Frontier Follies

by Ree Drummond

  Paige, of all my kids, was the most physically attached to me, starting when she was a newborn. For one thing, she wound up in our bed every single night during the breastfeeding months. I tried to be disciplined, as I’d been when Alex was a baby, and put her back in her crib after the middle-of-the-night feedings. But when Paige woke up crying, I was so exhausted (second child and all) that I just took her back to bed with me, hooked her on, and fell back into a deep sleep. This went on for months, so we had plenty of Paigie/Mama time. For another thing, she was just a squishy and delicious child, with fat Michelin baby legs and the sweetest nose-crinkling, toothless grin. Where I’d been a cautious new mother with Alex and had handled her more delicately and purposefully, I couldn’t get enough of baby Paige and was constantly sniffing her head, squeezing her thunder thighs, and eating her up.

  Of all the kids, Paige had the hardest time being away from me as a young child. When I had to stay in the hospital with Todd for the first couple of weeks following his birth, Paige felt my physical absence and plastered herself to me during our brief visits. If I’d had a pouch, she would have gladly crawled inside of it and lived there. During her early elementary years, she’d hug me and exclaim, “I love you so much,” with so much emotion that I felt it rather than heard it. Ladd noticed and often remarked about Paige’s palpable connection to me, and while I was absolutely loath to concede that I had any deeper feelings for her than for Alex and the boys, I always felt the bond, too. She was my sweet Paigie girl. I’m crying as I write this! Waaahhhh.

  As Paige got older and moved into her preteen and teenage years, we remained close . . . but things between us grew more complicated, as often happens between mothers and daughters (right, Mom?). For one thing, Paige grew very tall (over six feet) . . . and she developed a personality to match her towering height. She was (and is) very strong, very headstrong, completely self-aware, and pretty much always certain of what she wants and how she feels. Basically I’m trying to say the word “bossy” without saying the word, which I just did—but actually, “bossy” doesn’t do Paige justice. She’s complex and layered, with a very soft underbelly and an even softer heart. Just don’t even think about crossing her. (I’m only halfway kidding.)

  I actually love that Paige is this way, because I don’t worry about her like I did when she was young. Today she wouldn’t think twice about taking out anyone that posed a danger to her (or anyone she loves), and she could probably throw most average humans on the ground in a headlock within two minutes. So there’s that. But also, when I think about relationships that might happen in Paige’s future, I feel so good knowing she’ll always be willing to be completely forthcoming with her feelings, concerns, complaints, and expectations. She won’t be a pushover, and whoever her life partner turns out to be, they won’t ever wonder where they stand with her.

  So back to me being the wrong kind of mom for Paige. Again, she would never agree that I was anything but the right mom, and she is clear in her love and regard for me. Unless I’ve ticked her off about something, which happens regularly. However, there were four major ways I know I fell short for her during her adolescence, not because of what I did, but who I was. (And, most notably, who I wasn’t.)

  First, I was not a crafty mother. While I made feeble attempts to occupy the girls’ time with arts and crafts projects (which I probably purchased in the form of beginner boxed kits from Hobby Lobby) when they were little, I’ve always been much more comfortable in the kitchen, and in high school, when we had the choice of taking cooking or sewing class, I always chose the food route. I’m Ree Drummond, and I’ve never used a sewing machine. I do not own a glue gun. I can hardly sew on a button. For reasons I don’t fully understand, the thought of having a closet full of tempera paint, scissors, and beads makes me feel like bursting into tears and running away. And while Alex couldn’t have cared less about crafting, I could sense that Paige was always looking in drawers and rummaging through closets, wondering where the glitter—the glitter that all good moms have—was being kept. This became even more difficult in junior high, once the girls started attending a homeschooling co-op in the city. Paige became friends with some of the other homeschooling children, but only the ones whose moms had dedicated craft rooms in their homes. One mom had a dedicated craft floor in her home, with separate rooms for sewing, painting, and scrapbooking. Paige didn’t understand how this whole aspect of her childhood had gone so wrong.

