“OK,” I promised. “I'll do it. I'll get you an AC.”
The following weekend, we went and bought him an air conditioner. It was small and noisy, but it made the room ice cold in minutes.
It wasn't exactly on the level of The Brady Bunch episode where they created a bachelor pad for Greg, the oldest teenager. But still, Taz was grateful for it. And once it had been installed, to my surprise, he started spending more time at our house than he had in months. He was chillin’ at home for a change— literally.
I have a good friend from childhood whose son is a few years older than mine. I don't see her very often, but once in a while we run into each other and chat on the avenue. I saw her not long ago, and she told me she was coming home from a piano recital.
I had no idea she played piano. She told me it was something she started doing as her son got older. Believe it or not, she told me, she had time on her hands now— time for a hobby! “You'll get there,” she said. “Just wait.”
I had to laugh; I'd tried studying piano when my boys were little. What was I thinking? Take up a new hobby in between potty training and nap time? Taz was about five years old at the time, and he'd seemed fairly musical, so I'd also asked my teacher to give him a few lessons in addition to teaching me.
But it was a disaster. The piano teacher was old-school, Russian, gifted, and passionate; she had no patience for little Taz, who was wild and silly. She wanted to pour her knowledge into an empty vessel; he wanted to play games. After two lessons, she basically fired herself as Taz's teacher, saying she couldn't work with him.
As she swept by my refrigerator on the way out the door, she noticed a photo I'd taped to the outside of the freezer that showed Taz at the beach.
In the image, he'd turned a pail upside down on the sand and was banging on it like a drum. He had a gleeful grin on his face, as if to say, “Yeah, I'm a wild little boy, makin’ noise at the beach, woo- hoo!” To me it was the cutest picture in all the world. But Madame Tolstoya took one look at it and said, “You know, he's always up to something.”
I stopped taking piano lessons myself a short time later after finding that the only time I could practice was 1 a.m., which my neighbors didn't appreciate, and which was a time of day when I was better off sleeping, anyway.
But hearing my friend talk about studying piano now that her son was nearly grown made me realize she was right. In a few years, I, too, would be free of most of the responsibilities of child rearing, and I could take up piano again if I cared to.
After all, I'd have to find something to do once I no longer had to supervise homework, sort mountains of laundry, and help everyone find obscure missing objects.
“Mom, do you know where my NBA Playoffs T- shirt is? You know, from that game Dad took me to a couple of years ago?”
“Mom, do you know where the Monopoly dice are? You know, the ones that fell on the floor when the board got knocked over the other day?”
“Mom, do you know where my flip- flops are? You know, the ones I took to the beach last year?”
“Mom, do you know where my math book is? You know, the one I brought home at the beginning of the semester?”
“Mom, do you know where my yearbook is? You know, the one from fifth grade?”
What am I, the Amazing Kreskin? What's really incredible is that, actually, I do know where all those things are, and ten thousand more like 'em. I dream of the day when I not only will not be asked to find all these objects, but my house will actually be free of them.
One year, Elon took the kids away on a road trip over spring break, and I spent the entire week throwing away things like one- armed action figures, toy cars with three wheels, and hundred- piece puzzles that only had eighty-nine pieces left. I stuffed them all in big bags and prayed that the garbage would be collected before they got home. If they didn't catch me getting rid of all this stuff, they'd never notice it was gone. But if they saw traces of it in the trash, I'd never be forgiven.
Thank goodness, the Department of Sanitation trucks rolled down the street the morning of the day they were due to arrive home. But I didn't count on one bag being left behind in one of the garbage cans.
They hadn't been back for ten minutes when Sport came to me in tears. “You threw away Zerg?” he wailed, clutching an eighteen- inch- tall plastic creature that once upon a time had bellowed in a deep and spooky electronic voice, “Who dares approach Zerg? Ya- ha- ha!” each time you pressed a button. Now it only moaned out vowels like a recording played at too slow a speed or a ghost from a phony seance: “Ooooh aaa- aah- oh orrrr?”
Taz wasn't crying, but he was mad— I'd thrown away his size- eight Jordans from three years earlier.
“Mom, I can't believe you did this— these are collector's items! Some day I'm going to sell these for a lot of money!” He held one in each hand and thrust them under my chin. They looked like a pair of used sneakers to me, but what did I know?
Taz and Sport scavenged a few other things out of the trash, alternating between anger at me for being so callous, and tenderness over the discovery of long- lost treasures. “Are you kidding me, I LOVE this!” was a typical exclamation upon finding a stained Terminator T- shirt that dated to the days when Ah- nold was merely a Hollywood actor instead of a governor.
