The Santa Secret

Be warned. This post is not for kids.

The Tooth Fairy got caught red-handed in our house the other night.

I’d woken up at 4:15 am, poked him and asked if he remembered about Gabriel’s tooth. He hadn’t, so he stumbled out of bed and down the stairs.

He made a lot of noise.

The next morning, Gabe announced “The Tooth Fairy didn’t come. It was Dad.”

I said “Go. To. My. Room.”

I got the girls started on breakfast and then met him there.

“What do you think this means?” I asked him.

“That Santa and the Easter Bunny aren’t real either.” And then one tear ran down his face.

He’s 9. I was 10. He caught dad. I found a receipt in the garage for the skates Santa brought me. My mom whisked me into her room and shut the door, too. And I cried.

“Does it feel weird to you that we lied?” This has always been the sticky wicket for me. I don’t remember being upset that my parents lied, because I understood on some level that the lie was the trade-off for the magic.

“Yes.”

“Do you understand why we did it?”

“Ye-es.”

“Ok. Well, I’m sorry that you found out this way. Let it sink in and we can talk about it later.”

He went to school.

I was sad all day long. The world just got a little less magical for him. We wouldn’t have let it go on for much longer. We didn’t want him to feel stupid when he did find out. But I was hoping for one more Christmas.

And…I’ll admit that I gave into some contrived internet fueled mom-angst: I have betrayed my child! We all lied to him! He’ll think God is fake! What have we done????!!

By the time I got him alone in the car on the way to practice, I had all my mea culpas in order.

I needn’t have worried.

He had some very practical questions: “Mom, that time the tooth fairy got caught in the typhoon in Japan and didn’t come for three nights and then brought a bunch of presents for Kate to make up for it? Was that dad?”

Yes.

“That time we were at Uncle Jake and Auntie Susie’s and we heard Santa and ran outside to find him and when we came back there were present on the porch?”

Auntie Susie and I bought them.

“Where did you get my bike?”

A bike shop in California.

“The Santa Tracker is fake?”

Yes.

“So that’s why we never have to worry if Santa can find us? Because it’s you?”

Yes.

Silence. Then “I kind of knew it last year. It just didn’t make sense. And then I caught dad once before but didn’t say anything because I thought I wouldn’t get any more money. And I didn’t want to know because now it won’t be as much fun.”

Hold on. Christmas is not really about Santa, anyway. But it will be just as much fun. Annie is only 3. If she lasts as long as you, we have seven more Christmases with Santa. And now you are on the other side of the secret. You get to help us make it magical.

He chewed on that for a minute. Then he started planning.

“Mom, we can find some bells and ring them like sleigh bells. And I can hide outside and say ‘Ho-ho-ho’. Maybe I can go up on the roof and stomp around like reindeer…”

Then he stopped and I could see him smiling in the rearview mirror.

“Mom. You know I still have to get Santa presents or the girls will think that’s weird.”

Yes, buddy. I know.

Why My Kids Will Never Win A Perfect Attendance Award

Look. The perfect attendance award at school is a sham. It is. There is no real accomplishment attached to being at school Every. Single. Day.

First of all, the probability of your kid making it through the school year without some kind of significant illness is akin to lottery odds. Therefore, a kid with perfect attendance in June will have literally poisoned the competition.

His or her teacher does not thank you. Trust me. I have met dripping snot students at the door of my classroom and refused them admittance. Especially the years when I was pregnant and cough syrup and Sudafed were out of my reach.

Oh no. You are not bringing that in here. To the nurse you go.

SARS aside, there is no real reason for kids to be at school every single day. After all, adults don’t go to work every single day, and school is waaaay more taxing for a kid’s brain than work is for an adult’s.

You think I’m crazy?

Kids don’t buy shoes online at school, and retirees and SAHMs are not the only reason that Cyber Monday has become the busiest shopping day of the year.

Just saying.

I come from a long line of skipping school for good reasons. Like Disneyland. Disneyland is the perfect reason to skip school. No one in their right mind goes to DLand on the weekends, or during the summer, so once or twice a year my brothers and I would wake up late to the smell of pancakes on a school day.

It could only mean one thing: Mickey shaped pretzels in our immediate future.

Vacation is another solid reason to miss school. One of Kate’s friends is in Maui this week. Her parents are brilliant. It’s the perfect time to hit Maui. Who wants to go to Hawaii in the summer? What would be the point of that?

