Unwired

A boy. 

They'd exchanged phone numbers at school. Ittybit promised to call later that night.

Which she did. After dinner and before homework.

It was a big deal. ...

To me.

The telephone was my first, tenuous, connection to independence. It offered my mind a mode of transportation and a mechanism for planning that started simply enough with a single universal question: "What are you doing?" followed by the closed-circle response: "Nothing. What are you doing?"

Boy? Girl? It didn't matter who was hanging on the line, it only mattered that the line existed and that it connected me to a disembodied voice.

For the primary school set -- too young for Twitter and Facebook -- Alexander Graham Bell's invention is as relevant as ever.

The rules of communication haven't changed much, either.

"Smile when you talk," I tell her. "They may not be able to see you, but they will be able to hear the smile in your voice.

"Remember to be polite: tell whoever answers your name; ask if you may speak to your friend; always say please and thank you."

Phone etiquette isn't innate. It takes practice, and recently we'd been having our share of practice.

Still, I couldn't listen as she dialed the boy's number and waited for someone to answer.

I clanked around the kitchen, trying to buffer the exchange.

It reminded me ... a little too much ... of my own first phone call to a boy.

I had been in second grade, too.  I didn't even know to be nervous. He was, after all, a friend I spoke to each day. A boy whose name happened to line up next to mine in the alphabet, as did his chair in our teacher's similarly ordered classroom.

To be able to continue the conversation at home, after school, is a strange magic not dissimilar to running into your first-grade teacher at the supermarket and feeling as if your world had been turned inside out. The first time it happens it's disorienting.

Some of that disorientation was happening as I ran through the script I'd practiced.

Hello, I am … , may I speak to … ?

Silence.

The boy's mother wasn't impressed. Her voice, quick and sharp, told me all I needed to know about my mistake. And she wasn't going to let her son talk to any girl so forward as to call a boy at the age of eight.

More than three decades later, I have to wonder if David Sedaris' witty and scathing review of an elementary school nativity play wherein he writes: “6-year-old Shannon Burke just barely manages to pass herself off as a virgin,” could have been inspired by a similar experience.

Honestly, though, I hadn't thought of that moment until this one, in which my daughter was chirping away into the handset asking a boy questions I didn't get a chance to ask.

“What are you doing?”

My stomach tightened even more as she charged my way with the phone.

“Ok, I'm going to get my mom and you put your mom on the phone, too.”

I stretch a tight smile across my face, holding the phone and waiting for a stranger's voice to come on the line.

This is awkward.

Hello? Her smile is stretched, too. I can hear it.

“Hi,” I inject a small laugh into my voice for effect. “I think our kids are interested in setting up a play date.”

Without much fanfare we set a date and exchange information. And within a few days a boy from school is playing in the backyard with our daughter, collecting specimens of rare weeds and putting them in an old umbrella for some convoluted purpose.

A broken bumper shoot is a typical centrifuge for whatever pseudoscience my daughter has devised.

Together they battle a rising wind and a meddling brother until the boy's mother comes to collect him a couple of hours later.

By all accounts it was a success. Plans are made to play some more another day.

He climbs into the car, she bounds into the house.

The phone is ringing.

“I'll get it,” she hollers.

I open my mouth to holler back, but stop mid objection. It's probably for her, anyway.

Mom, enough

Sh*t (Fill-In-The-Demographic) Say videos on YouTube are somewhat addictive, aren't they?

My favorite ones are about parenthood.

A woman or a man (sometimes both) breezes through a series of seemingly random statements while doing ordinary, mundane things such as eating cereal or pushing a stroller or watching TV. The scenes are stitched together to produce a stereotypical representation of whatever demographic filled in the blank.

Formulaic, sure, but funny all the same.

A site search shows virtually every nationality, geographic location and parenting style represented. For all intents and purposes, it's about people laughing at themselves.

I've often mused if I were more skilled with video I'd make one of my own and call it: Sh*t My Kids Say, and it would consist entirely of a single word: “Mommy.”

There would be the whiney “Mahhhhm,” the bored “Mo-ahm,” the “MOM” that signals some kind of imagined emergency and of course, the “Mom” that is repeated over and over again because a response was not satisfactorily immediate.

There is also the Mom that is not meant for me at all … the one that is merely a pretend game between siblings about which my inquiry will provoke ire: “MOM!”

It drives me crazy enough that I find myself screaming: “The next person who yells 'Mom' better need the services of an emergency room doctor … or at the very least a Band-Aid.”

To which they always laugh, “Mah-em.”

I thought about all of this as TIME magazine's cover story touched off small fires in the ever-smoldering Mommy Wars last week with a provocative picture and a taunting hammer head, “Are You Mom Enough.”

I'm Mom too much, I chortled.

Seriously though, the TIME piece wondered why Attachment Parenting leads mothers to extremes: Baby wearing, extended breastfeeding (past the age of one) and co-sleeping.

The sparks that flew around the peanut gallery that is the ethosphere were pretty standard: People felt sorry for the three-year-old boy pictured standing on a chair, nursing at his mother's breast. They lamented the gaggle of coddled youngsters, whom, they believed would, no doubt, grow up to be horribly warped adults unable to detach from their mothers' apron strings.

I didn't take the bait.

