Blame it on the Blemishes

I have an important motto I've made up myself that is related particularly to the raising of children. At least I think I've made it up.

It didn't occur to me quite away because, frankly it wasn't needed. It occurred to me when Bar Mitzvahzilla went from being a smooth-faced twelve-year-old several years ago, into a raging, hormonal thirteen-year-old. And then the pimples came.

It was a normal night. The kids were up too late. The husband causing a ruckus in the house because those same kids had managed to mess up the house in the most minute ways; ways that seemed intended to drive us to the brink of insanity. I was hiding in my office, trying to get some writing done and wondering - lamenting - why my office didn't have a door. Oh yeah, I know. Because it's the living room.

Then Bar Mitzvahzilla marched in for a goodnight kiss. No knocking because, of course, there was no door.  He presented a face full of pimples for me to kiss. And I, of course, kissed the pimples.

It's not like I spent my life purposely kissing pimples. The common wisdom when I was heading into high school was that you could catch these things if you made out with a boy who had them. Since I already had enough of them to send makeup counter ladies running in horror from their stations in the mall, I wasn't going to purposely rub faces with someone who had worse pimples than me. There was also all the other stuff we believed about our skin right then: chocolate causes pimples. Rubbing alcohol will cure pimples (topically, not as a drink...). Use a blackhead popper on your pimples (hello, scarring!). We even believed that one day soon we'd grow out of them.

And, just like my nascent belief, as a teenager, in the fact that a ten-pound weight loss could change my life, I also believed that if I strategized just right, I could declare war on the pimples, and fix my social life.

I don't think Bar Mitzvahzilla was philosophizing quite as much as I had, as an adolescent girl. But he did march into my office for a kiss. So here's my motto, reiterated in case you missed it, used in the fullness of loving parenthood: Kiss the Pimples. And then get that kid to a dermatologist.

Any horrible acne stories from your youth? Archaic beliefs or practices? Any experience with this situation? Anyone else spend a lot of time in the dermatologist's office and not for Botox and Juvederm?

Linda Pressman, Author of Looking Up: A Memoir of Sisters, Survivors and Skokie
available on Amazon, Kindle, Barnes and Noble.com, libraries and other retailers

The Hormone House

Yes, it's true. After months of anticipating it, of being horrified over it, of moving forward day by day by day with extreme trepidation, today was my birthday. I'm now officially fifty and I want to say that the stupidest thing I did to prepare myself for this birthday was that I ruined my last couple of months of being forty-nine preparing myself for it. I spent so much time saying I was turning fifty that I wasted my last chance ever to say I was forty-nine.

All I can think is that it must be some kind of cruel joke, a mom heading into menopause, her hormones going nuts, with a son who's busted through adolescence, also a hormonal mess, and a daughter who's starting to develop, a pre-teen, and yes, also a mass of raging hormones. All in the same household, all at the same time. Everyday we wake up and there's an assessment: who's the biggest nut today?

My behavior comes out in a kind of heat-motivated panic about the state of the household. One more dropped toy of Daughter's; Bar Mitzvahzilla's whole wardrobe, somehow, stashed behind the bathroom door where he changes each morning; the idea that they ran out of soap in their shower apparently months ago and just kept on taking showers with no soap instead of asking for a new bar. This drives menopausal mom crazy. Actually, I think this would drive any mom crazy.

Then there's Bar Mitzvahzilla. He's taking a lot of showers lately. Either he's discovered that, yes, he has body odor or I don't want to know why. When he's outside of the shower he's now spotless. He alternates between being untalkative, mainly because he's got earbuds in his ears, or too talkative, presenting a pressing case for why he needs to get Xbox Live - because all of his friends have it - and how unbelievable it is that he doesn't have it. He has limitless, inexhaustible energy for this conversation, but I am a ticking time bomb.

Then there's Daughter. Her exhibit of hormones shows mainly in her great exits. Just like a movie star in the 1950s, she loves to make a final dramatic remark and storm out of a room. She thrives on this. I should've known something like this would happen, after all, I had her when I was thirty-nine. That meant she started Kindergarten when I was forty-five. Yes. So now - Menopause and Puberty at the same time.