Your kids’ teachers will only care if 1) It’s state testing time—but you know where we stand on that; opting out of testing to hit Washington DC makes all kinds of sense or 2) It’s finals time—and we agree there: DO NOT miss finals. It messes with the grading.

Sometimes, I keep my kids home just because. A few weeks ago we missed the Jog-A-Thon, which is a big deal at our school. Seriously—a lot of kids run ten miles or more at this thing. They raised $63,000.

It happened to fall on the same day as my dad’s 70^th birthday, and he was in town. There was no way my kids were going to school that day, not when there was a birthday picnic to be had.

They will be checking out early the next two Fridays so that we can attend football games, one at Oregon State and one at Oregon. Gabe happens to be playing in the one at Oregon. That’s a great reason to miss school.

Come June, my kids will sit quietly while the Perfect Attendance kids are called up at the awards assembly. They’ll turn to find me in the crowd, like Gabe did last year, to give me a shrug and a smile. Or tell their friends, like Kate did, “That will never be me. I will never get perfect attendance. We have to miss school. It’s like a rule in our family.”

Yep. There are adventures to be had and we will be having them. No certificates required.

Ignoring the Elephant

About Planned Parenthood.

The Senate voted 52-47 against defunding the other day, with 8 Republicans breaking rank. They aren’t going to defund it.

Americans have strong feelings in both directions of this debate. But that’s having no impact on the lawmakers. Oh, they’re talking and holding hearings. But the Senate vote tells us this is a moot point.

So why the Congressional circus?

It’s a really important question.

Back in July when this all started, a local minister published a blog post helping his congregation understand his position on this issue. My warning bells began ringing at a line (since removed) that referenced the fetal parts being sold to China, or other Eastern countries.

It felt like a hollow and racially charged dismissal of what was to me a huge piece of the puzzle: Why does anyone want fetal parts?

(Let me just state now that I know the position of Planned Parenthood is that they did not “sell” anything, since that would be against the law. They were simply charging for processing and shipping of donated parts. I have read the justifications over the high fees. I understand what is happening there and why.

But since there is an undeniable market for fetal parts, I am sticking with “sell”. Call me stubborn.)

I did some very basic research, which led me to Stem Express and this inconvenient truth: the fetal parts are sold to research universities and firms in this country. You can read the New York Times article for yourself, but you need to know that most of the top universities in this country—from which many of our top politicians graduated and some of which are tax-payer supported public schools—are doing business with Stem Express, and therefore Planned Parenthood.

While there was early chatter about Stem Express when this all broke, they have disappeared from the targeting around this issue. The sights have settled firmly on Planned Parenthood.

Why?

I don’t mean why are we targeting Planned Parenthood—I get that part. I mean why are we ONLY targeting Planned Parenthood?

Why not the laws that make this type of transaction legal? Why not the universities who sponsor this research? Why are we not defunding all of it—and yes, our tax dollars fund fetal tissue research, in some estimates to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

Well, the universities are using the fetal tissue to do stem cell research. To find cures for diseases which plague us. To make the blind see and the paralyzed walk and the cancer ridden rise from their beds healthy.

To save man from that which he fears most: death.

That’s another inconvenient truth.

There’s big money in this research, biggest of all for pharmaceutical companies. Just last week we saw what a whimsical racket that can be. And while some are howling that Planned Parenthood is using their lobbying money ($856,000 in 2012) to bully politicians into supporting them, that financial leverage is small potatoes when we start to understand the powerful machine that is Big Pharma ($148 million in 2012).

And that’s when I decided that this is a faux argument.

It’s the perfect set-up, where everyone gets to flex their beliefs. The pro-life folks can picket and pray. The pro-choice folks can stand shoulder to shoulder in defense of women’s rights. The presidential candidates can fire up their stump speeches and get cheap and easy cheers from their base. Everyone walks away with a “we showed them” fist in the air.

It’s easy. Too easy. And anything that is this important should not be easy.

If I said that Big Pharma will not allow Big Abortion to be defunded because then they would lose their supply of research material, I might sound like a conspiracy theorist.

So I won’t say it. But I will say that we are having a costly and headline-generating discussion on Capitol Hill about something that sure looks like it will never happen. Babies will continue to be aborted. Their parts will be sold to researchers in the US and used to create medicines and procedures that might save lives but for sure will make everyone involved a ton of money.