Even though I was one of those mothers who wore her babies (it was easier for me than a stroller) and who allowed her children to self wean (one at two, the other a four) and who found co-sleeping helpful with one child but not the other (one slept better with us, the other slept better alone) I didn't rush into Twitterverse to defend my decisions or try to convert the disbelievers.

I didn't think what I was doing was a style, necessarily, I just thought of it as something that worked for me. And I can be honest: It was mostly about me.

“If Mama Isn't Happy, Nobody's Happy,” was my motto. Even wore it on a t-shirt.

Whether meeting their needs in infancy with minimal tears has made my children more secure in their understanding of their place in the world, I can't tell you. I wouldn't expect you'd believe me anyway if I thought it had. How can anyone make such a correlation?

I don't presume to think that the choice of a baby carrier or a stroller could determine a person's whole life outcome. Nor would I be willing to bet a child left to cry it out would be irreparably harmed.

Yet I wonder how we get sidetracked into this narrow media gauntlet time and time again.

Maybe it's easier to point fingers than ask questions. It's certainly easier to yell and rant and rave than it is to let go and assume people other than ourselves are doing their best.

Which, is probably why I can't keep myself from laughing when my son stops himself after his second “MOM!”

“I mean … Siobhan,” he says, addressing me in his big-boy voice and then going silent.

“You can't call her that,” Ittybit chastises her brother.

“But she hates when we call her Mom,” he responds, confused.

“No. She hates when you call her 'MOM MOM MOM MOM MOM MOM' but never say anything else.”

As she usually does, Ittybit wants me to weigh in on the appropriateness of a child calling their mother by her first name.

“I honestly think I'm mom enough. You can call me by my first name sometimes so long as you aren't repeating it like a broken record.

“Like this: Siobhan Siobhan Siobhan siobhan shifawn shibong sifon,” he smiles with his best Sh*t Kids Say grin.

“I take that back. Maybe too much Mom is just enough.”

They just looked at me like they usually do: as if I'd grown another head.

I won't hold my breath waiting for the t-shirt.

Off the clock

It's evening. Twenty past nine to be exact, and I'm trying to ignore the sounds coming from across the hall.

Kids!

Their voices call to one-another as if they weren't sleeping in the same room. She says something. He answers. She tells him why he's wrong. He tells her she smells. Both of them laugh. They are happy and enjoying each other's company. It's not exactly rare. In fact, it's almost predictable at this time of night.

Before-bedtime bedlam morphs a into an up-too-late euphoria.

You'd think they'd be tired with all that preceded this moment:

Chasing the dog around the house.

Getting ready for school.

Chasing the dog around the house.

Did you comb your hair?

Brush your teeth?

Wash your face?

Running after the bus.

School ….

More school …

Did I mention school?

Not to mention getting home from school.

Measuring the garden we planted yesterday to see if it grew any.

Rummaging through the kitchen for food.

Chasing the dog around the house.

Dance class.

Chasing other dance students around the studio.

Complaining about dinner – and how you hate vegetable-chicken-meatloaf-steak-spaghetti-tacos – and why can't we just eat from the four REAL food groups: Ice cream, candy, cookies and pie?

Chasing the dog around the house.

Homework.

Keeping the dog from eating your homework.

Bath time.

Did you comb your hair?

Brush your teeth?

Wash your face?

Books.

Chasing the dog around your …

Oh look, it's bed time.

It's bedtime? Already? No fair!

Even after the last page is turned, hugs are hugged, kisses kissed and the lights snapped off they are not ready to sleep.

Each night it seems their routine becomes more of an improvisation.

On this night, Ittybit calls the dog. The Champ shoos the dog away. Ittybit calls her again, peeling back the blanket to make room. Champ throws one of Ittybit's toys so she will give chase. And so it goes for a while: Up. … Down … Up. … Down. Each time the dog scrabbles across the bed, rustling the covers as she launches and hitting the floor with a thud as she's dismissed. Her collar jewelry jingling no matter which direction she's heading.

Their voices, low at first, build a wall of noise that imprisons my thoughts.

“Be quiet! I can't hear myself think,” I yell, feeling the sting of my own irony slapping me in the face. It's TIME for BED!!!

No more dispute. Only admonished silence followed by the gradual overtaking of sleep.

The dog is the only one still stirring.

I hear her nails clicking across the floor. The lapping of water. And the groaning thud that I've come to expect before she finally settles.

She's not tired either, though she's give up her plaintive, daytime bark and settles into her nighttime chatty banter, which clearly emphasizes her displeasure that her people aren't polyphasic sleepers, too. Soon she falls silent.

I start to relax in this moment of reprieve.

Motherhood, off-duty but on-call.

I don't want to make a move until little bodies settle and I hear the deepening of breath.

Instead I hear the unmistakable sound of teeth shredding what I can only presume is a toy.

Dogs!

I don't know for sure, you see, because I'm trying to stay off the clock, which I can manage if I just ignore the sounds coming from across the hall.

Good grief

It was quiet, as it usually is this time of day. Mid-morning on Saturday can be surprisingly slow at the library.

The Champ clamors into the children's reading room, headed straight for the computer. He is pleased to find it ready and waiting for him. In no time he is scrolling through the programs, looking for his favorite: an anatomy game where you can place organs inside a skeleton.

