[Originally written 12/14/2008]

My son and I went to France and Spain earlier this year, it was ‘magnifique’ and ‘fantastico’ and all those other descriptive Latin-based terms.   

Everywhere we went I heard ‘Arrete!!’ (Wait!) ’Silence!’  (Quiet!!) ‘Attendes-Moi’ (Wait for me!)! Even if I hadn’t known a lick of French I understood the connotation of the words.  They came from moms; slathering sunscreen on her charges frolicking on a beach on the Mediterranean or the tired mother on the three-hour-delayed train to Paris trying to keep the kids occupied even though she’d run out of Euros for snacks, or the woman holding the hands of three (THREE) boys under the age of 6 attempting to cross a busy Parisian street.  Overhearing these exchanges struck me as the ultimate universal bond of mommy-hood: the ‘losing it with the kids’ in every language under the sun!

The ultimate memory I have is of the woman assisting her elderly mother across the street.  I can imagine the woman telling her elderly mom: ’Arrete!’ ‘attendes-moi’, and so forth. 

‘Tres amusant’ how situations reverse.

Mom and daughter, Paris

I may have written in here before about my youngest daughter.  She’s been a tad bit difficult since the age of three.  She’s now seven and we’re daring to breathe a sigh of relief. 

‘Tad bit difficult’ is the understatement of the millennium. 

We have the local exorcist on speed dial.  We put a cross on her forehead when she goes to sleep.  The whole family is scared to ask her to do anything, as they don’t want to risk her head spinning around. Seriously, scary. 

 She’s never been truly violent, but there has been episodes where the screaming continued for hours, and hours, and hours, over something as simple as giving her the wrong cup with dinner.  We were walking on eggshells never knowing what would fire up another ‘fit’. 

Coming from a long line of psychiatric studies, and the fact that any child psychologist we’ve approached said they were too busy to help, we’ve self-diagnosed her as having a form of Oppositional Defiant Disorder.  ‘ODD’ is another handy acronym in the ‘ADD.’ family.  It doesn’t help that the acronym spells out an unfriendly adjective.

My dad once said that since she’s the youngest, she has to be the loudest to make herself heard.  She definitely conquered the ‘loudest’ child, if that was indeed her goal.

Spring back to present day.  Recently we got a note from the after school program offering ‘free counselling’.  My husband and I looked at eachother and said at the same time ‘What’d she do NOW?’  We found that the she was merely the first child to get the notification, and we shouldn’t have been so paranoid.  Her sister, and the other kids received the same notice within a few days.  We eagerly signed her up. 

I explained to the counselor-in-training, about our issues.  She was quiet, and I expected her to put me on hold while she called that exorcist that we’d become so familiar with.  She did talk after a minute and said she was up for the challenge, and they’d get right to work!

It’s almost a happy ending–my youngest daughter hasn’t had a full-blown temper tantrum in the eight weeks of her counselling.  She’s been somewhat pleasant to her siblings, and sometimes accepts events that are out of her control. 

We still have that exorcist on speed dial, just in case.

I realized that raising children is a lot like learning another language.  Recently I ordered some Egyptian Arabic CD’s so I could learn some of the language before going on our long-awaited trip to Egypt.  I studied, and repeated, and wondered how I would use these skills (would I ever ask someone else if they wanted something to drink?).  When I arrived in Egypt, most people were shocked that my western mind was able to grasp even a syllable of the Arabic language.   They challenged me, asked me how, asked me why, and quizzed me (‘What’s this?’ while holding up a cucumber, ‘What’s this?’ pointing to a tablecloth.  If I am on an island with an Arab, a cucumber and a tablecloth, I’ll be just fine).  My CD-learned Arabic wasn’t enough, though.  I learned enough ‘on the job’ to make airport guards smile, to get the sole attention of a salesperson, or to get a table at a restaurant, but otherwise I was sorely lacking.

