Hiding Eggs And Forgetting Things

This post comes to us from Annie Boreson, a girl just trying to go viral before the Mayan Calendar stops us all in our tracks. You can find her regularly waxing poetic at her site Annie Off Leash or on Twitter @annieboreson. We read the first line of this post and knew she was one of us.

My Grandma used to hide Easter eggs in her cleavage.

It always took the fun out of the hunt. On her deathbed I told her so. She told me to lighten up. I think she was probably right, although I still would not want to negotiate an egg from those heaping mounds of flesh. There are just some things a kid shouldn’t have to do. Oh sure, get a paper route, man a lemonade stand, but dig in the crevices of your old Granny’s bosom for a hard boiled egg? That’s just wrong on so many levels. Still, every so often I think about her lying there with all those tubes running out of her, doing that death rattle thing, while telling me to find a laugh.

I told my kids about their quirky great grandmother. I have one child who reminds me that I have my own idiosyncrasies. Besides, she remembers a choice remark I hurled in her direction when she was much younger…

“I know I’m suppose to be building self-esteem, just give me something to work with.”

In my defense…my patience was the size of a sliver back then and she had a tendency to forget things. It could be snowing and she would leave the house without her coat…or arrive at school without her homework…or lunch…or permission slip. Didn’t matter what it was…the list was endless, and the calls from the school office came with increasing frequency.

The day I tossed the comment out, I picked her up at a friend’s house after an overnight, and drove her to her tennis lesson. Like always, I was running late…flying around all day without a moment to stop for lunch…feeling completely stressed by the so-called routine of life.

We were halfway there when things started spiraling.

“You’ve got everything?” I asked.

“I think so,” she said.

And then I heard “Oh No!”

“What?”

“I don’t have my racket,” she said.

“Well, honey, that’s going to make it pretty difficult to play tennis, don’t you think?”

There was silence in the backseat. She was smart to cower on the floor mat.

And then for whatever reason something hit me. I was channeling a force much greater than normal parenting wisdom. I began slowly, and then feeling my rhythm, the momentum grew. I began…

Okay, let me tell you a little story. At this moment it’s like you’ve said, “Mom, take my brain. I don’t need it and you seem to be doing a pretty good job with it.” But then around the age of 20 or so, some guy is just going to rock your world and you’re going to come to me and say, “Do you mind passing my brain over to him?” And of course, I’ll oblige because frankly, I’m burned out and have my own mid-life decisions to make. So you’ll build your life with this man and things will go according to plan for awhile until you hit the age of…say 40….and then something is going to kick in and you are going to ask him for your brain back so you can give it a whirl.

But here’s the kicker. He’s not going to want to give it back. You see, he’s quite content running the show. He likes how your brain feels in his safe keeping…and that’s going to shock the hell out of you. Then the fighting begins and suddenly he looks like a big control freak and you wonder why you’ve never seen that piggish behavior before? The world is going to feel pretty cruel as you hire yourself an attorney who will serve the “keeper of your brain,” divorce papers. Then comes the splitting of coffee mugs and sofas, and you’ll pack up all those kids and animals…and of course dust off that resume that hasn’t been touched since the summer of ’86 when you sold Cutco knives. Bottom line, you will be starting over…only this time with an entourage. Makes for quite an exciting new chapter of life!

I was on a roll! That is just about the time I looked in the rearview mirror and caught a glimpse of my daughter’s face. Her mouth had dropped to navel depth, and her once girlish glow had drained as if she had a slow leak. It may have been overkill, but I have to say, since that day, she has not forgotten a thing. I could put on a new roof for the therapy this may cost me, but hey, I figure I was already going there with the self-esteem comment.

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Tags: perspective, raising kids, self-esteem