A Note to My Children on November 9, 2016

Yeah, well, this sucks. On behalf of the world, I apologize to you and your generation. Dad and I and our friends worked hard to avoid this reality, but the world has failed you at this moment, there is no doubt. And it's scary and upsetting and it feels like anger would feel better than fear. Though it's okay to feel anger and fear, I urge you to eventually channel your anger and fear into hope, love, and action.

Humans are strong, resilient creatures. I keep thinking about how scary it must have been for the generation before mine. When they were your age, in the mid- to late-60s, their friends were being drafted into the military to fight in a senseless war. There were protests in the street. Segregation and sexism were blatant realities. Heroes were being murdered - JFK, Robert Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King - and it must have felt scary and hopeless, yet humans overcame.

I've also been thinking about how scary it must have been during World War 2. London was being bombed. Paris was occupied by Nazis. Millions of people were being systematically murdered. It must have felt hopeless, yet somehow humans overcame.

Over and over, there have been in scary, hopeless times in our history. And yet humans managed to somehow overcome.

I'm not going to sugarcoat it. We are in a dark time. But we will overcome this too. History is a swinging pendulum. We are in an extreme. It will swing back eventually with some hard work and hope.

You are both in important fields for our times: art and education. Music and theater are vehicles for spreading messages of love, hope, resistance, and change. Education is the antidote to hate and ignorance. Education is hugely important for moving our world out of darkness. Once we come out of our grief, let's all focus on our art and education to heal the world. I am so proud of you both.

So, the thing is, the next days and weeks are going to suck. I need you both to take care of yourselves, mentally, spiritually, and physically. I strongly strongly strongly suggest you STAY OFF SOCIAL MEDIA. It is not going to be helpful right now. Though it feels like we want to "be with our friends," social media is not a healthy place right now. In the future, social media will be useful as a way of banding people together to spread messages of love, hope, change, and education; but right now, it's full of fear. And it's all conjecture. Nobody knows how things are going to turn out. (Read that again. It's important.) They're just spinning out their worst fears. Please try to go on a digital diet for a week. Believe it or not, that's what I'm doing as much as possible, unless I have to promote shows. I'm off Facebook for a while because I know it's not going to be a healthy place for me and it will be too upsetting to see my friends spinning out their worst fears and present pain. If I can do it, you can too.

If you listen to the news, be sure to remind yourself of the difference between fact and beliefs. Concentrate on what is actually happening. What is a fact and what is an opinion? Put the beliefs and opinions in perspective. They're not reality; they're only ideas. Beliefs are not necessarily true or what's going to happen in the future. They are ideas, and ideas change. Even reality changes.

My plan is to concentrate on the voices of Good in the world. Find the leaders you trust in, both world and local leaders. Listen to them. Stand with them. This week, we are going to grieve. Next week, the work begins. 

By the same token, make sure to take breaks from the work and from unhelpful people in your life. Though these are dramatic days, kids your age tend to be extremely dramatic because you all feel things deeply. That's not a bad thing. In fact, that's important. But over the next week or so if things are feeling too intense at school, take a break. Sierra, I will come pick you up today if you need me too. Jake, Aunt Col will pick you up if you need a little break tonight or one or two evenings (or more) this week...she is very wise and will know what to say to help you maintain perspective. If you need to come home for a while, that's an option too. Otherwise, we'll see you in a couple weeks.

Please talk to dad and me if you are feeling worried. If you don't want to talk to us, it's important to reach out for help when you need it. You both have a fantastic, powerful tribe of adults - teachers, our friends, family - who love you and would drop everything to be of service to you. All you have to do is ask.

I love you both.

Mom

P.S. If you want to share this note with your friends in the event that it might be helpful, please do.

Pam Victor is an improv comedian, author, teacher, consultant, and nice person. She is the founder and Head of Happiness of Happier Valley Comedy, the epicenter of improv in Western Mass, where Pam teaches The Zen of Improv to the best students in the world as well as bringing the power of improvisation to the workplace in her "Through Laughter" program.  TJ Jagodowski,  David Pasquesi, and Pam are the co-authors of "Improvisation at the Speed of Life: The TJ and Dave Book."   She lives online at www.pamvictor.com.

Unless you're a meanie, Pam would probably like you.

Essay: The Incredulous Years

By Pam Victor

As of exactly noon on this brisk, sunny day, I officially am the parent of a 16 year old and an 18 year old. That is astounding to me. It occurs to me that I’ve been feeling astounded all year long, as we’ve approached these milestones of high school and graduation and college. I suspect I’ll look back on these as the "Incredulous Years," the time when I was slack-jawed and humbled that the time somehow whizzed by at a snail's pace. All those obscenely long, sometimes lonely, often poopy days - when I felt like I belly-crawled through the obstacle course of cooking and cleaning and re-cleaning and care-taking and soothing and crying and earaches and projectile vomiting and snuggles and picture books and losing my patience and regaining my patience and losing it again and the long ritual of winding down to the finish line of bedtime - all those interminable days seemed to have lined up, one after another, to turn into long months and shorter years and a decade that went by in a blink.

I am genuinely incredulous as I look at my grown-on-the-outside children, and I wonder who is taking care of the babies and toddlers and preschoolers and little kidlets that used to live in our house? Who are these tall

Mother's Day 2014

humans who I look up, both physically and, more and more often, mentally? How did they ever fit in my body? Where they curled up like ferns that unfurled slowly over the last 16 and 18 years? I hope the babies my children once were are okay. I hope I didn’t them screw  up too badly. I hope I can make it through my daughter’s geometry homework tonight.