I worked hard preparing for children too.  I read every book I could get a hold of, even the ones with the gory pictures of childbirth (vowing there and then to get the full epidural).  After my son,  people quizzed me on the number of ounces of formula I fed him, or what type of diapers I should be buying, how long I should let him cry at night and exactly when I would start potty-training him (according to them, potty-training started after the amniotic fluid was wiped off).  My book-learned child rearing wasn’t enough.  I learned enough ’on the job’ to make him smile between bouts of colic, to get himself and myself dressed before noon (rarely), but otherwise I was sorely lacking.

On the 31-hour trek back home, I sat near the most adorable Egyptian child.  He had sweet Ptolemic brown curls, and beautiful brown eyes.  He played peek-a-boo with me until we both tired of it somewhere over the Isle of Rhodes.  I told his mom in my halting Arabic ‘Gazeelan’ (beautiful) while pointing at her child.  Her matching brown eyes looked fondly at him and said ‘Shokran’ (thank you). 

I learned enough Arabic for that.

My son is home!  I’m ecstatic!  And weepy!  (I can’t help it, I’m a mom!)

Then we busted his chops, literally, first thing this morning.  There’s one problem with going to college out of the country, when he comes home he has to go in for ‘Maintenance’ with a capital ‘M’.  He hits the doctors, dentists, optometrists and pharmacies, and basically wipes out my flexible spending account in a mere two weeks.  So this visit home, he had to get his wisdom teeth pulled.  All four wisdom teeth. 

Wisdom Teeth + Jet Lag = 1 Tired Guy.

He’s been sleeping for four hours.  I just stood and watched him sleep.  I made sure his chest was rising and falling, anxious that he was not healing properly. Then I realized it’s been almost two decades since I did that exact same thing-watching him as an infant, so tiny, so vulnerable, worrying so much about his safety, his health.  It didn’t seem possible that I could have produced something, someone, so perfect and beautiful.  I always worried that something would happen to negate his perfect-ness.

My baby, and my worrying habits are back.

The holidays are coming up as well as my spouse’s and my 10th anniversary which is on New Year’s Day.  We never had a honeymoon.  It wasn’t necessarily a shotgun wedding, but the dress had to be expanded to fit my 4-month-pregnant self.  So, ten years later we’re going to town for our belated honeymoon and anniversary.  WAY outta town.  We’re heading to Egypt for nine days, and I have asked my now-adult son (how did that happen?) to watch our girls during that time.  Since I’ve paid for umpteen airplane tickets for my son to trek back-and-forth to Paris for college, plus living expenses, plus ‘oh Mom I need a new pair of shoes and some Biology textbooks’ charges, I figure he’s a very well-paid child care worker! 

I still worry, of course.  That’s my job.  What if something, anything, goes wrong while we are out of the country?  Yes, I’ve made a list five pages long for my son, and checked it twice, but what if I’ve missed something?  What if he forgets to pick up the girls from school because he’s too busy partying with his old high school chums?  Well, he wouldn’t do that.  I think he wouldn’t do that.  What if there’s a robber (which my girls call ‘a Robert’)?  What if my daughter finally finds that one thing she’s highly allergic to, and swells up like a Thanksgiving turkey like she did a few years back, and my son can’t find the Epi-Pen?  (They gave me a DVD to watch about how to operate the Epi-Pen.  A DVD.  I didn’t get a DVD to change a diaper, how hard is it to jab a needle into someone’s leg?).  What if he loses the house key?  What if he loses the spare house key? What if he leaves the front door open, the toilet un-flushed and the water running like he did when he was in high school?

You catch my drift.  In my instructional tome that I left for my beleaguered boy there are scads of phone numbers of neighbors, friends and family that can help.  I also included a mini-will, medical release forms and photo copies of, well, everything in my wallet. 

Maybe I should just calm down, and go on vacation.  That’s what my spouse is telling me to do.

After ten years perhaps I should listen?