the good ole days

we spent labor day weekend with my stepdad's family at their old family cabin in the mountains. it was, as always, pretty freaking awesome. i just love the family in general and this annual experience in particular. there are communal meals and cocktails served in 80 year old coffee mugs and campfire games and s'mores and trading memories as the fire burns to embers. there's an outhouse (not my favorite part). there's a chore chart. we take turns cooking and cleaning up and doing the dishes together. we blow an old horn when dinner's ready (it's like, a literal horn. i mean, a horn made out of an animal's horn. he's not using it anymore ;) it never occurred to me before now that this was the etymology of the word horn. learn somethin' new every day!) anyway, if someone has a new friend, we make them try to blow the horn and point fingers and laugh when they spit and sputter and fail. we play campfire games specifically designed to fluster the newbies. we play cards and (good naturedly) harass them some more. (wanna come?? ;)) we sleep under the stars and wake when the sun comes up over the mountains and eat bacon and pancakes and eggs or sometimes just cereal and drink coffee together next to the fire, planning our daily adventures, waiting for the sun to warm the air.

the kids LOVE it there. they get dirtier than they get the other 360 days of the year combined. they literally roll around in the dirt. omg, so much dirt. and they have SO much fun. but the cabin is definitely not what you would call child-proofed. there's a river on one side and a highway on the other. no fences. you can cross the river on a sagging, creaking 2"x12" board. there are steep, rickety old stairs, an unfinished, sliver-serving deck, open flames, large rocks, falling pine cones, wild and domesticated animals, biting insects, water snakes, and various other hazards. perhaps most tellingly, there are often SHARPIES left out within reach of the children - GASP! ;) the kids poke each other with sticks and swing branches wildly through the air and throw rocks too close to one anothers' heads and generally run around like dusty little savages. they "help" start the campfires and attempt to toast their own marshmallows. they play with ancient tonka trucks that would surely be recalled today for safety concerns. sometimes they play without either DM or I watching them at all, us relying heavily on the principles of community parenting.

this weekend, J went on a hike. an actual hike (well, i don't know if it totally qualifies because DM carried him most of the way) but, most importantly, he shat in the woods. if you know my anal retentive little boy, you know what a big deal this is. i'm sure anyone within a 5 mile radius thought some satanic cult was performing a ritual sacrifice, but whatever, he did it, and he lived to tell the tale, which DM keeps prompting him to do with that unmistakable glint of fatherly pride in his eye.

i don't ever really worry about J. he's got his mother's inherently concerned, rule-abiding, nature. (one of the news things he likes to say is, "if i don't do [dis or dat] den da police man wiw get me." no idea at all where he got that one. *wink wink.*) when they reached the top of the mountain on their hike, he had to be coaxed and prodded to step to the edge in order to see our cabin down below, and he was cautious as ever when we made our wallenda-like river crossings ("cautious" being code for "walking halfway across and then beginning to scream 'AAAH! HEWP MEHHHHH! I'M GONNA FAWWWWWW!!!'" he even worries on behalf of his little sister, yelling "Mama! Daddy! Save hewh! SAAAAVE HEEEEEWH!" whenever she is teetering on the edge of something tall and unstable, which is often.

at the cabin, there's a set of granite stairs. 4 steps, i think. no rails. grams and the other "elders" have assured me that, in the 100+ years the cabin has been in the family, "only two or three" kids have ever fallen down those stairs to their injury, but they still make me nervous, because C has no concept of her own mortality, balance is not her forte, and if anyone would be the "3rd or 4th" casualty, it would be her. she spent a lot of time staggering and stumbling on those stairs, causing her dad and me multiple mini heart attacks. she actually would have fallen down them more than once if one of us hadn't swooped in to catch her. i'm sure she would have survived, but it wouldn't have been pretty. so it was with good reason when J said, "Mom! [This is his new thing. "Mom" and "Dad" instead of "Mama" and "Daddy." *sniff sniff* ;)] I'm getting a littow newvous dat Cowby's going to faow down da 'tairs." haha! at least he understood. most everyone else just made fun of us for freaking out about it.

