Do I expect her to become a prima ballerina or ride a Kentucky Derby winner? Of course not. I’m all for cheering her on, for telling her she can do anything she chooses. But there’s determination and optimism, and then there’s reality. I joke with Reese, “You can do everything, but I can promise you that you’ll never be a professional gymnast, or a professional jockey. You can still ride horses and do gymnastics, but there’s no arguing with physics.” And we laugh about it. She’s the daughter of a six-foot-three father and a six-foot-three mother. She’s only eight and she already weighs ninety pounds.
Reece’s activities are obviously quote unquote enriching, and no doubt kids learn lessons from things they take up in grade school and then lose interest in about the same time they pass their driving tests. But how about activities that are a little stickier when it comes to parental hopes and dreams? How about if you were a tennis player and back in some unlit tennis court of your mind you have a fleeting image of you sitting courtside at some big match (okay, Wimbledon), and your kid is playing in center court, and . . .
I know. We all try not to live vicariously through our children. Still, it’s a tough one, realizing deep in your heart that what your child does is for her, not for you.
Not long ago Reece got the jujitsu bug. She begged me to take lessons. If Reece were a river she’d be one that flows year-round, century in, century out, eventually creating a grand canyon. She does not let up. Just one lesson? Please? Just to see? Pretty please? Just one, on the easiest day it is for you to take me? Preeeeeeeeety pleeeeease?
The girl wore me down. I told Reece I would buy her two months’ worth of classes, but once she started she would need to go until the class was over. Her brief fling with jujitsu is a chance for me to school her about keeping her promises and honoring her commitments. To my mind, that’s my parental duty. I’m a lot less interested in her becoming the world jujitsu champion. Which isn’t to say that it wouldn’t be nice for her to have a black belt tucked into her tool kit.
Learning about dedication and commitment are the main benefits of participating in any kind of sport. I’ve done many talks at middle schools, high schools, and sports camps and I always say, “Listen, if none of you play in college, it doesn’t matter. You are doing something valuable for yourself right now. The point of doing it is discipline, self-esteem, working with others, and working toward a common goal. All of these things will enhance you.”
Being an athlete also allows a kid the opportunity to gain self-knowledge.
Who am I? What do I need? What makes me happy? I ask myself those questions, and I want to raise children who ask them, too. To be able to answer those questions is to know what is worthy of your time and sweat.
If there’s one thing you can count on, it’s that life rewards those who work their asses off. Think about the successful people you know. Did they all put in late hours and weekends and eat/sleep/dream whatever it was they were chasing? Even Mozart, a genius and a child prodigy, practiced like a mad fool.
Hard work is humbling. It forces you up against your limitations every time. It keeps you honest. It keeps you human.
• • •
My kids are little, so I don’t know for sure, but I don’t think my world would be rocked if one of them announced she decided to go to law school. It wouldn’t raise my opinion of her. I wouldn’t think any more of her than if she said she was going to be a muralist, or a human resources person at one of those corporations where it’s hard to understand just exactly what it is they do.
Throughout my career I’ve done some TV hosting and color commentating. I was good enough that it was suggested I try my hand at sports announcing. But a great announcer is a critic. You have to look at an athlete’s performance and take it apart. If someone hasn’t brought their best game, you have to call him or her on it, and explain how they’re sucking, and why.
I just don’t have that in me. I appreciate people for just being out there doing it. Even if they are stinking up the court, I am happy they are there. We just put emphasis on the winner, but it’s as important, if not more so, just to go for it.
I feel the same way about the things my children do. I will judge them—and yes, we judge our kids, just like we do everything and everyone else—by how hard they work to attain their goals, and by what kind of people they are. Do they have friends? Do they have manners, which is a form of expressing empathy and gratitude?
When Reece invites her friends over to our house, I’d say one in three says “thank you” and brings her plate to the sink after we eat. And I say to Reece, “Who do you think is going to be invited back here? Who do you think I’m going to cook for again?” Of course Reece knows the answer. I tell her that I want her to be that kind of person: the polite one who gets asked back.
There’s a beach volleyball player named Kerri Walsh who’s one of the best players in the game. In 2004 she and her partner Misty May-Treanor won the gold in Athens, followed it up with fifty consecutive match wins, then returned to Beijing in 2008 to take home the gold again and then in 2012, they did it yet again in London. Between 2005 and 2007 she held the AVP records in both hitting and blocking, and in 2007 was named the FIVB’s Best Offensive and Most Outstanding Player. Her rap sheet goes on and on.
Once, during a big tournament, about fifty players were sitting around in the player’s tent and there was a big metal garbage can in the center that had fallen over. No one did anything about it, thinking, I suppose, that someone working the tournament would happen past and pick it up.
Then Kerri strode in, fresh from a match. Spying the garbage can, she picked it up and started refilling it with all the trash that had spilled, the empty cups and food wrappers. The guy who told me this story reported that they were all instantly humbled and embarrassed. Here was one of the best players in history, and is she “Yo, assholes! Look at me, Ms. Three-Time Gold Medalist!”? Nope. She sees what needs to be done and she does it.
