While normally, my sex column is fairly PG, with the occasional unable-to-be-scrubbed-away-no-matter-how-hard-you-try-image thrown in for laughs and spits (porn-n-eggs?), this week, I’m talking about the time I got busted. By my boyfriend’s mother.
And I’m warning you, it’s probably not, well, for the faint of heart, those who may be pregnant, those wanting to become pregnant, those with heart conditions, and please call your doctor for erections lasting longer than four hours.
Do not stare directly into the sun.
(it’s really not very graphic at all)(or is it?)
(click to go)(scroll down to stay)
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After I had Ben at age 20, I was left looking around and figuring out what the hell to do with my life. Professionally, I mean. I won’t bother getting into how PERSONALLY having a baby really crimps your style, especially when your kid is the one that screams like a banshee whenever he’s, well, awake.
I’d finished half a degree with a dual major in Bio/Chem, and had some pretty lofty Follow In The Males Of My Family’s Trek To Med School ideas of what I would do. Lofty, perhaps, but also the only damn thing I could think to do with my life. Whomever decided that 17/18 year olds should be in charge of choosing a profession is a wicked genius of a person (and also the reason majors like Media Studies are invented).
There’s a stupid commercial out there and the tagline is something like “Having a baby changes EVERYTHING.” I call it stupid, because I’m pretty sure that’s the most annoyingly obvious statement I’ve heard in my life, for a seasoned parent or not. But in the case of my schooling, it was irritatingly spot on.
Even if I’d been able to get into med school, which is either highly or only slightly laughable, as a single mother, I was aware that something was going to have to give. And if I’d chosen school, my son would be without a real mother at home (although I could have gotten a life-sized cut out of my picture and insisted that it follow him around creepily watching him as he went about his day), until he was approximately 26 years old.
Figuring I’d take my chances on extra-massive therapy bills for him later on (mental note: deposit money into Future Therapy Account every time I tell The Internet about my kid), I buckled down and made my choice: Ben.
Which left me with another choice: what the shit was I supposed to do now? I had to finish A degree in SOMETHING, and preferably something I could, oh, I don’t know, get a salary upon graduation WITHOUT asking if they wanted fries with that.
And as I saw it, my future was a toss-up between teaching and nursing. Neither of which were anything I’d ever considered as actual career options before then, so I chose what I considered to be the lesser of two evils. For approximately 12 minutes.
Yes, my friends, it’s true: I considered becoming a teacher for about 12 minutes. I even went as far as to try and say “I’m going to be a TEACHER” out loud. It was when I couldn’t contain my laughter AFTER that statement that I reconsidered my initial thought. The thought of me as a teacher was as laughable as the thought of me as a nurse.
I have the highest regard for teachers, really, I do. They’re tasked with wrangling OUR CHILDREN (or at least the children we know) all day long, and trying to teach them as they bounce off the walls like monkeys.
I pictured myself standing there in front of The Youth Of America, trying in vain to get the kids to stop eating each others’ boogers, my cardigan (I’d have to wear a cardigan if I became a teacher, this I knew) stained and buttoned incorrectly, my eyes puffy from a long night of drinking to make the voices go away, and I knew I just couldn’t do it.
This weekend, the care of 7 of The Youth Of America in my incapable hands, was like a vision into The Future That Could Have Been, and I hated every moment of it. As soon as we got there, the incessant questioning began. It’s like the kids could sense who was least equipped to handle their weird questions and glommed onto it.
“Why aren’t you serving pizza?” (the party was at 2:30 PM)
“Why are the cupcakes green?”
“I thought there would be more kids here” (me too, sweetheart, me too)
“Can we go to Pizza Hut?”
“Is Ben’s baby (points at Alex) a girl?”
“Why isn’t he a girl?”
“What’s his name?”
“Why’d you choose that name?”
“Are you having another baby?”
“Is it going to look like Ben?”
“Can I have some more money?”
“Can I have some more money NOW?”
