UPDATED 9/19 – Because it’s really hard to write a decent blog post about being a good mom on my iPad. Also, that wine I was drinking didn’t help.Dinner for One. iPad Not Included.
What does it mean to be a good mom? That’s easy to define when they’re little. You feed them, you protect them, you play with them. You keep them clean.
It’s more complicated when they’re older.
Over the summer, my daughter bought tickets to see a concert being held tonight. Yes, it’s a Wednesday – but after three years of high school, when she assures me that she can handle it, I am willing to let her try.
The concert is in LA’s Miracle Mile district. Neither my daughter nor her friends are legally able to drive the others yet – and even if that wasn’t the case, I’m not sure I would be comfortable with it.
So tonight, for me, being a good mom means sitting alone in a nice restaurant near LACMA, enjoying a nice meal and a glass of wine.
It means trying not to stare at the large multi-generational family at the next table, even though one of the toddlers is emitting some truly spine-tingling shrieks. And I mean that literally: I felt a tremor run up my back.
It means figuring out how to kill more time after the waiter has rushed me out without offering dessert. I don’t actually need either the calories or the expense — but it would have been nice to linger a little longer. The concert started at 8:00. I have 90 minutes to go.
It means wandering around the Farmers Market and the Grove, looking for something to do that won’t cost an arm and a leg. I stopped in at Sur La Table for Nespresso capsules. I would have bought those anyway. I peeked inside Crate & Barrel and walked right back out. Too dangerous. Same thing with Nordstrom.
Last night’s full moon over The Grove.
It means glancing in the Apple Store window, only to learn that the new iPhones won’t be on display until Friday. Nothing to see here.
I toyed with the idea of catching a movie. But what if the concert gets out early? Or if my daughter just needs me? Better to skip it.
Should I get dessert at Fat Cow? Or would that just end up being my own personal self-fulfilling prophecy? I passed on it.
Being a good mom means driving around Beverly Hills and West Hollywood in search of a place near the El Rey Theater where I can sit and browse the web for a couple of hours.
I vaguely remember being out at night all the time in my 20s and 30s — before I became a mom. How did I do that then? Where did I go? And why do I get the feeling that even if those places were still around, I wouldn’t fit in?
I wonder what happened to the 24-hour coffee shop? Or permit-free street parking? There’s a NORM’s with a lot on La Cienega, north of the Beverly Center — but that’s too far.
Perhaps a hotel lobby… The SLS and Sofitel are both nearby. But there’s the parking thing again. Plus, I am in my usual jeans and t-shirt and remember the time we got turned away from the lobby of the London Ritz because we were too scruffy to enter. Better not try that.
Being a good mom last night meant inspecting the underground parking at the Ralph’s supermarket a block from the theater to see if it was safe and lit well. And if I wanted to purchase a small bag of Lindt chocolates and call it dessert while I did crossword puzzles in the car, that was OK, too.
Being a good mom meant being there to pick up her daughter and her friends and drive everyone home so they could get to bed by midnight.
Last night, my daughter thanked me and I felt good.
English: A small box of Kleenex. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
My husband leaves for work really early every morning, so I’m used to sleeping through the 5:00 a.m. alarm. But today was different: School has started and once again, my daughter must begin her day with a cruel 7:00 a.m. 0 period. She instructed her dad to make sure she got out of bed at 5:30, which he did. Then he tried to do the same to me.
“I’ve got another half hour,” I mumbled.
This was true. Yesterday, my daughter noted that she would rather not lug a full lunchbox around school until they issue her a new locker — and that may not be for a couple of days. So freed of the responsibility of making her lunch, I made an executive decision to postpone my shower until after I drop her off… which allowed me to stay in bed an extra 30 minutes.
She spent most of Monday finishing up her summer assignments. I remembered that the light was still on in her room when I went to bed.
“How late were you up last night?” I asked.
No answer. That means she only slept for a handful of hours. I have stopped nagging her about this. Of course, she needs more sleep — but between her studies and assignments and that dreadful early period, it’s not possible. That’s why I also took it so easy on her over the summer, when she stayed in bed past noon nearly every day, as if she could bank all those extra hours of sleep for the Fall.
At 6:30, we were backing out of the driveway.
“Did you ever read The Crucible?” she asked.
No. Death of a Salesman is the only Arthur Miller play I’m familiar with, and it’s been a couple of decades since I gave it a good read.