Then they went back inside to unpack from their trip with Dad, showering me with a whole new collection of items they'd acquired on the road— like a key chain with a Sears Tower charm on it and a tote bag from the Splash Lagoon water park in western Pennsylvania— that no doubt I'd be trying to throw away the next time I did a big cleaning.
What can I say: I might be neurotic, but I'm not particularly sentimental— at least not about kitsch, souvenirs, and broken toys. OK, I admit, I did save a lock of blond curls from each of their first haircuts and the first baby tooth. And, as long as I'm baring my inner soul here, it's true, I saved that yucky thing that dries up and falls off from their umbilical cord. (Don't ask me why; I must be descended from witch doctors or something.)
And I'll probably be adding Taz's high school report cards to my small collections of memorabilia, too. His grades got a lot better as the year went on; one of his teachers said he was the poster boy for “most improved student of the year,” and by the final report card, he had raised nearly all his Cs and Ds to Bs.
He'd even gotten an A, inexplicably, in biochemistry. When I told that to Linda, she said, “An A in biochemistry! Holy shit! I mean, if he's smoking something, it's obviously working for him!”
The best thing about the report card was that Taz said he wasn't happy with the fact that he'd gotten all those Bs. He vowed to work harder the next year to make As.
But the worst thing about the report card was that he got one C, in the dreaded Español. Maybe I should have let him go on that trip to Cuba after all?
Besides, I'd told him I might let him go somewhere exciting sophomore year, provided he went out and got his working papers and a job over the summer. I suggested he try to secure a position in a coal mine, so that he could see what doing an honest day's work was really all about, but instead he managed to get hired as an assistant counselor at a local day camp.
It was fun to hear him complain about the children who didn't listen and how important it was to be firm with them and set limits, and how they take advantage if you don't. Ha! He didn't learn any of that from me.
It was also nice to hear him describe teaching a little boy how to roller- skate on a camp trip to a rink. And on a trip to an amusement park, he rode the big coaster with a camper who was scared. He won an award for counselor of the week, and told me he hoped he could work there again next summer.
But the best part was seeing him come home completely worn out every day.
“Oh my God,” he'd groan, “I worked so hard today! I carried eighty- nine watermelons up three flights of stairs for a party! I played kickball in the park for seven hours straight! I went crazy looking for a kid who we thought was lost, but then we realized he
was in the bathroom! It feels like all I do is work! I get up and go to work. I go to sleep, and then it's time to get up and go to work!”
Then he'd grin a gigantic grin.
“So, are you glad you took the job?” I asked.
“Oh yeah! It's really fun.”
Sport, meanwhile, was going to sleepaway camp for two weeks— his first time, and mine. I never went to sleepaway camp as a child, and I felt very weepy while he was gone. I never sent Taz, either; he was happy just hanging out in the neighborhood when he was little.
But Sport was a serious jock and needed organized sports, morning, noon, and night— something that was hard to find in New York City, but that was easy to find in a camp. Still, I kept myself awake at night making lists of all the things that could happen to him: starvation, sunburn, bears, West Nile virus.
Then Linda reminded me that we knew all these girls from high school who were always talking about how much they loved sleepaway camp.
“Don't you remember, they talked about it so much that you just wanted to punch them?” she said.
It was true, I did remember that, and it cheered me up to think about it. Maybe Sport would love camp just like all those girls I'd known when I was a kid.
Indeed, when Sport finally did get home, it was clear he'd had a terrific time. He talked for an hour straight about all the fun things they did— jumping in the lake, archery, sleeping in the woods, s'mores.
And just like Linda had predicted, I kind of wanted to punch him. How dare he have such a good time without me?
Finally, I said, “Didn't anything bad happen at camp? Did you ever get in trouble for anything?
He looked at me ominously. “What happens in camp,” he said, “stays in camp.” He would say no more on the subject.
While Sport was away I decided to take two weeks off from all household duties. I wasn't making dinner for anyone, or getting anyone a sandwich, or doing the laundry, or taking out the garbage. Within three days, the garbage was overflowing and we were out of toilet paper and milk.
And by the time Elon had done his third load of laundry, he was muttering under his breath that it was time Taz learned to do his Own Goddamn Laundry.
One night Elon and Taz spent ten minutes trying to figure out how to cook a Hot Pocket. I had made myself a beautiful salad, and I was washing it down with a nice tall glass of seltzer when I overheard their discussion.
“It says here to microwave it two to three minutes,” Taz said. “Well, which is it? Two or three?”
