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!"

And then it happens — giggling.

It starts slowly — I imagine it may have begun as a smirk on Ittybit’s face — but soon turns into peels of laughter, followed by dancing and bed bouncing. Elephant could have made less noise.

By the time I get up the stairs to check on them, they are holding hands and swinging them back and forth together.

Soon it will be bedtime. After I’ve wrestled them into taking a bath, brushing their teeth and putting on their pajamas, they’ll sleep together on a staggered trundle. Hers on top, his along the floor.

The arguing will start again over books, and music and the bedtime games we play.

"MY monster has pink hair and eats pink grass and wears pink pajamas," he’ll say stubbornly.

"Well, MY princess wears pink shoes and a pink dress and eats pink ice cream sandwiches."

"My Princess," he retorts, "gets eaten by a shark and has ..."

She interrupts.

“It’s my turn now. If your princess was eaten by a shark she is gone. End of story."

Oddly, he is satisfied with that explaination. He smiles.

"I missed you when you were at school," he tells her.

"I missed you, too."

"I hate you."

"I hate you, too."

What’s unsaid is what often really matters

“A mother understands what a child does not say.”

- Jewish proverb

Dear Ittybit,

I barely recognized your voice when you crept up behind me as I was unloading the supermarket haul.

"Can I help?"

"Sure," I said, happy for just the company as well as the extra hands.

I smiled as you remarked on every item you touched, taking it on its final journey from shopping tote to refrigerator shelf. It's just now dawning on me how long your reach has grown.

"I love these kind of pickles. ... This juice is heavy, I'm not sure I can lift it myself. ... Oh! You got the yogurt I like, thanks mom. You're the best mom I ever had."

I'm laughing a little as I climb on the step stool to stack boxes of pasta in the cupboard.

I begin my usual response: "I'm the only mom you've ever had, and don't confuse consumerism with competency. ...

You snort, and wave your hand in the air. "I know, I know, I know. ... You're still the best."

I wonder when you got to be so big. It wasn't a month ago that I still saw your baby face beaming at me from behind an alphabet book. Your limbs seem to have branched outward in recent days. You are long and lean, more graceful than gangly.

There are longer pauses between your words now. You understand more than you say, and with this comes a kind of power that can be frightening.

You are beginning to see that reaction bites on the heels of words in a never ending chase. You understand that ticks and twitches, not to mention tears, can give you away. Even a smile, in the wrong place, can work against you.

Your ability to hide your hurts from others comes a little more easily now. Moments of silence, pursed lips, hands tangling hair, a catch in your voice … all things a stranger might overlook.

The alarm on the refrigerator sounds. The door has been open for too long.

I turn to see what the trouble is, envisioning you wrestling a melon into the crisper drawer or trying to alphabetize the mustard jars.

But you are gone and the light from the refrigerator is shining on the empty bags, shapeless and slumped on the floor in front of it.

Your part of the task is over and you have moved on to something else.

I shut the door and begin to smooth the shopping bags. I hear your voice — the one I've known since your first words — bubbling through the kitchen doorway. It's coming from a far room that has been filtered through two other spaces, and it’s followed by the unmistakable sound of children jumping on a bed.

"Let me help you with that," I hear you say to your brother.

I am reminded how time is fleeting.

Soon you will be grown and, inevitably, the silence between us will have grown, too. This relationship of ours — mother and daughter — will not always be easy.

Even if it is a comfortable quiet, when I am gone you may still have regrets — as we humans tend to have — for that which remained unsaid.

Don’t hold on to those regrets though sweets, because we moms ... we already know.

With love and fancy yogurt,



— Mommy

Write to Siobhan Connally a sconnally@troyrecord.com

Jumping off the deep end to be neighborly

He was up to his knees in pond scum and discarded pool toys. He'd been there for most of the day. If the windows were open I'm sure we would have heard some choice words.

Things were not going well.

I've been calling the backyard pool area "Gray Gardens" for obvious reasons.

At one time it must have been a splendid respite. Evidence of elegant landscaping is still visible in spring as a blanket of daffodils and tulips push their way through the lawn, which any other time of year is choked in weeds and neglect. A stone patio meanders around a small in-ground swimming pool, its plates, in dire need of resetting, shift at dangerous angles. Large trees lean above it all, regal though untamed. In a perfect summer the pool would get sun but the parents would get shade as they performed their lifeguard duties.

When we moved into the house last year we didn't even bother uncovering the pool, which had been derelict for who knows how long. There were rumors the pool had been in use within the last several years, and we’d have liked to believe them. At least until we were ready to see for ourselves.

There will be time enough next summer, we decided, as we worked to get ourselves settled. Other structures in need of repair in our new home required our full attention. There were so many things needing nailing down that seemed to be coming up here and there: A leaky roof, broken doors, cracked windows, the acquisition of new appliances. … The list is never ending.

I must admit the decision not to take on the pool yard made me happy. I do not particularly like the idea of owning an outdoor pool. I don't see its value in the northeast, where perhaps a scant three months of use can be extracted from its watery depths. I’d just as soon fill it with sand and call it a lawn.

Always a Cassandra, I can only see the expense of repairs and maintenance, not to mention liability. I don't even want to think about the potential for disaster with little ones still running around. So frogs frolicked in the pool last summer instead of our family. I came to admire the nature that encroached as their chirping multiplied night by night. These noisy guests were no match for the mosquitoes, however.

Chlorine would have helped. Maybe. Fewer rainy days might have helped more.

"I really want to get that pool going," my husband mused as the extra warm days of spring came early this year. It became a kind of siren song, calling him to peel back the cover of the pool to finally see what's what underneath.

So I wasn’t terribly surprised one Saturday afternoon to find my husband dangling what appeared to be a gigantic tea bag (made out of the pool cover and containing everything that had been holding it down) over the pool from the hook of his crane truck as the kids and I return from errands.

The kids clamor to the back of the couch, jumping up and down with excitement. This is a spectacle worthy of fresh popcorn and a guy selling balloons on sticks out of a shopping cart, not to mention couch jumping.

"Poor neighbors," I think, turning my attention from the kids to the folks next door who were holding an "Open House" in hopes of selling the stately, renovated home. "No sale likely today," I say to the groceries as I put them away ... "not with the Clampetts living next door, experimenting with their C-Ment Pond, anyway."

RIP! CRASH! @FLUST #ubl@chute!

More choice words flow out with the detritus from the tea bag as it rips over the deep end.

"If they're smart they'll hold their next Open House when we're away," I continue to grouse over granola. "I should probably let them know now when to expect a vacation from us."

My husband slogs into the house with a grim look on his face. "I think something may have broken the pool."

The water is expectedly murky, though, and doesn't give away the damage caused by the accident. The ring left when the water recedes two feet overnight is the canary in that coalmine.

"Maybe we should check the basement to see if it’s flooding," I say, trying not to sound alarmed as I use the royal "we."

"No, the water’s not going there," he replies, with a tone that I interpret to mean he’ll check the cellar when I’m not looking.

"We'll it's got to go somewhere. ... Let's just hope it stays away from the neighbors'."

Write to Siobhan Connally at sconnally@troyrecord.com

Wisdom and luck often take turns parenting

Faster than I could think of the word for "falling" I was hurtling backward out of the truck to the pavement below.

