Twelve is mostly nonplussed most of the time. She habitually wears a jaded air (because after all, if you were the smartest person in the world, you too would want to express how unimpressed you are by anything else) but the other day I got to be a superhero for about three whole minutes.
I'd been trying to buy a bookcase for Twelve's room for months, because she doesn't have one and because bedrooms should contain bookshelves. Craigslist, thrift shops, the weirdly-overpriced-yet-boring consignment place down the street: Twelve vetoed every single possibility. As a general rule, I do not press issues like this with Twelve. If she doesn't like it, I don't buy it: She's a very good shopper and I trust that if she doesn't like a t-shirt now, she's not going to like it any more after I've forced her to own it. And, while I find it utterly inexplicable that her books lived in a dresser drawer, I do understand that this is not an actual problem.
We were out sewing machine hunting and stopped at the grungiest thrift shop on the route. I halfheartedly pointed at a very ordinary came-in-a-box black bookcase, entirely expecting Twelve to instantly dismiss it, and she actually said she liked it! Amused but wanting to stay cool, I asked if she wanted a nearby little black folding table to replace my little wooden folding table as her nightstand, and she went for that as well.
After bustling around to get the dang thing into the trunk and bungee-corded down, we drove off, discussing the bedroom rearrangement that would be happening when we got home. Twelve loves this sort of thing. Blah blah blah de blah blah blah ... I'm just trying to keep up, until she starts in on wanting to switch beds again.
Twelve used to sleep in my childhood bed: Twin size, creaky springs under the mattress, cast iron headboard and footer - very much like the hospital beds in Downton Abbey, in fact. After a former roommate moved out a couple of years ago, R and I surprised Twelve by giving her the very nice queen size bed that the roommate left behind. All was well until recently, when Twelve decided that the old bed would give her more bedroom space and lobbied to switch the beds back.
I have no interest whatsoever in playing musical beds.
Twelve's room is plenty big for the queen size bed, the spare room downstairs is teensy, and the staircase is low-ceiling-ed, twisty, and treacherous. Moving beds around is a dumb idea, and I'm not going to do it.
"But what if I get R to help me?" says Twelve, and as I try in vain to think of a reason why the beds shouldn't be switched, I know what's coming: "You know you don't have a logical reason," says she, and she's right, so I pull out my trump card. Laughing, I tell Twelve that she's right but that I still get to veto the bed switching plan, and the conversation moves on.
Once we get home, the furniture rearrangement begins. She lets me try the bookshelf in the place I think it should go, and of course she's right, it looks terrible there. As we're maneuvering it into the place she wants to try, I ask if she wants me to reinforce the back panel a bit.
"How?" she asks. It's one of those cardboard backs where you can see the fold lines.
"With staples, I think," and I go hunt down the staple gun.
Sure enough, after a few staples, the unit does seem sturdier, and the backing attached more smoothly. Twelve is impressed! I am gratified by this! Twelve is more and more capable every week, it seems, and thinking about it later I realized that there really are fewer and fewer opportunities for her to be impressed by anything I do: Going to college? Boring. Getting jobs? Tedious. Turning yards of cloth into garments? Business as usual. Being a landlady: A total hassle. Sometimes I guess it takes a staple gun and a reasonably steady hand to impress a twelve year old.
Then, I mentioned offhandedly that she could paint her desk black to match the bookshelf and end table. According to the notation on the back, we painted it white in 2005.
Twelve lights up.
The next day on our walk to the gym, we stopped at the neighborhood hardware store and picked out a quart of water-based black paint and a paintbrush. We found the giant roll of plastic that was originally intended as R's greenhouse cover and cut a piece to fit under the desk. I taught Twelve how to pry the lid off a paint can. Admonishing repeatedly that she better not get paint anywhere but on the desk, I left her to it.
She did a great job.
Bookcase: $10. Nightstand: $3. Quart of black paint: $8.79. Paintbrush: $1.99. Seventeen staple gun staples: Maybe seven cents. Impressing a twelve-year-old with your mad DIY skillz: Priceless.
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Friday, July 6, 2012
Sheepdog Twelve
My books of official wisdom haven't arrived yet, but I've decided that preadolescents are like sheepdogs.
I can explain.
A friend brought her sheepdog to porch sitting the other night (having first very properly emailed to check that was okay, the Emily Post in me interjects approvingly), and described the dog's behavior towards humans in terms of herding. Summit will, for example, follow her out to the yard, check out the situation and confirm that her human is only going to be sitting out there reading on a blanket, and only then might go back in the house. Keeping track, checking in ... bossing around, basically.
Twelve kind of does the same thing. Often it's combined with "Oh, you're heading towards the bathroom? I'm going to announce that I have to pee, race you in there, and get in your way, just because I want to be as obnoxious as possible." That's when we laugh together for a few minutes, and then when I get tired of that, we have the conversation about good attention-getting vs. bad attention-getting behaviors and I shove her out of the room.
Many times, though, Twelve will just wander out of her room and check in with what I'm doing. Are you going to go down and sew? What are you doing? Are you going to watch your show? That kind of thing. I can't quite tell why she cares, since she is becoming an absolute master putter-arounder in her room and is perfectly content to do that all day, but she definitely checks in. It's not obnoxious, it's just conversational. It's quite nice, actually. Sometimes she'll announce that she is going to sit with me in the big blue chair, and we'll do that for awhile. Sometimes I take the opportunity to tell her to do something specific, like remove that banana peel to the compost bucket and put the used tissues inside the trash can. (What can she possibly be DOING in there that prohibits the accurate placement of trash in the appropriate receptacle?)
Last night we three got home kind of late from a cookout - a fairly typical summer evening situation. Usually Twelve starts getting ready for bed right away, but last night she saw that I had sat down in the big blue chair with my laptop and R had collapsed on the couch with a magazine, and announced importantly that she was going to go get her book. She retrieved her book and came back to sit in the other chair.
Yes. It was that precious.
I had only sat down for a minute to briefly check my email, but obviously I couldn't mess this up, so I did some puttering around of my own on the interwebs until R and I, having to get up at reasonable hours, eventually abandoned sleeps-'til-noon Twelve to her book.
