I am having a week month year life bit of a “Humans are not a very good species, at all” episode. At the grocery store, a stranger in line repeatedly reprimanded Henry, and I wondered what people like that think they’re doing. Like, they obviously don’t see themselves as being startlingly interfering and rude and all up in someone else’s business unwelcome and uninvited, so how DO they see themselves?

It gave me flashbacks to my mother-in-law, who thought she was benevolently helping others lead happier lives—and, if they declined her advice as not being The Obvious Only Right Way For Every Single Person To Live, she rolled her eyes and threw up her hands at their stupidity and ingratitude. In what way does that variety of ovary GROW in a person, and in what way does it continue to thrive?

Then, I was telling the children wearily for the millionth time that it is NOT NICE to mock and tease and make other people mad for fun, and then while I was cooking dinner I was wondering why we bother to tell them this, considering it seems like most people grow up anyway to mock and tease and make other people mad for fun, and at that point there’s no parent to tell them to quit it. All the scornful “Who DOES that??” and “Who THINKS that??” and “Who LIKES that??” and “Who CARES about things like that??” (with the implied answer “Clearly only a STUPID IDIOT”) is wearing me down. OTHER HUMAN BEINGS, THAT’S WHO. And yet it can also be so fun, and so comforting to find others who feel the same way about something, and so bonding in a very human “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” way.

As it wears me down and simultaneously comforts me when _I_ do it (ahem). I can’t believe how many people cut me off, or swerve around me when I’m stopped for a pedestrian, presumably because they thought I was just stopped in the road for no good reason. I can’t believe how many people leave bitchy comments, apparently thinking that’s okay to do. I can’t believe how many people sigh loudly in checkout lines, as if that does anything but bring morale down. I can’t believe how many people enjoy hanging out at websites like People of Walmart, where the only point is to mock and be mean. It’s so reassuring to find other people who feel the same way I do about people who are not living The Obvious Only Right Way For Every Single Person To Live. Who DOES that? Who THINKS that? Who LIKES that? OTHER HUMAN BEINGS, THAT’S WHO.

Also, in giving Rob some lessons in dealing with other humans, I was reminded that there are SO MANY TIMES when another person is acting awful (for example, two people disagree but one of them spins the other’s position insultingly and unfairly and as evidence of poor character, rather than seeing it as a disagreement), and there is NOTHING THAT CAN BE DONE except to go about your business and let them go about theirs. EVEN WHEN THEY ARE COMPLETELY WRONG AND ALSO THINKING MEAN AND UNFAIR THOUGHTS ABOUT YOU. Even if you COULD change that one person’s mind, there are THOUSANDS OR MILLIONS OF OTHERS THINKING THE SAME WAY.

And I read A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick, and it reminded me why I originally formed my theory (since disproven) that I didn’t like books written by men. I don’t want to read a grown man thinking thoughts about a teenaged girl. I don’t want to read how he hates his wife and children. I don’t want to read about how often he thinks about cheating on his wife, or how depressed and burdened and bored he feels by his house and family and job. I especially hate it when Paul recommends books to me and they have these thoughts in them, because then I wonder if he identifies with this point of view or if he just brushed past it the way I do if I read a book where a woman fantasizes about shoes: I don’t relate to that particular aspect, but I don’t really notice it or think it represents All Women.

…Although, actually, that’s a terrible example, because I DO notice it and I then DON’T like the story because I DON’T identify. Well, anyway, that’s pretty much exactly why it got me upset. I felt similarly when Paul and I were first dating and he recommended Robert Heinlein books. Ah, Robert Heinlein. So much talk about how stupid monogamy is and how glorious the human existence could be if women didn’t keep being so ridiculous and jealous over the innocent and healthy joy of a man sleeping around. Maybe not the ideal book recommendation for a new girlfriend.

Things are looking up a bit this morning, though. I have made a batch of fudge, and I’ve started a book I thought I wouldn’t like but so far I like it a LOT: in just the first chapter, I laughed OUT LOUD (and I was the only one home, so it wasn’t even “I want you to know how funny I find this book” laughter) three times and cried once.