every time i'm up there, subject to this steady onslaught of familial hazing, it gets me thinking about how wimpy kids are, these days. or rather, we parents are. or maybe it's just me. but i remember having so many adventures when i was young, catching tadpoles in a little creek behind the babysitter's house, riding my bike to go get an ice cream cone, exploring the neighborhood, construction sites, and abandoned fields with friends, playing capture the flag or kick the can in the streets long after the sun had gone down - all with no grown-ups in sight. do kids even do that anymore? and our parents' generation took even more liberties. we always hear stories about stepdad and his brothers and cousins and the CRAZY SHIT they did when they were kids. climbing the faces of enormous rocks when they were knee high to a bee. backpacking solo in the wilderness. skateboarding without pads or helmets down steep winding mountain roads, and/or being towed (as grams says, "if they were dumb enough to try it, the least i could do was drive the car.") riding wheeled things off the diving board. unicycle races on a wire suspended over the swimming pool. using the empty pool as a halfpipe. doing flips off the tops of mountains or houses or balconies or anything else you could flip off of. sometimes they broke things, got scabs and scars. but they lived to tell the tales, and they are SUCH GOOD TALES! my dad has good stories, too. one of my faves is when he and his friend were 4 years old, they somehow convinced someone at the PX to sell them pocket knives, and they played with them until my grandpa caught them hours later, hands torn to shreds. (four years old!) there are also stories involving beebee guns, roaming around england for a day before being returned home by a good samaritan (or maybe that was ben, the family dog), and possibly driving a car before achieving double digits? my mom basically grew up in footloose. there was no drinking or dancing or playing cards or watching movies or wearing nylons (at least, not that the parents were supposed to know about), so her childhood stories are of a different genre.

not that i'm advocating selling knives to four year olds or anything (though maybe the YMCA does). and obviously some changes in the way we parent are probably worthwhile tradeoffs. (i have heard many a grandparent lament the use of "those craaaazy car seat contraptions," saying, "in our day, we didn't even have seat belts!" yes, and children flew out the window in a car crash! my girlfriend actually has a funny story from when they had their first child. her father-in-law was completely flabbergasted that you are required to have a car seat for your baby in order to leave the hospital. he was like, "what do you mean, you can't leave the hospital unless your baby is in a car seat?!? it's your baby?!? what're they gonna do?! arrest you?!" um actually, yes, hahaha.) but nowadays, kids can't even play football or soccer without fear of traumatic brain injury. and God forbid we go to the park without a costco-sized vat of Purell. i don't remember my mom having to desanitize the shopping cart before i sat in it, do you? how sad if this generation of america's (okay, middle-to-upper-class america's) kids' stories are like, "i played x-box while sitting in an ergonomic chair in a HEPA-filtered, climate controlled environment. sunlight - what?! did you want me to die of skin cancer?!"

so yeah, we're safer. but. what have we given up? and is it worth it? i'm not sure. it's like when i was pregnant and deciding whether to take anti-nausea medication or puke all day, to have a glass of wine or lose my mind, etc... it's a balancing test. you have to weigh the odds that something bad is going to happen vs. how much of an asshole you're going to feel like if that highly unlikely thing occurs... if your baby has 11 toes... if your kid shoots himself in the eye with a bee bee gun... etc...

reminds me of this interesting interview from a while back with lenore skenazy, the "free range kids" guru, on salon.com. she points out the irony of us taking such extreme measures to keep our precious children safe, all the while driving them around in cars 24/7 which is the #1 cause of death in children. “Remember parents: Asteroids happen, so keep your children inside!”

of course, i have no problem leaving the children perched unattended on a bench at the edge of a small cliff above a river... if it means getting an adorable photo out of the deal!!! ;) (don't worry. J would almost certainly save C in the somewhat likely event that she'd try to "dump" (aka jump) to her death below.)



i basically wrote this whole thing
just so i could post this picture :)

You know your parents are lawyers when...

DM and I weren't lawyers when our relationship began. We actually met working at a bar/restaurant/nightclub, and bonded over our shared love of tequila, inauthentic Mexican food, and sh*tty Kiss cover bands. He was my manager, and he "dipped his pen in the company ink," as he so crassly loves to say.