“The first thing we’re doing is taking a test on it,” she explained, “and I’m having trouble keeping track of Putnam, Parris and Proctor. Too many characters beginning with ‘P.'”
So we drove to school in near silence while she tried to create a mental cheat sheet on which character was which.
We arrived at our destination at 6:50 — right on time. There were already several students milling about.
“I will see you at 3:00,” I said before she slammed the door shut and began her senior year of high school.
I drove away, feeling sad that I had not taken a photo of her to commemorate this occasion. I didn’t even try; she put the kibosh on first day pictures years ago. The only photographic remembrance I will have is the senior portrait she posed for last week, and she was not all that happy about doing that. I’m pretty sure the only reason she went along with it is that it was required for the yearbook, and her father and I insisted. We were happy to receive framed senior photos as gifts from each of her older cousins as they finished 12th grade and we plan to do the same.
“I think it’s weird to give people a photo of yourself as a gift,” she said.
Not if those people are your family and friends who love you.
I got home and fired up Facebook and saw all the updates from my friends with kids who will be graduating this year, and I was reminded of the day I walked her into school for the first time, 12 years ago. The PTA at our elementary school had a tradition of hosting the mothers of the new students with a reception they called the “Tissue Tea,” where the party favors were be-ribboned purse-size packets of Kleenex.
I could use one of those right now. I have a feeling I will need a case of them this year.
The Wheatland Amphitheatre near Sacramento. Copyright 2013 by Donna Schwartz Mills
I have a ton of things to do before I send my daughter back to school tomorrow. So why did I spend my weekend driving up and down the Central Valley?
It started back in April, when we celebrated Megan’s birthday. My sister’s gift was a ticket to a concert featuring one of my kid’s favorite bands, the Irish group The Script.
There was just one hitch: The concert was being held on August 10, the Saturday before the start of school. In Sacramento. This is where my sister and her family live.
Not that big a deal, right? My usual routine the weekend before the start of school involves a big Costco shopping trip for the things I need to pack in her lunch, but most years I get the other shopping done ahead of time. And even though this was not my usual summer — I have been out of town a lot — she’s going into her senior year. You’d think I would have everything under control…
…and you would be wrong, because that’s not how I roll.
But back in April, we did not think a quick trip up to Sacramento and back the weekend before the start of school would be that big a deal. The worst case scenario might include us just sending Megan up and down on Southwest, which would free us up to take care of whatever we needed to do on the weekend. We had lots of time to decide how to handle it, so we waited until we were closer to the date.
And then in June, our niece (one of the ones in Sacramento) graduated from high school, and her brother took a page from his mom’s book and gifted her with a ticket to see the band, Train, on August 9.
“It’s in LA,” he told her, and the plan was that he and she would drive down here together to see the show.
Here’s the funny part: The Script concert and the Train concert were both the same show, because the Script was opening for Train.
My daughter and niece didn’t mind. They thought it would be great fun to follow the band from here to there and see the same show two nights in a row.
At some point in this discussion, we realized that the concert in LA on Friday night was actually in Irvine. People who don’t live here tend to lump all of Southern California into a label called “Los Angeles,” but it’s quite a distance from our home in the San Fernando Valley down to the Irvine Amphitheatre, and that distance tends to be crammed with bumper-to-bumper traffic. But hey — this was going to be special. We could deal with it.
Then my nephew wound embarking to Israel on August 7, so he was not able to accompany her. So the new plan involved my sister and niece somehow arriving here on Friday so the girls could attend the show (while the parents enjoyed a nice dinner out), and then Megan would go up to Sacramento with them and then we would get her home to us somehow on Sunday, perhaps on a plane but maybe I would drive or maybe my husband would, too. We had time to figure it out.
By last week, we had still not figured it out.
My niece had taken a part-time job and she was scheduled to work on Saturday night (which was when she was supposed to see the concert with my daughter in Sacramento). There was a chance that she could switch hours with a co-worker, which meant she would work on Friday instead (the night of the tickets her brother gave her). In that case, they would send the Friday night tickets to us, Megan could take a friend to Irvine, and then we would have to get her to Sacramento on Saturday for the second show. And since we hadn’t really dealt with this until now, airline tickets were pretty much out of the question. One or both parents were going to have to drive.
“We can all see the show together,” my sister announced. That may have been in the back of her head all along: the ticket she gave my daughter for her birthday was one of a set of six.
