Yesterday was Sam’s 19th birthday and we all went out to dinner to celebrate. My girls, Eva and Sophia, were at their dad’s and did not attend, but Paul’s kids, along with Susie, his ex-wife, met up at a wonderful Chinese restaurant in Capitola called Canton’s. I highly recommend it.

It was a pleasant evening. We each had assigned jobs to order various courses, ( mine was appetizers) but desert was the usual fortune cookie. Sam went first to read aloud his fortune, but before he did he said, “I think I got Dad and Carol”s.” (Carol is me, those of you who don’t know.) It said: “You will be very happy with your spouse.”

“What a nice thing to say”, I thought, not only because he could recognize that his father and I are happy, but because he acknowledged my existence in the first place. You see, Sam and I have a very turbulent past, so to speak. There are times when he looks at me with such disdain I swear he hates me. If I had to list all the mistakes I made as a step mother,  most would  begin with Sam.

When I first entered Sam’s life he was coasting along just fine without me. Both of his parents worked outside the home and there I was working from home and therefore able to observe him not doing his homework, eating crap and playing too many video games. I felt it was my role to correct his behavior and made it my mission to do so. In hindsight, this was not such a great idea. It not only back fired in my face, it bred resentment. I hope someday Sam will look back on my “interference” as caring rather than an annoyance. Only time will tell. If I had to do it all over again I would simply leave his parenting up to his parents and stay out of it. I set myself up to be the bad guy, even though I was well intentioned. Perhaps Sam’s acknowledgement that I was  good for his father was the first nod in my favor. Maybe I am making way too much of this, but sometimes I just have to take what I can get.

Sometimes I look back on some of my posts and I think I paint such a rosy picture that maybe you might get sick of me and think that I am laying it on a little thick. I wax on about how I married the most perfect man and have the most perfect life. Well I don’t. I am here to tell you that I have snot on my couch. With five teenagers, it comes with the territory.  I have found candy wrappers under the couch, nail clippings, moldy sandwiches and now…. snot.

I did marry a lovely man. That part is true. But he did not come to me in isolation. He had three children and the blending with my two has not been an easy task. It was the hardest on me, truthfully, because I am a clean freak neat nick  as in, it bothers me if the butter knives in the silverware drawer are not facing all the same direction. Or the bath towels aren’t folded a certain way. And I cannot for the life of me understand why no one seems to do things the way I want them done. So you can see my challenges here. These days with grad school and all, my standards of cleanliness have gone lower than I ever thought they could go. But I have my blinders on. One must in order to survive. I’ve had a lot of practice. When I lived in NYC in my early 20’s the view from my apartment was a brick wall. I made it a point to never look out that window. My motto now is, “Don’t look under the couch.”

We had a bit of drama at the Shwanda house last week. My daughter Sophia and my husband Paul got into a big argument on Tuesday night over something as innocuous as the TV (he wanted to watch the Olympics and she wanted to watch a reality show) and she just had a hissy fit. She stormed out of the great room, starting slamming things around, claimed she ” JUST CAN’T TAKE IT ANYMORE!!!” packed her bags and drove across town to go live with her father.  It was not her finest moment and it wasn’t mine either. She screamed some expletives at her step father, which she later came to regret, and I allowed myself to get caught in the middle when I should have been backing up my hubby. I got defensive. I let my “I’m-so-sorry-for-getting-divorced-and-remarried-and-making-you-move-guilt” get in the way of reason. Read the rest of this entry »

When I found myself a single mom at 40 with two young daughters, (ages 6 and 9) after 12 years of marriage, to what turned out to be a gay guy, I have to confess that I found myself in a state of total dating anxiety. I hadn’t dated in 15 years and quite frankly I wasn’t sure I remembered how. I was insecure for sure and worried that men would no longer consider me attractive.  I had been a wall flower in high school and then went on to a college where the ratio of men to women was one to eight. And then there was the marriage to the gay guy, so you can see that not only were my dating skills rusty, they had sucked to begin with. Read the rest of this post on Momversation.

A few posts back I  wrote about our aspiring rock star son Mark’s announcement that he was not planning to go to college because he was looking forward to living the hard scrabble life of his rock idol Slash. Last week I had the opportunity to give one of  his band mates a ride home and boy did I learn a lot. The young man told me all about the courses he was taking in school. He is a sophomore and is already tackling AP Calculus. To put things in perspective, that is something seniors usually take as an elective after they have completed Algebra one and two, Geometry and Pre-Calculus. This kid is driven. I asked him what motivates him and he said he needs to take as many AP classes as possible so that he can get a scholarship to college because that is the only way he will be able to go since his parents don’t have the money to send him.  I was impressed.