I can't get my mind around my children - hell, lately, I can't even get my arms around them...they are on the run to one place or another or too busy texting their friends or too strong for me to tackle. But I am grateful and humbled to be at this place in life. And most of all, I am incredulous. Absolutely and profoundly incredulous that we are here today. Absolutely and profoundly and GRATEFULLY incredulous when I look at my 5’9” daughter, all legs and gorgeous hair and bright eyes with all that she always has to say. Incredulous that my son no longer sleeps in our house. Incredulous when I look in the mirror at the silver in my hair. How the fuck did that happen? How is it that my baby is in high school while I am not? Incredulous when I fondly rub the baby soft hair clinging stubbornly to the top of my husband’s head, bidding it a final farewell. (Turns out, age is all about hair. Who knew?) Incredulous when I see the family-friend kids who used to dance naked after dinner in a funny noise-maker parade (which always included a hot pink shopping cart, for some reason), and those kids are now almost adults. And I look at the other parents of those replaced kids, and we just shake our heads with our mouths open, laughing in disbelief.

* * *

Pam Victor is the founding member of The Ha-Ha’s, and she produces The Happier Valley Comedy Show in western Massachusetts. Pam performs a "Geeking Out with: The TALK SHOW," a live version of the written Geeking Out with... interview series, at comedy festivals throughout the land. Pam writes mostly humorous, mostly true essays and reviews of books, movies, and tea on her blog, "My Nephew is a Poodle." Currently, Pam is co-writing "Improvisation at the Speed of Life: The TJ and Dave Book" with TJ Jagodowski and David Pasquesi. If you want to stay abreast (yes, I said breast) of all her nonsense, go to www.pamvictor.com. 

Essay: This is Homeschooling

By Pam Victor

As the high school graduation season was waning, our family and friends gathered for my son’s graduation from ten years of homeschooling as we turned the page from his time learning from home to his time learning from college.

We held the ceremony in a big, homey, old building that houses North Star Self-Directed Learning for Teens, a pivotal establishment in Jake’s later homeschooling life. The first row was occupied by three sets of grandparents (one local, one from Michigan, one from Florida), a great-aunt and –uncle from Michigan, and an uncle who had hopped onto a plane from his home in D.C. less than 24 hours after he touched down from a long business trip to Africa. The rest of the seats were filled with Jake’s friends and family friends. Like the core group of kids who attended weekly classes for eight years at our home. Jake’s first real friend who he met at almost three-years-old. Jake’s prom date. Our friend who also taught art to Jake. Our friends who run a CSA farm. My improv comedy troupe. That ragtag collection of people we are so immensely blessed to have in our lives looked up at me as I began speaking, so that I had to stop, take a moment to smile and say, “I think I have the best seat in the house.”

 Though I suppose all kids are unique and wonderful in their own ways, Jake is not your run-of-the-mill kid, so we didn’t end up with a run-of-the-mill graduation. We had a DIY rock ‘n roll graduation ceremony and celebration, complete with a father-son musical duet written by Jake, an ear-splitting, wicked tight set by Jake’s band, and a guitar-wailing version of Pomp and Circumstance. A diploma was collected. Jake wore a cap and gown worn by his cousin the previous weekend. He gave a quirky, partially improvised speech from behind his beloved keyboard. The ceremony ended with Jake singing lead on his band’s cover of R.E.M.’s It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine). They got a standing ovation.  It was friggin’ awesome.

In the creamy center middle of our graduation ceremony, I gave a speech. Me, being the mom and central educational facilitator for my son’s education from third through twelfth grades. Jake’s main teacher. His chauffeur. His defender. And, to his mind, his tormentor. 

Thank you for being here to celebrate Jake’s graduation from ten years of homeschooling and his transition to this next phase of his education and life. We are glad you all are here, and we are even gladder that you all have been a part of Jake’s homeschooling career. Our family’s homeschooling career. Thank you.

A lot of non-homeschoolers have trouble imagining what it is we’ve been doing for the last ten years. I think they picture that Jake has spent the last decade in the basement hunched over a textbook with a bare bulb swinging above him and me standing at a chalkboard while lecturing about something tedious. I guess we could have done it that way…if we had a basement. Instead, homeschooling, for us, has been…well…take a look around you. This is homeschooling. These people. You people. You are here today because you have all been part of Jake’s homeschooling. I see people who have directly taught him, like Chris who tutored him about genetics when he was in 4^th grade and Lorelie who did so many plays with us and Dvora who brought us the Teen Think Tank classes and Josh and John who facilitate the North Star band and Dan and Karen who run the farm where we learned so much and who taught about being lifelong friends and Jimmy who taught art classes and Uncle Jonah who taught him how to tie a bow tie and his friends who taught him how to be friends and his family who taught him what a family means. Every one of you. Every conversation. Every interaction. Every joke. Every moment in the last ten years has been opportunities for homeschooling. Yeah, homeschooling wasn’t so much putting paper to pencil in a dungeon while a parent lectured. For us, homeschooling has been just like life. But a tiny bit more intentional.