My ankle was scraped and the heel of my palm was peppered with asphalt. I'd landed on my hip, but the skin on my hand took the brunt of the impact.

I could hear Ittybit through the filter of my thoughts — "stupid-stupid-stupid" — her voice registering alarm as she yelled "MOM! are you OK?"

As I sat on the ground with the car seat I'd been trying to retrieve, I shook my head and tried to reorganize my thoughts.

The moment I released the seat from the cab of the truck, I'd forgotten where I was and just stepped back.

I knew immediately where I had gone wrong. In the instant I stepped back my mind was merely pulling something from my own, close-to-the-ground sedan as my body had done a thousand times before. My mind wasn't three feet higher.

I still didn't stand up. I could feel a burning sensation on my ankle, though the blood had yet to seep to the surface of the scrape. Something felt wrong with my leg, but not so wrong that it would require a trip to an Emergency Room.

My ego was more bruised than my body. I fell out of the cab of a truck. It was a stupid mistake.

From where I was sitting, Ittbit seemed so far away it didn't occur to me that she could have been hurt.

I didn’t even think to ask. I thought she was just scared. The kind of scared I was when I watched my own mother fall off of a horse when I was a kid, a few years older than she.

When I finally stood and dusted myself off, dragged the stupid car seat back to the car from whence it came, her eyes filled up with tears. "I’m OK, honey," I say, trying to be reassuring.

"It’s not you, it’s me," she said, lifting the skirt of her dress. The white lines on her leg were faint, but proof nonetheless she hadn't escaped unscathed. The car seat had struck her after I had let go.

Parenthood seems a lot like this moment in so many respects. You go along and you go along and you go along, almost by rote, until something you should have seen coming knocks you flat on the ground.

As it's happening, you get the sensation that time slows to a crawl. Yet events are happening so fast you have trouble comprehending what it all means.

Our success as parents depends not as much on whether we fall, but how we pick ourselves off the ground. In some cases pretending to know exactly what we are doing, and convincing ourselves that what we are doing is the best course of action, is called for. Other times, admitting our mistakes is imperative.

Knowing the difference is either wisdom or luck.

As I sat on the ground focused on myself, overlooking the potential for harm where my daughter stood seemed to be a rookie mistake.

I go and hug my daughter. I wish I could rewind the moment and play it again, only make it better. Her wound isn't really on her body it's on her soul. She knows I am fallible, and that she can't protect me. I know that I can't always protect her, and that I might not even notice she's in jeopardy.

All we can do is take a deep breath and try again.

When rules are rules to be broken

Why is it that children never have to go when you ask them?

"It’s going to be a long trip, you should use the bathroom now," I say to Ittybit, knowing from experience the wee girl has a wee bladder and an unreliable early warning system.

"I don’t have to go," she says in a defiant whisper.

This is our private war. There are rules of engagement.

Sometimes I win the battle and she disappears into the bathroom as I wait on the other side of the door. On those occasions I usually laugh when her voice echoes inside: "Oh, I guess I did have to go."

Other times, though, she wins and we end up making an unexpected stop. … Or two.

"You broke the seal," as my husband would say.

But this really isn’t about my daughter or her bladder.

This is about the kindness of strangers, and lack thereof.

Any parent will tell you, as we hunt for available rest rooms, we tend to become incidental shoppers. We buy lunch and trinkets, drinks and candy. Perhaps the smallest item we can get away with to meet the requirement "Restrooms For Customers Only."

When the kindest proprietors take pity on us ill-prepared parents, or have no such requirement, I try to buy something as a gratuity and become a repeat customer.

Of course the opposite is true when the rule-followers don’t bend.

You know who you are.

You are the people who think: "rules are rules," or "I didn’t make the rules, but they’re there for a reason," or "there’s a liability I just don’t want to take."

Every parent on the planet has probably made your acquaintance.

When I met you I was, unfortunately, at my wits’ end.

I was on errands with my two small children. The one not in diapers had already gone at the last stop, yet here she was squirming around, needing to go again.

We were shopping, with a few selections already picked out. You were smiling, probably a little uncomfortably, as you told me "No," she couldn’t use the bathroom. "It’s not for the public. Try across the street at the fast food restaurant."

Technically, I was asking for preferential treatment. And you were well within your rights as a store manager to deny access to the facility.

But when you smiled, I knew you enjoyed this power you had. I also knew you didn’t really value my business.

So I did what anger does. I dropped my selections on the nearest elevated surface and told the kids we were leaving.

The "we wouldn’t be back," was in answer to my girl’s question, but you knew it was directed at you.

I know you don’t care. I mean nothing to you, and you aren’t paid to care.

"I can hold it, I can hold it," my daughter pleaded, dragging on my arm trying to reverse my motion to the door.

I could guess she thought she’d done something wrong because I was unhappy. "We can go back. We can go back."

It’s not until we’re in the car, riding home, that I calm down enough to be human again.

"I’m sorry, kiddo. It’s not your fault. I wasn’t mad at you. I’m mad at that woman who wouldn’t bend the rules."

It’s a lot to take in for a child who is learning all the time why rules are important; why rules are supposed to be followed.

"Sometimes people are just more important than policy."

Looking at bullies, sometimes in the mirror

I'm not sure what bullying is anymore. I'm not sure if it's a shadowy part of human nature, a rite of passage we must navigate in some respect during our development, or a crime.

Surely the case of a South Hadley, Mass. teenager, Phoebe Prince, who committed suicide after enduring several months of torment from other teens, is enough to tip the definition toward the latter. But to do so, I think, would be a grave mistake.

Bullying is a difficult problem to face head on. There are so many dark roads to explore. As a child, do you tell someone or suffer in silence? As a parent, do you intervene or counsel your child? As an administrator, if you don't punish are you permitting? Is there a line drawn that can't be crossed?

Experts seem to disagree on what causes children to bully.

Some believe bullies are children with low self-esteem or who suffer from social isolation. Others believe bullies are most likely kids who have an easier time of making friends, are popular and possess an average or above-average sense of self-esteem. Some believe bullies are incapable of understanding the feelings of others but are expert at reading behaviors. Some say bullying stems from innate or basic survival mechanisms, while others profess it to be something we learn and therefore can "unlearn."

But how do we "unlearn" as a society?

A school district in Mississipi manipulated its school’s prom — turning it from a school-sponsored social event, into a private, parent-held party — expressly to exclude one girl, Constance McMillen, a lesbian who would have escorted her girlfriend to the dance.

Maybe my definition of bully is different than yours. My definition includes the kids with short tempers, the kids who want to be liked, the kids who are afraid to stand up for what they know to be right. It includes the kids who don't care and the kids who's parents don't care. The kids we'd just as soon throw away. The kids we've pegged as having no future. It also includes communities that would allow segregation and maltreatment of someone else because they are different.

From a "Breakfast Club" standpoint, I can see we are all bullies, we are all victims, we are all in a place where we do the wrong thing and have to live with the consequences. Yet we all wish to think of ourselves as underdog and the hero in one.

