I Won't Go to Rehab

This appears to be in direct opposition to the title of my last entry.

I crabbed again at Brahm yesterday morning as we rushed out the door for school. I promised myself the day before after crabbing all afternoon at Oliver that I wouldn't do it again. If it were bonafide parenting that I was about, that's one thing. But taking out life's little frustrations and unmet expectations on my children is another. But the promise is only as good as that of someone who's behavior is out of control and they know rehab looms on the horizon as the only way out. It's as if the promise itself holds some kind of balm that will somehow magically heal the source of the crabbing. And just what is that source? Are they truly being naughty? Am I insufficiently caffeinated? Was I not loved enough as a child?

"It always seems to be made worse when punctuality is an issue. Try diffusing the situation by preparing in advance." advises Dr. K. "For example, you say you lose your temper Sunday morning when he can't find his shoes and you're going to be late for church. Why not anticipate this and have him set out his shoes the night before?" Her suggestion seems so obvious. Why doesn't this occur to me on my own? Why do I have to shell out a $25 copay to acquire this kind of information? Well, it works when I remember to work it. It also works best when the battery on your phone isn't dead so the alarm fails to sound putting you behind an extra 34 minutes for the morning. In other words, it works when life doesn't happen. And life seems to happen about 85% of the time.

"Why do have to be so bossy?" he shoots at me as I run up to the car.

"The answer, dear seven-year-old, is because I AM THE BOSS!" I reply in my best impersonation of an intimidating mother figure. Besides, I know it's only said for show anyway since apparently it's not coming through on its own. Maybe this is what is irritating to me: why can't they just accept my position of superiority and then understand that, by nature, their rank then falls in below mine?

"And furthermore," I add, feeling a lecture coming on, "I wouldn't have to boss if you would know what to do on your own! Why are you just standing there by the car when you should be in it with your seatbelt on, ready to go?"

That should give them some food for thought! Hmph.

Doors slam, the engine turns and we're off. This last point made in my favor will surely be the morsel of logic that persuades them to my way of thinking. "Where would we be without Mom's abundant life experience to guide us?" they must be thinking now. Instead, I glance in the rear view mirror and see Brahm. He has pulled his head completely inside his coat, not unlike a tortoise under siege, and is starting to cry.

I look upward. "God, spare me this little display of emotion," I say to myself pretending He and I are on the same side in this moment. I shift uncomfortably in my seat but say nothing, my eyes straight ahead on the road. Mom guilt is setting in but I'm doing a good job at staving it off.

"When you get mad and say that, that means you don't love us!" he says accusingly through his zipper.

That criticism is just what I needed to bring me back to rational thinking. He has lobbed the ball back in my court and now I return it with the biggest swing I've got: "If I had even thought of talking back to Buck and Noni like that when I was a little girl, they would have spanked my bum so hard it would have stayed red for a month! That is definitely not the way kids talk to their parents!" Translation: I'm losing ground here but my voice is way louder than yours right now which means I just won the match. THE END!

No one says anything for the rest of the ride. My self-justification is slipping. I can't believe I went the "Why, when I was a kid..." route. I mean, kids really love that, don't they? When they hear it they say to themselves, "Boy, I'm so lucky I didn't grow up with parents like Buck and Noni. I should be grateful to have Mom. I think I"ll start obeying everything she says from now on." And this on the heels of a visit two days earlier in which Buck and Noni had given them them $20 each to go buy whatever Pokemon cards they wanted. If ever I give them money they have to pay it back to me with 10% interest. Yeah, real effective. With any luck, they'll be calling Grandma and Grandpa tonight asking to move in.

Sigh.

Back at home I'm in the kitchen making Brahm's lunch - that's how late we were. I'd drop it off after taking Oliver to school later that morning. An idea occurs to me and I go off in search of a pen and paper. A butterfly post card sits on top of the desk and I choose that. "Dear Brahm," I write. That pen runs out of ink and I pick up another, tracing back over the first words. "Dear Brahm, Do you think people can have an argument and still love each other? I love you very much and even though I was crabby, I hope you still have a great day. Love, Mom." I tape a chocolate-filled silver coin to the front and slip it in his lunch bag.