“We saw Train at a convention a few years ago and we really liked them,” my sister explained on Friday after I met her and Maddy at the Santa Clarita Amtrak dropoff on Friday afternoon. It was about 2:30. We had just enough time to drop their bags off at home, pick up a blanket and bottled water (my nephew had gifted his sister with lawn tickets) and head down to Irvine. We expected to get there early, which would allow us to scope out the area and figure out where to pick the girls up when the show was over.
It took us over two hours to get there.
But our plan was good: The parking lot was just opening and we arrived among just a few folks who had come to do a little tailgating before the show. The parking attendants pointed out the best spot for drop-off and pickup. We learned that it was OK to bring food in to the show, so we decided to search for a Subway.
The nearest one turned out to be at the Irvine Spectrum, a mall that was just a couple of blocks away from the Amphitheatre.
We dropped the girls off and debated where to have dinner. We tried to estimate how long we had: The show was scheduled to start at 7:00, but likely wouldn’t begin right on time. There were three acts (Gavin DeGraw was set to start before The Script)… We would want to be back at the Amphitheatre at least a half hour before the show ended. We figured we had three hours to kill.
We weren’t all that far from beautiful Laguna Beach. We could sip mojitos and watch the sun set over the Pacific…
…or we could stay close by and have a relaxed dinner at one of the restaurants in the mall.
What do YOU think a couple of Jewish mothers would choose to do? Of course, we stayed close to our kids. We ended up having a really wonderful dinner at Paul Martin’s, one of a chain of American bistro-type restaurants owned by the same guy behind PF Chang’s and Fleming’s Steakhouse (you see, the guy’s name is Paul Martin Fleming). We stretched that dinner out with drinks, appetizers and dessert. It was all really, really good.
The girls texted us with updates throughout the meal: “We’re inside”… “Gavin DeGraw just started”… “The Script is playing”… “Train is about to begin.” And as we were paying our bill: “We’re OK with leaving any time you’re ready.”
We texted them back with our location back at the Amphitheatre parking lot and drove back to my house, making it back at 11:30. This was a good thing, because Maddy’s shift on Saturday began at 2:00 p.m., which meant we needed to be on the road the next morning by 6:00.
My sister decided not to go on Saturday night. She didn’t want Maddy to come home from work to an empty house (Jewish mother, remember?), so she told her eldest daughter to invite one of her friends.
So here’s the thing: There was a time when I was passionate about music. My dream was to be a writer for Rolling Stone, like Cameron Crowe. I got kind of close: My first job out of college was writing (and later producing) a nationally syndicated weekly Top 30 countdown show for the RKO Radio network (among others). Basically, I interviewed rock stars for a living and got to attend two or three concerts every week — for free. That experience made it hard for me to justify paying hard-earned money for the crummy seats I could actually afford to buy, so I stopped going to concerts.
And I wasn’t all that interested in going to this one. The only act I was familiar with was the Script, who remind me a little bit of U2 before they got huge. It’s not just that both bands are from Dublin: I think the Script’s rich sound and the quality of their songs make them a band to watch.
The truth is, as I’ve gotten older I’ve become more and more curmudgeonly. I dislike crowds. I don’t want to deal with the parking. And I hate being the oldest person in the room.
I told my sister I would be OK with keeping her company at home. My husband, however, didn’t want to hear that. He wanted me there.
“Go,” my sister said.
So I did. And I had fun. It helped noticing that I wasn’t the only old fogie in the multi-generational audience. And the show was really good, with the three acts very well-matched.
I decided that I really like Gavin DeGraw, who was funny and charming and seemed to be having a really good time with the audience. I learned that I was familiar with some of Train’s hit songs, but didn’t like them enough to bother to learn the name of the group that performed them. It surprised me to see how popular they were with the audience, who were singing along as if they were the second coming of Springsteen. I felt like I do when I go to church with my husband and pretend to be familiar with the hymns everyone else is singing.
I ended up deciding that the cult of Train is like Jimmy Buffet’s Parrotheads. I never got into Buffet’s music, but I cannot deny that a lot of other people find it appealing.
But the bottom line is: it was worth it. The whole shebang — from the ordeal of driving to Orange County in rush hour to getting up at the crack of dawn to drive to Sacramento, and then doing the same drive back home the following day. This is something I had remind myself yesterday as we sped along I-5 for our second six-hour drive in 36 hours.
