Ketchup Is a Vegetable: And Other Lies Moms Tell Themselves (24 page)

“EWWWWWW! Mommy, your breaf stinks! You been frowin’ up, Momma?”

Actually, no. As you may have noticed from my supine position, closed eyes, and deep even breathing, you little devil child — I wasn’t vomiting. I was sleeping.

When we moved from Georgia to South Carolina Aubrey was three-years-old. Nobody in our family smokes and she had never seen someone smoking a cigarette before. It just so happened that some of our neighbors were smokers and it never really crossed my mind to address the issue with Aubrey.

Until one day I saw her pick up a toothpick between her index and middle fingers and suck on it like it was a Kool Menthol. She took the toothpick out of her mouth, and while it dangled between her fingers, Aubrey puckered up her lips and blew out a stream of imaginary smoke.

“Aubrey. WHAT are you doing?”

“Oh, it’s Okay Momma. I’ne just smokin’.”

“NO. It is NOT OKAY! Smoking is so bad for you Aubrey. It is nasty and disgusting. It will make you REALLY, REALLY sick. You would have to go to the doctor all the time and get lots of shots! Do you understand?”

“I unner-stan Momma.”

The very next day we were playing in the front yard when one of our precious neighbors wandered over to visit, with a cigarette in her hand.

Aubrey didn’t even say ‘Hello.”

“My Momma said smoking is nasty and bisgusting and you need to stop.”

I was mortified. Obviously, anyone who can read and smokes
knows
it’s bad for them. But I didn’t really want my new neighbors thinking I was sitting in my house telling my toddler how disgusting they were.

A few days later I caught Aubrey once again puckering up her lips and pretending to blow smoke out of her mouth. I gave her the Momma-Stink-Eye, and said, “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Oh! Don't worry Momma, I quit smoking.”

How do I teach them that there are degrees of Truth? And that full disclosure isn’t always in their best interest without teaching them to lie to
me.

Aubrey takes every opportunity to point out the differences in our bodies. It’s gotten to the point that I feel the need to run and cover myself if she so much as walks into the room when I’m changing. I am well aware of my body’s flaws and do not need her help in pointing them out.

After a stomach virus tore through our house and our digestive systems for over two weeks, I was once again tucking the big girls into bed. I was lying on Emma’s bed, with my legs hanging off and Aubrey was standing between my legs, explaining to me all the reasons
Purplicious
is far superior to
Pinkalicious
. She ran her hand up my calf briefly, while talking and immediately said, “GROSS! Momma, you need to shave.”

I
thought
, “Thank you, once again, small person for stating the completely obvious. I have realized for the last two weeks that I needed to shave, but I was busy bringing you popsicles and Sprite and cleaning up your bodily fluids all over the house. I was going to shave, but when I went to bed last night at 2:00am I just wasn’t in the mood. Then your sister woke me up at 5:00am and for some odd reason, despite my three full hours of sleep I still didn’t feel like it. I thought about shaving after washing all the sheets in the house for the third time in three days, but once again chose taking care of you and your sisters over the hair on my legs. Now the hair on my legs has crossed the line from short and stubbly to long, soft and flowing. I realize I either need to shave or quit wearing short pants, and start using patchouli oil instead of deodorant, but for now, if it’s alright with you... think I’ll just finish reading you a bedtime story.”

But instead of speaking my mind, I simply agreed with her. “Mmm-hmm. You're right. I need to shave.”

Because I
want
my children to be honest with me. I want them to feel like they are able to tell me anything without fearing the consequences, while still teaching them that negative actions have negative consequences.

My husband was tucking Aubrey into bed one evening, and as he kissed her goodnight she looked up at him and said, “Daddy, I would never throw a beer bottle in the street like Emma did.” He was confused and asked her what she was talking about but she just kept repeating herself.

His confusion ended when he walked out our front door a few minutes after putting Aubrey in bed and found a beer bottle smashed to bits on the driveway. I had been cleaning out a cooler from a recent neighborhood get together and had lined up all the leftover drinks by our front door, thinking I would put them away later. Apparently, those full bottles of beer looked just like water balloons to Aubrey.

Zeb came into our bathroom where I was soaking in the bathtub and trying to relax and said, “So where did Emma get a beer bottle to throw in the driveway? There is busted glass everywhere.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

He explained Aubrey’s bedtime story to me and I interrupted, “Aubrey did it.”

“Well, she said Emma did it.”

“Anytime Aubrey starts a sentence with ‘I would never’, it means she already HAS.”

He was skeptical. Emma has traditionally been the child who could look you straight in the eye and lie to you, while Aubrey is much more melodramatic and will regularly confess to her crimes before you even realize she’s done anything wrong — usually with one hand clutching her heart while large tears well up in her blue eyes. She will solemnly say, “I can’t tell a wie, Momma. I did it! I’m the one who ate the cake! It was me!” But Aubrey had recently been blaming her sister for crimes she committed on her own.

The following morning over breakfast, when I asked Emma if she had thrown a bottle in the driveway, she was completely and totally confounded. She didn’t even deny it; she just looked at me like I had lost my mind.

Aubrey couldn’t take the heat of her sister being wrongly accused. She threw her hand over her heart, and clutching her cereal spoon like a microphone, gave me a confession so thorough, Detectives Benson and Stabler would have been high-fiving each other in the interrogation room.

