The UnderToad

Though I won’t be telling any embarrassing childhood stories for John or Daniel (of which I’m sure they have many, including the time you left the choir risers in the middle of church and bit one of the boys in the name of a lesson), I will say this: whatever you did, you did it right.  John is as close to perfect (for me) as any man in the universe could ever hope to be.  Though I’ve often complained of his ignorance in the female department (especially where sharing a bathroom is concerned), I actually believe this is purely due to the fact that he grew up without any sisters.  His natural parental instincts have already given me all the confidence in the world that my daughters will one day marry extraordinary men.  They don’t have a choice.  They will compare everyone to their father.  So thank you, for John.

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.