(photo from Amazon.com)

EVERYTHING ABOUT this book says I wouldn’t like it (and maybe soon I won’t). It’s exactly the kind of book I tried about a dozen of before completely giving up on the whole Ladies’ Fried Coffee Diner Quilting Club Sisterhood genre. The title falls exactly into that category: The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can Eat. The jacket description does, too: a group of women with cute group nickname meet every week at a diner, “through marriage, children, happiness, and the blues.” I don’t understand why I picked it up or why I checked it out (I think it was partly because it was a group of THREE women, not the OMG ALWAYS group of FOUR), but I did and I did, and it’s cheering me up considerably. (Though also reinforcing things, as one character refuses to acknowledge or accept another character’s second wife. Sigh. Who DOES that??)

We are trying to figure out what to do about the kids and musical instruments. Instruments seem to fall into a category like diets and psychiatric medicine: there never seems to be a point where everyone agrees it’s not working and you can give up. Instead, it’s “He just hasn’t found the right one for him!” and “He just needs to give it more time!”

William first tried clarinet, since he didn’t really care what he tried first and we already had the clarinet Rob chose at that age. It sounded terrible all year, making me re-regret not making Rob keep going with it awhile longer, since Rob made it sound pretty within a week of practicing BUT OH WELL BYGONES. William said he didn’t mind instruments per se, but that the clarinet was not right for him: he didn’t like the sound of it (ORLY??).

So this year he tried trumpet. It’s been “like clarinet, but louder.” After his band concert last week, I asked if his teacher had given the class any feedback on the performance. He said yes, and that she’d had a video of it for them to see. He said, “Unfortunately, the video was really bad quality”—and I said, “Er, I’m not sure that was the fault of the…” just as he said “NO, NOT BECAUSE OF THAT. IT WAS STATIC ON THE RECORDING.” Well. I’m just saying.

Playing an instrument is such a well-rounded thing to do. And I like the idea of them being in band. (Yes, I’ve seen that article!) And it seems like it would be very nice on a college application. But when do we say “This is not only a constant struggle but also a constant torment. He is just Not Musical. Music is just Not His Thing, and that is Just Fine”? Not everyone does art; not everyone dances; not everyone builds furniture; not everyone likes camping; not everyone does well with math; not everyone picks up foreign languages; not everyone has a feel for motors and engines. It seems like music actually falls into THAT category instead: things some people have an aptitude for, and others don’t. We all think our own specialties are crucial for human fulfillment—but we can’t all do everything.

Now Rob is giving it a second shot. He’s starting high school this year, and the school requires a year of either music or art, and he’d prefer music. I tried to persuade him to go back to clarinet (we ENJOYED hearing him practice! ENJOYED it!), but he says it just isn’t his style. So he’s trying keyboard/piano, and we’re going to get him lessons all this summer so he has at least SOME experience before he starts—and also so that if it’s a total bust, maybe there will be time to switch to chorus or art instead.

One thing we’re considering is getting William piano/keyboard lessons TOO. This could perhaps cause some healthy competition. Or it could backfire and make the one who doesn’t do as well give up.

• Waking up half an hour before you have to get up, needing to pee too badly to sleep comfortably. But if you get up to pee, you won’t be able to go back to sleep for the remaining half hour.

• Someone (maybe a spouse, maybe not) didn’t listen carefully to the problem you described, and then got annoyed because you weren’t interested in their proposed solutions to the unrelated problem they think you described.

• Websites that were apparently set up by a company that thought, “Hey, we should have a Web Site!”—and then chose a setter-upper who was completely unfamiliar with websites. So for example, a button that says “Sign up for summer camp now!” is not a link. And when you do find the summer camp description, under “Course Descriptions,” it’s the 2012 schedule. And when you email the “email for more information” person to find out when the 2013 summer camp info will be up, they forward it to someone else because they don’t handle the email, and the person they forward it to tells you it all looks right to them: all you have to do is click “Schedule 1” on the pull-down menu and then the dates of the summer camp will show up! (It turns out that to get to “Schedule 1” you have to completely fill out the registration form for yourself and your child and also check boxes saying you agree to all the policies of the company including payment schedules.)