In the last hour, Twelve has wandered out of her room twice, raced me to the bathroom and been thrown out by her braid, sat in my lap, asked me what time I'm leaving the house this evening, and told me self-righteously that I should probably get ready to go: Herding.
I'm sure that the comparison of twelve-year-olds to sheepdogs is a major theme in the preadolescent development literature.
I can explain.
A friend brought her sheepdog to porch sitting the other night (having first very properly emailed to check that was okay, the Emily Post in me interjects approvingly), and described the dog's behavior towards humans in terms of herding. Summit will, for example, follow her out to the yard, check out the situation and confirm that her human is only going to be sitting out there reading on a blanket, and only then might go back in the house. Keeping track, checking in ... bossing around, basically.
Twelve kind of does the same thing. Often it's combined with "Oh, you're heading towards the bathroom? I'm going to announce that I have to pee, race you in there, and get in your way, just because I want to be as obnoxious as possible." That's when we laugh together for a few minutes, and then when I get tired of that, we have the conversation about good attention-getting vs. bad attention-getting behaviors and I shove her out of the room.
Many times, though, Twelve will just wander out of her room and check in with what I'm doing. Are you going to go down and sew? What are you doing? Are you going to watch your show? That kind of thing. I can't quite tell why she cares, since she is becoming an absolute master putter-arounder in her room and is perfectly content to do that all day, but she definitely checks in. It's not obnoxious, it's just conversational. It's quite nice, actually. Sometimes she'll announce that she is going to sit with me in the big blue chair, and we'll do that for awhile. Sometimes I take the opportunity to tell her to do something specific, like remove that banana peel to the compost bucket and put the used tissues inside the trash can. (What can she possibly be DOING in there that prohibits the accurate placement of trash in the appropriate receptacle?)
Last night we three got home kind of late from a cookout - a fairly typical summer evening situation. Usually Twelve starts getting ready for bed right away, but last night she saw that I had sat down in the big blue chair with my laptop and R had collapsed on the couch with a magazine, and announced importantly that she was going to go get her book. She retrieved her book and came back to sit in the other chair.
Yes. It was that precious.
I had only sat down for a minute to briefly check my email, but obviously I couldn't mess this up, so I did some puttering around of my own on the interwebs until R and I, having to get up at reasonable hours, eventually abandoned sleeps-'til-noon Twelve to her book.
In the last hour, Twelve has wandered out of her room twice, raced me to the bathroom and been thrown out by her braid, sat in my lap, asked me what time I'm leaving the house this evening, and told me self-righteously that I should probably get ready to go: Herding.
I'm sure that the comparison of twelve-year-olds to sheepdogs is a major theme in the preadolescent development literature.
Thursday, July 5, 2012
Happy Summer Days with Twelve
The two-week verdict: I'm having a great summer with Twelve. She slept in today, but when I got home from work she had jumped right in and gotten some of last night's porch sitting/cocktail party debris put away. She had helped me set out the glasses and bowl the snacks, and I have to say it's pretty cool to know that she just knows what needs to be done and can jump right in and do it. We followed our usual hosting routine: About an hour beforehand, I started running around tidying up and making the bathroom appear a little bit cleaner while Twelve did the fun getting-out-the-goodies part.
Okay, the peanut butter M&Ms really should have gone in a smaller bowl, but I make a point of letting her win certain battles: It's okay to just have the nine glasses set out because they look good that way on the tray (I'll just put out a few more as they get used). We can slice the medium cheddar cheese instead of the sharp (it was all eaten by the first two guests before anyone else got here anyway). You want to put the blue-and-red layered jell-o in the antique parfait glasses and squirt organic whipped cream on top? Fan-fucking-tastic. (They turned out totally cute.)
I also take her suggestions and questions seriously, even when it's totally unnecessary, as when she asked which shot glasses to get out: "Hmm, let's just do the tall ones. There are fewer of them and this isn't really that sort of party." Or, later: "It's totally fine if you want to arrange the beverages symmetrically on either side of the ice bowl."
"It's totally up to you" given in a matter-of-fact, deferential tone is my parenting secret weapon of choice at the moment.
If you asked me for advice about almost-thirteen-year-old people, that's what I'd tell you. I just ordered a few books about preadolescence (apparently this is what Twelve has), so I may soon have all the fancy technical terms for whatever this is called, but I'm feeling pretty confident that letting Twelve make all decisions possible and talking to her seriously about her suggestions is working.
This doesn't mean that she gets what she wants every time or wins every debate - I quite often exercise my veto power and/or talk her around to a certain option. But it means that I'm modeling logical thought processes to her AND that she knows what my thought process is when I make decisions that she doesn't like. Either way, we're talking, which I hear is apparently a short-lived state of affairs with people in her condition.
Preadolescent people also seem to simultaneously want and not-want you to be around. Case in point:
We went to the gym today for Twelve's first personal training appointment, and as we walked I coached her a bit on her goals for the training session (building core strength). She brushed me off at first, until I explained that if she doesn't want me to be involved with the session, she needs to know what to say to the trainer. We talked about it a little bit more (a classic example of how middle-class parents coach their children to navigate middle-class environs) and I concluded with, "It's my understanding that you don't want me to be a part of it at all, right?"
No, mom, I don't want you there at all.
In the preliminary chit-chat when we arrived, I explained to the trainer that I was just going to sit here and read a book on the couch while they did their thing, and lo and behold, Twelve flapped a hand dismissively (in that way she has) and said "Oh, you can come if you want." So I went along, double-checking for her benefit which column is the weight and which column is the number of repetitions, asking if she wanted to make a note that the yellow dumbbells are the right weight, and so on.
She didn't seem to mind my presence a bit - it was as if it's totally natural for a parent to accompany a child on a personal training appointment. I don't know if it would have been different if I had insisted from the beginning that I was going to be there, and eventually I'm sure she will remain adamant that she doesn't want me around, but for now I am happy to give Twelve the flexibility to go back and forth about it ... whatever the fancy technical term for that process may be.
