Oh, Snap.

In college, like all students, I procrastinated like hell. So the hours directly preceding my advanced writing courses usually found me stuffing an entire muffin down my gullet while I raced to the computer lab, hoping one of the dinosaurs that still accepted my floppy disc was open so I could glance over my woefully inadequate notes and pump out some writing that at least appeared to be advanced.

One such day, I was accosted down the sidewalk from the computer lab by a screeching nerve bundle of a man who wore a sandwich board proclaiming all the groups he thought were on their way to hell ("pencil-necked men" was my favorite, but "rebellious women" got bigger play). Like all right-thinking human beings, I was compelled to spend the next twenty minutes trying to disabuse him of his psychotic assholery mistaken ideas, all the while resisting the urge to employ his sandwich board and a whistle he repeatedly blew in some decidedly more creative manners.

That, most definitely, is a story for another time. But the upshot that day was that once I arrived at the computer lab, I had ten minutes to crank out a masterpiece, and the line for PCs wrapped around to the drinking fountain that always smelled like ass. So I hightailed it to the front of the Mac line, which was always a couple of students long, plunked down, typed from the top of my head, and printed it off. I called it "Snapshots of My Family," and chronicled moments of my family from the last ten years. That essay got the best grade of the semester.

The moral here is definitely not to blow off writing. I have learned my lesson the hard way about that, as has, I suspect, anyone who has ever put pen to paper or finger to keyboard (or put off doing so to put mouth to beer bottle or ... well, never mind). The moral that I should have immediately gleaned from this is to get the hell over myself and just write. I plan, and plan, and plan. And think about writing. And plan some more.

As before, my son shows me how it's done. He just does.

It always goes the same. I'm neck-deep in some Important Stuff drudgery.

"Mom, come on! The clouds are glowing!"

"I'm coming!" I lie.

"Just come on."

And I do.

Here, then, starting with that awesome cloud shot, are some of his snapshots. And in words, some of mine. I think maybe I'll do this once a week. You know, just because.

**He sat down in the office chair, still in his pajamas, and wanted to know about the big bang and human evolution. I told him. He understood.**

**He ran in and needed his camera right now to capture the sunset. He was right. It was almost neon, it was so bright.**

**He held back tears as we searched the house for the stupid cat, who had been missing for hours. The cat eventually wandered down the stairs nonchalantly, whereupon he was ambushed by a strangle hug and a teary seven-year-old who wanted nothing more than to bury his face in cat fur. The cat actually seemed to like it.**

**My husband found a huge toad in our driveway after the recent rain, and we all sneaked outside to watch it eat crickets. The cat darted outside. We collected him, deposited him in the house, and went back outside to stalk the toad with a flashlight. My son's still talking about how its fat legs trailed behind it when it hopped.**

**He took my side, but managed not to be a know-it-all, as my husband claimed that the Harry Potter actors pronounce Voldemort "Vahldemart."**

**He hung a notebook-paper sign -- "Seacrit Headquarters" -- on the unusued spare bathroom upstairs. The inside is plastered with more paper: "artwork painting" drawings of us, control panel buttons, a menu, and a drawing of every pet he's ever loved, living and deceased.**

**He riffed off some background music in a cartoon last night, and made a song and beat that was totally unique, but had real cadence and rhythm.**

**My husband and I stalked a dragonfly together the other day, hiding from our son because, technically, I had my feet a couple of inches in the water when I wasn't supposed to. Minnows nibbled my heels.**

Along came a (few dozen) spider(s)...

Most people avoid black widow spiders like ... well, like creatures with potentially deadly venom.

Not me, as you might have guessed:

Yep. I'm weird.

But most people have a vague idea that they are nocturnal, and relatively shy. People know that they just don't go traipsing around in daylight, right? And that if one did happen to be out in daylight, it would probably book it to the nearest rock or hidey hole, or back to its web? And that if it just happened to walk over some bozo's hand, that bozo might look at her hand before automatically swatting it because, well, it has potentially deadly venom inside of it?

I think you probably all know where this is going:

This spider was the latest in an ongoing quest to keep at bay a burgeoning population of black widows that have decided our house is prime real estate. I love the creatures. They're some of the most gorgeous spiders out here (and we have our share of spiders). However, their venom is potentially problematic. (It's rarely lethal, actually. Surprisingly, however, many people are less comfortable with "rarely" than "never.") That goes double if you have a kid, especially one who can be absentminded; or a cat, especially one who, though he isn't allowed outdoors and hates to be outdoors, occasionally tries to go outdoors, and has been known to eat spiders. If the webs and spiders are far enough away from the house I don't worry, but our widow population has taken to making webs against every freaking corner of the house. That includes the part everyone's ankles brush every time they walk out of or into the house, the corner our legs lean into if we're grilling, and the nooks along the area where David likes to play with his friend. (First thing his friend told his dad as he picked him up: "Hey Dad! They have BLACK WIDOW WEBS in their yard!" Great.) So last night and the night before, I waited until they were all coming out, grabbed a cheap flashlight (but not a partner, as my husband is a big giant baby has an aversion to spiders) and stalked the front and back yard. I'm probably a huge geek weirdo Aw, whatever geek and weirdo, but it was kind of thrilling. The moonlight was faint, almost absent. I could only see a patch of world at a time, just a little circle of weak yellow light sliding over the gravel, grass, dirt, and concrete. I could just make out the tangled heads of trees, darker shades of black against the almost-black sky. I played the light left and then right, keeping my feet always in the periphery of the beam and then whoa a something ran over my foot (probably a lizard) and holy crap the ground is moving over there and There, there's a black widow, huge and hunting. And another. And another.

I had to dispatch of more than I would have liked. But the excursion itself? It was stimulating. I paid attention. To everything.

The Arizona desert -- my backyard -- is so commonplace to me that I forget it's pretty exotic and remarkable. Outsiders already know this. Things I consider everyday, or at least not super rare -- using looming mountains to get my bearings, glimpsing a roadrunner or coyote, dodging a giant tumbleweed, walking past any of the hundreds of saguaros I might see in a day, finding a scorpion in the laundry room -- are Super Big News to a visitor or someone hearing about it. One friend of mine spent her first month here taking pictures of every saguaro she saw, and stopped her car in the middle of the road to photograph tumbleweed.

For the record, it works both ways. I bug the crap out of everyone in earshot every time I visit Upstate New York, or anywhere in New England, by commenting approximately ten times a minute that "It's so green." They get it. Also, I spent a whole afternoon photographing seagulls in San Diego, found the deer at Goucher College incredibly exotic, and was super-excited when I found this multicolored, active beetle on one trip.

I love the desert. (Well, usually. I could do with out temperatures that, as my husband says, are hotter than Satan's armpits. Actually, I'm pretty sure he stole that phrase. But I don't know the original source, so he gets credit for now.) I love its sunsets and mountains and cacti and especially its critters. But sometimes, well, I get used to the desert.

I could do without the black widows sometimes. But sort of, thank god for 'em. And for my ever-questioning kid, and for my chosen profession. I would hate to stop paying attention. I would hate to get used to this place.

**Also, I'm taking requests now, if you have any. I am used to this place all too often. My son provides a fresh perspective, but for those times he's too engrossed in the comparative merits of Bakugan and Ben 10, what would you like to read about? Widows? Sunsets? Cacti? Coyotes, wolves, roadrunners, javelina, Gila monsters, other spiders, insects, monsoons, the Grand Canyon? Am I leaving stuff out? (Well, of course I am. I could go on for much longer than you could possibly want to read. But I want to know what you find interesting.) And I promise to take my own, minutiae-including, booger-involving, amateur casually written, weird idiosyncratic approach.**

We hit the father lode

Last week at this time, my husband and I were planning to have lunch with my mother-in-law. As we contemplated if the restaurant would be packed and keep us waiting like a bunch of goobers (not good for an impatient perpetual motion machine kid, a hungry post-church mother-in-law and grandma-in-law, and a couple who manages to turn an idle ten minutes into a passive very aggressive whispered argument over who has been nicer to whom, vis-a-vis an incident the night before involving Tuna Helper), my husband said, "Well, isn't it Father's Day?" My heart/brain/facial expression melted. I raced through options in my head, rushed "secret" trips to the store/cards made/goodies baked, until I realized it wasn't that weekend -- I thought. But I wasn't sure. (I totally promise to be easy on you next year when you forget whether my birthday is on the second or third, babe.)

But others are much more on the ball, and I've been watching/reading a fair bit online the last few days about dads, their roles, their treatment, and so forth, in time for Father's Day.

The thing is, I've never really given much thought to "Do fathers get a raw deal," "Can they do just as good a job as mothers," or "Are fathers treated as second-class parents." Partly because my brain is busy thinking things like "Is the toilet going to flood our bathroom for a third time today," "Why on Earth did the universe entrust me with such an awesome kid and give me such a great partner," "Can we afford mortgage this month," "What the hell is that smell," "What's the difference between an eared grebe and a pied-billed grebe," and "Which Bakugan is blue, again?"

(Not necessarily in that order. Sometimes, though.)

(Yeah, these are all thoughts in my head at this moment.)

