Area Woman Blows Gasket (7 page)

Penises and Pryin' Eyes

I was sitting at the marina near my old cottage last summer, dumbly engrossed in a novel, when a woman came up to me and declared
with great umbrage: "He is
peeing
in the LAKE."

I looked up slowly— the way you do when it dawns on you that the ambient sound of someone blurting gibberish is actually addressed
to you personally— and saw a sixtyish woman with smoker's wrinkles, sporting hot pants and carrying a dachshund, staring down
at me and smiling very tightly.

"Oh, I'm sorry," I said, uncertainly. I assumed that she was referring to my dog. It is a well-known fact in North America
that dogs can relieve themselves only in the one place— parks— where people like to sit, picnic, and go barefoot, usually
slipping on smears of dog shit. Otherwise, dogs' needs are a constant embarrassment to the owner, as the dogs heedlessly urinate
in lakes, on marigolds, against car tires and recycling boxes, into leaf piles, and alongside hedges belonging to cat owners.
God forbid that dogs should defecate on the ground when you don't have a bag, because then you just have to perish from self-consciousness
on the spot. It's the rule.

I readied myself to argue with this hectoring woman, but then I suddenly remembered that I didn't have my dog with me at the
marina. Confused, I followed the limp, disdainful wave of her arm as she pointed across the docks, and realized that she was
talking about my
son.

Ohhhh, I nodded. Right. There was my son, naked, as is his wont, ever since he was busted loose from diapers and snow pants
and the restrictions of the city. He was playing on a strip of sand near some boats and had evidently just executed an exciting
arc of piss into the shallows.

I smiled apologetically. "Accidents happen at that age, you know. He doesn't always remember to come to me in time."

Of course, I knew that Geoffrey had peed in the lake deliberately, bending his knees and thrusting his pelvis forward in great
I-love-my-penis glee, because that is what he's into these halcyon days of summer, and I don't care. Male friends have murmured
admiringly to me about Geoffrey's penis-waggling because they were taught shame. If only they had had a bookish absentminded
mother who found nudity easier to deal with, frankly, than chasing a boy around and around the house attempting to clothe
him, they tell me. Imagine their sexual confidence then!

If truth be told, I wasn't aware of this masculine evolution of the self, but still I intuitively agreed with my friends.
I think Geoffrey's innocent happiness about his penis-gadget is touching and amusing to watch. But not so. The woman's prim,
perturbed expression suggested that my explanation had not appeased her. "He needs to be in a diaper," she said.

"I can't put him in a diaper," I protested, aroused. "He's over three years old."

"Then make him wear a swimsuit," she countered.

Now my faced flushed. I put my novel down and got to my feet. "Are you suggesting that small children in swimsuits don't pee
in the lake? You don't think your granddaughter pees in the lake through her swimsuit? Or are you telling me that Geoffrey
shouldn't be naked?"

She drew her panting dachshund in closer to her chest, as if to protect him from my sudden hostility, and whipped out the
proverbial feminine pistol: "It is the consensus here at the marina that your child should be clothed."

Errrgh.
I so deeply hate that. I'm being discussed! I'm the subject of an impromptu town hall meeting! Over the Skittles and Aero
bars at the cashier's counter in the store!

I must go, now, to Peshawar on a mule.

"So you've been gossiping," I observed.

At this, she absolutely bridled. "I do not gossip," she avowed, as if I'd accused her of having sex with a goat.

Okay, so what was it then, her shared conversation, that came to its decisive consensus about the affront of Geoffrey's nudity?
A matter of "what is to be done?" It had nothing in common with the savage dog that's been mauling children in the township,
or the drug addict who has been stealing cash, or whether to intervene when a parent is seen cuffing her child with an appalling
backhanded blow.

The quandary here was a naked toddler occasionally arriving at the marina in a boat, and this woman, I sensed, had seized
the opportunity to forward her agenda when she saw Geoffrey flaunting the implications of nudity by peeing in the lake.

I gazed at her and shrugged helplessly. "You have your opinion," I said, "and I have mine."

But it didn't end there because I was left to deal with the issue of community relations. I have been spending summers at
this lake since I was a baby. I was married here. My aunts and uncles and cousins and second cousins are scattered all around
its shore.

To ignore the marina store gossip would be to make an antisocial statement, the sort of broad hit of contempt that is notable
in a small community, where the reverberations of every comment and shift of mood are observed.