From the beginning, I’ve thought of as our homeschooling adventure as The Grand Experiment, where I had a very small sample size and very large stakes. It was a big gamble, but we didn’t really have a choice with Jake. We wanted him to be in school. In fact, ten years ago I really didn’t believe in homeschooling. But when he was eight-years-old, school was not working for him. He was becoming someone we didn’t recognize – a troublesome, unhappy kid who didn’t like learning. Since all this damage was being done just so he could fit into a classroom - which in no way represented real world in our society - we decide to just go ahead and take a gamble on educating him in the real world in our society. And thus began our Grand Experiment with one of our most precious gifts as the sole subject. (And he was later joined by our other most precious subject, Sierra, who homeschooled for five years.)

Immediately, there was relief for Jake. Huge relief. Within six months of homeschooling, his previous teachers called him "a different kid." And as much work as homeschool was at times, it was so much less work and less stress that what I had been going through to help him in school. Every year, we allowed Jake to choose how he wanted to be educated, and every year he chose homeschooling. As we are eclectic homeschoolers, Jake has mostly chosen how he would like to be schooled and what he wanted to study. The only curriculum we've used has been math – Jeff and I recently figured out that between us, we’ve taught from 2^nd to 12^th grade math! The rest of his schooling was largely self-paced and fairly relaxed with few textbooks aside from math.

So this is what homeschooling looked like for us: Jake did some learning at home, on his own or with a parent. But a lot of learning took place outside the home too. Jake has taken classes and day-long workshops throughout the community, such as the Hitchcock Center and Teen Think Tank and at Beth Anne Moonstone’s place. He performed in theater in many different places, like here at North Star, at Greenfield Community College, at Hampshire Shakespeare Young Company where he’ll be performing summer as Julius Caesar. He did a lot of improv comedy in his younger years, but he seems to have grown out of that phase. (Unlike me.) Jake took a huge variety of academic and artistic clubs that I facilitated at our house for eight years. He’s read pretty much all the classics – though I only remember a few book reports, he seemed to enjoy most of them anyway. He hangs out with friends as much as he wants. He’s taken French class on the floor of our family room. He’s taken online classes about all sorts of stuff, like Astronomy and Physics and Viking warfare and goodness knows what else. If the glowing staff reports are to be believed, he’s become an immensely valued member of the North Star community. He is in a band that he loves and that has taught him a tremendous amount about being part of a community, working cooperatively, being a friend and a colleague, composing music and lyrics, what it feels like to sing lead, and, of course, he’s learned a lot about music. And he has a lot of downtime at home by himself, which he enjoys quite a bit. Jake kicked ass on his SATs and the GED. This year, Jake had his first experience with a formal educational classroom setting when he took four classes at Greenfield Community College – not that grades matter or anything, but he got all A’s. Over the last several years, Jake has written a lot, including two self-published books, at least one other manuscript, and a script for a play called “Hamlet 2025” in which he placed the entire Shakespearean play in a post-apocalyptic world. Jake recently released his second album. He went to the prom. He got accepted to the college of his choice.

More importantly, over the last ten years, Jake has learned what he loves to do. He has explored many passions over the last ten years, from Looney Tunes to writing to quantum physics to Dungeons and Dragons to Shakespeare to Doctor Who to music. And that is one of the things about Jake that makes me most proud. He is committed to following his passions. From the beginning, my biggest goal with homeschooling Jake was to help him get through his childhood and teen years with his confidence and self-esteem intact and undamaged. Bonus points for academic achievements. When we began The Grand Experiment, I just wanted him to come out of it feeling good about himself as a person and liking learning. And he does. Jeff and I are so proud of Jake’s success in this area.

And I have to admit, we’re kind of proud of ourselves too. We didn’t anticipate  that when we started homeschooling Jake, we started homeschooling our whole family. As it turns out, for us, homeschooling is a whole family affair, a totally different way of being together as a unit and a different way of approaching the world than we had been before. We became a homeschooling family ten years ago. Even though Jake and Sierra are no longer formally homeschooling anymore, we still are a homeschooling family and I think we always will be. Even though Sierra is a regular high school, she still approaches her work with a homeschooler’s heart and mind – we know this because her teachers have mentioned it. And we know that as Jake moves into the formal educational world, he will do the same – he’ll be a guy who has definite interests and passions and knows how to set goals for himself to accomplish great and small things over the course of the rest of his life.

Ten years ago, when Jake wasn’t able to conform comfortably to being educated in a bureaucratic system, we thought it was a bad thing, a weakness, a failure. But it turns out that it actually was a gift, a huge gift to all four of us, because Jake led us to homeschooling, which completely transformed our whole family dynamic in the most positive way. There are many ways to be a loving, intellectually thriving family – and you all serve as models of this every day – but homeschooling has been the defining element OUR particular loving, intellectually thriving family. And we all have Jake to thank for that.

As I wrap up here – much to Jake’s relief – I am going to make him grumble. Some more. Because I have one final homework assignment. Jake, when you were born, the thing I wished the most for you (and for your sister when she was born) was that you both leave the world a better place than you found it. So as you move forward in your lifelong education, I know you will continue to explore and achieve in your areas of interest. But I also want you to please keep that goal in mind too. Perhaps it may be making the world a more musical place or a place more open to geeky people or a place that has more literature or theater or science or whatever it turns out it be. Probably many of those things and more. But to get an A in homeschooling – that’s a joke, we didn’t do grades – anyway, to complete your homeschooling, your assignment is to please leave the world a better place than you found it. In anticipation that you will kick ass at that endeavor too, I thank you with all my heart.