This would be a great place to wrap up the entry. It's a nice point of resolution where the conflict dissolves into a place of understanding and forgiveness. But that only happens 15% of the time when life doesn't happen. But this isn't one of those times.

On my way out the door again, the phone rings and Brahm's unmistakable voice comes through the other end.

"Mom? Uh, today is the class field trip and you marked on my permission slip that I was supposed to take school lunch with me."

So much for the nifty note idea.

"And Mom? My lunch account is out of money."

I'll Never Be Famous

Brahm won an award for his Lego airplane sculpture at his school's Reflections Contest. He didn't know he had placed until it was announced at an assembly to which Brooks and I were secretly invited. Here we are in the multi-purpose room beforehand with Oliver at the camera.

This has nothing to do with my entry.

I only posted it because photos add visual interest to blogs. (And because Brooks is so handsome. He keeps getting better-looking with age. Sigh...)
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A mid-life crisis was averted two months ago when Kami A. and I headed out to the community garden on a cold, wet Saturday morning. We were stringing lights for the pumpkin festival scheduled for the following weekend and doing a good job of catching up in the process. I don't remember what I said but the gist was some kind of musings on a general malaise that had come over me at the time. I couldn't quite put my finger on what was at the core but Kami did.

"I think for me it was summed up a few months ago when I realized that I'll never be famous," she says candidly from across a few garden rows.

"What?" I query. This seems so off topic.

"Yeah, I woke up one day, realized I'm thirty, married with kids and a mortgage and my name isn't recognized in most households across America."

Oddly, I see where she's going with this. I never considered it before but I begin to see how I, too, carried some kind of hope throughout my adolescence and early adulthood that I would make something of myself. I mean, really be someone. This, of course, translates into a certain amount of fame and recognition, maybe money, too. At twenty-one, the sky is the limit. The future has yet to be defined. Anything could be in store. Now at thirty-four I have settled into a structure that has narrowed down the possibilities quite a bit.

A soft rain falls. I pound stakes into the ground, Kami follows a few feet behind stapling the lights into them. She's still talking, developing the theme as we go and I consider her words.

A blur of new hairstyles, Botox, crash diets, fancy cars, wardrobe upgrades and career changes flashes before my eyes. When that passes, I see a woman wearing her husband's cast-off parka, wet hair sticks to a face laced with hairline wrinkles. She lives in the Sandy ghetto and drives a ten-year-old Subaru station wagon that usually has two little anklebiters affixed to the back seats. Her college degree is gathering dust and the only time anyone ever recognizes her out in public is, well - never.

And then the unexpected happens. Instead of feeling like I somehow failed or sensing the rise of resentment, I feel relief. Yes, relief! This is strange. It's like M. Scott Peck writes in the beginning of his landmark book, "The Road Less Traveled": Life is difficult. And once we accept this truth, suddenly it's not so hard. Once I identified the disappointed expectation, somehow I wasn't so disappointed. And somehow, I don't care about fame or recognition at all. My compulsion to be someone has suddenly dissolved and settled into the satisfaction of simply being.

We finish and head to Hagermann's for sandwiches and more conversation. I consider the good fortune in all areas of my life but especially that which comes in the form of good friends like her.

In Case of an Emergency

He's not Boo Radley, but only makes me think of him. During the year we exchange warm hellos in passing but he likes to keep to himself and that's OK with me. Last year when Brooks and I took the boys trick-or-treating, we knocked on his door and waited. He appeared with the traditional bowl of candy but stopped when he saw us and closed the door. A moment later, however, it opened again and he emerged with a clever smile and two large pumpkin-shaped trick-or-treat bags full to the brim with candy bars, suckers, and other such goodies - one for each of my sons. Still smiling, he nodded in response to our delight, and then closed the door again.