It isn't like the city, where anonymity presides and thus a kind of tolerance for everything but dog shit is assumed; that
very weekend, gays from all over North America were getting married at Toronto City Hall and celebrating Gay Pride Day, and
here I was in that general vicinity discovering that the phrase "it just isn't done" still has currency.

Oh dear. I didn't want to give in to the communal consensus that nakedness in a boy of three isn't done.

"I have an idea," Ambrose later ventured. "Why don't we come back to the marina with Geoffrey fully clothed, and me naked?"

I loved that idea; I thrilled to it and laughed. But in the end he chickened out, didn't he? Because he was a man who had
been a boy when it just wasn't done.

"Here's the deal," I said to Geoffrey when I'd given it some thought. "I want you to wear underwear, because you're going
to spill hot soup on that penis of yours or fall down and scrape it, and you need to protect yourself, okay?"

From a mother lode of fear about male sexuality, and those pryin' affronted eyes.

My Lousy Job

If, as a working parent, you wish to be stopped in your tracks for ten days, I highly recommend a lice infestation in your
children's hair. There is simply nothing that even comes close to ruining your status as an efficient office worker like being
unable to find the
last one
of eleven thousand seven hundred and twenty nits the size of dust molecules on a six-year-old's head.

In my case, the whole fiasco of lice began with me, myself, walking around with an itchy scalp for about two weeks, thinking
that I really ought to do a hot oil treatment in this very dry weather. Given that I shampoo every day and wear fashion mousse,
it never occurred to me that I had insects nesting on my head.

Instead, naturally, it was the schoolteacher who discovered the lice crawling through my daughter's ponytail because only
schoolteachers can see lice. It's part of their training in teacher's college, to be able to spot minuscule species of insects
from ten feet across the room and then cry out a special code blue that all of the other teachers hear and respond to.

If there has been sensitivity training around the whole issue of lice— they're not caused by Dickensian living conditions,
Mother is not necessarily an alcoholic, etc.— I cannot vouchsafe that this training has worked. The school called me and commanded
that I pick up my children AS SOON AS POSSIBLE, regardless of whether I was just then in the process of selling London's
Daily Telegraph
to the Barclay Brothers, or conducting surgery, so that none of the other, better-tended and hygienic children would get
cooties.

Then when I arrived, out of breath and apologetic, the teacher reassured me that lice were really no big deal; a special shampoo
would do the trick and everyone could get back to business. This left me with the false impression that I was contending with
a mere twenty-four-hour emergency.

I collected the children and went directly to the pharmacy to find the special shampoo. When I went home and applied it, I
discovered that it kills, maybe, one louse and has no impact whatsoever on the nits. It does not take twenty-four hours to
remove that many nits from two little heads, because neither head will keep still for longer than thirty seconds unless they
are clamped in an iron vise.

Use of a vise is not possible, given the interest it tends to attract from the Children's Aid Society. So I had to plead with
my children, cajole them, yell at them, chase them around the house, threaten them with a total moratorium on toy purchases,
bribe them with more toys than they could ever play with, and finally sit on them while they shook their heads wildly and
wailed "We will never surrender!"

Unless you have dealt with nit capture, you have no idea how impossible it is to remove one nit if the host head moves more
than one one-millionth of a centimeter in any direction before you have grasped it.

Clara eventually grew somewhat compliant for stretches of five or six minutes, but Geoffrey is a three-year-old. The merest
whisper of a suggestion of obedience leads to freaked-out shrieks of countersuggestion, and it becomes a matter of psychologically
developmental necessity for him to refuse to allow me to remove insects from his head. Nor would stealth work. He could detect
the approach of my hovering nit comb with the acuity of a fly on the windowsill and get away just in time.

Finally, I had to wait for them to fall asleep so that I could root around on their heads in the darkness like a deranged
jewel thief, with me nit-picking as Ambrose aimed the flashlight. Lice, however, have evolved the ability to be invisible
in all but the brightest noon-time light when only a teacher can see them. We would think that we'd conquered them in our
nocturnal attacks, only to realize next morning that we'd nabbed less than half.

Thus, the children were boomeranged back at us when we meekly attempted to resubmit them to class, with the staff practically
holding crucifixes aloft and sprinkling holy water in their bouncy, retreating tracks. Growing desperate, we slathered their
heads in condiments, at the suggestion of cheerful "no problema" friends. My daughter sported mayonnaise for several hours,
and my son slept in a cap of olive oil. Furniture and carpets were doused in vinegar. Everything emerged smelling odd and
looking shiny. Within a week the nits were back.

