Mid-CenturyModernMoms

Nerds Rule!

By Nina

I saw it with my own eyes at every single HS reunion I've attended. The nerdiest most unlikely to "succeed" kids inevitably ended up being the coolest, realest and most interesting ones at the party.

Somehow the mean alpha girls just got meaner and smaller.  The cheerleaders got fat.  The grinds had been ground down by life.  But a lot of the nose picking, pocket protector, AV Squad boys and nerdy girls were the ones who'd cashed out their dot.com businesses and were now pursuing their bliss, sailing sloops around the world, taking on second careers, shepherding foundations, that sort of stuff. Even Marsha Miller, who was so horsey she practically whinnied, had turned into a way-cool art gallery owner in the Bay Area. 

No surprise learning that a high school A-lister like Robby Benjamin went to med school, made a lot of money, retired early to Florida and was proudly wearing his trophy 2nd wife on his arm.  But whoa, let's hear it for Geek-O-Rama Marty Tessler, who went to med school the hard way, after being a Physician's Assistant for 7 years and then chose Emergency Room medicine in a hospital in Queens.  Way to go dude!  You may not be making the big bucks, but you've earned my respect and I bet you feel good looking in the mirror every morning.

So while I wish my own nearly 16-year-old geek in residence had a more robust social life and was feeling a little higher up on the high school food chain, I try to remember that being a tech nerd often means having the last laugh. 

My kid is a tech assistant this summer before he leaves for Israel.  He's helping to install new computers in the new building at his school . . . and he's getting paid for it!  He's enjoying the radical paradigm shift as he works with the school's resident technology staff who are (gasp) Republicans and Libertarians, unlike the mushy skwushy  liberals who teach at his crunchy granola private school.  This week his reputation as a nice reliable kid who knows his way around Macintosh computers landed him an off-site gig at the home of one of the school's two college advisers. There he successfully installed a Wi-Fi network and in the process got on the radar of the person who is going to help him navigate the rocky shoals of college applications.  And he got $100 smackeroos. 

Like I said.  Nerds rule.

Launching Pad

By Nina Rubin
In an effort to save some dough (and because hotels were going for more than $300 a night) I recently spent two nights in my college son's D.C. "launching pad" over his graduation weekend.  My darling and personable first born (a.k.a. Jaws to MCMM readers)  has sublet a 2 bedroom apartment in a groovy Arlington, VA building that boasts a health club, party roof deck, a pool, and a concierge -- before he has actually landed job.

That's not intended to be a snarky comment.  Honestly.  Jaws is not a slacker and he will get a job.  I mean, he has to.  He's not being subsidized by his parents, his school loans are coming due and his savings are not endless.  He's a great kid -- a mensch as we Jewish parents like to say.  But I had to laugh when I compared his first digs with my first apartment after college.

My apartment:  $185 a month, divided by 2 roomates.
His apartment:  $800 a month...just for his room!
My apartment:  In an Italian neighborhood where old men played bocci ball and widows wore black for their entire lives.
His apartment:  Nobody over the age of 50 in evidence.

His apartment came with a flat screen tv and a refrigerator that makes ice.  Jaws and his roomate each have their own tv in their own private bedrooms.  They don't have a car and they don't have silverware.  But they have cable and TIVO. They have granite countertops.  I have formica.  They have stainless steel appliances.  And here's the real rub...they have a Harris Teeter supermarket and a dry cleaner in their complex.  Jealous?  Moi?

We were all back together again in New York over Memorial Day weekend celebrating Grandma Isabelle's 85th birthday. Hanging out in my mom's kitchen yesterday, Jaws asked lots of sweet cooking and grilling questions, having recently discovered that if one cooks, one has copious leftovers, and one saves money.  He asked his grandmother for a few of her recipes and she sent Jaws flying back to Washington  loaded up with a flank steak, flatware for 12, a box of home baked brownies, grilling tools and a bottle of teriyaki marinade.  As I've said elsewhere, they don't make 'em like my mother anymore. Her care packages are, legendary and eclectic.

When I got back to Atlanta last night, I was dying of curiosity so I called the launching pad.  I heard the sound of happy young people in the background and beer cans popping. "How was the steak?" I asked.  "Fabulous," Jaws said.  "But we kind of incinerated the burgers...the flames got a little out of control out on the balcony." 

Yup, it's happening.  He's out on his own.  With two interviews coming up this week.  You  live, you learn, you launch.

Looking Backwards, Looking Forwards - Musings

As a first time mother, you don't know any  better.  The second time 'round, you're just too tired to care.

I hope that you had a happy Mother's Day!!!

Our dreams (plans) for our children change over the years.  A parent can keep those dreams until you get hit in the face that they must be modified.

Looking back, I can see that some of my hopes for Abe (17.5 yo, PDD, ADHD, NVLD, etc) were too expansive.  When he was born, I hoped for a wonderful kid who was going to have a wonderful life.  He's a wonderful kid (when he wants to be) who has had a hard life in terms of figuring out how to deal with his disabilities.  I still hope that when he's older, he'll think that he had a good childhood.

When Abe first started at an out-of-district, special education  placement school in the middle of 4th grade, I had dreams that he would be back in the mainstream during the high school years.  When Abe went to a high school SPED placement, I had dreams that he was going to graduate "on time" and go onto a regular college.

Now my dreams look somewhat different.  I want him to repeat 11th grade so that he can have more time in the therapeutic environment of the residential school that he's starting at the end of June.  I still dream of him going off to college and living an independent life, but I know that he is years away from that.  Abe's going to get there, but it's going to take him longer than other kids.  But I have faith that he's gonna get there (ya gotta have faith, baby).

