Didn’t I Feed You Yesterday?

by Laura Bennett

  “Yes. It was as close to tragic as I ever hope to come.”

  “I can imagine,” I said, leaning forward. At this point I really needed some specifics to find the right empathetic chord to strike—this is what people do: we share our own challenges to let another person know that we understand their pain. I was already flipping through my memory picture book, past the time that Cleo shoved pearls up her nose, straight to the time that Peik had emergency surgery for a septic knee. I found nothing quite as wrenching as spending Christmas in intensive care. “How did she get there?” I queried, very gently. Sometimes people don’t like to talk about accidents or diseases, especially at fancy cocktail parties.

  “Well, she was sitting right there.” The woman pointed at an imaginary object. “On the counter at Bergdorf’s, patiently waiting for Mommy to make a special purchase.” I recalibrated my mental picture of Lily to reflect perhaps a pre-walking infant, something that sits up on a department store counter. “When just like that, some thoughtless person offered her a treat, can you imagine?”

  “Um, no,” I said, thinking: Well, it’s not unheard-of to give a kid candy at Christmas.

  “And then it happened!” she exclaimed in a hushed voice, nearly dropping her Sauvignon Blanc as she swept her other hand in front of her. “Lily jumped down off the counter to get the treat and broke her back!”

  Now I did feel some real sympathy. A small child with a broken back is serious.

  “Yes,” she moaned. “Thank God she had on her Chanel booties, or God only knows what would have happened to her paws. Four days in the hospital. Can you imagine?”

  “Oh,” I said. “Her paws.”

  “Yes, poor little Tiger Lily may never be able to have another pedicure, what with the damage to her nails.”

  “Tiger Lily? You’re talking about a dog?” I said, unable to politely hide my disgust. A swirl of thoughts raced through my head: I’ve got to get back downtown; I want my ten minutes back; why does Karl Lagerfeld design dog shoes? This woman was a walking example of exactly why I won’t have a dog in the city, especially not one that will fit in a purse—that kind of dog will make you a crazy person before you are ready to be one. Once all my circuits are snapped and I’m wandering around with my latest gay boyfriend, wearing feather boas and too much jewelry, then and only then will I have a dog. If any of my children want a dog, they can move out and get one. I need to remain a safe distance from this particular banana peel.

  ALL THAT SAID, FOR EVERY WOMAN IN NEW YORK WHO TREATS HER shih tzu like a child, there is a woman who treats her child like a shih tzu—prized, groomed, pampered, and coddled to within an inch of its life.

  I was at a parents’ meeting at school one morning, talking to one of the new moms—an attractive, petite, divorced woman around my age. She was telling me about her difficult relationship with her ex-husband. There was a distinct sound of bitterness in her voice, which didn’t surprise me once I understood he had left her for a twenty-four-year-old.

  “He really crossed a line last week,” she said. “I’m going to have my lawyer work on getting his custody rights revoked. My case is ironclad—you cannot believe what he did.”

  “What did he do?” I had to ask. After all, I often have divorce fantasies that result in Peter getting sole custody of all the children, even Cleo, who has been out of the house for a good seven years already. Just for some peace and quiet. That’s what my grounds for divorce would be: irreconcilable noises. I often tell Peter, “If I ever leave, you get the boys.” It’s all in good fun, but I imagined that this mom’s problems must have something to do with Ecstasy pills rolling out of the girlfriend’s slack mouth, or her pole-dancing friends coming over for a weekend performance. Something juicy, or half naked at the very least.

  “Well”—she sniffed, half angry, half distraught—“he packed their lunches with Cheetos, Go-Gurts, and bologna sandwiches on white bread.” She sat back, satisfied. My mouth fell open, so she continued. “Do you have any idea how dangerous high-fructose corn syrup is? It is in every single one of those products! And the cheese single must have been made out of milk from cows who have been given hormones and antibiotics. When the children are in my care, I poach Amish-raised, grass-fed, free-range chicken breasts and stuff them into whole-grain pitas with hydroponic tomatoes and micro-greens that we grow in our own kitchen. How could he possibly endanger them in this way? And undermine my attempts to keep them from being poisoned by the agribusinesses that are the cornerstones of the nation’s obesity and diabetes epidemics?”