I dropped him at his house, a modest home in the working class section of town, and made the snap shot assessment that this kid is already living the hard scrabble life. And he wants better. Good for him. He reminded me a lot of myself at that age because I too came from very humble beginnings. I got my first job at 13 in a hotel laundry room and worked my way through high school and college for which I got a scholarship. And I pitched in around the house by cooking and cleaning while my  mother was still at work. In my efforts to give my kids a better life than I had  I wonder if am doing them a disservice by not giving them the hard scrabble life now so that they won’t be craving it later. You tell me. When the boy got out of my car I hollered to him, “Hey, rub some of that college stuff onto Mark. He says he doesn’t want to go.” He replied back with assurance, “He’ll go. He’s just saying that.” I hope he’s right.

Photo of a natural bridge along West Cliff

The kids all have off from school today in honor of President’s Day and they are all at their other parents’ houses. I was working in my home office when Sophia called me to ask if I would like to go for a walk with her on West Cliff Drive. How sweet to be asked. I said, “Sure.” Now that she’s got wheels she drove over to pick me up and we headed down to the beach for a power walk along the ocean. I always enjoy time alone with each of  my kids. And I’m delighted they still want to have anything to do with me.

I’ll let you in on a little secret. I’m getting old. Old as in… when I bend down to pick up something my knees creak and I’m not sure I can get back up. Old as in… I’m getting red moles of the back of my knees like my mother had. And old as in … sometimes I forget where I left my kids. For example, this past weekend Eva had a sleepover at a friend’s house and she was gone Friday night and all day Saturday. With a houseful of all her siblings and their friends, I hardly missed her. Around 5pm on Saturday night she called me on my cell phone and asked me to come pick her up. And I thought to myself, “Pick you up? Where? All this time I thought you were in your room.” Nooooooo. I’m turning into my mother. Help!!! The red moles, the denial that I am losing my hearing, sight, mind… fill in the ___________. And now… I’m losing my kids!!! When they were babies I used to have nightmares that I drove off and left the car seat on roof of the car. Those were only bad dreams. This is my sad reality. In spite of my exhaustion, when they were little I always knew where they were. Now that they are teenagers, not so much.

I guess I shouldn’t be too hard on myself since my mom was guilty of  misplacing her children too. When we were kids she used to take us to WaWa after church on Sundays. (WaWa is a Northeastern regional convenience store chain similar to 7Eleven. I wish they had them here because they have the greatest milkshakes.) While Mom was at the deli counter we five kids would run wild through the store. My younger sister Jill and I would dip our hands into the pickle barrels, lick the pickles and throw them back in. (Aahh. Those were the days.) One day, Jill must have been in the bathroom when we left the store and drove home without her. I think we were home about a half hour when my mother  realized her “oversight” and shrieked in horror, “WE LEFT JILL IN WAWA!!!!!!!!!!!” We all clamored into the paneled station wagon (which my father had decorated with embarrassing Flower Power stickers) while my mom sped like a maniac back to the store where we found Jill wandering the aisles aimlessly, oblivious to the fact that we had left her in the store and had gone home without her.  My mother covered well when she told my sister, “Come on, Jill. Time to go.” Just as I did when I told Eva, “Sure, I’ll be right over to get you.” And we wonder why some children have abandonment issues.

Sophia won, “The Don’t Eat the Marshmallow Award” in math class this past week. It  was given to her from her teacher for “showing exemplary self control, delaying gratification and focusing  on the long term goal of doing her best every day throughout the course of Trigonometry/Analytic Geometry.”  The award is named after a groundbreaking experiment held at Stanford University in the early ’70’s in which four- year-old children were given a choice. They were each given a marshmallow, which they could eat right away, or they could wait 15 minutes and then have two. Two thirds of the children immediately devoured the marshmallow, some hung on as long as they could, and the rest were able to wait  and were rewarded with two marshmallows. Fourteen years later there was a followup study done that revealed that the kids who waited were much more successful in life, with better grades and life goals, than the ones who ate the marshmallow right away. The study’s findings were that self-discipline and delayed gratification are the most important factors for success.

