Clucking Nuts!

On a hike with my kids this week, one of my sons ran ahead and we came upon him awkwardly lying facedown on a sand dune looking like a corpse. We tried to joke with him, told him we wanted to keep walking… he didn’t stir. His younger brother ran up and jumped on his back. In the space between breaths, he shot up, furious, grabbed his brother’s hair, and slammed his face into the ground. My heart broke. My kids are not okay. I mean, they are resilient and strong, and I have been stunned by how beautiful and kind and creative and tough they have been these last few weeks. But they are also not okay. They are raw. Their emotions churn unsteadily below the surface. Quarantine is hard. Let’s be honest: This is not healthy. Isolating my kids, standing between them and their community, making them dependent on only me for all their needs, while I have no one meeting mine... It’s a recipe for trauma. In foster training, they taught us that trauma happens when stress exceeds a person’s...

One afternoon when I was multitasking as I was helping my daughter with math, she asked me, “Mom, what is 37 minus 23?” And at that precise moment, I clumsily slammed my funny bone on the corner of a counter. Out of my mouth shot, “Ow! Fuuuuh-” and I stopped myself. My son across the counter, asked, “Fuuuuh-ourteen?” We all chuckled. I’m really honest with my kids about words. I tell them what they mean. We talk about picking good ones, and we talk about communication being only half what you deliver, and the other half being what the person receives. Early on in raising these fabulous people, they started repeating some swear words, some of which they had heard from me. So I made a homeschool lesson out of it. I wrote out all the common 4 letter words, explained what they actually mean, what they mean to the general public, and how they will likely be received if you choose to use them. It was a great lesson in etymology, the evolution of our language, and how culture affects ...

I was quarantined with a twelve year old boy on April Fool’s Day. I would imagine that after the pandemic is over and we all start sorting through our trauma, there will be a support group for this. I’m joking... but only a little. He unscrewed my light bulbs, put lemon juice on my toothbrush, wooden blocks in my pillowcase, an “out of order” sign on the toilets, and smeared toothpaste on the toilet seats. When I discovered that last one, I calmly hissed through clenched teeth, “If you have laid any other pranks that involve sticky messes, I strongly advise you go clean them up immediately and never tell me about them.” His eyes went wide and he flushed a little, then he rushed out of the room to go take care of some things I don’t need to know about. Ever. I will say, though, his piece de resistance was photocopying a painting I had done, a portrait of our cat, painting a mustache and glasses on it, and replacing the original with his vandalized copy. Genius.  But goodness! ...