Dalai Mama Dishes

by Catherine Newman

Catherine Newman cooks for the family

Dalai Mama Dishes

Catherine Newman cooks for the family

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Buckets of Rain

Posted July 08, 2008
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Ben and Birdy

"Cheese lightning?" Birdy asks from the back of the car, and I laugh. "No, honey. Heat lightning." She's silent for a couple of seconds, then says, "Wait - what?"

It's hot again, and the sky is flashing and silent, though in another couple of minutes rain will come pouring out of the sky all at once, like the world has been turned upside down and the oceans are above us and suddenly remembering about gravity. We'll race screaming from the car, race screaming through the house, closing windows, and then everyone will get their hair rubbed with a towel, like we're wet dogs. When it lets up a tiny bit, Birdy will snap up her raincoat, humming quietly, and let herself out the back door so she can swing her crazy-soggy self through the rain, pumping her happy, wet legs.

Swing in the rain and you get wet. Some of life's lessons are self-evident, others easily taught, others not so much. Like the one we've been working on lately, the one that seems tautologically apparent but turns out to be oddly elusive: The problem with being annoying is that you end up annoying people. Obviously. I mean, duh. And yet.

For example, Ben might like to comb my hair with a paperclip, and even though I'll say, "Ben, I hate that - I feel like you're going to poke my eye out," he just laughs and says, annoyingly, "Comb, comb, comb," dragging the bent wire through my tangles, like, a quarter inch from my eyeball. "Comb, comb, comb," he laughs, and then, when I say sharply, "Ben!" he seems genuinely surprised: his eyes go wide, and he puts his hand down like he's been slapped. "Honey," I say, and he says, "I know. Drive people crazy and you drive them crazy." "I always picture crazy driving!" Birdy pipes in. "Like the steering wheel, the brakes, lights flashing!" That might be helpful.

Ben wanders in even while I'm writing this, and I say, "Give me an example of how you do annoying things even though you know they're annoying." And he, my funny, charmingly ironic child, says, "You mean, like how you pinch our booties even though we scream and say no?" And I am caught. Why do we do it? To combat boredom? Or is it the same pleasure as friction - the rubbing hard enough against someone that you can be positively, absolutely sure they're right there? Is it for the attention, even the attention of a person rolling their eyes or speaking sharply or, in the case of Birdy, the attention of a person bursting into aggravated tears? Like when Ben switches the lids on the pretend food so that the tin of peas and carrots looks like the tin of gummy fruits, and when Birdy says, "Wait, Ben, these aren't peas and carrots," Ben says, "Yes they are, Birdy! Look. It says peas and carrots so they're peas and carrots!" Peas and carrots, it says peas and carrots! Until Birdy practically turns inside out with frustration. "Ben," I call in and he says, almost before I've uttered the one syllable, "I know, Mama. Birdy, I'm sorry."

I don't like Birdy pressing her dirty socks into my face, but she does it. I don't like her calling me "Catherine," but she mumbles it sotto voce, right where I can hear her. "My Mama's name is Catherine," she singsongs almost quietly. "But she doesn't like me to say Catherine. Catherine Catherine Catherine." The children sound like brats, I realize, and they're not. Mostly they're funny and playful, and I love jokes that push right up against the edge of something. But I'm trying to understand more about the pushing it right off and over.

But it's still raining. It's pouring. Ben juts his lower lip out and says, in his sad-animal voice, "I hope the poor wormies don't drown out there!" And then says, in his regular voice with spilling eyes, "I was kind of kidding, but then I actually made myself feel sad!" A minute later he adds, "The problem with hurting your own feelings is that you end up hurting your own feelings." And those just might be words to live by.

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Buckets of Rain

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About Catherine Newman

Catherine Newman is the author of the memoir, Waiting for Birdy: A Year of Frantic Tedium, Neurotic Angst, and the Wild Magic of Growing a Family, available online and in bookstores nationwide.

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