And now: School starts tomorrow and I’ve got a lot to do.
“You don’t have to do that,” my daughter said with an annoyed tone of voice.
I pretended not to know what she was talking about, but she could not help but see me stretch my right foot forward, as if putting on the brake. Since I was in the passenger seat, she took my twitching as evidence that I was uncomfortable with that.
Not true. She’s actually an excellent driver. She had a lot of practice last summer, when I broke my right toe and enlisted her as my chauffeur, taking me to and from grocery shopping and doctors’ appointments. By the time she got her license, her dad and I felt comfortable letting her take the keys for short drives.
But driving me to LAX — and then driving all the way back home by herself — is a really big step. And as much as I trust her, after 40 years of my own driving, I cannot help certain reflexive movements when some car cuts in front of us a little too close for my own comfort.
“Maddy says her mom wouldn’t let her drive to the airport.”
Maddy is her cousin, who lives in the Sacramento area, and it did not surprise me to hear that my sister wouldn’t go for that. You need to take a busy freeway to get to their airport. We were making the trip to LAX on Sepulveda, the longest street in the city, which starts all the way up near our home in the north San Fernando Valley and ends in the South Bay, somewhere past the airport. This drive would be no different from meeting her friends on Ventura Boulevard — except that it’s longer. And winds through the Santa Monica Mountains. And is prone to very busy traffic.
Ok, so maybe there was a little reason to worry.
Today’s teen drivers are issued provisional licenses, which limit their driving privileges for a year while they gain experience on the road. I learned at this year’s Lifesaver Conference that this is key to a reduction in accidents by new drivers in states that have this kind of program. Her provisional license period will end in a couple of months, and them she will have fewer restrictions on driving passengers around. And in another few months, she will turn 18 and become a legal adult.
She lives in a big city with lots of big city things she will want to do, so I want her to know how to get around. We just need to take baby steps around it. And that’s why I had her take me to the airport about four hours ahead of my flight to Chicago. And when we got to LAX, we made an extra loop around the terminals so she would know how to get back on Sepulveda and on her way home.
“Don’t forget to text me when you’re home,” I told her as I got out of the car. She waved to me and I watched her drive away before I called my husband to let him know she got me to the airport safely.
I assured him that at this time of day, traffic was light.
“I don’t like this,” he said. “I need a Valium.” He was joking, but he sort of meant it.
I attempted to finish it on Tuesday afternoon, while waiting for a doctor’s appointment. I didn’t get very far.
I spent yesterday working on my weekly podcast … and then trying to finish a freelance post that should have been done two weeks ago.
As you can see, time management is not my forte.
It wasn’t always this way. I was a productive, working member of society for a good twenty years — capable of managing projects on time and under budget. I expected that I would take motherhood in stride.
I was wrong.
Oh, there have been periods over the last 17 years when I thought I had everything under control. The gymnastics era was especially productive for me: Although I was forced to be out of the house for big blocks of time while she trained, the hours of waiting around forced my imagination to work overtime. That was when I did my best writing, without feeling guilty about all the housework that wasn’t getting done while I was with my kid at the gym.
She quit gymnastics four years ago, and I have been flailing about ever since. And lately, it’s gotten worse.
For some reason, everything now just takes me longer. I cannot accurately estimate the time I should devote to a task. Writing a blog post used to be a pretty simple matter, but now I find myself worrying about SEO practices, finding good outbound links, creating descriptive tags, selecting appropriate images, editing video if I shot it, tweeting out links and writing Facebook updates…
…and I am responsible for more than one blog.
I am not doing any of it well. And it’s frustrating.
I have worked all day today on a MOMocrats post that is really just a bunch of quotes from others. It should have taken about an hour to write. It’s not done.
Instead, I’ve been distracted by breaking news, correspondence, site administration, and the realization that BlogHer is in two weeks (which means I need to get my butt in action).
I signed up for the annual 5K Run (which in my case, will be a walk). And found two partners to do it with.
The other day on Facebook, my friend Julie posted an article about ADHD in girls. And reading it, I wondered if I might actually have an adult case of it: I feel perpetually scattered, I constantly lose things… and I’ve felt mentally fuzzy for the two months I’ve been off caffeine; a disconcerting feeling I’ve been unable to shake. Maybe the structure of my previous occupations kept me in check? And now that my daughter doesn’t even need me to drive her to school, I’ve lost all semblance of structure and so I keep drifting off-task and topic…
Or it could just be that I spend too much time on Facebook (an occupational hazard for the type of social media type stuff I have been engaged in now for years).