Okay, the peanut butter M&Ms really should have gone in a smaller bowl, but I make a point of letting her win certain battles: It's okay to just have the nine glasses set out because they look good that way on the tray (I'll just put out a few more as they get used). We can slice the medium cheddar cheese instead of the sharp (it was all eaten by the first two guests before anyone else got here anyway). You want to put the blue-and-red layered jell-o in the antique parfait glasses and squirt organic whipped cream on top? Fan-fucking-tastic. (They turned out totally cute.)
I also take her suggestions and questions seriously, even when it's totally unnecessary, as when she asked which shot glasses to get out: "Hmm, let's just do the tall ones. There are fewer of them and this isn't really that sort of party." Or, later: "It's totally fine if you want to arrange the beverages symmetrically on either side of the ice bowl."
"It's totally up to you" given in a matter-of-fact, deferential tone is my parenting secret weapon of choice at the moment.
If you asked me for advice about almost-thirteen-year-old people, that's what I'd tell you. I just ordered a few books about preadolescence (apparently this is what Twelve has), so I may soon have all the fancy technical terms for whatever this is called, but I'm feeling pretty confident that letting Twelve make all decisions possible and talking to her seriously about her suggestions is working.
This doesn't mean that she gets what she wants every time or wins every debate - I quite often exercise my veto power and/or talk her around to a certain option. But it means that I'm modeling logical thought processes to her AND that she knows what my thought process is when I make decisions that she doesn't like. Either way, we're talking, which I hear is apparently a short-lived state of affairs with people in her condition.
Preadolescent people also seem to simultaneously want and not-want you to be around. Case in point:
We went to the gym today for Twelve's first personal training appointment, and as we walked I coached her a bit on her goals for the training session (building core strength). She brushed me off at first, until I explained that if she doesn't want me to be involved with the session, she needs to know what to say to the trainer. We talked about it a little bit more (a classic example of how middle-class parents coach their children to navigate middle-class environs) and I concluded with, "It's my understanding that you don't want me to be a part of it at all, right?"
No, mom, I don't want you there at all.
In the preliminary chit-chat when we arrived, I explained to the trainer that I was just going to sit here and read a book on the couch while they did their thing, and lo and behold, Twelve flapped a hand dismissively (in that way she has) and said "Oh, you can come if you want." So I went along, double-checking for her benefit which column is the weight and which column is the number of repetitions, asking if she wanted to make a note that the yellow dumbbells are the right weight, and so on.
She didn't seem to mind my presence a bit - it was as if it's totally natural for a parent to accompany a child on a personal training appointment. I don't know if it would have been different if I had insisted from the beginning that I was going to be there, and eventually I'm sure she will remain adamant that she doesn't want me around, but for now I am happy to give Twelve the flexibility to go back and forth about it ... whatever the fancy technical term for that process may be.
Friday, June 29, 2012
Mental Exercise, Physical Exercise, Creative Expression, and Household Contribution
I'm bad at keeping up on diaries. Always have been, ever since those padded fabric-covered journals in the mid-nineties (there's a box of them around here somewhere, or maybe in my mom's attic). I can't be the only one with this problem: When lots of stuff is going on, there's no time to write about it. And then, when things slow down a bit, the thought of getting caught up on everything that happened is too overwhelming, so you never quite get around to starting and you end up just starting another diary the next Christmas when you get another blank padded fabric-covered book.
I'm now facing the added bonus that I don't want to write about the bad stuff. I am in denial about the impending avalanche of teenage behavior, and I'd like to pretend that Twelve will keep on being a sweetie pie/smart-ass as we transition our mother-daughter relationship into a relationship of two adults.
A couple of weeks ago, Twelve was sullen for the first time. We were at a cookout at which a live band was playing, and instead of hanging out and making herself occasionally useful, Twelve had a piece of chicken and half a bag of chips, then declared the band to be the "worst music she's ever heard" and went and sat in the car.
For over an hour.
Sullenly.
Texting me periodically: "Let's go!!!!!"
We were back to normal afterwards, so that evening felt like a fluke, but still. Sullen. 'Twas a new one on me.
I also had a bit of a chat with one of Twelve's teachers last week. We're going to need to keep closer tabs on school performance next year; my suspicions that Twelve is an underachiever were confirmed. "She's smart, she just needs to apply herself." Lovely. Just fantastic. I've taken a step back from my employment obligations for the summer and next school year with the idea of actually focusing on my dissertation, and I'm super duper excited about monitoring every seventh grade deadline and reviewing every seventh grade assignment.
In hopes of sparking some interest in something, I've told Twelve that she needs to come up with a schedule for herself for the summer that gives her something to do in each of four categories each day: Mental exercise, physical exercise, creative expression, and contribution to the household.
She's supposed to make a list of topics for the mental exercise category. In my imagination, she goes to the library in the morning and pores over a pile of books about, say, volcanoes, and then uses four-by-six note cards to compose a one-page summary of what she's learned. By the end of the summer, she'll have discovered a fascination with ancient Egypt, and we'll build a scale replica of Tutankhamen's tomb together, complete with the wadded-up linens that the priests shoved back in the trunks any which way.
In reality, maybe I'll get her to watch a few documentaries and poop out some lackluster run-on sentences.
We joined our neighborhood gym in pursuit of physical exercise today, Twelve because her doctor has prescribed core training to improve her posture and spinal alignment, me because it was a screamingly good promotion, and R because of the hot tub and sauna. Un/fortunately, Twelve cannot go to the gym by herself until she is fourteen, so I am destined (doomed) to become a gym goer.
JoAnn's had a big clearance sale a few days ago, so I picked up a few boxes of blank cards, lots of stick-on rhinestones, and some packets of fancy cutout accoutrements. Twelve was thrilled! And has yet to actually assemble a single card. Also: Does sticking stuff to pre-folded card stock count as creative expression? We'll see.