The common thread seems to be the ability to have others follow the lead others who may be relieved the target is painted over someone else. Animals, even human ones, tend to pounce on those they perceive as weak, those who won't challenge their authority. We are nothing if not predictable.

As much as we seem shocked by the thought of the viciousness of kids calling each other names in an effort to assert power, we are happy to watch any number of powerful people do the same, from the halls of American governance to the judges’ seats on American Idol. Its tactics are not new to any generation of politicians or pundits.

When the news about Prince's suicide was reported, the impression I got initially was that the girl was physically tortured. Report after report after report, however, seemed to indicate the girls who used ugly names and behaved in a reprehensible manner were jealous and small-minded, and likely someday, if they ever mature, will have to live with the tragedy their words put into action.

They will have to face the repercussions just as each of us has to face the results of every choice we make. We also live with the questions and regrets when the paths we choose lead us to places we couldn't have imagined.

It's not easy defending a child whose words cannot be condoned. It's difficult to look past the malignancy some of these New England teens have continued to spread, trying perhaps to avoid the sanitizing effect the bright light of scrutiny has cast on their words and actions.

But I can't help but think the answer, if there is one, lies somewhere beyond punishment -- somewhere within.


RESOURCES ON THE WEB
www.stopbullyingnow.hrsa.govkids/
http://kidshealth.org/parent/emotions/behavior/bullies.html

To maternity ... and beyond

I’d forgotten all the things I’d meant to bring. The cookies I’d made were sitting on the kitchen counter and the hand-me-down baby carrier was still tucked in the top drawer of my dresser.

I was anxious to get on the road. My friend was weeks away from meeting Baby No. Three, and my babies, numbers One and Two, were dawdling.

"Oh-my-gosh, we’re late. We should have left five minutes ago," I yell in the direction of the family room where the kids had run after I asked them to get on their shoes. "I still have to stop at the gas station. … Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go …"

I wasn’t ready either. As I looked into the empty tote bag, willing things to just jump in of their own accord, my brain was racing the clock. "It would take an hour to get there. I wonder if there will be any traffic." I tossed in diapers and wipes extra clothes in case of emergency spills. I remembered my phone and keys and cash. My camera batteries were charged and ready to go. The camera bag was already packed and in the car ... first things first and all.

Our mission, in addition to a friendly get-together, was for me to take maternity pictures -- something that has become a sort of tradition.

I photographed her first pregnancy - with film - eight months after giving birth to Ittybit. When I photographed her first child kissing the baby bump that contained her second child, a son, I owned a digital camera. One month after her boy joined the world, so did The Champ.

In so many ways it’s been a journey through motherhood we’ve taken, and documented, together.

"Now I need your help, guys," I tell my kids, who are already "are-we-there-yetting" as we turn out of the driveway. "I’m going to take pictures of you with your friends, but I need you to stay behind me and keep any pets, robotic toys, errant balls, flowing liquids or monsters from getting into the room when I’m taking pictures of your friends with their mom, Ok?"

"OK, mom," they parrot.

"This is very important," I stress. The last time I took family pictures in an official capacity, I had to crop my daughter out of the best one. Christmas cards with an extra kid in them can be confusion to some people.

"OK, OK! But are we there yet."

"Soon. We'll be there soon."

Ittybit may have been even more excited than I was to see my friend, whose children she has decided are "The Luckiest Kids in the World" because they are not only having a baby, but the sister kind. "I always wanted a little sister," she says sweetly, gazing at her brother who has already fallen asleep in his car seat.

Both kids are asleep when we finally arrive. I pull in the drive way to see my friend’s daughter jumping on the couch in excitement. I can almost here the "THEY’RE HEREs!" echoing through the house.

"We’re here," I say to the kids as park the car and the engine. They are instantly awake and excited again.

My friend looks happy and rested as she opens the door for us. She is glowing in the way that people say expectant mothers glow.

"I can’t believe I forgot the baby things I was going to bring, especially the baby carrier you wanted to borrow," I say as we hug.

"Oh, that’s OK," she tells me. She’s already as prepared as she needs to be. One fewer thing at this point is one fewer thing of which she must keep track now that she would have three tiny humans to corral.

For the first time since The Champ was born, and even though I always told people "two and through," I felt settled, if not cemented, in the decision to put maternity behind me.

It’s the kind of epiphany that is weighted with a tinge more sadness than relief.

My friend was going into new-baby territory by herself. I won’t be following.

Two and tantrums go together like cats and dogs

He’s making the face. His nose is crinkled, his mouth askew, his eyes are so small there’s no light reflecting in them. He crosses his arms and tips his head down.

That’s when The Champ announces his alter ego has arrived.

He says it just so: “I. AM. MAD. BOY. I. AM. NOT. HAPPY.”

This would be the point where, were we reading along with a comic book, the lightning would CRACK in the sky panel and the masked villain with the initials “MB” on a billowing cape would take up the rest of the cell space on the page.

I can even imagine a cyclone to rival Dorothy’s might open the roof and slurp each one of us out as payment for the laughter than ensues.

I really feel bad for the kid. It’s taken him so long to reach his terrible twos and no one really takes him seriously.

Even the dog yawns and goes back to snoring when he tries to rile her.

Probably doesn’t help that his tiny protest over whatever it was that stepped on his independence -- maybe we started the waffles without him … or we put away the miles of train tracks as he slept … or maybe we just took the scissors-markers-knives-blowtorch away from his sticky little grasp — is so easily squelched.

It’s difficult for a little squirt to stand one’s ground when the big people in his life can still pick him up and whisk him away from it.

Of course being difficult doesn’t mean the endeavor is impossible.

In his developmental fishing expeditions The Champ has become an expert in baiting his big sister.

For instance, he has become fond of telling his sister that he is bigger — one of only two statements that will reel in her ire hook, line and sinker. The other, of course, is insisting that he is older, too.

“He is not older than me. Tell him mom. YOU ARE NOT BIGGER, AND YOU ARE NOT OLDER!

“I am the one who gets to use the blender. NOT YOU.

“I know how to use scissors. NOT YOU.

“I can get my own drinks. YOU CAN’T.

“I don’t have diapers … YOU DO!

“YOU. ARE. A. BABY!”

He just smiles at her with is signature sideways grin. He’s gotten the exact reaction he was after.

“NO! YOU ARE BABY. I AM BIG, MAD BOY!”

The house is in an uproar. His sister’s eyes have gotten smaller than his. Her mouth has almost completely disappeared.

It has also turned us into referees.

I try to hold each of them at arm’s length as they circle my legs in this antagonistic dance.

“Tell him he’s little.”

“I not little. I am big. You are little.”

I next try to reason with the big kid:

“You know you are older. You know he’s just a little kid. Why can’t you just ignore it?”

“Because it is just not fair,” she screeches.

“No. You not fair,” he echoes at the same decibel, one that threatens shattering windows.

I wish only the dog could hear this. I glance over at her bed and realize her selective hearing is allowing her to sleep through the din. I take it back. I don’t really wish this torture on a defenseless animal.

“TIME. OUT.”

I send them to their separate corners, wherein they stare angrily at each other from across the room.

“I do not want to hear one more peep from either of you until your moods have changed for the better. …

When you’ve calmed down we can make cookies,” I add hoping to speed the process.

