Category Archives: Motherhood

Is it too late to talk about Mother’s Day? Is there a threshold after which the topic becomes banal? I don’t know… so I’m going to tell you about my Mother’s Day weekend anyway.  Plus, I want to hear about some of the Mother’s Day adventures of the moms in the M.O.M. Squad in the comments section.

The sequence of events that took place over the weekend came in rapid succession. I’m under the gun because Stone has a pissy pull-up on and Liya wants to go outside, so I’m just going to give you the highlights if that’s ok. Okay? Here we go!

Book Launched:

This was supposed to be an exciting milestone – a triumph, in fact! – but it turned out to be a near tragedy. With just mere hours to go before my first book was supposed to go live online, I discovered to my shock, horror and dismay, that the back of the book had no information. How and why would people buy it if they didn’t know what it was about? When I was instructed to upload a “cover”, I had my graphic artist do just that: create a front cover. Come and see me scrambling at midnight to reformat the whole thing! I was exhausted. I had to get some sleep because the next day I had to go camping with the big girls.

We’re going camping? I’m coming too!

My period invited itself to my Mother’s Day weekend festivities. It sucked. I don’t like taking a dump in public, let alone bleeding out my behind in the presence of total strangers for 3 days and two nights. Oh and did my period show out. I spotted on my jeans – something I haven’t done since high school. When another mom (very discretely) pointed it out to me, Aya asked me what the stain was.

“Did you poo-poo on yourself, Mommy?”

“Yes. I did.”

I chose to tell my 6 year old that I crapped my pants just so I could avoid a conversation about the onset of menses.

Pat that weave, baby!  

By hour five into our camping trip, I had begun to question the wisdom of such an endeavor. I called lights out at 11 pm. I had already had enough of the screaming, screeching, squealing and scampering that accompanies a pack of first and second graders. As silence descended upon the bunk house (we had avoided sleeping in tents, that Heaven) I heard a vaguely familiar sound. It was a thunderous, methodical thumping.

Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump!!!!

As the night wore on, it became more and more persistent. Sweet baby Jesus in the sky. I wish I had a rat tail comb to give this woman so she could scratch her scalp! Or better yet, why didn’t she just get her weave washed before she came on this trip. Ugh! Finally, at 3 am, I fell into a fitful sleep…

It’s time for activities, Mommy!

Tie-dye. Leather work. A 45 minute hike. Canoeing. Basket making. Kitchen cosmetics. Swimming. All these things and STILL my girls were not satisfied.

“I wish we had done archery and the big swing,” Nadjah moped.

I wish you would just shut your face!

“When were we going to have time to do all that, Na?” I asked, rubbing my neck in frustration. “There was literally not enough time to do everything on the activity sheet.”

“But I – “

“No. No, Nadjah. No!”

I shoveled camp-issued mac n’ cheese in my face and chewed ferociously. I was tired, and bleeding, and when we got back to the bunk house that night, that one mom was posted up in her bed, thumping on her skull like a Roman soldier nailing a thief to a cross.

Can we go out to eat for Mother’s Day?

I vetoed that idea immediately. You know how my kids are. I’ve told you about them. They are those children…the ones who can’t sit still long enough to take a bite of their food before their plate magically hits the floor. You hate dining out with those kids, and so do I.

But my husband wanted to dine out this week, so we did. I gave him my conditions before we entered the restaurant.

“Babe. I literally “can’t” with these children this week. If you want to eat out, then you have to let me sit in this car by myself for 10 minutes just to get my mind right.”

He said okay and took our tribe into Sweet Tomatoes alone. Poor man. Poor, foolish man.

Eight minutes later, he was calling me from inside the establishment.

“Are you ever coming in??”

“Why? What’s wrong?”

I took a deep breath. The landscapers had planted gardenias and roses in bushes nearby, and I was inhaling the excellent scent of the mingled fragrances.

What was wrong indeed! Sweet Tomatoes, for those who don’t know, is a farm to table-ish buffet. They have soup, salad, light pastries and fruit. It’s a healthier (and better tasting) alternative to Golden Corral. So there stood Marshall in line, trying to balance four trays and four kids, each with their own demands and food preferences. In the midst of his trying to scoop food onto their plates, Liya hit her face on the tiled counter and began to howl with abandon. At that moment, Stone took it upon himself to run out of the restaurant and plant himself in the middle of the STREET. A nice white guy in Sperry’s went outside to retrieve him for my husband. Several women offered to help my husband. He declined their assistance. The cashier offered him a belt.

As he recounted his harrowing tale, I couldn’t help but give into a fit of satisfied laughter. I told him! I told him they were crazy! I spend all day with these inmates. I know their limitations and I know mine.

And then we had an anniversary…

This week Marshall and I celebrated 8 years of wedded bliss, or something close to it. To commemorate the event, we climbed Kennesaw Mountain.  I will not expend the time needed to describe the comical scene of two people whose combined weight equals that of a small marine mammal as they attempt to scramble over sheer rocks and dodgy trails. That being said, we were pleased that we actually made it to the top and could add that to our list of feats accomplished as a couple.

I attempted to make this achievement analogous to our marriage, but I was distracted by the sight of a younger (fitter) couple running past us. The guy was muscular and had the posture of someone living in a state of prosperity. The girl was a brunette, with a flat stomach and was clad little Lycra shorts that sat perfectly on her taut bottom. Whore.

“Look at those spring chickens,” Marshall said with a snort.

“That’s okay, babe. We’ve had our time. We are winter turkeys!”

*****

And now this winter turkey has to take her turkeylettes(?) outside to play.

Happy Friday one and all!

Oh, Oh, Oh! Random thought for this random blog. Let’s play a game! What are you doing while reading this post? Tell us right here: ↓

There is a mountain of paperwork that perpetually rests on the desk in our office/dining room. This mountain never gets any smaller – it is merely divided, sorted, and reassembled over time. I got tired of looking at it this Monday. Monday’s are days when people resolve to do things – like start that new diet or squat regiment.  I resolved to clean up the mountain.

Our papyrus pyramid primarily consists of unopened envelopes of weekly or monthly repeat mail: credit card offers from Chase, Allstate invitations and bank statements. I rarely open any of them, but after staring at the pile for almost a year, I decided enough was enough and began to open envelope after yellowing envelope to determine and discard its contents if needed.

I started with Nadjah’s Suntrust savings account statements. After opening six months’ worth of statements, I decided that it was time to go paperless. The details of her account never change: It draws $10 a month from our checking and puts it into a small yield savings account. I smiled as I remembered the day I took Nadjah into the bank at age 5 to open her new account. She was given a blue plastic piggy bank and a lollipop. I estimated she should have a few hundred dollars in there, minus the money we took out to pay for camp one year.

So imagine my surprise when I opened up envelopes and started noticing fees that I had never seen before. Consequently, I began to see red. These people were now taking $5 to maintain $10! How long had they been doing this? I could only assume from the very beginning and that they had bilked my daughter of $300 over the course of 5 years. I went on a twitter rant, gathered my youngest children and my purse and went into the bank to close the account.

I was too pissed to try to conjure up a work around. I know how banks work. To my surprise, Suntrust’s social media team responded to my tweet. I informed them that I had just pulled up to the bank to close the account. They responded with a canned answer, saying were sorry to lose my business.

I met with a pretty, hipster account rep named Denise and told her I wanted to either have the fees removed or close the account. She obliged, and noted that the account was set up wrongly from the very beginning.

“This should have been a minor account,” she said. “They have you listed as the primary, when it’s your daughter who should be the primary account holder.”

I was surprised that she was so forthcoming about the error. Before I could speak, she said she could correct the error right there.

“I’ll ask my manager about getting those fees refunded too,” she said kindly. “I’ll have to confirm with him if we actually can, however.”

She scribbled my number and said she would contact me later in the day. I left with Stone and Liya in tow, oddly relieved that I would not have to go through the process of re-opening another account at another bank.

