Friday Night Date

Me, eight-year-old, root beer, wine, mac-n-cheese with complimentary peas, kimchee cauliflower, popcorn, and the Duke.

Right about perfect.

Long-Haired Hippie People

Since we've moved back to San Diego, my son has experienced a significant number of people's mistaking him for a girl. Granted, he does have beautiful long blond hair that any girl--nay woman--would kill for, but it seems odd that we've never encountered this
phenomenon before in Monterey. Did his hair hit a critical length that screams feminine despite his Star Wars shirts and dirty jeans? I wonder if people look at him and think what I think about Shiloh Pitt: "that poor little girl whose parents force her to wear boys' clothes."

I will miss this so much when he decides to cut it.

I love my son's long hair. I think it fits his vibrant personality. I think it makes him so much more him. When we cut his hair (and yes, we do cut it), he loses a teeny tiny bit of that devilish spark that I love so much. A small part of the twinkle goes out of his eye.
But despite my obvious bias, he also has another influential adult in his life who is not in love with long hair: his father. And together, my husband and I decided that my son gets to decide how he wants his hair. Sometimes he likes it shaved close like Daddy. Sometimes he gets a little boy cut. Sometimes he grows it out. We always remain open to when he wants to change his hair, saving our "Do What We Want Because We Are Your Parents" card for something a bit more important--like that neck tattoo.

Still, I like to reiterate to my son from time to time that he does have the option to cut his hair. Especially because I am so vocal on loving it long and didn't want him to think he should keep it long even if he was uncomfortable about being thought of as a girl. So, after about the 47th "oh your little girl is so cute" comment, I asked him if he wanted to cut his hair and if he was bothered by people's mistaking him for a little girl.

"No," he said, sounding almost puzzled. "I know that I'm a boy. I don't care what they say."

"Besides," he continued. "I want to grow it out to here," playing his hand on his lower back, "so that I can cut it to celebrate my century."

"Your century?" Had he taken some weird Nazarite vow to never cut his hair until he was 100 years old? Even I was a little put off by hair grown out that long.

"Yeah, you know, when I turn ten."

"Oh, your decade."

"Yes, my decade. I'm going to grow it out until my decade and then it'll be long enough to donate."

And this was the point that I shut my mouth. At my son's age, if I had been mistaken for the opposite sex, I would have been devastated. Here my kid is intentionally growing out his hair so that he can donate it to some other kid who doesn't have any.

I'll admit I was a little bit bummed.

Despite my big talk of its being his decision, I thought he was growing it long because I liked it.

Quality Time

Small son goes into the bathroom. He's there a suspicious amount of time. I wander in to see him sitting on the pot with the empty dispenser of Kandoo in his hands. He's staring intently at the open lid. I assess the situation and assume

a) (correctly) he's out of wipes
b) (incorrectly) that he needs more and wants me to finish wiping him.

He's really too old for that, and we both know it. But sometimes the mom thing of a toddler still kicks in and I just act. Often, much to his and my embarrassment.

All business, I grab a refill of Kandoo, take the Kandoo dispenser out of his hands, bend him over, and do a quick and unnecessary wipe.

"MOM!!!" He shrieks. "You just interrupted my Internet browsing! You took away my computer and now I lost my web page."

Apparently, he was done with the actual cleaning post poo part and was using his "quality time" on the pot to check his Twitter on his Kandoo laptop.

It's started. Be suspicious of every Tweet from Tinyman from now on.

Bird by Bird

I have entered a very painful time in my relationship with my son. I knew it would happen someday, but I thought I had until he was at least 13 before I was totally annoyed with him and he hated me. Apparently, with the right impetus, the schism can happen when your child is as young as six. And that impetus for us is writing stories together.

It's not like we are sitting down and engaging in fun and free writing where anything is possible and the entire English language is at our service (or not if we don't want it). Rather, every week, he has ten disparate spelling words that he must weave into a coherent narrative. Couple that task with shaky handwriting skills at best and a patchy knowledge of English conventions and you have a definite challenge for any six-year-old.

The challenge for me is not letting him know just how thin my patience gets when we are doing this part of his homework. That's not easy: he's freaking annoying as hell.

Composing a narrative should be easy for him. He can tell stories like no one's business--most beginning with "When I was three"--yet when it comes to actually writing these stories down, he's suddenly pen-tied (oh no, not tongue-tied because even as he whines that he has nothing to say, he manages to keep up a nearly constant patter of talk that in no way uses a single spelling word) and completely unable to just. sit. still.

(Like Moby) I try. I bribe. I yell. I threaten. I look at each spelling word and find connections to our life ("Look honey, 'whale' is one of your words. We live on a bay that is full of whales. Would you like to write about that?" "Nah." "Okay. Here are some pictures of whales on the Internet. Oh look, the blue whale is the biggest animal ever. Even bigger than dinosaurs. Would you like to write about that?" "Nah."). I even (gulp) make connections to his video games ("We can write a story about Sonic and a whale." "Nah, I want to write about Mario and a whale" "[Ecstatic that we are getting somewhere] Okay, let's do that!" "Nah.").

Nothing works. In fact, the more I try to engage his writerly self, the more active his body becomes in a Tourette's-like litany of wiggles and twitches and rolling and pencil tossing and exorcist-like head rotations, searching for any distraction at all ("Mom, why is there a turtle in that picture? Mom, look at that bird out there on the house. Mom, check out how my pencil rolls farther than this cookie."). One second he writes a single letter (poorly) and the next he is doing a three-legged down dog.

Nothing. Works. And then I lose it. I leave the room (instantly he drops to the floor and starts playing with the cat, singing his spelling words instead of writing them down), and I start screaming in my head:
Why doesn't he love writing like I do?
Is he even my son?
He hates salsa too, maybe there was a switch at the hospital.
Why won't he stop moving?
Is he going to be a dumb jock?
I am so just going to give up.
It's not worth it.
Let him be a math nerd.
I don't care.
I won't share my books anymore with him, see how he feels then.
How is his writing process different from mine?

I stop there.

How is his writing process different from mine?

I get ready to write every morning. Then I wander the house, call a friend, write a sentence or two, fold laundry, do dishes, make tea, put on some music, check to see if the chickens have laid any eggs, write another sentence or so, delete it all, dance a little to a really good song, check Twitter, etc . . . I may fake a bit more purpose than holding a pencil in my mouth and barking like a dog, but my writing process isn't really all that different from my son's six-year-old version.

Ultimately, we are both trying to accomplish the same thing: we are seeking order in the colorful, butterfly-winged words that skitter and flit and zoom and swoop constantly in our heads. All our movement and procrastination is an attempt to shake these words into a semblance of form without being overwhelmed by their sheer power--to pin them down in a way that makes sense on the confines of 70% recycled, brown, lined paper.

I loosened up. The story about Mario feeding a singing whale a cube of chopped old and new fish got written. Peace reigned again in our house.

Until next week at least.