But it's also because my own family was never like that. Sure, there were times, many, that my mom was the "primary" rule giver, and when the shit (which, if it was there because of us, we'd better clean it up ourselves or ELSE) really hit the fan, she usually took charge at home because 1) she was the one home most often and 2) she was her (if you know her you'll know what I mean). But they were a team, and my father was about the most involved father one could possibly have. He taught me reading and humor and music appreciation and that Beach Boys are great if you're happy and Jim Croce is good if you're sad and how to be sarcastically snide to the music guy at Best Buy if he calls him "Jim Crochet." He taught me as much about baseball as is possible to cram into a three-year-old's head, and later, everything else about baseball. (I've fallen out of following it, but could still properly keep score in my sleep, backwards Ks and all, and I know that Ozzie Smith switch hit. Go crazy, folks.)

More than that, my dad was sort of a superdad. He was the popular teacher/coach at school, the goofy (though you can't really help but be goofy if you're as tall as a phone pole and wear SHORTS in front of 11- and 12-year-olds), sarcastic, teacher-it's-cool-to-like teacher. If a kid needed guidance or coaching or extra anything, he was there. We shared our dad often, and it somehow always seemed to add rather than take away in terms of his dad-ness.

I've written on my dad before. I pretty much idolized the guy. That, I always thought, is the standard by which all dads are to be measured. I have never exactly made a secret of how I felt.

So already, you can possibly see where my husband could have maybe felt pressured. Just a tad.

But it's not even that. I ... well, I don't hide it exactly, but there are some things I don't exactly broadcast. I used to think it was to not make my husband feel weird, or even my son. But it's me.

It's just: David didn't start out Aaron's.

But that's not how it is at all. The thing is, Aaron chose David. He chose both of us.

If I were telling another story, a romantic story, I’d tell here how my husband and I came to be married one December afternoon, with my son as ring bearer, how the ceremony went on to recognize the union of my husband and son as father and son. I’d tell how we all got to that point -- how Aaron and I had dated through high school and a few years afterward. How we had been the forever and ever couple. I’d tell about taking Aaron to my prom, unbothered when his family threw scandalized looks at my dress straps, as if this was exactly why their son had been home-schooled.

I’d tell the usual tired stories about betrayal and sex and school, and maybe some less-tired ones involving a diabetic coma (his), a black bear encounter (both of us, and we think a black bear), and even more daunting, encountering my mother after a particular indiscretion ("... and a teenage female, last name Henry-Ocean-Sam-Edward-Yellow. I think the male's head is about to implode from mortification. Wait, I just heard 'im yell 'Your mom has a POLICE SCANNER?!' I think I'm gonna make 'em wait a minute more, mess with 'em.") (Most definitely both of us, as my mother was delighted share).

I’d tell how our relationship had survived fights, only to disintegrate from stagnation. How it had nearly torn us both apart as individuals. How I’d dived headlong into a job I didn’t really like, met someone I didn’t really like, had a child, alone, and why I honestly never think about that man. I'd tell who Aaron had used that time to date. How, when we finally became good friends once again after three years of little communication, all of that seemed to fall away and it seemed natural and easy that we’d be together again. How it hasn’t really been that easy, if I'm honest with myself. How I know so completely that I want it, and him, anyway.

But I'm not telling that story. I guess the only important points here are: Aaron and I have known each other for about eighteen years. We've been super-close friends for the better part of those years, if not consecutively. We dated, then we didn't. I had a kid. He married me and embraced that kid. He loves my son. His son, our son.

No matter what we'd ever gone through, even before he was his "father," Aaron was there for David. He was the first visitor when I had him, a fixture around the house when I brought him home. Even before we'd considered anything like getting back together and back when he still thought he hated kids, he loved David. He was covered in spit-up and at least tried to change a diaper. Which is what parenting is, in my experience. I'm not a mushy goo-goo girl. I didn't know how to change a diaper until after I had a son. I am much more kid-inclined now that I used to be, but it's more by immersion and philosophical understanding. Kids are still a pain. But it's different with mine. And that's how Aaron is. He's not a kid person. But he's definitely an our-kid person. He's a dad.


Aaron isn't just like my own dad. Which isn't better or worse, just different. (Actually probably better for me specifically, since I never would have married someone just like my father -- two sarcastic, opinionated, never-backing-down bigmouths wouldn't have worked too well.) We're our own family. He's his own person, learning and growing and loving and screwing it up just as often as he gets it right just like the rest of us. But the one thing that is the same between them is the caring. I haven't known very many people who care as fiercely as my own father, and this one:



Happy Father's Day, baby.

(It IS this weekend, right?)

Slowing down at the ripe old age of 29

My husband tells me I say "Sorry for not posting" too often. So, I'm not not sorry for not posting. How's that.

Blame it on age. I had a birthday a few days ago. Twenty nine. Seriously.