This year we were treated to the same kindness.
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"You guys can borrow my belt sander if you don't have one."

Brooks and I look at each other wondering how to respond. Usually when you hire someone to do work for you, that's exactly what you think you're doing - "hiring". The carpenter we chose to do the finish work on the basement, however, is standing in front of us telling us that he will loan us his personal equipment free of charge. This so we can finish one of the DIY projects that have become the norm as we attempt to complete a huge undertaking on a modest budget.

He has a wife and kids. He has a mortgage. I'm sure has has a car payment, too.

"Uh, that would be great!" one of us says in a way that probably comes off as something close to awkward but not ungrateful. Do people really do stuff like this? He does. Over the course of the remodel he has stopped in to see how we were surviving even when he was not directly involved. Not only has he freely lent tools but also his experience, advice, and a listening ear to boot. His moral support, easy laugh, and attention to the detail of his craft have pulled us through some tight spots, even (and especially) when he was not on the clock.

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Our home away from home is the roomy and well-kept basement apartment of Brooks' aunt and uncle. Our boys have found new and fast friends in their second cousins, crashing summer and holiday parties not intended for their attendance - but who would know the difference? Room is always made for them on the trampoline, air hockey table, inflatable water slide, zip-line, and Cousins Club House. An extra slice of pizza, some ice-cream cones or a big helping to Uncle L's Belgian waffle specialty will periodically find its way into their bellies. Brand new boxes of color pencils from aunt and uncle met them on their first day of school, new tee-shirts just for them came back from a St. George excursion, and a notice arrived in the mail the other day letting them know of a gift subscription to Kids' National Geographic.

Of course these are not the perks given to good customers in order to keep their business. Brooks and I are squatters, first rate! They have not only opened their doors to us but have rolled out the red carpet, too. In fact, not only do they decline rent but once when we wrote out a check to cover our utilities, we found it the next day on the breakfast table with a note that read, "You are our guests."
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photo credit to Brooks and his clever phone

Printed with Permission

If colonoscopies, nudity, and flatulence repel you, you are advised to read no further. :)


So, I picked up Oliver from school the other day and as we pulled up to our house, I explained, "Hey, when we go inside we're going to have to be a bit quiet because Papa is resting. While you were at school he was up at the hospital having a colonoscopy and he's pretty tired."

And then the inevitable question: "What's a colonoscopy?"

"Well, it's when a doctor uses a camera attached to a scope to be able to look inside your large intestine to make sure everything is healthy." At the age of two or three, Oliver went through a phase of looking through my Netter's anatomy book whenever he had a question about the human body. He was pretty keen on knowing how things worked and what they looked like beneath the surface. There was that confusion once between an asparagus and an esophagus, but once we worked through that, he was good to go. Having this to build on, I felt sure he understood the phrase "large intestine", especially since he had also successfully graduated from the anal phase around the same time.

He pauses a moment, digesting this (no pun intended) then wants to know, "That camera - is it pretty small?"

"Oh, yes. Pretty small." I say.

"As small as a crumb?"

"Well, maybe not that small, but small nonetheless."

We park the car and get out, walking toward the back door. I know he's imagining just how this procedure unfolds in the OR. "Was he naked?", he asks frankly, looking up at me.

"Well, sure but the hospital gives him something like a robe to wear over the top so he can have some privacy."

This reassures him a little but he suddenly stops at the door: there's one more thing he wants to know before he'll go inside. "Is he still naked?"

Suppressing a smile, I let him know that his father is fully clothed and it is, in fact, safe to proceed into the house.

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The following is not the first time I have underestimated the Great Brain of the Firstborn.