Kerri lives not by the code of fame or wealth or even hard-won achievement, but by her own code. If my daughters grew up to be like that, I’d consider myself a success.
THIS IS NOT THE UNITED NATIONS
I believe in power-parenting. I’m the parent, and I’ve got the power. This is similar to the Golden Rule. I’ve got the gold, so I make the rules.
I’m only half kidding.
I feel as if sometimes we need to say to our children, “Look, I am in charge. I am the parent. And with that comes huge benefits for you. I am not asking you to be my friend and give me advice. I am not asking you to solve my problems, or clean up after me, or pay my bills, or take me to the doctor. I, on the other hand, am here to I create as much freedom and fun for you as I can, to give you a childhood without worry. But that is not a childhood without duties or responsibilities.”
I am tough and very direct with my children. When I see nonsense, I don’t launch into a big goopy speech about how I understand why they feel the way they must feel, and why they’re doing what they’re doing, and how their father and I don’t believe in whatever it is they’ve just done, but we appreciate why they did it and blah blah blah. Not long ago I was standing outside the market and saw one little girl refuse to share her cherries with her sister. The mother started in with, “I imagine that when I tell your father about this he’ll be disappointed in your decision to make the choice to refuse to share.” Her daughter looked up at her like, “What in the hell are you talking about?”
I just say, “Cut out the nonsense.”
Kids know what you’re talking about.
Part of my attitude reflects my parenting credo, but part of that is just who I am. In all the hubbub surrounding being a parent, we can lose sight of the fact that we’re still exactly who we were before we brought kids into the world.
I’m not a big overexplainer or coaxer or let’s-hug-it-out kind of person. I don’t have that light, effervescent spirit that a lot of mothers have (and which, frankly, I envy). Why would I be someone el
se with my kids? Why would I want to model for them the importance of being someone else, fabricated from tips gleaned on the Internet?
Brody, age four, could give a seminar on talking back. Not long ago I let Reece borrow a pair of my stud earrings. She went into the bathroom to use the mirror to put them on and dropped one down the drain. Laird was due home soon, and I thought I’d let him do the honors. Reece, dutifully, got out her markers and construction paper and made several very sternly worded signs warning that no one should enter the bathroom or use the sink.
A few minutes later Laird came home and I told him about the earring and as he opened the bathroom door Brody scurried over and threw her body in front of him. “If you go in there I’m going to smack you in the balls.”
Another mom might have pulled her daughter over and sat her down and said, “Sweetie, let’s talk about why you’re talking like this.” And they would go on to have a conversation about what happened. But that’s another kind of mom. I told Brody to knock it off, that talking to her dad—or anyone—that way was disrespectful.
Of course, I thought it was funny as shit.
When Laird and I had girls, we thought, “Aw! Little girls! We’ll have to protect them.” But by the time both of them were four we thought, good luck world.
• • •
I suspect it’s easier for the mothers of easy children to justify the adult, conversational approach to discipline. Maybe if my girls were less like their father and me, I’d try this tactic, too. Just sit them down for a nice, cozy girlfriend chat about why they shouldn’t pitch fits, pinch and slug each other, break stuff, tell their little girl whoppers, tattle on each other, and all the other stuff kids just naturally do.
Laird wrote a book called Force of Nature and that pretty much sums up the character of Brody, also known as the Most Strong-Willed Child God Ever Put Breath In.
Brody is a fighter. She loves a good tussle. She’s a complicated little being. We call her the Cat of the House. If you approach her for a kiss, she won’t have anything to do with you; if you’re busy doing something else, that’s when she’ll want to snuggle on your lap.
Once, she bit Reece and hung on, like some little pit bull. Even though she’s the older sister, and twice the size of Brody, Reece is a lover not a fighter. She won’t defend herself. I pulled Brody off her sister, spanked her, and sent her to her room. Then marched outside, where I stood by the side of the house and wept. What kind of monster was I? At that moment Laird drove up in his truck. He hurried over. What was up with me sobbing by the garbage cans? I told him what happened and he was nonplussed. I was comforted by his lack of alarm. He rubbed my back and said, “Haven’t you ever seen mother lions cuff their cubs?”
I am aware of how little say I have with Brody. Her fierceness surprises even me. In order to get her biting under control, we made a contract with her; when she misbehaves, she can choose either a spanking or a time-out for her punishment. She stood there in her little shorts and bare feet and bright yellow banshee hair and considered this. She’s not one to simply react.
“How hard will you spank me?” she asked.
She wanted me to give her a sample of what she was in for. Because she’d much rather have the spanking than the time-out, because a spanking is over and done with, and then she can go about her business. A time-out doesn’t hurt, but it’s drudgery, and that’s the last thing she wants.
Only a few hours before writing this I pulled Brody aside and said, “Listen, you’ve been a bit rude lately, and you are not listening at all. Also, you need to stop fighting with everyone about everything. I want you to know that I’m going to start pulling on your ear a little.”
Another child might have been instantly afraid or alarmed by this, but Brody was intrigued. “What do you mean?”
“When you bite people, or are very rude, I’m going to give your ear a little yank. And I’m also going to give Katie permission to do it, too.” Katie is our babysitter.
“Really?” said Brody.
