My Life Between Coffee and Wine

Humor from the Home Front

EVELYN AUCOIN

Evelyn Aucoin
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Confessions Over Coffee

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Soaking up the quiet of Saturday morning on my patio, I enjoy my coffee in the stillness before being productive becomes my focus.  I look up and see my eldest son standing beside me. Somehow I spawned a ninja, because I did not hear him come out the back door.

I am looking at an eighteen-year-old young man, but once I make eye contact with his deep blue eyes, all I see is the sweet, tow-headed toddler who would play with his Winnie the pooh stuffed characters, making up stories and imitating all the cartoon voices.

“Mom,” uttered from a lower octave than I can conceive coming from the mouth of the perceived toddler within the man, “We need to talk.”

My imagination is instantly hijacked, and starts racing through potential scenarios.

Buying time to fret, I say, “Sounds like I may need a second cup, be right back.”

He has selected a college 3000 miles away from Texas in upstate New York. Is he changing his mind? He had a friend recently come out as gay, could it be about that? Did he drink at the party he went to last night?  I know he has another friend who was recently arrested for marijuana – could that be the impetus for this slightly dramatic audience?

Reloaded, I return to my spot on the outdoor couch, as he positions himself in a chair directly across from me.

I am mentally rehearsing my response, without even hearing the question. Taking a deep breath, I am trying to also control my facial reaction, which as a southern woman, is as likely as stopping the world from spinning.

Straightening my back, I prepare for mental impact as he breaks the silence.

“I know you only want the best for me. I also know that all the decisions you have made as my mom have come from a place of love, but I need to be honest with you about something.”

The pregnant pause hangs in the spring humidity between us, as I remind myself to breathe, and fortify my eyes in case tears begin to swell.

He continues, “I don’t like wheat bread. Once I am off in college, I will probably never eat wheat bread again when white is an option. Mom, I love white bread.”

I replay what he has just confessed. Is this for real, or am I being punked? Does he really think his confession that he desires an affair with Mrs. Baird’s is going to push me over the edge?bread

I stop listening to his continued reasoning as my thoughts drown him out. In perfect Catholic mom guilt, I conclude this is entirely my fault. Somehow in my mind, I had created this mystery and allure of white bread. “Oh no,” I would say at a picnic, “my boys only eat wheat bread. Is this all you have?” I have driven him to this. Into the arms of a soft, white, refined flour goddess of spongy, albino carbohydrates.

“There is more,” he adds. “I also don’t think I will stick to the ‘one soda a day’ rule when I am off in school. I just wanted to be honest with you.”

I never allowed soda until he was in grade school, and then I would repeat endlessly “no more than one a day”. Even on vacations. I didn’t realize that as a senior in high school, while nailing his ACT scores, being accepted to college, going on retreats and hanging out at friends’ houses, sometimes for days, he was sticking to this rule.

At least, he isn’t switching to diet. I comfort myself with the reminder that the true evil in this world lies with artificial sweeteners.

I realize the silence between us has hung too long, and so I reach across the verbal divide.

“Of course. You are an adult. You are leaving home for college. It is expected that you will be making choices that are your own.”

Satisfied with my response, he gives me a sideways squeeze of a hug, and leaves me alone to reflect on my patio.

If white bread and soda are his vices, I think everything is going to be just fine.

 

The Dog (Walking) Days of Summer

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As summer commenced, hope my 17-year-old son would land a job faded as quickly as my aspirations for an instant forty pound weight loss.

By the second week of June, his summer rhythm was set: Eating randomly at least six times a day, playing video games endlessly (after he pounded out 15 minutes of chores), staying up late binge watching Netflix and sleeping until noon.

My husband and I began brainstorming additional projects and chores to address his idle capacity.  One night over dinner, we decided that he should take the dogs for a walk the next day. Perhaps this thought was prompted because we had to buy him bigger shorts due to the six-times-a-day-face-in-the-refrigerator habit. Incorporating some physical exertion seemed like a prudent parenting move.

We knew we needed to set some parameters. This child needs expectations clearly set, since he has the genetic blessing of being able to argue the semantics about anything. He could walk them to and from the mailbox, “check the box” on the list and call it complete with a clear conscious. So we asked him to use his (“his” = the one we bought and pay for) iPhone, and turn on an activity tracker during his stroll. We asked him to walk at least three miles with the dogs, which we reasoned would be less than an hour out of his busy day. He agreed without complaining. That fact alone should have put us on high alert.

The following  evening, my husband asks to see the tracker, and our son opens the app and hands the phone to him. It shows exactly three miles. Passing the phone to me, I, out of habit and being obsessed with statistics, hit the “workout details”  button.

His fastest mile? “1:33” – One minute and thirty-three seconds. WTH?

