Category: Confessions

The preacher at church today said, “The older I get, the smarter my mother becomes to me.”

How true.  I fought with my mother pretty steadily until I was 24.  I was convinced the only adult in the world who understood me was my father.  To a degree, I still believe this is true, especially for my childhood.

Then I got married.

About a year ago at the breakfast table in Tennessee, I looked my dad in the eye and said, “Dad, you know you’ve been my favorite pretty much my whole life.  I’ve certainly said it and I don’t think I’ve ever pretended it wasn’t true.  But I just want to say for the record, I still love you (as much as I always have), but from now on, no matter what has happened, I’m on Mom’s side.”  He smiled and said, “That’s fine, Claire,” which prompted me to add, “Oh yeah, and now that you are retired, you have to help when she cleans the house.”

I don’t think I could even sit down and write out the ongoing mental list of things that I have come to understand about my mother with each passing day of becoming what she was my entire life.  What she still is.  I cannot list most of them because so often moments of enlightenment strike me at the peak of wife- or mother- frustration.  My cousin in Turkey recently asked me (via Facebook) if my mother ever brought all the toys back in the house that one day she went ape-shit about the mess and hauled everything we owned from the basement playroom to the curb.  Sadly, said cousin is likely the only one who learned a lesson that day, because I have absolutely no memory of this occurrence.  Hearing about it for the first time just two weeks ago gave me an enormous inward sigh of relief.  (In moments of raw sleep-deprived-children-induced-irritation-rants, perhaps I’m not actually screwing up my kids as much as my guilt would suggest I am.)

And so, here’s to you Mother.  Though you were not big on playing with us on the floor when we were under the age of 5 and allowed the television to babysit Jeff and me through your next two pregnancies, though you didn’t like to get dirty, go skiing, or turtle-topping behind the car in the snow, though we ate Hamburger Helper at least once a week for most of our childhood and had bowl-cuts (all four of us) until we were well over the age of 13, and though society might have told you (as it daily tells me) that most of these things are counter-productive to raising happy and healthy children, it turns out you were on to something.  I think we are all actually happier and healthier than most people we know.  And, here’s the kicker: you are not only loved (because you are our mother), but we actually like you in our adult lives.  So if you’ve ever had a moment of thinking you maybe did something not as well as you could have, or maybe could have changed something so we would have turned out better, or wondered if there is anything we (perhaps unknowingly) resent about our childhood, then take this moment to relish the awesomeness that is all four of us Paulus kids.

That’s your fault.

When Carter was born, Eliott spent a few days away from John and me in Tennessee with my parents.  My mother told me, later that summer, that for her, Eliott is living proof that there is a God.  “She is the manifestation of all the times I prayed that you would one day have one who was just like you.”  So for the record, I will try to be patient through these pre-school years, and later through the teenage years, and wait until Eliott is 24 or 26 or 30, for her sincere, “Thank-you, Mom.  I get it.”

As a caveat to my previous post, I feel it is necessary to include one exception to the Paulus-family-language-free-for-all.  If there is one word my mother has always despised and to this day, will correct a grown man on the use of, it is the “s” word.  She has physically reached across the table and implemented a choke-hold on my 6’2″ husband when he has let it slip.

To fully illustrate the reality of the s-word’s exception as the last sacredly vile and therefore unacceptable word in all of English diction, I take you back to the summer before my senior year: Cheerleading Camp, 1998.

I believe it was because our coach was technically too young to be in charge of eight high school girls in another state that my mother found herself chaperoning us to Pocatello, Idaho, for my 4th (and final) summer to attend Cheerleading Camp.  (I’ll give you a moment to stop laughing about the fact that I was a cheerleader and reassure you before you go on that it is, in fact, true.  And I was pretty good.)  On one of the last nights, we were up late, being silly, debriefing the week, when my co-captain and then best friend Ruth exclaims (about who knows what), “Oh that sucks!”  All week my mother had been correcting someone or another on the use of that word.  I shuddered everytime I heard it, knowing my mother’s ex-smoker-Texas-twang would ring out of the bleachers, “Stop using THAT WORD!”  On this particularly giggly evening, my mother had had enough.

“Ruth!  Don’t say that word.  You know how much I hate that word.  It is fowl.  It is awful.  It makes you sound so, so— do you even know what that word means?!  Where it came from?”  (Dear God, no, I’m thinking.  I do not need to hear the “It originated in the 60s…” lesson in front of my friends and coach right now.)  Ruth, who damn well knows what it means responds, laughing, with, “Actually no, Mrs. Paulus.  I thought I did, but now I’m not sure I know exactly what it means.  Why is it such a big deal?”

The rest of the conversation is unnecessary, except to point out the kind of raw humiliation inflicted by my mother’s rasp, accent, and emphasis on the word oral.  At this point, the rest of the evening is a bit of blur, but I seem to remember our coach laughing so hard she farted in her wooden chair, which was probably the icing, flowers, and little groom topper on the wedding cake of lessons that day.

