Monday, May 2, 2016

Safe

Me, age 42
Owen, age 9

I should’ve known we had a problem when I caught my son dabbling in illegal activity last summer.

It all had to do with the Snack Shack. The Snack Shack is the snack bar at our neighborhood swimming pool. Tickets for the Snack Shack are 25 cents each, and to Owen they represent all that is mind-bogglingly glorious about summer, like Laffy Taffys, Bomb Pops, and nachos with neon-orange cheese sauce.

You will not be surprised to learn that I enforce a strict limit on the number of Snack Shack tickets my kids are able to use every day. Nor will you be surprised to learn that Owen repeatedly revolts against this limit, which he somehow perceives to be a personal insult.

One afternoon in late July, I noticed Owen busy at work in a dim corner of our basement with scissors, markers and poster board. When I pressed him for details about his mystery art project, he carefully maneuvered his body to block my view. “I’m not making anything, Mom,” he said, evading eye contact. “Really.”

Right.

There’s a reason kids go to bed before their parents. It’s so moms can snoop through clandestine art projects. Poking around the basement, I was surprised to find that Owen had cleaned up the mess on his own (!), without me having to nag (!), so 99% of the evidence was gone. However, he was not flawless in his execution because, on my hands and knees behind a chair, I cheerfully unearthed two clues: a real Snack Shack ticket AND A COUNTERFEIT SNACK SHACK TICKET, MADE BY OWEN.

“Oh, my God,” I said to the empty basement. “My son is a criminal.”

The following morning, Owen, my husband and I had a sit-down discussion about how making counterfeit Snack Shack tickets is wrong, etc. etc. There were apologies, there was a no-Snack Shack-for-a-week punishment doled out, there were tears. All in all, I thought it was a positive learning experience for my burgeoning lawbreaker.

I didn’t give the counterfeit Snack Shack ticket sting another thought until last week, nine months later. Owen had just walked home from school. He came through the backdoor with great fanfare, brandishing a $20 bill. “Buddy, where did you get that?” I asked, and a creeping sense of doom rose in my throat: the look on his face told me that he instantly regretted waving the money in my face and should have left it concealed in his pocket.

“Buddy, where did you get that?” I asked again, trying to remain composed.

“Nowhere,” he said, cornered. “Nothing. No one.”

It was time for another sit-down discussion, whereupon I was uncomfortably reminded of Owen’s creativity, boldness, and enterprising spirit. He confessed that he had sold some of his better Pokémon cards to a classmate in some sort of “deal”, but he was sketchy about how the sale went down.

He and his friends have been trading Pokémon cards all year, but buying and selling them is another thing entirely. Last I checked, buying and selling anything on the school playground is not a super idea. I made this very clear to Owen. There were admonishments, there were consequences, there were tears. I thought it was a positive learning experience for him, but I found myself worrying anew: first it’s counterfeit Snack Shack tickets, now it’s a Pokémon-card laundering scheme. What next?

In the midst of my mini-crisis, I had lunch with a close friend. It was a perfect chance for me to vent about my concerns about Owen. He might have a brazen entrepreneurial spirit, but he pushes boundaries like crazy and it makes me nervous. My friend told me that I wasn’t alone, referencing her own mom and brother, who had a good deal of similar challenges when he was a kid. “My mom spent 18 years with a pit in her stomach, wondering when the next call about my brother was going to come,” she said. “She felt like she could never relax. On the days when the school didn’t call her, it was his coach or the church instead. She said she never felt safe. She was always waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

That is exactly how I feel: I don’t feel safe. I love my friend’s mom for putting it that way. I always have a snarky little voice in the back of my head that whispers things like, “So, you think you had a good day today, Laura? Just wait until tomorrow. You can't remain unscathed for long.” In light of Owen’s questionable decision-making, the voice is getting even worse: “Your kid is sneaky and he’s only in third grade! What will he try to get away with when he’s in high school?!”

In fact, I have no clue what he will try to get away with when he’s in high school, nor do I want to dwell on that right now. Because I’m too consumed with trying to raise up three law-abiding citizens while making sure I don’t lose my sanity. – Although, really, why do I think I should be immune from this? Isn’t being a mother inherently stressful and unsafe and insane? There is a quote I’ve heard that touches on this idea:


“Making the decision to have a child – it is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.”

– Elizabeth Stone

If I were a better, more crafty person, I would cross-stitch this phrase on canvas and hang it on my wall. It would look pretty, and it would remind me I’m not alone in my madness. But I know nothing about cross-stitch, and I don’t have any free time: my heart is too busy out there in the world making sham tickets for the snack bar and getting the better end of the deal on illicit Pokémon transactions.