He's already a font of knowledge when it comes to connecting leg bones to the hip bones, and placing the brain is a no-brainer. Even the librarian whistles under her breath when he drags and drops the spleen in the upper left side of the abdomen. “I didn't even know what that was,” she marvels.

His sister thumbs through the stacks of books, looking for just the right one. School has upped the ante. Pictures books aren't enough of a challenge anymore. They're too easy. No danger. She needs to find something with meat and teeth.

She doesn't want my help. The books I suggest lack a certain spark.

I make my way to the well-worn leather chair by the window and take a load off. I put my feet up on the ottoman and just sink in. There's nothing for me to do but wait.

We all know the drill: Eventually the boy will tire of placing innards where they belong and the girl will find a book to end all books. Of course, there's always the possibility that stomachs grumbling for lunch will make short work of such decisions. Only time will tell.

Practice has made me better at waiting.

“Don't rush them,” I remind myself. “There's no place we need to be.”

I watch as she takes a book from the shelf and slips it back. Another. And another.

Before too long she appears before me and hands a yellow hard-cover to me.

My hand floats along its spine, unable to get a firm grasp. The title repels it. It's a book about cancer.

She flips through the pages excitedly. “This is important stuff,” she says with a maturity I always mistake for misunderstanding. “This is stuff I will need to know.”

I take a deep breath … and fall apart.

“That's not for us,” I say. “Put it back. Get something about the solar system. There must be a nice book on black holes or asteroid storms. … Or avoidance. There must be a book on avoidance. How to keep from getting caught in an asteroid storm. Now that would be useful information.”

Truth is, I'd scanned the new books when we'd first walked in the room and noticed the abundance of children's books dedicated to serious diseases and death. I'd averted my eyes.

“We don't need this book,” I begged, hoping that leaving the book where she found it (and performing a complicated ritual based entirely on superstition) instead of bringing it into our house would keep heartbreak from ever stepping over our threshold.

But it wasn't about me, and she knew it.

Talk was all over town.

The primary school principal was recently diagnosed with stage-four lung cancer, and announced to the school-family that she would remain a presence in our children's lives for as long as she was able. She planned on waging a public fight. She was in it to win.

Parents were quietly upset. They want to protect their children from heartbreak. They wanted to have the right to tell their kids their beloved principal had taken a job on a farm, should the unspeakable happen.

I understood that fear even as I tried to renounce it, spinning on my heel three times and throwing salt over my left shoulder (and then my right just in case I'd muddled the old-wives-tales I was trying to wash down with my anxiety).

Not that it helped. Burying one's head in the sand rarely does.

I wanted to pretend we didn't need to do anything, and Ittybit needed to understand if there was anything she could do.

“Hey, what about this stuff you always say about knowledge and power?” Ittybit asks, thrusting the book into my hand.

She was right. And as usual she was using my own words to prove I was wrong.

Words of advice

What would I tell my childhood self?

My awkward pre-teen self?

My newlywed self?

My pregnant self? 

My new mother self?

What would I tell her that would save her even one ounce of pain or regret?

The interwebs has been talking a lot about what sage advice we'd give our youthful selves in the hopes of maybe reducing our mistakes or merely dampening the turmoil they cause us.

Advice that, were we to have really listened, might have made a difference. The goal, I imagine, is to provide a guide for weary, fearful Googlers as they make their way down the path we and generations before us have traveled.

I've thought about this a lot over the years.

Thought about all the things I'd have done differently.

Maturity isn't something you learn exactly. Eventually we understand how to listen to advice that speaks to us, trying our best to ignore advice that wags its finger in our face. But we don't reach our destination until we realize that sometimes the two are interchangeable.

I've loved and loathed so many aspects of each situation I've found myself in that I also find it hard to point to any one of them and lament …

“If somebody had just told me …

“In this precise way …

“So I could understand. 

Life doesn't work that way. It isn't about doing the right thing the first time. It's about finding the right thing for ourselves in our own time.

Maybe we're supposed to have regrets.

One of my most painful regrets as a parent happened in the hospital, after the birth of my daughter, as my newly emptied body floated on a roller coaster of hormones and fear.

She had been with me for nearly 10 months, an active mass of fetal flesh that would change my life forever … and I was afraid to be alone with her. I sent her to the nursery every chance I got. “What if …” became the scariest proposition in my mind.

I'd done all the classes, talked to all the mothers I knew. But experience taught me the most.

Going through it. Waking around the clock. Spit-up. Crying. Dealing with the fear and uncertainty of every decision. Finding a solution after losing count of my failures.

And then having to find another solution when everything changed again.

When my son was born a few years later I was hesitant, too. Late-pregnancy tests showed a medical condition that could cause kidney damage later in life, or even be linked to Down Syndrome.

It was a frightening time filled with feelings that I hadn't done all that I could do. It was a time that I also wondered to myself: "What had I done?"

When he was born healthy but for the wonky kidney, none of it mattered. Only him.

I couldn't let him leave my side. The nurses had to come to find him for weigh-ins and tests. They had to wrestle him from my adoring gaze and serpentine arms. 

So many differences. 

So much guilt.

Nearly five years later I still want to have had a different first experience. I want to have made different choices.

I want to go back and give my daughter all the first-days' love I gave my son.