I know the exact moment my parents fully regarded all four of us children as adults.  Though I cannot say what motivated the change nor how we “earned” it, so to speak, I will tell you how I knew when I knew.  It did not happen when we went to college (obviously) nor did it happen at graduation.  It did not happen (as I expected) when my mother made me sit down at the computer three days after graduation and figure out everything “insurance” for myself and then pay for it.  It did not happen when we finally landed that first job with benefits.  I do not even believe that getting married and having children was the defining moment that my parents regarded me as an adult.  But it has happened.  For all four of us.  And here is how I know: when we all come together, once a year or so, every single member of my family, in conversation, curses, without shame, without hesitation, without apology.  Like sailors.  And I do not exaggerate to say this includes the original Mr. and Mrs. Paulus just as much as it includes the active duty Army boys (who, by nature, believe they are excused).

If you knew me in high school, you understand why this is seemingly as natural as it is ironic.  I, for one, have been cursing fluently since about the 6th grade, with the exception of the four years of active leadership in my Christian high school and Christian youth group and certainly never in the presence of my mother.  And for as long as I can remember, I had the strictest parents of everyone I knew. This began with their insistence on everyone calling them Mr. and Mrs. Paulus and trickled down to things like curfews (even in college), being home for dinner every night unless we submitted a pardon at least 24 hours in advance, and of course, language.

Of course the Paulus children were not allowed to curse, but a “bad word” in our house was not merely constituted by society’s 4-letter word rules.  My mother had her own set of four letter words when we were growing up (and mostly grown) which included: butt, fart, shut-up, crap, and retard.  When we were very small children, “bathroom talk” at the dinner table excused us to the room for which it was intended, to stand in front of the mirror and “get it out of our systems” at the top of our lungs.  This punishment was weirdly effective on me, but a fabulous pasttime for my brother.

Today, it seems these rules no longer apply.  Today, I am sending mass-email reminders at the holidays that my children are no longer infants, therefore they can and will pick up on anything they hear so could we please refrain from mature language in the presence of Eliott and Carter.

It is an amazing thing the way bad language resides inside us and can be summoned or suppressed at the flick of a mental switch.  There is also an amazingly liberating and unifying social climate that has since been created by the general acceptance that what was once a hard and fast Sarah Paulus rule, is no longer.  It is like my mother has non-verbally announced, “I release you.”

December 21, 2009 (from an email to my sister Erica)…

Eliott scolded the sun today.  It was shining in her eyes as we drove home from school.  From the front seat I’m listening to something like this: “No.  Go.  Away.  I’m talking to Mommy right now, leave me alone.” It took me a second to realize who she was talking to.  I turned around to find her maneuvering in her carseat to find a shady spot and waving her hands in front of her eyes trying to block it out.

You go ahead and tell Dragon [Erica’s husband] that although I may be but one grain of sand in the world…I happen to be the only grain of sand who gave birth to Eliott Wait…and she’ll be the hermit crab that carries me to the throne of greatness.  Just wait.

Today I had a ten minute conversation in my driveway with my next door neighbor (in front of her husband) about our current and respective pooping schedules (our own as in, not those of our kids).  Her husband eventually interrupted with, “Wait, wait, wait, are you two talking about pooping?”

“Yes we are,” I said.  “This is exactly what I ever hoped for and imagined.  An NNBFF with whom I can talk shamelessly about poop.”

“Yeah, why don’t you go blog about it,” he said.

“What an excellent idea.”

Up until now, and generally speaking in my life, I’ve tried not to be too political about anything.  Not too politically minded, not too politically polarized, and certainly not too politically correct.  Obviously I had no plans for blogging about anything political.  But someone made a comment the other day that has been sort of festering inside me.  At the time it was made, I knew I disagreed with it, but like all my best come-backs, I didn’t figure out what I wanted to say about it until at least 4 days later.  And then, I didn’t hone that into my full response until last night.

The discussion topic was taxes.  I’ll say for the record, in case you need a reason to stop reading in advance, I did not vote Republican in the last presidential election.  However, at my core, I’m definitely more Republican than Democrat.  (This is because I believe I am going to be rich one day.)  My household currently falls into a tax bracket in which we do not have any income tax withheld from our paychecks and yet have managed to receive a refund for the past couple of years.  I hear it is called “credits” and having lots of children is helpful, so I’m still en route to my 4-child family plan because “Yes We Can!” and we will.

So, sometime after April 15th, a discussion arose among myself, some friends, and some strangers, through this question: Do you believe it is fair to get more back in taxes than you paid?

(I do not think it is fair.)

(But I’m also not one to look a gift horse in the mouth.)

