Parents' Voices v. Kids' Voices

I am taking a novel writing class at the Hugo House taught by Sonora Jha. She has an older son, and she says his comments haunt her now instead of her parents' words. As my kids would say, #relatable. When I was younger, I would hang on the words of my mom. Now, I hang on to the words of my daughter. When my mother would harangue me, I would often bite my tongue and not respond to her. Instead, I would go off and complain to my father, friends, and brother about how I was wronged.

Last week, Claire-Adele and I went to see Hidden Figures. As much I as I enjoyed taking the time to see the movie with her, there were times that I was annoyed at her rudeness towards me. We were running a little bit late as I was talking to my father right before we left. There was a power outage, and Claire-Adele ran to Starbucks to get lunch, only to find their power was out, too, and were not serving food.

We got to the theater after that drama, and I am jogging up the steps, a major accomplishment for me considering that last year at the same time I was learning to walk without a brace or crutch. Jogging and going upstairs were out of the question, let alone trying them together.

"You are the most embarrassing person in the world!" Claire-Adele scolded me as I moved quickly up the stairs. She didn't consider yelling at me in the middle of a crowded movie theater embarrassing, but whatever. I am sure she didn't want to be seen with me at all, but none of her friends wanted to see this movie.

After we had found our seats, Claire-Adele wanted some popcorn because she missed lunch.

"Can you get it for me? I want to see the previews," she said. After being told I was the most embarrassing person in the world two minutes earlier, I told her to get her own popcorn. I gave her money, but I had no desire to stand in line and miss the previews for someone who had been rude to me.

This Christmas, she told the family that she had no plans of coming back to visit after she graduates from college during the holidays. Of course, she wants to be invited on vacations, but God forbid she has to spend a holiday with us.

If another friend talked to me like this, I'd probably drop them--unfriend them on Facebook, block their phone number, etc. Instead, she is my daughter. I don't have the luxury of writing her off. This weekend, I went to visit my dad and my mom in Ohio. I got home around 11:00 p.m. last night, and the kids were in bed. This morning, Claire Adele was sniffling, and I asked how she was doing.

"There is nothing wrong with me," she yelled. "Why do you think there is something wrong with me?"

Good morning to you, too, I should have said. Later, I went to wake up the Boy. As I passed her room, she asked me for the fabric scissors.

"Why do you need them?" I asked.

"To cut my head off," she said as she rolled her eyes. "I need them to cut fabric. Can you get them for me?" She had blue fleece spread out over her floor. She is part of a group that is making blankets for homeless men and women.

"I need to get your brother up, and then I can get them," I replied.

When I went to get the Boy, he was excited to see me. "How was your trip?" he asked. I told him, and we talked about how his friend got his remote control airplane out of a tree. This was big news, as the plane had been stuck forty feet up in a Port Orford cedar since the end of winter break.

"Are you going to get me the scissors?" Claire-Adele barked. "I need the scissors."

"Shut up," I said frustrated with this person who has said nothing nice to me in weeks. "I am talking to your brother." I was so tired of the world revolving around her. "You are interrupting my conversation. Just wait."

"You know," she said. "You say I am rude to you but spoiler alert -- you are ruder to me."

I could let those words haunt me, like the words of my mother stuck with me as a kid. Instead, I look at the millions of micro-aggressions and insults she has hurled at me for the past few years. I know I am the grown-up here and she is the kid. I should be the example of the right way to behave.

Yet, it is so hurtful to be constantly told how wrong and awful and embarrassing I am, and I need to respond. How is it that I am rude when I call my daughter on her rudeness to me? Why? I wish I had Michelle Obama's grace of "When they go low, we go high." This is different. I am living with this lowness, and it is in my face when I wake up, when she comes home from school and before she goes to bed. She directs her sass at not just me, but to her brother as well. I shouldn't defend him because that makes him look defenseless. She has no awareness of the link between yelling at her brother and then his yelling back at her.

"Dad didn't yell at us all weekend," she said after I told her to shut-up. Argh. Jack was probably in "Distracted Parent Mode" all weekend, squeezing in work, looking at his phone, and generally ignoring the kids. He probably didn't notice them enough to yell at them.

"Where is my water bottle? I've been looking for it for two days!" Claire Adele continued to rant.

"I put it in the drawer with the other water bottles. It was in the dishwasher. You should yell at your dad about that. I wasn't home this weekend," I said. She glared at me and stomped away.