But maybe it’s just the fact that I don’t have a lot of time to sit and think. When everything is boom boom boom, deadline, deadline, get here and then go there and then the family is home and it’s time to shift to making dinner… It’s all too fast. And I miss those long, long, afternoons sitting in a hot gymnasium, feeling bored while my daughter trained.
I wrote some of my best posts that way.
I keep thinking of ways to try to build in some time to do as little as possible (and hopefully, get my creative juices flowing again). But I have too many obligations, too many deadlines, too many things I should be doing that never get done.
As your kids get older, the toys they want for their birthday get more expensive.
My daughter let me know that what she REALLY wants is a car. But she would be happy with the same present she has asked for at every gifting opportunity for the last couple of years: an iTunes card.
This is a relief, because shopping for her is no longer easy. She has her own taste in clothes, in music, in games, in entertainment.
“Next year, I will be an adult,” she tells us. As if we need to be reminded that she is all grown up. Almost all grown up. “Next year, I will be moving out of the house,” she says.
Oh yeah?
“To go to college.”
I will worry about that next year. This birthday snuck up on me. Maybe I have been in denial, but by the time I realized it was close, it was too late to order a custom card. She drove my car to school yesterday; so I did not get a chance to sneak out to the mall until late afternoon.
I used to be able to find plenty of good cards at the Hallmark store. Alas, while there were plenty of cards for daughters turning 16 and 18 and every year younger, I could find nothing for 17.
The humorous cards were all inappropriate; better suited for people heading toward middle and old age than a newly minted young adult.
There was a large section of elaborate cards with sounds and buttons and pop-ups. But they weren’t all that clever. I got the feeling that Hallmark is relying too much on gimmicks these days. They can charge more for a card that plays “I Feel Good.” (I bet they have to; I cannot imagine what the James Brown estate charges to license that.)
So I ended up in the aisle with the mushy cards, addressed to daughters, each one more sincere and flowery than the next. The kind of cards I never buy. And as I scoured the rack to find something that might sound a little like US, I started to cry. Yes, she was the most amazing child. Yes, we cannot imagine our lives without her. Yes, we are so proud of the young woman she has become.
I got the prettiest, simplest, most direct one of the bunch, held back the tears and got the hell out of the Hallmark store. And hope next year doesn’t come too quickly.
I’m making matzo balls today (Yes. ALL DAY. Or most of it, anyway.) So once again, I am running one of my series of old blog posts in honor of my 9/10’s of a decade writing SoCal Mom. This one seemed appropriate as I prepare for Passover. It is from February, 2009.
Yesterday, I mentioned how I’m suddenly back in the world of Facebook. I did not mention the look of horror on the face of my friend, “Elaine,” when she noted a recent addition to my list of friends.
“You friended our Rabbi?? That’s brave. I’d be afraid for him to see my conversations!” she exclaimed.
The truth is, I’m not too worried about this. For one thing, I like our rabbi. He’s smart, he’s funny and he strikes me as a very compassionate person… and while he’s obviously religious, he’s not intolerantly so. He’s exactly the type of person I would want to be friends with — if he wasn’t our rabbi.
But I don’t think he’s spending any time reading my Facebook feed. He’s got hundreds of other Facebook friends (most of whom are probably REAL friends and not just anonymous members of the congregation). And let’s be real here – the extent of our relationship has been saying “hello” when we run into each other at Starbucks. I think he recognizes me as one of the flock… but he doesn’t know my name. We are not all that active in the synagogue.
It’s not that I don’t want to be. I’ve lived in Los Angeles for 50 of my 53 years, but never felt a part of the community — until Megan started school and we joined the Temple (which is located a few blocks from our old elementary school and so was the synagogue of choice for about half of my daughter’s kindergarten class and some of the teachers, as well). Even my gentile husband — who resisted affiliating with organized Judaism — loves the people we’ve met and admits to enjoying himself once I drag him over there.
But my daughter’s athletic commitment is a 500-lb. gorilla that overshadows everything else in our family. Between 16 hours per week of training, competitions and school — there’s little time for anything else. It’s a difficult balancing act, made more so by the fact that her father and I made the commitment to send her to religious school. She is supposed to go twice a week and attend a minimum number of Friday night services.
