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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Daring

Posted September 07, 2007
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Over our bowls of white bean soup tonight, Ben talked happily about the play date he had just returned from, and, in the course of this happy talking, described some of the things that he and his two best friends had been daring each other to do. I love this branching out into the fullness of childhood, love his friends, love that they are entering the era of secrets and mild daring that I once feared Ben might never enter, stuck as he was for years and years to my hip and ribcage. But later, as he was dealing out cards for a quick before-bed game, it occurred to me to lecture him.

"You guys are great -- it's great that you're having so much fun," I began, with the smug magnanimity that comes from one's being an Understanding Parent, not like those other parents who want their children eternally sweeping cinders from the hearth and memorizing flashcards in particle physics. "But I just want to be sure you always remember to do things because you want to, and not because other people are making you feel like you should." "Like shaving your legs?" Ben didn't ask me, because it does not always yet occur to him to point out parental hypocrisies. What Ben actually said -- and he interrupted me to say it -- was "Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. I know. Are these cards shuffled?"

And maybe this is a whisper from the future about the challenge of raising a teenager: the way the blowing off of one's guidance can trigger an almost hormonal need to ratchet up the tone and volume of a lecture. I don't think it helps that Ben's current conversational mode seems to be: Talk to the curtain of hair. We ask that he wear his long hair pulled out of his face for school, but at home it often seems to function as a hirsute soundproofing mechanism. Or a shaggy Berlin Wall. And so I preached on about peer pressure and safety while Ben and his hair rearranged the cards in their hand and said, "Mm hm. I understand. I know. Okay." And so, to mix it up a little, I decided to act like a sullen child for the duration of our card game.

Okay, this was not a decision I made. It's just what happened -- the sighing and the quiet and the chill -- and it is truly the ugliest part of me, this need. What did I want? For Ben to look up and say, "You're so right, Mama. I am illuminated by your wise counsel and only sorry not to have communicated my deep gratitude more thoughtfully." I don't know. Because when I finally said, belaboringly, "I'm annoyed that you weren't really listening to me," and he said, "Sorry. Sorry, Mama. Sorry." I felt like Mommy Dearest playing the scary and weak wizard of Oz.

The parent I want to be floats in and out of my life, and some days it speaks through me, and other days I lunge after it like it's a shaft of sunlight I want to capture. Last night I regaled the kids with a memory of the x-ray glasses I fantasized about ordering from the back of an Archie comic, only then someone else actually got them and there were just painted-on skeletons on the lenses. "I thought I was going to be able to see through people's clothes," I explained, and Ben's face lit up. "I always want to see people naked!" he cried. "I thought that was just me!" And when Michael and I laughed and explained that this was, in fact, everybody -- that kids and grownups alike share this goggle-eyed wonder about bodies and their hidden parts -- Ben was thrilled. It felt like such an easy gift to give him -- under the wrappings and the ribbons, the simple message: "You're perfect just the way you are!" And tonight. I don't know. Tonight it was coal in his stocking. It was "What's wrong with you?" even though those words were never, of course, spoken.

Maybe it's the irony that's killing me: my subtle bullying of him in the course of warning him against bullying. Or maybe I'm just reminded of the power we have as parents -- the power to shore up our children's confidence or, horrifyingly, to erode it.

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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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