  Second, I was a tardy mother. All the time. To everything. I have wrestled with this over the years, I’m not proud of it, I’ve tried to shame myself into getting better, and I’m trying to change this very fundamental flaw in myself. I’m late to church, for goodness sake. Alex never really cared; she’s cut from the same cloth as me, and didn’t complain (or even mention) when I made her late to soccer practice, co-op, Sunday school, or birthday parties. Thank you, Alex! You’re the greatest. But for Paige, this was all completely inexcusable and unforgivable. For her not to be ten (fifteen is better) minutes early to everything—and, in fact, to be late to many things—was a cause of great stress to her as a young teenager. After enough late episodes, until she got her driver’s license, she started asking Ladd (who’s also routinely ten to fifteen minutes early for everything) to drive her places instead. I’ll bet they spent all their time in the car talking smack about me and my lateness. Haters!

  Third, on a more superficial level, I did not dress like the other mothers. After a few years of my showing up to her soccer and volleyball games (and homeschool co-op days) wearing some variation of a loose, flowy, floral shirt, dangly earrings, and skinny jeans, Paige asked me a simple question one day:

  “Mom, can you just wear a T-shirt and shorts sometimes?” she asked.

  “No,” I answered.

  “No?” she responded.

  “No,” I repeated.

  The reason I answered no is that I don’t own a pair of shorts, because I’m a redhead and my legs aren’t tan. And I don’t own any T-shirts because they’re short sleeved and I don’t like my elbows. But I didn’t want to go into these details, because God forbid I pass any of my body-related hang-ups on to my impressionable adolescent daughter. So “no” seemed like a much more fruitful response. Now, I did compromise at a certain point and I tried to choose cotton or gauze for their games and leave the silk-rayon blends just for my cooking show . . . but everything—absolutely everything—was floral. Poor Paige. I’ve ruined her on flowers forever. When she has her own flower garden someday, she’s probably going to plant nothing but craggy, prickly cacti. Or just fill it with rocks.

  Finally, and this is a fundamental difference between Paige and me, I’m not a mother who likes to go do things. The best example of this is when I took Paige and Alex to New York on a work trip. We had reservations in a nice hotel and after the two-leg flight from Tulsa, I was ready to plop down on one of the double beds in our fluffy, posh room and relax. Alex, again, is my clone in this regard, and at fifteen, she was content to crawl under the covers with me and watch Forensic Files for the next three hours, then get in our pajamas and order room service. But Paige had other expectations.

  “What . . . are you doing?!” she demanded, completely incredulous that I was horizontal in Manhattan.

  “What do you mean?” I asked, playing dumb and snuggling deeper into my covers.

  “Mom, please get up!” she commanded. “We have to go!”

  Go? Go where? I didn’t have any work responsibilities until the next day. “Oh, c’mon—let’s just veg!” I said. Alex nodded and agreed with me, which made things worse.

  Paige looked at the clock, exasperated. “We’ve got to be at the Statue of Liberty by two in order to get back in time for dinner, so we can make it to Magnolia Bakery before they close, because tomorrow we won’t have time! And we have to go to the LEGO store tomorrow before your meeting, then get tickets to Top of the Rock and go take the carriage ride in Central Park!” This is how Paige’s mind works. We hadn’t even bee
n in New York an hour, but she could see the clock ticking away and all her plans disintegrating with each passing minute. All I could think about was getting the most out of the money I was spending on that hotel room. The rest of the trip was defined by my pulling Paige toward my cocoon and Paige pulling me out into the world. The same tug-of-war still happens today.

  I brought all of this up to Paige in passing lately, telling her (somewhat in jest, but also as a confession) how sorry I am for the ways in which I was the wrong mother for her. She gave me a funny look and set the record straight. “You’re not the wrong mother for me, Mom,” she corrected. “It’s just that we balance each other out.” (Translation: You’re a total mess, but I make it work.)