• EBay seller keeps listing the same item over and over, so it keeps appearing in your search results over and over. It doesn’t hurt anything, so there’s no reason to be annoyed. BUT WHY DO THEY KEEP LISTING IT? NO ONE WANTS TO BUY IT.

• The way I type “eBaby” almost every single time.

• A big company won’t make clothes for people who aren’t thin. Same as almost all the other companies.

• An email from an online store, telling me that maybe I’d like to look again at some clothes I looked at yesterday, and showing pictures of everything I looked at. That’s annoying AND creepy.

We went to a middle school band concert (William “plays” trumpet), and what surprised us was how enjoyable it was. Though WAY TOO LONG. Dear heaven, sitting on bleachers for an hour and a half listening primarily to OTHER people’s children (the sixth graders played for the first ten minutes and then mercifully went to the bleachers; the rest of the performance was 7th and 8th graders) play instruments at a middle-school level is TOO MUCH. Half an hour was what I would have considered the absolute limit, and if that means splitting it up over several nights, then SPLIT IT UP. No, I don’t care how much trouble that is. I watched OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN play instruments for an hour and twenty minutes.

There were two reasons we would call the event “enjoyable,” even though if you’ve heard a typical middle-school student practice an instrument you will find the concept of enjoyment incompatible with reality. The first reason is that parts of it were extremely funny. There is bad playing, and then there is BAD PLAYING. The band leader is conducting, the children are looking earnest with their shiny and expensive instruments, the audience is in their seats—and the ASTONISHING BADNESS of the playing made us squeeze our fingernails into our palms to keep from laughing. And parents are RECORDING it: phones are held aloft to preserve this special moment! We were pink and bright-eyed with the effort of suppression. Well worth the whole evening.

The second reason it was enjoyable was that some of the later playing (not the part with our child) was actually GOOD. Well, to be fair, Paul and I disagreed on this. There’s an elite, by-audition-only 7th/8th grade band segment that the band teacher astutely allowed to play for most of the performance, and I thought they did a really good job, to the point that I was glad to listen to them. I said so to Paul, who said “Eh” and put up a horizontal hand of eh-ness. I also enjoyed seeing one of Rob’s friends play: he’s one of these multi-talented kids who’s confident and good at everything and is nevertheless very appealing. And there was an 8th grade girl on bass guitar who was clearly aware of the coolness of being a girl playing bass. And it DID make me think “Hey, if William keeps practicing, maybe HIS playing could be enjoyable TOO!” So I guess I see what they did there.

The children and I were talking about allowances. Their contention as usual was that everyone gets more allowance than they do. I was explaining to them that different families handle money in different ways. For example, maybe their friends get twice as much allowance, but their friends are expected to buy more of their own stuff, or have to buy their own hot lunch at school if they want it. Or maybe their friends get less allowance, but their parents will buy them the shirt they like or give them a quarter for the gumball machine. And different families have different amounts of flexible income, and different ideas about how much flexible income a child should have. It can be really hard to compare.

Also, big-allowance stories get over-represented in the child’s mind. It reminds me of Tooth Fairy stories, where “everyone” gets $20 per tooth—and then it turns out it’s one kid, and that his family does $20 for the FIRST tooth and not for ALL teeth, and a quick Facebook survey shows that pretty much every other family does $1/tooth like we do, or maybe $2 or $5 for the first tooth and then $1/tooth after that, and ALL the parents thought they were being cheap compared to other parents because ALL the kids are talking about the $20/tooth kid. (This is a benefit of having plenty of parent friends.)

