Suburban Goddess

It’s surprising to me that, in this day and age, there aren’t more school rampage shootings.

As a mother, it makes me absolutely sick to hear about them. I can’t imagine the pain, the fear, the anger that parents must feel… there are no words to describe the horror that must initially go through their heads when they hear the news.

But as a person, I am not surprised by them. Do you remember high school? The cruelty in your average school setting is immeasurable…. the stress, the pressure that kids must endure from one another is devestating. Add the digital factor to that, where more & more children are being raised by an electronic device instead of having quality face time with a loving parent, and multiply that by the economic pressures these kids face. iPods, portable DVD players, the newest game systems, flashy cell phones, colored laptops… these are a far cry from the baseball cards and Barbies of my childhood. It’s EXPENSIVE to keep up with the rat race these days.

And if your Mommy and Daddy can’t buy it for you, you’re a loser.

Kids are being blasted with advertising campaigns everywhere they go, telling them they’re not cool without the latest Technorati. They’re far more connected than we ever were, creating deeper alliances and friendships that magnify the rivalries and conflict. They’re losing their innocence at a far younger age, thanks to the lapse in moral standards of American media coupled by the apathy of their Gen X parents who are too busy texting on their Blackberries to see their children are crying out for love and attention. Beaver Cleaver is dead…. this is the age of Neo.

We are self-absorbed. We are instant gratification. We are soulless electro-zombies… and we’re imparting that example to our children, exposing them to violence and mayhem without a moral direction. I’m not saying “down with video games,” or “shut off the TV,” or “hug a tree!” I’m saying that we, as a Generation, need to spend more time focusing on our children and the world they are faced with… it is a completely different landscape than what we grew up in.

The Internet has changed the world; knowledge is much easier to share than it was before. It is also easily manipulated, and in the hands of a clever mind, it can be extremely dangerous. This is what children face… and without guidance, I personally believe that the violence will continue.

I worry for my daughter. I want to shield her from reality as long as possible, and give her time to enjoy being a child. I can only hope that when she goes to school, the kid sitting next to her was also loved like she is… but I know the number of those children will be far less than what it should be.

Karma dealt me a bizarre punch today… a karmic twist of fate that was so cruel that I had to mentally recount the past few days to wonder why she was such a bitch to me.

I had to leave work early to bring Alex to the pediatrician. I was standing at the window, waiting to sign in when I heard Alex shriek, “DADDY!” I turned to find him standing almost directly behind me.

It took my mind a moment to focus on exactly what was happening. He had mentioned that he was taking his son (from yet ANOTHER marriage) to the doctor today; obviously we had just crossed paths. He looked heavier, older…. I realized I actually haven’t laid eyes on the man for months now. He was wearing a green polo; I recognized it, remembering when he bought it. His black trousers were immaculately pressed, clinging to the pudge that wasn’t there a few months ago. His dark red hair was still cut short, in that style that I hated… it made him look so mean. The wrinkles around his eyes were much more pronounced than I remembered; maybe I hadn’t noticed them before because I was too close to him.

My eyes focused past him to see my ex-stepson. I’m still amazed at how quickly he grew, and I was standing eye to eye with him… but before I could say anything to him, I saw HER standing behind him.

It was like someone kicked me in the chest.

Here they were, a perfect little family taking the stepson to the doctor together. For a moment, the redneck came racing forward.

“Punch her in the throat!”

The reaction was so swift, I had to laugh at myself. She appeared to be as stunned as I was. He attempted to make small talk, but I wasn’t hearing what he was saying. I was just caught in this surreal moment, much like the first time I saw them together. My eyes swept over her; her jean shorts, her red shirt, her blonde ponytail. She looked tired. I wondered if she cared about Preston like I did; I wondered if she would still care years from now. I wondered why she didn’t say anything to me… and then I realized, I was scowling.

I probably didn’t project the friendliest demeanor.

They finished up their business and got out of there quickly. I watched them through the blinds as they walked to the car together…him… her…. my ex-stepson. Alex climbed in my lap, a sad look on her face.

“Where’s my Daddy? Where’s Dardy (her name for Darlene)? Where’s Preston?”

I wanted to throw up.

I spent the majority of the evening last night trying to clear and catalog over 120GB of pictures off of my laptop… I had no idea I had so many on there, until I started searching around the nooks and crannies that I like to stash stuff. When you translate that into volume of photographs, I’d estimate I have over 20,000 pictures in my computer. As I reached back further and further, I found memories I’d long forgotten…

…and they hurt me beyond words.

I can’t look at the timeline now without it being tainted by Chip’s betrayal. July 4th, 2004; the day I found out I was pregnant. The beginning of the end. October 2006; my trip to New Orleans. Was he with her that weekend while I was away? Did he talk to her on the phone? March 2007; Alex’s 2nd birthday… we were separated. He left quickly; I found out later, it was to be with her.

Even looking back in 2005, shortly after the miracle of my daughter, I look at the pictures and remember… he didn’t pay any attention to me on that trip. He was short with me during that one… looking back, I can see the expressions on his face change. He used to be so playful for the camera… then he started with the “mean” face. I can see the indifference start to creep into his face… then the detachment…

It’s been one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do, cataloging my life for the past six years. Tucked away into tidy little contact sheets, burned onto a CD, and placed in a binder on the shelf.

Someday, I hope I can look at those pictures with joy instead of this all-consuming sadness. Right now, I truly hate him for what he did.

Weekends with Alex are both the most rewarding and the most trying times of our mother/daughter relationship. There are some women who are programmed to be stay-at-home moms; I am not one of them. And it’s these 48 hours that remind me that being a working mom, sometimes, is not a bad thing. But sometimes Alex will do something to make me stop and think about who is teaching her things, and what things they are teaching her, and if those things are acceptable within my own belief structure.