A couple of years ago, we really tried to meet that standard — but as Megan moved up the USAG competition levels and her training became more rigorous, I’ve relaxed my expectations of her in the religion department. This year, she’s only attended one Hebrew school class per week and we haven’t been to any services outside of the High Holy Days.
Even so, she’s on target for learning her prayers — and is even ahead of some of her friends in class who have 100% attendance. I know: I am blessed with a really smart kid.
I am not a particularly spiritual person. I’m not sure what I believe. I want my daughter to be free to decide her own beliefs. I think she needs to understand her religious and cultural heritage before she can do that. If my husband had insisted that we raise her in the faith he grew up with, I would have been okay with that — but it would have been HIS responsibility to answer her questions about it. (Since I know next to nothing about the New Testament, how could I be the one?) I felt that if we did not pick one tradition or the other, she would grow up without an understanding of either.
In the end, I guess I cared more about it than my husband, so our daughter identifies herself as Jewish — even if her dad likes to insist that she’s half-Christian. We can argue forever about how you are either Christian or not — there’s no halfway in religion — although you can be half-Jewish if you are talking about ethnicity. But I digress.
You see, Megan is turning 13 in April – and we’re on track for her Bat Mitzvah. This is something that was abstract six years ago, when we joined the synagogue. Now, it’s achingly REAL. I’ve written a couple of posts here, agonizing over the planning. The entire event is going to cost us about $2,000, most of that on the “extended kiddush” (lox, bagels, salads, desserts) we’ll be providing the guests after the ceremony.
We will be hosting our immediate family and closest friends at a dinner that evening, which will likely cost an equal amount. My parents offered to help underwrite the cost and I gratefully accepted, because to be perfectly honest, I don’t know where this economy is taking us. We’re living on less this year.
Altogether, this is a teeny, tiny fraction of what most people I know are spending on their events.
Aside from the catering, the next largest expense was for the printed invitations; Megan wanted something pretty and I felt so bad about giving her such a “plain wrap” party, that I got her the ones she wanted.
Now I’m worried that our friends and family will see these invitations and expect something a lot more elaborate than what we can provide. I dunno. All I can do is the best I can and I need to stop second-guessing myself.
I just dropped about half the invitations in the mail (I’m still waiting for addresses so I can send out the rest). The train has left the station.
As for the rabbi? We’re not so anonymous with him any longer, either. On Tuesday, we had our introductory meeting with him as Megan prepares for her big day. She wasn’t feeling well that day; I’d even kept her home from school. But I didn’t feel I could re-schedule our appointment with the rabbi, as this one was hard enough to get: Tuesday is the only day of the week Megan doesn’t have gymnastics and his schedule was pretty packed, too.
So I brought my sick child in to meet with him and found myself babbling apologies over and over again about her gymnastics and how tough her schedule is. I mortified my daughter by insisting that I would send him a link to video of her (which I have thought better of doing, so have not followed up).
I like to tell my kid that as her mother, it is my job to embarrass her — but I think I may have outdone myself on Tuesday. I embarrassed myself, too.
My only consolation is that the rabbi is probably the one person I know who really understands Jewish mothers.
The social circuit in suburbia includes a number of sales parties: for housewares, jewelry — and sex toys. Another in a series of old blog posts I’m re-publishing in honor of my 9/10’s of a decade writing SoCal Mom. This one is from February, 2009. It has been slightly revised.
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
We’d been talking about having a Girls Night Out for a while, so the Evite from my friend (she asks that I call her “Roxy”) was not a surprise.
The occasion was:
GET YOUR WILD ON!
A wild and wicked evening with friends!!! You are invited to bring a friend along- please let me know if you will be doing so! Drinks, Nibbles and entertainment provided. The Love Boutique will be here.
Gulp.
I guess this is the time I have to come out and confess that I am something of a prude. Oh, I was young and single once (in the 1970’s! and ’80’s), so I wasn’t always a Victorian.
And I’d been to one of these parties before: Thirty years ago, while still in college, my younger sister was a rep for one of the first companies selling sex toys and related products via the party plan. My mom volunteered to be her first hostess, and of course, I was invited. It was a command performance.
And it was weird. There was my kid sister, standing in the middle of our living room, passing around dildos and vibrators to my mom and her pals — all of whom were hooting and hollering and giggling over the wares. And over on the other side of the room, I sat with a couple of my friends, feeling creeped out about the whole thing.
