THE NEXT INCIDENT is when I call Sally at her dad’s on a Friday night to check in. She seemed monosyllabic and down. Why?
“Because I haven’t heard from JJ since last night and I’m afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
“Afraid that he . . .” She can’t finish.
With much prompting, she haltingly explains that two weeks earlier, he had slept through the night with a gun next to his bed. The night before, he had said he was depressed and then suddenly ended with “Sorry. Bye. Sorry for everything.”
Because I am not a calm person, I’m one step from breathing into a paper bag. That won’t help.
What would Badass Mom do?
I think she would say: “I know you’re worried but JJ is FINE. Trust me. He’s fine.” But I don’t know that. But just because I don’t know, does that mean I shouldn’t say it? Is that how parents do things? They project oceanic calm, and things end up fine?
What I end up saying is, “Whatever has happened or not, we have done all we could. We are standing by. And whatever happens, we will be fine.”
Again, that seems to sort of work.
An hour later JJ texts her back. His Aunt Jill enrolled him in debate camp this weekend and he didn’t have his phone on him. He is fine.
“Camp!” I exult. “You see? How normal! Aunt Jill took him to debate camp!” Sally agrees maybe she overreacted.
I TALK TO my girlfriend Yolanda who, conveniently, is a therapist. I’ve named her a semigodparent for Sally, mostly so I can get free therapeutic advice.
“Do you think Sally could be depressed?” I ask.
“Well,” says Yolanda, “one of the reasons teens get depressed is that they’re not getting enough sleep. Girls enter puberty earlier now than ever before. They now enter it as early as seven—”
“What?”
“Well, they don’t menstruate for another couple of years, but they’re getting that hormone explosion. Their circadian rhythms shift. They really need nine hours of sleep, but often they’re getting as few as seven or even four.”
“All those devices!”
“Well, look at it this way. Back in the day, we—the parents—used to ride our bikes all afternoon and hang out with our friends on the corner. Our kids can’t. The way they shoot the breeze after school is on social media. It’s normal.”
“Normal! Gah!”
“Just continue trying to gain her trust. Showing that you appreciate who she is. Take an interest in what she loves, what delights her, what interests her.”
AND, OF COURSE, more backstory: we’re still in recovery from last year’s birthday debacle.
My daughters’ birthdays have always been complicated.
When I was growing up in Southern California in the 1960s and 1970s, all of us kids went to the same schools. The birthday parties were two hours, think: Pin the Tail on the Donkey, Twister, cake.
Fast forward to twenty-first-century Los Angeles.
L.A. public schools today are melting pots. When Hannah went to kindergarten at Valley Alternative in Van Nuys, she was the only blonde in a class of twenty kids. I literally had to train the immigrant families—from Mexico, El Salvador, Armenia, Iran, the Philippines—that birthday parties were something we all could do together.
My way eventually struck my own family as a bit much, being like International Day (with many younger siblings). So after the divorce, when the girls were six and eight, the girls let their dad take over. Utterly sensible, he’d limit the guest list to six, trusting the girls to handle the invites. Big mistake. My girls would invite their friends two days before and, as a result, both reaped birthdays where only one guest came, and they cried.
Although we would try to laugh about it: “Oh, oh, oh—even worse was when just half a child came. Remember? It was just the bottom half, the legs, walking up the porch!”
So last year, Sally’s first year in her new middle school, a “gifted” magnet science academy, she wanted to give up childish things.
Sally had a vision. She described it with excitement.
“Friday night, six to ten, coed sleepover. We’ll have a cookie-decorating contest, a baby food-tasting contest, and a marshmallow-eating contest called Chubby Monkey I saw on YouTube!”
She has been talking it up with other giddy sixth graders.
Small wrinkle: none of their parents know, because five days before, no actual invite has been handed out.
So here’s where I kick into gear.
Helicopter parents? Amateurs! Me—I’m less helicopter mom than Robert Duvall in Apocalypse Now. Think fleet of choppers, napalm, Ride of the Valkyries.
