Everyone warns you about having teenagers, but I have to say, so far, I'm enjoying it.
Good. Got that out of the way. A disclaimer, in case you're reading this at some point in the future, 15-yo. Hello to you, now you've got children of your own and you're thinking it might be fun to see what your old mum whittered on about when she was writing that blog. *waves*
Seriously. The teenage years bring a new dimension to family life, for sure. There is loss (you hardly see them, and this loss is felt by younger siblings as well as parents), but there is gain. You can watch unsuitable comedy together, and discover a shared love of naughty humour. You can expect more help about the house. You see a person emerging in his own right. There are some rather nice hoodies to borrow if you get bored of your own clothes. You have a live-at-home babysitter for a Saturday night. They self-function, so you no longer have to remind them where to be at what time, what equipment to take, what to wear. There's no more chivvying in the morning, have they remembered this? have they remembered that? have they finished their homework? So if you hate that morning chivvying, take heart; it won't go on forever. They even tell you in advance if they need a particular piece of kit to be washed and ready by a particular date.
Although come to think of it, laundry... ah, laundry... that's actually my big sticking point. I know you people with babies and toddlers think you do a lot of laundry, and I don't want to do that irritating "oh, just you wait till they're teenagers" thing that used to annoy me so much when I had wee ones, but... at least the items are small and cute. A whole drumful of sleepsuits, vests with poppers, tiny socks... Now, it's a pair of jeans, a hoodie, a couple of t-shirts, some track suit bottoms, and the drum is already overloaded. (I miss that American way of putting "already" at the end of the sentence. The drum is overloaded already. There that's better.)
Then there's the other issue, which is the placing of the laundry. Dirty socks, pants and other smaller items, are strewn around the bedroom floor - well it's my bedroom so what does it matter? Large clean items, worn once, are put in the laundry basket - no it's not because I was being lazy and didn't want to put them away, it's because I thought they were dirty, see there's a mark there, um, there, um, somewhere, um, I'm sure I saw one.
But I wouldn't be the Iota you know and love if there weren't some laundry woes involved.
Brag alert: I came across this email the other day, when I was looking for something unrelated, and I forwarded it to 15-yo. It was written soon after he'd started High School, and joined the soccer team. His coach said "I want to
let you know that 14-yo has been one of the best young men I have ever had the
privilege to coach. He is very polite and has quite a sense of humor.
He has also been a great impact on the team. With his quiet sneaky
style of play he surprises people including us
coaches on a ever more frequent basis. I dare say he is probably my
favorite all around player/student/personality on our team." Boy, I miss America. Not only that "already" at the end of a sentence thing, but also, people say gushingly nice things about your children on a regular basis. I add that in to tone down the bragginess of quoting this to you. You have to remember that in Scotland, the equivalent sentiment would be expressed to me with a sniff, and a "yeah, he's doing ok". I also have to add that I had been reluctant to let 14-yo (as he was) join the soccer team, for various reasons which were almost entirely those of cultural misunderstanding and disconnect (*waves and says sorry about that, Son, but it worked out ok in the end, didn't it?*), so I'm thinking that maybe the coach was trying to butter me up a little.
Anyway, I feel I've now prepared the ground well enough, in case he's reading, to be able to share one of those "hopeless teens" stories about my son.
The other evening, I was in the study on the computer. The kids were finishing dinner on their own. 15-yo came in and asked if they could have custard for dessert. Ambrosia custard is one of his favourite things in the whole world. (He has a point.) I said yes. A couple of minutes later, he came back and asked where the tin-opener was. I replied that I didn't know, probably dirty in the dishwasher. He responded, "How do I open the tin, then?" It was a moment for a personal problem-solving challenge, I felt, so I replied "I am confident that if you really want custard, and if the other two also want custard and start nagging you, then you will work out a way." And then I very deliberately didn't go and check up on the situation.
And the end of the story, dear Bloggy Readers, is that later on, I found the tin of custard unopened... and in the fridge.
.