  At least I know that Paige loves me dearly, and even though she gets aggravated with me, I still feel that same bond we’ve had since she had Michelin baby legs. And if I fall short as a mother everywhere else, I can always make it up to her in the kitchen: Nothing can turn her into putty like my chocolate chip cookies.

  This Christmas, I may give her a big gift card to Hobby Lobby, just to see how much glitter she comes home with.

  Mom Report Card

  Ways I fell short as a mother

  Bananas. I hate them and forget to buy them. F

  Math. I don’t like it and sometimes forgot to teach it. F

  Swimming. I don’t own a bathing suit. F

  Animated movies. If the kids watch them, I go do laundry. F

  Late to everything. See previous essay. F

  Daughters’ hair. I wasn’t into it at all. Sorry, Alex and Paige. F

  Ways I think I got it right

  Laughed a lot. A

  Didn’t gossip. A

  Goofed around. A

  Corrected their grammar in text messages. A

  Listened to the Eagles around them. A

  Watched Rodgers and Hammerstein movies with them. A

  Took ’em to church. A

  Loved their dad. A

  Jury’s still out

  I was strict about dating. (Maybe it saved them grief? Maybe not.) ???

  I worked a lot. (Maybe it taught them to pursue their dreams? Maybe not.) ???

  I was kinda messy. (Maybe it taught them to be relaxed? Maybe not.) ???

  Misophonia

  I have an issue, and until about two years ago I had no idea it was an actual condition with a name. My “little problem,” I’ll call it, involves being unable to tolerate certain chewing sounds coming from members of my family. It’s completely bizarre, and I wish I didn’t have it, but by and large it’s something I’ve learned to live with.

  The earliest instance of this affliction that I can remember was when I was sixteen, and my then boyfriend, Kevin, in all his Irish Catholic cuteness, took my brother Mike and me out to dinner. The three of us went to China Garden, Kevin’s and my favorite restaurant back then, but my much-anticipated order of cashew chicken wound up being completely ruined. Instead of enjoying the flavor of my food, all I could hear was the sound of my brother’s chewing, which sounded like the jaws of a vise grinding tighter and tighter. I felt exactly like Emily in The Exorcism of Emily Rose when her demon possession was just beginning to show itself and she couldn’t bear to sit in the school cafeteria because of the cacophony of utensils clanking and humans eating their food. I remember becoming physically irritated, almost enraged, at Mike’s eating—the nerve of him! I didn’t want to put anyone on the spot, so I didn’t say anything . . . but all I remember from that dinner is a feeling of agitation.

  A scene from a random movie was my next sound-related trigger. In Reversal of Fortune, actor Fisher Stevens’s character was trying to pull one over on Joel Silver’s character, and in between sentences, Fisher took a sip of coffee. Only it was the loudest sip/slurp I had ever heard, and even though I loved the movie and watched it over and over because Glenn Close was perfection, I learned that for my sanity, I always needed to leave the room during Fisher Stevens’s coffee-drinking scene. That sound! It took me to a dark place that sometimes made me want to punch him. And I had never even met the poor gentleman. He was otherwise a fine actor!

  This overwhelming loathing of sound, usually of eating but occasionally not, was unpredictable, and it would hit at the most unexpected moments. From as early as I can remember, loud music in cars always bothered me. I was the party pooper who complained, “Can you please turn that downnnnnn?” when my friends blasted the Violent Femmes or Guns N’ Roses. I loved the music; I just couldn’t handle the volume. They told me I was a lame-o as they loudly munched on Bugles, which of course was another trigger sound and made everything worse. I was such a blast to be around.

  As I was raising my children years later, I began to notice that my hatred of certain sounds—and the accompanying overwhelming urge to run out of the house when they began—showed no sign of abating. My sweet Paige would eat a bowl of cereal and my insides would come unglued. My youngest child, Todd, would slurp soup and I could feel my blood start to boil. And don’t get me started on Ladd and a can of Pringles. What kind of monster eats a can of Pringles in front of his dutiful, loving wife? I loved him so much every other moment of the year . . . until he ate Pringles. Then I did not want to live with the man at all. Most interestingly, none of my family knew this was happening, because I kept all my consternation inside and seethed quietly. I’m very emotionally healthy in that way.