The kids thought it would be a good idea to do an allowance survey on the blog. But I can’t just do a poll for it—not only because of all the different ages involved, but because there are too many variables. One family might think $10/week is the right allowance for an 8-year-old, but they have her pay for her own ear-piercing, and for the presents she brings to birthday parties. How does that compare to the family that gives their 8-year-old $1/week but the dollar is pretty much exclusively for candy because everything else is paid for by the parents? Or maybe one teenager gets no allowance because she has a part-time job, and another teenager gets $15/week because she’s in half a dozen extracurriculars and her parents would prefer she concentrate on those right now?

So multiple-choice won’t work; it’ll have to be an essay question. At our house, allowance starts at age 6: one of the birthday gifts that year is a bank with 50 cents in it, and then he or she gets 50 cents a week. (Their allowance isn’t tied to their chores, but if they want more money they can earn it by doing some of MY chores. The hope is that this will firmly plant in their brains the idea that if you want money, you ask for work rather than asking for money.) At each birthday from then on, there’s a raise:

Age 7: $.75/week
Age 8: $1.00/week
Age 9: $1.25/week
Age 10: $1.50/week
Age 11: $2.00/week
Age 12: $2.50/week
Age 13: $3.00/week
Age 14: $3.50/week

That’s as far as we’ve gotten; we’ve been winging it year by year as Rob gets older. Once we tried a system where he got a larger allowance but had to put some in savings and some in charity, but OMG it was such a huge headache/hassle. (The biggest issue: what was the savings…FOR? That is, at what point was he allowed to spend it? Or was he just supposed to save indefinitely?) We did it for two years with him, then gave it up; by then William wanted to try it, so we let him do it for one year and then we all agreed to drop it permanently.

The whole subject came up this time because Rob is now older than Paul and I were when we stopped getting allowances, so we’re feeling like we don’t have much to base our decisions on. When I was 13, I was babysitting; Paul had a paper route. We had a lot more spending power than Rob has, but Rob doesn’t have the same job options we had, and we wondered if instead we should raise his allowance. On the other hand, Rob doesn’t have the same expenses we had, either: I paid for my own haircuts/perms, my own make-up, school lunch if I wanted it, presents for friends’ birthdays, family gifts at Christmas, equipment/food for my goldfish, etc. And it was the days of feathered hair, so hairspray alone was enough to keep a teenager poor.

Rob might not NEED as much money. He uses his allowance to buy snacks at the school snack bar, and school lunch if he wants it more than the once a week we’ll pay for, and candy. He’s just this year started going to school dances, and we split the cost of the ticket with him (it’s $8, and “more than a week’s allowance” seems to me like the right amount for him to pay, while “more than two weeks’ allowance” seems like too much). He also pays the difference if he wants something that costs more than I’m willing to pay (like when he wanted the Nird shirt), but that comes up very rarely (he still doesn’t care much about what he wears, and doesn’t mind Target clearance stuff). If he wants more money, he can earn it by doing some of my chores (he doesn’t get paid to do his own chores); we also generally pay him when we have him babysit his siblings.

One reason Paul and I have been talking about raising everyone’s allowance is that we’ve had the same system in place since Rob was 6, and maybe 50 cents isn’t quite the same now as it was 8 years ago. The other reason is that we’re noticing that our kids pretty much never save up for anything: they mostly spend all their money the week they get it. We’re wondering if that’s because they don’t get enough money to feel like there’s any point saving it: if it would take over 2 months of not-spending-a-single-penny in order to save $10, does an 8-year-old have that kind of patience? We’re thinking no. On the other hand, we’re already a little uncomfortable with how much candy they can buy with their current allowances; if we raise it and it turns out they STILL blow it all on candy, we won’t like that.

And we also have to keep the family’s income in mind. After Henry and the twins have their birthdays in the next month, we’ll be giving out $8.50/week in allowances—$442.00/year. That’s not a tiny amount, and that’s with three kids at the littlest-money end of the spectrum. It’s worth it if they’re learning valuable lessons about money, but it’s hard to tell if they ARE. And in the meantime, it’s a lot of money being frittered away.

