Marnie Piazza

I wish I knew...

I tried to field the questions from my eldest son.  I really did.  But he was persistent, logical and, most significantly, not dropping it.  I lacked either enough information or enough confidence in my information to satisfy him.  And then I thought of my husband at work, sitting at his computer, diligently focused on accomplishing a set task, while listening to, hmm, let's check his Google status, Cold Play.  I like Cold Play.  I could be doing that.  Things on a computer, while listening to good music, uninterrupted.  That's it...

"Call Daddy and ask him," I said.

Phone call connected, my son got right to it. "Daddy, how do we know Osama Bin Laden isn't in our woods?"  Technically, they aren't our woods, but our neighbor owns 11 acres, much of it dense woods directly behind our house, so we know what he means.

"What?"  Says my husband. 

My son repeats his question.

"Who?  What?"

My son asks one more time.

"Oh, umm, because he's in Afghanistan."

"But Mommy said no one knows exactly where, so if no one can find the cave, then how do we know he's there and not in our woods?"

My husband explained that he'd have to show a passport to leave the country and get to another country, and no one would let him travel, and made several points along those lines.  Eventually, my son asked if he could swim here, but decided himself that sharks would be a problem.  The line of questioning fizzling out, my husband made a quick exit from the phone call.

A day of questions about the "bad guy in the cave" resulted from an earnest parenting idea on my part.  I've been open with my sons about my distaste, distrust and disappointment in President Bush.  So when Barack Obama gave an impassioned, articulate and visionary speech in accepting the democratic nomination, I thought it would be a good thing for us to watch together. 

As we watched, my youngest son started to roll around on my lap and his chair and eventually wandered off, but my eldest son was interested and listened carefully to the speech.  He asked intelligent questions throughout and I had to explain a lot more about politics and our country than I am qualified to do. 

Then, the line in the speech, and forgive any inadvertent paraphrasing of a really good line: "John McCain said he'd follow Bin Laden to the Gates of Hell, but he won't even follow him to the cave where he lives."

"Mommy, who is that and why does he live in a cave?  Why is there a bad guy living in a cave?  Where is the cave?  Where is he?  Why is he bad?  How does he get food?  Why can't we find him?"

I  wish I had the answers.

The Old Days

I was chatting with friends at the soccer field, and one mom was talking about her oldest son's visits to colleges.  While it amazes me that I have friends with children of that age, it also amazes me how well I remember my college visits and how young I was back then.  Some of it would be positively cringe-worthy, if it all wasn't over 20 years in the past.

I did my college visits with friends.  I have no idea why my mom, who was best known for chauffeuring me around in order to know where I was at all times, decided to let the 16 year old me go off to see colleges unsupervised, but it happened. 

Maybe it was because we were hopelessly geeky.  We weren't like the smart kids nowadays, who take AP classes, compete in elite soccer leagues and build art portfolios, all while looking like Abercrombie and Finch models.  We were plain old geeks, of the Anthony Micheal Hall character in Breakfast Club variety, only without detention, since we never got detention. 

The first trip was to Cornell with a good friend who ended up going there.  I crossed it off my list during the part of the tour when we were led across a bridge over a gorge and told that it was a popular suicide spot during the long winters of academic striving.  I now assume that the guide was the dark humor type, or just liked freaking out 16 year olds, but I believed him back then.  So, tour out of the way and Cornell off my list due to fatalities and low temperatures, my friend and I proceeded to stalk a cute guy who worked at a record store in the little college town adjacent to the school.  We walked back and forth in front of that store, giggling, for a long time.  It's hard to imagine why.  I guess we couldn't figure out what else to do with ourselves and our freedom and weren't ready to go back to our hotel room.

The worst college visit was to Duke, the beautiful, sprawling, warm, green and lush campus with which I fell in love.  We were staying in dorm rooms with freshmen women.  But these women were a different breed from us.  The one I was staying with was a SORORITY GIRL.  We were left on our own while she did sorority things, including a secret ceremony with girls in white dresses and possibly devil worship. 

I was again with my stalking-the-cute-guy-at-Cornell friend.  We could not get anything right in the sorority girl atmosphere.  First, there was the awkwardness of multiple girls asking if we were twins. We still don't know why, except that we are both fairly short and have brown hair.  Then, there was the fatal faux pas of my friend borrowing, without asking, a baseball camp from my host's room. My friend is allergic to the sun and needed the shade.  For whatever reason, we didn't go to the bookstore and buy her a hat.  She borrowed the hat and wore it all over campus, we came home, saw my host, and she looked at us in horror.  It turned out it had her sorority letters on it and was forbidden for anyone but her or her sisters to wear it.  After asking if anyone saw us, she took that hat and turned on her heels.  Later, I lost her keys for a few hours, though I did eventually find them.  And did countless other ridiculous things over that long day and a half.

Next was the Boston area visit:  Brandeis, and then Tufts, with a different friend.  Brandeis was a perfectly nice and age-appropriate visit.  Again, we stayed with college women in their dorm rooms, but these were friendly ones.  We ate in the cafeteria with them, went to a class or two, and socialized a little with their friends.  It's probably what my mother had in mind.