I poke my head in when I hear a gravely dragon growl answered by a low monster roar.

“Not a peep.”

In a few minutes, I hear the older one chirping happily. Her brother peeps back.

“Peep …peep … peep …peep. We’re ready to make cookies, mom.”

“How about you. Are you ready, Mad Boy?”

“I’n ready. I’n not Mad Boy anymore. I’n just a boy.”

Ittybit's 'Other Mother' would never approve

"He just smacked me on the head. He needs a time out. If you don’t give him one I will."

She may only be six, but she’s already a better mom than I’ll probably ever be.

Even on the rare occasions when she and her brother disappear happily into a world of make believe, she’s the loving mother who knows just what to do … usually the opposite of what she thinks I might do.

It occurs to me that when it comes to parenting failures, I don't just get to the brink of bad and teeter on the edge or even fall over its cliff unable to stop forward momentum. I sense impending doom and plunder right ahead as if getting to the other side will redeem me.

Case in point:

Sunday afternoon Ittybit wanted to watch a movie. So we HBO Anytimed "Coraline."

Now, I had previously watched about two-thirds of the film and thought it was tame enough for Ittybit, who, as a fan of The Nightmare Before Christmas, LOVES all things scary. ... How scary could the ending be?

Turns out the answer is: Pretty freaking scary.

The story itself is kind of a parable of modern life: A family has recently moved to a new and strange place. The daughter is struggling with the transition, but her parents are too engaged in their own lives — chained as it were to their computers and work deadlines — to have much tolerance for her needs, be they real or whims.

One night Coraline crawls through a mystical passageway into a world that is a mirror image of her own life. Only here, her parents seem happy, loving and normal, save for their button eyes. Her Other Mother cooks wonderful meals. Her Other Father sings sweet and charming songs.

One might think the sewing needles, and the creepy doll doppelganger of Coraline that shows up in the opening sequence would be enough to have me switch the channel.

... Or when the Other Mother slides a box with a sharp needle, thread and two buttons, and tells Coraline she can stay in the alternate world if she agrees to the switch.

... Or when the Other Mother, once so seemingly wonderful, turns into a gaunt horror and comes at the daughter with darning needle hands that resemble a spider.

So when Ittybit’s hands came up to her eyes and she tells me she's ready to move on to watching grass grow or paint dry, instead of turning off the TV then and there as a sane parent would have, I convinced her to just hold out to the end.

"Why are you letting me watch this," she asks. "This isn’t appropriate for children. This is NOT good parenting."

The twisted hunk of matter that passes for my brain rationalized she'd already seen the worst part. She'd see Coraline as the heroine of her own story, and then the color would return to the Pink Palace and all would be right with the world again. The End.

"I'll be right here. I promise nothing bad will happen to Coraline. ... It's just a movie. She is an amazingly brave girl, and amazingly brave children always prevail in movies."

And that’s what we did.

I held my hands over her eyes, and told her what was happening.

When the credits rolled, we both sighed in relief.

I thought it was over. We’d made it to the light at the end of the tunnel — the credits.

However, such thinking only works until the lights go out at bedtime and the shadows of innocuous things dance in menacing ways across her pretty pink walls.

The only thing a parent can do after that is settle in under the covers and wait for her breathing to deepen and become steady. Then slip out and cross your fingers the shadows stay at bay until sunrise.

Widgets, gizmos and big blue 'pills'

It’s been years since I’ve been to a first-run movie theater. You know, the kind where you save for weeks, get a sitter, wait in line with your home-computer printed tickets and your $30-worth of snacks that could arguably feed and saturate Rhode Island?

I can sense you are rolling your eyes.

Go right ahead and roll ‘em whilst I complain about something that a majority of planetary humans (including myself) find enjoyable — "the movies."

There we were, on a Saturday evening, herded into a line that snaked around the lobby of the multiplex like an errant garden hose, waiting to see James Cameron’s Avatar in 3-D.

It was my husband’s turn to choose the movie.

I, after all, made the final decision for "Up in the Air" at the $6 per-ticket theater as a Valentine’s Day treat. Now, while I would argue Jason Reitman’s comedy drama offered a far better (albeit depressing) story for less than half the price of Cameron’s predictable, epic sci-fi adventure, it wasn’t what anyone could rightly call romantic.

I know you probably don’t believe me right now, but I really do hate to complain about things I love.

And I love seeing movies in movie theaters. I love sitting next to people I don’t know and having a shared experience without ever having to speak. I love the hours of chat it can provide later, should the movie prove either interesting or insipid. I really do.

And yet I know why it takes a production going totally over the top to get us out from behind the small screens in our own isolated little lives.

Even without the excuse of children and limited leisure time, "dinner and a movie" is so far from being an affordable night of entertainment that even the phrase "Dinner and a Movie" should have already become a relic of a bygone era.

Now that a person pays the equivalent of two days’ worth of groceries for snacks and drinks, and is then held captive by advertisements we’ve successfully (thanks to TiVO and DVR) eradicated from our small screen lives, the movie experience doesn’t hold the same appeal.

Nothing short of epic will cajole us out of our cocoons.

I would not have dragged myself from the house if it weren’t for the nine-foot-tall blue creatures sticking it to the imperialist marauders, and the optical illusion that the miraculous mayhem was all happening from the seats next to me … for that one can be sure.

And yet, as I sat there in the packed house, seemingly a part of the movie itself, all I wanted to do was take off the stupid glasses and just watch.

It wasn’t just that the offending set of specs were at once slipping off my face AND digging into my head, but they seemed to act as a barrier between me and the film.

Sure, I supposed it was cool for a minute that it felt as if *spoiler alert* the ashes from the devastated world were floating over my head and into my hair, but after a short while the scenes just played out like expensive parlor tricks. My own imagination was obsolete.

As we were leaving the theater there was only silence between us.

"You hated it didn’t you?"

"I didn’t hate it. … I just think of it as an epic music video. After a while it’s not really that special it’s just three hours of special effects."

My husband, poor guy, just wanted to see the widgets and gizmos and watch the technical marvels, and NOT think about real life for a while.

"There’s nothing wrong with that."

I hate when they are right … for all the wrong reasons

A report last month in the Detroit Free Press that Detroit Public Schools have teamed up with Walmart to provide job training in four inner-city high schools has angered critics who say the relationship between the beleaguered school district and the behemoth discount store amounts to an attack on education.

Some also believe the plan — described as an 11-week, credit-bearing program intended to pair about 60 inner-city students with access to entry-level, after-school jobs in suburban stores — does nothing more than funnel cheap labor to the corporation and plant underprivileged youth in dead-end jobs.

Unidentified students from one of the schools, Frederick Douglass Academy, wrote of their outrage on a teacher-posted Web site:

"We the students of Frederick Douglass Academy are not going to accept the attack on our education! Allowing Walmart to come into our school, set up elective ‘classes,’ and the (sic) offer 30 Walmart jobs, is an insult. … The Frederick Douglass Affirmation proudly states ‘We are determined to get the root of success, not just the fruit of success.’ When we decided to come to this school, we were deciding to make our dreams and aspirations a reality. We came here to learn and grow. We wanted our lives to have meaning, and we were going to be somebody. Frederick Douglass Academy was built to create leaders. Its purpose is to give students the opportunity to get a real education and get into schools like U of M. Frederick Douglass Academy is a beacon of hope for many Detroiters. We cannot let our hopes be trampled. We deserve MUCH more than Walmart.”