I didn’t respond at first, because I wanted to hear what others had to say.  I was among a group of women who all have children (big surprise) and had on the whole, mostly benefited from Uncle Sam this year as a result of those children.  My non-committal initial comment was, “It is a bit staggering when you think about the fact that only the top 5% of wage earners in America are paying over 50% of the Nation’s taxes.”  *Phew.  That was safe.  No thoughts or feelings one way or another.  No one suspects I’m a Republican-in-denial.  To this, one woman says something along the lines of: if she was rich enough to be in the top 5% of wage-earners, she’d be happy to pay 60% in taxes because even after that, she’d have more than enough remaining, off which to live.  (Note: I’m sure the grammar was not quite so impeccable in her original statement.)

And while this is mostly true, in theory, my internal idiot alarm went off in full force.  I couldn’t really muster a response at the time, and because I missed my opportunity, I need to scratch an itch here.  I do not think this woman’s sentiments are unique.  I think there are a lot of people in the world who believe that having more would create in them a desire to give more of what they have.  What I want to say to these people (from behind a wall of anonymity and in the safety of my own home) is, “No.  You wouldn’t.  If you wouldn’t pay 60% of your income NOW, what makes you think that having more income would change your attitude?  It would still be your money.  If you can’t give away a little, what makes you think you’d be willing to give away a lot?”

That’s pretty much it.  This is the extent of all things political today, and hopefully for a long time.  It is probably better that this can of worms remained closed that day.

I’m certainly not proposing any solutions to our economic crisis.  I’m not even really trying to stir up trouble with all my bleeding heart democratic friends (of which I have many, and actually like all of them and their hearts very much).  In the meantime, I’ll keep squandering away my pennies in a little GOLD jar, preparing for the inevitable collapse of Social Security by the time I’m sixty two and a half.  And should Jesus come before that day, I’m glad I got to experience the joys of sex and childbirth.  So I’m ready now, Lord.

I’m not sure how it was for most people, but I know when I was growing up, we (my brother and sisters and I) did not go into my parents’ room very often.  I do not have a single recollection of getting scared in the middle of the night and crawling in bed with my parents.  Perhaps I didn’t wake up in the middle of the night all that often, but if it did happen, my memory tells me that it would have been far scarier to go into my mom and dad’s room, wake them up, and crawl into bed with them.  I’m not sure when nor how the boundary was set, but it was definitely there.  We didn’t go into Mom and Dad’s room.  We just didn’t.  For one thing it was cold.  And dark.  And it smelled different than the rest of the house.  And my dad snored.

Living in a condo that offered little more space than that of a double-wide made this a difficult boundary to create and enforce with my own children, starting with Eliott.  For one thing, I practically used the entire house to get ready in the morning.  Obviously my bedroom closet wasn’t big enough for two people, so half my stuff was in the closet in the hall.  Also, when the kitchen and my bedroom were mere steps from each other, making a bagel while only half-way dressed and putting rollers in my hair was not uncommon.  Though Eliott was usually gone with John by the time I was up in the morning, weekends and summer time weren’t very different.  And when we finally got a TV, we put it in our bedroom.  We soon discovered that 45 minute videos on Sunday morning occupied our 18 month old just long enough for us to both get dressed without interruption.  As a result, she probably believed our bedroom actually belonged to her.

So John and I had big plans for the new house and the bedroom boundary when we moved.  We were so sure that more space and a clean slate would make this new boundary an easy one to create.  Now, I understand that there are parents (in America) who share their bedroom and their bed with the entire family.  I understand there are entire cultures of people for whom this way of life is perfectly normal.  I also understand there are entire cultures of people who do not eat beef because what I believe about Jesus, they believe about cows.  Fine.  I’m allowed to admit that I think such beliefs are weird.  The bed sharing.  The steak worship.  All of it.  (Note: I’m not saying I hate slash cannot be friends with these people just because I think their crack-pot beliefs wouldn’t be good for me and my family so don’t go calling me a racist or getting your feelings hurt if you fall into one of the above categories, okay?)

I am probably lucky to admit that neither one of my children has ever awoken in the middle of the night and needed me.  They have both slept through loud company up late at night, thunderstorms, tornadoes, the fire alarm (in our condo), and the garbage man right outside their windows.  But I have not yet instilled in either of them a fear of my bedroom.  Waking up to find my 4-year old sorting feminine products on the floor of my bathroom is unfortunately not unusual.  (If you’ve seen the new “U” by Kotex, you understand why this activity is so enticing.  I think the ad says, “They look like something from art school. Cool!”)

Therefore, John and I are gladly accepting any tips or ideas for creating an atmosphere of fear surrounding our bedroom.  Not fear like, one of my children sleeps in her own vomit all night because she’s too afraid to come tell me she was sick, but something more like a respectful reverence for a sacred place.  (Like, maybe I should make them wash their feet at the door and wear a bell around their ankle every time they enter.)  Because I can’t decide which is worse: the possibility of Carter swallowing some potentially expensive piece of jewelry from the top of my dresser or the inevitable question from Eliott one day: “What are these things, Mommy?”