I try to think back to what I remember of this when I was a kid but all I come up with is when my mother went through menopause. For ten years. 

The final member of our household is mild-mannered and poor beleaguered Husband, not a hormonal mess and not in a midlife crisis. Despite a blameless life, he's stuck living with the three of us in the Hormone House.

Are there any hormonal problems in your house?  Do you remember having one growing up? Any evidence of midlife crisis? Did you like your birthday post-childhood?

A Picture at Age Ten

Ten years ago Daughter was a baby just learning how to roll over.  Today she's a pre-adolescent. That went kind of quickly.

Here's a present day picture of Daughter:  she's grown taller but hasn't gained weight.  Her hair is growing out at the rate of one inch per year. She has a perfect memory for everything I ever mentioned in passing that I might be able to do with her some time and no memory at all for anything she ever absolutely promised to do, like her chores. 

Her new thing?  The silent treatment.  Now this is kind of funny because we're Jewish which automatically means we're really loud and can't shut up when something bothers us.  But since she's sneaky and wants to get a lot of attention, she's figured out how to stand out in this family where no one can hold anything in.

First she gets a martyrd look on her face and then she stops talking.  She swiftly moves beyond silently miffed to traumatically silent.  After a lifetime of this child filling the air with conversation, it's pretty noticeable when she stops talking.

When she's really mad she slams the door on her way out of a lot of rooms, apparently enjoying the thud of the door and the sudden end it causes to all conversation.  Sometimes she charges into her bedroom, but she doesn't slam the door there.  She knows if she does we'll remove it from its hinges.

When she's done this about ten times and has finally managed to get some displeasure out of me, she says, "Well, aren't you in a grumpy mood today!" and then she slams out of that room.

I think way, way back, to Skokie.  To seven sisters separated by eleven years.  When we fought - which was often - we'd end up a huge ball of clawing girls rolling through the hallway.  Or one sister would throw a lamp or a hockey puck at another sister.  No silent treatments, just fist fights.  And no slamming doors.  Not because we wouldn't have enjoyed the satisfaction of it but because our mother had installed carpet too thick for the doors to shut at all.

I think, surely I can't be riled by a ten-year-old? I lay down the law, tell her I hope she's enjoyed herself but I'm not planning to be given the silent treatment for the next eight years.

And she nods her head, goes back to childhood and starts talking my ear off again.

Scarface

This was our Rosh Hashana: first we were at services and they were the best services we'd been to in 14 years. I don't mean that anything had changed about them to make them new and improved, I mean that it was the first time in 14 years that Husband and I were actually able to stay at services as long as we wanted, without kids' tantrums, nap times, hunger, diapers, ennui, or something else deterring us from our goal.

It wasn't that the kids were thrilled about being there, or that I didn't hear plenty of their complaints about hunger and boredom. It's just that now they're old enough now that I can ignore them. Anyway, they were pretty quiet about their rebellion. We walked in, sat down, and all four of us picked up prayer books. Husband and I, however, were following along with the Rabbi, but our kids found the page we were on and then located the page we'd have to get to, then they counted the pages in between - 89 - and held them separately, watching them diminish over five hours.

After services ended, we had a little rest at home and then we went off to my extended family's Rosh Hashana party. This was a potluck like every other potluck my family has; the only thing that differentiated this one from the parties is that there was a plate with apples cut up on it in the middle of the buffet.

As the evening wound on, I found myself smashed into one of my niece's two couches, so close to the person smashed in next to me that I was actually having a conversation with his pores, when there was a sudden tumult over at the powder room. News filtered toward me: Bar Mitzvahzilla had been hurt in a game of tackle football outside. I kind of hovered on the seat, wondering if it required getting up or not. I've been fooled before. Could I supervise the injury from my coveted spot? Was Husband nearby so he could handle this?