“Why is that called air hockey?”
This was pretty much all I heard for the last 30 minutes of the party (thank you moon bounce for making them be quiet for an hour and a half), and while 30 minutes sounds like no time whatsoever, I found myself wishing that I had thought to bring a telephone number list to call their parents to pick them up EARLY. See, I’m not so patient. Or teacherly.
So, to all of the teachers out there, Aunt Becky salutes you. I consider you to be among America’s Finest; standing in the trenches and educating Our Youth while I hide at home. Away from the questions I can’t answer.
What job would YOU be unable to do, my Internet peeps?
Amelia, it was clear by our lack of preparation, was our third child. I think it wasn’t until week 34 or 35 that we set up anything that we could have brought a child home to, having barely put them away for Child Number 2. Mostly because we didn’t have anywhere to put her and partially because we are lazy.
Let me back up (Ima let you finish) and give you a brief rundown of the layout of the land.
We technically have a 4 bedroom house.
Upstairs are three bedrooms:
1) Master Bedroom: currently occupied by 1 Aunt Becky and 1 The Daver which is stupidly big. Not us, but the room, you know. It’s a poor design, and should have been 2 rooms, but will probably be bedroom PLUS office or bedroom PLUS porn den or something.
Had originally thought to be converted into boys room until it was determined that the space would never be used by the boys as play space.
2) Ben’s Room: it’s a medium sized bedroom full of the weird stuff my son cannot manage to part with. This is only noted because this is the same child who FREQUENTLY comes through the house saying “when I grow up, MY house is gonna be SUPER organized.”
Judging by the back issues of catalogs and his inability to throw away anything up to and including: tags to clothing and/or Target bags, he may want to rethink his berating of others within earshot.
3) The Nursery: It’s a fart (armpit) of a room, previously painted French Impressionistic pink (one of the only colors of pink that offends even me, lover of all things pink) where Alex spent most of his babyhood hating, well, everything.
(Bedroom 4 is in the basement and would probably be best for a teenage lair, not for a child, especially not one who might get up overnight.)
Mimi has been sleeping in a pack-n-play (o! bless thee God of pack-n-plays) in the living room since she was born because she seems to hate the crib that we’d set up in the master bedroom. Oh, sure, she’ll NAP there, but when it comes to SLEEPING at night, oh, HELL no.
This weekend, we made the switch. The dreaded switch of sleeping quarters. The only one looking forward to this was Ben, who had been promised, in time, bunkbeds.
Alex moved in with Ben, and Amelia got her own room. I was terrified and Dave was so annoyingly optimistic that I sort of wanted to pee on him, which is the same way Dave and I go into pretty much everything. Blind optimism and The Voice of Reason. It’s not that I want things to go WRONG, it’s just that sometimes, I think that Dave should remember that they could.
Like this, for example:
Alex, who previously has slept like a champion in his fortress of a crib has now learned to crawl out of his crib. I’m not sure why it took moving in with his brother to take place but somehow that’s when it happened: yesterday at naptime, Alex took the opportunity to hoist his wee body from his crib to the room to lock the door. FROM THE INSIDE.
Can you hear my hair greying as I peck out those words?
We have a toddler bed, yes, and obviously I am somehow going to dismantle that lock today (chainsaw?)(icepick?)(playing Britney Spears music at it?).
Mimi is adjusting swimmingly to not sleeping among the chaos, and Ben, poor abused Ben, was kept up last night by his brother, who, overjoyed by having company, not realizing bedtime could be a team sport, wanted nothing more than to TALK to him. All night long. Poor, poor Ben.
In time, we’ll adjust, and in time mean time, I’ll pry my anxiety ridden fingers from my own neck where I am trying to strangle myself for having such a lovely idea and remember that this had to happen eventually.
Amelia couldn’t live in the living room forever. Right? RIGHT?
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So, loves, come gather round Your Aunt Becky and tell her a story. She’s not feeling too well today and could use some distractions. Advice, stories, gossip, just, anything.