Enjoying leftovers today after church, we're all seated around the table talking about this and that. The subject turns to stars and planets since Brooks has mentioned that the first photos of planets outside our solar system has emerged in the news recently. Oliver is naturally animated. He gestures dramatically with his hands and face as he speaks. Brahm, on the other hand, is more subtle. It's usually hard to know what he's thinking just by looking at his face. In fact, most of the time I wonder if he can hear me at all when I'm talking to him since at any given moment, he's usually involved in some kind of manual activity that absorbs his attention.

So the conversation is going something like this:

Brooks: "Which planet in our solar system is the smallest?"

Oliver, hand shooting up wildly before the question is entirely formed: "Oh, I know! It's Pluto! And did you know that Venus is the hottest? It's like 133 degrees or something. Wait, maybe 5,000. And it would burn you if you were even on that planet. Well, not it you had metal to protect you. It will burn everything except metal, like robots."

In my minds eye, I see droplets of saliva shooting through the air between us generated by the sheer force of his excitement coupled with his lisp.

Brooks: "And what about Jupiter - ?"

Oliver, interrupting again: "You couldn't even land on Jupiter, you know why? Because it's all made of gas swirling around everywhere. There's nothing you could even land on."

Brooks: "Except for the lava at the core - "

Oliver:" Yeah, except for the lava. And you know what? The lava is so hot, sooo hot, that nobody could even live in there. And you know what else?" He raises his hands to make a crushing motion with his fingers accompanied by the appropriate sounds. "The pressure from all the gases above you would smash you to death!" he explains, parroting something his father had said moments earlier.

Jenny, with her two bits: "And what's Jupiter classified as? A gassy _____."

Oliver, hand shooting up once again: "'Giant'! A 'gassy giant'!"

Brahm is at his seat, not having moved much in the last five minutes except to look around from time to time. He's too busy using his fork to shift the food around his plate to be bothered with the conversation. And yet, here I see his eyebrow go up and a smile start to curl at the corners of his mouth.

"A gassy giant? You mean like Papa's tooties?"

There's a brief moment of silence where his sudden comment stumps everyone, even the little brother. Then, we simultaneously erupt into laughter and with that, the conversation has come to a pleasant end. There is, it seems, nothing left to say.

When October Goes

Yes, I'm out of the closet about my affinity to Barry Manilow and his music. In fact, I have been for a long time. In double fact, if you know me, you probably know that I am the proud owner of a quadruple CD set of his called "The Complete Collection and Then Some" that Graywhale actually paid me to walk out the door with some ten years ago or so. I have owned vinyl, audio cassettes, CD's and recently an mP3 of his music spanning from seventh grade to the present. But I digress.

{Photo: Quoth the Brahmie, "Nevermore."}

October is my favorite month of the year hands down. And this year in particular has been the most brilliant fall I can remember since moving to this neighborhood. The weather has been warm all month (except for the day of the pumpkin festival but that's a tradition so it doesn't count) which makes it seem like fall has lasted longer this year. Not the calendar fall, the beautiful leaves and sunny afternoon fall. Barry Manilow, Tony Bennet, Paula Cole and others have sung down the end of the season in my home this month with songs like "The Autumn Leaves", "Indian Summer" and the title of this entry, "When October Goes". Johnny Mercer wrote the music to that tune but never finished it with words. Manilow approached Mercer's widow for permission to add lyrics and make a recording. Permission was granted and the result is a wistful tune that enunciates the end of a warm, colorful season and laments the beginning of a cold and gray one. Sigh. Double sigh.

So today is the last day of the month. We went to Oliver's Halloween party at school this morning and are now washing the dishes from lunch and cleaning up for tonight's festivities. My sister Vicki and her husband come down every year to trick-or-treat around the neighborhood with us around the neighborhood. Before we head out we grab a bite to eat of the traditional "Cheesy Beef Hideaways" and fresh-pressed "apple slider" as Oliver has called it since he could talk. Then it's back to the house to examine and plunder the loot, of course. I make my anal attempts to buy off their candy with trans fats and HFCS in it then we settle in around the fire and try to stay awake as long as we possibly can before November 1st inevitable arrives.