As I read the statement I was livid: “What have they done to deserve anything?” I railed. “These kids are leaving school thinking the world owes them their dreams. The world owes them nothing. It was here first.”

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized I was only against the hubris of youth and their perception of the situation, not their position on the situation.

I don’t shop at Walmart for reasons that include my opinions of its history and its employment practices. But I have to admit the reasons also include unpleasant shopping experiences, such as dirty stores, long lines and poor customer service.

On the whole, I would agree with the students that being trained to stock shelves at Walmart isn’t what anyone should call education. Nor is it appropriate for such a course to be on the taxpayers’ dime.

When students graduate completely unprepared for higher education, Walmart will train them anyway. And they should train their employees on their own dime.

Learning how to be a cashier at Walmart isn't the same thing as learning how the supply chain works in the retail industry.

Had this plan included other retailers and various industries, I might not be as inclined to object. Students may get their first work experience in the stockrooms, perhaps, but if we want to call it an education they should also be in the board rooms and the buying rooms as well. They should meet the deal makers. They should see exactly what goes into buying and selling an entire spectrum of products from the high-end to the dirt cheap.

And yet, as I read the students’ words about hopes and dreams and aspirations I couldn’t help but think that they’ve missed an important understanding of success. Schools don't create leaders, leaders create themselves. The students have to find their own way.

The “root of success” is rhetoric concerning an ethos of stability and perseverance, which requires a network of small, unseen fibers to support a larger structure. No single experience should topple that structure. What these children are plucking from education is bitter fruit. There should be no shame in starting at the bottom. There is no shame in honest work.

If these deserving scholars really believe the people who work in Walmart are nobodies, what they still have to learn only life can teach them.

The world IS their oyster.

But they must come to understand what that metaphor's message really means: An oyster that opens on its own isn’t worth eating.

Without the right tools -- without a work ethic, without usable experience, without some real understanding of how society actually works as opposed to how we think it should work – we’d never be able to claw our way into that oyster, we’d just throw it away.

On the Web

http://detroitteacher2.wordpress.com/2010/02/15/students-speak-out-against-walmart-work-program/

When theater of the absurd stops being funny

"You will NOT believe what happened," Ittybit says emphatically as she dumps her coat and boots on the entryway floor and runs toward the refrigerator.

"Melanie’s mom SHOT her," she says, rummaging through the crisper.

"What? Where?"

"On the balcony. ... It was an accident," she says, crunching a celery stalk. "She had just gotten married and they didn’t even have a honeymoon! Melanie didn’t even know her mother WAS Carly."

"See, more effective gun control would keep those accidents from happening," I say, closing the door she left open.

She watches "Days of Our Lives," with her babysitter.

I don’t really see much wrong with it, to be honest. My mom watched daytime dramas, too. We always laughed at how Salem must be the amnesia capital of the world.

I still laugh about how my husband found out the twists and turns of naptime adventure, for a non-napping kindergartener anyway, had nothing to do with blankets in a playpen.

"I think the babysitter might be pregnant," my husband whispers to me one night before dinner.

"I don’t think so," I say a little confused. "That’s something I’m sure she would have told me. What makes you think that?"

"Oh … It was something Ittybit said to her as we were leaving … something about seeing a doctor about a baby."

"Oh that. Tat’s just Greenlea ... or Melanie ... or Gormley ... or somebody-E ...

"Who?"

"Characters on the soaps she watches."

He starts to laugh. The television addict in him knows what serial plots can do to a person home during prime daytime hours.

At least there’s humor in the absurd.

Since Ittybit started school, however, real-life plot twists and heartaches have encroached upon her little corner of the world. Illness, death, divorce are all words we’ve started to define. She’s having trouble understanding the concept of two moms or two dads, despite knowing kids who have them.

Sometimes I find myself wondering why anyone would want to get married.

I know there’s a bunch of folks out there who think in narrow and sanctimonious terms: "Marriage is between man and a woman. Period. End of discussion."

They talk about the children and families as if homosexuals don’t have either.

I don’t think that way.

I usually object to the kind of thinking that is drawn with such straight and narrow lines. For that matter, I usually object to any line of thinking that locks out other thought.

Thoughts, in my opinion, shouldn’t be set in stone. Thoughts have to be free to roam, and they should keep their bags packed.

But I’m just one person who can’t help noticing that the people making a mockery of marriage aren’t characters on television. They aren’t even people who can’t or won’t buy in to the rite of passage. Marriage is hurt by the folks who enter it so poorly prepared to handle difficult times.

I thought about all of this when Ittybit came home from school, kicked off her boots, rummaged through the refrigerator, and announced that the police had visited one of her friends’ houses.

A real friend.

"So-and-So’s dad put his hands around So-and-So’s mom’s neck," she said, matter-of-factly. "Now he can’t go to their house anymore."

We’re always telling her the difference between real and fiction. This is

"That won’t happen to us, will it?"

"This won’t happen to us," I say as calmly as possible, trying to be reassuring.

I don’t know what else to say. This isn’t theater of the absurd. This is the just the beginning of one child’s awareness that everything is not always fine.

And it’s the story of another little girl, who came to school with a heart-wrenching tale to tell, that illustrates the sad truth behind heightened security measures in our schools: The most common danger to children isn’t a stranger, or a character on a television screen. The most likely source of harm comes from the people already in their lives, even their own parents.

Have glue gun, will fix ... anything

There will come a day, probably sooner than I'd like, when I will remind Ittybit of the love she once had for hand-me-downs.

Whenever we receive a bag of new-to-her things, it musters the same excitement as Christmas morning. She combs through the piles, sniffing the duds and commenting about the scent of another family's detergent. "Oh ... It even smells like her," she’ll swoon with a soft sweater pressed next to her face.

Having togs worn previously by some of our friends’ daughters - girls she would have loved to have as big sisters – is, to her, akin to wearing the sweat-stained, cast-away t-shirt of a rock star.

Major. Rock Star.

Sometimes I can’t believe she allows me to wash them.

The only problem comes when an item meets the end of its useful life before she's ready to let it go.

She slipped her foot in the pretty pink boots, and she spoke in warm tones about the cozy faux fur. They were the perfect size for her to slip her already-ballet-slippered feet into so she could be the first one ready for dance class. I noticed the broken bit on the boot's toe as she was shuffle-ball-changing around the dance studio in taps.

For some reason the evil spirit that is alive and well in the promise of shopping forced me to mention her need for new boots aloud.

Big mistake.

“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! You. Have. To. Fix. It. You. Have. To. Fix. It.”

“ThesearethebestbootsI'veeverhad. These were Anna's Boots! You. Have. To. Fix. It.”

I frown and look back down at the boots.

She doesn't understand that we don't live in an age where cobblers or tinkers hang out shingles.

Things aren't made to last. They're made to be replaced ... usually long before the ink on their warrantee has dried. We generally don't even bother to force manufacturers to abide by their promises because replacement items are so cheap it's not worth the effort or the return shipping fees.