[Edit: Because it’s coming up a lot in the comments, I’ll add that they don’t get money from relatives. This is another bone to pick at our house: “Sophia got TWENTY DOLLARS from her grandmother for EASTER!!” “Jacob’s grandpa gives him a $2 bill EVERY TIME HE COMES OVER!!” “Abby’s aunt gave her TWENTY-FIVE dollars for kindergarten graduation!!” Etc.]

Something in my brain must have re-wired itself, because recently I can’t think a single scornful thought without a knee-jerk reaction from my brain. “Oh, nice, just cut me off,” I think about another driver. “You don’t really know how long they’ve been trying to get out of that side-street,” responds my brain, or possibly my knee. “And you know how tense you get when people are behind you waiting to go—it’s probably made you cut things a bit close too.” “Does she really have to follow that child everywhere?,” I think about another parent. “She’s probably wondering why YOU aren’t paying adequate attention to your child. Or perhaps she isn’t, because she’s just paying attention to her own business instead of looking around judgily. And you don’t know it’s her idea to follow him: it could be that he’s insisting on it. Or he might not be able to play safely on his own. Or maybe this is a rare time for her to give him some one-on-one time. Or maybe she LIKES playing, even though you don’t,” comes the reply.

You’d think that if I tried to do the same thing, my brain would praise me for it. I see someone moping about how no one even noticed they took a Twitter break, and I think correctingly in their direction, as my brain would do for me: “Well, do YOU notice when OTHER people take Twitter breaks? And if you DO notice, do you contact the person, or do you assume they have their reasons—so they’d never KNOW you noticed, just as YOU don’t know if other people noticed?” But instead of patting me for learning and applying, my brain corrects this too: “Everyone feels a little illogical self-pity now and then. And it is REALLY EASY to see other people doing it, and REALLY HARD to see oneself doing it.”

On one hand, isn’t this nice? What a nicely-balanced, calm, accepting person I am likely to become from this relentless onslaught of internal kind-but-firm correction! On the other hand, things are going too far when I see one of those genuinely stupid and awful Facebook posts, and I think a legitimately scornful thought about it, and my brain steps in about THAT. No. I will continue to think scornful things about things that are genuinely stupid and awful. (“You know, everyone posts things like that sometimes….” NO. NO, THEY DO NOT.)

My temporary crown just won’t stay in. I keep putting it back in with tooth cement, but it just won’t stay. Yesterday morning I woke up with it loose in my cheek; it’s lucky I didn’t swallow it. I’ve been back to the dentist once for it, and for an hour and twenty minutes they were prying it out of my mouth (ouch) and then pressing it back in (ouch), trying to make it fit. They’d shave off a little more here, press it back in (ouch); no, still not right; pry it back out (ouch), shave a little more off, press it back in (ouch); nope, still not. I was sweating and getting close to crying; they were frustrated and kept talking about what a particularly tricky tooth it was.

Since it’s about the same amount of discomfort in or out (when it’s in, I can’t really chew because it’s too high; when it’s out, I have twinges from heat, cold, or air), and since it’s hard to think of any reason that going back to the dentist would make any difference, I’m just leaving it out. I feel nervous with the tooth stub exposed and unprotected, but I’m brushing after every single thing I eat and that’s just going to to have to do. Still two more weeks until the permanent crown is ready, and it’s already been more than two weeks. It seems like we could use a big surge in dental science in this area.

********

One of our cats had a reaction to the vaccines he got yesterday. This morning William came up and said the cat had slept on his bed ALL night! He was very pleased. I thought, “Hm, that’s unusual,” and then I thought, “The vet said to keep an eye out for anything unusual; maybe I’d better go take a look at him.” I went down to William’s room and the cat felt warm and trembley, and his face seemed a little puffy. I went back up and looked at the vaccine reactions list: fever, puffy face. I went back down and felt near the injection sites for puffiness/bumps and to see if they seemed to hurt him; he didn’t react, but when I put him on his feet, he was limping on one back leg.