True: I can’t even conceive of a parent who would drive his kid from Sherman Oaks, where Sally’s school is, to Pasadena, where my house is, on a Friday night, wait for four hours, then pick the kid up. It’s like hoping for a unicorn, which is probably another thing on Sally’s wish list.
As this is a new school, I know none of these kids or their parents. But I do have the homework group e-mail list. Gingerly I pull it up. It is an alphabet soup of parental first names like JohnM and Nancy123 and then more helpful addresses like FloresFamily—or they would be helpful if Sally knew any last names.
So, wincing at the possible illegality, I send out a few tentative, apologetic notes that say, “My eleven-year-old guesses you are the parent of her friend Dan. She would like to invite him to her birthday party Friday night in a venue very, very far from you. I am not a serial killer. If this is not Dan’s dad, please ignore.”
And the first note bounces back immediately from a mom who says, indeed, we have the wrong family. And I realize I have inadvertently informed a parent that my daughter Sally is having a party and her son is not invited. Terrific!
But then a turn happens.
A dad writes, amazingly, that his daughter wants to attend the party, so the parents will drop her off at six, go to dinner, and pick her up at ten. It’ll be date night!
Another mom writes that her son would love to come but as she’s already madly chauffeuring her three other children that night, can I give him a ride?
We’re up to fourteen RSVPs, which is four more kids than I really want, for an “optional sleepover” party—but I figure there will be attrition.
The first sign of trouble is after school, when I’m picking up the children. I won’t say how many children will officially fit in my car, but I can say I wish there had been two less children. That said, it was surprising how automatically they folded themselves on the floor into sardine can position, as though this was a drill done many times.
By the time I gingerly make it back home via side streets, it is four o’clock, and everyone is starving. The pizzas are supposed to arrive when the party starts at six and so, as if in a dream, I get out the skillet and start making quesadillas. We now have seven tweens running around our backyard and it is three too many. Those creatures are big—by that I mean the girls, not the boys, who are four feet tall and punching one another.
More kids are arriving, including several who not only did not RSVP—“Glen? Hi, Glen! Who’s Glen?”—to this day, I’m not sure they were even at the right address. I had prepared a Yankee Swap present game for 14 kids, now I have 20. There were 14 reasonably good gifts—now I’m frantically throwing stuff into gift bags: stale Halloween candy, a kitchen sponge, an old tennis ball, trying to ignore the fact that they are technically wine bags.
“I saw Slender Man!” some young punk yells. Now a dozen children run out of the gate and down the street, with me running after them, yelling, “I’m texting your parents!” Back-sasses an angel-faced blonde, “What they don’t know won’t hurt them!”
I’m half-tempted to hit them over the head with a shovel.
All around Sally are sixth graders inhaling helium and shrieking the Spice Girls’ “Tell me what you want, what you really really want!”
“Oh my God,” she wails, “this is the worst birthday ever!”
BUT HERE
COMES surprising good news.
Sally has a plan for her twelfth birthday. She describes it to me while sitting at her desk, and carving troll horns out of balsa wood.
Sally wants to attend the Anime Convention in Long Beach. A gaggle of online Homestuck “cosplay” friends are coming. If I will drive her, she will be so grateful. No gifts necessary.
I am delighted this is so simple.
That same weekend, Ben will drive Hannah to her first practice SAT. “We’re on it,” the father of my children declares.
So my focus can be only Sally and on her interests!
Si, si puede!
I am going to educate myself on this. To get closer!
I eagerly don my Costco reading glasses and peruse the Anime Convention website. What fascinating workshops and panels are they offering? Sample titles:
My Hamachi Designs: Harajuku Dog Fashion
Foam Prop Making with Shawshank
DokiDoki Chu!: Sound in Anime
Osomatsu-san Fan Panel (“So you’re finally here, Karamatsu Girls!”)
Wigs 101 and Wig Repair
Hot Glue Cosplay with Snugzmeow
Learn to Yoyo
Stunt-Fighting
Closer to my expertise, there are multiple Pokémon GO workshops. I am a secret middle-aged Pokémon GO addict. My girls introduced me to it, then went back to school and got bored with it. I stayed on. In case Sally and I get separated, I will have a backup activity.
