Hanging with Michelle, Sasha, and Malia...

My ears are still ringing from last night’s Jonas Brothers Concert. I proposed taking Molly and a friend to the concert in lieu of having an 8th birthday party. Concert tickets were on her cute and largely ignored 3-item Christmas list , so I figured it would be a hit.

Some impressions of the evening:

Expensive. Her concert t-shirt cost $35 dollars! Unless you are Tom, and you are reading this, in which case it cost $3.50.

Between tickets, public transportation, parking, snacks and souvenirs, the evening cost a lot more than any party would have. My whole dining room set cost $44, so I’m sure you can see how I found it a bit annoying to spend so much on one night.

I also worry about the longevity of her new t-shirt. After all, she was Hannah Montana last Halloween, a fact of which we no longer speak in this house.



Some highlights:

1. Getting a crush on Nick. I asked Molly why all the younger girls favored Nick, “The Cute One,” but now I get it. He’s adorable! He played the grand piano, rocked the drums, strummed the guitar, wrote the songs AND gave a heartfelt (?) pep-talk to “each and every one” of us to not let “them get inside your heads” when things get tough. I don’t know who “they” are, but I ate it up.

His own example, delivered in a pseudo-twangy, soulful southern accent (aren’t they from New Jersey?) as he shared his struggles with diabetes, had me wondering how much a box of tissues would cost. By that point I would have paid $150.00.



2. Feeling sorry for Kevin, “the Other One.” You know how I am about underdogs. Kevin definitely doesn’t get the screams and squeals his brothers do, which made me sad, but considering he did get engaged last week, he’ll be the first Jo Bro to get to remove the purity ring, so I guess that helps ease the pain.

3. Realizing I’m just not a dancer. I tried to be fun and stand and sway on occasion, but I just looked like a dufus. For the most part I stayed rooted to my seat, fingers pushing my earplugs as far into my ears as possible.


Yep, earplugs allowed me to hear the music while also making me feel just a little bit buzzed. This helped me find my own little happy place while surrounded by thousands of screaming girls and flashing strobe lights.

One drawback of my happy place? A flatulent pre-teen in front of me kept letting them slip as she jumped up and down, right at my face level.

I have a feeling Mrs. Obama, Sasha and Malia were protected from such indignities in their pricier seats. A pro of having seats in the stratosphere? When Kevin, Joe and Nick started spraying (Water? Foam? Jonas Juice?) on the crowds, we were spared entirely.

In all, the concert was fantastic. Molly and I made some wonderful memories, and I won't be running around like a crazy person getting ready for a birthday party. I hope to regain my hearing in a day or two, by which time I’ll be ready to watch the 5 episodes of “Jonas," Disney’s new tv show, that I’ve recorded on the DVR.

And as for the raunch factor? Thank goodness, it was very, very low! Not even in the same league as Disney’s Gymnastics Superstars.

"Fun Mom"

My mom had a dose of zany in her. Whenever we got a new jar of peanut butter, she dared us to be the first to scoop out a big hunk—with our fingers. She was right in there, trying to be first, too. Sometimes on car trips we had just Dairy Queen cones and gumdrops for lunch.

She let us play a game in the house that involved chucking tennis balls, hard, at each other, as long as we blocked the windows with furniture. When she had to take us to sports practices or rehearsals, she would lean her seat back in the car and instantly fall asleep, no matter who could see her. She sat cross-legged on the kitchen counter as she talked to us. She said “shit.”

Instead of yelling at us for being irresponsible and taking good spoons out into the sandbox, she offered us and our friends 25 cents for each one we found and returned, $1.00 for sterling silver.

One time when the three of us kids were fighting like banshees, she kicked us out of the house, each with a ceramic bowl—telling us that if we were so mad, we could not come inside until our bowls were broken. Fighting turned to bewilderment. Had she finally lost her mind? I was reluctant to do something so utterly wrong, but I eventually broke my bowl against a tree and was soon laughing my head off with my brother and sister.

I thought Mom was cool. This is at the same time I thought she was the weirdest, most old-fashioned, strictest, most embarrassing clog-wearing mom on the planet.

I hope to strike this same balance with my kids. I instituted “Ice cream for Breakfast Day” for the first snow day of every year. There’s never much risk, with the way I eat, that we won’t have ice-cream in the freezer. And, since school most likely is cancelled anyway, there’s no fall-out from all that sugar.

I also make up songs in the kitchen, dance like Pee Wee Herman, engage in lots of potty humor, and talk like a Valley Girl. I wear dorky get-ups around the house, and drive the kids to school with last night’s mascara half-way down my cheeks.

I want to be zany, but in a safe, “I’m still the mom” sort of way. I’m sure we all had friends with the “other” kind of cool mom. You know, the one who hung out playing quarters with the teenagers at parties because she’d “rather have them drinking safely at home” than somewhere else. The mom doing the beer bong. The one who gossiped about who should be cheerleader, and why her daughter had been “robbed!” of the honor.

That other kind of mom always freaked me out. My mom was not that mom. Our drama was not her drama, and she didn’t drag us into any drama she was dealing with in her own life. She lent a sympathetic ear, and dished out hugs, but she let us deal with our own stuff.

If our friends betrayed us, she didn’t call their parents and chew them out, or tell us why we were so much better than they were. She didn’t get involved in who was dating whom. I remember thinking, although I couldn’t put it into words then, that she showed remarkable restraint.

She didn’t label, and she didn’t name call. This made me feel safe because I knew that even if I was the bitchiest bitch ever, or the biggest baby, she’d still be there for me. Instead of screaming at me when I freaked on her, she would give me a sort of wide-eyed, bemused look that said seemed to say, “Uh, yeah, you are acting like a huge ass right now. I’m going to keep my mouth shut. I’m sure you’ll realize the error of your ways before too long.” And I did. No berating, no negotiating, no pleading. She was the mom and I was the kid, and I felt safe knowing that my childish behavior might not make her happy, but it would never rip her world apart.

My mom attracted teens to her, around the kitchen table. Not with beer bongs, but with plates of nachos and a listening ear. If they were boys, she cut their hair using her barber clippers in the middle of the kitchen. She took the exchange student to get birth control after telling her that although she didn’t believe in premarital sex, she would do what the girl’s own mother would do for her if she could be there. She figured out how to make international long distance calls, just to be sure. Did she mention any of this to me, her curious, gossip-loving daughter? Nope. Restraint again.

Kids crave structure, and when we have rules and structure and standards, they feel safe. It’s when they feel safe within these constraints, that we are able to get a little zany. Not "unstable, no dinner, different men in the house, out-all-night" zany, but just a little bit more fun than you would expect from mom on a given day.

I may be more yell-y and psycho than my mom was (maybe I should just start saying “shit” to blow off some steam), but I hope some of her fun rubbed off on me.

So if it’s letting the kids take the cushions off the couch to jump on every night, having ice cream for breakfast, teaching them the diarrhea song , or grooving out to Dance Dance Revolution, I hope my kids see me as FUN MOM. Just not in that order.