The vet said to bring him right in, and they’re keeping him for the day just to keep an eye on him. Just as with children and pediatricians, his most alarming symptom (the puffy face) had completely gone away by the time we got there. “It’s really quite normal to be a little achy and feverish after a shot,” said the vet reassuringly. “I mean, sometimes we see cats and their faces are all puffy and THEN we get alarmed.” “His face was a little puffy earlier,” I volunteered. “Oh, was it? It was good you called,” she replied. But it was the way the pediatrician is understanding and kind when I say the child’s fever really WAS 104, even though now it’s 99.8.

The phone rang last night at about 3:40, and I’m pretty sure Paul and I looked like synchronized swimmers:

Phone: *ring!*
Paul and me: *up on elbows*
Paul and me: *swiveling in confusion toward the alarm clock on Paul’s side table*
Phone: *ring!*
Paul and me: *swiveling now toward the phone on Swistle’s side table*

I’m so glad we got this new phone with multiple handsets. Not only has it relieved some of my Burglar Anxiety (I can now imagine calling 911 right away, instead of having to imagine the horrible “How do I get to the phone without the burglar seeing/stopping me?” and “Do I try to get to the phone or do I try to get to the kids?” parts of that scenario), but also, for a middle-of-the-night call I can answer it in two rings. Once, I missed a middle-of-the-night call because it took me one ring to wake up, one ring to realize what was happening, and two rings to get out of bed and run through the dark house to the kitchen. I then lay awake for probably an hour, wondering if I’d missed a Call of Distress or whatever. “If only you’d answered on the second ring, none of this would have happened. It’s a terrible, terrible shame.”

I reached for it with that Middle-of-the-Night Call feeling and the accompanying thoughts: “Am I about to take a call that will be PIVOTAL?” and “It’s not going to be GOOD news at this time of night.” But on the other hand, even Very Bad news can wait until morning if you’re not in the Very Innermost Circle. So when the phone rings at 3:40, I’m making a fast mental Very Innermost Circle list: I’d get a call if it were my mom or dad, or if it were my brother. Would there be a call in the middle of the night if it were my sister-in-law? my niece? my nephew? It would depend. Better include them in the anxiety. What else could it be? …Too late, out of fret time, already answering the phone. I said “Hello,” but it was just a dial tone.

I lay there for awhile experiencing the aftereffects. “We’re at that time of life now,” I told myself pointlessly. “And imagine in a few more years, when the phone rings in the middle of the night and I have to add the KIDS to my anxiety list.” Then I wondered if it had been a distress call, someone’s cell phone running out of batteries in the middle of it. But the list of people who would call us in the middle of the night for help is even shorter than the Very Innermost Circle list: my brother and sister-in-law would call someone more local; my parents are on a road trip. Man, what if something Very Bad happened to my parents on a road trip? I suppose they’d be hospitalized THERE, and we’d need to rush to their sides. Well, let’s not think about it now. A hospital would not have run out of cell phone batteries mid-call.

I made a Let’s Be Sensible Now list:

Most likely:
1. Wrong number
2. Phone company thing
3. Butt dial
4. Someone up with a baby in the middle of the night, child hit call button
5. Penelope

And then I did manage to go to sleep. It’s not that I thought the call REALLY WAS something, it’s that the call reminded me that it COULD BE something. That LOTS of people get calls in the middle of the night that ARE pivotal. It happens ALL THE TIME. It’s not a sleepy kind of thought.

In the morning I said with fake casualness to Paul, “I wonder what that call was?” Without even time for the question to have performed a turn-around in his brain, he said with equal fake casualness “Wrongnumber.” This told me several things:

1. He probably lay awake for awhile thinking, “Great, now she’s going to lie awake, and for the next few days she’s going to be all ‘LOTS of people get calls in the middle of the night that ARE pivotal’.”

2. He thought more about it in the shower. He thought to himself, “As soon as she wakes up, the very first thing she’ll want to talk about is that phone call. It was a WRONG NUMBER, that’s all.”