Twelve remains fun to buy things for because she understands that we don't buy things indiscriminately and is is gratifyingly appreciative. On the way home from the gym, we found her some workout clothes and the kind of chair she's been wanting for her room. (Side note regarding workout clothes: When did this become a special fashion category? What happened to the regular ol' sports bra and the ordinary t-shirt from last year's district track meet?) When we got home, Twelve (magnanimously - it's really obvious and very cute when she's feeling this way) offered that she would rake up the grass clippings in return for me buying her everything within a dozen blocks of home. Almost before she finished the sentence, you could see the gears turning and she appended that she'd get it done within the next couple of years.
Girl, you're too smart. Apply yourself to the rake and gather up those clippings.
I'm now facing the added bonus that I don't want to write about the bad stuff. I am in denial about the impending avalanche of teenage behavior, and I'd like to pretend that Twelve will keep on being a sweetie pie/smart-ass as we transition our mother-daughter relationship into a relationship of two adults.
A couple of weeks ago, Twelve was sullen for the first time. We were at a cookout at which a live band was playing, and instead of hanging out and making herself occasionally useful, Twelve had a piece of chicken and half a bag of chips, then declared the band to be the "worst music she's ever heard" and went and sat in the car.
For over an hour.
Sullenly.
Texting me periodically: "Let's go!!!!!"
We were back to normal afterwards, so that evening felt like a fluke, but still. Sullen. 'Twas a new one on me.
I also had a bit of a chat with one of Twelve's teachers last week. We're going to need to keep closer tabs on school performance next year; my suspicions that Twelve is an underachiever were confirmed. "She's smart, she just needs to apply herself." Lovely. Just fantastic. I've taken a step back from my employment obligations for the summer and next school year with the idea of actually focusing on my dissertation, and I'm super duper excited about monitoring every seventh grade deadline and reviewing every seventh grade assignment.
In hopes of sparking some interest in something, I've told Twelve that she needs to come up with a schedule for herself for the summer that gives her something to do in each of four categories each day: Mental exercise, physical exercise, creative expression, and contribution to the household.
She's supposed to make a list of topics for the mental exercise category. In my imagination, she goes to the library in the morning and pores over a pile of books about, say, volcanoes, and then uses four-by-six note cards to compose a one-page summary of what she's learned. By the end of the summer, she'll have discovered a fascination with ancient Egypt, and we'll build a scale replica of Tutankhamen's tomb together, complete with the wadded-up linens that the priests shoved back in the trunks any which way.
In reality, maybe I'll get her to watch a few documentaries and poop out some lackluster run-on sentences.
We joined our neighborhood gym in pursuit of physical exercise today, Twelve because her doctor has prescribed core training to improve her posture and spinal alignment, me because it was a screamingly good promotion, and R because of the hot tub and sauna. Un/fortunately, Twelve cannot go to the gym by herself until she is fourteen, so I am destined (doomed) to become a gym goer.
JoAnn's had a big clearance sale a few days ago, so I picked up a few boxes of blank cards, lots of stick-on rhinestones, and some packets of fancy cutout accoutrements. Twelve was thrilled! And has yet to actually assemble a single card. Also: Does sticking stuff to pre-folded card stock count as creative expression? We'll see.
Twelve remains fun to buy things for because she understands that we don't buy things indiscriminately and is is gratifyingly appreciative. On the way home from the gym, we found her some workout clothes and the kind of chair she's been wanting for her room. (Side note regarding workout clothes: When did this become a special fashion category? What happened to the regular ol' sports bra and the ordinary t-shirt from last year's district track meet?) When we got home, Twelve (magnanimously - it's really obvious and very cute when she's feeling this way) offered that she would rake up the grass clippings in return for me buying her everything within a dozen blocks of home. Almost before she finished the sentence, you could see the gears turning and she appended that she'd get it done within the next couple of years.
Girl, you're too smart. Apply yourself to the rake and gather up those clippings.
Monday, June 11, 2012
Social Class: Snacks, Pyrex Bowls, and Grosgrain Ribbon
Twelve helped plan a going-away party for one of her friends last week, and she was responsible for bringing some of the food. Twelve is ridiculously good at selecting snacks and treats, probably because the hospitality gene runs in my family: We may not be great thinkers, or world leaders, but this is what we do. (However, we do read quite a bit and some of us used to run fairly fast.) If you need a formal dinner given, you check with my mom. If it's a cookout for 200 that you're after, I'm your gal. Twelve's specialty is classroom treats.
For example, for the winners of the geography contest a few weeks back, she did a box of nerds with a package of those awful sugar-and-sticks things on top, all tied with a narrow grosgrain ribbon in an impeccable bow. Okay, the ribbons were my idea, and Twelve hasn't yet mastered bow-tying so I ended up having most of the fun, but they were apparently a hit with the winning team. (Bow tying is just another one of those skills that impress people to no end but that can't quite go on my cv. It's an excellent substitute for a party trick in many nonalcoholic middle class realms, and it's one of the little things that keeps me from really understanding most other people. Or does it keep them from really understanding me?)
Anyway, after an hour at the Grocery Outlet, Twelve and I talked through all possible options for the going away party food and drink. After a certain amount of earnest negotiation, we settled on just the right assortment and quantity of canned beverages to signal my conflicting middle-class and granola hippie pretensions. (Sprite because it's name brand but caffeine free and Hanson's because it's made with Real Cane Sugar; quantity plentiful but not to the point of appearing crass.) I allowed the family size bag of Doritos as long as they were Cool Ranch instead of the grossly colored Nacho. I even good-naturedly drove Twelve across town to another grocery store to get huge bags of just the right candy in bulk.
Yes, I'm ridiculously indulgent with Twelve when it comes to the selection of foods for social occasions. We both have a great time with the process, and it's hard to articulate what it is that's so much fun.
Twelve loves to shop, that's for sure; she's great at narrowing down a range of selections to just the right one. Even with clothes, I'll think that three or four things are perfectly acceptable, but she'll still take just one or two, even if I'm willing to purchase all four. She also loves the freedom of buying treats for school; our regular grocery shopping outings are full of no, no, no in response to processed and/or conventional food items, but for treats she gets way more latitude. I'm sufficiently haunted by my own junior high experiences of not having the right brand names that I recognize and occasionally indulge Twelve's need to purchase a sense of community. Call me a hypocrite if you must.