  “It’s a good question, I’m sure,” I said. She probably took the look of shock on my face as kindred-spiritedness. I’m all for a nutritious diet, and I personally despise Go-Gurts, which are single-serving tubes of yogurt waiting to be set on a table and exploded by the force of a small boy’s fist applied to one end. They are capable of nailing a victim at thirty feet and making in a mess that only CSI: Miami could begin to unravel. But as I sat there hearing about other dietary transgressions, I couldn’t help thinking that perhaps it was this woman’s husband who should be pursuing a custody change. Her reaction was maniacally disproportionate. Junk food is not child abuse. Not in anybody’s book. I quickly made a mental note of this mom’s name so that when she called for a play date I could demur. It’s bad enough that my kids would starve at her house and never, ever forgive me for subjecting them to tofu. But even worse, here’s what would happen if her kids came to my house:

  They would have no sense of moderation when faced with the forbidden fruit roll-up. Like winter-starved animals, they would dedicate themselves to consuming the lifetime allotment of sugar they had so far been denied. They would rapidly learn to lie about what they had eaten, because they would twig to the reality that their mother was keeping them from the things they loved and craved. This craving would become so all-consuming that they would question your authority in all other areas. Soon they would be boosting Twinkies from the corner bodega, a behavior that can only lead to smoking pot and much higher crimes.

  I’ve had children like this enter my apartment, walk directly to the cupboard, remove a family-size tub of Swiss Miss Cocoa, and stand there eating it with a spoon, then move on to conquer a jumbo box of frosted strawberry Pop-Tarts. Faced with three different brands of snack chips, these children run from the kitchen clutching Cool Ranch Doritos in one hand and French Onion Sun Chips in the other, only to be found an hour later in the corner of the boys’ bedroom, curled in the fetal position amid the empty packages, unable to state their own names.

  Sheltering children from every evil in the word as if they were precious pets does them a disservice; decision making is a skill, learned with practice from the time they are small. Put a cute little bow on young Fido’s head if you must, and feed him his whole-wheat whole-meal whole-grain puppy diet. But then do me a favor and keep your lapdog out of my house; I don’t need a Milk-Bone overdose on my conscience. At some point my boys will go out into the world and have to decide for themselves what is right and wrong. One would hope that they will have ascertained by then that Krispy Kreme doughnuts are not really for breakfast and that there are serious repercussions if you leave the mother of your children for a twenty-four-year-old.

  GINGER BITCH AND OTHER PARENTING FAUX PAS

  “There’s only poop on one hand. Do I have to wash them both?”

  Truman (texting): OM fucking G, mom.

  Me (also texting): What’s the matter?

  T: A kid here at sk8 camp can’t ollie but he got tapped as sk8r of the wk.

  M: Maybe you didn’t get tapped because of your filthy language.

  T: Dude, sk8rs swear, it’s part of the credo. A kid here called me a ginger bitch.

  M: Tell him he’s stupid. A bitch is a girl; you’re a ginger bastard.

  T: OMG mom!!!

  M: Not technically, but grammatically is all I’m saying :o)

  Truman was texting me from skateboard camp. Getting tapped is the equivalent of winning th
e best camper award. I started out with the best of maternal intentions, reminding him to clean up his language, and then I got off track. It happens to me a lot when it comes to my parenting.

  I was recently cruising a mom website where women were invited to confess their worst sins of motherhood. One woman admitted—with the kind of guilt better associated with an appearance in night court—that she fed her baby purchased food from a jar. The horror. She said she had always meant to make the baby’s food herself, but couldn’t find the time. Tsk tsk. Another woman came forward with the shocker that she allowed her child to sleep in pajamas that were not government-approved as sleepwear. I don’t even know how you might find out such a thing about your clothes. Yet another poor soul declared that she washed her baby’s bottles in the dishwasher, even though she felt in her heart that the water temperature was not high enough to properly sterilize them. Well, bless me, Father, for I have sinned: say three Hail Marys and have a martini. These children were fed, clothed, and cleaned. What exactly is bad about any of that? And if these women are the measure of good mommying, then I’d better buy myself a new stick, a rosary, and a bottle of Tanqueray.