“When you’re our age, you’ll understand,” laughed my mother’s friend Stella, who used to push me in my baby carriage. Shudder.
That experience was horrifying. But what’s more horrifying is that I am now 10 years older than my mom and her friends were back then. And I DO understand.
However, this is one area where I prefer to be private. It probably doesn’t help that I’m married to a Brit, who has very definite ideas about what is appropriate and what is not in polite company.
My girlfriends are not the type of people you’d describe as “polite company.” They’re fun. And this event had all the markings of an evening that would be fun…
…for everyone but Monica, the hapless young woman who came to Roxy’s suburban home to sell sex toys to a group of mommys, teachers and Brownie leaders.
Roxy is a terrific hostess. True to her word, there were plenty of yummy “nibbly bits” … and alcohol, which was something of a double-edged sword. I do the same thing when I’m hosting a sales party. Likkering up your guests loosens their purse strings. It also loosens them up in other ways, too.
The party got off to a raucous start when one of Roxy’s friends brought her a novelty store gift she’d purchased especially for the occasion: penis-shaped drinking straws, which were plopped into each of our cocktails, resulting in lots of cell phone snapshots and dirty giggling from the guests.
The phallus motif was carried on by Monica, who handed out pencils w/similarly shaped erasers.
For young Monica, it was all downhill from there, because my friends and I behaved much as my mom’s generation did in 1979. Monica estimated that her presentation would take about 40 minutes. An hour and a half later, she was begging us all to settle down because she wanted to go home.
Some of the merchandise was pretty benign: products you find every day at the supermarket: shaving cream, bubble bath, shower gel. Even some of the more intimate items are advertised routinely on television: like K-Y’s new line of lubricants — which was a hot item at last year’s Johnson & Johnson Camp Baby conference. (Monica tried to make a case for why her company’s products were superior.)
Some of the products were exactly the same as the ones my sister showed back in 1979 (notably, the Kama Sutra flavored powder with feather applicator – the packaging is even the same).
Then we got into “the good stuff’: The “Crystal Wand,” described by Monica as a “tool that penetrates your G-spot” (I dunno – the word “penetrate” sounded a bit inaccurate to me). BenWa balls. The “Vaginal Work Out Egg.” The Magic Sleeve. The Rabbit. The Dolphin. (All I can tell you is that I can never look at these innocent-seeming animals in the same way again.)
Throughout the presentation, Monica peppered us with little quiz questions for points (the one with the most would get a free prize). At the beginning, they were easy: 50 points if you’ve ever taken a bubble bath. 200 points if you ever lit a candle in the bathroom for your bath. 200 points if you ever made love in a body of water.
When we got to the toy part of the presentation, Monica told us to give ourselves 200 points for every toy we owned. This was the end of the quiz for me – I don’t have any.
But another of the guests announced that she collects them. This is the one who brought us the interesting cocktail straws. It turns out that she — and the two co-workers she brought to the party — works behind in the scenes in the porn industry. In fact, all three women once worked in front of the cameras.
Now, I’ve always heard that the San Fernando Valley is the pornography capital of the world, and I’ve been vaguely aware that people I meet through school and kids’ activities might be a part of that — but this was the first time I ever met anyone who was a part of it and talked about it. It turned out that these ladies were a lot more expert about the products than Monica was, and the conversation grew into a lively discussion of the merits of one item over another. These women had informed opinions — which I would listen to, if I was in the market for any of it.
But I’m not. I really studied the order form, trying to figure out what I was willing to drop some money on… and was relieved when Roxy told me she didn’t expect everyone to buy: this was just an opportunity for a Girls Night Out.
It had been fun. And not a bit creepy — aside from the fact that my mom’s friend Stella was right. Now, I understand.
This is one of a series of old blog posts I’m re-publishing in honor of my 9/10’s of a decade writing SoCal Mom. This was first published in December 2005.
Each December, our PTA holds its last meeting of the year in conjunction with a holiday dinner. Sometimes it’s held at a member’s home – but last night, it was a no-host affair at the Northridge Olive Garden.
I imagine that the restaurant employee who booked our reservation for an elementary school PTA, pictured a nice, sedate gathering of teachers and mothers enjoying a nice holiday meal together.
That picture would be wrong. At least this year.