I enjoy our earnest discussions about what to get. Because Twelve feels like she's getting away with murder, she's unusually cooperative. She acquiesces immediately to the Cool Ranch Doritos and conscientiously checks to see how much one scoop of Sour Patch Kids weighs before filling the bag. She demurs thriftily when I point out that we'd need a couple dozen cans of soda to make a respectable showing in the cooler, but eventually gives in when we discover a second variety of Hansen's.
On a deeper level, though, our treats shopping expeditions are an exercise in constructing and maintaining class privilege. We each know half of some kind of elaborate algorithm that accounts for what we think other people will think about what we select. I had a nice, long, complicated sentence going that involved phrases like "my assumptions about parent and teacher assessment" and "her innate knowledge of peer assessment," but the damn sentence was drooping under its own weight and there's no point in sugarcoating the truth: We are trying really, really hard to cultivate other people's approval using snack foods. I tend to couch my concerns in terms of appropriateness and logic, sometimes invoking convenience and cost. Really, I am trying to impress whatever adults are around to notice. Twelve never comes right out and says outright that x is cool and y is not, but I can tell that there's something going on in there, some knowledge of sixth grade coolness to which I'm not privy. Really, she's trying to impress the other kids.
When we got home, we discussed serving options for the chips and candy. I had unequivocally vetoed the purchase of a plastic serving bowl at $1.49 as a complete repudiation of our entire belief system. I offered my vintage Pyrex mixing bowls as the logical alternative.
Let me explain about vintage Pyrex mixing bowls. I'm not even sure why or how this tradition started, but every woman in my mother's side of the family is given a set of the classic large yellow/medium-large green/medium-small red/small blue Pyrex mixing bowls, usually at marriage. They are definitive. They are simply what bowls are - I forget what philosophers call this. Things are served out of them at all occasions. Tossed salads and tortilla chips go in the big yellow ones. Fritos go in the green, if you got the big bag of Fritos; otherwise the red will do. My aunt's pea and cashew salad goes in the red. The blue size is just right for mixed nuts, and is also excellent for heating soup in the microwave. I'm at a loss for further description here because this is how things are done.
So, reassuring Twelve that I trusted her to keep my bowls safe, I packed her a box with one bowl of each size: Chips, fruit snacks, Sour Patch Kids, and M&Ms, in descending order of volume. We hied off to the party.
Of course the bowls didn't make it out of the box. I'm not sure what I was thinking, really. Twelve didn't care one way or another, of course, but we did share a rueful smile as we hauled them home again. I might as well have tied a grosgrain bow around each can of Sprite, I suspect. The way we do things in my family isn't pretentious, though of course I wouldn't think so. It's just that I decant the damn tortilla chips into a bowl, damn it, and if the salsa is in a matching smaller bowl, so much the better. We use coasters, we arrange tufts of tissue paper to stick out of the gift bag, and we know that the fork with the short tines is either for salad or dessert.
What's my point? I dunno. Twelve associates many of the niceties with her grandmother, and it's true that my mom does all of this much more effortfully than I ever will. I don't experience my affinity for serving dishes as an affectation of a higher class, especially since the family hosting the party at their suburban neighborhood clubhouse pool is much wealthier than we.
At the very least, grosgrain ribbon and colorful mixing bowls are something that Twelve and I share. I'll take it!
For example, for the winners of the geography contest a few weeks back, she did a box of nerds with a package of those awful sugar-and-sticks things on top, all tied with a narrow grosgrain ribbon in an impeccable bow. Okay, the ribbons were my idea, and Twelve hasn't yet mastered bow-tying so I ended up having most of the fun, but they were apparently a hit with the winning team. (Bow tying is just another one of those skills that impress people to no end but that can't quite go on my cv. It's an excellent substitute for a party trick in many nonalcoholic middle class realms, and it's one of the little things that keeps me from really understanding most other people. Or does it keep them from really understanding me?)
Anyway, after an hour at the Grocery Outlet, Twelve and I talked through all possible options for the going away party food and drink. After a certain amount of earnest negotiation, we settled on just the right assortment and quantity of canned beverages to signal my conflicting middle-class and granola hippie pretensions. (Sprite because it's name brand but caffeine free and Hanson's because it's made with Real Cane Sugar; quantity plentiful but not to the point of appearing crass.) I allowed the family size bag of Doritos as long as they were Cool Ranch instead of the grossly colored Nacho. I even good-naturedly drove Twelve across town to another grocery store to get huge bags of just the right candy in bulk.
Yes, I'm ridiculously indulgent with Twelve when it comes to the selection of foods for social occasions. We both have a great time with the process, and it's hard to articulate what it is that's so much fun.
Twelve loves to shop, that's for sure; she's great at narrowing down a range of selections to just the right one. Even with clothes, I'll think that three or four things are perfectly acceptable, but she'll still take just one or two, even if I'm willing to purchase all four. She also loves the freedom of buying treats for school; our regular grocery shopping outings are full of no, no, no in response to processed and/or conventional food items, but for treats she gets way more latitude. I'm sufficiently haunted by my own junior high experiences of not having the right brand names that I recognize and occasionally indulge Twelve's need to purchase a sense of community. Call me a hypocrite if you must.
I enjoy our earnest discussions about what to get. Because Twelve feels like she's getting away with murder, she's unusually cooperative. She acquiesces immediately to the Cool Ranch Doritos and conscientiously checks to see how much one scoop of Sour Patch Kids weighs before filling the bag. She demurs thriftily when I point out that we'd need a couple dozen cans of soda to make a respectable showing in the cooler, but eventually gives in when we discover a second variety of Hansen's.
