No is the most exhausting word

I've been thinking about songs lately. Particularly while I stand in the shower trying to block out the screams of my two boys wrestling in the hallway. Remember that old Blood, Sweat and Tears song: One is the loneliest number? And that old Elton John classic, Sorry seems to be the hardest word? Well - other than dating myself terribly by not including any songs from any decade other than the Seventies - I have a new one to add to the list: No is the most exhausting word. Yes, I've been thinking of putting it out on a single for all the other parents of two year olds, but I'm afraid their buying power couldn't possibly compete with the latest American Idol. By the way, do they still have singles these days? It's sad that I don't know the answer to that. I am way too old for all of this.

Anyway, no is all that I hear these days. No. No. No. No juice. No nap. And the all time favorite - No, Mama. That one is particularly useful and covers a multitude of possible situations. For a child who is just shy of his second birthday and has a vocabulary of maybe a couple of dozen words, it is amazing what he can accomplish with that simple phrase.

No, Mama can translate to No, I really don't think I want to stop jumping off the back of the couch and attempting to do a Greg Louganis dive on to the cushions, Mama.

Or perhaps the No, Mama that means, No, Mama, I think I will chase the kittens while screaming at the top of my lungs and brandishing a toy spear. What's the matter with that?

Or the most common No, Mama on these hot summer days : No, Mama, don't try and get between me and that gallon of ice cream. I have a spoon and I'm not afraid to use it.

What happened to my sweet little boy? He went to bed one night and woke up a different child. A stubborn, bad tempered child who lives to cause me as much chaos and discomfort as he possibly can. Unfortunately he is too well established in this household for me to auction him off on Ebay without someone noticing. More's the pity. I know, that probably sounds terrible to you, doesn't it? If it does, you obviously do not have children or if you do they are old enough that these horrible days have become a hazy memory. For those of us still living it, it is tough. Patton said War is hell. He obviously had never lived with a two year old.

Yes, I do think that No is the most exhausting word. It must be. I hear it a hundred times a day, and I am one exhausted woman.

Here's to the graduate!

Ben is only five years old and yet he is already a graduate. A graduate of preschool - but still a graduate. In the weird karmic circularity of life, we attended a full graduation ceremony for him - complete with songs, speeches and diplomas - almost twenty five years to the day that I graduated from high school. I don't really know which I'm having a more difficult time wrapping my head around: the fact that my son, who only moments ago was a screaming infant in diapers, is heading off to a real 9 to 3 classroom this fall, or that it has been a quarter of a century since I left one.

Wow, 25 years. I remember that unusually hot June night, the white eyelet lace dress I wore, the parents, grandparents, friends, shuffling in the bleachers as we paraded across the shiny wood gymnasium floor to our folding metal seats. Pomp and Circumstance blaring out over the speaker system. I had every intention of being a good little graduate, listening politely to the principal and school board chairwoman say their bit, nod encouragingly to the valedictorian - a triple threat: good grades, good athlete, and popular - and then receive my diploma. I had not expected the girl beside me to take sick from a mixture of too much heat and too many pre-ceremony Bacardi and cokes. I remember the piercing scrrreeeechhh of our folding metal chairs scraping across the floor. The flustered pause of the valedictorian - a nice person, can't remember her name but I'm sure she's never forgiven me for ruining her moment - as I half dragged the gagging girl out of the gym. The amount of echo created by the sound of one young woman vomiting in an empty locker room.

Ahh ...... the memories. And now here I am again, twenty five years older, wiser, with a bigger ass and more gray hair, sitting once again in a folding metal seat, watching a little boy, my little boy, walk forward to receive his diploma.

I swear I did nothing this time to disrupt the ceremony. A few maternal tears make no noise at all.

, originally uploaded by kimhs.

Hello from the wilderness

Yes, it is hard to believe but I am still alive. Perhaps not quite sane, but still alive. I used to have a life, a career, and a personality. Now I know the lyrics to all the Playhouse Disney programs and only change my t-shirt if the stain is of a contrasting color. I used to live in a beautiful city by the ocean, but now I live in a four bedroom colonial in New Hampshire. I was a writer and journalist, but now I am ..... Mommy. Mommy the receiver of sticky kisses and even stickier crayon notes - that's the lovely part - but also Mommy the evil disciplinarian who gets that odd throbbing vein on the side of her forehead about four o'clock most afternoons. This weekly column will chronicle my life here - the good, the bad, and the vomit. It is an exercise in good mental health - cheaper than therapy! - and a reminder that I did have a life outside of this incestuous little world of gymboree and oshkosh overalls.

Vive la Liberte!

Kim