It's All About Me and..."The Social Network"

[It's All About Me and..." is my unique version of book/movie reviews. They are not your typical reviews, so don't complain if you learn more about me than about the book or movie under review.]
Yeah, the so-called “Facebook Movie.” Of course I’m writing about the Facebook movie because if you know me at all you know that I’m willfully addicted to Facebook. But - surprise! -I’m not reviewing The Social Network as a Facebook denizen. I’m reviewing it as a mom.

The Social Network opens with Mark Zuckerberg (played brilliantly by Jesse Eisenberg,) a Harvard University student who is about to create a new world inhabited by 500 million people. He is at a small table in a crowded bar talking to his girlfriend, a sweet-faced Boston University student who shares similar geeky interests. Or at least she wants to share his interests. Actually, we really don’t know what she wants because the “date” consists of her trying to make sense of Zuckerberg’s hyper-speed cogitations as he talks and talks and talks.

                 

Did you know there are more people with genius IQs living in China than there are people of any kind living in the United States?...How do you distinguish yourself in a population of people who all got 1600s on their SATs?...I could sing in an a cappella group but I can’t sing…or I can row crew or invent a 25 dollar PC. I can’t do the first and I’ll get bored doing the second so…

On and on he goes. And my heart sinks because I know what this is called. I know what he is doing. And I know who he is. He is “monologuing.” He’s about to get dumped. And he has Asperger’s.

I’ll pause this review for a micro-moment for some background. According to Autism Speaks, “Asperger's Syndrome is a neurological disorder that, like others on the spectrum, is marked by difficulties in communication and social interaction.” To my eye, Asperger’s is a cluster of personality traits, some of them weaknesses and some of the strengths, which present a distinctive display of commonalities across individuals. Though it is obviously insulting to say if you know one Aspy, you know them all, there is a grain of truth in there. Therefore, within the first five minutes of The Social Network, my Aspy alert was blaring in my head. Lights flashing. One, two, three cherries dialing up. Ding, ding, ding.

From that moment on, I felt like I was watching a different movie from the rest of the theater. It was as if I was residing in a parallel movie universe, watching the same flickers on the screen but seeing very different images. While the Mark Zuckerberg character was droning on and on (his about-to-be ex-girlfriend laments, “…it’s just that since the beginning of the conversation about finals clubs I think I have missed a birthday,”) I am shrinking in my chair, groaning, clenching my fists into my stomach. I am thinking, Am I sitting here in a theater with a hundred strangers watching my son’s future?

In the obvious sense The Social Network is about the high-speed, turbulent rise to fame of Mark Zuckerberg as he develops the new frontier of global socialization. Most viewers marvel at his genius single-minded absorption (a classic Aspergian trait.) But really the movie about his frustration with his inability to, quite frankly, have friends (another classic Aspergian trait.) Zuckerberg’s attempts at friendship and social acceptance are horrifically clumsy and tactless (uh, yeah, another classic…oh you know the rest. ::sigh::) As the movie continues, I can almost see the thought bubbles over other viewers’ heads: “This guy is a totally a-hole.” But my thought bubble is screaming: “He’s not an a-hole! He has Asperger’s!!!”

Oh dear. With apologies, I realize that you loyal few have read all this way for no review at all. For I now must declare myself incapable of seeing The Social Network with any objectivity whatsoever. Plus, you’ll probably see the movie completely differently than I did anyway. So should you see it? Yeah. Sure. The people I was with thought it was a great movie. It’s definitely an original and well-told story. You’ll feel like you got your money’s worth, I think. So go ahead and see the movie if you haven’t already.

But, please oh please, when you see The Social Network keep in mind that Mark Zuckerberg is not an a-hole.

He just has Asperger’s.

Quickie: Secret Toast

If only ninjas lived in my kitchen. They would sneak in stealthily, creep about on silent toes while hidden fingers produced ample nourishment. And leave without a trace. I would enter the kitchen, set about my business, in carefree ignorance of my ninja housemates. If only my children were ninjas (black masks optional), they would know how to make Secret Toast.

Secret Toast is a careful recipe of minimal ingredients, yet it apparently takes enormous skill to make. When you make Secret Toast, you leave nary a trace beyond the yeasty waft of comfort. But by the time the homey aroma reveals your task, you’ve vanished in thin air. Poof.

My children make all-caps TOAST. Yelling Toast. Sherlock Holmes would be offended by their inability to cover their tracks. A half-blind, feeble-minded dolt could crack this case. A trail of crumbs a mile wide litter the counters (Why two? How much space does it take to butter toast?) Ah, the knives (again two!) lay plain claim to butter and jam. But if there was any doubt, significant samples of both condiments blob the area in front of the toast. Yes, the toaster, the epicenter of Yelling Toast. An explosion of burnt crusts and crumbs too large to be called proper crumbs but apparently too small to be considered worthy of a plate. A plate? Who am I kidding? There couldn’t possibly have been a plate involved in this preparation. Oh, wait. But look again. There it is, unrinsed and globular, in the sink. Next to the softening butter and warm jar of jam, so close to their home in the refrigerator, but yet so far away.

O, Secret Toast, how I yearn for thee. 

Welcome, My Child, But Proceed With Caution

It’s 11:30pm and my 14-year-old son and I are the only ones awake, though apart, staring into our separate screens. I log off and poke my head in his room to say goodnight, and he quickly x’s out of the webpage he was on. Hunchy shoulders. Shifty gaze. Reeking of guilt.