It's becoming increasingly difficult to escape the realization that I am, in fact, a full-fledged adult. Not a young adult. Not just an adult with respect to being a mom, but it's still OK to eat a bagged salad out of the bag and watch Dawson's Creek without feeling ashamed. Not even a twenty-something anymore, really. I'm almost thirty. Eek.

But if one thing has come with age, it's an appreciation for detail and the understated. An ability to slow down and zoom in. Well, that, and an inability to eat peanut M & Ms with impunity.

I'll back up. In sixth grade, I was a burgeoning intellectual. Of course, I also wore those shirts that change color when you breathe on them like when you fog up windows, and bunched them up in those shirt-holder-things that looked like big "No" symbols, so my self-assessment skills might have been lacking. But I was the shit, trust me. I won spelling bees and academic bowls and, you know, all the stuff cool kids do. I wrote acrostic poems ("Dinosaurs" and "Nature"). Also, I decided to write a book. My book had two space explorers who were thrown off course and couldn't find their way home. They decided to settle on a strange new world. Adam decided to name it "Earth," and Eve agreed.

Yeah, I know.

In junior high (by which point I'd abandoned the Hypercolor tees and clips, in favor of plaid and an otherwise totally brown and green wardrobe), I still wrote stories, and though they weren't as blatantly unoriginal, they invariably ended with the main character finding out that (gasp!) that shopkeeper had died three weeks before he talked to him or (gasp!) he had been dreaming the whole time. (Or HAD he?) Gah. Also, I decided I would write about marine biology, but pretty much only the mega-est of marine megafauna. You know, because no one's thought of covering that before.

In high school (by now I had graduated to No Fear shirts) I wrote a paper about, and entitled, "Religion and Science." The assignment was to write at least twenty-five pages. I wrote forty. I thought I knew it all, but all I cared about was the All. Never the parts. So I never noticed enough to really know anything. Because everything's about the parts. Even megafauna depend on the tiniest creatures. I didn't even know about the existence of phytoplankton back when I considered myself a marine biology expert.

Even my first several newspaper articles suffered from this inability to zoom in and notice what was important and unimportant. (By this point I'd totally stopped trying to dress impressively, and filed most stories wearing satin Tootsie Pop shorts.) It might not be so bad since the stories were probably read only by editors and my mom. Still, I had a hard time writing about a thirty-minute tax workshop at the community center in less than forty inches.

(I've been both a reporter and editor many times since those shitty amateurish early stories. I'm sorry. You guys must have hated me so much.)

It was about patience. I had none. I could always write -- where "write" is defined as "vomit words." I could write twenty pages in one go by the time I was ten. It doesn't take much patience or attention to "write" twenty pages. It takes a lot of it to write two. If the idea or concept couldn't be seen from space, I wasn't likely to cover it, and I covered it all. I was unable to sit still, to read, to really think for long enough to find nuances, to pare down ideas and words.

I must be growing up, though. Now, I "write" just as much, but I sit. I let it ferment. I think. And then I write. Or, I try to. Sometimes it happens.

Other aspects of my life have gone through a similar maturation (though, sadly, not my sense of fashion).

Take food. I used to cook: 1) chicken nuggets or patties; 2) pizza; or 3) whatever my mom sent home. Now, I can reliably cook over a dozen semi-complex dishes, and they usually taste like what they're supposed to taste like, and if atmospheric conditions are right, I can rattle off the names of at least seven or eight spices. And I'm not even counting salt, pepper, and powdered cheese.

Or cars. I used to know the following about cars: 1) whether a car was running; 2) how to change a flat so creepy dudes don't stop to "help" me; and 3) not to barf all over the car taking me home from the New Year's party where I shotgunned Jell-O shots all night. Now, I can name at least ten car parts, and point out probably five of them!

So I thought I was getting better at things -- writing, cooking, not killing my car -- because I was growing up. Learning to slow the hell down and notice details. And all by myself, too!

Well, maybe not.

See, if there's anyone who has an excuse for not noticing details, it should be my son. Most of the day, I live with a cat, my husband, and a boy-shaped blur. It begins at about six each morning. And doesn't stop until nine at night, when I cover him, still chattering, and force him into a supine position. In between, it's:


MomHeyMomMOMWAKEUPMOMHiMomCanIHavethisCanwego
thereCanIseethatWhenareweleavingWhyisthatduckbitingthat
otherduckandwherearethebabiesandhowdoeshispenisfitintothe
girlduckanywayandHeyMomdoesadragonflyhaveapenisandwhy
arethosepeoplelookingatmenowCanwehavepizzaAndifwehave
pizzacanIhavepineapplesandextracheeseAndafterwardcanIhave
icecreamandcanIhavesprinklesandcantheybemostlyredonesand
MomwhydoyoulooksotiredandIdon'twanttogotobedIDON'TWANT
TOWAUGH!HeycanwereadfirstCanwereadHarryPotterCanweread
thewholethingHarryPotterBakuganDragonfliesDucksPenisButt
BoobiesSpongeBobLoveKissVideoGamesMomNutsDadMom...