I never doubted that Aubrey was guilty but used the opportunity to explain to her
again
how important it is to tell the truth. It is one of the many paradoxes we find ourselves in as parents: How do we make our children understand the truth is important if we tell white lies in front of them? How do we teach them to censor their thoughts in public but to bare their souls at home? How do we help them to distinguish between keeping secrets for the good of others and keeping secrets from us that can potentially hurt them or someone else?

I don’t know the answers to these questions. I’m pretty sure answering them is what being a parent is all about and maybe in the next eighteen years, I’ll learn a little something to help my children and me survive their childhoods and adolescences with grace. I’m just hoping the amount of beer and cigarettes involved so far is no indication of what’s to come.

A
s Aubrey neared her fifth birthday she became bewitched with all things involving love, princesses and marriage. She began speaking on a regular basis about growing up, getting married and having babies. (The first of whom she plans to name Angelina Ballerina, and the second who will be Japan Ursula Wiley.)

Towards the end of the school year she began talking about a boy named “Christian” non-stop. Christian this, Christian that.

“Momma, Christian is sooooo ham-some and I’ne going to marry him instead of Mr. Jerry.” One of our neighbors who had apparently proposed to her.

“Momma, Christian is so sweet to me,” she would say with a sparkle in her eyes and a smile on her face.

“Aubrey where did you meet him? Does he go to your school? Does he come to the nursery at church?”

She became frustrated and yelled, “YOU KNOW.... CHRISTIAN!”

“No, baby, Mommy doesn't know him.”

And I really didn’t. I scoured my brain for all the places we went, the gym, Bible study group, church, school. I had no idea who this kid was and Aubrey was as enamored with him as she was disgusted with me for not knowing who he was.

This dialogue went on
for days
on end. She talked about how wonderful Christian was and I quizzed her relentlessly trying to figure out the identity of my future son-in-law.

Until one day she finally snapped and screamed at me, “Momma, you said I was gonna marry him! RENEMBER?”

I had a sudden flashback and a moment of complete clarity as I remembered our conversation the night she had sashayed in the door and announced proudly, “I’m going to marry Mr. Jerry!”

Mr. Jerry was our neighbor — I won’t speculate as to his exact age, but he has a head full of gray hair and grandchildren. Neither of these facts matter to Aubrey; all she cares about is his chocolate lab Belle, and the fact that if she married him, she would have her very own dog.

My husband objected vehemently, “You CANNOT marry Mr. Jerry. He is way too old for you.”

“Well, I guess I’ll just marry my daddy then,” she speculated.

“You can’t marry your Daddy, because he's your daddy and I’m already married to him,” I explained as she climbed into her bed.

“But who will I marry Momma?” She raised her eyebrows as if she was already worried about becoming an old maid. I lay down beside her on her bed as I said, “I don't know his name, but I'm sure he will be a Christian (here's my moment of clarity) and handsome and very sweet to you...”

I was snapped out of my reverie by my own laughter. “Baby, I don’t know
what
his name is, I said he’s going to BE a Christian!”

Aubrey looked at me quizzically and asked, “What's a Christian?”

Seriously? Four years of dragging this kid to church, Vacation Bible School and church preschool programs and I have to tell her what a Christian is? Incredible.

“Someone who loves Jesus. Do you love Jesus?”

“Yes,” she said with a skeptical look on her face.

“Then you are a Christian, too!”

She looked at me like I had lost my mind, spun on her heel and stalked out of the room.

Aubrey was apparently under the impression that I didn’t approve of “Christian” and I was trying desperately to keep them apart because no matter what I said to try to convince her “he” wasn’t a real person, she continued to talk about him on a regular basis.

In fact, she turned down another marriage proposal from her best friend, Tristan, to continue to wait for “Christian.” We were playing in our neighborhood pool when Aubrey swam over to me and whispered to me, while grinning from ear to ear, “Tristan said to me, ‘You’re gorgeous. You’re pretty. Wanna marry me?’”

I tried to remain serious, as I have learned from laughing at these types of moments that she feels I am “habing fun at her.”

“What did you say?” I asked her.

“I told him, ‘No way, Jose. I’m marryin’ Christian.’” She said twisting her mouth sideways to reveal one of her dimpled cheeks.

Lauren, one of our other neighborhood friends, is eleven-years-old and she knows a good catch when she sees one. She tried to intervene and started playing matchmaker.

“But Aubrey,” Lauren protested, “Christian isn’t even a real person and Tristan is so cute and he’s your best friend!”

Aubrey’s instincts were telling her to play hard to get and the more she ignored Tristan the louder and more extravagant his declarations of love became. I was worried things might be getting out of hand — I mean, my four-year-old shouldn’t be in any hurry to make a life-long commitment, when thankfully (for our sake anyway) someone pooped in the swimming pool and it was time to load up and head home.

Aubrey’s obsession with romance didn’t end with just the idea of happily ever after though, she became more and more enthralled with the “kissing business” she sees on her G-rated movies, as well.

After watching Cinderella and Prince Charming seal their love with a kiss, she asked me, “Mommy, do we need to learn how to kiss like that?”

Lord, in heaven.

“No honey. You don’t kiss boys like that until you are really, really big.”