And then I got a call from Denise.

“Malaka?”

“Yup!”

“Hi…I spoke with my manager, and he said that we can only refund two months’ worth of fees to this account.”

“You mean ten dollars?”

“Yes.”

As I grunted in disgust, Denise stuttered through an explanation.

“I guess the logic is that at least they were able to give you something back off the loss…”

$10 back off of a $300 theft hardly constitutes as something!

I guffawed at her response and told her to have a good day. Initially, I was outraged, and then I was indignant. I called Denise back, demanding a meeting with the branch manager.

“I want him to explain his policy to my daughter, and tell her why he can’t refund money that was taken from her account due to an error that his bank made!”

“Oh…it’s not HIS policy,” Denise said pointedly.

“Whoever’s it is, she’s the customer, and she deserves an explanation.”

We scheduled a face to face meeting for Friday. For some unearthly reason, I called Suntrust’s customer service department to find out what kind of account Nadjah was holding. When had these fees actually started? The woman was of no help first, because she barely spoke English and second, because her ineptitude made it difficult for her explain that the terms of the account had changed some time before.

“You have to put $25 into the account to avoid the fee,” she said after I eventually wrung the information from her.

“Since when?!?”

“You should have received a communication telling you this, either over email or in letter form.”

“Do you have my email? Because I’m looking at a years’ worth of statements and I don’t see a letter here.”

“No, we don’t have your email,” she said after a brief pause. “You have a letter. You must have lost it.”

I hung up on her. I couldn’t WAIT for Friday.

After doing my own investigation, I discovered that the fees had begun in July of 2012. The bank had taken $55, not the exorbitant $300 as I had previously (and incorrectly) presumed. I explained the details of the fiasco to Nadjah, who was clearly upset by this revelation. (The only thing the girl loves more than life is money.)

“We’re going to meet with the branch manager on Friday,” I said, as though it was fight night. I didn’t want to taint her response with my own biases, so I didn’t tell her what the bank was PROBABLY going to say: That it was her mother’s fault for not opening her mail and – despite it being their error from the beginning – they were not going to be able to refund her money past the $10. I then made a mental note of all the other banks we could visit to deposit her meager savings.

“Can I come too!” said Aya.

“Yeah, sure,” I replied. It would be good for both of them to learn how money and customer service work (or don’t work) together.

Finally, Friday arrived. The girls and I went to Chic-Fil-A for nourishment before the epic showdown. I had piles of statements in my purse and a no-nonsense countenance at the ready. We were twelve minutes early. Denise met us when we walked in and directed us to the waiting area.

“Michael will be with you ladies in just a moment. He’s on a conference call,” she said flatly.

I looked towards the back of the bank and saw an enormous man with red hair and a white shirt pacing his office with a phone plugged to his ear, waving his arms wildly. And so it begins…

At 3:01, Michael walked out to meet us. He extended his hand and greeted the girls and I warmly.

“Come this way to my office please,” he said.

Humph. This was customer service 101. You defuse a volatile situation by offering kindness before you address concerns. It was like offering a rabid dog a piece of aspirin laced meat, and it was working. The girls and I virtually skipped into his office.

“I only have 2 chairs, so I’m going to bring another one in for you ladies if you’ll give me just a moment,” he explained before ducking into the neighboring office and retrieving a chair.

He was the quintessential Southern Gentleman. He had a drawl – yes – but not the type that incites terror in Black folk. You have to have lived here to know exactly what I’m talking about.

He took his seat and launched into a recap of events, including tweets, dollar amounts and mistakes.

“I’ve only been in this branch for a year,” he revealed. Then he pointed to his HTC phone and made a startling admisssion. “I don’t twitter, I don’t facebook, I don’t do any of that stuff. So when the Suntrust (social media) department emailed me all this stuff, I was at a loss!”

Nadjah and Aya both laughed. The idea of a grown up not tweeting or Facebooking probably seemed absurd. Michael continued.

“Called Denise in here to figure out this $300 thing, and we discovered that the fees actually began in July of 2012.”

“That’s correct,” I interjected. Michael was not done talking, and neither were the girls, apparently. They asked him about his kids in the picture, about Disney world, and informed him that they had 200 Disney Dollars between the two of them for doing chores.

“What kind of chores do you have to do?”

“Do the dishes, fold the laundry and clean our room,” Aya said excitedly.

“Sometimes I have to clean the room twice,” Nadjah said, shooting me a dirty look. “Can we get back on topic, please?”

Michael raised a quizzical brow and smiled slightly. He explained to  Nadjah how her account had been set up incorrectly, and that she was a minor. Then he said something about paying taxes on her investments, which then got her all out of sorts. Her eyes began to water.

“I don’t want to pay taxes!”

“Well, as your momma will tell you, there’s only two things certain in life: We’re all gonna die, and we all have to pay taxes,” he said, laughing.

Nadjah did not appreciate his joke.

I thanked Michael for taking the time to meet with us. I explained that since I had brought Nadjah in to open the account initially, I wanted to make sure she was involved in every part of the process if there were any changes. Michael looked at Nadjah seriously.

“Well, I have to tell you, we appreciate your business,” he boomed. “And we want you to keep banking with Suntrust when you get older and get a job.”

“And start paying taxes?” Nadjah said sullenly.

Michael and I chuckled.

Michael turned back to her.

“Okay Ms. Nadjah, I’m going to make this commitment to you,” he said earnestly. “I’m going to contact my regional manager, Courtney Thompson, and ask her if we can get that $45 refunded to you. I don’t know what she’ll say, because it’s going to require an override, but I’m definitely going to ask.”

This was the moment I was waiting for. Nadjah was going to put her foot down and tell him he betta git ALL her money, or she was taking her business elsewhere!

“Does that sound fair to you, Na?” I asked with baited breath.

She nodded and looked at Michael.

“Yes, it’s fair. Even if you can’t get all the money back, at least you tried and did your best.”

Michael sat back in his chair and clasped his hands.

“You know what? Just because of that, I’m going to strongly recommend that we refund you all of your money!”

He stood and ushered us towards the door.

“Can we have a lollipop?” the girls asked in unison.

Michael strode over to the bowl and offered them any flavor they wanted. Then he looked at me.

“Hey, why don’t you bring them back one day so that can take a tour of the bank? We might have some future financial officers on our hands,” he said. He wasn’t joking.

“Sure!”

We shook hands once more and left. The girls were elated, and I was satisfied. It wasn’t the train of events I expected…it was far better. And as they often do, my kids taught me a lesson I’d recently forgotten: you catch more flies with honey than vinegar. Oftentimes, you get better results when you’re sweet.

Just in time for Mother’s Day, the BBC released a report on maternal health touting Finland as the best place on earth to be a mother and disparaging the DR of Congo as the worst. The report looks as if it was recycled from last year. Again, the United Sates came in dead last on this list at number 30 because it holds the record for highest newborn death rate compared with other nations in the developed world.

The subject of healthcare in America is a hot button issue, with Obamacare finally rolling out in earnest. One of the unfortunate consequences of universal healthcare has been demand outweighing supply. The US was already facing a shortage of medical professionals, and with more people opting out of the field altogether due to its cost prohibitive nature or, eventually, burn out, the quality of care the average American will receive can only decline.

My family is considered ‘healthy’ (well, except for my husband and I. We qualify as ‘obese’ and are thus subject to higher insurance rates), and hospital visits for are a rare and few between. I’m the only one of us 6 who has had the most hospital visits, and that’s because I was biological responsible for dispensing babies from my body. And with the exception of two unfortunate incidences, I have been blessed to be a part of a good group of doctors who have excellent bedside manner and genuinely care about their patients. However, for many women bringing babies into the world, this isn’t always the case. Like anything else in the human experience, the quality of service one receives will ultimately come down to race, geographic location, socio-economic status or a mix of all three.