Then I heard the words "cut" and "teeth" and Bar Mitzvahzilla's name again and I knew it was no use - I had to get up. I am the mom, after all. So I up and went over to the bathroom, took one look at the 2 inch long jagged cut on his chin, and I knew my lovely evening was over. Or at least, that the rest of it would be spent in the ER.

Bar Mitzvahzilla might be the size of a man and he might have the voice of a man, but right at that moment he was about 4-years-old again. He didn't care about any stupid, possibly-infected cut on his face! He only wanted to go back outside and play more football, apparently until someone gouged one of his eyes out. He said, "MOM! I'm okay!" But I gave him the look that brooks no refusals. I had assessed the injury. It needed stitches.

By 11:30 at night, we were walking out of the ER. By then Bar Mitzvahzilla had 14 stitches in his face and, if he grimaced just right, with the scar and the two fangs that have grown into the middle of his gum line he looked pretty horrifying. Of course, he was thrilled. If he could only grow something else - horns or claws - life would be perfect.

On our way home he showed a tiny bit of remorse. He said, "Oh shoot! Tuesday's picture day."

The Summer of Yes

This week was my kids' first official week off from school. Since we spent the entire camping budget to send them to sleepaway camp in July, they're home with me this month. Mom Camp.

I was pretty enthusiastic on Monday, apparently a little too enthusiastic for them. In the car on the way back from my morning exercise class, I declared this to be the "Summer of Yes," where they would say "yes" to all the activities I've planned for them, diving into new adventures.

My daughter was okay with it, but I encountered resistance on the other side of the car. Bar Mitzvahzilla had apparently decided it was going to be a "Summer of No." It wasn't exactly a "No," it was more like a "Can you just drop me off at home?" followed by a "Can I go on the PlayStation when we get there?"

About two years ago, I decided to override my husband's wise opinion and I bought Bar Mitzvahzilla a PlayStation 2 game system. He was already 12 and was apparently the last child anywhere in the Western Hemisphere who didn't have a gaming system. We were already social outcasts, with legions of boys who weren't interested in coming over to our house to hang out because there wasn't anything to do - despite our basketball hoop and air hockey table. One time a boy came over and expressed astonishment that we had a nice house; the kids at school had all assumed that we were poor because Bar Mitzvahzilla didn't have a gaming system.

So I gave in, buckled. I told Husband that we could keep this thing contained. It'd be used when friends were over only. And anyway, seeing my son stick out like such a sore thumb reminded me of myself as a kid, when friends came over with their perfect Barbies with store-bought Barbie clothes, and then I'd pull out what passed for a Barbie in our house: a Barbie body with a freckled Skipper head and one leg. And it was naked. I felt my boy's misery.

After two years passed, I had to shovel past criss-crossed mounds of wires just to find my son somewhere tangled in the middle, the computer addict needing more, more, more. And just like they say happens with drugs, the purchases didn't stop with the Playstation. Soon there was a Wii, and then there was an iTouch, which I actually thought he'd use for music. Little did I know he could download games. And I don't mean to seem naive, but isn't it a little odd that my son, whom I'm trying to raise Jewishy Jewish, with Jewish values and a reverence for life, spends all of his time on these devices killing human-looking creatures?

Sometimes things I don't want to look at closely kind of dance around the edges of my brain and then, when I finally notice them, my brain kicks back on and I can act swiftly. So when Bar Mitzvahzilla tried to opt out of every activity in favor of staying home with his favorite friend in the world, the PlayStation, this thing I apparently invited into our house to raise my child two years ago, well, that was it. It became the "Summer of No" all right, but with me saying No.

So I took it all away. He put up a good fight, asking me hundreds of times after the ban if he could use them anyway, waiting to tire me out, insisting he had nothing to do. And of course he had nothing to do. He has become the most boring child in the world, with no interests except that. With it all gone, we'll just see who exists under there.

But let's put it this way: by Wednesday he played basketball in the driveway, then he put on his Rollerblades and zoomed around the neighborhood. On Friday he became aware of the existence of other people in the world again, and actually had a conversation with his sister.

And yes, he came along on all the activities I planned in this, the first week of the Summer of Yes.