Showing posts with label enthusiasm. Show all posts
Showing posts with label enthusiasm. Show all posts
Friday, February 22, 2013
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Visit of the Snow Queen
Here is a guest blog by my sister, who spent Christmas and New Year with us. We had a large fall of snow just before she arrived, which was topped up a few days later and then stayed for the duration of her visit, melting away the day after she left. Hence the name she acquired while here.
I bribed her to write the post with the promise that she'd get nice comments from all my bloggy friends, so please don't disappoint.
"I had never been to America before, and had no idea what the Midwest would be like. Most of the television I watch is American, but none of it is filmed anywhere near Iotaville. If I were to go to New York, I would have an idea about what it would look like as I watch Friends and Sex and the City avidly. Ditto Seattle as I watch Frasier and Miami as I watch CSI. But, with the Midwest, I had no preconceived notions as to what the place would look like.
I had assumed, in a very superior manner, that there would be no history and no culture. The first assumption was completely correct, but I was very favourably impressed by the two museums I saw. They were imaginatively done and fun (especially if accompanied by a small child who dances round the glass cases shouting 'pooperscooper, pooperscooper, pooperscooper' in a loud voice).
What I found difficult to take on board was the sheer size of America. I was thinking that if you lived anywhere in the South of England and wanted to see, for example, Ian McKellen as King Lear, then you could travel up (or down) and see it. This is simply not possible in America, due to the vast distances. Of course, what you should be comparing it with is not England, but Europe. I wouldn’t travel to see any play if it was in Portugal, and this is what the comparison should be.
What also struck me was the confidence and positive outlook that everyone exudes, which I couldn’t decide whether I liked or not. In some ways it was a nice change after all our British negativity, but I did wonder how kind it was to tell children that they could be anything they wanted. “Never give up your dream” seems a very American thing to say. On the one hand, to tell people they will succeed if they keep trying is admirable, but it is totally unrealistic to tell a little girl she can be a top ballerina if she has no talent. Hard work and determination can get you far, but cannot cut everything. Enthusiasm, I decided, is great if it is genuine, and both cultures have something to learn about pitching it at the right level.
I did love the food. Being possessed of the sweetest tooth in the whole world meant that I was in my element with Philadelphia cheese with added brown sugar and treacle (did I imagine this?); ice cream with caramel, butterscotch and chocolate poured on top; and sugar cookies with extra icing. It was probably just as well for both teeth and waistline that I was only there for a couple of weeks. I often think about the Wal-mart shelves, groaning with Krispy Kreme doughnuts, little mince pies with real cream piped on top; and too many cakes to count. I am reaching for the jelly babies as we speak.
Now I am back, I do find I go around saying 'awesome' and 'good jarb' to people. I am certainly going to visit America again."
I bribed her to write the post with the promise that she'd get nice comments from all my bloggy friends, so please don't disappoint.
"I had never been to America before, and had no idea what the Midwest would be like. Most of the television I watch is American, but none of it is filmed anywhere near Iotaville. If I were to go to New York, I would have an idea about what it would look like as I watch Friends and Sex and the City avidly. Ditto Seattle as I watch Frasier and Miami as I watch CSI. But, with the Midwest, I had no preconceived notions as to what the place would look like.
I had assumed, in a very superior manner, that there would be no history and no culture. The first assumption was completely correct, but I was very favourably impressed by the two museums I saw. They were imaginatively done and fun (especially if accompanied by a small child who dances round the glass cases shouting 'pooperscooper, pooperscooper, pooperscooper' in a loud voice).
What I found difficult to take on board was the sheer size of America. I was thinking that if you lived anywhere in the South of England and wanted to see, for example, Ian McKellen as King Lear, then you could travel up (or down) and see it. This is simply not possible in America, due to the vast distances. Of course, what you should be comparing it with is not England, but Europe. I wouldn’t travel to see any play if it was in Portugal, and this is what the comparison should be.
What also struck me was the confidence and positive outlook that everyone exudes, which I couldn’t decide whether I liked or not. In some ways it was a nice change after all our British negativity, but I did wonder how kind it was to tell children that they could be anything they wanted. “Never give up your dream” seems a very American thing to say. On the one hand, to tell people they will succeed if they keep trying is admirable, but it is totally unrealistic to tell a little girl she can be a top ballerina if she has no talent. Hard work and determination can get you far, but cannot cut everything. Enthusiasm, I decided, is great if it is genuine, and both cultures have something to learn about pitching it at the right level.