You will never hear this confession in congressional testimony or from a mother being interviewed on Larry King, but the truth
is this: I had my son's head shaved in order to resume my career.

Almost-Forgotten Rites of Passage

The week that Clara entered grade one, the
New Yorker
featuerd a cartoon depicting two mothers on a park bench watching their toddlers at play. One mother was remarking glumly
to the other: "They grow up so slow."

Oh yes, I get that. Every parent who just spent Labor Day weekend with a three-year-old and a six-year-old screaming at each
other about who "gets to poke the dead fish" can relate to that sentiment.

Time flows as slowly as molasses when you have to spend it trying and failing to get a sun hat on a toddler, or trying and
failing to get your six-year-old to understand that God and Santa Claus are NOT the only ones who get to make the rules.

"Go to bed."

"No."

"You have to go to bed because it's the first day of school tomorrow."

"You don't make the rules."

"Yes, I do."

"Only God and Santa—"

"GO TO BED."

Aaargh.

Yet mothers of older children adamantly argue the opposite point: "No! No!" they cry in alarm. "Kids don't grow up slow; they
grow up FAST." Indeed, such parents hammer this into my head at every opportunity, as if all will be lost if I don't grasp
what they are trying to say. But what
are
they trying to say? What lies at the root of this parental perception of time-warp? It doesn't seem to apply to one's spouse
or parent or pet. Nobody ever says to me, "Oh my God, my husband is aging so fast!"

It isn't a perception of time flying, but something else. I wonder if it's about control— that you lose control of your children
faster than you anticipated that you would. Do you slip from the center to the periphery of their universe before you're prepared
to, before you've taught them everything you wanted them to know? There is always a sense of regret affixed to the notion
of children growing up fast, a feeling that one is caught off-guard because one wasn't watching.

Whatever it is that is lost, the universally acknowledged threshold for a child's crossing into the speedier time zone is
grade one. Baby goes to school. There is so much hype around this entry point that the occasion is made momentous. It would
be unthinkably crass to send one's child with the nanny, or a friend, to the first day of grade one. Pictures must be taken.
Sunday-best outfits donned.

All this hype and all the sentiments were very much on my mind yesterday when my daughter and I crossed that threshold together.
There were only two problems. The first was that as a working mother who rushes from one daily crisis to another, grade one
kind of snuck up on me. I had it written down in my daybook, so to speak, but I hadn't thought over what it entailed.

Thus at midnight on Labor Day I realized that I had no idea what time school started: Eight-thirty? Eight-forty- five? Nine?
Oh, God.

And what was Clara supposed to bring? A pencil? Some gym clothes? And where was she going to have lunch?

So I rose at dawn on the Big Day and flew around the house in a neurotic fluster. I hastily did her laundry, assembled random
school-like contents for her knapsack, and tried hurriedly to find a "bread substitute" for her lunch sandwich since I hadn't
thought to get any groceries.

"You're such a loser," I scolded myself as I stuffed her lunch box full of leftover barbecued salmon and Cheetos.

We got out the door at eight-fifteen. "Am I late for school?" Clara asked, as we trotted along the sidewalk.

"I don't know," I muttered. "I hope not."

Au contraire,
we were thirty-five minutes early. This gave me sufficient time to ponder the second problem, which was really more a dawning
revelation. To wit: Times have changed. Grade one doesn't feel like that big a day.

Clara, you see, is a day care child and I am a working mother. We were not dealing with our first full-time separation. I
did not look at her with her knapsack and her new shoes, and think: "It seems like only yesterday that she was a babe in my
arms bawling from colic." I didn't feel that pang of nostalgia. Clara has been beyond my control and among her peers since
she was ten months old.

Clara stood comfortably in the crowded and clamorous hall, yakking with friends, waving at her kindergarten teacher, showing
off her Barbie bracelet. She knew what to do, in some ways, better than I did. She lined up expertly along the wall when the
bell rang and then slid past me, smiling at her new teacher and scampering into the classroom without so much as a "see ya
later."

"Oh," I said, still standing there. "Well, okay then . . ." I suppose I'll just go to work now.

I left the school with a good friend who had just deposited his daughter alongside mine. We fretted about the huge class size
and wondered if our daughters would be all right eating their lunches in the gym. And then, as swiftly, we moved on to other
topics— to our work lives, our marriages. At one point, I thought: "We should be talking about the Big Day more, shouldn't
we? Isn't it momentous?"Then I shrugged and kept on walking. They grow up so slow, you think. And then one day you realize
they're growing up just fine.