She doesn’t care. She wants THOSE boots and not NEW boots, not even if they looked like THOSE boots.

Snow is coming and we are at an impasse.

"Maybe we can put a patch in there ..." my mother suggests.

"Maybe we can coat it in some kind of adhesive ..." my husband ponders.

"Yes! YES! A patch. A hesive. Anything so that I can still wear my boots," trumpets my daughter.

I leave it for tomorrow. It's late and I still have hope I can get to the store before snow hits the ground. Perhaps she'll see the beauty in a brand new pair if I can find a similar style or something with razzmatazz, as my dad would say.

But in the morning there is snow on the ground and her boots are still waiting for the elves of yesteryear to mend them.

My husband plugs in the hot melt glue gun and gets to work.

"Oh ... thank-you-thank-you-thank-you," she gushes as he helps her on with the boots.

"The fix is not going to last," he warns her. "You will have to get new boots before long."

"Are you trying to break my heart?" she asks playfully.

"No. But you are going to break mine," he replies, and then tousles her hair as she runs for the bus.

"Good thing we have hot glue, dad. We can always fix it."

Ode to a man who brought the world to Chatham

Although the words I’ve shared with Tony Quirino, for the most part, were exchanged through the ticket window as I slid a few dollars toward him and he slid my single ticket toward me, when I read the news of his untimely death last month it felt as if I had lost a family member.

I only vaguely remember the first movie I saw at Quirino’s Crandell Theatre, Chatham’s historic, family-owned film house for more than five decades. It was either "Snow White" or "Cinderella," and my parents had fought a quiet battle over which of them would take us. Disney was always a favorite of theirs.

Back in the 1970s Tony’s father, Anthony, was behind the tiny window in the theater’s entry hall. His mother, Minnie, stood smiling behind the concessions counter. I always got popcorn: salt, no butter. My sister always got Good n’ Plenty.

I saw so many movies at the rural cinema it would be easier to name the ones I didn’t see from its lever seats. And even some of those — the scary ones I’d watched through my fingers or while looking into the faces of the folks behind me — were there as well.

My window to the world came through that big dark room. In it I always sat on the edge of my seat waiting for the big clock near the screen to strike the end of the previews. The lights would go down, and the place would seem to melt away.

Those of us old enough to remember the release of Star Wars can tell you where we were when we’d seen it. I can tell you where I sat. I was fifth row, 12th seat. I was jealous of my sister, who’d gotten to sit in the balcony, opened special for the overflow crowd. I have no idea where my parents ended up. It was the first time we’d ever been separated for a film. I felt big.

In the dark, in that place, I traveled the nation and the world. I got to see glimpses of outer space — not to mention puzzle at alien languages and actor hairdon’ts -- from a seat in the balcony eventually. But the tiny theater brought more than mere locations to me it brought me to my generation visiting the nowhere towns of Hill Valley and Shermer, Illinois.

Over the years I’ve come to understand most places and people through sitting in the dark of a theater.

In Chatham, it seemed, no one ever laughed when a movie was funny. By the same token, no one seemed to mind a bad movie when the price was only a few bucks per ticket.

Still, walkouts would be offered their money back, or so my mom once told me. She laughed and told him she wouldn’t hear of it. The fault was hers for not reading the previews for a movie called "Porkies."

When Tony took over the family business I was graduating high school and moving on to college. I still came back for shows. I brought my friends, and we laughed and talked, and got shushed from time to time … though never by Tony.

I didn’t know then, nor until I read his obituary, of his life outside that small window. I didn’t know he’d served in Vietnam, or that he’d been decorated in the war. I didn’t know he had once owned a repair shop or that he could fix just about anything.

All I knew was his face and its far-away smile.

Even though the years passed quickly, time stood still at that ticket window. My single admission turned into four tickets two adults, two children. His hair had turned silver, but his smile was unchanged.

He always seemed to be enjoying the show.

On friends and friction

There’s no easy way to say this, so I’ll just come right out with it: I don’t like Olivia.

She’s got some very nice qualities, but aside from being inquisitive, intelligent and assertive, she’s also smug, self-centered and greedy. And just because she’s a pig doesn’t mean she gets a pass.

Yet, saying “I don’t like her” — or Caillou or Junie B. or Baby Bear for that matter — feels akin to saying the unspeakable: that I don’t like one of Ittybit’s real-life friends.

We all have our pet peeves. Mine, when it comes to fictional children, are bratty behavior, whining and speech impediments.

Many educators think children’s programming that focuses on how real kids feel, and that depicts adults taking a child’s feelings seriously, helps kids handle real-life situations by teaching empathy, tolerance, coping methods as well as basic social skills.

But I can’t help but think there’s something wrong with a kid (I mean pig) who, night after night, is tucked into bed with an “I love you anyway.”

It just seems as if these characters never break character. Olivia hates her “Little Bother;” Caillou whines whether he’s happy or sad; Junie B. never apologizes for being mean … and no one is helping Baby Bear pronounce his Rs.

So that’s my dilemma.

As a parent, I know all kids have moments of bratty-ness. I know they have tons of difficult emotions from anger and fear to jealousy and disappointment. I’ve even learned, to my great chagrin, that happiness — in any number of over-exuberant presentations — can have an annoyance factor that is off the charts.

And as a parent I would never restrict my child’s access to someone with speech impairment, but Baby Bear is a television character geared toward preschoolers, a set that I would assume is more needing of accurate pronunciation than tolerance training.

I’ve known my alphabet for ages, yet by the end of the little bruin’s segment, I’m even asking the kids to “Pwease tuwn off Seasame Stweet and come in for wunch.”

The idea that we’re educating our children through bedtime reading and “quality television,” though, seems to make those otherwise unspeakable decisions a moral imperative.

And that’s the rub. WE are educating our children, not the books or television programs. When we read we intone how we feel. We ask how it makes them feel. Sometimes we lead our kids and sometimes they lead us.

I don’t want my child to speak in whine. I don’t want her to strong-arm her friends or treat every new situation with resistance and scorn. Each word I read at bedtime about the “Stupid Smelly Bus” or “that May,” has me fearful that I might be kissing Ittybit goodnight for the last time, and that Junie B. will be joining us for breakfast.

I’m choosing to hope for the best. Junie B. is likely to join us from time to time. When she does I’ll be ready for her. At least I know the ending.

Write to Siobhan Connally at sconnally@troyrecord.com or read more online at www.troyrecord.com, click on “Blogs.”

It’s a ‘January Tree’ this year, hoping for hearts next

The brown needles were needling me. They were also stabbing anyone who walked in stocking feet on any floor in our house. Needles have a tendency to travel.

I couldn’t put it off any longer. I had to take down the Christmas tree.

It was a tiny defeat, for sure. I don’t remember any tree of mine — artificial, live or in some middling phase of its demise — being dismantled before February.

It has become a something of a family joke: "How long is their tree going to stay around? We have a Christmas Tree but they have a January Tree, and Valentine’s Tree and soon my guess is they’ll be working on a Mother’s Day Tree … that’s if the house doesn’t burn down first."