I did love the food. Being possessed of the sweetest tooth in the whole world meant that I was in my element with Philadelphia cheese with added brown sugar and treacle (did I imagine this?); ice cream with caramel, butterscotch and chocolate poured on top; and sugar cookies with extra icing. It was probably just as well for both teeth and waistline that I was only there for a couple of weeks. I often think about the Wal-mart shelves, groaning with Krispy Kreme doughnuts, little mince pies with real cream piped on top; and too many cakes to count. I am reaching for the jelly babies as we speak.
Now I am back, I do find I go around saying 'awesome' and 'good jarb' to people. I am certainly going to visit America again."
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Enthusiasm: Part II
Where was I? Ah yes. Lost and alone on a sea of unembarrassed enthusiasm, without the raft of irony to cling onto... Doesn't sound good - I'd better not leave me there too long.
When one is shipwrecked, one has to make use of the scarce resources to hand, and thus it was that I began to investigate enthusiasm, to see if I could put it to any useful purpose. I noticed that my children came home from school with teachers’ comments reading “woo-hoo, 10-yo, this is AWESOME work!”, or “6-yo, I am so PROUD of how hard you tried on this - way to go!”, and seeing their faces light up with pride. I began to wonder how they would cope with a return to the “good effort” or “nice work” crumbs that they would be thrown by British teachers.
Then I noticed that even adults dealing with adults feel able to say things about themselves and each other that are affirming and positive and, well, rather, um, uncomfortable and embarrassing and, let’s face it, jolly unBritish. Then after a while, since you can get used to pretty much anything, I began to feel that this is actually quite nice (in a reserved kind of repressed way). The zenith came when I got together with 3 other women to form a book club. We had a great evening, partly discussing the book, mostly discussing life, and the next morning, there was a little flurry of emailing. It was effusive. There were superlatives. I was told I was “adorable”. Email, of course, is very forgiving, and in the privacy of my own home, I was able to shuffle about in my chair, look at the ceiling, breathe deeply and recite the words of God save the Queen to restore my equilibrium. I wrote a reply, matching their effusive excitement: “Thanks so much for your emails. It wasn’t a bad evening at all, was it?”
Maybe I’ve just been here too long, but you know, I can’t help feeling that the Americans might have got hold of something. I wonder what it is like in the other direction. How on earth does it feel to an American moving to England? Dour, cynical, repressed, gloomy? To them I say, you should try living in Scotland. No, no, I'm only joking.
You see, here in Home on the Range, there's a line that goes 'seldom is heard a discouraging word'. You get to Britain, and it's the brutal opposite. The newspapers are discouraging, the discussion in the office is discouraging, the chat at the school gate is discouraging. We don’t see it like that. We see it as self-consciously amusing, wittily detached. We think Oscar Wilde, Jonathan Ross, Private Eye. We look on the Americans as a nation of adults who’ve never quite grown out of childhood, but I’m beginning to wonder if the British are a nation of adults who haven’t entirely left their teenage years behind. We’re so keen (in a totally uninterested way, of course) to be cool, to be unimpressed. Perhaps it’s not as clever as we think.
I find myself in the uncomfortable position of sitting on the fence with a foot in each camp. Fundamentally I am a Brit. My Brit foot is a size 6, and it’s a laconic foot in a painfully elegant cashmere sock, draped languidly over the fence in a self-deprecating gesture, an ironic reference to post-modernist foothood.
But my Yank foot, a size 8½, is learning to wiggle its toes in an unembarrassed manner. I dread to look, as I think it might be clad in one of those socks with individual toes, in bright stripes or spots. It might even be in team colours. It's enjoying itself, and it isn't going to apologise for that. It's pursuing happiness, and that's its right. Nothing to be ashamed of there. I’ve just thought of something else. Oh no. It probably understands the offside rule, and if not held in check, will soon start offering to explain it to other feet.