The other fear I have is that she will know more Spanish than English. Have you ever seen “Fun with Dick & Jane?” On occasion, the kid with the Spanish accent resembles my daughter a little too much. Art is definitely imitating someone’s life… but I digress.

Anyway, this morning, I had another episode where I have a strong feeling that I know whose influence was showing.

She climbed up in the bed next to me, which is quickly becoming a new morning ritual, and snuggled down beneath the covers, putting her forehead directly against mine. I opened my eyes to see here tiny little face right in front of me, beaming from ear to ear.

“Hi, Mommy!”

I sighed, turning to look at the clock. 6:25am. I rolled back over to find the smile still there, dimples and all.

“Hi, Alex,” I smiled back, planting a kiss on her forehead. I placed my head back on the pillow about a foot away from hers, and we sat there for a moment, staring into each other’s eyes… until she reached out, her tiny fingers clinching the nostils of my nose closed.

“Honk honk!”

The other evening, I was driving along a feeder road. The traffic was heavy and moving rather slowly, so my eyes started to wander to my surroundings (because I have a short attention span. What was I saying?)

Anyway, I looked in my rear view mirror and found a burgundy minivan directly behind me. It was being driven by a young man who appeared to be in his late teens or early twenties. He had a passenger sitting on his right, and I could see there were at least three other men in the van behind him. They were all laughing, the passenger bouncing excitedly in his seat. Upon closer inspection, I realized they were all dressed identically… upon even further inspection, I realized they weren’t DRESSED at all. Their torsos were painted entirely in white paint, and each of them had a royal blue hankerchief tied around their necks.

I smiled for a moment, remembering a time of high school football games and band trips… I was lost for a moment in the memory, smiling into the mirror. The flow of traffic picked up, and as the minivan began to move forward, we both gained momentum. He pulled alongside of me as we both slowed for a stoplight. At that moment, in perfect unison, every passenger in the van pulled a white hockey mask over their face and peered out the window straight at me.

I couldn’t help it. I cracked up.

As the light turned green, they all waved. A moment later, the van lurched up the on ramp of the Interstate, and they were gone.

I wanted to keep my engagement ring to pass down to my daughter. It’s really a beautiful ring, but it’s far flashier than I ever wanted or expected.

I remember the night Chip told me about it. We were driving home from New Orleans, headed back to his house in Slidell, when the subject of engagement rings came up. I described my ideal band; wide, platinum, understated, no adornments except a single, square-cut diamond. Simple. Classy. Different.

Like me. (stop laughing, damn it.)

Suddenly, Chip became uncharacteristically distraught. He pulled the car over, driving us to the shore of Lake Pontchartrain. This was totally unlike Chip on so many levels… I grew afraid. He turned off the car and turned to me, blurting out, “I already bought a ring.”

Not my ideal proposal, but I was happy anyway. He was afraid I would hate the ring, because it was nothing like I described. He made me wait another three months before he actually proposed… and as he slipped the ring on my finger, my first thought was: “Oh my God. This thing is LOUD.” The rock in the middle is flanked on either side by four smaller diamonds, set in a platinum band. I was immediately struck by the fact that it looked almost identical to his roommate’s wife’s ring (who I discovered later helped Chip pick it out.)

It was so NOT me.

But I wore it every single day, despite the fact that it would get caught in my clothes, scratch people as I walked by, and constantly got caught on the corner of the wall because I have no sense of depth perception. I wore it every day, because I made a promise to love that man, and I did, every single day, until the day I slid it off my finger. Two weeks after he moved out he stopped wearing his ring; three months later, I accepted the inevitable and put mine in a box, never to wear it again.

So there it has sat… and occasionally I open my jewelry box to find it staring back at me. I don’t have any family heirloom jewelry from my own mother, so it was kind of important to me to start that tradition with my daughter. I’ve thought about saving it for Alex… but life’s necessities are adding up. I was supposed to receive a settlement from my divorce, which has been slow to come (because flat screen TVs, custom-built entertainment centers, gifts for the new girlfriend and family trips with her kids take precedence over prior obligations to a bitchy ex-wife). So I look at that ring, a symbol of broken promises and reminder of lost dreams, and wonder:

Why the hell am I keeping this thing?

It would be worth far more to me as part of my savings account, should I ever encounter a rainy day. I’ve thought about keeping one of the smaller diamonds, and setting that into a ring for Alex… that way she would still own part of her parents’ history, but not the actual symbol of a failed marriage.

It’s a stupid rock. And it does me absolutely no good sitting in a box. And it means even less to me than the smooth polished stone sitting next to it; a rock given to me by Alex as we walked along the beach.

“Look, Mommy. Present for you.”

“Thank you, baby…. that’s so sweet!”

“I wuv you, Mommy….”

And that is a symbol of love…. a promise from my child. It’s not the material value of the rock that matters to me; it’s the meaning behind it. And I’d rather leave that space in the box for a worthless piece of sea glass than an expensive but shallow reminder of a life of lies.

A few memories from the past year, chronicled in my cell phone…

Like the time we Post-it Noted my boss’ office

And the time Alex got bit by a mosquito on her eyelid

And the time we kidnapped Steph’s gator

And the time a gator mysteriously showed up on my desk after a certain hair-raising near-death experience

And the time my friend made out with a giant stuffed crawfish

And, of course, my most prized possession:

My red Swingline Stapler.

“Remind me never to piss you off.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because you’re really a sick individual.”

“Why do you say that? All I said is that I hope she gets a visit from the Constipation Fairy…”