I have friends of all races who have had babies, but I admit I have only talked to my African or African-American ones about the nuances of their child birth process. I would like to think that the events I am about to describe to you have absolutely nothing to do with their race and all to do with the fact that the medical professionals in these cases just sucked. I know that abortion is very much en vogue this century, what with our president (and his glamorous wife) being honored as the most pro-abortion president in history at a Planned Parenthood gala, but there are still a number of women out there that actually want a family and are willing to go through the pangs of childbirth and rearing, no matter how painful or “inconvenient”. Call us crazy; or call it a primal need to preserve our species – it is what it is.

When Stone was being delivered by c-section, I had placenta previa . As my OB cut and dug into my abdomen, I watched as liters of blood dripped into two canisters to my right. I was light-headed, but I didn’t pass out. In a way, I wish I had. At least then I wouldn’t have to hear the Eastern European anesthesiologist say something that no mom should hear while she’s in the midst of giving birth to her child. Her tome was mocking and condescending.

“Don’t have any more children. You see all this blood you’re losing? And I wish you could see your uterus. It looks like hamburger meat.”

I shared with you a few years ago that the geneticist affiliated with my Ob/Gyn’s practice (wrongly) predicted that Liya had Down’s Syndrome . I will never forget the call I received that late afternoon.

“Mrs. Grant?”

“Yes?”

“We got the results back from your preliminary blood work and your ultrasound, and it looks like your baby is testing positive for Down’s Syndrome.”

I murmured something in acknowledgment. The coordinator then asked me (very sweetly) if I would be willing to consider an abortion. Whatever for? I told her no, under no circumstances, thank you. They still needed me to come in and see a specialist. I set up the appointment and went in. Turns out the machine they were using upstairs was delivering faulty results.

When my good friend M5X (which stands for Mom Five Times) went in to her doctor’s office to confirm that she was indeed on her fifth pregnancy – a shock considering her husband’s freshly minted vasectomy – a nurse approached her with a lop-sided smile.

“So, Mrs. M5X…this is your fifth pregnancy! What do you want to do about it?”

M5X played dumb and asked her what she meant. The nurse smiled a little broader, injecting her speech with “wells” and “you knows” before finally asking her if she planned to keep it.

“Yes,” M5X said flatly.

It was only at that moment that the nurse began to refer to the child she was carrying as a baby and not a fetus. Now, the reason this story struck me is because I was watching Dr. Phil this week and Troy Dunn (The Locator) was on the show. Troy and his wife have eight children together. I wonder – did his wife’s nurse practitioner have the gall to ask her if she planned to keep her fifth child, or did that child and subsequent others, have the assumed right to life because their parents were White and wealthy?

In another instance, I had a friend from the Caribbean who was advised to abort her baby, because she was showing to have a genetic defect. Her ultrasound showed she had a “broad, flat nose”. Well, so did the child’s dad. Many people of African descent have broad flat noses!

My own sister went through months of agony when she was informed that her son had trisomy 18, that he would be mentally retarded, and he would not live past a year. She too was advised to have an abortion. Again, the boy’s father has an unusually large head that my nephew had the misfortune to inherit. And today he’s a genius who’s about to make his third birthday.

Finally comes the case of my cousin whom I told you about two weeks ago. She is expecting her first child, and went to listen to the heartbeat earlier this week. She was elated that her child as doing so well, despite the fact that many other things in her life weren’t, including her relationship with its father. Her elation soon turned to distress when her Asian doctor turned and looked at her and said this:

“You shouldn’t get too attached to the fetus. Your risk factors for miscarriage are high, so you will probably lose it.”

In those words, exactly.

I was incensed for her and called my sister to rant.

“Dude, there are certain things that doctors don’t need to say to you under any circumstances,” she growled. “They need to do a preliminary questionnaire to ask a woman if she wants to have an abortion before it gets to a certain point.”

“Exactly! Like day one, I sit in your office, and you hand me a list that says “Can we ask you about an abortion? Check ‘ye’, ‘no’, or ‘I’m open to discussing it later’. Sometimes I feel like other cultures don’t think Black women love their (unborn) kids as much as anyone else!”

You can draw your own conclusions about these stories. I just find it disturbing that the FIRST option that these women of color (myself included) were offered when there was the slightest hint of a problem with their unborn children was a termination.

That’s Stone’s foot on the left!

As we prepare to celebrate Mother’s Day, and tolerate the litany of TV commercials encouraging our families to buy us bouquets that will eventually die and jewelry that we will eventually lose, I’d like us to give some thought to the process of motherhood if we could, and all those who are involved in it. I believe it is absolutely imperative that moms-to-be have a strong network to rely on to help them reach the goal of delivering healthy babies; and no one is more important in that endeavor than her doctor and his/her medical team. That strength is displayed through offering caring, encouraging words and positive affirmations, as well as the ability to write out proper prescriptions. It truly does set the tone for one’s mothering experience. Personally, I know I felt better knowing that the first person to touch my child was someone who genuinely cared for my well-being… or at least did a fabulous job faking it.

A guy walks into an interview dressed in a fancy suit and shiny shoes. He’s just graduated from college with decent grades. His father is in the construction industry, and he’s made the decision to immolate his career. He tells the interviewer, a seasoned gent in his late 50’s, that he’s a self-starter, self-motivated, and values autonomy… all the things that look good on a resume. So far, the hiring manager is impressed by what he sees and hears. Then comes the moment to negotiate the young man’s salary. The job seeker asks the hiring manager to hang on just a moment. He leaves the room and returns with his father, who then begins the salary negotiation process for his son.

In another state, half way across the country, another young man is frustrated that he is unable to find work. With a degree in hand and a suit of extra-curricular to his credit, he can’t understand why he hasn’t been able to land that elusive $45K per annum job that every college grad has been promised! He does the only thing that seems logical: six months after his fruitless job search, he applies for unemployment benefits. He’s informed that he is not eligible. Shocked, he asks why ever not! He IS unemployed, after all. Because you have to have had a job previously – and paid into the system from your previous wages – in order to qualify for unemployment benefits, he’s told. Miffed, he leaves the office, grumbling about how “unfair” it all is.

Sounds crazy doesn’t it? Who are these “entitled” people and what makes them think they are so special? You know exactly who they are. They’re your co-workers, your kids, and if it all hits the fan, your future bosses. This is the Sticker for Participation Generation. And I can’t stand them.

Anyone who’s spent more than a week with me has heard me bellyache about this group of individuals who were born in the 90’s. Raised by a generation of parents who came out of Carter and Regan administrations unscathed and determined to give their kids a “better life”, they have largely grown up without learning the value of hard work or experiencing the purifying pricks of failure. Everyone is “special” because that’s what’s “fair”. Indoctrinated by MTV to believe that their parents are obligated to fete them with an outlandish Sweet 16 party simply because they managed to cross the mark, these Neanderthals throw full on tantrums when all they get is a night out at the movies and some cake. I’ve seen it, and it ain’t pretty.

I spend a lot of time berating this group of woefully underachieving individuals, often criticizing their parents for the absolute crap job they’ve done raising their spoiled, entitled, lazy kids. And then Friday night happened.

My two oldest girls are in Girl Scouts, which is great for them, but terribly inconvenient for me. Nadjah and Aya participate in several activities, so no matter what the day, I am subject to some form of inconvenience. But I do it because it’s “good for the kids”, plus I rarely got a chance to do any of this stuff myself when I was a child.

Cookie season came in January, and as all Scout Moms and Dads know, it’s a hectic time of year. The pressure to sell these darn cookies is so intense that it’s almost spine-chilling. It makes no sense, particularly given that parents have absolutely no personal payoff to look forward to.

This January I was in Ghana on vacation, so cookie sales were going to have to wait. And wait they did; three full weeks into the month. Through my husband’s efforts the girls were able to sell 106 boxes between them, which is still a decent amount of cookies. In times past, the troop leader would combine their total boxes and give them a prize(s) to share. This was generally done in the absence of the girls to prevent hurt feelings. Some girls sold hundreds of boxes and others only sold tens. The prizes are bigger, the more cookies you sell. This year, their troop decided to have a big ceremony with gift bags and camaraderie and togetherness… and it sucked.