Let’s just say that a couple of the moms had about five too many cocktails.
By the time we started the “white elephant” gift exchange, these women were standing on the chairs, hooting and hollering as if they were at a strip joint instead of a PTA meeting. In fact, one of them invited Ricky, our cute young waiter to take them to The Candy Cat.
“I’m game,” he said. “I’ve never been to a place like that.”
I doubt if he got to do it last night. Shortly after that, the management of the Olive Garden threatened to kick us out — they were getting too many complaints about the noise — from the patrons in the bar. One of the moms wound up sick in the bathroom. And while the rest of us were trying to figure out who was going to drive these ladies home, another one sobered up enough to call their husbands to get them.
It’s the most fun I’ve ever had at a PTA gathering.
DISCLOSURE: I have no business association with The Olive Garden or its parent company and received no compensation for mentioning them in this post.
Friday was a minimum day at my daughter’s school, as she wrapped a week of finals before the annual holiday break. I usually bitch and moan about having to quit work at 12:00 to drive to school and get her, but not this time. By then, I knew what had happened in Newtown, and I could not wait to see my kid and hold her close — which has been my inclination whenever the nation has been touched by tragedy.
It is what I did after Columbine, when she was just a toddler, and what I did in 1999, when white supremacist Buford Furrow shot women and children at the Jewish Community Center a couple of miles from our home (after we got the hell out of the neighborhood while the police were conducting a manhunt). It was how I handled my shock and disbelief after the fall of the World Trade Center her second week of kindergarten. I hugged my daughter after each and every report I heard of a child who was abducted… or harmed… or killed. I held her close and I wondered if there was any way to ensure that she would always be safe.
I got the news of the massacre in Newtown the way I learn of all breaking events these days: from my Facebook and Twitter feeds. I had ceased working anyway by the time I needed to leave for school — but without the audio and visual cues of broadcast coverage, I had been able to stay somewhat detached from the horror. In the car, I heard the anguished voices of the people of Newtown… and the President’s speech, where he choked up talking about the babies who had been lost on Friday. And I started to lose it, too. I could not wait to hug my baby.
And then, school was out.
My daughter threw her backpack in the trunk of the car and slid into the passenger seat.
“Can I drive?” she asked.
Did I mention that she is 16 now and has her license?
I was not in the mood. I just wanted to get us home.
“The movie is at 5:00,” she said. I vaguely remembered telling her I had no problem with her seeing a movie after school with her friends. This was no longer true.
“I’m not sure about that now,” I told her. “Did you hear what happened today?”
She had, and she did not think that an event that happened at an elementary school 3,000 miles away had anything to do with her ability to go to the movies that night with her friends. She said it wasn’t fair.
My daughter’s study load doesn’t give her much time for a social life, so on the rare occasions when she wants to get out with some friends, I am all for it. But now, all I could think of was those families in Newtown, and the people who were terrorized at the mall in Oregon earlier that week — and the massacre in the Aurora movie theater just six months ago.
No, no, no, no, no.
“You’re right,” I said. “It’s not fair and it’s not logical. I just don’t want you going alone to a movie at a mall tonight. I don’t expect you to understand that now, but maybe some day when you have kids of your own, you’ll look back on this and get it.”
One thing was certain: she did not get it now. We argued a little more and drove the rest of the way in silence, and when we were home she went straight to her room and shut her door.
I did not get my hug.
A friend called me later that afternoon to talk of the horrible events of the day — and our kids. I asked her if she thought I was being unreasonable.
What I actually said was, “Am I crazy?”
“No, Donna. You’re not crazy. I absolutely would not let my kids to to a movie theater tonight! What if someone decides to pull another Batman? I bet the other kids’ parents feel the same way.”
Maybe. One of them is the child of two schoolteachers. I bet this hits even closer to home.
I felt better about my decision – but not about the world we live in, where a parent has to be afraid to let her kid go to a mall, a movie theater or even to school. The rational me knows that I cannot lock my daughter safely away for the rest of her life; I want her to be out in the world and to feel strong and unafraid. But no one is immune from random acts of violence, none of us is 100% safe. But at least, for this one night, we would all be together.
I knocked on her door and peeked in. She had fallen asleep.
By the time her dad got home, she was up and about and was no longer sulking about missing the movie. We had a nice dinner and a pleasant evening. And when it was time to go to bed, I asked her for a hug.