Pretty soon I am going to have to stop saying that I hardly ever read books by male authors.

(photo from Amazon.com)

Truth in Advertising, by John Kenney. I liked this one a lot. I wouldn’t say “it reminded me of Augusten Burroughs,” because I think that phrase is used to describe a much stronger similarity than was present. But I WAS reminded of Augusten Burroughs, in that he periodically came to my mind while reading this book. I think a lot of it was the dialogue, which was the kind that made me want to be friends with every single person. And the fact that the main character was in advertising.

Speaking of advertising, I wouldn’t want to oversell the book: there were a lot of flaws and rough spots, and there were entire pages where the narrator stopped using contractions and the lights dimmed except for a single spotlight on the stage so he could do his monologue wondering what REALLY mattered in life. But they were the kinds of flaws and rough spots I found tolerable/skimmable, and I thought there were a lot of times when the author then pulled it right the heck out of that kind of thing in a charming way. The flaws all felt “first-novel-ish” in a way that made me want to see how the next novel would go.

I liked it, I found it funny, and it made me tear up a number of times. If you are still resenting your non-perfect parents but it’s weirder now that it turns out you can’t be a perfect parent either; and/or if you feel like maybe you should have gone into a different career / done something different with your life, there are nice solid chunks of that.

There is a scene that I found hard to handle as a parent—but I DID handle it. So I wanted to mention that it exists, and if you want a spoiler you can email me, but it’s not the kind of thing where I thought that if I’d known about it beforehand I wouldn’t have read the book. I just had to sort of breathe carefully and not picture anyone I knew in that situation.

(photo from Amazon.com)

The Shelter Cycle, by Peter Rock (which is an interesting name, for those of us who spent a lot of time in Sunday School). Speaking of scenes that are hard to handle as a parent, this book has a kidnapping theme. I avoid those AUTOMATICALLY: like, I’m in the library reading book jackets, and I see “When a child disappears from a small town…” and the book is back on the shelf before the word “NOPE” has fully formed in my brain. This book handles it in a way I found just barely tolerable; for example, it doesn’t show us the parents’ point of view. Again, if you think you’d be interested in the book but only if you had further spoilers (like if you need more details, or if you need to know ahead of time if everything turns out okay or not), you can email me.

I would have liked to have known ahead of time that The Church Universal and Triumphant is a real church, and that they really did build shelters in the 1980s so that they could wait out a predicted apocalyptic situation. It’s not like you have to know it actually happened to read the book, but it does add an element of interest. The story is about two kids who grew up in that church at that time, and how it affects them as adults. I felt like the female character was sketched-but-not-drawn, which is often my problem with books by male authors. (Quite likely there’s the same problem with female authors and male characters, but I notice it less because I’m not male).

I liked it and felt like it gave me a lot of interesting things to think about. For me, a downside is that it’s the kind of book where mystical things happen but you don’t know if they’re real or not; for others, this would be a major upside.

The younger children were so agonized this morning giving me the Mother’s Day presents and cards they made in school: a high percentage of elementary school teachers (all three of them this year) favor poems and prose in a style the children find mortifying. “I DIDN’T WRITE THAT!!,” they assure me, or “SHE MADE US WRITE THAT!!” Aw, thanks, honey, I love you too!

But I identify and empathize, because our family does not talk that way. Paul and I have never described our marriage as a magical journey or as a twining of souls. I’ve never told my children that they are precious gifts or the stars in my sky or that they will always be in my heart. The children seem completely unnatural signing their names to cards that claim to think the word mom is the most beautiful in the language and to revere my tender care and my gentle smile. I don’t say such things to my own mother, either, nor do I call her my guiding light or the best mother in the world, or suggest that she is an angel walking on this earth.

