Monthly Archives: August 2009

Let’s play “Cut the Cake!”

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My family spent a great deal of time at the beach when I was growing up, a sandy, dunes-style beach on Lake Michigan’s eastern shore. Mom was untiring in her efforts to make sure we had fun there. “The more the merrier” was a motto she embraced, which meant we could invite all the friends we wanted, whether for a day or a week. She never complained about youthful crowds. To the contrary, she was energized by them.

After we arrived at the beach with our big, black, truck inner-tubes (the kind that rubbed black onto our bathing suits), Mom was always first into the water, teaching visitors to stand on their heads by going under without holding their noses. She made her shoulders available for kids nearly as big as she was to jump from. She raced us all to the anchored raft “out deep” where no one could touch bottom.

Mom never brought a magazine or a book to the beach. Her first choice was to play with children. One of the beach games Mom loved was “Cut the Cake.” Using a bucket for a mold, she turned out a cake of wet sand that was perfectly round. “Go find stones to decorate it,” she directed, “and bring something for the middle, a feather, a stick, whatever you want to make it pretty.”

We “sugared it” with the soft, dry sand and then stood back to admire our work. “Now,” she said, “we’re going to cut the cake.” With a thin stick found in the dunes nearby, she demonstrated what she meant by slicing a piece of sand-cake thin enough not to disturb the rest of it.

Handing the stick-knife to the nearest child, she said, “Your turn. If the cake falls when you slice it, you have to run up and down the dunes five times (or run into the water and stay under 30 seconds, or carry someone on your back anywhere they want to go, etc).

Each person took turns slicing a tiny bit more of the cake while the sun slowly dried the wet sand, increasing the threat of “a fall.”  At long last, someone’s slice caused the remaining cake to crumble, causing hoots and hollers from those who hadn’t lost1 the game. Mom always laughed the hardest.

The sands of time ran out for Mom, but she left behind her spirit of fun for our grandkids to enjoy. Last week I taught a child how to make a bucket cake. (Use only wet sand, pack it tight at the bottom, pile sand slightly above the rim, flip it fast). As I watched him struggle to master this “baking” task, I thought of Mom. She left a lofty heritage in many categories, and surely one of them was how to experience joy among children by playing “Cut the Cake.”

Over and under

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Having kids can put life over the top. Overworked, overstimulated, overwhelmed and overboard, which is where a mom often wants to jump. Simultaneously she feels very much under it all. Underappreciated, underpaid, undermined and under water, which is where she’d be if she jumped.

Is there any middle-mothering between over and under? The truth is, most of our days fall somewhere inbetween. It’s just that having kids, being a mom, can toss us to either extreme in a flash. We know it, and we fear it.

In our family, each time I became pregnant, I puzzled over how another kiddie-commitment could possibly fit into our over-the-top lives, especially the part about stretching the love we felt for the ones we already had, to cover over another.

But children, when they arrive, seem to come pulling a wagon load of the extra everything that will be needed, an over-abundance of flexibility, of energy and especially of love. It’s one of motherhood’s wonderful surprises.

As we plug away at mommy-hood, riding the waves of over and under, we can sometimes be overtaken by good things, too. Overworked and overwhelmed might morph into overflow, i. e. an abundance of whatever we need at the moment. Underappreciated and undermined can transform into understanding, i.e. wisdom of how best to handle a confusing situation.

Whether children are newborns or fully-grown, our challenge to sink or swim as moms will always be with us. When we get nervous about that, it’s good to look for those positive overs and helpful unders. If we see them, the wild ride of motherhood becomes a joy, sometimes even making us overjoyed.

Looking at porn

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A couple of weeks ago I saw a pornographic movie. It was entirely by accident, but that wasn’t the worst of it. Our 19 and 21 year old daughters were next to me, and I’d bought the tickets for them, rewarding the girls for helping me organize the basement that day.

I try to stay away from “R” movies, but that night it was either “G” or “R”. We questioned each other before we went. “What’s the “R” for?” I’d asked.

“Probably just a little bathroom humor, Mom.”

We should have done our homework and hunted for a review, because before the first ten movie-minutes had flickered past us, we were gasping with shock and turning away.

“Let’s get out of here,” I whispered. But once we were on the front sidewalk, our disgust bubbled up like vinegar on baking soda. “How dare they try to pass off that movie as acceptable in a family-friendly theater,” I raged. The newest Harry Potter movie was showing at midnight, and children filled the lobby. “I’m going back to find the manager.”

A smiling twenty-something asked how he could help, and I gave him what-for. Polite and calm, he used his headset to inform the front desk we’d need our $23.50 back. “But that’s not the point,” I fumed, feeling a wall go up between us. “Have you seen that movie? It’s raw porn.”

Still smiling, he said he hadn’t had time to view it but had fielded other complaints about it. Then he played his trump card. “We have to show what corporate sends us.”

Buck-passing is always ugly. “This movie has spoiled a mother-daughter evening. How do we get that back after being assaulted in your theater?” I pressed.

Security hovered a little closer. “Feel free to fill out this complaint card,” he suggested, sliding a form across the counter. His eyebrows went up with optimism when he said, “It’s got pre-paid postage on it and everything.”

Trying to burn the look of anger and frustration from my eyes into his, I couldn’t come up with words that would either convince him or change the outcome, although I did have the urge to leap over his granite-topped desk and shake the daylights out of him.

And so we left, complaint card in hand. The girls and I had a good chat on our 25 minute drive home. Although all of us felt betrayed,  the one positive was having had an opportunity to show the girls its ok to walk out of a movie, should the need arise again.

I didn’t sleep well after our disturbing experience and started the next day’s morning by filling out the complaint card, and I do mean filling it. Covering every inch of space with comments, I ended up needing an envelope and forfeiting the pre-paid stamp. It will be interesting to see if we get a response. I’m fully expecting one, because the youthful manager assured me, “If you mail the card, corporate will read it.” We’ll see.