Needless to say, I was extremely proud of Sophia, but more importantly, she was very proud of herself. This recognition is particularly significant because Sophia does not have a natural aptitude for math. She really has to work hard at it, that entails working with tutors  4-6 hours a week plus additional studying.  I have always told her that what she lacks in ability she  makes up for in dedication and perseverance. Way to go Sophia!!! We are all very proud of you. One final note: the award was in the form of  a certificate, which we framed, accompanied by two marshmallows, which Sophia promptly ate.

A few months ago, in a drastic cost cutting measure, I had to let the housekeeper go. I figured with enough able bodies around pitching in we could all handle it. So far so good. The kids have taken over doing the laundry, “cleaning” their rooms ( I use that term loosely)  and bathrooms. I vacuum and Paul mops and all is well. The only thing no one seems to volunteer for is the dusting. Since I am allergic to dust I usually only tackle the task once every six months or so which is why I always had a housekeeper.

A few weeks ago, before we put out all the Christmas decorations, I summoned my five kids into the laundry room, gave each of them a dust rag, sprayed it with some Pledge and sent them all into a different room in the house. They complained, but their objections weren’t what you would expect like “boring, tedious, dirty…” No. My dusting method was simply not sophisticated enough for them or as Sophia put it, ” Mom (elongate the monosyllable in a lengthy whine) your dusting is just so low tech.” Low tech dusting???? “Why don’t you get a Swiffer? If you got a Swiffer I would dust all the time.” Really???  So I bought a Swiffer, which is  cheap flimsy piece of crap probably made by slaves in a foreign country stealing manufacturing jobs from us, but I bought one anyway and my kids LOVED IT. They all fought over it. So. The moral of this story is  …. If you want to get your kids to dust get high tech and buy a Swiffer. Note:  I am not a paid endorser of this product.

Baby Jack born Jan. 4th, 9 lbs 8 oz

We have a new baby in the family, my great nephew born on Jan. 4th to my niece Joy and her husband Dale. (Not their real names.) Joy is my sister Nina’s daughter and she and everyone else in our family is ecstatic about the birth of the first baby born in our family in 13 years –my Eva being the youngest grandchild on my side of the family.

Since I live on the opposite coast as most of my family, I have to rely on stories and photos, text messaging and Facebook to hear what is going on. I wish I could have been a fly on the wall the night Joy and Dale brought their new son home from the hospital. I heard he cried in the middle of the night and they looked at each other frantically and exclaimed, “Oh my god, he’s crying. What do we do?”

Been there. I have a very vivid memory of bringing my first born, Sophia, home from the hospital. She was warm and cuddly nestled in her baby snuggy when I put her down in her new crib. And then a few hours later she woke up wailing and would… not…stop. It was at that moment when I couldn’t pawn the kid off onto someone else as in, “Here, your kid’s crying. Take it.” that I realized I was a parent and there was no turning back. I tried to nurse Sophia, but that did not go over well. I rocked her in my brand new glider rocker and that didn’t help either. I was fretful, resentful, and overwhelmingly exhausted. I just wanted this baby to stop crying and go back to sleep so I could too. And then I just gave in. I made peace with the possibility that I would be up all night and I relaxed and miraculously, she did too and fell back to sleep. I learned a very important parenting lesson very early on and that is to stop resisting the demands of my child and to just surrender to her needs, because a need that is fulfilled goes away.

Over the years I adapted to my new time management style of working in fits and starts as I took many breaks to tie a shoe, prepare a snack or wipe away a tear for my children. Some days seemed to drag on forever (like when Sophia had chicken pox and I had to entertain her by dropping a bouncy ball from our second floor balcony down to the first floor landing to distract her from scratching) yet the years still managed to fly by.  I can remember walking Sophia in a her stroller and middle aged strangers stopping to admire her and wistfully telling me, “I remember when my baby was that small. ” I now know how they feel.

So it is with this thought in mind that I would like to impart some advice to my niece Joy and her husband Dale and to all new parents everywhere: Take the time to enjoy your children. You can dust later. If your son wants you to read to him or help him solve a puzzle, leave the dishes in the sink. You’ll get to them eventually.  Savor the little things like a hand picked bouquet of weeds or his “abstract” art that hopefully wasn’t scribbled on the wall.  Don’t resist. Surrender. And always remember this: If you think he’s wearing you out now, wait ’til he’s a teenager. I know.