“Oy,” I think with the dread of facing the inevitable. “Here we go.” Furtive surfing. This can’t be good.

As I stand there with my head half in his explosion of a room and the rest of me safely in a far tidier space, I realize the website he careened away from looks familiar. Blink, blink. Very familiar.

Holy crap.

My teenage son was sneaking a peek at...my blog.

I take a tiny step into his room, more like a shuffle to scoot my feet under the refuse coating his floor. “Hey buddy,” I say bewildered. This was not the discussion I thought we were about to have. “Were you just reading my blog?”

He looks suitably guilty and grumbles. “Yeah, I look at it sometimes. It’s actually pretty interesting.”

This is my son who is trying to hone the whole slouchy, grouchy, irony-seeking teenager act like Meryl Streep going after an Oscar. The guy who doesn’t seem to notice when I get home after being gone for three days. The kid I have to force to role play interest in my life. He’s an amazing kid, and I sincerely like him very much, but I honestly didn’t realize I merited a blip on his radar screen.

“Really? You read my blog?” I say, trying (and failing) to sound neutral. “Huh.” I scuttle back out of his pit with wonder.

He keeps his eyes on the screen and shrugs, “Whatever.”

Okay, dude. Game on. Read this blog if you want, but I should warn you that you might learn stuff here that you don’t want to know. Be careful because you might learn that your mother is a human being. You might find out that your mom is not only a mom. You may discover that your mom is a woman. (Don’t say I didn’t warn you.) You might actually laugh at something I write or come to understand my point of view or – horrors! – appreciate my place in your life. Look, I’m not saying you can’t read my blog (goodness knows I could use the readership,) but don’t say I didn’t warn you. You may be growing up, but I still need to say it: Proceed with caution, my son.

Essay: The Sweet Smell of Teenhood

I gotta say, I love being the mom of a teenage boy. There is no doubt that I will suffer my fair share of teen angst run-off at some point, whether from my son or my daughter, whose teen years are speeding down the pike chronologically and arrived emotionally a couple months ago (yikes.) Yeah, the girl teen years scare the crap out of me, but I find the early boy teen year to be a barrel of laughs. And that was said without a trace of sarcasm.

Unintentionally, my 14-year-old son Jake cracks me up daily.  He dutifully wears his snide-talking, irreverent responsibilities like a jean jacket. (He might be the first to sigh in exasperation that nobody wears jean jackets anymore, a conscious dig to make me feel old.)  Perhaps his Aspergers protects him from owning his teenhood in any deep way because to me it seems like Jake is acting out a role of a teenager that he read about in Zits or Baby Blues comics. Of course, that’s what I thought about his exaggerated interest in fantasy swordplay, man-eating monsters and Dungeons & Dragon-type violence, and that act is still going strong. I roll my eyes when he responds to a story about a decapitating cyclopean ogre with a guttural, “Aaaaawesome.” It’s been a couple years of his adoration of mythical shoot-em-up’s, and I still have money on the passing phase theory.  Please do not dissuade me from this stubborn insistence.

Maybe it’s the Aspergers or maybe we’re still in the honeymoon period of his teen years, but it still feels like make-believe. Every day is another performance of the comedy hit “My Life as a Teenager” on the Disney channel starring Jake. I swear, this kid should come with a laugh track (although it might take a warped viewer like me to truly appreciates the comedy.) For instance, the other day, I was talking to a friend while picking up my daughter from her house. I was complimenting a quilted bag her daughter has made, saying how nifty I thought it was.

As we’re pulling out of the driveway, Jake reprimanded me, “Mom. Nobody says ‘nifty’ anymore. That’s so ‘80s.” (Note: He said “80’s,” but he was thinking “Dark Ages.” As he would say, “Same diff.”) I almost busted a gut laughing. That was not a typical Jake comment, and I must admit that the worried mom that constantly resides in my heart was psyched that he exhibited the ability to put himself in the place of the general public rather than just seeing things from his point of view. (A trait that can be difficult for Aspies.)

Plus, the kid is gifting me with all this ammunition, right? If I can embarrass him with the mere word ‘nifty,’ how will he react if I say ‘flibbertigibbet’ in casual conversation with one of his friends?! As Jake would say, “Bwahahaha!” The power is in my hands! (More evil laughter.) Jake drew me a map to find his kryptonite and it starts at the word “nifty.” Huzzah!

Another great episode: When he was frustrating me one day last week, I half-jokingly told him to kiss my butt. I have never said anything like that to him before, but it was much milder and slightly more humorous than the alternative phrase on the tip of my tongue.

Jake mutters with a straight face in his most professorial tone, “I wouldn’t think that would be hygienic.”

Again, I’m sent into wild peals of laughter. Maybe you had to be there. Maybe you have to know Jake and hear his ever so slightly robotic vocal signature. Maybe you have to be his mom and love the crap out of him without condition.

Here’s another one. One day while we’re driving in the car, I tell Jake about something exciting that happened to me at a rehearsal. He knows this news is something that is an exceptionally big deal to me, but of course he responds in a monotonous, “Oh.” No enthusiasm. No support. (No surprise.)