Stuck In The Middle with Bar Mitzvahzilla

Once I had a tiny son who could be brought to any park in the world, unsnapped from his car seat, and, like a revving engine, set down and he was off. Rolling in the grass, playing in the sand, kicking balls, head first down the slide, chasing kids he didn't know, an ape on the jungle gym, and swinging into the sky. He could go and go and go - all day and all night - his battery was always charged. His fun would only end when we hunted him down and lured him into our car, the seat belt click sounding the end to his freedom.

But things change when you have a son who's nearly fourteen.

I used to love sitting on a park bench reading or writing while the kids played safely nearby. Now I'm no longer alone. Next to me sits a silent, brooding teenaged lug, along with his man-sized body, his gigantic arms and legs, his big feet, and an alarming blonde moustache. He apparently is too old for the park. He's too big or too old for every single thing at the park except for sitting there next to me on my bench.

So since he can be a little conversationally challenged, I've thought of a series of questions that I can ask him that will set him off on a twisting, winding, conversational labyrinth that won't stop until my eyes roll back in my head. What's the coolest new video game on the market? What's his dream car? (He aims high - it's a Lamborghini.) Which one's the best Terminator movie? Who had the coolest light saber in all the Star Wars movies? If I can stand to stay awake for the answers I can at least hear his voice.

There are some things he will still do. He'll play basketball anytime and anywhere. He'll surf like a beach bum in the ocean but first he has to find some ocean in Arizona. He'll swim in any pool but lately he wears a t-shirt, hiding something on his upper body. I figure it's probably one valiant, newly-sprouted chest hair, but won't I be the fool if he has a Siamese twin growing under there?

He reads books obsessively, but no book that any girl anywhere in the world has ever said she likes. The blood and gore and confusing Sci-Fi plots take care of that. And he plays video games with such intensity that if I didn't tell him to stop he would actually never stop. He'd forget to go to college and forget to get married. He'd only stop decades later when his hands froze with arthritis on the controls, the house disintegrated around him. Then he'd yell through the rubble, "Mom! What's for dinner?"

Stuck in the middle with Bar Mitzvahzilla; he's not a boy and he's not a man.

Dang Fang

It's hard to see myself in my children. And I don't mean just my bad personality. I mean my crappy genetics.

There are some things about my genetics that are good. Being freakishly tall for a Jewish female is good. By this I mean I'm over 5'1. So my kids are not short. Of course, there is something a little creepy about waking up one day and having a gigantic son, a son who can suddenly look me in the eye. But, okay, I got used to that. I got used to him hovering like a wall around me. I got used to him creeping up behind me and a shadow suddenly falling over me. I got used to him squeezed into the backseat of the car until finally I relented and let him sit in front, and then gnashed my teeth as he fiddled with the stereo, played with the seat controls, and blasted all the air conditioning on himself, leaving menopausal mom hot.

But the troubling thing is the physical defects he's inherited from me.

A few months ago I took Bar Mitzvahzilla to the orthodontist to find out when he was going to start his next phase of treatment. For some reason, nowadays when kids get braces they get them on and off, on and off, like ten times. So he'd already had the first set of braces and this was the consultation for the second set.

The orthodontist tells me my son can't get them because apparently he has inherited my jaw.

You know when you were about thirteen and you were keeping a horrible secret about your body? Like that you had a volcanic pimple or one of your breasts was growing on your back? My secret was that I grew this horrific Cro-Magnon jaw. I would look at it sideways in the mirror, just to see how far it stuck out, or I'd look at myself straight on in the mirror and hold something over the bottom half of my face, just to see what I'd look like if I was normal. Of course, at school a group of males noticed - about whom I still have revenge fantasies - and they called me "Chin."
My jaw eventually had to be surgically corrected. So I am disconcerted to find out that my son's inherited this jaw. The orthodontist wants to wait for his jaw to grow before getting his braces back on because who knows how big it will get?

