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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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Posted December 25, 2007
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Ever wonder what Catherine sounds like? Listen to her read this blog entry.

What happens is that a plague of locusts descends on our house, a blizzard ices over our very hearts, a tornado crashes through and whirls away all our earthly happiness because someone has been vaguely unkind! I know. Can you believe it? A human child acting human?

Michael and I have cozied up with Birdy in the children's bed to read Stuart Little, and when Ben skips into the room to join us, Birdy says gleefully, "Oh, I'm sorry, Bennie -- there's no room in the bed for you!" What you can't hear, reading that sentence on the page, is the way the word "sorry" is festooned with balloons and streamers: regret reborn as the Good Humor truck.

"Birdy!" I say, sharp as the very knitting needle of righteousness that I suddenly am. "That is so unkind!" "Sorry," Birdy says, and now the word has contracted into the World's Smallest Living Confederate Utterance, so tiny that there is no font tiny enough to convey it -- as if an ant has whispered its apology to an amoeba's turned back.

"Sorry, Birdy," I tease. "Now there's no room for you!" And even as I'm hearing my words sound more unkind than I intended, even as Ben, my wise and compassionate 8-year-old is humbling me with his warning ("Mama, two wrongs don't make a right."), even as I'm feeling the awful, electric current of power surge through me, Birdy's face is falling. Her chin and mouth crumple inwards as if they have been built over a fault line, and she sobs a terrible, wet sob, her open lips strung together with saliva and misery.

"Oh, honey," I say. "I'm sorry. That really wasn't such a big deal. I shouldn't have spoken so sharply to you. I think I'm in a grumpy mood." "Why?" Ben asks. "Why are you in a grumpy mood?" And while Birdy shudders and snuffles against me, I say words like "work" and "tired" and hear myself sounding like a caricature of a grown-up -- Andy Capp hoping he won't tumble drunkenly into the canal before getting a chance to humiliate his wife about the burnt meat pies. The children must dread adulthood.

But it's also true that Birdy's graciousness is -- how to put this? -- like a crashed hard drive. Usually she's enthusiastic and polite, but in the past few days she hasn't been. You don't even get the start-up ding, the sound of the fans whirring. Which would be okay, if I weren't Division Chief of the Manners Gestapo. At my work today, for instance, someone at the computer center had kindly gotten down a box of toys for her to play with, and she said -- again, with the small font here -- "nks." "I'm not sure he heard you," I whispered coachishly, and she said it again, out the back of her skull -- "nk you." It's the gratitude form of pushing an old person out on an iceberg. I shrugged, embarrassed, and thanked him myself.

What I want is for the children to perform like trained monkeys, only I know better, so I don't want to see evidence of the training -- just the seamless trainedness that makes it feel as though graciousness exhales naturally from their very pores. And they're good kids: generally kind, generally appreciative. But we go through stretches like this where we need to work on it. I made a rule, for instance, that "Thanks" is an appropriate response for "I like your drawing of a demented beaver," "Here, let me help untangle you from your scarf," and such niceties as the passing of the salt shaker or the refilling of a milk glass. An actual gift requires a full "Thank you" and also -- the tricky part -- looking right at the person's face when you say it. Even if you are practicing to be a ventriloquist, it is not acceptable for gratitude to appear to emanate from your hair, your elbow, or the backs of your knees.

I'm strict, I know.

After a classic incident at Whole Foods -- after being given their "Kids' Club" granola bars, both children tossed a "thanks" over their shoulder like it was salt for luck -- I talked to them seriously in the car. We discussed my expectation that they remember "please" and "thank you" without whispered reminders, and my feeling that if we couldn't get back in the habit, maybe we should institute a "no second chances" rule. And just talking about it rendered it obsolete: The kids booted themselves back up, and we never needed to.

But I'm thinking about myself now -- wondering what it would be like if the same rule applied to me. How would I act, for instance, if I never got a chance to apologize? I am growing up alongside my children. Or trying to.

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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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