“I don't know,” said Elon, “but apparently we also need to use the crisping tray. What the heck is a crisping tray?”
One night while Sport was at camp, Taz took the train to his cousin's house on Long Island, where he planned to sleep over. It had been a long time since Elon and I had been alone together in our house, and we found ourselves at sixes and sevens. We hung around doing not much of anything, freaked the dog out by walking her together, which we never do, and decided around midnight that we were hungry. I hadn't made dinner, in keeping with my pledge, and Elon had decided that Hot Pockets were revolting.
We debated whether there was any place in our neighborhood open at that hour to eat. We had lived here for fifteen years, but we didn't know the answer, because we had never been out at midnight in all these years. We were always home with our kids.
We hopped in the car, drove down to the main drag in our neighborhood, where I usually see the CONY hanging out, and were astonished to see lots of places open at midnight, all filled with grown- ups— and no kids. We found a new burger place that we'd somehow missed the opening of. It was loud and fun and the food was fine.
We realized as we were eating that the dog had never been left home alone at this hour before; she must have be wondering what the hell was going on.
What's going on, Buddy, is that the kids are gone and we remembered how to have a life without them.
As long as we are still responsible for our children, we will take to heart the immortal words of Calvin Trillin, who is not exactly Dr. Spock or anything, but who wrote in a tribute to his late wife that they had agreed on a simple notion early on in raising their daughters:
“Your children are either the center of your life or they're not, and the rest is commentary.”
But this rare night out was a preview of the day when they wouldn't be the center of our lives. They'd be gone and grown up. And then what?
Some friends with empty nests have gone back to school and started new careers as teachers and social workers, or gotten the master's and doctoral degrees they'd long dreamed of but hadn't had the energy to do when they were still running around to Little League games and PTA meetings.
A neighbor devoted herself to volunteering in a school in a poor neighborhood, and got everyone else on our block to donate their kids’ used books to the library there. Another woman I know who still has a few more years of child rearing ahead of her fantasizes about just being a lazy bum— sitting in front of the TV every night without anybody asking her when's dinner or did you know we are out of paper towels. A lot of women I know get a puppy— I guess because they miss having something sweet and cuddly and messy to love.
The problem, I realized, was that for all the exhaustion and obsessions that come with being a mother, these two boys were about the most interesting thing that had ever happened to me. Even when they were driving me crazy, even when I wanted to kill Taz because of some dreadful thing he'd done, at least I was never saying, “What is the meaning of life? Why am I on this earth?” As long as there was a diaper to be changed or a meal to be cooked or a times table to be learned or a school trip to accompany, I had a purpose.
But now that Taz was fourteen, I could see more clearly that this purpose would eventually come to an end. Sure, I had a few more years ahead of me with Sport, but he was going to be fourteen before I knew it. And then what? Would I be trying to get the dog to play Monopoly with me?
In the meantime, if I'm feeling wistful for the days when Taz was younger, I can always call his cell phone. You see, with part of the money he earned at the day camp, he bought a new phone to replace the one that went in the toilet. He got his old number back, too, and even had his old message reconnected.
I'm glad, because now I can track him down when he's out chillin’. And if he chooses not to answer, that's OK, too. Because if he doesn't pick up, I get to hear that little squeaky voice from long ago on the message, and it reminds me of the days before he turned thirteen:
“Yo, whaddup, it's Taz!”
Acknowledgments
Thanks to my family for letting me do this: to Elon and Linda for eagle- eye proofreading and honest feedback; and to many friends and colleagues for sharing stories and advice about raising adolescents.
Also, thanks to my editors and bosses at The Associated Press, for their encouragement in pursuing this project, and especially to Julie Rubin, for finding a home on the wire for the “Unjumpable Son” story that was the genesis of this book.
Finally, I am profoundly grateful to Jane Dystel, the most wonderful agent a writer could have, and to my editor at Crown, Rick Horgan, who helped me find the story inside the shtick.
Copyright © 2009 by Beth J. Harpaz
All rights reserved.
www.crownpublishing.com
CROWN and the Crown colophon are registered trademarks of
Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Harpaz, Beth J.
13 is the new 18— and other things my children taught me
while I was having a nervous breakdown being their mother /
Beth J. Harpaz.— 1st ed.
p. cm.
1. Parenting— Humor. 2. Parent and teenager— Humor.
I. Title. II. Title: Thirteen is the new eighteen.
PN6231.P2H37 2009
306.87402′07— dc22 2008016547
eISBN: 978-0-307-45210-8
v3.0
13 Is the New 18 Page 20