“Here, I’ll show you.” I gave her ear a tug.
“Owww,” she said. She rubbed her ear, but she was completely calm. She was still more intrigued by this new development in our interactions.
“Only it will be harder. And I want you to think about this before you bite someone, or pick a fight, or are rude to us.”
“And Katie gets permission, too?” she said.
This is what I deal with.
A WORD ABOUT COLLEGE
Part of being a good parent in these modern times is creating a childhood that positions our children to get into a top college.
Not.
Or at least not around here.
I want our kids to be kids as long as possible. My friend tells her college-age daughter to venture out and have fun and explore and experiment. Make some mistakes, and go down this path, no this one, no this one, wait! Go ahead and take a year off to live in Peru. Because, as my friend says, in this life we’re old for a really long time.
Take my four-year-old to be interviewed for a prep-school-track kindergarten?
Kill me now.
College is terrific, don’t get me wrong. My college experience was invaluable. I wouldn’t have had my volleyball career without it. But part of our job as parents is to raise contributing members of society. This isn’t the same as driving your offspring through four years of college, as if they’re cows on the range.
The truth is: college is awesome for some people but not for others. If it’s not for you, it’s lunacy to rack up six figures in debt trying to stuff your square-peg self into the round hole of higher education. And just cruising through four years of course work and partying to earn a business degree doesn’t float the boat anymore, if it ever did.
A better education is one that teaches kids to look for opportunities, to scan the world and find a space that only they can fill. Neither Laird nor I come from money or privilege. Everything we’ve achieved has been through hard work, persistence, and, yes, a lot of luck. Being able to recognize an opportunity and seize it is a key skill; we want to teach our girls that skill, and also the value of hard work. If they leave our house knowing their strengths and weaknesses, their genuine interests, and how to work hard, we have faith that they’ll succeed.
PARENTING IS FOR ADULTS
Our kids are going to grow up no matter how we parent them. Also, they’re pretty resilient. The planet wouldn’t be groaning with so many humans if we weren’t.
I try to parent my children in a way that’s in sync with my personality. When we don’t trust our instincts, when we act in a way we think we’re “supposed” to, when we start thinking that someone else has a better idea about how to be a parent to our children than we do, we do nothing but add to the crazy stress of family living.
As someone said to me just the other day, “Stop ‘shoulding’ on yourself.”
Laird has an interesting perspective on the whole thing: our kids are going to get older and taller and turn eighteen no matter what we do. For him, the parenting journey is for the parents. How do you function on no sleep? How do you function when a little baby is screaming her head off for weeks on end? How do you function when you must put your child’s needs, always, endlessly, before your own?
Parenting teaches us all, finally, to grow the hell up.
7
BEAUTY AND OUR INNER BEAST
Not long ago I showed up for a magazine shoot and the photographer, upon seeing me, stopped in his tracks, widened his eyes, threw open his arms, and exclaimed, “Gabrielle, I am amazed at how good you still look.” He’s a genuinely nice person in a field filled with sometimes not-so-nice people, and it’s possible he regretted that tiny word “still” the second it tumbled out of his mouth, but he went on to overcompensate, praising the state of my skin, “even though you’ve spent so much time in the sun,” and my figure, “even though you’ve had two kids.”
He meant well, and yet every sentence he uttered dead-ended in the sa
me place: even though I can still rock a magazine spread with the help of Photoshop, I am not the hot-ta-ta boffo babe I once was.(Please hear the sarcasm, dear reader.) I am, like everyone else in the world, getting older.
I’m forty-two as I write this; by the time it’s published, I will be forty-three, closer to forty-five than I am to forty. Some days I catch a glimpse of myself in the rearview mirror of my truck, without my sunglasses, and I’m shocked. The Hawaiian midday sun is like HDTV. I notice a new line beneath my eyes. Or I twist my forearm a certain way and see that the elasticity of my skin has decreased.
And you know what my next thought is going to be, but, sister, I’m not going there. I am not going to think it. It’s counterproductive, it doesn’t serve me, and it doesn’t make me feel good. In this regard I follow the teachings of Meryl Streep who said, “Put blinders on those things that conspire to hold you back, especially the ones in your own head.” I don’t need to say anything to myself, ever, that involves the phrase “old bag.”
Even the way my clothes fit is beginning to change. People think that because I can walk around in my running tights, and maybe take my shirt off and there’s my sports bra or tank top, that somehow I’ve managed to cheat the determined demon known as aging, but I haven’t. My body is changing, just like everyone else’s.
GET REAL
Age is coming for us all. And the question is, do you want to take it on the chin and be grateful for your health and vitality, for the ability to move your body and partake of life, or do you want to be bitter and self-conscious and spend your time, energy, and money worshipping at the altar of plastic surgery? This isn’t to say there aren’t procedures out there that can make you look better, fresher, and, yes, younger—for a while. Then, you start looking like a woman I see at my local market in Malibu from time to time, who looks not young and vital, but like a sad, panic-stricken not-young woman who has had so much work done, all she is managing to convey to the world is her fear and insecurity.
My Foot Is Too Big for the Glass Slipper: A Guide to the Less Than Perfect Life Page 9