Dear Future Suttie and Molly,
You’re welcome.
You’re welcome for whooping your tails when you needed it.
You’re better for it, which means that it was worth the tears (yours and mine…secretly
shed in the closet after the fact).
You’re welcome for caring enough to show you love but also
discipline and love in the form of discipline. I have seen too many children
with constant praise and no punishment turn into butthole adolescents and asshole
adults. I don’t want that for you, and I wasn’t put on this earth to make you
feel good about your bad choices.
And, yes, I realize that you are growing up in what many
have dubbed an “entitlement culture.” And that’s fine…as long as you understand
that I, too, am entitled. I am entitled to spank your butt, to revoke your
freedoms, to enforce my rules, and to embarrass you in public. So choose
wisely, my dear ones, so that I can invoke my other privileges of showering you
with affection and rewarding your good judgment.
Now, you may be thinking, Mom, what has brought on this
sudden bout of sincerity and plain speaking? Well, it all started with a normal
Wednesday morning trip to Walmart. Ah, Walmart, the cradle of life for
misbehaving children, both of you included, who seem to lose every lick of
sense as soon as we cross that ill-maintained threshold.
On this occasion, Suttie, you were at school, and I’d
remembered to load up a snack bag for Molly, so things were on the up and up. I
cannot, however, say the same for the poor mother of at least three who I
encountered in the food storage aisle.
This unfortunate soul was trying to wrangle her very loud,
very active boys into her cart as one was ripping Ziploc containers off the
shelves to build a fort and another was jumping up and down in the main area of
her buggy like a ritalin test monkey. I didn’t realize there was a third until
I saw her bend down and try to coax him from beneath the cart where he was
hanging on for dear life upside-down
with his back against the “coke rack” like a hissing possum. She was clearly
overwhelmed, and I couldn’t help but think, “Woman, where is your wooden
spoon?!”
Then, just as I was turning my cart around to give her some
privacy in which to wrench the conch back from Jack, Piggy, and Ralph, the Ziploc
engineer sauntered up to me and smacked me on my thigh. Yes, smacked a total
stranger. Not really knowing what to do, I simply said, “Hi,” and looked at
Mom, sure that she would prompt him for an apology or, at the very least, devour
him whole. I would have been happy with either.
But instead of correcting his behavior or forcing him to
admit fault, she looked back at me and muttered an exasperated, “Kids!”
I would have gone with “demons,” but I rarely argue
semantics in Walmart. And after letting out another defeated sigh, she called
for my attacker, leaving the containers on the floor, and wheeled her cart
onward, with Bubbles still going ape-shit up top and the possum still hanging
and hissing from the bottom.
Now, you two are not perfect, and Molly, sweetheart, at
times, you border on psychotic, but by now, you both know that homey don’t play
that. I will never be okay with you disrespecting and purposefully disobeying
me or acting with the intention to hurt another. Never. ever.
And I will gladly cut other moms (and dads) slack because
kids misbehave, they act up, they go wild. When they exit the walls of their
homes, they think that none of the rules apply, that every store, mall,
playground, and restaurant is a Lord of
the Flies-style anarchist state. But as a parent, you have to do something.
ANYTHING! Even a step in the wrong direction is better than no step at all. If
you yell too much or lecture too much or invoke the Devil too much, you can
rein it in and begin again. But if you do nothing, then their young, but acute
sense of logic says that what they’re doing is okay. And if they feel validated
in doing whatever they want, regardless of appropriateness, at 6, then you
can’t question why they share that mentality at 16.
The whole situation reminded me of an encounter that we had with
a father and son right after the 2011 tornadoes, which devastated parts of
this area. Your father and I were helping to clean up the remains of a friend’s
nearly destroyed home, and we noticed a teenage boy working his tail off over
here, over there, doing whatever he could to help. When a local church brought
around sack lunches, your dad and the boy and the boy’s father all sat down to
take a much-needed rest. But the father, noticing that the boy had a lunch when
not everyone had been served, told him to give his lunch to your dad (who was
still waiting) and to help pass the rest out before eating his own. After the
boy left, my husband complimented the father on how well behaved and hard
working his son was, and the father simply responded, “I stays on his ass.” It has
become our parenting mantra.
And although I hope that today was a fluke and that the
mother who I met was just having one of those days (we all have them – the days
when I can’t tell you “no” anymore, when we’ll have to start again tomorrow), I
have a sinking feeling that her sons won’t turn out to be the well behaved,
hard working kind.
So you’re welcome, my loves. I care about you enough to
correct you, to hug you, to scold you, to tickle you, to question you, to love
you…they are all equally important to me. You are entitled, yes, that is true.
You are entitled to my love and also to my direction. And you are blessed
because your father and I stays on your ass.
--------------------------------------------------
Dear Mom,
Thank you.
Thank you for the whoopings, the spankings, the pops, the
stink eyes, the scoldings, the lectures. Thank you for taking the time to set
me right when I was wrong, even when you were tired from work and overwhelmed
with my extracurriculars, when you would rather have been hugging your little
girl or, God forbid, taking a moment to eat a hot dinner or just catch your
breath.