And there's nothing I could say to myself that would change that desire.

The only thing I can do is move forward and understand that this entire process of living is made up of experiences we'd either rather not have or have had differently.

By constantly looking back, though, don't we just build up a mountain of regret we must overcome?

Sometimes I think we think about what we could have done differently so often, we search for answers so exhaustively, that we forget life is a process built on missteps and failure. We understand ourselves best through experience. We trust ourselves best for having gone through it. We want to spare people something they maybe shouldn’t miss.

Instead of telling my younger self what to do differently, I will whisper to my future self: “Try to relax and enjoy what is now.”

Simulating bravery

Ittybitty Surfer 

The weekend started off as expected. We had checked-in to the indoor water-slide park and in no time we were all getting soaked: the kids were in Splash-water Heaven and we were in Two-Dollars-And-Fifty-Cents For A Coke From The Vending Machine Hell. 

It was our first time, so we weren't as prepared as we should have been, given the amount of time (during two separate phone calls) I waited on hold for the next available customer service representative.

The descriptions of thrilling rides, drenching playgrounds, surf mountains and lazy rivers circled in the background of my thoughts like water down the drain. The images I wanted swimming around in my cranium were of my children, dashing through sprinklers and screaming down water slides; and me looking up from a trashy novel to wave at their exuberant faces from the safety of a pool chair.

“This was going to be great,” I said over and over again, pushing aside any thoughts of having to wear a bathing suit before the sticky, hot summer tipped the scales into the Not Caring What It Looked Like On Me territory.

Who was I trying to kid?

Of course I was going to look horrible in the swim suit. But more importantly, the kids were going to have fun.

What kid doesn't love spending 48 hours immersed in a slightly warm soup stirred by mechanical currents and flavored by hundreds of perfect strangers, many of them sporting fascinating tattoos?

I mean, who doesn't think being propelled backwards through a pitch-dark tube -- their expensive yet almost inedible lunch creeping back toward its entry orifice -- isn't worth the blockbuster-long line.

At every turn is an event that could change the world, or at the very least pave the way to future Olympic glory. Who's to say the next gold medalist in the 4000 meter freestyle wasn't once one of these hyperactive rug rats filling their mouths with over-chlorinated water and attempting to out-distance the automatic sprayer.

Who in their right mind could resist such a feat?

Not my kids, that's for sure. But I am not in my right mind.

Oh Resortland! … I see you as the swirling cesspool of my immune system's despair. You are the petri dish of my discontent. And yet, we soldier on through scraped knees, abraded toes, slipping here, bruising there.

Yet somehow the glaze I've painted over this pre-packaged recreation can't distort the power super-chlorinated water has on the soul.

I learned this lesson as Ittybit waited on line for hours to ride a few waves.

At first it seemed impossible. Each rider got ample time to test their skills. Once they found themselves either barrel-rolled into the crease or wash-cycled back to where they started, they got a second chance before being sent back to the end of the line.

I looked at my watch, rolled my eyes and gave a heavy sigh: This was going to take forever.

But forever soon turned into the luxury of seeing time stand still. Each rider ahead of Ittybit taught me something about perception and perseverance.

The sporty-looking guy was all confidence and bravado until he couldn't steady the board.

His girlfriend, who'd never attempted surfing before, steadied herself easily and nearly made it to standing on her first try.

The boy who wanted to quit when the water washed him back to the start with a sudden and uncontrollable force got back on the board. His brother, who high-fived him as they switched places, followed in his path exactly, both rides.

And their mom smiled all the way through her own two wobbly rides. What a trooper.

My daughter was next.

She hesitated. She required a steadying hand from the attendant, who held on to the board until she was ready to be released into the oncoming waves.

For the minute or so she was able to hold on to her balance she looked like a natural surfer. Seconds later the board skittered from underneath her, a gush of water rolled her backwards and halfway up the ramp. Her second turn was a fast-forward version of the first.

When it was over she rushed toward me wearing the biggest smile I'd ever seen.

She was ready for another go. I just shook my head and smiled. Where did she come by this bravery? Certainly not from me. I felt fear just watching her bide time.

But the more I witnessed, the less I worried about the price of frankfurters or whether I resembled one stuffed into a bathing suit. And the more I hoped some of her bravery would rub off. Someday I'd like to get the nerve up to hurl myself against a wall of water, smiling all the way as my daughter (and virtually everyone in the water park) watches me conquer the waves.

Hand-me-down fakery

All of a sudden things don't seem to fit quite right.

Pants ride high. Shoes are tight. Belly buttons are peeking over waistbands.

All the clothes that were swimming on them last summer, it has become apparent, won't likely float them through another season.

And it's not just clothes.

So many ideas that once seemed set in stone are slowly turning to rubber.

The tooth fairy tripped up, pilfering a bill from my pocketbook that had been marked and duly noted by its newly toothless recipient.

The Easter Bunny doltishly stored his chocolate likenesses in the car, where they were easily detected by those who wouldn't sit still in their booster seats.

“Here's what I think,” ittybit said to the air, turning on heel to face me and choosing her words with the precision of a deft prosecutor as if giving her closing argument: “I think that YOU are the Easter Bunny … and the Tooth Fairy … and quite possibly Santa Claus. What do you have to say for yourself?”

