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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Unconditional

Posted October 02, 2007
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Ever wonder what Catherine sounds like? Listen to her read this blog entry.

Sun floods our bedroom, lighting up our white sheets, the dust in the air, the rich brown of the children's hair. It's a school morning and it's freezing, and they're huddled against me for warmth and stalling. Nobody wants to get up. And then, of course, there's the urgent matter of our dental hygienist that really needs figuring out before the day can start. "You said he was mean," Ben says, and his voice is tight. Ben is one of those people who believes that mean should be saved for such extreme personalities as Cruella de Ville, say, or Attila the Hun. I respect his hesitation. "Oh, I didn't mean mean-mean," I say, in inadvertant triplicate. "I meant naughty-mean. Besides," I add, "he's Romanian, so that kind of teasing is part of his culture." Ah, stereotypes. So offensive! So constraining! Now our kids can grow up to say things like, Oh, you're German! You must be very boisterous in your consumption of marzipan potatoes! Not like those shy Icelandic reindeer-eaters. What is wrong with me? "Grandpa's family is from near there," I add, by way of lame explanation. "It's kind of a sparky way that people talk to each other, that kind of teasing."

A kind of flirting I don't add. "You floss ivry day?" the hygienist always asks me with his patented style of exaggerated dental incredulity. "I don't zink so. You use illictric toothbrush? No? I can tell not." "I don't like to feel like we're not doing a good job with your teeth," I explain to Ben now. "But he's just trying to keep his job from being boring. And I actually like that kind of naughtiness." "Really?" Ben asks, and the vibe in the room shifts; a whiff of something comes off him -- the kind of whiff of something you might sense at NASCAR. Or the WWF. "Well, would you like it if I took a hammer and smashed your computer?" He cackles. It's so new, Ben's imaginary forays into aggression, that all I can think to do is shrug and say, "No." "Well, what if I robbed a bank and took all the money and used it to buy a sword and came home and ..." -- I have a bad matricidal kind of feeling here but it turns out to be only -- "... cut all our window panes?" "Oh you'd be in such big trouble!" I cry, and tickle his ribs for emphasis. "Mama, really," he says. "What if I did?"

I think of that book we read when the kids were younger, a board version of Mama, Do You Love Me? about a native Alaskan girl pushing against the limits of her mother's love. "What if I put salmon in your parka?" "Then I would be very angry, but I would still love you." Isn't it amazing how often life cycles back to this basic reassurance? "What if I ...?" our kids ask in a million ways, and in a million ways we say back to them, "I would be angry, sad, confused, or revolted but I would still love you." ("What if I was just a torso on a skateboard and you had to pull me around behind you everywhere and all I did was complain?" Michael once asked me, because grownups are no different. Also because we were somewhat obsessed with the Caterpillar Man in the old movie Freaks. I pictured knitting Michael a woolen body stocking while he rolled cigarettes with his lips, and I said, "I would still love you.")

"I would be angry," I say now to Ben, "and I would hate that you did that. But I would still love you." Then I add, "But honey? That's not really naughty. That's more like criminal." Birdy, not atypically, arrives late and exuberantly to the conversational party: "What if I took a hammer and smashed the Kleenex box? What if I did? What if I was so naughty that I SMASHED THE KLEENEX BOX?" Ben is aghast. "Well, Birdy? Kleenex cost, like, 5 dollars. We can't just buy new boxes because you felt like smashing them. Mama and Daddy don't have, like, all the money in the world to pay for new Kleenex because of you." "Um, honey?" I say. "Weren't you the one who was going to smash my computer?" Ben chuckles. "I wasn't really going to," he says, and Birdy says, "ME EITHER!" Before adding in a low voice, "Unless I really do smash it. The Kleenex box. With a hammer."

And then they are peeling back the covers, they are up, they are leaving me, they are singing "Why are you so poopy?" to the "Frere Jacques" tune of morning bells are ringing. Ding Dang Dong.

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Unconditional

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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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