My face twists in confusion. I look up and witness my spawn spontaneously bursts into a spin doctor. “What mom? Give me that. What did you do to it? It must be broken.There is no way. You are looking at it wrong.” Too bad he did not apply as a summer intern with a local politician – his gift of verbal deflection might have been put to better use.

His slowest mile? 22:45 – twenty-two minutes and forty-five seconds.

I silently gaze at him for a few more minutes, as his spew of verbal diarrhea loses steam. Finally, he succumbs to Catholic guilt and fesses up. He had started the tracker, and then got in his  (“his” = the one we bought and pay for) car, went cruising through our ‘hood, and then left the tracker turned on sitting on the kitchen counter – while he ate a snack after his exhausting five-minute drive – to let the total time catch up with the distance.

He didn’t even have the decency to take the dogs for a joy ride. I am pretty sure he bought their silence with cheese.

The consequence needed to be as creative as his little scheme. Channelling Dr. Phil, I asked myself – what is his currency? What is valuable to him? Instantly my thoughts turned to is his love of sleep. Waking him up in the morning (which I wrote about here: I Swear I Skipped the Poison Apple) is an adventure all on its own. Over and over as school winds down, all he says is “I can sleep as late as I want!”

So for the next 30 days, our dear Pinocchio,  must walk the dogs every day. Since he cannot be trusted, he must be awake, on his own, by 6:45 am so he can walk them before I leave for work. And if he fails to arise, two additional days are tacked on to the punishment period.

captain_tired_2

So far, the dogs have walked over 40 miles and, as a bonus, those new shorts are a little looser. My neighbors have even commented that they see him walk the dogs everyday, and add sweet commentary like, “Isn’t that wonderful?”

Yep, Mr. Wonderful is counting down the days until he can pile up the Z’s before he is back in school. Hopefully we will also think twice before he tries to blow sunshine up my arse. Happy Summer y’all.

Driving Miss Crazy

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As a mom of two boys, I believed potty training was going to be my undoing, until I faced teaching them to drive. Completely outsourcing either of these parenting joys crossed my mind, but there is no service to coach your kids to poo in the potty, and the Great State of Texas requires twenty hours of driving outside of driving school.

So my younger son could log some of these requisite hours, I planned for him to drive us to McDonald’s on a Sunday morning. We would make a mom and son date of it, and treat ourselves to some sausage biscuits.

connor_car
My youngest son posing with the Shag-uar.

Death before dishonor, nothing before coffee

My son, who normally cannot be roused before noon on a weekend, is up at 8am on the designated Sunday morning, keys in hand and ready to go. After I fortify myself with coffee, we venture to the Golden Arches in our 11 year old, 150,000 mile white Lexus SUV. I like my sons to drive this car because it is not exactly a babe-magnet.

As we approach the fast food restaurant’s corner, I feel like he is going a little fast, but say nothing. While he passes the entrance I snap, “Aren’t you going to turn?”

So he does. Immediately he jerks the steering wheel right, without the benefit of the brakes. The SUV veers into the grass and ramps through the small ditch, tearing through the pristine landscaping.  The car plows through bushes, hits a curb as it passes the last plant, and then the Lexus catches air before it lands with a crunch on all four tires, at a dead stop. I have a flashback to the General Lee during the Dukes of Hazzard opening credits.

I confirm there are no physical injuries, and I undo my seat belt. I see tears well up in my son’s eyes, as I exit to examine the car.

Petunias Mock Me

Pink petunias cling to the windshield wipers that sway back and forth in front of my son’s distressed face. Grass and random vegetation spikes out from the grill, and radiates from the undercarriage. One lonely boxwood, branch trapped in the crease of the hood, dangles, roots exposed, in mild shock.

My son steps out, wipes his eyes and asks, “What are we going to do?”

“Eat sausage biscuits, and then, you will drive us home,” I reply.

“I can’t!” he claims as he drops his face into his hands.

“Yes, you can. Now let’s eat,” I answer.

We ate.  And he did slowly drive us home.  A six-year-old on a bicycle passed us.

In the end everything is fine. However, in retrospect, the cashier did look rather confused when I tried to order a McBloodyMary.

It’s a Book Thug Life

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As parents, many of us are downright obsessed with encouraging our children to love reading. Over and over again, we are told of its importance, and the teachers send home endless reading logs and stand ready with the roll of stickers to reward the effort. The effort being all parents everywhere, remembering to make the kids fill it out, and then we sign it with a handy crayon in the carpool lane.

As an avid reader, I recently exploded with book thug happiness as part of a social media launch team (#the4500launches) for The Sound of Gravel by Ruth Wariner (shameless plug –> www.ruthwariner.com) which included not only my first Advance Reader Copy, but the book ranked as a New York Times Bestseller upon its release. So the drive to instill such passion in my kids came naturally in my maternal role.

book

As a parent, I certainly had my shares of failures (potty training, teaching them to drive, self-initiated hygiene); however, having them slightly obsessed with books I chalk up to a win.  However, as I bask in the glow of this child rearing triumph, I recall there were some interesting conversations with the elementary school.