The scout leader read off what each girl had sold and handed her a gift bag containing her prize. Nadjah had sold 51 boxes, so all she got was a badge. The girl who sold 500 boxes hauled in electronics. To her credit, Nadjah fought back her tears of disappointment. Aya on the other hand, who wears her heart on her sleeve, burst into bitter tears, sobbing and clutching her belly as if the love of her life had died. I cringed when I witnessed her tormented display.

My God… I was becoming one of those despicable parents and I hadn’t even realized it. I had not done my job in preparing her for disappointment and what it means to lose. I had shielded my girls from lost hope, and these were the results.

My immediate internal response was to whisk them away to Toys R Us and purchase a consolation prize. If we left at THAT MOMENT, we could get there before the store closed. Then I thought about all the kids who were going to go to bed without heat or dinner that night, or who were standing in the rain with their parents waiting on the bus to come because they had no car. I thought about lost football matches and basketball tournaments in high school. I also thought about my mother, who had willfully put me in situations where there was no chance of success at least on two occasions. All these thoughts came to me in an instant.

No.

The Grant girls were not going out like that. They would have to put on their big girl knickers and tough this one out.

We went to the car and sat in the drizzle.

“I’m going to give you 5 minutes to cry, and then we’ll talk about it, okay?”

Aya wailed and threw her head back against the seat. Now that she had been given permission, Nadjah began to sniffle too. I occupied myself by reading Twitter updates.

“I think I’m done, Mommy,” said Nadjah.

“We still have two minutes left,” I informed her. Aya was still crying. You could tell she was winding down, but in hearing that she had two minutes left, she restarted her engines. Finally, (finally!) the two minute mark came. It was time to talk.

“Tell me why you guys are crying.”

“Because we didn’t get a prize.”

“And you’re disappointed, right?”

Aya nodded.

“I understand how you feel,” I said honestly. “There have been times when I was a kid that my friends have gotten things that I never have, and never will. But tell me something: Where are all your Girl Scout prizes from last year and the year before? Can you tell me what you won two years ago?”

Nadjah rattled off a short list of 4 items. I corrected her and rattled off 12. (I’m sure there are more.)

“Do you see that you have so much stuff that you don’t even remember what you have?”

They both nodded in reluctant agreement.

After informing them that they were very lucky to be a part of this particular troop – which does a lot of the girls and exposes them to things I haven’t made time for – I made it clear that getting prizes for selling cookies is not what scouting is about.

“Girl Scouts is about training you guys to be powerful, influential women one day,” I said solemnly. “Aya, when you had your tea party/etiquette class, that was to teach you manners and how to conduct yourself in business meetings one day. And when you guys went to the STEM Expo, that was about getting you to think more about science and math. These things are not just for fun… they’re to help train you to be better people.”

I wanted to hear from them. They were unhappy because they had not gotten a plushy (made in China) dog or a travel kit. What could we do differently next year?

“Well for one thing, we could get the cookie sheet earlier,” said Nadjah. (That was an indirect dig at me.)

“We could talk to more people,” said Aya timidly.

“Good!” I said. I started the car and turned to look at them huddled in the back seat, like a pair of captured gerbils. “And remember this feeling. Remember how awful it felt, and do something different so that you don’t have to feel this way again. Now let’s go home and have dinner.”

And guess what? By the time they went to bed, there was no further mention of scout prizes or such foolishness. There was only laughter, teasing, and squealing as they played with their younger brother and sister. That night, I’d saved $40 in pity prizes and was well on my way to saving my kids from being coddled into future adult failures.

*******

As a parent, do you feel it’s better to spare your kids feelings or let them experience hardship in one sense or another? Even if you don’t have kids (maybe you were that kid), discuss, discuss!

I realized just last night that I have come to a point in my motherhood journey where I no longer have funny little anecdotes about lack of sleep, getting peed and pooped on, or spending innumerable hours trying to decipher baby babel. “What comes next for me?” I’ve begun to wonder.Serendipitously, my wonderful friend, writer/expert mom/expert on life itself Julia N. gave me a glimpse into what the next phase of this mandate I’ve willingly taken on will look like and how I should begin to mentally prepare for it when she posted this note on Facebook. It’s just too good NOT to share! And so MOM Squad, from the woman who introduced me to Baby Wise, I give you Mama Bear: Destroyer of Lofty Dreams

*******

So Dean and I have begun having the what-do-you-want-to-do-when-you-grow-up talk with our kids in earnest. For efficiency’s sake, we are combining it with the make-sure-it-doesn’t-involve-living-off-us-forever talk and the don’t-confuse-a-hobby-with-a-career talk. As a start, I presented for their consideration a list of fifty decent jobs that require only a bachelor’s degree. We told them they are not limited to this list by any means. But they must begin to work on a life plan, and that plan must contain credible data to support it. Want to try for a long shot? No problem; just remember to present a backup plan as well.

I honestly have no idea if this is going to work, so check back with me in a few years and I’ll let you know. But I do know that at some point, when children are between the ages of 10 and 18, parents have the obligation to help them move from the dream of being Ironman (or a unicorn-riding fairy princess) to something a little more achievable. This might seem obvious, but if everyone approached parenting this way, there would be no American Idol auditions.

In fact, I have concluded that a growing number of parents are failing to help their teenagers make this transition. I’m not talking about the blatantly abusive parents who tell their children they’ll never amount to anything. I mean the nice, well-meaning parents who have embraced some fashionable lies which seem harmless enough until you field test them on an actual human:

Lie #1: Your child must pursue a career he “loves”

Much of popular culture (and many a parent) currently promotes the idea that you must exclusively pursue a career that you are deeply passionate about. Some even go so far as to imply that you are being inauthentic or untrue to yourself if you don’t spring out of bed each day just dying to go to work. This is why so many young people want to pursue careers music, sports or entertainment: they like listening to music, playing sports or watching television and movies. Well, I like eating pie, but no one is paying me to do it.

I am by no means suggesting that our kids should intentionally pursue careers that they will hate, nor am I saying it’s unrealistic that they could really enjoy their work in the future. But here’s the problem. Virtually every occupation imaginable comes with at least one annoying component. Policemen don’t just get to catch bad guys; they get shot at, spit on and spend hours filling out boring paperwork. Doctors have to see eighty patients an hour and worry about getting sued. And I am pretty sure that even Brad Pitt isn’t particularly passionate about filming a scene by the 17^th take.

A big part of being able to enjoy a job is being mature enough to do what the job requires with a good attitude. Sure, we all want to work hard as long as we get paid a ton and our boss praises us on an hourly basis. And we all want to be our own bosses as long as we never have to worry about where the business is going to come from next month. But life doesn’t work that way for 99% of the human population. And as I tell my son almost every day, a crucial part of being an adult is making yourself do things you don’t always feel like doing. (For him, this is still includes showering and brushing his teeth.)

I have told my children that they must find a useful way to support themselves doing something they don’t hate. If that coincides with something they happen to love, wonderful! I will be the first one doing (figurative) back flips in celebration. But otherwise, they should be content to love their families, friends and hobbies and like (or even just tolerate) the way they make a living.

Lie #2: Your child is destined to be “great”

Okay. If what you mean by “great” is kind, polite, loving, hardworking and generous, then yes, everyone’s child can be great. But what a lot of people mean by “great” is famous, wealthy and universally recognized as the lord high master of something. And for many parents such grandeur kind of feels like fate. After all, they already “feel” just as proud of their child as if he had already cured cancer or won the presidency, so it’s only a matter of time before he achieves something that merits that emotion from anyone other than a parent.