Then we went to law school, and along with property, torts, and criminal procedure, we had to learn not to "lawyer" each other. We're not perfect at it, but I think we deserve an award for Most Improved.

Along came two miniature humans, and we're having to learn again how to keep our careers as professional arguers from bleeding too much into our parenting styles.

Don't get me wrong. Sometimes my lawyer training comes in handy when trying to parent two manipulative little bastards sweet babies. For example, "Asked and answered" is a favorite retort and serves its purpose quite well when those little buggers start down the road of "Hey maybe if we ask her the same question 373 times, she'll change her mind." Where my professional training does not come in handy is in remembering that I do not have to attend every argument to which I'm invited - that I need to choose my battles wisely. I also forget, on occasion, that these are in fact my itty bitty children, and not opposing counsel. Finally, I often lose sight of the fact that "Because I Said So", while not a valid legal argument, is one of the basic tenets upon which successful parenting is based. This is not a democracy. It is a benevolent dictatorship. (It's just not always clear who's the dictator!)

Daddy Mack, on the other hand, has never really had the heart for arguing, and would prefer not to fight any battles with our little warriors. His legal training has affected his approach to parenting in a completely different way. After years spent fighting "The Man" on behalf of "The Little People*," DM identifies with our very own little people in their tireless fight for liberty and justice against the tyrannical regime of Chairman Mom, among many other oppressors (e.g., pants, shoes, bedtime routines, basic laws of survival).

(* Just to clarify. I am referring to "The Little People" in the socio-political sense, not the PC term for people with varying forms of dwarfism. While certainly a rewarding and perhaps burgeoning area of law given their reality television fame as of late, my husband does not in fact spend his time defending the rights of people of small stature.)

Some examples.

The other night, DM says "I feel like we need to get rid of the baby video monitors as soon as possible. I mean, it just feels wrong, invading their privacy like that." Me: "They're one and two years old." DM: "Well they still have rights." Me: "Um, no. They don't." (Okay maybe they do. But these rights do not include an expectation of privacy against the invasion of baby monitors. This is also reminding me of the "accidental" damage of Colby's baby monitor the other day. Hmmmm. Fishy.)

A little while back we were sitting outside a coffee shop and a police car drives slowly by. It was actually one of those RSVP (Retired Sheriff Volunteer Patrol or whatever it stands for) that I love (I have a grandpa collection). Jack started waving frantically at the car, and to our surprise, they stopped, and one of the sheriffs stepped out of the car and walked up and offered Jack an "Honorary Deputy" badge sticker. Of course by this point J was cowering behind my legs and refused to make eye contact with the nice old man, so he gave one sticker to little Colby, and another sticker to Dad to give to Jack. Once the sheriff left and J came out of hiding, DM says, "Buddy, you don't have to be afraid of the nice police man. The police are our friends. They're here to help us. Unless we're in [Wealthy Conservative California County known for police corruption]. Then there's a good chance they're corrupt as all getout and you should steer clear. But it's fine. You don't look ethnic, so you're probably alright."

When Jack is fussin' and fightin' about some nonsense or another that I've already said no to, and I tell him he needs to stop or else he's going to have to go to his room to cool out, DM says, "Well, let's hear him out. He's entitled to his 'day in court'." Um yeah. He had his day in court. It was a bench trial. The judge [ME] summarily denied his motion. Now go to your freakin' room until you're done caterwaulin', kid!

And let's say I ask Jack not to do something (stand up in the bath tub, put a ping pong ball in his mouth, climb the heavy wooden shelves like a monkey, RUN WITH A PENCIL IN HIS MOUTH) without providing a reasoned argument. Rather than present a united front, DM will say - "Well, why not?" He says it a little quietly, like that somehow makes it better, or like our kids can only hear certain frequencies of adult conversation. And he won't come to my side [a.k.a. THE GROWN UP SIDE] until I've provided an answer that satisfies both him and Jack.

Oh, and "innocent until proven guilty" is DM's JAM. "Yes, Colby is standing 6 inches from Jack's crying, swollen eye holding a large blunt object in a menacing manner, but did you see her whack him in the face with it? The evidence is circumstantial."

Sigh.

Let's hope they grow up to be doctors :)