I bristled under the glare of her accusatory spotlight. All of a sudden all that had once glittered in manufactured magic was exposed as a lie made of sinister intent.

Her eyes were asking: “What could you have gained from lying to a child.”

And at that moment I had to wonder the same.

What would have been the harm in quietly acknowledging milestones without introducing imaginary beings who possess gossamer wings, floppy ears or eight tiny reindeer?

“SHHHHHHHHHHHH,” I hiss. “Your brother can hear us. … Do you really want the truth?”

She nods her head, she's ready. It's time.

Time for the speech I've practiced in my head since the moment I started planting phony evidence (at least thrice-yearly) of mythical beings sneaking around our house as we sleep.

“Technically it's true that your father and I have done much of the shopping and placement of holiday gifts. And, essentially, it's true that much of what you can't see requires varying amounts of faith and, now, skepticism.

But there comes a time when the simple answer … perhaps even the least satisfying answer … is the answer that you can't ignore.

“And yet as you come to accept this disappointment, you also have to come to terms with the idea that the truth isn't really that simple, either.

“This magic wasn't sculpted out of lies and wishful thinking. It was crafted from all the things we try to cultivate in ourselves: generosity, feeling special in the world and that the unimaginable is possible.”

“The Easter Bunny may not be a furry,bow-tied basket delivery animal in the you-might-actually-get-a-glimpse-of-him-on-the-lawn-one-fine-Easter-morning sense, but that doesn't mean the imagination behind such an idea is valueless.

“It's not a lie … it's a parable. It's not history it's poetry.”

My words had come tumbling out in her direction willy-nilly like Super Balls. I could see in her expression that some of them were sailing right over her head as others were breaking her heart.

Nevertheless, her eyes were dry and placid. I wasn't telling her anything she hadn't already figured out on her own.

But the question that remains has to do with how to proceed.

The Champ grabs the not-so-cleverly-hidden chocolate bunny and holds it up. “What is this doing here?” he wonders. “Why would the Easter Bunny put chocolate in my mom's car?”

Before I could open my mouth to throw a bunch of wordy Super Balls his way, she intervened.

“The bunny is just getting old and senile. Probably hid it here last year and forgot all about it. I wouldn't eat that if I were you.”

He smiles a devilish grin and unwraps a section of milk chocolate ear. She rolls her eyes as he bites down.

She' may have outgrown these particular clothes, but she can admit they are still a pretty good fit for her brother.

Scientific discoveries

“I've been waiting for this for nine years,” says The Champ, whom last I checked, had yet to celebrate his fifth year on Earth.

Details.

He'd wrestled the box from my kung fu grip and was trying to pry it open with a plastic butter knife he'd gotten from the kitchen.

For the bargain price of $29.99 the science kit came complete with beakers, test tubes, safety goggles, magnifying glass, a tweezer, an eyedropper, and instructions for simple experiments we could have Googled for free.

Not that I mind paying a premium to excite imagination on occasion. I just don't relish the idea of a mess.

But I knew with his speed and determination it would be a matter of minutes before he'd torn into the slick cardboard box and littered the living room with an array of curious new plastic chew toys for the dog.

I also knew if that happened the potential for tears would be 100 percent since the potential for replacement stood at 0 percent. The only conclusion I could draw was that it would be impossible to predict when the tears would end given the range. I had to act quickly in order to shape the research.

“WAIT! There are some ground rules,” I yelled, slipping the box from his eager hands and holding it above my head as he jumped all around me as if on springs.

In order to be a real scientist, you must first establish a laboratory and keep it free of contaminates.”

“Good idea! What's a contaminant?”

“Debris or dirt that could damage your findings.”

“But what if I'm doing my speriments on dirt?”

“Then you'll have to have your laboratory outside, I just vacuumed.”

His sister just stared at me with her glancing look of disapproval. “You said that his lab should be free of contaminants ...”

“I know what I said. But what I mean is that I want to keep scientific evidence from getting splattered on the walls or ground into the couch.”

“Oh ….” she rolls her eyes in an inaudible assumption that I have no hope on that front.

As usual, she is right.

The phone rings, and within minutes Ittybit has proof of her theory. I leave the room to answer and he collects a box of food coloring and a gallon of water, bespattering a bit of each as he makes his way into his “cleanroom.”

I will feign surprise as I reconstruct the scene.

Why would he have any interest in cleaning pennies with lemon juice, baking soda and vinegar? He tosses the card. BUGS? He's seen bugs already and he'd prefer not to get a load of them under the magnifying glass. They look scarier up close and 10X their original size.

But mixing magical potions with food color, compost and pencil shavings? That sounds like very important work for a some-day-to-be nine-year-old.

He was ready for me when I returned from my minutes-long phone call.

“STOP! GET OUT OF MY LABORATORY!!!”

The declaration told me two things I could have easily guessed a week ago as I was plugging the numbers of my credit card into a secure web portal: He was working on his reputation as mad scientist; and no amount of vacuuming would salvage the cleanroom.

“Let's try that again, buddy … scientists are nicer to their mothers.”

“Sorry, Mom. Could you PLEASE leave? I have some sperimenting to do.”