On a deeper level, though, our treats shopping expeditions are an exercise in constructing and maintaining class privilege. We each know half of some kind of elaborate algorithm that accounts for what we think other people will think about what we select. I had a nice, long, complicated sentence going that involved phrases like "my assumptions about parent and teacher assessment" and "her innate knowledge of peer assessment," but the damn sentence was drooping under its own weight and there's no point in sugarcoating the truth: We are trying really, really hard to cultivate other people's approval using snack foods. I tend to couch my concerns in terms of appropriateness and logic, sometimes invoking convenience and cost. Really, I am trying to impress whatever adults are around to notice. Twelve never comes right out and says outright that x is cool and y is not, but I can tell that there's something going on in there, some knowledge of sixth grade coolness to which I'm not privy. Really, she's trying to impress the other kids.
When we got home, we discussed serving options for the chips and candy. I had unequivocally vetoed the purchase of a plastic serving bowl at $1.49 as a complete repudiation of our entire belief system. I offered my vintage Pyrex mixing bowls as the logical alternative.
Let me explain about vintage Pyrex mixing bowls. I'm not even sure why or how this tradition started, but every woman in my mother's side of the family is given a set of the classic large yellow/medium-large green/medium-small red/small blue Pyrex mixing bowls, usually at marriage. They are definitive. They are simply what bowls are - I forget what philosophers call this. Things are served out of them at all occasions. Tossed salads and tortilla chips go in the big yellow ones. Fritos go in the green, if you got the big bag of Fritos; otherwise the red will do. My aunt's pea and cashew salad goes in the red. The blue size is just right for mixed nuts, and is also excellent for heating soup in the microwave. I'm at a loss for further description here because this is how things are done.
So, reassuring Twelve that I trusted her to keep my bowls safe, I packed her a box with one bowl of each size: Chips, fruit snacks, Sour Patch Kids, and M&Ms, in descending order of volume. We hied off to the party.
Of course the bowls didn't make it out of the box. I'm not sure what I was thinking, really. Twelve didn't care one way or another, of course, but we did share a rueful smile as we hauled them home again. I might as well have tied a grosgrain bow around each can of Sprite, I suspect. The way we do things in my family isn't pretentious, though of course I wouldn't think so. It's just that I decant the damn tortilla chips into a bowl, damn it, and if the salsa is in a matching smaller bowl, so much the better. We use coasters, we arrange tufts of tissue paper to stick out of the gift bag, and we know that the fork with the short tines is either for salad or dessert.
What's my point? I dunno. Twelve associates many of the niceties with her grandmother, and it's true that my mom does all of this much more effortfully than I ever will. I don't experience my affinity for serving dishes as an affectation of a higher class, especially since the family hosting the party at their suburban neighborhood clubhouse pool is much wealthier than we.
At the very least, grosgrain ribbon and colorful mixing bowls are something that Twelve and I share. I'll take it!
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
Unlike Mother, My Daughter
Twelve and I are very different. Yes, we're both snarky and sarcastic and occasionally funny, but last weekend I spent approximately 23 hours rescuing a vintage quilt top. I was obsessed. I declined a dinner/movie invitation because I was two hours into the (ultimately) twelve-hour process of hand basting the quilt sandwich.
While my sewing room is a testament to many projects started but not quite finished (yet), I was determined to finish this quilt. I found the top at our neighborhood thrift shop for $12.50. It's a not-terribly-special Log Cabin pattern from perhaps the 1940s, half hand-pieced and half machine-pieced. The fabrics are worn; some are nearly transparent, many are the original calicos that are reproduced everywhere now. It's not skillfully done, either; many of the seam allowances are too narrow, and the squares don't always line up. But I just couldn't bear to pass it up, despite the little old lady at the thrift shop who shook her head over the 'high' price tag ("It would be different if it were two fifty," she said sympathetically, as I spread it on the counter for inspection.)
I'll rescue it! I'll make it into something useable, I suddenly resolved, and hied off to the fabric store for cotton batting and wide muslin for the back. Thirty-five bucks later, doubt began to niggle at the back of my mind, but I held fast to my plan and put the muslin in the washer for pre-shrinking.
Once I had the patchwork mended (oh, did I forget to mention that the patchwork needed mending?), I laid out the sandwich and got the layers pinned smoothly, then realized with resignation that it would be impossible to machine-quilt the damn thing without hand basting it first.
Had I realized that it would take an entire day, I'd like to think that I would have bailed, but by this time it was too late. I was in for the long haul and felt compelled to finish, come hell or high water. Twelve would never do this. Twelve declined my Mother-Daughter Bonding Time invitation to help baste for a few minutes, even when I said we'd watch Downton Abbey together while we stitched.
(Twelve tends to invoke Mother-Daughter Bonding Time to get her way. It sometimes works for me, but mostly if what I want to do involves shopping.)
Bins and baskets full of unfinished projects notwithstanding, I was about Twelve's age when I learned about sticking with and finishing seemingly insurmountable projects. I was working on a little gray corduroy backpack with a drawstring closure. I was sitting in front of my mother's Featherweight in the utility room, with a pile of belt loops for the drawstring next to me. I remember doing the first one and then assessing the stack of unfinished ones with dismay. There were so many! It was at that moment that I realized that I just needed to sit there and do them, and then - eventually - they would be done. And so I did, and so they were.
That self-same drawstring bag is hanging on the wall of my sewing room. It has a grand total of eight loops - I just counted them. I may have remembered there being a much bigger stack, but I refuse to allow the memory to be cheapened!
I persevered, and got the thing basted and quilted and bound with red fabric of which I happened to have just the right amount. It's beautiful. I'm in awe. All I have wanted to do this week is sit with it in my lap, but I'm kind of afraid to touch it.
One of my recurring worries about Twelve is that she doesn't really have any hobbies; she's not really into anything, and isn't really working on anything that could be termed a practice in the philosophical sense. She does volleyball, but she doesn't work on skills outside of scheduled events. She reads, which is great, but it's for entertainment and doesn't qualify as a practice. She likes to buy fabric paints, but she never seems to do much with them. I've sworn that she will not leave my household without knowing at least the basics of running a sewing machine, and she has done a few coasters on the machine I've designated as hers, but with zero enthusiasm.
She has discovered the magic of mending, however; she was visibly impressed when I restored a hoodie and a pair of yoga pants to like-new condition with some cones of black thread and the safety four thread stitch. Perhaps she will come to sewing through mending, acquire hobbies later in life, or perhaps she won't ever have any hobbies (how does that even work?).