It’s not funny, I know. It could happen. And as someone who unplugs the toaster oven when not in use, I should know better … or at least know enough not to tempt fate.

I often tell people that I’m lazy. But that’s not really true. Sure, everyone is keen on decorating the tree when the spirit of the season is fresh and new but once the bow is off the package, few (compulsive folks not withstanding) are as eager to painstakingly re-wrap the trappings and pack them away.

But I’ve given up on the careful storing of holiday artifacts years ago. Sure, I started out meticulously wrapping each ornament in tissue and separating them with sheets of cardboard, be they delicate glass orbs or layers of felt glued together with pom-poms and sequins.

However, with each progressive year I shave off a few minutes more on my takedown time. This year I broke down and bought an enormous plastic tub – the kind with a snapping lid and festive holiday colors -- and recycled the myriad cardboard boxes, marked "X-Mas" in Sharpie, that have been chasing me from apartment to apartment, home to home, during the last two decades.

I had condensed all the breakables into three smaller boxes within 27 minutes, then jammed the boxes into the storage tub and padded them with the soft, stuffed or impossible to destroy curios.

A few more minutes and the three strands of tiny twinkle lights that had been wrapped around the pine were wrapped (wrist-to-coil action) and stowed with room to spare.

No, it’s not the chore.

It’s just the idea of going to all the trouble — knowing at the outset that the thing you tethered to the top of your car had been happily living a farm-fed life for five to seven years — of dragging a living tree in from the outdoors spending an hour (or seven) getting it positioned straight in the stand (even if you give up and accept its crookedness as a natural quirk) and then putting on it every piece of glitter you’ve collected since your preschool days, forcing you to walk down memory lane for the *mumbles-a-number* time. ... All to have it wither and die in the span of three weeks’ time.

After having gone through all that, I want to HAVE this tree for longer than a few weeks. I want to read by its light on the Epiphany and hang hearts on its limbs for Valentine’s.

It seems so simple to me: I just want to enjoy every brown, crinkling sap-oozing day for as long as I can.

I want to vacuum up needles for an eternity.

No one really wants TV to take them away

On weekend mornings I have a hard time getting off the couch. Even for coffee.

The kids play around me in a low growl that is a mix of fighting and fidgeting over various tiny toys. Any one of which is destined to puncture my sole if I were to venture into the kitchen for a warm-up. I stay put drinking cold dark roast and hoping the caffeine will start to do its work soon.

Every so often Ittybit ventures over to the place where I’m entrenched and tries to coax me out of my imposing quiet.

"Will you put the wings on my Angel Polly Pockets doll for me?" she asks.

"Do you have a ‘please’ for that request?"

"Please?" she says sweetly.

I reiterate my long-standing mantra -- Moms Don’t Play -- but I take the doll and try to affix the wings.

It’s not working, they won’t stay put.

I hand her pocket doll back with an apology and a recommendation. "I think you might have to hold your thumb on her back when you play with her to keep her wings stable."

She narrows her eyes at my idea, a look I know to be questioning my sanity, but disappears upstairs.

Small objects have a tendency to disappear around her brother, who is heading over to the couch full-speed ahead in his too-big shoes.

"Mommeee! Want watch ‘Diego GO!’"

My head hurts at the temples.

I click on the T.V.

I want them to play quietly. Be invisible. I want to finish my coffee. "Television … take them away."

But instead of the colorful ’toons they are used to, pictures of real suffering fill the screen.

What is this? Ittybit asks, lured back into the living room by the sound of television voices.

"This is a news story about a disaster that happened in a place called Haiti," I tell her.

My husband comes in from his desk and sits next to me. The Champ climbs into his lap, bringing with him a car he’s dismantled and packed its trunk with pilfered parts of Lego sets and other toys he’s gleaned. Ittybit sits in mine, forgetting her brother’s recent trespasses.

They don’t ask me to change the channel. No one can look away.

"What happened?," she asks. "Why are those people living outside? Why can’t they go home?"

We answer as best we can. There was an earthquake. Their homes are destroyed. Places nearby that could help them were destroyed, too. They have to wait for help from elsewhere. Help from elsewhere takes time.

The announcements from the broadcast keeps coming as I try to explain: No water. No food. Survivors still buried in rubble. Hope diminishing by the day.

A doctor talks about the suffering, the lack of supplies and infrastructure. The numbers are hard to picture.

On the screen a little boy screams in agony and shock, "why me," as he lays gripping a stranger’s hand in a make-shift triage center. He is waiting for someone he recognizes to comfort him. His parents are gone.

That was too much for ittybit, who understood the sentiment and urgency if not the boy’s words. It was too much for me, too. In that moment, that boy was my child, too.

They cut to a commercial. … A woman talks about dessert cups.

Ittybit brightens as her brain switches deftly from the confusion of what she’s just seen to a familiar game she plays with her father.

"What are they trying to sell me," daddy, she asks?

"Crazy, isn’t it?" He answers. "People are suffering in Haiti and here in America we’re trying to figure out what pudding choice is best."

We are silent again switch off the television, get off the couch. I can’t keep them away from the world or its suffering forever. But I really don’t want the television to take them away.

Love, marriage and Greek tragedy

"Mommy? Will you play wit me? Mommy, come here! Mommy, where’s the DEE? Want to watch race cars on Dee. Mommy, where’s superboy cape? Mommy, where’s cat? Mommy! dog toots! Mommy? mommy-mommy-mommy-mommy-mommy-mommy-mommy-mommy … MOM Eeeeeeee!

Mommy? Where AH you?!

Mommy? Mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy mommy mommy-mommy-mommy mommy-mommy-mommy-mommy-mommy … mooooooooooooooooommmmmmmmmmmmmmeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

He can’t find me.

He can’t find me because I am sitting on a stepstool with my knees up to my neck, wedged under the kitchen counter, sipping a warm beverage as I hide from him.

It’s not as if we’re alone in the house. His father is sitting right beside him as the little king yells for his cape, and he yells for his bowl and he yells for his superheroes three.

But dad isn’t mom. For all The Champ cares at this moment in his wee little life, dad is merely a part of the décor that cooks dinner.

This developmental foible of childhood weighs on the man.

FATHER: "What am I? Chopped meat?"

OEDIPUS REX: "Yes."

MOTHER: "Don’t listen to him. He doesn’t even know what chopped meat is."

It seems as though I spend a lot of my family time reassuring the man that the small folks love him at the same instant the small people announce, loudly and without qualification, that they don’t want him to make their lunch, or play in the snow, or do a craft, or change a diaper …

Well, that last one he’s grateful for, but the other things make him feel as if I am the rock star and he is just a wad of gum waiting to be scrapped off an old shoe.

The books never mentioned this. Hollywood never lets on that Mom Love actually competes with Dad Love, and Mom Love has an early advantage.

Such is the case when the little lord font-le-boy toddles into my office, picks up our framed wedding picture from the bookshelf and starts describing what he sees: This is you. This is daddy. HEY! You married? I not want you married."

Sometimes dads are an acquired taste.

I try not to smile, though some small part in my cold, black heart thumps wildly at the idea that the kids want me to read books, and make crafts, and watch them play … and change diapers.

Well, not that last part.