{Photo: Here lies the body
Oliver Croft Briggs
he sucks his white fingers
like ghostly-sweet twigs.}

Wise As Serpents

Since Brooks and I moved out of the house, we've been eating breakfast together every morning as a family. We all have to leave the house at the same time to get to school, work, etc., and so it just works out that way. We find this to be a convenient time to read scriptures with the boys since they can't talk while their mouths are chewing or get up and run around with a hand stuck to a spoon. So far it's working.

A few weeks ago we started in on some of the war chapters in Alma to make sure and hook them in good and strong.

That's working, too.

One day back at our house, I hear some squawking in the back yard and decide to investigate. Going out the back door, I'm nearly bowled over by Oliver who zooms past me into the house with Brahm in hot pursuit.

"Mom!", he yells, running up to me. "Oliver's not following the rules! He was shooting me with his squirt gun when I didn't even have mine loaded yet!"

He's not just annoyed, he's mad. What's worse, Oliver has taken cover before Brahm can exact his revenge. He's frustrated as am I when they fight. We both stand there not knowing what to do.

Suddenly, the Holy Ghost descends on me like a dove.

"Hey," I begin nonchalantly. "Do you remember when we were reading the other morning about Moroni and Teancum? They wanted to get the city of Mulek back from the Lamanites but to do it, they first had to come up with a way to lure the Lamanites out. Do you remember how they did it?"

The clouds begin to clear from his face and I watch as his plan of action takes form.

"Yeah...", he says slowly, a smile curling up the corners of his mouth. "They came up with a decoy."

What happened next was nothing short of genius on the boy's part. Preying on his little brother's weakness for sweets, he runs out the side gate, hides behind the fence and begins to make the sounds of an ice cream truck.

"Do do dooo dah de dee, dah de dee dum.", he croons to "The Yellow Rose of Texas".

And I'll be a monkey's uncle if it wasn't Oliver's knotty little head that pokes itself around the corner of the back door not two seconds later. Bam! Bam! Bam! With impeccable timing, Brahm jumps out from behind the gate and soaks the little bugger from head to toe, sending him screaming into yonder parts of the neighborhood.

I don't recall seeing a look of satisfaction like that on Brahm's face for quite some time. I must have had a similar expression on my face, too, judging by the way I felt. Justice had been served and a lesson learned - maybe two. It would probably be a while before Oliver came up against his brother again and as for Brahm, maybe he would never have to ask the question, "But what does all this have to do with my life?"

Elections 2008 Brinkel-style

This is for Brandi who says I need to update my blog.


From the backseat in the car on the way to school last month, Brahm pipes up, "Mom, you know who I'm voting for for president? Obama." I'm surprised and amused, not by his choice per se but by the fact that he's given it any thought.

"You know who I'm voting for?", Oliver chimes in, removing his sucking fingers from his mouth only long enough to say the words. "John McCain."

This amuses me even more. I am imagining our '96 Subaru wagon rattling down the street with a McCain bumper sticker on Oliver's side and an Obama on Brahm's.

It's Brahm who interrupts my thoughts. "You know why I'm voting for Obama? It's because we've never had a black president before and I think it would be good if we could have one."

There's an audible pause and then this from the little brother: "Obama's black?"

"Yep." I confirm, "He's black."

"Is John McCain white?"

"Dear child, they don't come any whiter."

Another pause and then,"Well then I'm voting for Obama, too." I raise my eyebrows and glance in the rearview mirror to see if I can interpret his face for a reason behind the change. I can only tell that he's thinking.

"Why don't you want to vote for McCain anymore?" I finally ask.

"Well, if you put a black crayon on a piece of white paper and color it, the black will always win."

Aaaah. Now I see. No, I don't pretend to understand the logic behind the decision but with Oliver, it's all about winning, whatever the context, whatever the reasoning. Therefore, come November 5th, may the best crayon win.