After a brief bit of silent driving, he deadpans, “I bet you wish you had a son who was more impressed with your achievements.” Again, I’m reduced to fits of laughter. Again, I’m secretly delighted that though his Aspergers prevents him from feigning enthusiasm for my achievements, he still is able to step outside himself enough to recognize it and joke about it. I can see a hole has been poked in his tendency toward mind blindness (the ability to put himself in the minds of other,) and though the joke is at my expense I am still delighted. Maybe only another mom of a so-called “special needs” kid can appreciate this dark humor… but this kid really tickles me.

I think I’m amused by it because I don’t feel like he really means it in his heart. He even admitted a short time later, “I am specializing in biting comebacks.” Hey, it worked for Don Rickles!

I can just hear Jake grumbling now, “Jeez, Mom. You’d have to be a caveman to know who Don Rickles is.” 

Essay: There Is a Stranger Living in My House

There is a stranger living in my house. He arrived at some point in the last year. I’m mostly used to him now, but sometimes I realize that he stole my baby from me.

I don’t recognize him at all. But it seems like our entire family has agreed to pretend he belongs to us, so I play along.

Often I become momentarily disoriented when I hear his unfamiliar voice, this unnecessarily deep baritone, coming from the next room. I get this jolt of panic - “Holy crap, call 911. Some man is in my house!” - before I realize that it’s the stranger’s voice. On occasion, he’ll approach me and ask me for something – typically along the lines of “Where is the butter?” – and it’ll take me a few seconds to respond because I forget about this stranger’s residence in our lives. (I should note that he’s not often patient with my delayed responses, and often prods me, “Helloooo??? I asked where the butter is. Is anybody home in there?” He says it with what I take to be affection, so I tend to laugh it off.)

He insists on joining us for dinner every night, and we don’t mind because he’s fairly amusing and quirky-sweet, even though he often pretends to be obnoxious and hyper-critical. We know it’s just an act he puts on to entertain us. Oddly enough, by some tacit agreement, the other two, familiar members of my family and I all treat this stranger with an extra dose of patient tolerance. It’s like he’s a kitten, and so we expect and allow for a certain amount of typically unacceptable behavior, like being surly for no apparent reason or locking the bathroom door when he brushes his teeth.

I keep expecting my husband to say to me something about this stranger presence in our lives, but he doesn’t. And he doesn’t. And he doesn’t.

I keep expecting my husband to ask where our baby went, our funny little boy who loved music and dancing. Our voracious reader. Our unstoppable scientist. The cute boy who insisted on hollering to us at the top of his lungs one final “I LOVE YOU,DAD!!!” or “I LOVE YOU, MOM!!!” as we closed his bedroom door at night. But my husband doesn’t ask where our baby went. And he doesn’t ask. And he doesn’t ask.

Surely, my daughter must miss her eager playmate, the boy who spent hours playing fantasy games with her. The guy who begged, “You wanna play a game of toys with me?” I would think she would be resentful of the stranger, who inundates her with eye rolls and mocking and shouts of, “Stop bothering me!” and “Why can’t you shut up already?” and “I said, go awaaaaay!” For some reason, she doesn’t seem much put out by his actions, but I certainly am. I don’t care who this stranger is, I won’t let him talk to a member of my family like that.

Truth is, I’ve come to love the stranger. Though he’s taller than me, I can tell he still has a lot of growing to do. But even so, he seems like a good guy. I only wish he would let me kiss his forehead. In fact, the only way I can get in the rare hug is to tackle him and hold him down, which I must admit I do on occasion when I can’t contain my affection any longer.

I guess he can stay around. Heck, it pretty much feels like he’s part of the family.

I just wonder where my little boy went.

Essay: The Great Stinky Toilet Mystery

“Remember that time when we could only talk about how much our toilets stunk for, like, a month?” I asked my friend Ren the other day.

“Yeah,” she nodded sagely.

“What was up with that?” I pondered out loud.

Ren slowly shook her head in clear bewilderment, “I have no idea.”

We tried to stop ourselves. We really did. But for a significant period of time in the late 1990’s, regardless of whatever other conversational topics we conceived of while catching brief snippets of talk time at the sandbox or the wading pool or while doling out carefully cut-up, peeled, organic, locally grown apples, we were lured back to the Great Stinky Toilets Mystery.  No matter how much we scrubbed our thrones, no matter which over-priced, bleach-free, eighty-second generation cleaner we used, we could not rid our bathrooms of the cloying waft of urine. Like Lady Macbeth, we washed the same spot with wild compulsion to no avail. Out, out, damn stench. Ren’s toilets were as bad as mine, and we suspected that there was some virulent virus infecting the toilets of western Massachusetts. Pee Pee Flu Syndrome.

How does a Smith College graduate (cum laude, folks!), “Ms. Magazine” subscribing, former wearer of padded-shouldered business jackets get to a place in her life when persistent piss odors become the bane of her existence? One word: Children. Here are two more words for you: Mommy Brain. And let’s add an image to go with our words: Trying to hold water in a colander. As in, “See this? This is your brain on children. Any questions?”

During the Great Stinky Toilets Mystery era, Ren and I were in our fifth year of stay-at-home motherhood. We each had a toddler and a preschooler, one girl and one boy each, and though at this point even you can do the short-legged, bad-aiming math to solve the crux of our urinary odiferous issues, at the time we were sincerely stumped. We were too close to the situation, too tired, too beaten down and too brain-dead to claw our way out of the OCD mind loop. Yet we couldn’t stop perseverating on it. We didn’t want to talk about it. We tried not to talk about it. We made great efforts to come up with other talking points, somehow incapable of even getting a foothold on the conversational behemoth of Bill Clinton’s impeachment or the Columbine Massacre or even the latest episode of “Ally McBeal.” It always came back to bathroom stench.

