Sep. 22, 2005 – Originally published by CNC, Inc. – Dateline: Deirdre's Castle

Love – American Mommy style

Have you ever noticed that its very easy to embarrass your kids with your own behavior?  (I bet you haven’t, it’s probably just me).  I remember back in the seventies when my own mom had a propensity for wearing sneakers we called fish-heads (you know, the ones with the white rubber toes) and she also liked to engage in the then-cutting edge practice of yoga, even if my friends were over after school.  And when she combined the two – actually doing yoga while wearing fish-heads – well, forget it!  (Like I was so cool in my striped hip-huggers, peasant blouse and cornrows hairstyle).

Well, it seems I’ve blossomed into a fine little embarrasser myself, and with all age levels.  All my kids, my nineteen–year-old, my fifteen-year-old, and even my traitor-ish six-year-old, do a lot of eye-rolling when I’m around these days.  Take my oldest, whom I recently drove four hours straight for to bring him home from college up in Vermont.  He seemed to be reluctant to leave me alone with any of his friends, but was finally ripped away from mme by his R.A. who needed to check him out of his dorm room for the year.  After smiling politely at a group of assembled teenagers, who by the way seemed very tired (they must be doing a lot of studying to be so tired!) I grinned goofily at the whole bunch and for some reason blurted out, “So, what’s up in ya’lls hood?”  Dead silence.  Then uncomfortable silence, followed by some squinting out into the distance.  And that was my reaction to what I said.  The kids just gaped.  Apparently, when I am at a loss for words in front of college students or really anybody at all, I like to combine my speech patterns into a sort of combination southern accent/rap thing.  “Gangsta South,” that’s what I speak.  So, I tried to recover.  “The current political climate is so lame, ya’ll, its just weak.  So, rock on, or whatever.  Power to the people.”  Was I having a stroke? Now I was branching into a sort of a Hannity and Colmes/Beyonce/Shaft thing, and it wasn’t pretty. My son drove pretty fast when we were leaving campus.

The same thing happened with my fifteen year old, who had some friends over recently, a few of whom were girls.  As the girls walked by, I handed one of them a bunch of paper napkins and said, “Here you go, these are for if you need to use the bathroom later.  I’ve run out of toilet paper.  Good to see you!”  My son turned around slowly, kind of like a gunslinger in an old western, who is getting ready to draw on the bad guy.  “Mom,” he laughed, “I cannot believe you just said that!”  What was so wrong with what I said?  Chances are the girls would need the bathroom later, after all.  And I was teaching them both how to plan ahead, and also how to make do in a pinch.  This particular son also seems to not like it when I sing along heartily with songs like “Dream Weaver” or “Torn Between Two Lovers” as I drive him and his friends around town.  When did I get so uncool?

Even my little boy James has his embarrassment-antennae up.  Beofre school recently, as we were standing by my car, I grabbed his little face and said, “I could just kiss your smooshy face all day!  Smooshy, smooshy, smooshy-face!”  Now, no one could have possibly heard this, as no one was around for miles, but still he stepped back.  “Mom,” he said nervously, “stop smooshing my face!  Gosh, Mom!  You’re embarrassing me!”  This from someone whose biggest influence is a sea-sponge named SpongeBob!

So, I have to keep reminding myself that all three of them are constantly growing in their own ways, and sometimes Mom just doesn’t fit into that.  As long as we still have our long talks, and still share hugs, smiles, problems and triumphs, I guess I’ll be all right.  I’ll hang in there.  And, I’m going to go call my mom.  I guess I never realized how cool she really was back then – fish-heads, yoga and all.