Or perhaps it's okay that she's not like me, and I will just become resigned to that.
(We'll always have sarcasm.)
While my sewing room is a testament to many projects started but not quite finished (yet), I was determined to finish this quilt. I found the top at our neighborhood thrift shop for $12.50. It's a not-terribly-special Log Cabin pattern from perhaps the 1940s, half hand-pieced and half machine-pieced. The fabrics are worn; some are nearly transparent, many are the original calicos that are reproduced everywhere now. It's not skillfully done, either; many of the seam allowances are too narrow, and the squares don't always line up. But I just couldn't bear to pass it up, despite the little old lady at the thrift shop who shook her head over the 'high' price tag ("It would be different if it were two fifty," she said sympathetically, as I spread it on the counter for inspection.)
I'll rescue it! I'll make it into something useable, I suddenly resolved, and hied off to the fabric store for cotton batting and wide muslin for the back. Thirty-five bucks later, doubt began to niggle at the back of my mind, but I held fast to my plan and put the muslin in the washer for pre-shrinking.
Once I had the patchwork mended (oh, did I forget to mention that the patchwork needed mending?), I laid out the sandwich and got the layers pinned smoothly, then realized with resignation that it would be impossible to machine-quilt the damn thing without hand basting it first.
Had I realized that it would take an entire day, I'd like to think that I would have bailed, but by this time it was too late. I was in for the long haul and felt compelled to finish, come hell or high water. Twelve would never do this. Twelve declined my Mother-Daughter Bonding Time invitation to help baste for a few minutes, even when I said we'd watch Downton Abbey together while we stitched.
(Twelve tends to invoke Mother-Daughter Bonding Time to get her way. It sometimes works for me, but mostly if what I want to do involves shopping.)
Bins and baskets full of unfinished projects notwithstanding, I was about Twelve's age when I learned about sticking with and finishing seemingly insurmountable projects. I was working on a little gray corduroy backpack with a drawstring closure. I was sitting in front of my mother's Featherweight in the utility room, with a pile of belt loops for the drawstring next to me. I remember doing the first one and then assessing the stack of unfinished ones with dismay. There were so many! It was at that moment that I realized that I just needed to sit there and do them, and then - eventually - they would be done. And so I did, and so they were.
That self-same drawstring bag is hanging on the wall of my sewing room. It has a grand total of eight loops - I just counted them. I may have remembered there being a much bigger stack, but I refuse to allow the memory to be cheapened!
I persevered, and got the thing basted and quilted and bound with red fabric of which I happened to have just the right amount. It's beautiful. I'm in awe. All I have wanted to do this week is sit with it in my lap, but I'm kind of afraid to touch it.
One of my recurring worries about Twelve is that she doesn't really have any hobbies; she's not really into anything, and isn't really working on anything that could be termed a practice in the philosophical sense. She does volleyball, but she doesn't work on skills outside of scheduled events. She reads, which is great, but it's for entertainment and doesn't qualify as a practice. She likes to buy fabric paints, but she never seems to do much with them. I've sworn that she will not leave my household without knowing at least the basics of running a sewing machine, and she has done a few coasters on the machine I've designated as hers, but with zero enthusiasm.
She has discovered the magic of mending, however; she was visibly impressed when I restored a hoodie and a pair of yoga pants to like-new condition with some cones of black thread and the safety four thread stitch. Perhaps she will come to sewing through mending, acquire hobbies later in life, or perhaps she won't ever have any hobbies (how does that even work?).
Or perhaps it's okay that she's not like me, and I will just become resigned to that.
(We'll always have sarcasm.)
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Blush, Mascara, and Tears
The morning before I took the preliminary oral exams that mark the transition from doctoral student ("Sure, you can pay tuition and say you're working on a doctorate") to doctoral candidate ("Okay, we believe you when you say that you can actually do this. Go ahead and start your dissertation now"), Twelve tried to sneak out of the house wearing makeup.
We don't have very many rules around here: Tasks are to be done, but enforcement is often lax, and Twelve is allowed - even encouraged - to go and do what she wants and needs to do with a minimum of adult interference. No makeup outside the house, though, is one of the big (only) ones.
For a smart kid, she's not very good at being sneaky. She often gives me the cursory side-hug and air kiss on her way out the door in the mornings, so I didn't suspect a thing when I innocently insisted on a real hug.
It was the scent of powder that gave her away.
I am not the most observant of persons; you have to gain/lose about fifty pounds or cut a foot off your hair if you want me to notice that something's different. R only shaves about once a week, and sometimes it takes me all day to notice that he has.
After I realized that Twelve was fully made up, I gathered my wits - I'm barely awake at this point, mind you - and told her to wash her face. Amidst frantic insistence (complete with impatient hand flapping gestures) that she had to leave right this instant, she moistened the corner of a washcloth and took a few cursory swipes. Gathering my wits further, I got the washcloth all the way wet and took some actually-effective swipes, at which point the tears began to fall. Gathering all remaining wits and steeling myself against the crying, I shooed her out the door to school.
Eleven minutes later, when she called to tell me she had arrived (according to our standard operating procedure), she may have seemed a bit resentful but had recovered her composure. Okay, we survived round one and made it to school on time. Excellent.
After school, I decided that I should probably take further action, so I told Twelve she was grounded from her iPod and everything else for the rest of the month. This was greeted with flippancy, bravado, and a whole lot of not-caring, with a good measure of what used to be called back-talk as garnish:
"It doesn't hurt anything!"
"Nobody cares!"
"What's the big deal about makeup anyway?"
She has some good points there, but I stuck to my guns:
"It hurts our relationship when you break my trust in you."
"In our culture, wearing makeup sends a message, and that is significant."
"When you are out in the world, you are representing me, so I have a vested interest in what you look like."
"It's not really about the makeup; it's about you breaking a rule and sneaking around."