Then we moved on to a long gone Quality Inn in Harvard Square, our base for checking out Tufts.  And for some reason, in Harvard Square and in Faneuil Hall, two of the toughest places on under-aged drinking I've ever seen, we managed to go bar hopping.  Maybe it was our utter cluelessness that did it.  The fact that we didn't look guilty or sneaky, because we didn't even know it was a big deal to get into a Harvard bar at 16.  My friend was even wearing her retainer.  We just wandered right in wherever we thought looked like fun.  I would say this was not what my mother had in mind, but other than a drink or two bought by men at least five years older than us, we didn't get into any particular trouble.

So will I let my kids go on college visits themselves?  We'll see.  For now, I'll just reminiscent about mine.

Summer...

As summer comes to a close, I'm thinking about all that I'll miss about it.  It's been a good one, near the top of my best summer lists.  That's saying a lot, as I'm someone who takes maximizing summertime fun seriously.

As I gather school supplies and add back-to-school nights to my calendar, I think of riding the waves with my eight year old.  A few days into our extended stay at the beach, he could keep up with me and became as passionate about the ocean as I am.  Instead of sneaking down to the beach for a swim without my boys, I was a little bored when I wasn't body surfing with him.  Being with an eight year old gave me permission to get goofy and exuberant about those fast rides on white water all the way to the shore line (the ones that fill your bathing suit with piles of heavy sand and make you dive right back in for more.)  I also think about how far my six year old will have come by next summer.  At the end of our beach stay, he was already getting more independent, wanting to "ride" waves by himself, getting knocked over and trying again, so proud of himself for floating a bit in the shallow surf. 

As I read letters from teachers and principals, I think of some of our other special beach moments. When you are lucky enough to spend a full month in a little community on Fire Island, there are a lot of them to cherish.  There was the day we swam in the rain.  The day of the red jellyfish.  The many days of wild, awe-inspiring red flag surf.  The first time my  youngest jumped off the lifeguard stand as the sun set across the island. The Kadima records.  Playing catch in the surf for hours when it was too rough to go out past the breaking  waves.  Buying the New York Times just to find out when high tide would be.  It's not the picture perfect sunny blue sky days that stand out.  It's somehow the imperfect ones that  were actually perfect just by us being there.

As I shop for back-to-school clothes and plan for pre-picture day haircuts, I think about being back home, our lazy summer mornings, of which there weren't enough, when we'd lounge on the couch together until the town pool opened or it was time to go to a friend's pool.  I think of our pool time with friends and on our own, racing with my eldest, letting my youngest hold onto my back while I swam underwater, trying to do water somersaults and handstands together, my oldest teaching himself the butterfly stroke by watching Micheal Phelps.

My boys don't know why I am holding on so tightly to the last days of summer.  They're a little bored of swimming every day, ready to move on to other activities.   But summer has always been my favorite season, and a summer day without being within sight, and preferably in, water makes my antsy.  I've always felt our time to swim under the sky in this part of our world is too brief.  But that's also what makes it special.

I'll let go when I have to.  Fall has its own beauty and tempo of life, and I'll embrace them when it's time. But for now,  even though it's time to plan for fall, it's still summer.

Out of the Mouth of Babes

It was a lazy summer morning.  We had no place to be in a hurry.  Friends weren't coming over for hours, the town pool wouldn't open until the afternoon, and those were our only plans for the day.  Our lack of a schedule had put us in a lounge-on-the-couch mood so we scrolled through the list on our DVR for something to watch together.  I had recorded something called "Jurassic Fight Club" on the History Channel.  Anything dinosaur-related is always a huge hit with my youngest son and is usually interesting for my oldest son as well.  I was just happy it was something we hadn't seen before and that it was presumably educational, being on the History Channel. 

We started the show and it looked like a good enough way to spend an hour.  It appeared to mix science and violence in a visually stimulating way, but most importantly, the dinosaurs looked really good.  I went into the kitchen to wrap up a few chores so that I could join the boys on the couch and watch.

Then, from my oldest son, "Mommy, what are herpes?" 

"What?!" I said.

"What are herpes?  Are they bad?  What are they?"  My older son is nothing if not detail-oriented, curious, and determined.

I had been mentally tuning out the commercials as I cleaned up, and was startled into catching the tail end of an ad for Valtrex, a medication used to treat herpes infections.  Since that was not the segue I planned to use for a facts of life discussion, I hedged big time and basically hid for a few minutes until the dinosaurs came back on the TV and started attacking each other, guessing correctly that my son would get distracted by the wanton prehistoric violence.

After I stopped hiding, we settled into our couch positions.  My youngest son sweetly said "I like to put my head on your tummy and cuddle on the couch."  At six, he's growing lankier and more angular, losing the baby fat that I love.  But he doesn't know that yet, and still curls himself into a cuddle ball with me.  I'll go along with it for as long as I can.  It was the kind of cuddle that was starting to make me feel sleepy and cozy.   

But not too cozy.  I had to stay alert to fast forward past the commercials.