It’s awful to consider that our leaders think we are that stupid.

But maybe we are, clinging so tightly to our notions of pro-life and pro-choice while the elephant in the room gets rich off our single-mindedness.

Super (Crazy) Mom

I have thirty seconds that aren’t even really spare to write this because I am in the midst of Gabriel getting dressed for football–which is like a WWF event since eventually I will have to threaten to body slam him before he’ll believe that he can IN FACT tie his own dang shoes—and preparing for whirlwind Kate to get home from tennis to switch her school uniform out for her Brownie uniform and head to Scouts.

At this point in the day, I can only pray that I remember to high five Shea as we pass in the garage and make sure that Annie gets into someone’s car.

Although I recently showed her how to push the stool over to the fridge to reach the food, so if she does get left behind, she will be able to feed her 3 year old self. Plus, she’s a third 3 year old, which means she’s resourceful.

Annie is the one prompting this post because in between emptying backpacks and skinning a butternut squash that will get cooked at some point this evening, my brain said “Hey, what happens when Annie needs to be somewhere too?”

I said “I don’t know” with a capital F.

When Gabe handed me the Join Beginning Band form last week and said “I think the trombone would be cool”, I just barely managed not to laugh in his face.

Oh really? You think I want to be at school by 8 to drop off, 11 to pick up Annie, 3 to pick up Kate and 5:30 to get you?

We told him no, just like I told the altar server coordinator no on Sunday. “After football, for sure” I said. “So football is more important than God?” he asked, predictably. I rolled my eyes at him. My mom will tell you guilt hasn’t worked on me since way back.

“He will be at Mass and Sunday school. It’s no sin to not be an altar server” I told him.

I know there are super moms out there who can make it all happen, but I am not of their ilk. Not to mention that shuttling kids from one activity to the next on a schedule with Tick Tock precision, fueled by OCD and Starbucks, makes one neither super nor a mom.

We call those people “handlers”. I didn’t have kids to handle them. I’m trying to build a family of God-loving, kind human beings who eat as a family at the table and discuss ways to make this world a better place than we found it.

Please.

Right now we’re lucky if we can eat Taco Bell in the same car once a week without squirting hot sauce on somebody.

So if you’re the mom who swore you would never over-schedule your kids, knows how to say no and still finds herself split into a hundred car-pooling pieces?

You are not alone. I don’t know what the heck happened either.

At this point, there’s nothing left to do except salute each other with our water bottles full of (vodka) Gatorade and soldier on.

When It Stops Being A Game

By now you must know the story of the high school football players who clocked the ref.

For some insane reason, Good Morning America and Outside the Lines hosted these boys and their lawyer on Friday morning so they could rationalize their behavior.

Impossible.

When someone shows you who they are, believe them.

The ref may have used racial slurs when referring to the players. The coach may have told them to take the ref out. If those two things are true—and I am of the opinion that at least one of them is—then, so what?

The two boys would like us to believe that they didn’t want to hit the ref, but they were following orders. And that the coach who told them to make the hit is like a father to them, so they obeyed.

I laughed out loud because this approach is typical to their generation. Nothing is ever their fault–even when we have them on tape. Hopefully some adult in their lives will seize on this moment to teach them about personal accountability.

It’s not just what the kids said. It was the comments underneath the article, too. A lot of commenters were of the opinion that if the ref said what the players say he said, then he deserved it.

“What were they supposed to do? Let him get away with it?” Or “If they hadn’t hit him, he would have gotten away with it.”

As if there aren’t rules and governing committees and administrators who can handle this very type of thing.

You know what would have made real, lasting waves? A coach pulling his team off the field to protest racist comments made by the official.

Instead, a forfeit was more costly in that moment than integrity.

When someone shows you who they are, believe them.

After twenty years of playing and coaching, I can say with certainty that these kinds of things do not come from nowhere. Everybody knows when a program is off the ranch. From coaches to parents to the school and district administrators—they all are lying if they say they had no idea this was the tenor of that football program. Also when they protest “This is not who we are, this is not what we stand for”.

Yes it is. The NCAA calls it “lack of institutional control” and it is never a surprise. Only a regret.

If you are going to let your child get mixed up in the world of sports to the extent that they are wearing a varsity jersey in high school, then you have an obligation to know what kind of a program you are sending them into.

People talk, and where there’s smoke, there’s fire.

When someone shows you who they are, believe them.

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