Walking on eggs

“I should have known by the barrier that this was going to end badly. The tape keeping the throng of sugar-crazed toddlers at bay read 'CRIME SCENE DO NOT CROSS.' Parents all around us were laying out strategies for their kids so complex I expected at any moment a mom or dad would pull a chalkboard out of a stroller and diagram the game plans with arrows, Xs and Os. 

“This was an egg hunt of epic proportions, and we were out of our league.”

That is how I remember the first town-sponsored egg hunt my daughter ever attended. It was chaotic and eerily similar to the event Colorado Springs recently cancelled because of some bad eggs – parents. Ours had all the earmarks: anxious parents, hundreds of kids, thousands of eggs in plain sight and a sufficient amount of technical glitches to cause pockets of confusion throughout the crowd.

It's enough to make you think the seed for the “The Hunger Games” were planted on a field littered with plastic eggs.

Oh, I jest.

Others don't, apparently.

Where I see tiny gladiators fighting house cats for balls of fluff, they see helicopter parents ruining a time-tested rite of passage.

And while some parenting experts worry the modern Easter Bunny won't provide the necessary hard-knock reminder that life isn't fair . … I just want to go home, fill plastic eggs with Cheerios and hide them under the shrubs.

Stupid, fluffy Easter Bunny. Making people think this Easter Egg hunting thing is just a bit of sweetness, not a Battle Royale where two-year-olds must learn they don't always get a happy ending … or an egg.

It's survival of the fittest.

But parents stepping in seems to cross a line. We all know how that usually ends. It's not as if parents haven't been making Little League games and Girl Scout meetings unbearable for generations.

Mob mentality can make the best of intentions come undone.

Our own Egg Hunt education started uneventfully enough: getting to the event early, finding where we were supposed to stand and waiting patiently for further instructions. As we stood behind the tape, holding our girl back from snitching an egg before it was time, a man with a megaphone informed us they would be starting with the youngest group soon. Then he asked for parents who would volunteer to guard the borders so there would be eggs enough for the next horde of hunters.

A quick game of Rock, Paper, Scissor dictated I would volunteer to go into the field of battle. My husband thought it would entice our daughter to run out to me, picking up eggs as she skipped along, no doubt, to an internal soundtrack of “Ode to Joy.”

My inner mother was screaming for me to tell him she would need help not just incentive. But I didn't say anything. We didn't want to cross the line. So instead I watched in mini-horror as the signal was thrown and hundreds of tots broke rank. Our daughter was frozen. She clung tightly to her father's stain-proof pants, afraid to join the fray.

In seconds all the eggs were gone. More nimble arms had swept away all the colored orbs. In the melee I had forgotten my job and let dozens of kids into the next territory. By all accounts it was a dismal failure.

When it was over our daughter realized her basket was empty, and began to cry. Talk about heartbreaking. A toddler at an Easter Egg hunt without a single egg. Even more heartbreaking was, as the crowd thinned out, no one seemed to notice the weeping tot and her useless parents.

We stood there feeling helpless and wondering why we hadn't just brought some eggs to plant in case of such an emergency. A neighbor came over to see about the tears. Her daughter had found four eggs, two of which she happily shared with our daughter.

It wasn't the end of the world after all. On the contrary, it was the start of a lovely friendship and the impetus for planning to survive the next year's hunt if, by some tragic twist of fate, the Easter Bunny didn't see fit to cancel.

It was either that or pray for rain.

Not safe, not sorry

I was looking down, worried that my son would trip on the descending escalator. He's never had even a hint of trouble, but it doesn't stop me from holding my breath every time we approach the splintering stairs.

It's a momentary worry.

My husband shot me a narrow-eyed look and tilted his head in the direction of forward. I took the hint and followed his withering gaze.

“I'd rather have a gun in my hand than a cop on the phone” read the broad back of the man in front of us.

Heavy sigh.

I wondered if he'd read the news stories about Trayvon Martin, the unarmed Florida teen gunned down in a gated community by a volunteer of the Neighborhood Watch. I supposed he'd hadn't.

The shooting happened weeks ago, and only now it seemed the nation was waking up to the tragedy.

Perhaps the news wouldn't matter to Mister Gun-in-Hand. His definition of justice I'd wager is entirely different than mine. In his eyes, I'd reckon, criminals have too many rights.

I'd have to admit in this case I'm in agreement.

The shooter, George Zimmerman, by news accounts, was a student of criminal justice and an obsessive volunteer on the Neighborhood Watch. In the last year he'd called authorities 46 times to report suspicious incidents. He wanted to be a cop.

After he called 911 on Feb. 26 to report a suspicious black teen wearing a hoodie, police saw no reason to dispute his version of the events that lead up to Martin's shooting death that evening.

Zimmerman wasn't charged.

Experts listening to the 911 tapes pointed out a hallmark sign that Zimmerman may have been intoxicated – slurred speech – was apparent to them, but police hadn't tested his blood alcohol level, something that is routine in all homicides.

According to ABC News, police even corrected a witness who said she'd heard the teen yell for help. Police told her it was Zimmerman who yelled. That's what he told them.

They took Zimmerman at his word that he had no criminal history, though it turned out he was charged with battery against an officer and resisting arrest in 2005. That charge was later expunged, allowing him to legally possesses a weapon.

Even when these and other discrepancies came to light, the shooter wasn't arrested.