I know this preference is just part of some developmental blueprint that in some previous era would ensure their survival. Such as way back in the 1950s, when fathers knew where babies came from but had not likely seen the event first hand.

Of course, I think about that and wonder how mid-century moms survived if all dad did when he came home from work was bellow for his slippers from children he could see but not hear.

It may be a different show, but I bet the sound effects are pretty much the same.

“Mommymommymommmymommy.”

"This, too, shall pass," I tell myself. I tell him.

"It’s like ripping off a Band-Aid. He cries when you leave, but then he’s ok. He even has fun."

Now it’s my turn to feel like something stuck to a sore spot.

"A Band-Aid?"

"Or a Buzz Lightyear sticker? Take your pick."

Maybe rocket science isn’t out of reach

Experience — often lack of it — really is the hobgoblin of all life pursuits, isn’t it?

There are times when a person’s complete familiarity with a particular skill can undermine their focus, therefore putting them at risk of a stunning failure, sometimes even bodily harm. ... Picture someone working with a chainsaw … No. Don’t. Don’t want anyone having nightmares.

Suffice it to say that for the most part we don’t worry about what we know, we worry about what we don’t know.

I was thinking about this as I stood at the sewing counter of a local fabric store, asking the ladies what supplies a beginner might need … you know, seeing as how I bought my six-year-old a real sewing machine for Christmas … and seeing as how I don’t know the first thing about sewing anything besides replacement buttons (and even then the results aren’t pretty).

I could see from the expressions on their faces, they thought I was in way over my head.

Of course, I might have been projecting just a bit with my built-in facial expression read-o-meter. After all, it was the biggest shopping season of the year, and they are, in fact, sales folks. Just because they offered Mom–and-Me sewing classes and tried to sell me an $80 sewing kit doesn’t mean they think I’m a dolt who will sew my own fingers to a pillow project.

I thanked them and asked them to point me in the direction of thread.

I’ve muddled through before. It’s not the worst thing in the world for a person to do.

Not that muddling through hasn’t been mortifying at times. I’ve been critiqued for the way I’ve dug holes in the garden the way I’ve hammered a nail and even the way I mop floors. I’m been shown the proper way to bowl, the best way to stir batter and which side of the roll the bath tissue should face.

Yet sometimes winging it is a gratifying experience.

For instance ... the time I stood saucer-eyed in the tile aisle at Home Depot, discussing supplies with an equally clueless friend who had graciously offered to help me tackle a tiling project. Tile, check mastic, check grout? One box? Two? What about a tile cutter? Our conversation didn’t seem so out of left field until I felt a tap on my shoulder and some smirking woman thrust her card in my hand … "just in case your DIY project didn’t work out."

I didn’t give that woman or her card a second thought until I was standing with my friend outside of the finished job. She’d cut. I’d placed. It wasn’t perfect, but we’d done it ourselves and we’d done it together.

But I gave the fabric store ladies some extra thought. My finished craft projects always look like something the cat coughed up. Sewing may as well be rocket science.

And yet Christmas morning came, and the sewing machine made its way out of its wrapping paper to the dinning room table.

The reckoning was at hand.

I read and follow the instructions. Soon we had the thing humming along.

Without following a pattern, without measuring or cutting straight lines, we spent the afternoon putting it all together.

The designs we came up with were certainly imperfect. Our seams were crooked, prints didn’t match, our structures were lopsided. But when ittybit hugged her new pillow — an under stuffed patchwork of an indeterminate geometric shape — it couldn’t have been more perfect.

Write to Siobhan Connally at sconnally@troyrecord.com

Wii wish you a happy, healthy New Year

I stepped on the "Balance Board" and a mechanical voice protested: "Oh!"

The games hadn’t even begun and I had the distinct feeling I’d already failed by hurting the machine.

"Stand still" the voice admonished as I tried to center my feet in the rectangles. "We can’t find you … please step off and we will reboot the system."

Nintendo’s tiny army of virtual trainers mean business.

I try again. Another protest emanates from the console as I step up. "Oh!?" it says with increasing alarm.

Can I be getting worse at this? I shift my weight again.

I half expect the voice to become shrill: "What is wrong with you? STAND STILL ALREADY, WILL YOU?!"

Bling, the machine chimes with my first success. "OK. Got you."

"Measuring …"

Bling. The voice happily tells me my weight and my body mass index as I try to lower the volume (Shush — let’s not tell the whole house, huh?) It then insults me a few more times as it leads me through a routine of basic balancing games.

"You’re pretty shaky, aren’t you? Do you trip a lot when you walk?"

Then, from nowhere, there is a drum roll and spotlights. The Wii Fit Plus is getting ready to tell me my Wii Fit Age.

Bling. "57."

"It is mocking me.

"People like you are the reason I don’t go to the gym," I tell the voice.

My husband laughs. I shush him, too.

I run through more preliminaries: I choose an avatar with little difficulty. (I say "little difficulty" because I didn’t bother to personalize "Figure F.") In fact, I consider the consumer satisfaction I would have had were I able to make my character look less human. "Too bad they don’t let you pick animals," I grouse.

"Oh, I could totally see your avatar being a cougar," my husband laughs as I contemplate throwing the nunchuk at his head. I decide it’s not a good idea. This hateful thing was expensive, the last thing I want to do is replace it.

He disappears, realizing he’s better off wrestling the kids into their pajamas than jabbing at me from the peanut gallery. (Men have been eviscerated by women for lesser transgressions.)

The computer tells me I need to pick a trainer. Do you want a woman or a man? "Definitely a woman," I say aloud as I try aiming the controller at the screen. "I don’t want any man, not even a computer generated one, commenting on my posterior."

Like magic the Barbie-esque figure appears on the screen, her hands on her waist and her hip jutting slightly outward.

"Wait? Did Santa bring us Wii Fit Pole Dancing or something?" I grumble, thinking of the programmers, in their geeky glasses and pocket protectors, designing the girl of their dreams instead of one that might actually exist.

I follow along as the perky trainer twists, bends, reaches and balances.

In between each exercise she takes time to critique my performance. She contradicts herself with each assessment. She tells me balance isn’t my strong suit, then tells my I have excellent balance. She tells me I’m weak and strong.

I hate her.

But I keep going.

Side twists.

Plank.

Sit ups.

Push ups, side plank, push ups.

Lunges.

And then my husband hands me a wet towel containing my screaming, flailing boy.

"He didn’t want to get dressed for bed," he says, dusting his hands of the chore.

The woman on the television notices I’m just standing on the balance board. She doesn’t see that I am trying to calm a grumpy lump of terry cloth.

"You have to do the exercises to get the benefit. …

"These exercises won’t do themselves you know."

I step off the Balance Board and head upstairs.

"Where do you think you are going?" chides the voice.

A few minutes later both kids are asleep and I go back to the workout. I turn on the machine and it welcomes me back. I return to lunges, where I left off.

The male trainer appears on the screen.

"I hope you don’t mind. We’ve had to substitute trainers for this exercise. Your regular trainer is unavailable."

I stand there blinking.

"How can a computer-generated trainer be unavailable? Did she go out for a virtual latte?"

"Now that is impressive!" my husband whistles. "Even your imaginary trainer is avoiding you."