I have a daughter who has been in gymnastics since the age of three, so I am well-acquainted with the culture of parental delusion. After all, 95% of parents whose daughters have been in gymnastics since the age of three believe that their daughter is going to be one of the five girls who will represent the United States in the Olympics in a given quad. (It is also true that 95% of the parents whose daughters are NOT in gymnastics cannot understand why in the world your daughter would put so much time and effort into it if she is NOT going to the Olympics. But that is a separate issue.)

Now a handful of gym parents have good reason to believe their kids are going to the Olympics: as of this writing, they have last names like Biles, Key and Ohashi. (Google if you’re curious.) But the larger problem remains: belief and desire alone DO NOT make dreams come true. And if emotions were an accurate gauge of destiny, there would be thousands more gymnasts in the Olympics, and everyone would win gold.

Lie #3: You must “believe” in your child’s dream, no matter how ridiculous or narcissistic it is

Parents who are willing and able to support their children financially for the foreseeable future a la Buster Bluth are free to encourage them to pursue careers in Cartography or Native American Dance. But the rest of us have a moral obligation to help our children be a little more realistic. If they want to aim high, great! But we have to help them count the cost and come up with an alternative course of action in case the Big Dream doesn’t work out. Because at some point in one’s life aiming for a career as a successful, well-paid sculptor is not too different from wanting to be Ironman.

Without divulging any details that would hurt anyone’s feelings, I am personally acquainted with parents who have:

1.     Encouraged their teenager who was unable to make her high school swim team to pursue a dream of winning a gold medal in the Olympics (yes, for swimming)

2.     Encouraged their teenager who was getting C’s and D’s in on-level high school classes to pursue a dream of a career as a nuclear physicist

3.     Encouraged their sporadically homeschooled teenager who was several years behind in his work (due to parental negligence) to pursue a dream of attending Harvard University

4.     Encouraged an adult son who had no savings, no college degree, and significant debt to pursue a career in music (which the parents were unable to support)

I realize the world is full of inspiring people who successfully pursued such dreams against pretty heavy odds. But none of them were using “pursue your dream” as a euphemism for “develop a fantasy version of yourself and then imagine becoming that person in a short period of time with little to moderate effort.” The problem with these situations is not the dreams per se; it is the fact that the parents are encouraging the teens to fantasize about the outcome while failing to help them think through the step by step process of achieving it.

But in a larger sense, the teens who are overreaching so drastically are clearly not setting goals for the sake of challenging themselves, “being the best that they can be,” or using their future fame and money to “help others.” They probably just want an easy life and the envy of their peers. Any responsible parent must discern those motivations and explain that they are really stupid reasons to waste your parents’ money.

Lie #4: Laid back parents are less cruel than strict parents

I am not talking about temperament here; I am talking about what we require from our children on a daily basis. Amy Chua was almost universally excoriated for her Tiger Mom confessions, as if our country is overrun with dangerously well-behaved, high-achieving children. But here’s the thing: at least Tiger Parents put their money where their mouths are. They don’t just set high expectations; they do the work every day to ensure their children have the knowledge, habits, work ethic and attitude necessary to meet those expectations. Too many laid back parents just tell their kids to “go for it,” and call it a day.

Look, I am way too lazy qualify as a Tiger Mom. And I know (not from personal experience, but from the experiences of many of my friends) that endless hours of study and piano practicing take an emotional toll on a kid. But you know what else takes an emotional toll? Getting to age 30 and realizing that you have nothing to show for your life except a bed in your parents’ basement and eight leather-bound volumes of handwritten self-reflection. And at the end of the day, at least the Tiger-parented kid learned how to play the piano.

Once our kids reach a certain age, encouraging them to pursue their dreams but failing to help them count the cost is negligent and cruel. Of course some parents fail to be encouraging in the first place, and that sucks. But for emotionally normal people, “encouraging” is the fun part. Anyone can say, “Sure, son! That sounds like a great idea!” It takes significantly more effort to say, “Alrighty then. Come over here, and let’s look at the number of job openings for an entry-level journalist and see how much they pay.”

Lie #5: Your job as a parent is to make your teenager happy, not help him grow up

Some kids seem eager to take care of themselves from birth; others will reach their thirties still content to let Mom make dinner, do laundry, and tell everyone that they would have totally made it to the Olympics if it hadn’t been for that injury. It’s easy to help the first kind of kid grow up because she wants to. It’s harder to help the second kind, because it feels like you are forcing him (because you are).

But the fact remains that until our (non-special needs) kids are responsible, independent adults, we haven’t finished our jobs. And just like the baby who gets picked up every time she cries will cry a whole lot, the teenager whose parents are more concerned with his temporary happiness than his long term ability to take care of himself probably has that basement apartment in his future.

The real world can be a cruel and unforgiving place. If we send our children into it with an inflated sense of their own importance and skill, we are ultimately asking society do the dirty work of parenting for us. But is it really such a good idea to let the bad cop beat the snot out of our kids just so we can stay the good cop?

I don’t know what the future holds for my kids, and like any parent, that fills me with a combination of excitement and terror. And some days it doesn’t feel any easier to prepare a teenager to think realistically than it feels to get a squirmy toddler into a car seat for her own protection. But it’s possible. And it’s necessary. And at the end of the day, maybe that’s all we need to know.

I’ve written frequently about my fears about raising a Black boy in America. I read somewhere that there is nothing quite so loathsome as an 8 year old Black boy. They travel in packs, they get into stuff, and they’re no longer considered as “cute” and “harmless” as they previously may have been before they reached the milestone of making it to the third grade. I don’t know about other races, but you have to be careful about how you raise Black sons. Raise them too soft, and the streets will be them. Raise them to be too tough, and the cops will get them. Fortunately, I had a solution in mind; one that would solve everything!

When I found out I was pregnant with Stone, I already had an idea of the sort of young man I wanted to raise. He would be handsome (of course), well mannered, considerate, sensitive and intelligent. I would clothe him in argyle and dress shoes, and teach him to observe the natural world and draw conclusions from it. I would raise the proverbial Renaissance Man. And Stone is certainly all these things – but I have recently discovered that when I was making my list of attributes to be assigned to my brewing baby boy, I forgot to add “brave”.

You see, to my horror, I have realized that my son is an unmitigated wuss.

For the last three years I have delighted in his early morning nuzzles and squeals (yes – squeals) of delight whenever we rode over abandoned train tracks somewhere in the city, but never in my wildest dreams did I considered that all that exuberance was masking something more sinister. It took a lizard to unearth the direful reality I am about to tell you about.
Two days ago, I was sitting on the couch enjoying one of the few moments of silence that infrequently descend upon our house when Stone burst through the front door. He had been outside riding his bike and was agitated by something.

“Mommy!” he screeched. “I saw a lizard!”

“Yeah…a lizard,” Liya echoed.

Well, I was thrilled. Lizards aren’t very common in this part of Georgia. Perhaps some had migrated up from Florida. This was wonderful news! We have lizards everywhere in Ghana, bobbing their heads up and down and doing “push-ups”. This was another part of our childhoods past and present that we could share!

“You did!” I exclaimed. “Well that’s wonderful!”

Stone looked at me quizzically.

“It scared me, Mommy!”

I pshaw-ed his statement and told him not to be silly.

“Lizards aren’t scary, boy,” I laughed.

That’s when he burst into tears. When I had the audacity to display shock, he began to shake uncontrollably, repeating again and again how scary the lizard was. Well what was I to do? His 2 year old sister was mocking him and my words were going over his head. I pulled him close and hugged him.

“It’s ok, Stone,” I soothed.

This only made him cry harder. Perhaps I was taking the wrong approach in coddling him? I released my grip and held him away from me.

“It’s ok!” I said, putting a little bit more bass in my voice. “You can’t be scared of lizards.”

“But I’m scared!” he wailed in objection.