While pressure mounted to charge Zimmerman and let a court decide what happened based on evidence, Federal investigators warned that the laws of Florida could likely protect the shooter. The law in question allows citizens to protect themselves with deadly force anywhere they happen to be.

Known as Castle Doctrines for residences and Stand Your Ground laws outside of one's home, it means those who feel threatened are legally allowed to protect themselves from any force with deadly force. They don't have to retreat.

But are they allowed to pursue?

Should average citizens who suspect criminal intent -- who actually look for it -- be allowed to stalk, corner, confront and then shoot those individuals they distrust?

What if they're wrong? What if they had a grudge?

No one will ever really know. Not unless thousands of people, from all corners of the country, stand up and demand it.

Shoot first, don't bother sorting it out later.

Justifiable homicide without justification. Not safe, not sorry.

The more I think about it the less I'm sure the crime itself was as racially motivated as the laws that allowed it to play out the way it did. Laws that just perpetuate the deplorable divide.

I think about how this ride will end just as the escalator reaches the ground floor.

The stairs before us straighten and slide under the floor. My son looks at me with his devilish smile and hops off at the last moment.

“I'm Safe!” he hollers.

But I can't help thinking we're still not on solid ground.

The man in front of us had already dismounted, his message of vigilantism disappearing into a crowd.

How can there be safety looking down the barrel of a gun? Even one on a t-shirt.

Practicing for the apocalypse

“Just one more chapter,” she pleaded as I shut the book with a snap. But it was late. And the story was a little frightening ... to me.

True stories of our pioneer days always make me a little antsy.

Can you imagine having to survive the harsh winter without electricity or all-night supermarkets? To grow your own food? Build your own house? Make your own clothes? Butcher your own meat?

Whenever tales of human perseverance trickle into my consciousness I can't help but transport myself into the storyline, and stand stock still in its glow, my eyes fixed like a deer in the headlights.

Should the economy implode and we were to start from scratch … I would surely perish. Page after page tells me this truth is self evident.

Laura Ingalls Wilder's “Little House in the Big Woods” might as well have been Cormac MacCarthy's “The Road.”

Most people see herbs on the windowsills, small kitchen gardens and backyard chickens as pleasant little hobbies from a bygone era. A link to simpler times. Something to connect us to the natural world.

But … if you've ever considered how you'd survive should the modern conveniences you've come to know and love suddenly vanished off the face of the Earth and thought: “maybe I should start a small garden,” you'd be thinking like me.

Only trouble is … I can't even consistently grow weeds.

This troubling lack of ability is not lost on my children, who are vocal in their concern about my potential to take a wrong turn on a country drive and the natural implication that the threat of starvation would loom large.

Without boxes and microwaves and simple directions we would surely expire. Man can not live by the crumbs in the crevices of the upholstery alone.

Which is why I've harbored the notion that our true salvation was in my choice of mates: I married a very capable man whose natural tendencies put him squarely in the classification known as hoarder.

If we can't grow a tomato, he could probably barter for one. There must be someone who grows eggplant who needs a rusty tool from the 1950s or salvaged building materials.

We just have to have faith.

Of course when you put it that way, the idea that you maybe should try and correct past mistakes seems at least worth a bit of the old college try.

After all … how hard can it be to, say, make bread?

I may not have a bread machine, but I have a Kitchen-Aid and enough flour to make homemade clay for a small army of primary school sculptors. Five ingredients is all a person needs, right? Flour, water, sugar, salt and yeast.
Oh. … Yeast.

That living organism that comes dry to the pack.

Warm water is all it takes to revive it.

Except when I'm at the mixing bowl.

“I don't understand … your dough didn't rise? Did you proof the yeast?”

Proof? As in let sit for a few minutes to double in size? Yes, I did that. The only thing I proved in the process was that I can kill yeast with the best of them. Too cold? Too hot? Brick loaves.

“It's really not as hard as all that,” they all said. And truth be told, they were right. Pretending I was going to use the water for a toddler bath time was helpful. Sticking my elbow in the measuring cup proved a little awkward at first, but effective.

Following directions didn't even seem all that cumbersome -- bread gets more naps than my kids: Knead, rest, knead, rest, shape, rest bake.

And when that first loaf came out of the oven, crusty and golden brown, I saw a future I barely thought possible and one that I quickly tried to harness.

Before it even had a chance to cool, I sent the kids to the neighbors' bearing steaming baguettes and crusty loaves.

By week's end, the investment had paid off in a dozen cookies, a hot casserole of eggplant Parmesan and the strength to finish reading “Little House” without feeling alone in the big woods.

Replacement parts

I think we've met.

We've definitely seen each other's children.

Walking up and down the narrow corridor, mine holds his chin and looks concerned. Toy selection is never an easy task for a child, even when permission has been granted in advance of the mission.

It takes time.

It also takes a combination of talent, strategy and foresight that eludes most adults. There's an infinite number of calculations that must be made -- such as the sum of all cool, moving parts divided by the number of removable attachments, which all might be reduced to shrapnel by the invasion of sharp puppy teeth -- and the window overlooking plaything math is closing.

In a few moments his mother (that's me) will create a spectacle by turning into a toddler.

Oh, yes, of this I am guilty.

He will stroll the aisle, stopping from time to time to look at various boxes and make a few comments to himself before retracing his steps. Stroll. Study. Stroll. Each pass is punctuated by indecision.