  I could certainly beat myself up over my boys’ use of colorful language, but there’s only so much I can do about it without them rightly calling me a hypocrite. I try to encourage them to be more creative with their vocabularies, but the truth is, sometimes there is nothing as satisfying as a good healthy expletive. The way I see it, regardless of how many times I try to get them to stop, they are going to swear. Cursing is a lot like nose picking—it’s going to happen, so why waste my time correcting the behavior? My effort is better spent teaching them the appropriate place for such things. Booger retrieval, masturbation: that’s why God put doors on bathrooms, I tell them. Do what you have to do in the privacy of your toilet time, wash your hands thoroughly, and don’t tell me a word about it. Likewise, do your swearing where you won’t be overheard by an adult or a tattletale.

  One time in the fourth grade, Cleo was sent to the office for calling a classmate gay. Mind you, she was not mistaken. Despite her youth, she seemed to have some understanding of the word. Back when the boy in question came to stay the weekend with us in the country, I had found him in the garage trying on women’s clothing—specifically, a silver lamé gown, which I then shortened for him and let him take home. During his visit, he tripped on the stairs and tumbled down one or two to the bottom. He lay on the landing, wailing for fifteen minutes, a reaction that can only be described as drama, and that provided further evidence for Cleo’s eventual assessment.

  When I sat her down to give her the obligatory parental speech about not calling names, I got very off track. I explained how difficult it must be to suspect that you are gay, and how different you must feel from everyone else. I said that calling the boy gay and thereby pointing out his perceived differences in front of others was hurtful and could make his situation even more uncomfortable because she had vocalized his worst fear—not that he prefers boys to girls, or Judy Garland to Angelina Jolie, but, in short, that he is different. Kids don’t want to be different, I told Cleo, they want to be the same. So she should reach out to him—maybe the two of them could find something in common that made him feel “normal.” I used air quotes.

  When my job was done, and Cleo had left the room, Peter looked at me like I was crazy.

  “What was that all about?” he asked.

  “What?” I said, proud of how I had handled things.

  “That wasn’t what you were supposed to tell her. ‘Help make him feel normal’? How about ‘Don’t call people names’?”

  I could see his point. Perhaps it wasn’t the right occasion to teach Cleo about the self-esteem issues of gay boys. Especially boys who didn’t know that they were gay, or even know what “gay” is. But it’s never too early to teach a child tolerance, and so I felt my time was far from wasted.

  Sometimes I think I do better with the little kids. Life is so much more clear-cut when you’re four. Pierson came out of the bathroom with poop on his hand. As you can imagine, bathroom issues in a house with six males are endless.

  “There’s poop on your hands; go back in the bathroom and wash them.”

  “There’s only poop one hand. Do I have to wash them both?”

  In this case my message was clear and the solution was clear, on track, and nonnegotiable.

  IN A WORLD THAT HAS BECOME SO POLITICALLY CORRECT THAT Santa Claus has to be careful whom he calls a ho, it’s no surprise that even the lowly peanut has become a target. There is a suburban myth floating around about a Massachusetts school district that recently evacuated a school bus of t en-year-old passengers after a stray peanut was found on the floor. Not an unclaimed backpack that could contain a bomb, not a mysterious white powdered substance. A peanut.

  Once your child enters the great world of pre-k education, you are suddenly introduced to the concept that a classmate might die right in front of him if he brings a peanut butter sandwich for lunch, or in some special cases, any item in the nut or seed family. Thank God soy-based meat alternatives aren’t banned, because I don’t even know what those are. I fully acknowledge that there are children who have life-threatening nut allergies and their parents must work to ensure their safety. I am not an anaphylaxis denier. But I have to wonder—where were these kids when I was growing up? Did they just fall dead under the cafeteria table, swept up with the dropped spaghetti? What is causing the rise of the killer peanut?