Few things strike fear in a parent more than seeing the number of the elementary school pop up on your cell phone in the middle of the day. I am uber organized enough that I have saved all the “incoming” phone number variations (um, yeah, there was considerable opportunity to do so). Even to the point I have them identified by caller ( for example, the vice principal’s office versus the nurse).

Poster Boy for The Strong-Willed Child

My youngest son has been on a first name basis with both throughout his school career. Let’s just say I wish I had a quarter for every time another parent recommended the book The Strong-Willed Child to me. He is definitely one to always push the envelope and test boundaries.  I’ve often joked that there should be a Little Golden Book entitled You’re the Reason Mommy Drinks.

But I digress, one day while I’m at work, the caller ID shows the vice principal from the elementary school, where my son is in first grade, is calling my phone. With a very short prayer (ok, prayer may be a loose term, I think I said “Oh my God”) I answered the call.

My dear boy had requested a hall pass to go to the bathroom. Please understand that our school are all “open concept” (which is latin for “total distraction opportunity and zero noise control”). This means the toilet-tarium is centrally located for each pod of eight classrooms. Please note that I think one can delineate a direct correlation with “open concept” schools and the trend in ADHD diagnoses, but I will save that rant for another day.

So after acquiring his pass, he beelines for the library. Now being interrogated by the Vice Principal for his bad choice, he explains that today was supposed to be library day.   However, they didn’t get to go because of a meeting being held in said library, so the teacher made all the children turn in their library books. My son was panicked, he had not finished his book. What if someone else checked it out before he got to it? So he faked the urgent need to urinate, believing he could casually pop into the library and re-check the unfinished work of literature.

I am pretty sure the teacher thought twice about letting him have a hall pass the rest of the year. On the bright side, the he became the librarian’s pet student for the rest of his time at the school.

Book Fair Time

This pet-status came in handy a few years later during the annual Scholastic Book Fair. I forgot to leave cash for him, as I promised (#parentingfail) before I left town the day before. He didn’t want to ask his dad because he thought he would say no. So my child shows up at school with my checkbook, and started writing checks for this purchases. He had “signed” the checks beforehand, so that it would appear I had endorsed (literally) this approach.

The librarian, bless her heart, was barely holding in her laughter when I answered that call. Luckily since he was eight, no forgery charges were to be filed. Good thing, can you imagine what they might do to a book thug in the clink?

 

 

 

Yes, I Kiss My Children With This Mouth

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I am known among my circle of friends for a lot of things. My off-kilter sense of humor. My dramatic storytelling. My ridiculous addiction of saving lost animals. But, perhaps my most infamous trait is my potty mouth. There are merchant marines who have asked me to “clean it up a little”. I thought I had tempered my language for naughty words as I became a mom; however, a couple of situations with my children proved otherwise.

When my oldest son was four years old, he was in a great Montessori school. The headmistress at this preschool did not mess around. To say she lacked any evidence of a sense of humor is putting it politely. She was not unkind to the children, but she had zero tolerance for any monkey business.

So, as I sit at my very open desk at UBS Warburg Energy, my co-workers hear me say “Oh Sh!t” as I see the school number appear on my caller ID. They then perk their ears for my side of the phone call from the Take-No-Crap-Montessori- Headmistress:

“Yes, this is Evelyn.” “He said what?” “Oh my God.” “Um, yes, I will come to the school now.”

My co-workers do not have to solicit an explanation.

“My son had a friend grab a toy away from him. So my child, and in loud voice with perfect enunciation, looked at the playmate, and said ‘F%^& You.’ I do not know if I am horrified or slightly impressed that he used it in proper context.”

Not to be left out, my youngest had his moment in the cussing spotlight. Several years later, we took the boys to a Texas A&M football game. My youngest was four years old (I sense a trend).  This child has understood football since he was two. As an infant, if you turned the TV channel off of a football game, he would cry until you returned the channel to the game.

My kids had their handheld game devices to help keep them occupied. The Aggies were playing Colorado, and the game had been very close – trading the lead over and over.

At the end of the fourth quarter, A&M was ahead, but in the last seconds Colorado tied the game –  so we were headed for overtime. We are surrounded by old Ags, and there was audible disgust that we did not hold the lead. As the stadium sounds quieted around us, my youngest, in coke bottle glasses, adding to his appearance as an innocent child, glances up from his Gameboy, and at full volume declares:

“Colorado scored! Son of a b*tch.”

Everyone in our immediate area busted out in laugher. My husband shot me the “I wonder where he heard that” look, just to cover his butt.

So, me and my mouth have managed to leave quite a trail of stories. And as “offended” as some people will pretend to be, they often request I tell these stories over and over. What can I say? Love me, love my mouth.