Claire Adele will be leaving for college in a year and a half. I've talked to other parents about life as an empty nester. I've always imagined it being so hard and lonely. I always wondered how moms coped with the person they raised for eighteen years leaves to go off on their own. Why aren't all of these women crying and crying? Why aren't there support groups for moms when their kids go to college and leave home? When Claire-Adele was six, I talked to one mom who had what I thought was a nice and lovely daughter say she was sad for about a day when her daughter left for school, and then she was fine. I tried to push out of my mind how I'd feel when Claire Adele leaves the house, my firstborn, my baby. I couldn't imagine.

Now I get it. Claire Adele needs to leave me as much as I need her to leave. We need a separation, time apart. Hopefully, someday, we can be friendly to each other. She might need to push me away to make her own departure easier for all of us. She is succeeding, I have to say. She is succeeding.

The Psychological Bogeyman

Like me, the Boy loves movies. In the past few days, we have watched The Theory of Everything about Stephen Hawking and Whiplash, a movie about a jazz student who get abused by his teacher. Last month, we watched Pawn Sacrifice about Bobby Fischer who was flat out crazy. I ordered The Time Travelers Wife from Netflix, and the Boy joined me in watching it a few weeks ago. The man would travel in time, and get dumped in an unfamiliar spot naked. He had steal clothes, food and try to survive in an often inhospitable world. We also saw The Right Stuff based on the Tom Wolfe book about the Mercury astronauts. Next up: Birdman, the movie that won the Oscar for Best Picture in 2015.

What is up with the Boy liking these movies with psychologically tortured souls?* Stephen Hawking was plagued by a disease that left him unable to move. The Mercury pilots, while not certifiably insane, were the pioneers of the space age and were kind of crazy to volunteer to get strapped to a rocket and get flung into outer space. Bobby Fischer was a tortured genius.

The Boy is twelve going on thirteen. Could it be that instead of watching horror stories, these movies have the same effect of allowing him to manage his fears about the world? Instead of Freddy Kreuger, could it be that the Boy prefers the psychological bogeyman? Instead of watching teens being chased by a man with a chainsaw, the Boy prefers watching people struggle with their inner demons?

When I was his age, I was an Alfred Hitchcock fan. My favorite was Rear Window, which I showed the Boy. I loved mysteries and movies with problems to solve. The Boy likes the BBC's Sherlock, which is both about a crazy person (Sherlock) and mysteries to be solved.

Now, I find these psychologically themed movies a challenge to watch. I almost could not bear to watch the end of Whiplash. I had to leave the room because I could not stand to watch this young man get abused by his teacher. Why did it make me so uncomfortable but my son could stand it? Perhaps as an adult, I have seen abuse in action, and those stories rarely have a happy ending. Perhaps this is a safe distance for my son to see abuse, and then create a map in his mind of how to solve those problems in the future. Or perhaps, the Boy is like I was, finding these characters interesting, but only seeing them from a safe distance. As I've grown, I've seen crazy close up. While I don't think movies make insanity look glamorous, it is much messier when you are living with it than seeing it on a screen for a few hours. Most people plagued by insanity aren't international chess champions like Bobby Fischer.

As I've watched my mother decline with Alzheimer's, my biggest fear is losing my mind. While it completely sucks to have a bad knee, it would be far worse to have a damaged brain, whether with memory loss or forms of mental illness, like depression or schizophrenia. I know what I could do to fix a bad knee--physical therapy and surgery--but a mental or neurological disorder would be harder to fix, and far more messy. Yet, we are bodies and souls. We need a healthy body to help keep the mind in shape, and vice versa.

Perhaps I will begin to embrace my son's interest in the psychological bogeyman. Perhaps I too need to create maps of how to get out of potential messes.

* In fairness, the Boy also loves Parks and Rec and Dr. Who. He isn't only interested in movies about the inner life. He does like comedy and sci-fi.

The Lion King

My kids hadn't seen The Lion King until yesterday.  The Boy is 11 and the Big E is 14.  We didn't get to finish it, so we will watch the end tonight.  The kids had been talking about The Lion King, mainly because Fox looks like a little Simba.

There are lots of different ways to look at this.  Someone might say I am anti-Disney, but the Big E has seen Finding Nemo 30 or so times.  We own the DVD.  We had to stop watching it when the Boy was about two years old and the shark attack freaked him out.

I am not a big fan of screen time in general, but that is not all of it.