And on like that. He's like those characters in storylines who have sped-up bodies or whatever (I'm pretty sure I wrote a story about them in seventh grade) and they can't experience the normal world because in relation to their own movements it's all frozen and imperceptible. You would think it would take a monumental force of sheer will to notice anything at all.

But he's gifted. He slows down when it matters. Every time.

That's it. He just slows down. I really don't have anything particularly enlightened to say about it, which seems right, somehow. It just is. He just is. He notices the barbs on a dragonfly's legs. A twitch of my mouth or a slight change in my inflection, and he's there, telling me exactly what I need to hear. A song plays, and he can name the instruments, even the ones I never noticed. At the lake last night, he sat shoulder-deep in the water, and ducks and grebes swam by, almost close enough to touch. He didn't try, though. Just watched.


Anyway, I think that's where I must have learned it.

Maybe we'll rent a movie next time

My son hosted his first mostly-independent-of-my-hovering visit the other day. By all accounts -- his own, his friend's, his friend's parents' -- it was a success. Which is funny, looking at a transcript of the event:

My son: Let's play Guitar Hero!
His friend: No! Let's play Battleship!
Son: OK, fine. I have Battleship. I'll show you how to play.
Friend: No! Don't show me! I know how!
Son: Fine! Let's find it.
Friend: Nah. Let's go outside.

Outside

Friend: Let's swing!
Son: No! Let's slide!
Friend: But I WANT to swing!
Son: OK, fine. But I get the good swing. You can have the guest swing. ("Guest" here means "crooked, ass-pinching, not-as-high-swinging.")
Friend: But I want the good swing!
Son: (Looking at me giving the be-a-good-host glare) OK.

Several minutes of genuine contented swinging follow, interrupted only when a who-can-go-higher contest nearly upends the thing.

Friend: Let's play football! ("Play football" here equals "Throw the Nerf football at each other, occasionally sort of catching it. With our faces. Follow with crying to Mom.")
Son: No! I'm tired of football. Let's play soccer! ("Play soccer" equals "Kick the flattened Spiderman ball at each other, occasionally sort of passing it. To each other's faces. Follow with crying to Mom.")
Friend: Football!
Son: Soccer!
Me: Guys, does it really matter?
Friend: Hey! Look what I can do! (Takes flat Spiderman ball, turns toward neighboring yard, gives Spidey a good hard kick in the webface. Ball disappears over brick wall.)

Back inside

In a display of extreme idiocy, I suggest they find a two-player video game to play. Since these things always end well. My son wants to play Ben 10 (single player); his friend wants Transformers (also single player). I trick them convince them to agree upon Lego Star Wars, because it's a two-player game and come on, who can bicker when they're watching Chewy rip Lego Darth Vader's arms out? They begin the game in this fashion:

Friend: Hey, it's a movie!
Son: You know it's not a movie. It's just those scenes before the level.
Friend (In his best I'm-gonna-be-a-contrary-idiot voice): COOL. A MOVIE. You know it's a MOVIE.
Son (In his best I'm-gonna-be-a-bickering-ninny-even-though-it-totally-doesn't-matter voice): QUIT it. It's NOT a movie.
Friend: COOL.
Son: QUIT it!
Friend: COOL. It's a MOVIE.
Son: It's NOT.
Friend: It is. IT IS! LOOK! See! I was right and you were wrong!
Son: QUIT IT QUIT IT QUIT IT!
Friend: COOL! It's so COOL!
Son: It IS cool. Cuz it's a SCENE for the GAME.
Friend: It's a MOVIE. That is so COOL.
Son: QUIT...
Me: GUYS?!
Both: We're having fun!

Son: So you go over there when we get into the ship room, and I'll get the Storm Troop... WHAT ARE YOU DOING YOU'RE MAKINGMELOSEMYGUYQUITQUITAHHHHH!
Friend: I WANT to go this way! And I don't want to be this stupid character!
Son: That's C-3PO.
Friend: Well, C-3PO sucks!
Me: He's kind of right, David. 3PO does kind of suck.
Son: Well, he can be the other rebel guy...
Friend: I wanna be the Lego guy!
Son: That's the rebel guy! You can be the other one...
Friend: I wanna be the one with the RED shirt.
Son: Fine! You can after I do this part. Be Princess Leia until then. She has a blaster.
(Friend grudgingly agrees.)
Son: Ah ha! You're a GIRL! You're so girly! You have boobies!
Me: David!
Son (very insincerely): Sorry.