The more I told him he couldn’t be, the more he insisted he was. This was becoming alarming. I did the only thing I knew to do to calm him down. I gave him a fistful of crackers and turned on a DVD – hating every moment that I was medicating him with food and cartoons. An hour later he declared he was ready to go back outside.

I relayed the incidents to my husband, who was equally unsettled. Marshall has always loved the outdoors, and has spent countless hours ambling about in the woods as a kid. The news that his son – Marshall Grant’s son! – was afraid of a lizard was therefore just as bad as Dale Earnhardt’s offspring declaring trepidation and horror at the sight of motor oil.

“You can’t be scared of lizards, boy!” he said, repeating what I had already told Stone earlier. “You’re a boy. Boys like dirt, bugs and reptiles.”

He grabbed his son and began to rough house with him. Stone wriggled away with a high pitched “no!”

I suddenly saw into his future, and I didn’t like what I saw. Stone has spent the last 4 years predominantly in the company of women. He has three sisters and his mother. His father comes home at 6 pm, sees him for 2 hours, and then he goes off to bed. His Pre-K teacher will most likely be a woman, as well be the director of his pre-k center and all the other people in authority who run the facility. In fact, all of his teachers up until fourth or fifth grade will most likely be female. He will only know female authority and most likely will not know how to handle a man’s heavy handedness and domineering nature in class. Oh heavens. He may even burst into tears the first time his male physics teacher booms: “No sir, Mr. Grant!” when works an equation incorrectly. And then what will his classmates think of my argyle clad, clean shaven prince?

My poor son!

I have wanted to put Stone in a sport since he turned 2, but I always came up with some excuse.

He wasn’t potty trained. No one could understand what he was saying. It conflicted with everyone else’s schedule.

The truth is, I don’t want some other little boy knocking my son around because his mammy didn’t have sense enough to teach him to keep his mitts to himself! One can’t (or shouldn’t) go around hitting other people’s kids because they injured your own. And so I kept my son safe at home, watched Barbie and Veggie Tales DVDs, rushing to his side every time he skinned his knee.
Now he’s afraid of lizards. And spiders. And bees.

*Siiiiggggh*

I can raise wonderful girls, but this boy thing is proving a lot tougher than I previously imaged. Surely I’m not the only parent to have this concern? Here’s a question for you dads: What would you do in this situation…or am I fretting over nothing? Did you grow up “sensitive” and turn out alright in the end? Discuss, discuss!

It’s easy to tell what my 8 year old is thinking. She’s talkative, and will generally tell you what she’s pondering without prompting or solicitation.

“Do sloths wear pajamas to sleep, Mommy?”

“Oh Lord, I pray that we get home in time to eat those delicious noodles that Daddy was making; In Jesus’ name, amen.”

“What birds reach the highest altitude in flight?”

“Do you always have to get your chin waxed, or will the hair on your face eventually stop growing one day?”

I don’t know the answers to half these questions and on the days that I can’t handle her barrage of questions and useless factoids I tell her as much and order her to get out of my room.

“I don’t know, Nadjah! Get out of my room. Please.”

After dealing with her manic brother and sister all day, I do not have the cerebral fortitude to answer life’s least pressing questions. One day, I stopped to wonder exactly what goes on inside the mind of my two littlest lunatics. Stone is an easy book to read. His main concerns in life are eating, locomotives, airplanes – and yes – Barbie. He has a partiality to Barbie flicks.

It’s harder to get a read on Liya, however. Her powers of speech are not yet developed well enough to convey thought, however she is quite adept at conveying her feelings. There is no balance when it comes to a two year old’s feelings. Their emotions are a wildly swinging pendulum, ranging from excessive anger to utter joy. The pendulum only stops moving when a two year old is asleep…and even in that state I’m convinced they are designing their next terror plot.

I decided to watch Liya for a day, to try to get inside her mind.

*****

Crap. It’s morning and I’m wet again. I wish these two would stop being so cheap and buy some of those pull-ups I saw on Nick Jr today. It said they provide extra leak guard protection – whatever that is. The babies on the commercials look so happy and dry…and White. Why aren’t I White? And why don’t I have a back yard? My parents are such losers. That’s why I have to run through this house at top speed: because I have no back yard.

Well, it’s time to wake up the hag. She’ll change me and get me breakfast. It takes so long for her to rally though. It’s a good thing my biggest sister left her deodorant out so I could have a nibble. Screw it. I’m going to eat the whole block of this white stuff…

Ahhh. That’s better.

Ugh. Stonie is already in bed with her, snuggling with her. He makes me so sick! Just once I wish I could wake up before him and garner the spoils of a pre-dawn cuddle. But “noooo”, he has to bang his infernal head on his pillow all night and deprive me of sleep! I’ll outwit him one of these days, but in the meanwhile, I must use my size, weight and vocals to my advantage.

“Mooove, Stonie!”

As I anticipated, my commands have gone unheeded. I’ll just have to step on his head and get between the pair of them. This draws a sharp rebuke from the fat woman who calls herself “Mommy”, but I couldn’t care less. I quickly grow bored and request some entertainment.

“Micka Mouse Club Hawse, Mommy,” I ask politely.

She refuses my request and tells me it’s not time to watch TV yet. I’m aghast. How dare she! I pick a fight with Stone and kick him in the shin. This of course sends him into hysterics since he’s not allowed to hit me (no one is) and he begins to wail uncontrollably. I add an unholy timbre to his screeches of displeasure. As expected, the fat woman turns on the television. I then demand milk, which she scurries off to get.

Soon, I become acutely aware that she’s been gone for more than the 56 seconds it requires to pour a glass of milk and bring it to me. This is not to be borne! I rally my older brother so that we can swoop in and retrieve our drudge.

“Let’s get. Mommy!” I shout with urgency.

“Yeah! Mommy!!!” he agrees, leaping off the bed.

My brother is more like an obedient puppy than an actual functioning, intelligent human being. I don’t know what Allison sees in him. She’s always showing off her new dresses and t-shirts and asking Stone if he likes them.

“’Tone…do you like my Dora?” she asks in that sing-song voice. (I hope she learns how to enunciate the letter “s” soon. She’s not going to make it far in pre-k if she doesn’t.)

But do you know what my oaf of a brother actually said to her?

“Yeah, Allison! I like your Dora!”

Then the two of them run off to play – and fight. They never invite me to play with them. It’s not fair. I’m just as tall as they are…even if I’m a year younger.

As I contemplate these things, I see that the fat woman has my cup of milk in one hand and that hard thing I play Angry Birds on in the other. She wastes SO much bloody time on it! She sees the look in my eye, and her anxiety quickly becomes palatable. I can smell her fear. I wasn’t going to ask her for her phone, but I will anyway, since she looks like she doesn’t want to give it up.

“Can I want you phone, Mawmie?”

She says no.

At this juncture, I would typically wrestle it from her, but she’s pulled down that bottle with a red label that sits on top of the fridge  and is hungrily popping pills. These are dangerous times. It’s better to proceed with caution for the next 4 days…

I take my cup of milk upstairs to watch TV in my parent’s room. I know I’m not allowed to do this, but the two fat people have disconnected all the good channels from the TV downstairs. They say my sisters need to spend more time reading, but it hasn’t helped. Mother spends hours helping the whiny one sound out words every night. I myself CAN read, but I’ll never let them know it. It’s why I request a book every night and read myself a bedtime story. I get to make up all the sounds in my head. And I particularly love the way every book begins with the phrase “One day…”

You know what I can’t stand? When grown-ups treat me like a two year old. Yes, of course I realize that I AM two years old, but when they ask me inane, rhetorical questions like “Where do we pee-pee?” how do they expect me to react? Everyone else in the house takes a dump in the toilet, and you don’t ask them where does the poo poo go. It only makes sense that I would opt to use the toilet on myself. For one, it’s terribly convenient, and secondly it shakes things up around here. People move a little faster when there’s poo in the living room. But am I potty trained? Yes…again, it is not to my advantage to admit this.