In printing out our tickets, they ask me to choose my “cosplay name.” I pick “FlabbraMom.” Logic? Sally’s Pokémon GO name is “Flabbra,” and I am her mother.
What could go wrong?
THE MORNING OF, Sally is dressed as “Dave Strider” from Homestuck (cropped blonde wig, aviator sunglasses, homemade sword).
I am dressed as Her Mother, in T-shirt, khaki pants, and New Balance tennies. Thinking ahead to the long day, I have packed a soft cooler of Costco salami and cheese. #Winning!
Whizzing south on the Long Beach Freeway, I pelt Sally with questions. “So in Homestuck, there is a ‘living’ world and a ‘dead’ world, right?”
“Well, there are several different planets—”
“Where the trolls live, right? Not elves.”
“Correct. There’s Terezi—”
“Terezi!” I exclaim, moving aside the neurons responsible for correctly spelling Saoirse Ronan (recent several-times-appearing NY Times crossword clue). “Terezi is blue. She has the Aquarius sign. She’s from the underworld?”
I think we’ve done well enough with that conversation that we now deserve a respite. After mooring the Volvo in the cavernous parking structure, we now join several hundred people in a line that snakes around the convention center. Above us, blue pennants flutter under the sun. Beyond us, the harbor sparkles.
The anime conventioneers make up a colorful group. Costume genres include Japanese anime—Asian girls with high neon pink or green pigtails—Harajuku dogs? In quasi–French maid dresses, silver disco boots, angel wings.
Alice in Wonderlanders—that’s girls and boys, often in cross-gender outfits. For example, there goes a male Alice. Rollerblading. Six feet tall. Full black beard. And pigtails.
There are assorted zombies, steam punkers, Power Rangers, Greek underworld demons, a vague category I might refer to as “Dead Renaissance Fairies,” and what appear to be floppy-eared Never-Ending Story dogs, with fluffy glitter tails (“furries”?).
It is fun to stand in this line and people-watch . . . for the first fifteen, twenty minutes. But then, with the intensifying heat of the sun reflecting on various battle weapons around me, my left (“flyaway”) retina is starting to pulse. I’m starting to see stars and floaters. I cup my eye in my hand.
In front of me is an orange Manga Man in full body suit with a trident. I lean forward, give a light tap.
“Excuse me,” I say. “Does it feel to you like this line is not actually moving?” Manga Man barely nods—although his stiffness may be due to his costume. “What’s the deal? Anyone know what the deal is?” I call out cheerfully, to my line mates. Various masked and feathered heads shake. No clue. No urgency, either.
Anime land’s gentle denizens seem to already have plenty to do with twirling and surreptitiously repairing (with duct tape) their elaborate props.
“Man, if I were to invade a country, cosplayers are the last people I would take!” I joke a bit too loudly to Sally, who looks stonily forward.
Five minutes later something snaps. “I’ve had it,” I say sharply to Sally.
Her eyes widen. “No, mom. Please.”
Tell it to the hand.
A mom on the go, I stride in my New Balance tennies past several hundred conventioneers to the front entrance. There I accost the laconic Anime Convention guy in a man bun and wrinkled yellow security vest.
“How long will this take?” I babble wildly. “What’s going on? We’ve driven five, three, seventeen hours!”
Man Bun mumbles something about some printer being broken, so they’re kinda behind on printing badges.
“I know this is not your fault,” I say, “but we’ve been waiting over an hour and my daughter and I have a critical panel at eleven.” (I moved the time up two hours.) “I want to speak to your supervisor!”
In confusion, Man Bun waves over a similarly young and clueless guy. He at least is wearing a blue Long Beach Convention Center blazer and has on his “customer service” face. He listens attentively, then produces a surprising response: “Oh, you’re with Indie. Indie films. Sundance. That another entrance.”
I have no idea what he’s talking about—then I realize he’s seeing the Sundance (Theater Lab) logo on my T-shirt. Half my face wants to go, “That’s right. Maybe I am. In Indie films. With Sundance.”
