The Sting of the Serpent’s Tooth
I’ve read the books.
Paid attention to the experts.
Knew it would happen.
And still, it comes as a shock: My fierce little 4-year-old is declaring her independence in new and unsubtle ways. Most recently, there was a conflict, followed by an emotional meltdown (hers), followed by a heartfelt suggestion about new living arrangements (hers too). Our adventure in developmentally appropriate rage began when I explained to her the concept of picking up her room, of being responsible for her own havoc. She had just trashed the newly tidied joint, dumping the contents of her big plastic toy boxes on the floor atop two already dense layers of stuffed animals and children’s books.
“What are you doing?” I demanded.
She cocked an eyebrow and stared at me with that I-don’t-need-no-stinkin’-badges look of defiance familiar to parents of preschoolers and convicted felons.
“Nothing.”
I cursed, regretted it, regained my composure. “Tell you what,” I said. “Why don’t you start picking up your toys? If you would like to earn an allowance, this would be a good way to start.” “I don’t need an allowance,” she said. “I have money right here.”
It’s true. She has a 3-foot-tall plastic baby bottle / bank I’ve been tossing coins into for the last few years. According to the measuring lines on the bottle, we are about six ounces away from funding a swanky college education.
“Mommy,” she said, “I will never, never, never clean my room.”
“All kids have to clean their rooms,” I said.
“I don’t,” she replied.
“You do.”
“Why?”
I felt a strange cramp in my brain. My mouth opened. A voice I recognized said: “Because I’m your mother and I said so.” Followed by: “Just wait till your father gets home.”
Hysterics ensued. A little while later, my daughter floated the idea of getting herself a new set of parents.
*
All children fantasize at some point about running off with a new clan. And few things, I wager, are more shocking to a parent than a child’s rejection. Nor more universal.
One afternoon, as we decorated Valentine cookies, my 7-year-old neighbor looked at me and said wistfully, “I wish you were my mother.”
“But you have one of the best moms in the whole world!” I said, flattered and appalled.
“I know,” she sighed, “but she never makes cookies.”
An adult friend of mine felt so foreign in her family as a child that she constructed a secret myth about having been left by a UFO in the field behind her home. Influenced neither by doomsday cultists nor astro-theologians, she was equally sure they would return for her one day.
“How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child,” moaned Lear, one of literature’s all-time peevish patriarchs.
King Lear, of course, was addressing his daughter’s refusal to verbalize her love, but he might as well have been facing a 4-year-old who has just asked to move in with neighbors after refusing to clean her room.
It’s not like I was put out enough to wander the heath in a raging storm or anything, but, I admit, I was torn. Half of me wanted to double over laughing; half of me was a little wounded. Mostly, though, I wondered how my kid had managed to skip over the entire grade school experience and land smack in the middle of adolescence.
“Don’t worry, Mom,” my daughter said. “You and Daddy could come and visit me.”
“I’ll have to discuss it with your father,” I said with as much sincerity as I could muster. “I’ve gotten kind of used to being your mom.”
*
Humor is a great defuser of these battles of will. My father, when he wasn’t roaming the house bellowing at his children about the missing scissors or Scotch tape, was an adept practitioner.
When our whining escalated to gale force, he would offer to take us down to the Pop Swap Shop for a trade-in. It was tempting, of course, but we didn’t want to trade in our parents, not really. We wanted instead to give them make-overs. A snazzy haircut for our mother, who wore a long braid, and maybe a little mascara. For our father, perhaps a business suit for the office (like a normal dad) instead of the shabbier attire preferred by college professors.
My mother had a style all her own. To the predictable childhood plaint, “I never asked to be born,” my mother’s reincarnation-based philosophy enabled her to reply with a straight face and mean it: “Yes, you did.”
On Monday, a few days after my daughter asked to move in with our neighbors, I asked her in jest if she still planned to leave. “We need to play right now because we have just one day left together,” she said. “Then I’m moving out.”
She patted my shoulder. “But don’t worry, Mommy,” she says. “I will come back for my birthday. Just call me.”
I will, I will.
But only if they have pay phones on the heath.
* Robin Abcarian co-hosts a morning talk show on radio station KTZN-AM (710). Her column appears on Wednesdays. Her e-mail address is rabcarian@aol.com.