Still, I recognize that my grip on power cannot last forever. The fat woman keeps talking about “August 2014”, whatever that is. I also hear that Stone will be shipped off the pre-k this autumn. He vehemently denies that this will happen, but if the morning activities of my two older sisters are any indication of how things run around here, I won’t be seeing him for a few hours every day. Which is fine with me. The fat one buys me frozen yoghurt when none of the other kids are around.

Oh look! Jake just got four more gold doubloons…

******

WHOA! This is only 40 minutes of observation. My head hurts…doesn’t yours? Venturing into the mind of a toddler is like risking a trip to the Terradome. You go at your own risk.

I was watching What Not to Wear when Aya burst into the room with a scowl on her face. Clinton Kelly was telling a woman how her ill-fitting trousers made her crotch look a rectangle. My daughter cut short my contained chuckles with a question I knew I was going to have to answer, but never expected it to come on that day at that moment.

“Mommy!” she exclaimed almost tearfully. “Nadjah said that we all used to live in your hoo-hoo!”

“No I didn’t!” Nadjah called from the other room. “I said we all used to live in your stomach, then we came out of your hoo-hoo!”

I couldn’t see her face, but I could tell that my first born was enjoying her younger sister’s state of hysteria. I sighed and muted the TV.

“Yes, Aya,” I said solemnly. “Your sister is right. Remember how big my stomach was when I was pregnant with Stone and Liya? Remember they used to live in my stomach?”

She nodded vigorously, her eyes widening slightly. It’s as if she were girding herself up for tragic news. I smiled and patted her shoulder.

“But none of you guys came out of my hoo-hoo,” I said reassuringly. “You all came out of my stomach.”

Almost every portion of my body has been used in the service of my children since the moment of their conception. A uterus to incubate them in; arms to cradle them in; breasts to suckle them with; a back to ferry them on; lips to kiss away the pain of boo-boos. So without hesitation, I lifted my flabby belly in order to reveal the keloid scar that marked the point of entry into the world for each of my four children. I told her that the doctor had cut my stomach so that she could be born. She seemed relieved and asked me a few follow up questions. Did it hurt? I told her no. (I declined to go into detail about the wonderful drugs and needles that accompany a c-section…or the intense pain that follows when those drugs do finally wear off. Why rock a leaky boat?)

She asked me if a doctor was going to cut her stomach one day too. I told her I couldn’t say. Satisfied with the knowledge that her entry into the world had not come from via a place where I urinated (not to mention menstruated) from, she scampered off to go play. The conversation stuck with me though. Was I doing a good enough job educating my girls about their bodies? Had the time come for me to do so and I’d somehow missed it? Neither of them is in the double digits as far as age is concerned…why these crazy questions??

I consider myself a progressive enough parent. I let them watch videos on babycenter.com when I was carrying their younger siblings so that they would understand what was going on inside of my body. At ages 3 and 4, they watched the cycle of life repetitiously, awestruck at how a blastocyst could become a person in a matter of weeks. By the time they were in preschool, my kids could name all the parts of the body with by their proper scientific names…except for one.

The vagina.

I will admit that there is a certain discomfort I harbor for the use of the word “vagina”, or any reference to it at all for that matter. In fact, I’ve never seen my own vagina. I couldn’t pick it out of a lost and found bin. So when my children asked me what that fold of skin was between their little toddler thighs, I told them it was called a “hoo-hoo”, some generic term I’d picked up from a co-worker 13 years ago. It has served me well…until now.

Dr. Phil said on his show once that it is very important that we teach children the proper biological terms for their genitals – and early. I still haven’t been able to bring myself to do it. I know that there will probably be social implications for my future teenager calling her…. *gulp*…. vagina something cutesy like a “pocketbook” or her “stuff”, but that’s one of those things I’m willing to let her navigate on her own with her peers. The labia minora is something that truly terrifies me.

I don’t know why it should though. I remember having a vagina monolog with my mother when I was about 12. She was laying in her room sunning herself and I burst in. I had a bad habit of not knocking. Her legs were open on the bed and she was naked from the waist down. I came face to face with her hoo-hoo before I knew it.

“Ewww, Mommy!” I exclaimed. “Close your legs! That’s gross.”

“It wasn’t ‘gross’ when you came out of it,” she shot back.

I was stunned into silence, and I learned two things that day: to always knock before entering that woman’s room and that I was terribly afraid of female genitalia.

I often wonder if I’m the only parent who feels this way about identifying that part of my kids’ bodies. It’s not something I discuss with friends during Mommy and Me time or over coffee. In anyone else squeamish over this issue, or am I just being weird?

Yesterday I received a series of terse tweets from my “namesake”, Abena.

“How come you have not blogged abt the #steubenville rape? Why the silence? Don’t u feel sense of outrage? What if it was (one) of ur *girls*?”

Ah. I don’t like to be attacked like that. I asked her why she was being so aggressive! She explained with a laugh that she knows that this is something I am passionate about, and was surprised that I had not written about it yet. I promised that I would do so – just for her – and so here I am. I also cautioned her that my opinion might actually serve to disappoint her, and here’s why:

Perhaps my sense of cynicism has eclipsed my sense of outrage, so I might as well quickly admit that I am not outraged at all by what happened in Steubenville. I am outraged with society’s reaction to the event, however.

Let’s consider who the players in this atrocity were: a group of 15 – 17 year olds. 15 – 17 year old who grew up and lived in a derelict town in Ohio that hasn’t flourished since the Industrial Revolution. Now, if you’ve ever stopped for gas in one of these towns, you know exactly what manner of individual lives there. They’re low achievers. They live in homes with trash in the yard. They barely have an education. They are content with the small world that they live in, and in that small world the football team is the only source of pride. At the age of 16, you already have a false belief in your own invincibility, but when compounded with a whole town’s affirmation that you are indeed invisible and even further, above reproach, then the acts and the events leading up to rape in Steubenville was the next logical step.

Why do I say this? It all goes back to something I have talked about on this blog, my Facebook and over coffee with friends. It all goes back to how we parent (or don’t, rather) in this country.

The two boys involved in the rape came from broken homes where their fathers were either physically absent or emotionally unavailable. Not much information is given about the girl’s home, but I’m willing to bet that her parents were equally lax in their duties. I’m going to say something that is going to sound like I’m “blaming the victim”, but I’m really not. I am cautioning would-be victims and my remarks should only be read as such.

Under no circumstances should a 16 year old girl be out in the middle of a different town drunk, and by herself. When I was 16 and heading off to jams and parties, there were key questions my parents asked me.

“Who are you going with?”

“Whose car are you driving in?”

“Will there be drinking at this party?”

The questions went on and on until finally they ended the inquisition with this advice: “Stick together with your friends and be home by 10:30 pm.”

I thought I would die. Be home by 10:30?? That’s just when things would start to pop off! While I always broke curfew and suffered the month-long grounding afterward, there was one thing I always did – I stuck with my friends. There is safety in numbers, and we kept each other safe. When one of us got stupid drunk (as in the case of this victim) the four of us would made sure she wasn’t taken advantage of and got her home safely. This girl didn’t even know she had been violated until pictures of her attack began to surface on social media!

American society has developed increasingly casual attitudes towards sex to the point where we actually ask ourselves if a wide shot of Beyonce’s crotch during a half-time performance is “going too far”. Knowledge of sex, alcohol and violence are more common in a teenager’s everyday experience than the ability to solve a mathematical equation or locate their own freakin’ town on a map of the United States. From the cradle to the graduation stage, kids are encouraged through song to dabble in foolishness. Do shots! (LMFAO); Get freaky with a stranger at a hotel! (Pitbull) Lift your hands if you came to get drunk! (Mania)  And when you have parents who not only do not monitor what their kids are watching and listening to, but participate in the debauchery with their children, what behavior can you expect? There was some music I was embarrassed to ever let my parents know I was listening to, and that’s the way it should be. Your children should know that there are some things that are totally unacceptable.