Hm. Time to do the patent Iota litmus test of enthusiasm. Close my eyes, picture an old friend of mine who used to render a roomful of the rest of us helpless with laughter by his description of an 'enthyoosiast'. Re-run in my memory that perfectly honed timing and pronounciation. Yup. Still has me rolling around in my imaginary seat. Phew. Still on the right side of the fence then. That’s a relief. Though nothing to get too excited about, of course.
When one is shipwrecked, one has to make use of the scarce resources to hand, and thus it was that I began to investigate enthusiasm, to see if I could put it to any useful purpose. I noticed that my children came home from school with teachers’ comments reading “woo-hoo, 10-yo, this is AWESOME work!”, or “6-yo, I am so PROUD of how hard you tried on this - way to go!”, and seeing their faces light up with pride. I began to wonder how they would cope with a return to the “good effort” or “nice work” crumbs that they would be thrown by British teachers.
Then I noticed that even adults dealing with adults feel able to say things about themselves and each other that are affirming and positive and, well, rather, um, uncomfortable and embarrassing and, let’s face it, jolly unBritish. Then after a while, since you can get used to pretty much anything, I began to feel that this is actually quite nice (in a reserved kind of repressed way). The zenith came when I got together with 3 other women to form a book club. We had a great evening, partly discussing the book, mostly discussing life, and the next morning, there was a little flurry of emailing. It was effusive. There were superlatives. I was told I was “adorable”. Email, of course, is very forgiving, and in the privacy of my own home, I was able to shuffle about in my chair, look at the ceiling, breathe deeply and recite the words of God save the Queen to restore my equilibrium. I wrote a reply, matching their effusive excitement: “Thanks so much for your emails. It wasn’t a bad evening at all, was it?”
Maybe I’ve just been here too long, but you know, I can’t help feeling that the Americans might have got hold of something. I wonder what it is like in the other direction. How on earth does it feel to an American moving to England? Dour, cynical, repressed, gloomy? To them I say, you should try living in Scotland. No, no, I'm only joking.
You see, here in Home on the Range, there's a line that goes 'seldom is heard a discouraging word'. You get to Britain, and it's the brutal opposite. The newspapers are discouraging, the discussion in the office is discouraging, the chat at the school gate is discouraging. We don’t see it like that. We see it as self-consciously amusing, wittily detached. We think Oscar Wilde, Jonathan Ross, Private Eye. We look on the Americans as a nation of adults who’ve never quite grown out of childhood, but I’m beginning to wonder if the British are a nation of adults who haven’t entirely left their teenage years behind. We’re so keen (in a totally uninterested way, of course) to be cool, to be unimpressed. Perhaps it’s not as clever as we think.
I find myself in the uncomfortable position of sitting on the fence with a foot in each camp. Fundamentally I am a Brit. My Brit foot is a size 6, and it’s a laconic foot in a painfully elegant cashmere sock, draped languidly over the fence in a self-deprecating gesture, an ironic reference to post-modernist foothood.
But my Yank foot, a size 8½, is learning to wiggle its toes in an unembarrassed manner. I dread to look, as I think it might be clad in one of those socks with individual toes, in bright stripes or spots. It might even be in team colours. It's enjoying itself, and it isn't going to apologise for that. It's pursuing happiness, and that's its right. Nothing to be ashamed of there. I’ve just thought of something else. Oh no. It probably understands the offside rule, and if not held in check, will soon start offering to explain it to other feet.
Hm. Time to do the patent Iota litmus test of enthusiasm. Close my eyes, picture an old friend of mine who used to render a roomful of the rest of us helpless with laughter by his description of an 'enthyoosiast'. Re-run in my memory that perfectly honed timing and pronounciation. Yup. Still has me rolling around in my imaginary seat. Phew. Still on the right side of the fence then. That’s a relief. Though nothing to get too excited about, of course.
Enthusiasm: Part I
Enthusiasm. I’ve thought a lot about enthusiasm over the past year. That’s because there’s a lot of it about over here. Americans are so unembarrassed about it, and you know what? I’ve come to admire that. I know, I know, it’s all very unBritish, and don’t think I can’t see you, over the Atlantic, wincing a little and gripping your shoulder blades together, and thinking “oh Iota, no, please not”.
