An Accidental Mother (6 page)

About ten minutes into the video, Michael says, “Kate, while you're watching that video, think about the day you can sew my dog and my cat.”

I am walking Michael to the bus stop when he turns to me and asks, “Kate, what if I wasn't made?”

“What do you mean?”

“What if no one built me?”

I ponder the question from a Catholic point of view, wondering how his father or grandmother would respond. I answer the question with another: “You mean what if God didn't make you?”

“Yeah.”

“It would be awful! I would be so sad and so lonely!”

“You wouldn't have to be lonely; you'd be with Daddy.”

“But I would still be lonely without you.”

“But you wouldn't even know that I ever existed.”

I am shocked that he has surmised this. But I stick to my message. “I would still miss you! I would just know that something wasn't right! And besides, who would I buy presents for?”

“Daddy. Or Gordon.” Gordon is my boss.

“Gordon doesn't need presents; he can buy his own things. And besides, who would I take care of?”

“Gordon. And Daddy, too.”

“But Michael,” I say, “I can't read
Hop on Pop
to Gordon, now, can I?”

A big smile appears on his face, and he begins to giggle. Apparently the mental picture of me reading
Hop on Pop
to Gordon (who is a PhD) is just as humorous to Michael as it is to me. “Nooooo, I guess not.”

As we reach the bus stop, his little hand firmly in mine, I wonder, how do these things come into a
child's mind? What made him think of this? I look down at his beautiful little face, but before I can begin to question him, he speaks: “Kate, will you help me tie my shoe?”

As always, just as quickly as it has arrived, another moment of inquiry has passed.

A long with all the joys, becoming a mother is hard work, requiring constant adjustments to address the needs and development of a child. Helping to enunciate
r
's by growling like a tiger is far simpler than providing a moral compass. Case in point: try explaining to a child the importance of telling the truth when the truth may lead to punishment. When discussing the subject of lying with my adult friends, I have always given a stock response: “I never lie about anything important.” This often-proffered sarcasm always
raises a brow and brings on a bit of a laugh, but you cannot joke about such things to a child. To Michael I say that lying is a far worse offense than whatever thing he may have done to get into trouble and that he absolutely must tell the truth. He's only lied to us a handful of times (from what we can tell), but it seems that he always gets caught.

Now that Michael is of school age he is able to dress himself and pour his own bowl of cereal in the morning. He knows that after breakfast he is supposed to brush his teeth. He then ends up in my bathroom, where by this time I am dressed, made up, and finishing my hair, ready to help him comb his. Each day I ask him the same question: “Did you brush your teeth?”

On one such morning there is a slight pause before he says, “Yes.” Something inside, perhaps the “mother truth detector,” ticks, and I know he is lying.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

I lean in and look at him more closely, see dried
milk in the corners of his mouth. “You brushed your teeth?” I ask again.

“Yeeeesss!”
he replies, obviously annoyed.

I look at his milk smile and am certain of the opposite. I march past him, up the stairs, through his bed-room, and into the bathroom, not looking back but knowing he is just a few feet behind me. I grab the electric toothbrush on the counter and run my finger over the bristles; they are dry. I open the bathroom drawer and (just to be sure) check his travel tooth-brush, the one that goes with him on vacation or back and forth to Grandma's house. It, too, is stiff and unused. Of course I scold him, but there isn't time to do much about it—we're going to be late for the bus.

“We'll deal with this tonight,” I say.

When Jim gets home I describe the morning's events. We sit Michael down together, and Jim tells him that although brushing his teeth is important, it is far more important to tell the truth. He explains that he is in trouble not for not brushing his teeth but for lying about it.

Jim pulls a notebook and a pencil out of a drawer and lays the notebook on the kitchen counter, scribbling across the top of the page.

“Can you read this?”

Michael nods and reads slowly,
“I will not lie.”

“Good. Now write it twenty-five times.”

“What?”
The boy is not happy.

“You better get started,” Jim tells him and turns to walk away in a preemptive strike against the dirty look and slumped shoulders he knows will follow.