A blessedly unblogworthy and relatively quiet half hour of giggling, talk and cooperative play follows. The friend's father arrives to pick him up. I open the door and we hear the boys bellowing from upstairs.

Son: Quit shooting me! You did that before!
Friend: Well, YOU shot ME.
Son: Only because you're not as good at that part and you kept losing all the coins! I was taking them to carry them!
Friend: Well, you don't have to SHOOT me.
Son: Yes I do!
Me: GUYS!
Both: Sorry! We're having a lot of fun!

As I go upstairs they've made up and are entertaining themselves by making R2-D2 fall repeatedly off a precipice, because he does this pathetic dying-away scream each time. I hate to tear the little angels away from their sadistic fun, but it's time for his friend to leave.

****

5 frickin' a.m. this morning

Poke.

Poke poke.

I crack open one eye. My son is looming over me, with one of those inflatable sticks people bang together to distract free throw shooters. Only it's raised like a hatchet or something. I propel myself from bed. My husband seems unconcerned.

"Good morning, Mom!"
"David. It's a little early."
"But I want to know when my friend can come over again! We talked in school yesterday about how much fun we had! I always get along with him. I wished he lived here all the time."
"Mrflgrfff."
"Mom?"
"Sweetie, it's really early. Can I just lay down for a little longer?"
"Sure, Mom."

5:12 a.m.

"Good morning, Mom! I love you more than anything in the universe or if there's more universes more than anything in the universes! Ready to get up?"

There's no turning back now.

"Good morning. I love you too."

"So when can he come over again?"

Word to my mother

I never go to bed early enough. So, usually, when I wake up and see this:



...I'm sometimes pretty unenthusiastic, even though it's my favorite sight in the world 99 percent of the time. However, last night as I tucked him in my son said "Mom? Can you leave out some pretty paper? And also a pencil and safety scissors? Oh, and don't get up early."

(No one ever said he was a master at secrecy.)

So I did as I was told, and when I cracked open one eye this morning, to see much surreptitious tiptoeing and peeking, I stayed "asleep." Then I actually did fall back asleep, and when I awoke I was covered in Mother's Day spoils: He'd come back in to put my card, another card he made and a present (a recipe book he wrote himself, with ants on a log, cowboy cookies, edible nests and at least a dozen others) on top of me.


Later in the morning, I also got this ------------>

There were only a few hundred aphids on it.

I have the best kid.

I rarely, however, feel like the best mom. I spend too much time online. I'm not a good housekeeper. I'm not that great at feigning interest in video games or endless games of tag. He's wearing second-stringer shorts right now because I neglected to throw in a load of laundry.

But I'm hopeful I'll develop into a pretty decent mother. I had, after all, an awesome example.

You know how everyone says it will come?

"You just wait," they say in resigned tones, as the inevitable event has apparently come to pass for all but me. "You'll wake up one day and realize you've totally become your mother."

I'm still waiting. When? When do I get to be my mother? It can't be as inevitable as all that. It seems pretty evitable to me. I'd LOVE to turn into my mother. I'd love to be good with bills. Keep a clean house. Get people to freaking listen to me without feeling like my head will implode. Remember that the littlest things are the biggest things.

My mom not only did everything a mother does, and at least made it look easy, she did it by herself for several years. After my dad passed away, she was mother and father, disciplinarian and buddy, the parent who says "What were you thinking?" and the one who pretends to turn a blind eye. When my own first Mother's Day rolled around, she not only made sure I got a card "from" my son, she got me one on Father's Day too, as I was "both mother and father" to my son at the time. I appreciated it so much, but I never really thought about how she was both for so long. And she didn't have herself helping out and reassuring her.

When I was still flying solo, my son was a baby. He was difficult sometimes, and I was clueless. But he ate. Pooped. Slept. Pooped. Cried. And pooped. That was about it. He didn't even stray from where I put him until he was pretty old, since motor skills (or lack thereof) in our family ensure we're nearing puberty before we can walk.

When my mom was on her own, we were pre-teens and teenagers. We argued. We devised schemes to get around the draconian, horrible world she had created wherein we actually had to do our share. I crashed a school dance and rode home in a wildly careening car driven by a crazed friend. I crashed (in the literal sense) my own car on the third day of owning it. My brother flipped a car going about 90 miles an hour. My sister ... well, my sister was pretty much perfect. But she was annoying sometimes.

My mom was always ... there. Always. Now that I've been around the block of supposed adults a time or two, I'm starting to realize that's incredibly rare.