It’s not cool, is it? Enthusiasm. It means celebrating your kids’ achievements publicly (dreadful), or being proud of what and who you are (ghastly), or telling people all about your favourite occupation and why you enjoy it (anorak). I have to say, however, that having experienced rather more of it in the past year than I am used to, I can see it does have a lot of upside.
My study of the enthusiasm phenomenon started when I went to 10-yo’s first soccer match of the season. I was horrified. All those parents cheering the team on, and seeming to mind very much how they did. I mean really mind. Not just showing up and being supportive in a generally parental way. I mean running up and down the sidelines and shouting encouragement. I guess this happens in Britain too. We hadn’t quite reached that stage before we left, so I asked my brother in Sussex, who has soccer-playing children. He said “yes, I’m afraid people do get rather keen, but just shout “go deep” every now and again, and you’ll be fine”. Yet in spite of his advice and this evidence of the existence of enthusiasm on the south coast of England, I couldn’t help feeling that somehow this unapologetic eagerness and commitment was something of a different animal in America.
I tested out another mum, by making a conspiratorial comment about not understanding the offside rule. Now, women do not understand the offside rule. That is just how it is, as any self-respecting member of the sex will tell you. They are not biologically designed to. It’s to do with hunting and gathering, or staying in the cave, and superior non-understanding DNA being passed into the gene pool. It’s been scientifically proved. So imagine my horror when the other mum said “oh don’t worry, you just have to see it in operation a few times, and then you’ll get it, but actually FIFA have just brought in a new ruling which has nuanced it a little”. Now that really wasn’t cricket at all. Here I was, having left family and home to start a new chapter in another continent, and I couldn’t even make a connection using the most fundamental of womanly bonds. I diagnosed a case of over-enthusiasm, but worse was to come.
There was another mother there who said she had been at the soccer field on Saturday AND Sunday. When I joked about “beyond the call of duty”, she said, straight-faced, “I wouldn’t miss it for the world”. That was the moment I realized I was adrift. Lost and alone on a sea of unembarrassed enthusiasm, without the raft of irony to cling onto. That was a bad moment.
To be continued…
It’s not cool, is it? Enthusiasm. It means celebrating your kids’ achievements publicly (dreadful), or being proud of what and who you are (ghastly), or telling people all about your favourite occupation and why you enjoy it (anorak). I have to say, however, that having experienced rather more of it in the past year than I am used to, I can see it does have a lot of upside.
My study of the enthusiasm phenomenon started when I went to 10-yo’s first soccer match of the season. I was horrified. All those parents cheering the team on, and seeming to mind very much how they did. I mean really mind. Not just showing up and being supportive in a generally parental way. I mean running up and down the sidelines and shouting encouragement. I guess this happens in Britain too. We hadn’t quite reached that stage before we left, so I asked my brother in Sussex, who has soccer-playing children. He said “yes, I’m afraid people do get rather keen, but just shout “go deep” every now and again, and you’ll be fine”. Yet in spite of his advice and this evidence of the existence of enthusiasm on the south coast of England, I couldn’t help feeling that somehow this unapologetic eagerness and commitment was something of a different animal in America.
I tested out another mum, by making a conspiratorial comment about not understanding the offside rule. Now, women do not understand the offside rule. That is just how it is, as any self-respecting member of the sex will tell you. They are not biologically designed to. It’s to do with hunting and gathering, or staying in the cave, and superior non-understanding DNA being passed into the gene pool. It’s been scientifically proved. So imagine my horror when the other mum said “oh don’t worry, you just have to see it in operation a few times, and then you’ll get it, but actually FIFA have just brought in a new ruling which has nuanced it a little”. Now that really wasn’t cricket at all. Here I was, having left family and home to start a new chapter in another continent, and I couldn’t even make a connection using the most fundamental of womanly bonds. I diagnosed a case of over-enthusiasm, but worse was to come.
There was another mother there who said she had been at the soccer field on Saturday AND Sunday. When I joked about “beyond the call of duty”, she said, straight-faced, “I wouldn’t miss it for the world”. That was the moment I realized I was adrift. Lost and alone on a sea of unembarrassed enthusiasm, without the raft of irony to cling onto. That was a bad moment.
To be continued…
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