In a few minutes he'll zero in on LEGO brand building bricks and will narrow his search to a few shelves. The process isn't over by a long shot, but invariably as he's squinting his eyes at the inventory I will be standing by the shopping cart, slowly going boneless.

“Have you made up your mind?” I ask, sounding sweet and motherly at first. Aware that we are not alone. Then slowly everything around you melts away until it's just you and an cavalcade of toys threatening your grip sanity.

He will maintain silence. He's in the zone. I will become more frantic. I am on the edge.

Will it be the 156-piece ninja fan-wing plane or the 98-piece Superheros set? He knows the size limits if not the price prohibits.

“Have you made up your mind? We have to get going now.”

He's still silent and focused as I ask the same question for the 156th, time, hoping for a different answer. I'm losing composure.

I imagine myself to be any man who has ever accompanied me to a women's clothing store. I feel a never-before-felt compassion remembering their hang-dog looks or their bull-in-china-shop discomfort.

I empathize with the desire to sneak away or to just lay on the ground and pout.

“Please just pick one. I. Want. To. Go. Hoooooooooooooome. I'm soooooooo tiiiiired.”

By the time he committed to one of the boxes he's been juggling, he'll have to mop me up off the floor, where I will have melted into a sticky puddle from all the pleading and begging for mercy on my poor, tired soul.

You've felt this way, too. I know because our eyes have met midfield, just as our kids were charting the zone of battle. I saw the lines of frustration cross your face and your eyes glaze over. It was like looking in a mirror.

I can't help but think of you going home to build a beautifully intricate spy plane with the help of an indecisive shopper, a wordless instruction manual and, perhaps, even a dog that eats LEGOs.

That's when I realized we're destined to see each other again, probably even here, looking for replacement parts.

Edjumuckation

The letter came in the mail addressed to “The Parents of The Champ.”

He's turning five this year, and as such he will be required to attend a school of our choosing.

Unless. … The district decides it can no longer afford to offer kindergarten.

Of course the missive didn't put it quite that way. The form letter, sealed in an overstuffed envelope with a glittery smiley-faced sticker, was on top of a ream of festively-colored papers explaining exactly what acrobatics we'd have to perform in order to get him registered.

But it was the wording in the first paragraph … “As it stands currently, we offer a full-day Kindergarten …” that got my attention.

“As it stands currently,” is actually code for “But when you put your adorable son on the bus at 8 a.m. in September, expect to see him return for the day at lunch-time.”

But it seemed worse.

I read in the newspaper that the district had put the nuclear option – getting rid of Kindergarten completely – on the table for a potential savings of $600,000.

“That's the scare tactic,” my husband said, in his most authoritatively hopeful voice.

“Of course. It has to be,” I thought to myself. Much the same way the panel discussed going to half-day kindergarten and a one-bell system of busing during last year's board meetings. Few supported that kind of crazy talk.

Closing two elementary schools and laying off dozens of teachers seemed harsh enough.

Cutting core programs? Putting kindergarteners on the bus with high schoolers? What is the world coming to? Last year when these ideas were floated it seemed as nutty as telling parents that if they lived within three miles of the school their kids would not qualify for transportation.

Oh, wait. They mentioned that, too.

I suppose they're betting they can cut phys. ed. if the kids walk three miles (or fewer) to school, in the snow, up hill both ways.

“So you're saying NEXT year they'll do away with kindergarten, move to lecture-hall style classes and have kids walking home along the main truck route … without sidewalks? Or … maybe we can get rid of school and have children learn from home by punching random words into Google.”

He didn't laugh. Neither did I.

With so many tech companies clammoring for contracts it's only a matter of time.

It's so easy to say how different things are now as opposed to when we were children.

But sometimes I wonder if it's fair to wag our fingers at parents … or teachers … and blame them entirely for “The Kids Today.”

Society is shaped by the politicians, too. Politicians who are saying the idea that all people should have the opportunity to go to college is nothing more than snobbery.

Snobbery.

They are waging wars without taxes. They are giving corporations personhood. They are gutting protections so people can build vast empires on bubbles.

Why aren't we looking at them and rubbing their noses in their policy-making messes?

When New York City released its internal rankings of 18,000 public school teachers based on their students' test scores, the response seemed appropriately if not surprisingly subdued.

In an age when we follow such things as follower numbers, how many people Liked us and Klout scores, it should come as no surprise that we are metric centric.

But Test scores will never be able to tell the whole story. A test is merely a tool … one of many that should go into to the instructive process.

It certainly seems that What's Wrong With The American Educational System will not be fixed by vilifying teachers, denigrating parents and the expectation that awareness of data will solve the problems we have in educating the next generation.

It won't be fixed by weakening teachers' unions or breaking them all together. It won't be fixed by cutting funds and increasing class sizes. It certainly won't be fixed by slashing early education programs because we refuse to raise taxes.

There was a time when this country valued education. We valued it so much that we made it a requirement.

And now with tax caps and austerity budgets, larger class sizes, massive cuts to early education and specialized programing … we are taking away the very things that we know contribute to educational success.

In fact, by denigrating education we are taking away the very thing that has proven to breed success.

But that's where we're going.

And it will be up hill … both ways.