So I watch my son now, or I watch his jaw anyway, waiting for some chin equivalent of a hunchback, some Igor thing to happen - I don't know - is he going to look like Dudley Do Right? Because I once looked like Dudley Do Right. Can I at least hope for Jay Leno?

Then the other day we're eating at a restaurant and I look at him and I'm thinking, he looks fine. He's so handsome! But then I see something new. I say, "What's that?" He opens his mouth and I see there's a fang coming in right in the middle of his gums. A fang just like I had at the same age. If he ever wonders what I gave him, now he knows: a lantern jaw and fangs.

After a long absence, BarMitzvahzilla returns

When you name a blog something as event-specific as mine, Bar Mitzvahzilla, it kind of has a beginning and an end to it. The beginning was the time period when my son was tormenting me, not studying his Torah portion, not writing his speech, refusing to go shopping for suits, for shoes - you know, just being 12. And then the end was the Bar Mitzvah and his party that evening. So it ended and the blog ended.

But tonight I found out in my new Mothers Who Write class that I should be blogging. And while we were talking about this I realized that, being a lifelong journal-keeper, I missed blogging. So here I am again. I'm keeping the name since it's kind of applicable since I'm living in Post-Bar Mitzvahzillaland. I'm also living in a kind of Pre-Bat Mitzvahzillaland, since in about 3 1/2 years my daughter will be there too. Might as well start blogging now.

Here's what's happened to Bar Mitzvahzilla since the event six months ago:

1) He's grown about 4 inches. I'm a giantess of a Jewish woman - by which I mean I am 5'5 - and he's almost as tall as me.
2) He still believes soap and water are optional for bathing and contraindicated for his face.
3) He is still reading a book a day, like 300 pages. Who'd he get that from?
4) When he's in a snotty, adolescent mood, which is just about every day, he can say some of the meanest things imaginable. Sometimes it's not what he says, it's the huffing and the puffing and the muttering under his breath, his uncanny ability to call me on everything I say and do, and to somehow find fraud in everything I am. He watches me closely, like a spy.
5) Since I'm still the source of all good things that happen to him (the spender in the family, I'm the one who buys him all those books!) I know I can win this ware. I refuse to give in. I go with the excellent advice of my best friend, a mother of a 24-year-old, "Don't let him get away with anything."

And just in case you have a bad impression of Bar Mitzvahzilla, I just want you to know that his bad behavior is only half the time. The other half of the time he is the darling boy I've raised: affectionate, funny, kind, and honest. I'm determined that we'll exorcise that other boy - that weird stranger - and my boy will be there, waiting for me, whole, when he's eighteen and ready to go to college. If I live.

Some Perspective

On Wednesday, a day of much tutoring, everywhere that Bar Mitzvahzilla and I went, we ran into a girl he had gone to school with here and there around town who is having her Bat Mitzvah in two weeks. She told me (because my son can't actually speak in the presence of a girl his own age) that her Hebrew's still pretty rough as far as her Haftorah reading goes and that she's just starting to work on her Bat Mitzvah speech right now.

Oh. Hmm. That gave me a little perspective. Me, the Mom in the witches hat, have been riding my son, haranguing him about this speech like it's a dissertation or something, but here's this girl with two weeks left to go, and she's just starting hers. And my son, on the other hand, has his Hebrew nailed down tight, beautifully memorized by heart, all the ups and downs up it, all the trops of it - perfectly.

So he's gone off this weekend to his cousins' house, both of them his two best friends in the world, carrying along all of his PlayStation 2 games and, hopefully, a change of underwear and a toothbrush, and I guarantee they'll try to weasel an extra day out of me tomorrow and then I won't see him until Sunday, his 13th Birthday.

How I came to be the mother of a 13-year-old when it was like a second ago that I moved to Arizona as a 13-year-old myself, this I don't know. How my child, who was born a pound and a half 13 years ago ended up as tall as me "and I haven't even gone through my growth spurt yet, Mom," this I don't know either. But it looks like maybe it's time for a little gratitude and a lot of shutting up so that's what I'll do: I'll be grateful and shut up.

Shabbat Shalom.