Here is my shame:  I was the Chairman of the Film Board in college.  I ran a volunteer non-profit that showed six nights of movies on campus.  If I hadn't seen a movie, I had likely read about it.  I had a subscription to the now defunct Premiere magazine.  When I graduated from college and was living in Chicago, I'd read Roger Ebert, Gene Siskel, Dave Kehr and Janet Maslin.  This is a case of "The cobblers kids have no shoes."

Even worse, The Lion King holds a special place in my heart.  Twenty years ago, Jack and I brought this little boy I used to tutor to see The Lion King at the Water Tower Theatre on Michigan Avenue.  Khoa Le was the sweetest boy ever, and I was grateful his mother let us borrow him for the afternoon and fill him up with popcorn.  We took him shopping at the Disney store, but he refused to buy anything.  See?  The sweetest.

I would say this movie brought tears to my eyes and whatnot, but so far it is just a regular movie, except now I am singing "The Circle of Life."  And we haven't seen Simba take down Scar and bring peace to the land.  I suppose tonight I will cry.

Given my complete remiss at showing my kids important movies, here is a list of movies that they need to see.  (Note:  I am missing many movies created since the Big E was born in 2000.  Oh well.)

1.   Almost anything with a score by John Williams:  E.T., Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jaws, etc.
2.   Arsenic and Old Lace --  This is one of my favorite Cary Grant movies.
3.   It's a Wonderful Life -- I saw this when I was in high school on videotape.  About three quarters of the way through, I decided it was kind of a downer so I turned it off and missed the point.
4.   The Princess Bride -- Done.
5.   The Blues Brothers -- Best car chase ever.
6.   The Wizard of Oz -- My kids saw this at the Seattle Children's Theater, but I am not sure they saw it on the screen.  Oy.  Judy Garland is amazing.
7.   To Kill a Mockingbird -- Gregory Peck at his best
8.   Rear Window -- My favorite Hitchcock movie
9.   Casablanca -- Just because it is good
10. Ruthless People -- I wonder if I'd find it dated, but laughed so hard when I first saw this years ago.
11.  Something adorable with John Cusack
12.  Ishtar -- I saw this in high school with a friend and we were the only people in the theater laughing.  But we were laughing.

Getting to Know You, Middle Talk and Shrimp de Jonghe

I love the movie The King and I.  (My favorite scene is "Shall We Dance," which is now on YouTube thanks to Rodgers & Hammerstein making their work publicly available on the internet.) As Jack and I are working to come back together, I am reminded of the song "Getting to Know You" from the musical.

I think this "getting to know you" is going to be harder than I thought.  I thought we could just pick up where we left off, but I am learning that is not the case.  We can be kind and civil to each other.  We can spend the day peacefully playing miniature golf with the boy or going to dinner with the kids.    Small talk isn't a problem.  The large conversation about how this disaster in our marriage occurred happens regularly.  Sometimes peacefully.  Sometimes not.

But what about the middle talk, the conversations that for the past three or more years I have been saving for my girlfriends?  The ones where I try to figure out what to do with the rest of my life, or sort through a challenging problem.  I don't feel safe yet to talk about these things.

Jack and I made Shrimp de Jonghe last night for dinner, which is shrimp baked in butter, garlic, wine and creed crumbs.  I had this for dinner on our third (or so) date.  The second date we went to the Davis Street Fish Market in Evanston.  It was a double date.  My roommate joined Jack's roommate.  The Davis Street Fish Market was a fancy place for kids on a college budget, and I was looking forward to the evening.  My roommate didn't like seafood.  She didn't want to seem high maintenance to this guy, so she asked me to tell Jack I didn't like seafood.   Jack and I were on reasonable footing, so I agreed.  A week or so later, we were at The Keg, an Evanston steakhouse.  I had been there before, so I ordered the Shrimp de Jonghe again.  Jack was surprised.

"This is my favorite dish!" I said.

"I thought you didn't like seafood," he asked delicately.

"Oh, that," I said.  I explained that my roommate didn't want to have to tell her date she didn't like seafood, but I was cool with it.  I knew my roommate really liked this guy, so I was willing to take it for the team.  Jack and I then had a little secret.  He knew I was good friend to help my roommate get in the good graces of this guy.

Will we get back to those days of easy, free-flowing open conversation, where I am not afraid to tell him what I think?  Back then, I didn't have any secrets or worries or fears that I was afraid to share with the world.  Now, life is so much more complicated.