Later that night, long after Michael has been put to bed, I go into the kitchen to get a glass of water. I flip on the lights and see his scrawled lines. His printing is uneven, inconsistent, and slanting all over the page, just as you would expect from a six-year-old.

“
I WILL NOT LIE
.”

His words yell out at me from the lined notebook paper, and I think, “How cute, how sad, how important,” all at the same time. I realize that I wish Michael's behavior was perfect—not because I want him
to be but because then we would never be required to discipline him.

A few days later I find myself arriving home long past Michael's bedtime after a lengthy work day, which included helping my boss to entertain a group of fifty business associates with an elaborate cocktail hour and dinner. I'm exhausted. Everyone is asleep, including the dog, and I can't wait to be. I've been on my feet running about all night, and all I want is to crawl into bed. And so I do.

The next morning Jim comes into the bedroom to say good-bye on his way to work. He declares that I must be sure to tell the boy that I went into his room and kissed him the night before because Michael told his dad to make certain I did.

I wander out to the kitchen in my robe and see Michael sitting at the counter, eating breakfast.

“Good morning, sunshine!” I call out.

He grins in return.

“Do you want to know what I did last night?” I ask.

He nods, still grinning.

“Well, I organized a party for a whole bunch of people. Then I wandered around and said hello to everyone and talked to them about business things. I made sure they all got dessert and then waited until everyone left to lock the doors and turn off the lights.”

He knows me well enough that he attentively waits for the rest of the story.

“Then I came home, took off my shoes, tiptoed up the stairs, opened your bedroom door, and whispered, ‘Michael, are you awake?'”

Now he's smiling.

“Do you know what I heard?”

He shakes his head.

I snort long and loud, imitating the snore I often hear from his father's side of the bed.

He starts to giggle. “Why didn't you wake me up?” he wants to know.

“I tried! I said, ‘Michael, are you awake?' but all I heard was …” and I begin the snorting again, even louder than before.

Now he's laughing out loud. “Kate!”

“It's true!” I say. “And then I leaned over to kiss you on the forehead. I whispered, ‘Good-night, Michael—I hope you're having wonderful dreams.' And you know what I heard?”

Another smile, and an enthusiastic nod.

Snort, snort, ssnnoooorrrt
—I fake-snore as loudly as I can.

He laughs again and returns to his breakfast. I pour my coffee. As I head back to the bedroom we both turn and smile at each other.

I never lie about anything important
.

On this day, as I walk out of the kitchen, I can't imagine any lie as important as the one I've just told.

I used to be a Republican. Then I began to work for a very politically active Democrat. It was not he alone who converted me; it was what the Republicans did over the Monica Lewinsky incident. I'm not defending President Clinton's actions, and he shouldn't have lied, but I thought the reaction by the Republicans (and the amount of money their response cost taxpayers) was just as shameful. Even so, I was never motivated to change the designation on my voter registration until George W. Bush's second term.

My dog, Annie, came to the office with me daily.
Sometime during W's war against “terra,” a visitor who knew that our office was filled with Democrats brought a plastic dog toy in Bush's likeness, although it was only his head and shoulders. My dog carried the toy around the office, and sometimes she chewed on it. But most of the time it remained upside down in her toy basket on the floor.

One Saturday afternoon Michael is playing with construction paper and crayons at the kitchen counter while I'm doing the dishes. He draws an American flag and then stops to look up at me.

“I want to draw things that are American. What else can I draw?”

“Hmmm, what about an eagle? An eagle is an American symbol.”

“Okay!” He draws his version of a large bird. “What else?”

“Well, they say hot dogs and apple pie are American.”

“How come?”

“I'm not sure why. But you could draw a hot dog, couldn't you?”

“Yes.” A few minutes later a hot dog is drawn. It doesn't surprise me that he included ketchup in his drawing. He refuses to eat any meat without ketchup, but Jim and I decided long ago that it makes no difference to us if it ensures he'll finish his meal. “What else?” he inquires.

“What about the space shuttle or a spaceship? Americans made it to the moon before anyone else.”

He's much more excited about drawing a rocket ship than he was about the hot dog. He bends his head, tongue curling up on his lip, concentrating quite hard on getting it right.