One of the most peculiar things about becoming a mother is the shift in identity. You become so-and-so's mom. I'm at about half-and-half right now. People still know I love critters. I'm a writer. I'm terrible with directions. I'm a better driver now, but I used to be pretty awful. I hate cilantro. I'm keenly interested in politics. I love sci-fi and know an embarrassing amount about the Dune universe. But more and more, I'm losing these things as definers of me, even if they're still parts of me. I'm David's mom. I'm the one who makes cookies, buys Bakugan toys, prefers SpongeBob to Patrick and can believably voice most of the characters in a Harry Potter reading. I love being these things, probably even more than "just" being me. Being a mom has become the biggest definer of me, and I like it that way. But it makes me think: If that's "me" after just seven years, how many cool things do people probably not know about my mom?

My mom is amazing, quite apart from her ability to put up with me.

• She's the best improviser that I know. She can make anything from anything. Crooked mailbox post, animals in need of a place to feed/hide, messed up wiring, missing ingredients for dinner -- she doesn't have "training" in home improvement, carpentry, or cooking, but the lady's like MacGyver.
• She's a fervent environmentalist, a card-carrying member of Greenpeace, and one of the best appreciators of the natural world ever. I like to think it's where I get it.
• She does not like to be startled.
• The Navy was interested in her at one point.
• Her views on faith are among the most nuanced, and at the same time strongest, that I know.
• She's almost always the one behind the camera. (I plan to work harder at turning the tables.)
  
• She's a great editor. She can spot a grammar, punctuation, or spelling mistake from space.
  
• She really does not like to be startled.
• She loves to watch CSI, Without a Trace, Cold Case and the like. However, she has a hard time remembering characters' identities and who's done what, so if they rerun an episode after a span of a month or more, it's a whole new show for her. This is a source of much amusement and teasing from my brother and me.
• She was way shorter than my dad, and unless she "cheated" he'd pose by clamping his arm down/ around her.
• She was a badminton champion in high school, as well as a kick-ass archer.
• She pretty much totally hates being startled.
• She graduated top of the class when our town held a citizens' police academy. No one was surprised.
• She was a children's basketball coach for years.
• She's a pretty big Trekkie. Especially TNG. Patrick Stewart would probably be on her "list," though possibly in character, since when we saw him in a movie, she told me "Hey! Picard's the bad guy in this one!"
• Speaking of the "list," Tom Selleck would be there too. She used to have a big Magnum, P.I. poster in her closet.
• She published an excellent article on Circlestone in the Superstition Mountains. (Something that I have yet to do, though I was on the trip too. Who's the writer again?)
• She absolutely, forever and always, unreservedly and completely for all of her days, eternally and as long as time shall stand, despises being startled.
• She totally, unabashedly loves John Denver.
• If you are ever in any kind of emergency situation, she is the very first person you want by your side.
• She loves chimes and clocks. Our house was a lovely cacophony growing up. (Well, the cacophony provided by the clocks and chimes was lovely, anyway.)
• She is an excellent bowler. I take bowling just a tad too seriously thanks to her tutelage, but those lessons are also the only reason I routinely make it to triple digits.
• We startled her regularly growing up. OK, we still do. Sometimes. It's just too easy.

I've left out tons. But hopefully you get a piece of the picture. Happy Mother's Day, Mom.

(Boo.)

What about when swine flew?

"Never."

"You will."

"I won't. Ever. Not even when pigs fly. Not freaking ever."

So went an exchange I had over seven years ago, while pregnant with my son. I'd just heard about a mother who was so afraid of spiders, snakes, allergens, and imagined dangers that she'd kept her baby completely sheltered from the natural world. The girl was so unfamiliar with the outside world ... with outside, period, that when her aunt placed her on soft grass at ten months old, she freaked out.

"It's understandable," my friend had said. "You'll become like that. Just wait."

Of course, I was unequivocal in my insistence that I would never, ever, not once, be like that. So you can see where this is going.

This week, I killed a bunch of spiders in a maternally induced, poison-spraying rampage (some of which I did on the sly, to hide the carnage from my son) and I became paranoid about swine flu.

I'm not this person. I mean really. If you're rolling your eyes at me and thinking how ridiculous it is and it would never be you, it's even more not me.

When my son was growing inside me, I became obsessed with the fragility of small things. I signed up for no less than a dozen "what your baby is doing now" widgets and calculators. The third month: Your baby is three inches long and has his own fingerprints (assuming you cease vomiting long enough to read about the baby). The sixth month: Your baby is growing hair, hiccuping, developing billions of neurons in a head now graced with proto-eyebrows, and weighs a little over a pound.

