Mostly I bitch here. But I'm in the mood to say something good. So a mommy story it is. My mother didn't mean to have me. Or Danielle. Or Alex. Christopher was her absolute favorite*. She LOVED him. She loved having a boy. She wanted to have another him. Just one more boy. But she got me. So she gave me a boy name and tried again. And got Danielle. And then Alex. Finally she gave up. My mom didn't really want any girls. She definitely didn't want prissy girly girls. She decided to make us into the most badass girls she could. We were the only babies in Brooklyn wearing black. She also decided she was too old to be doing the whole baby thing again, and lazy, so she wasn't going to fully get into it, since babies grow so fast anyway. So there was no baby talk, no making all conversations about dumb things like pigs and lambs and all that. Other mothers do "this little pig." My mother held our hands and twirled us around really fast, so it felt like we were flying, and only stopped when she was going to fall down from being too dizzy. Other moms use small words and won't talk about a lot of things in front of kids. My mom just talked about whatever she was thinking about, and used whatever words made the most sense to her. So she taught us big words that we weren't old enough to be saying out loud, and let us do all sorts of things we weren't old enough to do. She just couldn't be bothered, especially by the time she had Alex. There were just too many of us and she was too busy and lazy. So she didn't care that in front of Alex she told Dani that Dick Cheney looks like a pedophile. Alex knew the words "child molester" and "pedophile" before she was three years old.
And that was ages ago. And all three of us have agreed that not only does he totally look like a pedophile, but you know how they try to teach you that you never know what a "bad guy" looks like, because it can be anybody? Well, it turns out we all imagine a bad guy in our heads looking exactly like Dick Cheney.
*We didn't mind that Christopher was the favorite. My mom did it in a way that made him our favorite too. Dani was his favorite, and Alex and I didn't mind that either.
3 comments:
my parents also never used baby talk with me, and i remember my mother often rolling her eyes when people used cutified words with their babies. she often said “how are children supposed to learn to talk when all they hear is dee-dee, doo-doo and diddle-diddle?”.
i really liked that my parents talked with me like with a grown-up person, and their discussing grown-up topics in front of me made me feel important.
and that dick cheney does look like a pedophile. at least he looks like someone i wouldn’t trust.
i think it’s probably not so bad if very small children know about child molesters, as long as they get the context and don’t start having nightmares about one hiding behind every corner. you can’t teach children early enough that they should not trust everyone who offers to drive them home.
you make it sound a little like your mother was too lazy or too careless to mind that you were listening to grown-up things. maybe she just had the good sense to realize that you would have to be confronted by those things sooner or later anyway, so why raise you in a pretty pink-and-blue barbie world first and then tell all the big truths later?
I would have liked your mom.
I read you everyday and just wanted to thank you for sharing a story about your mom with us.
I'd say she did a DAMN good job with the little time she had with you. :)
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