When I was a kid, on the list of things I would have happily gnawed off my own limbs for was a sibling. A whole MESS of siblings. Didn’t matter which brand–Japanese mushroom or cheeseburger–I just wanted more.
I had a pack of neighborhood kids that I chummed around with from sun-up until sun-down during the summer and after school most days (I don’t remember having as much homework as my kid gets) and that was all well and good, and I even was always pretty well liked in school. But I wanted a pack of siblings. A HUGE family.
My tiny nuclear family, well, most of them ignored me and I was a really lonely kid. I did have an older brother whose attention I vied for like an overzealous puppy, always shocked when he kicked me away, but eager to try again. Even at age 8, I was nothing if not persistent and shockingly transparent in my desire to be liked.
Luckily, while I didn’t outgrow my persistence, I did outgrow the gene that made me care if people liked me, but I never did outgrow the desire for a big family.
If you haven’t poured through my archives with a fine-toothed comb to discover that *gasp* my eldest was born *gasp* out of wedlock *gasp* and sired by another *gasp* father, well, he was, but if you haven’t, it’s because we don’t make a big deal out of it here at Casa de la Sausage.
Anyway. It’s not a dirty little secret or anything, it’s just not that important to us, because, really, it’s kind of old news now. But after I was pregnant with him and before I had met The Daver (this was a shockingly narrow window), I knew that I wanted to have more children, and, being the planner that I am, I wanted to have them closer together than my own brother and I are.
Part of the problems (but really, only a small part) that my brother and I faced were that we are ten years apart. What do an eight year old and an eighteen year old have in common? Fuck-NOTHING. The other problems are farther below the surface and much more purulent, so let’s just stick with the age difference, shall we?
Luckily, The Daver came along before I had to think about begging my male friends for a shot of their Man Juice–can you imagine the awkwardness? Because I can’t–and I would happily have dropped trou and tried to start makin’ babies well before I was Mrs. Aunt Becky Sherrick Harks.
The Daver is more traditional than I am (I know, you’re shocked), so we waited until after the wedding to cook up a couple of crotch parasites. I got pregnant with Alex as we were nearing our one year anniversary and Amelia as we were nearing our third. And no, to clear up any pesky rumors, we have no affection for the letter “a”.
I mean, it’s a good letter and all, and it’s a vowel so that makes it awesome by association, but if I had to BE a vowel, I would be “sometimes y”. Wouldn’t you?
It was weird the amount of ominous flack I got from people as I lugged Alex and Ben around, largely pregnant with my third.
“You’re going to be busy…” people would cluck meaningfully at me, obviously disdainful of my “delicate condition”
“Wow… you have your hands FULL,” others would sort of sneer, as I heaved a box of diapers and Alex, never offering to lift a finger to help.
While I appreciate that everyone is entitled to have an opinion on everything, and what comes out of (or, apparently, goes INTO) my vagina is no different, this was really not their call to make. They never liked to hear it when I told them as much, but come on, how rude could you be. I had 3 kids, not thirty. My uterus wasn’t exactly a clown-car yet.
But no, thank YOU, Mr. Fuckface, I appreciate you loudly judging me in front of my children, I have it under control. And you know what, I do. I still have it under control even now that I’m only pregnant with a burrito baby.
I sit in the other room sometimes, the baby banging merrily away in her saucer, gnawing on a pair of metal measuring spoons that were her older brother’s favorite toy too, screaming joyfully, her voice echoing against the glass door and bouncing back again.
Mingling with it are the indistinguishable voices of her older brothers, who have–5 years apart–the same tone and timbre of voice (without the words, I cannot tell them apart) as they scream delightedly together, piling on top of each other like squirmy puppies.
They are happy. My children, they are happy.
And I smile quietly to myself, as I sit there listening, knowing that if I do nothing else right for the rest of my life, I have done this right.
My children, I have done right by.
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