I think some people really do talk and feel that way toward each other: they really FEEL that way, comically foreign as those words seem to me. They think of their spouse, and they envision entwined souls; they think of their children, and they think of precious stars. They hear that “I’m Already There” song where the guy claims to be the sunshine in his family’s hair, and they don’t think to themselves, “No, seriously, I’m wondering like what time specifically you’re going to be home, I need to plan dinner. Unless you want me to just spoon some into our hair for you.” The imagery RESONATES with them. (I’m sorry, I’m getting tired of the word “resonates,” too, but it’s just so USEFUL.)

Then I think there’s a second, much-larger category of people who don’t talk or feel that way EITHER, but they use it the way they’d use the King James Version of the Bible for a wedding, or the way they stop using contractions when they’re discussing Something Meaningful: the language seems appropriate for the message. They don’t analyze each part (“Is it actually accurate to say that she is the wind beneath my wings?” “Does ‘do not’ where ‘don’t’ would be more natural make me sound Trying To Sound Meaningful instead of actually meaningful?”), it’s more like getting dressed up. It’s special language to indicate a special occasion.

And then there’s the last category of people, which includes me. And yet I cut some slack, as I do with the word “blessed” in Christmas-card letters (it’s only after the first use of the word that people start losing points), because of that second category: if a friend sends me a “To My Dear Friend” poem-card and yet I know from years of experience that we’re compatible, I interpret it correctly as a Dressed Up / Special Occasion card rather than wondering if she’s switched sides on me.

Paul’s mom and grandmothers sent cards like that all the time. It was odd to get a card from his mom, when we didn’t get along, telling me in flower-decorated script poetry that I was like a daughter to her and that she was so lucky I’d married her son. She didn’t mean it, but it’s not that she was faking it, either: it’s that to her, on special occasions you use this language. It’s not what’s said, it’s the WAY it’s said. She was category #2 all the way.

I’m sure she was puzzled why I never sent her the “A Poem to My Other Mother” card from the mother-in-law section—not because she thought I felt that way, but because that is the card the daughter-in-law is supposed to send. It’s MEANINGFUL; my stars, who said it’s supposed to be TRUE? Civilized people say sorry when they don’t deep-down care about the stranger’s foot they stepped on, and they say thank you even when they hate the gift, and they send “To My Special Daughter-in-Law on Mother’s Day” cards even when their son married someone stubbornly unwilling to listen to the abundant wise advice offered by their mothers-in-law who only want to help with all those OBVIOUS MISTAKES they’re CONSTANTLY making, like what is UP with buying the WRONG BRAND of peanut butter and the BOXES of brown sugar instead of bags and wasting money on NON-GREEN bell peppers, my god this girl needs HELP, why won’t she TAKE it???

It’s not just a love-language thing, either. I tend to express love via food and gifts and tasks rather than words, but if I DID do it with words, I wouldn’t use the kinds of words I keep seeing on cards and framed poems and Facebook status updates, the kind my mother-in-law would buy pre-printed. It’s not that I don’t like WORDS, it’s that I don’t fit this STYLE of words. Words are clearly my thing, but I would use DIFFERENT words. A good example is blog posts: I write them, just like a lot of other people write them, but that doesn’t mean I’ll ever in my life end a post in the “I hope you always will, baby. I hope you always will” style. (If I ever DO, please remember the warning signs of stroke.) And I like to RECEIVE love via words, but by that I mean, “Wow, you did so much work on that closet!” and “Cute hair!” and “I don’t know how you managed to be patient with him during that whole thing,” and not “You are the most perfect wife in the world and I love you with my whole heart,” or anything that requires the use of my whole name, or anything that includes unrealistic certainty about the future. So it’s not that I don’t express love with words (don’t Paul and I say “See you in hell” to each other pretty much EVERY DAY?), it’s that I don’t identify AT ALL with the TYPES of words.

And neither do the kids, poor things. I had to assure Edward, who was lying face down on the couch with embarrassment, that I KNEW he wasn’t the one who chose that poem glued to his card, and that I TOO hated to be forced to say something in someone else’s words. When he’s grown up, I assured him, he can communicate his Mother’s Day feelings via boxes of Ferrero Rocher chocolates and a card that invites me to meet him in hell. And I will understand. I will understand.