Me: “Your toilets still stink?”

Her: “Yup.”

Me: “Mine too.”

Her: “Ever figure out why?”

Me: “Nope.”

Her: “Me neither.”

This conversational Mobius Strip epitomizes the challenge of my parenting years. I was a thinker in a thought-free world. More accurately, I was a former thinker who yearned to think again but had lost the ability due to toddler-induced dementia. I could see the concept of complete thought up ahead, but strain as I might I could not reach it.

And please spare me the crap about stay-at-home parenting being the Most Important Job in the World. I almost always hear that sentence crowed by people for whom parenthood is a philosophical concept rather than practical reality. Or people with full-time nannies. Obviously, I do this job because I think it’s more critical than sustained cerebral functioning, but don’t think I’m skipping along this road wearing a flouncy blue gingham dress, joyfully flinging flower pedals and singing a merry tune (“If I Only Had a Brain” perhaps?) For me, stay-at-home parenting is hard. And I pray that when I get to the end of this long road, my formerly nubile brain is there to greet me with open arms. (For the love of all that is good, don’t talk to me about the brain fog of menopause! Please allow me my denial. Leave me in peace to cling to my ignorance.)

The good news is that Ren and I made it through the worst of it. Our kids are now hovering about the teen years, and we’ve both expanded our lives well beyond the wading pool. On the rare but treasured occasion when we get together, our conversational topics open like blossoming pedals.

Me: “Remember that time when we could only talk about how much our toilets stunk for, like, a month?”

Her: “Yeah.”

Me: “What was up with that?”

Her: “I have no idea.”

The Tale of the Dung Beetle

My daughter Sierra, her friend Hope (oh! how this name foreshadows our tale!) and I were walking the dog early one summer morn. The weather was, for once, lovely. Not too hot. Not too cool. Not too buggy even. The girls brought a carrot each, a treat for our neighbor's fine equine companions. Birds chirped. Wind whispered. Girls giggled. All was well in our little piece of the world.

My little nature girl, Sierra, cried out in delight! "Look!" she said, pointing to the middle of the road. "A dung beetle!" A scarab of lore.

Sure enough, an industrious hard-shelled, black beetle labored loyally on her front feet, using her back ones to roll a small ball of dung up the hill. Our very own dung beetle! Right in the middle of the road! We didn't even realize they existed in America, for I had only seen them in Africa on TV. (No, I didn't not watch TV in Africa. The TV was state-side but the video showed Africa. But I digress.)

How exceptionally perfect her little ball of dung was formed! A more perfect sphere of poo there never was. We later found out that the female dung beetle lays her eggs in the ball of poo, and she rolls more dung, like a child building a snowman, around her offspring. Then the larvae eat the dung as they grow. One man's trash is another man's treasure - the dung beetle life motto! A green tale for the ages. The original recycler.

The girls and I marveled at this dung beetle, as we crouched by the side of a country road agog with admiration. For Sierra and Hope, this beetle’s journey was a PBS nature special brought to life at their very doorstep. However to me, this dung beetle’s remarkable devotion to the Sisyphean task before her encapsulated the very essence of the immeasurable sacrifice and toil of motherhood.

Suddenly, in the distance, a deep-throated rumble came from down the road. Our eyes locked. We were shocked to the core. Oh no! Our dung beetle was right in the middle of the road. I’ll admit, I was flummoxed. Sure, I wanted to help the poor dung beetle, but...how? Would I have to touch the dung? What if she got separated from her ball of poo? What if the dung beetle survived, but her manure-marooned offspring did not? I was struck senseless by the dilemma.

Fortunately, Sierra sprung into action! She fetched a leaf, and attempted to sweep the dung beetle from her destiny. However, her mere 10-year-old courage faltered as the rumble became a roar when the truck turned the corner. Sierra shrieked, running to the edge of the road.

"Perhaps it will go between the wheels!" Hope yelled optimistically, remaining until the end of our tale true to her name.

We held our hands to our mouths in fear as the truck lumbered past. The workers smiled and waved a neighborly high-ho as they passed, unaware as the drama unfolding beneath their tires.

Six eyes shot to the middle of the road once the truck cleared. The birdsongs silenced. The wind fell suddenly. An impossibly humid heat bore down upon us. Horror! A flawlessly flat, perfect circle studded the road. (A sphere no more!) We gasped. We swooned. We moaned. Sierra blinked away tears, fearful lest she let on to her friend Hope, one whole year her elder, how deeply she felt the loss of that honorable dung beetle.

"At least she died doing what she loved to do," I said weakly, bowing my head in excruciating shame.

Oh, the guilt! The guilt! Why had I not leapt to the dung beetle's rescue? As my daughter teetered upon the edge of adolescence, the opportunity to gallantly save the dung beetle may have been the last gasp of my superhero status in Sierra’s eyes. I shall never tire of thrashing my soul for allowing my prissy instinct to avoid touching foreign poo to interfere with my own maternal devotion. What heathen power tied my feet to the ground, forbidding me from playing the hero before my daughter's eyes? Alas. I shall never know. And I shall never forget the lesson of the dung beetle.

A more perfect sphere of poo there never was.