  In a curious twist, I started noticing that this reaction didn’t happen during normal, everyday family meals around the table. In fact, those otherwise dreadful, ghastly sounds—the sounds of . . . egads . . . eating—didn’t bother me at all in the context of dinner. It was only when I was one on one with a kid or Ladd, and they dared to munch or slurp on a snack in my presence, that things in my life fell completely apart.

  Still, I chose to be an eardrum martyr and suffer in silence. I surged on in spite of my auditory plight. I figured if I never said anything, I wouldn’t introduce the “issue” into my family, it wouldn’t become real, and then perhaps I’d stop the cycle, if there even was a cycle. I never remembered my mom or dad becoming enraged when I chewed food as a young child or teenager, and I didn’t know where it came from . . . but I still felt a responsibility not to let whatever it was enter into my family’s consciousness. Besides, it wasn’t every day—it probably happened once or twice a month. But it was still persistent and weird enough that it troubled me.

  One day out of the blue, as I was browsing the internet instead of doing laundry, I discovered that the “little problem” with which I was afflicted had a name. The article in front of me described a little-known (at the time, anyway) condition called misophonia—which literally translates to (are you ready?) “hatred of sound.” It’s a disorder in which negative emotions or (sometimes) physical reactions are triggered by certain noises. It’s also called “selective sound sensitivity,” and I have it, man! I read the signs and symptoms and was immediately certain that this is what I had suffered with and almost (not really, but maybe) punched loved ones over throughout the course of my life. I read celebrity accounts, too! Kelly Ripa, an admitted sufferer, recounted that she almost divorced her husband after listening to him mow down a whole peach one evening. I’d never related to a celebrity so much in my life, and I made a point to mark stone fruits off my grocery list forever. They’re so dangerously slurpy, after all.

  Since my self-diagnosis day, I’ve continued my research. The most perplexing thing I’ve learned about misophonia, and I completely agree with this and can back it up with evidence, is that the most offending sounds tend only to come from those who have the closest relationship with the sufferer. For example, I have never experienced the symptoms (rage and anxiety) of misophonia while having dinner with a casual group of friends. I would never hear a restaurant patron chewing at the table next to me and be overcome with the urge to run screaming from the restaurant. The closer the relationship, the more brutal and amplified the misophonic sound—which explains why Ladd eating a
can of sour cream and onion chips can cause me to want to take a long walk off a short pier. (I can’t exactly explain why Fisher Stevens’s coffee slurping set me off, since I hardly knew him. I’ll chalk that one up to a misfire.)

  The experts aren’t exactly sure what causes misophonia. Some believe that a childhood trauma connected to certain sounds might be the trigger. I can’t remember such a trauma in my life. Others consider misophonia a sensory disorder. Some experts actually dismiss that it’s a real condition! In which case I invite them over to my house and dare them to eat a peach in front of me. Those “experts” won’t know what hit them.

  Yes, I am a misophoniac—but a highly functioning one. I even came clean to my family about my self-diagnosed condition, so they are aware that it’s a thing. But I also work on the cognitive side of things—and if I find myself alone with Ladd while he’s devouring chips, and things start to veer off course (i.e., I start plotting his demise or our divorce), I’ve learned to have discussions with myself. I try to approach things from a logical place: My husband has a right, for example, to sit and eat chips without having to modify the way he eats and somehow figure out how to turn chips into a quiet food. Who needs that pressure? And I make light of it sometimes, too. Recently, when Alex was home on the ranch, she came over and plopped next to me on the sofa with a big cup of ice. After she very loudly munched a couple of mouthfuls, I turned to her and said, “Hey, Alex? Do you really think I’m going to let you sit there and get away with that?”

  Alex laughed and kept chomping the ice. I stayed with her and patted her leg because I was so glad she was home, but I was also working out in my head how quickly I could have the ice machine uninstalled from our house. At least we were laughing about it.