Friday, May 18, 2007

OPM Anonymous

Hi. My name is Eileen and I'm an Over Protective Mom.

~Hi Eileen!~ (That's your line, speak clearly, reach for the back row.)

I'd like to tell you there is a day that it started. Maybe the day I got that horrible email about the three year old who was abducted in England. Maybe the day someone I "knew" from the Internet had a child killed in an unfortunate driveway accident. Maybe...but probably I was born this way. I'm not a risk taker. I was the sit and read books kid. I had a fear of things like bleeding. I avoided it at all costs. Which might have been nice for MY mother. Maybe. But it really doesn't do my two boys any good. Two boys.

You know I have heard people say things like "How can you look at a sunset, or a flower, or a new born baby, and not know that there is a God?" I dunno. I look at that as astounding circumstance, the brilliance of cause and effect and chance. But if there ever were an argument for the existence of the almighty, I believe it would be the fact that this wall flower, book reading, liberal, pacifist, candle meditation loving round girl somehow birthed the modern day version of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn (I'll let you decide who is who...) That, to me is evidence of not only a higher power, but one with a sense of humor, (and may also support evidence that this higher power is kind of mean).

So last night after a good couple of hours of, "Please don't touch that. Hey we don't throw rocks at cats! Why are we pouring water into a cardboard box? Where is the hamster now? Oh, no, please not in your ear...or no...not there either...Are you licking me? Why are you licking me?" I was laying on my bed blinking. I wish I could tell you some grand epiphany came to me but my brain had stopped working. The realization was old and new and old and new. They aren't going to change. You have to adapt.

And I do, not just for my own sanity, but for theirs. They are boys. Boys experiment. They bleed. And they like it. And sooner or later they'll be better men for it. And I might survive too. But I have doubts about the hamster.

Ironically enough, I got a book recommendation today. I ordered it for the boys, hopefully it will be here just in time to take on our vacation next week. Read the interview with the author at Amazon. Written by brothers dontcha know. Anyway, I guess summer is as good a time as any to begin living a dangerous life. I'll bring the band-aids.

The Dangerous Book for Boys
By Conn Iggulden
Release date: By 01 May, 2007

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ei - thanks for adding me to your blogroll - I'll do likewise. I heard about this book awhile ago, but it was just for Brits then.

At the end of the day, reading about yours may be my saving grace - I only have one, but this post describes what has recently become my life - no forewarning that my cuddly soft 2-yr-old lovemuffin would turn into a 3-yr-old whiner and now into a 4-yr-old boyfest. I feel embarrassed by the neverending "stop..", but it's constant, the picking up of things and climbing and throwing and poking and *yuck* placing of things in the mouth. When he's strapped to a car seat, it's a verbal jungle gym. I still wouldn't trade him for any other boy. Or a girl.

Anonymous said...

Did you see I added your great book suggestion to my Father's Day Gift Guide. I need to link back here. I'll go do that right now...

Yes, I did.


QuitMeter Counter courtesy of www.quitmeter.com.