The Hilarious Book I Did Not Write

The Hilarious Book I Did Not Write

Catherine Newman wrote the book that I should have written, and I’m trying not to hate her for it. “Waiting for Birdy” is the hilariously neurotic tale of the year she was pregnant with her second child. I’ve passed around the book to every woman I know, saying “If you’re not laughing out loud by the second page, then just put it down,” under my breath adding, “and get a sense of humor.” This author represents Everymother, and even people without kids laugh in recognition of her maternal angst. In fact, my friend Laura passed the book along to me with her “You gotta read this!” recommendation, and she doesn’t even have kids yet. (Though she and her wife do have a poodle, which I think counts.)

After turning the last page, I was delighted to read that the great author herself lives in my town. Thus the bizarre hand of fate gave me a push, and I promptly decided that I just had to meet this woman. I fantasized we’d share an instant connection which lead to collaboration on well-received projects until destiny plopped us across the desk from Jon Stewart on “The Daily Show.” Not to mention walking the red carpet at the Oscars with Julia Roberts and flirting strategically with George Clooney, the stars of our fabulously successful and artistically rendered screenplay.

But really I just wanted to thank her for writing such a true story that enabled me to laugh at, and perhaps forgive myself for, my second pregnancy paranoia, guilt, and general kookiness. And then as I got to know her better, I might do something mildly passive aggressive like use chicken bouillon in her vegetable soup, just to get back at her vegetarian-self for writing the book that I should have written.

So I set about trying to find my connection to her. I live in such a wonderfully big small town where we’re all connected by, at maximum, two degrees of separation. Strangely enough as soon as I started asking around, I suddenly found myself surrounded by people who had had their own sightings. One friend met her when their kids were in the same choral group. Another friend turned out to be her husband’s client. Someone else ran into her at the top of Skinner Mountain. Everybody was meeting this woman but me!

But I plodded on, finally inspired to ask was my jolly CSA farmer friend if he knew her. Turns out she’s a member of the farm! I shyly asked Farmer if he would assist me in my effort to make this funny woman my new best friend. (I don’t think those were my exact words, but he got the picture.) The very next week, the stars aligned just right, and Farmer found himself socializing with her. So he asked the great author if he could give her my number. (She said yes!)

I was horrified! I had envisioned a more casual, not-so-stalkerish introduction. I thought Farmer could just point her out to me. Then I could begin by handing her a stalk of broccoli one day at the farm. Maybe the next week, I would lend her my scissors in the flower patch. And perhaps in the dog days of summer, we could share a laugh about global warming among the tomatillos. But to have her actual phone number! As if I would just call her out of the blue, and say, “Hi. I’m funny. You’re funny. Let’s be friends.” Having graduated from kindergarten, that’s just not the way I meet friends these days.

Weeks stretched into months, and I just couldn’t bring myself to cold-call this woman. Months have stretched to years, and now it’s too late. If it were meant to be, it would have happened already, right?

Plus I’m afraid she’ll take out a restraining order on me.

Damn, I just realized something. Do you think she reads online blogs? Don’t you dare forward this entry to her. I swear, don’t you dare. Now I’m really embarrassed.

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Post script: Just one week after I posted this blog, I was at a dear friend’s 50^th birthday party shooting the breeze with a very cool woman named Nicole. Suddenly, Nicole turns to greet two kids who just arrive on the scene saying, “Hi Ben! Hi Birdy!” If you’ve read Catherine Newman’s book, you know as well as I do that there can only be one Ben and Birdy.

I do a pirouette (in my mind) and ask with no hope of containing my excitement, “Are those (gulp) Catherine Newman’s kids?”

“Oh, sure,” Nicole breezily replies. “Catherine is one of my best friends.”

So basically, I plotz right there in my friend’s lovely garden surrounded by his closest friends with Bob Marley playing in the background. Like a total jerk, I confess how much I adore Catherine’s (oh yeah, we are SO on a first name basis now!) book, and I summarize this blog entry. Nicole laughs and promises that Catherine would get a kick out of it. (There may or may not have been fear in Nicole’s eyes. Hard to tell since she was wearing sunglasses. Perhaps she took a couple steps backwards and crossed her arms defensively. But I’m pretty sure that was just my imagination.)

Thirty minutes later, I’m sitting next to Catherine Newman at a raucous table of laughter, shouting and general glee. We’re talking about parenting and writing and comedy. She was delightful. Her husband was charming. Her children were adorable.

It occurs to me that perhaps I need to confess that not only have I read, and greatly enjoyed, her book, but that I wrote in my blog about it. It’s one thing for her to read the blog written by a stranger. But now, it seems awkward that I spend a lovely evening chatting her up in a garden, all the while having written this essay. Alas, she left the party before I got up the courage to confess. So here it goes…

Catherine, if by any chance you’re reading this, I’m sure you understand that – as I am first and foremost a comedian – this essay was written with my tongue fully inserted in my cheek. Nevertheless, I admire the hell out of your writing style, and I’m glad to have you as a literary role model. It was a pleasure to meet you, and you seem like a fun and funny woman. Although I was totally kidding about us being BFF’s, I look forward to handing you a stalk of broccoli some day at the farm. –Pam

(P.S. Please reconsider the restraining order on me, kay?)

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Pamela Victor is the author of the not-nearly-as-hilarious but still really good children’s book “Baj and the Word Launcher.” Her blog "My Nephew is a Poodle (and Other Random Thoughts)" is at www.pamvictor.blogspot.com.

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