She wasn't convinced. As far as I could tell, she didn't really care. She is particularly tired of all sentences that begin with "In our culture ... "
Okay, you've got to get through to her, I told myself firmly, in a very supportive and encouraging manner. Summoning courage, I bravely pointed at her hooded sweatshirt, her favorite blue one that she wears every day despite the fact that she owns six others: Give me that sweatshirt. Not quite sure what was happening, she took it off and handed it over. Scanning her room, I picked up her favorite sneakers and went to get a box. As she started to realize what was happening, I piled makeup and hair products and nail polishes into the box on top of sweatshirt and sneakers.
Finally, tears.
The brave front crumbled, and she was able to admit that she was wrong. She apologized for sneaking around, and asked why she isn't allowed to wear makeup. This part included the explanation that she had done it because she felt insecure about a zit on the tip of her nose that her friends had mentioned:
Me: Were they making fun of you?
Twelve: No.
Me: Were they trying to be mean to you?
Twelve: No.
Me: So ... they just mentioned the zit?
Twelve: Yeah.
Kind of precious, that bit. I may have ruined it a bit by chuckling behind my hand, but I think I recovered okay. I reminded her that the important thing is for me to be able to trust her, and reminded her that we both want her to be able to continue being trusted. I told her that she is more than welcome to request a re-visiting of the whole makeup question after she's ungrounded. I held her for awhile as she cried and eventually left her alone to sort herself out. Later, I took her a glass of water, and eventually she cried herself to sleep.
Relating the whole incident to R (who had fled the scene somewhere between the seventh "Nobody cares" and the sixteenth "What's the big deal about makeup anyway?"), I think he's proud of the way I handled this first major incident with Twelve. He fears that I let her get away with too much, most of the time, and he's probably right. It just takes so much energy to stay on top of every little thing! I have created a monster with Twelve's independence, that's for sure; for the most part it's the very best possible approach for both of us, but it also occasionally puts us in positions where she feels like she should have more decision-making authority than she does have or is ready to have.
Twelve will be ungrounded in a few days, and I'm sure won't forget to remind me to return all her stuff; I'm sure not looking forward to the whole house smelling like nail polish all the time.
We don't have very many rules around here: Tasks are to be done, but enforcement is often lax, and Twelve is allowed - even encouraged - to go and do what she wants and needs to do with a minimum of adult interference. No makeup outside the house, though, is one of the big (only) ones.
For a smart kid, she's not very good at being sneaky. She often gives me the cursory side-hug and air kiss on her way out the door in the mornings, so I didn't suspect a thing when I innocently insisted on a real hug.
It was the scent of powder that gave her away.
I am not the most observant of persons; you have to gain/lose about fifty pounds or cut a foot off your hair if you want me to notice that something's different. R only shaves about once a week, and sometimes it takes me all day to notice that he has.
After I realized that Twelve was fully made up, I gathered my wits - I'm barely awake at this point, mind you - and told her to wash her face. Amidst frantic insistence (complete with impatient hand flapping gestures) that she had to leave right this instant, she moistened the corner of a washcloth and took a few cursory swipes. Gathering my wits further, I got the washcloth all the way wet and took some actually-effective swipes, at which point the tears began to fall. Gathering all remaining wits and steeling myself against the crying, I shooed her out the door to school.
Eleven minutes later, when she called to tell me she had arrived (according to our standard operating procedure), she may have seemed a bit resentful but had recovered her composure. Okay, we survived round one and made it to school on time. Excellent.
After school, I decided that I should probably take further action, so I told Twelve she was grounded from her iPod and everything else for the rest of the month. This was greeted with flippancy, bravado, and a whole lot of not-caring, with a good measure of what used to be called back-talk as garnish:
"It doesn't hurt anything!"
"Nobody cares!"
"What's the big deal about makeup anyway?"
She has some good points there, but I stuck to my guns:
"It hurts our relationship when you break my trust in you."
"In our culture, wearing makeup sends a message, and that is significant."
"When you are out in the world, you are representing me, so I have a vested interest in what you look like."
"It's not really about the makeup; it's about you breaking a rule and sneaking around."
She wasn't convinced. As far as I could tell, she didn't really care. She is particularly tired of all sentences that begin with "In our culture ... "
Okay, you've got to get through to her, I told myself firmly, in a very supportive and encouraging manner. Summoning courage, I bravely pointed at her hooded sweatshirt, her favorite blue one that she wears every day despite the fact that she owns six others: Give me that sweatshirt. Not quite sure what was happening, she took it off and handed it over. Scanning her room, I picked up her favorite sneakers and went to get a box. As she started to realize what was happening, I piled makeup and hair products and nail polishes into the box on top of sweatshirt and sneakers.
Finally, tears.
The brave front crumbled, and she was able to admit that she was wrong. She apologized for sneaking around, and asked why she isn't allowed to wear makeup. This part included the explanation that she had done it because she felt insecure about a zit on the tip of her nose that her friends had mentioned:
Me: Were they making fun of you?
Twelve: No.
Me: Were they trying to be mean to you?
Twelve: No.
Me: So ... they just mentioned the zit?
Twelve: Yeah.
Kind of precious, that bit. I may have ruined it a bit by chuckling behind my hand, but I think I recovered okay. I reminded her that the important thing is for me to be able to trust her, and reminded her that we both want her to be able to continue being trusted. I told her that she is more than welcome to request a re-visiting of the whole makeup question after she's ungrounded. I held her for awhile as she cried and eventually left her alone to sort herself out. Later, I took her a glass of water, and eventually she cried herself to sleep.
Relating the whole incident to R (who had fled the scene somewhere between the seventh "Nobody cares" and the sixteenth "What's the big deal about makeup anyway?"), I think he's proud of the way I handled this first major incident with Twelve. He fears that I let her get away with too much, most of the time, and he's probably right. It just takes so much energy to stay on top of every little thing! I have created a monster with Twelve's independence, that's for sure; for the most part it's the very best possible approach for both of us, but it also occasionally puts us in positions where she feels like she should have more decision-making authority than she does have or is ready to have.
Twelve will be ungrounded in a few days, and I'm sure won't forget to remind me to return all her stuff; I'm sure not looking forward to the whole house smelling like nail polish all the time.
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