But now we’re joined by a no-nonsense chunky anime dominatrix in black leather, with blonde braids crossed over the top of her head. In more than one way, I sense she is “the heavy.”
“Excuse me,” she snaps, “is there some sort of problem here?”
With a big whoosh of hot flash, I push past Man Bun, Customer Service, and Dominatrix Girl and shriek: “Let me see your head producers! Right now! I’m from the press!”
There’s momentary confusion among the yellow-vested staffers as I blow past them into the (pleasantly air-conditioned) convention center lobby— As though I have any idea where I am going— Are they going to chase me? What of it?
To forestall being physically thrown out of the convention center, I whip out my iPhone and say into it, very very quickly and very, very tersely, like a very, very important Anime Magazine editor furious because her top-priority credentials are not in order: “Yes. No. Of course! New York is on it. The New York office!”
For good measure, I throw in some fancy SXSW language. “Artivism!” “Hackpharma!” “Grocerants!”
Speeding away from my potential captors, I see to my left, through walls of glass, the still-unmoving line of fairypeople, wilting in the Long Beach sun. There are double doors every fifteen feet. I realize, like some anime Norma Rae liberator, I can just push open door after door and let everyone in.
Barring that, I could just let Sally in—
And there she is, behind orange Manga Man. I text her: “Honey, look to your left.”
I see her look down at her phone, then around in confusion.
I tap on the glass. Tap, tap, tap. Wave. Everyone sees me but my daughter. Some guy dressed as a starfish pokes her on the shoulder and gestures toward me with one of his five golden foam points. Sally sees me and starts in terror.
You have to understand that Sally is a tiny police girl. One of her major pet peeves is jaywalking. When I’m driving, she wants both hands firmly on the steering wheel at all times, even at stoplights. “Two and ten o’clock, mom! Two and ten.”
No matter.
I shove open the doors and attempt to pull her in, with some difficulty. “Come in. Quickly.”
“What are we doing, mom?”
she wails, her skinny shoulders shaking in horror. I’m now firmly yanking a half-panicked child down the convention hall to . . . I don’t know where.
“Will we get in trouble?” Sally pleads. “I think we should go back and wait outside!”
Seeing that we’re attracting stares, I put my phone up to my ear again. “Yes, yes, the talent is here,” I say curtly. “No, we didn’t. I made that call. The L.A. office is on it.”
“I can see your home screen,” she asks. “Are you actually on the phone?”
I whirl toward her. “What do YOU think, Brad? What do you and the committee really think? Whether or not I am, or if, in fact, we are?”
“MOM?” Sally cries out, grasping my arm. “WHY ARE YOU PRETENDING TO TALK ON YOUR CELL PHONE?”
I pull us into an alcove. “Excuse me for just a moment—quick L.A. conference,” I say tersely, hanging up the fake phone.
“Why is this fair?” Sally asks. “Why should we break out of the line when everyone outside has to wait? How are we special?”
It’s, really, the very opposite of an after-school special.
“Let me tell you what’s not fair,” I say, waggling a finger. “Some kid out there drove three hours to get here, he spent sixty dollars, maybe he only has five hours to spend here, and three hours of that he’s going to spend standing in line! How is that fair?” I finish, triumphantly. “It’s sheer capitalism!”
Sally crumples in the corner, her sword collapsed beside her.
And then I see it. The Press Booth. Two bored young women. No one in line. I fumble through my fanny pack, whip out an expired NPR badge, and stride toward the bench.
“I’m with NPR—press!” I declare.
“Press,” one says, picking up another clipboard. “I don’t see—?”
“No no, we’re not on that list, we paid—” Everything I am saying is contradictory, but I’m impatient, curt, distracted by my phone. “Yes, Brad. It’s not here. New York is unaware. Ravi Joseph is on it—yep, the sleep thing, Arianna Huffington’s guy.” Riled to the max, I put my hand over my iPhone, and unveil my ultimate action hero weapon—my Menopause Face.
The Madwoman and the Roomba Page 10