These boys didn’t even know what they did was wrong…and that is frightening. They testified as much.

“I didn’t know,” said one of them tearfully.

In his mind, “rape” is a guy dragging a woman into the bushes and violently penetrating her. Coming from a culture where football players sleep with a different girl every week and where coaches and bars supply them with as much liquor as they need, slapping his penis against the thigh of a girl passed out on the floor while his buddy fingered her seemed “harmless”. Why else would they film it and distribute the video? They have literally grown up without a sense of compassion, shame or empathy.

America came to a crossroads a long time ago and willingly walked down a dark path. When you supply a mad man with a grenade, what makes you think he wouldn’t throw it into a crowded room? Why do we think we can give teenagers the ability to make adult decisions?

“Hey! You’re 14. You need birth control. I got whatever flavor you want. You want an IUD? The Pill? A quarterly shot? Some condoms? I got what you need!”

Why aren’t we instead explaining to the teenager that he/she is a three part being: spirit, soul and flesh, and that singularly satisfying one to the exclusion of the others is not healthy? No one talks to a girl about how she is going to feel in her soul the moment after her virginity is taken (because in most cases, it’s not “given”). It doesn’t matter…because her school nurse made sure she was on the pill. And even worse, we socialize boys to believe that they ought to be getting sex early and often. Furthermore, do we even think discuss with boys/men the implications of what it means to have taken something as precious as someone’s virginity? I’ll wait for the crickets to finish their serenade.

Of course Steubenville happened! Peel back the veneer and look at your neighborhood. It’s happening right now, right under your very nose. Why, WHY do we think we can give someone for whom it has been scientifically proven has limited cognitive ability the chance to make serious decisions and then get upset with they fail? That’s lunacy on our part.

So Abena, please accept my apologies. I can’t be outraged when someone meets the expectations of their conditioning. We live in different times. The machines are raising our children and we’re letting them. Anytime a kid has a smart device in their hands, there’s the propensity for trouble. Condoning the use and access to alcohol only exasperates this. Being an absentee parent guarantees disaster. And to your final question: What if it was one of my girls?

That’s a hard one to answer. I’m shaking at the thought. All I can do is teach them the lessons that my own parents taught me and do my best to raise a God-fearing son who respects humanity so that this cycle is not perpetuated within my own family. What about you?

If you didn’t catch this Wednesday’s episode of Law & Order: SVU (entitled Funny Valentine), it’s definitely worth checking out online. Like the entire Law & Order franchise, the episode was “ripped from the headlines.” The segment  dealt with the issue of domestic violence, using Rhianna and Chris Brown’s tumultuous (and vicious) relationship for fodder. It was a no-holds barred, unapologetic parody of the events leading up to the 2009 beat down that Chris Brown eventually meted out to Rhianna.

Fast forward five years later and the couple is canoodling and clobbering cannabis together and tweeting pictures for all who care to see. At the end of the Law & Order episode depicting their repugnant relationship, Caleb Bryant (fake Chris Brown) kills Misha (fake Rhianna) after beating her to death and throwing her corpse overboard after they ran away to Barbados following her appearance at the grand jury. It has long been my suspension that Chris Brown will eventually kill Rhianna, and when that day comes, I will shrug and offer a passive “meh.”

Black Twitter was in an uproar over the episode, saying that Law & Order had hit a new low and disparaging the actors for their poor talent. However when you consider that they were portraying two people of limited intelligence, then the acting was more than adequate.

I think it was very bold of Dick Wolf to tackle the topic of domestic violence in the manner that he and his team did, especially at Chris Brown and Rhianna’s expense. The highly publicized episode set tongues wagging on a subject that coincidentally came to a vote in the House of Representatives the day after it aired. The Violence Against Women Act passed with bipartisan support, extending its protection to cover gay men, bisexuals and transgendered individuals. I think it ought to cover everyone, including straight men who regularly have to live in the shadow and shame of getting their arses kicked by their wives and girlfriends, but that will have to be a discussion for another day. Today I want to talk about beef cookies.

Yes. Beef cookies.

To recap quickly: In the opening scene of Funny Valentine, Misha leaves the recording studio briefly and returns to find Caleb flirting with and fondling one of their backup singers. She shocked, but not surprised by what she sees.

“I can’t leave you alone for a second,” she laughs tersely.

“Yo, who you steppin’ to?” Caleb asks angrily.

“You…and this beef cookie,” Misha scoffs.

Without warning, Caleb then proceeds to smash her face, kick her in the gut and strangle her in the presence of the recording team. No one lifts a finger to help her or utters a word in protest. As is typical in street culture, no one “saw anything” during the time of the assault either. The closest the police were able to get to a statement came from the beef cookie (surreptitiously named ‘Brianna’ in the episode) was this:

Behold the “beef cookie”

“I’m a woman who knows how to keep her mouth shut when she’s supposed to,” she declared nonchalantly while examining her nails.

She had just been asked if she didn’t find the beating Misha had taken as problematic or troubling, and this was her response…which incidentally I find more troubling and problematic than the beating she witnessed.

According to the results of a survey conducted by Buzz Marketing Group polling 420 respondents ages 8-17:

• 95 percent believe Chris Brown’s alleged actions are not acceptable or justifiable for any reason
• 59 percent hold Chris Brown responsible for what happened
• 33 percent blame both Rihanna and Chris Brown for what happened
• 45 percent believe Rihanna could have provoked Chris Brown
• Girls 13-17 were more likely to think Rihanna provoked him in some way

For any mother, feminist, or person with a pulse, these statistics are troubling; Or at least they should be.

I applaud the fact that we have laws on the books that provide women with the assistance they need after suffering sexual and physical abuse at the hands of a partner. I actually remember a time when a man could assault his wife with impunity. (Cue Tracy Chapman and Last Night I Heard the Screaming.) What I want to know is what we can do to prevent domestic violence in the first place…or at least drastically reduce the numbers. How can we change beef cookie mindsets that say that it’s okay for a man to hit a woman…and if he does so it must be as a direct result of something she did?

In India where there seems to be stories of violence against women and girls pouring out of the media almost daily, the new rallying cry is for fathers to teach their sons to respect women, rather than forcing their daughters into seclusion. I agree with this approach, wholeheartedly. However as a mother with 3 young girls of my own, I believe it is imperative that I discuss their self-worth with them early and do my best to construct an impenetrable tower of assurance in that self-worth.

I personally only know one woman who has been the victim of domestic violence, and I’m sure I have written about her here at some point. My cousin Nicole got married to her high school “sweat heart” who had impregnated her and another girl from the neighborhood 2 months before. I don’t know when he started beating her, but I know when he stopped. One night, after he had punched her in the head, she looked straight up at the ceiling as they lay in bed together and whispered “I’m going to kill you one day. I don’t know when, but I will kill you one day.”

He packed his bags and left the next morning. A few months later they were divorced. She is my HERO! Because  like many women who are in abusive relationships, she found her inner Tina Tuner and made the decision to put that man on notice – her life may have been in jeopardy, but so was his. Unfortunately, these women are not in the majority. The reality is that far more of them lose their lives as a consequence of the state of violence that they live in.

I think there is a serious need to change the conversation that we have with our daughters and sons early on in life. Girls are always told to “be sweet” and advised to let things go for the sake of peace. That’s never been a message I’ve taught in my house. I tell my girls that if someone hits them, they better retaliate with equal or more force…and if they feel like they are in danger to get out of the way quickly. No one can hurt you if you are not there.

There are no easy answers, I know. Judges, politicians, housewives and pop stars – women whom we consider successful – have all suffered the blight of domestic abuse. I suppose the one answer I really want is how do we shift the conversation from slapping a band aid on this condition to preventing it? How can we teach our girls and women to find the strength to never allow themselves to become trapped in the cycle of abuse in the first place? How do we eradicate the “beef cookie” mentality?

Thoughts?