  There are parents with legitimate concerns, but I can’t help but believe that a few are needlessly jumping on the bandwagon. Every now and then I encounter a parent determined to have a child who is special in some way—any way—that keeps the child dependent. It’s a kind of Munchausen’s by peanut. Other kids are getting special attention, why not mine? I once knew a mother who had her son, Acheron, convinced that if he so much as looked at a peanut, he would instantaneously begin dying a torturous death by strangulation and suffocation. And, not to get off the subject, but who names their child Acheron? In Greek mythology, Acheron is the river bordering Hades. It is a branch of the river Styx, where the newly dead are ferried into hell. Basically, the kid’s name predicts a lifetime of woe that ends in misery, and his mother was going to make damn sure the prophecy came true.

  She dragged Acheron around to allergists, looking for the evil airborne particles that would cause his untimely end. After endless rounds of scratch testing and other tortures, none of the doctors could find anything that he was allergic to, but his mom decided that she didn’t trust the science. Acheron was required to carry an Epi-pen around with him in a small backpack emblazoned with a red cross so he could save his own life in case of emergency—a challenge I find most eight-year-olds not exactly up for. She might as well have embroidered “Kick Me” on the little kit. Happily, no symptoms of death ever occurred, but Acheron lived in fear nonetheless—fear of peanuts and bullies.

  One day Acheron’s mom called me to complain that my son had brought homemade chocolate chip cookies to school to share with his classmates. Also, she went on to tell me, I was guilty of buying her child a soft-serve cone from the Mister Softee truck on the way home from school the day I helped her out by covering pickup. Apparently Acheron had told her that he felt compelled to eat these treats because my son was his friend. I was trying to figure out why this boy would confess to his mother what he had eaten. Then she told me it was irresponsible of me to send homemade food instead of packaged food that had a label her son could scan for evil ingredients. Hang on, I put in. Homemade cookies do not come out of my house. The cookies were made from purchased gourmet dough, and there was indeed a label on the container, and Alicia had checked it. I’m not out to kill your kid with my store-bought homemade nanny-baked cookies, I said. I then suggested that perhaps our children shouldn’t play together anymore; I have no problem with your child, I told her, but the way you’re torturing him is driving me nuts.

  After a brief silence,
the mom mumbled something between an apology and a plea for sympathy, asking me to reconsider, as my son was one of Acheron’s very few friends—no surprise. By that time I was spooning a lump of peanut butter into my mouth and wondering what would become of this child.

  Why did this woman feel the need to unnecessarily traumatize her child? Did the thought of him being in constant mortal danger give her a sense of purpose? I have no problem refraining from dipping into the Skippy if doing that will save the life of a child, but do I have to take prophylactic measures against allergies that don’t exist? Ghost allergies? Ironically, science shows that exposure to peanuts in school-age children actually reduces the risk of allergies. Avoiding nuts out of fear becomes a self-fulfilling snack-time prophecy.

  As if raising healthy children isn’t time-consuming enough, how do these moms find the time or energy to deal with crises that don’t even exist? Once we get them vaccinated, checked up, louse-free, de-pinkeyed, and straight-toothed, and have the occasional broken bone set, who has time for any more medical drama?

  And why do these hypervigilant parents single out nuts? If the peanut is such a threat to the general population that schools “have peanut-free zones,” why not insist on shrimp-free schools? While 3.3 million people are allergic to nuts, 6.9 million are at risk from treacherous crustaceans. Lightning causes 100 deaths per year, about as many as die from all food allergies combined. Should children be required to wear little helmets with lightning rods affixed to them?

  Apparently adults need to be special these days, too. Peanut hysteria seems to be part of a wave of new serious conditions that went either unnamed or unacknowledged when I was growing up—conditions like lactose intolerance, formerly known as burping and farting; restless legs syndrome, formerly known as “Get up and take a walk;” or the grand-daddy of all illnesses that didn’t previously exist, chronic fatigue syndrome, formerly known as motherhood.