My dreams for Rosie (14 yo, NT, ADHD) were never different than mine for her brother.  Be a good person, be of good intelligence, learn at nice schools and have a wonderful life.  I never dreamed that I would expose my children to the harshness of both parents having cancer or to domestic discord; but that's some of my legacy to them.

A mother always has hopes and dreams for her children.  Those wishes have changed over time as to specifics, but the basics of wanting the best for your kids always stays.

THE WIMPY BURGER FACTOR

by Jenny Gardiner

I know you all know about the Wimpy Burger. Because we are all old enough to remember Popeye, right? Back when we were kids, there was nothing else on television but that lame-o cartoon several time a week (and of course Leave it To Beaver, but that's a story for another day). So for lack of anything better to do, we kicked back in front of the TV console (remember those consoles?!) and watched Popeye pouring on the spinach, Brutus forcing himself on Olive Oyl (talk about a wife-beater type), and Wimpy always in search of the elusive burger, for which he had no cash.

Wimpy's famous line, of course, was "I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today."

I have come to recite this line with regularity, sotto voce, around my teenaged son, who loves to "rob Peter to pay Paul" in order to borrow time. In other words, he's a Grand Master Procrastinator, and it's making me nuts.

You know the cliched line about Little Kids, Little Problems, Big Kids, Big Problems? Well, it's true. To a certain extent. Granted, your very small child can indeed get into all sorts of vexing, and even deadly trouble. Like swallowing something out of those bottles with the Mr. Yuk stickers would constitute Big Problem for Little Kids.

But generally speaking, once they get bigger, you can be assured of mental stresses that will add fat to your ass and gray to your head faster than you can say "My kid didn't do that!"

That is, of course, if you are a stress-eater (which I am), and inclined to sprout gray hairs under duress with the rapidity of a tender bean pod unfurling on a time-lapse video (ditto). [By the way, if something happens to my hairdresser, I sure as hell hope they can unearth his wonderful recipe for my bogus blond hair color or I'm screwed.]

Okay, so I'm beating around the bush. But here's my Big Kid issue. And really, it started out as a Little Kid issue, but we failed, failed, failed to quash it in its infancy, and so it has become a problem that has grown and spread like that bright yellow fungus that shows up magically in your mulch after a heavy rain.

It's all about teen boys and procrastination. Oy, vey.

Now, I know that there must be those boys who are punctual and get their homework done on time and go to bed before 1 a.m. and when they're supposed to be home at 11:30 they're home at 11:30 and not 12:10 with every legitimate-sounding excuse in the book as to why they're not there on time. But I haven't ever experienced that myself. And it makes me CRAZY.

I think the thing of it is that my son is such a fabulous kid in every way (except the procrastination, which, admittedly, bleeds into every aspect of our lives) that I have excused away this bad habit to the point that it's now a firmly-entrenched personality trait that constantly comes back to bite not only him in the butt, but us as well. I have been his procrastination enabler, feeding the addiction instead of stopping it early and often.

And I wonder often: is the procrastination of a 17-year old a trait that will never recede? Much like a 15-year old nail biter, really unlikely to ever cease that obsessive habit. Or, say, a 45-year old stress-eater who blithely pops peanut M&Ms when anxiety hits the flash point.

This all came to a head this week when college admissions letters came out. And to our great dismay, our intellectually curious teenaged son, with a passion for learning and smarts to spare and who truly deserved admission into most of the colleges to which he applied found himself wait-listed for his top choices (this of course hastened by the fact that this of all years is officially the hardest year to get into college, thanks to the Type-A overachieving Baby Boomer parents, whose children have all reached matriculation peak this year). And these wait-lists? A direct result of years of Wimpy Burger behavior that sadly cancelled out SO many of the hugely important and relevant things he's done over the years, because when it came time to crunch for that AP Calculus exam, he was too engrossed in debating other political buffs on some website where you create and sustain your own nation-state to bother with integers or whatever it is you learn in Calculus. A really well-meaning kid whose track record was exemplary in so many areas, but who just couldn't help but reaching for that Wimpy Burger time and again when he should've been focusing on those irrelevant classes that ultimately mean nothing down the road, because really, who actually uses Calculus anyhow?

On one level my heart aches for him that he couldn't squelch the Wimpy Burger in himself, couldn't see far enough down the road to realize that even if he would rather spend hours on the computer debating world events, the fact is you have to play the high school game if you want to get past it and ultimately into the area in which you have a passion. You can't keep blowing off the have-to's to deal with the want-to's, even if the want-to's really matter. The have-to's are sort of the tolls on the highway toward your dreams, and you can't jump the tollbooth---eventually it catches up with you.

Our philosophy all along has been that our kids need to learn to sink or swim on their own. We refuse to be helicopter parents, hand-holding and hovering and ensuring every step they take is the right step. And so it's been agonizing for us to watch this unfold, to watch his dreams now have to re-shape to fit this new reality, a reality that exists because of those damned Wimpy Burgers. You can be sure I am left to question whether we should have, could have, done something to stop the Wimpy Burger behavior from getting beyond him. And to hope that perhaps this time the lesson will take hold (but most likely won't)...

)

The irony has not escaped me that a wait list for college admission is almost a Wimpy Burger sort of thing in and of itself. "I'll gladly accept you Tuesday, that is, unless I can't find an opening for you, er, um..."

Am I the only mom with a perpetually procrastinating boy? Or is this the rule, rather than the exception?