The smallness of him freaked me out. Anything could happen. What if I bumped into a table or chair or fell on my face or ass, as I so often did? What if some idiot pulled out in front of me in traffic? What if I had exposed him to too much of the chemicals I worked around? I had always mucked around in the chemical vats, fixing and stirring and squeezing my body behind heavy machinery. I'm the opposite of paranoid, when it comes to my own safety. But I began to shuffle around, resisting the urge to shield my abdomen with my arms, giving everything a wide berth, doing paperwork while someone else fixed the machines.

It was real and frightening, but not frightening because it was real. I had dealt with the reality of the situation almost at once -- coping by scarfing down a platter of ribs and confessing to an ex-boyfriend and then my family. Much crying had been involved, and much much barfing, but my near-pathological pragmatism had been a blessing, slipping me swiftly from panic to acceptance to happy anticipation. No, the frightening quality was the size. The fragility. I was totally freaked out that I was going to be in charge of a baby, a whole person, or at least a potential one. An empty vessel; an innocent, undifferentiated being who, somehow, I was supposed to raise to be a full person. Through interaction with the world around him, through how I would present that world, he would learn ... what? Caution? Trust? Love? Fear? Indifference? What if I couldn't even keep him healthy and whole and uninjured?

It reminded me of when I was a kid. I saw a butterfly, some kind of swallowtail though I didn't know it at the time. Bright yellow and bold black. I reached out to it, caught it, very gently. I brushed a wing. I loved it. And injured it. I was scared to touch a butterfly for a while after that.

I'm reminded of this now because I'm still the opposite of paranoid when it comes to myself, or even those close to me. You feel sick? Suck it up. Sore muscles? Deal with it. Spiders outside? Give me a break. Worried about abduction or disease or vehicular injuries? Come on. Do you even realize the vanishingly small numbers of people, in the grand scheme of things, who suffer these things? It's confirmation bias, people. Get over it.

But with my son, it's different. I'm fully aware that season flu kills tens of thousands of Americans each year, and that there are only tens of recorded deaths from swine flu. If it was just me, I'd be acting like a total know-it-all jackass, going around telling anyone who would listen how hyped-up and silly this all was. But my son comes in and coughs, and it's all about potential. What could happen. You know, I tell myself, the real danger of swine flu isn't how many deaths there are so far, it's the lack of immunity from it. In just a few generations, a few months, the number of infections could rise exponentially. That's why it's got pandemic potential. It can infect anyone who is exposed. Anyone. In fact, I think I've developed magnification-powered super vision, and I swear I can see flu viruses crawling all over my son's filthy fingers right now, the same hands that rub his nose and play with other kids who probably don't wash after wiping their butts, and OH MY GOD he just stuck his hand into his mouth. And now I can see, just from where I'm sitting and without even turning my head, all the spoils of my newly acquired paranoia: pocket-size antibacterial wet wipes; anti-flu, anti-cold, virus-and-bacteria-obliterating wipes in a huge cylinder dispenser; a new box of bar soap; hand soap; hand sanitizer; and surface wipes for each time someone uses the computer.

I know I'm being ridiculous. But I can't keep my head from going there. What if? We had a black widow infestation recently around our house and garage, and my initial fascination was followed by an ill-advised online search about how much worse black widow bites can be for children.

But that isn't me. And I don't want it to be him. I'm the one who gets inches away from spiders, who looks up medical information before freaking out, who embraces the world. So is he, so far.

Here is my struggle: How do I raise a son who grows up taking chances, holding the cricket, going nose-to-nose with the python, climbing the tree -- but who also, well, grows up? As in, remains alive? How do I raise a human being to live, and also to live? How do I not go crazy balancing the two? I can't make him care about the world while telling him to run in the opposite direction.

I guess it's all about example. Engagement. He never did go near the widows' webs. But he goes near webs of every other kind, and he's kind of sad we had to get rid of them. We brought them in to study. He skinned his knee today -- apparently, he was horsing around really roughly. Could have gotten hurt badly. Could have ... well, that doesn't matter. He didn't. And now the bandage is hanging dirty and loosely, forgotten except as a token feel-better gesture, and he's running. He doesn't think, he acts.

For now, it's up to me to think for him, to make sure he both survives and cares, but not for long. He didn't run to me this morning when a few kids tried to harm a lizard on the playground. He marched right over to them, let him know he was almost-crying because he cared, and they should care, and it can't hurt them and they're big jerks if they think smooshing a lizard is cool. He's realizing the potential, becoming a real person, with his own thoughts and feelings influenced by me but not the same as mine.

Then he rescued it, found his friend and went inside, almost forgetting to wave goodbye.

We're exiting the potential-person stage and entering real personhood. I think we'll survive this stage. It may be seen from between fingers, but I'll be watching with pride.

As long as his fingers are sanitized. And not in his mouth.