My youngest child, Moira, has become a handful. I'm not sure when it happened, but it sure feels like it occurred during the night a few months back while I was sleeping. She has always been a pretty laid-back, easy-going kid. A bit of a homebody, but that was okay with me, and certainly her father, whose lack of impartiality where she is concerned is alarming. Moira, or Mo as she is known to most, is 11. She turns 12 in a few short weeks. She is spunky, witty, smart, fashion-minded (whose mind, I do not know) and a pain in the butt.

I think the biggest change I have noticed lately is she has become more aware of what her peers are doing or wearing - consequently feeling the need to conform. This causes a number of arguments, the most recent over bathing suits. She thinks she needs a bikini, her father and I don't. She says all her friends are wearing them. Her dad says, "You might as well wear a bra and bikini to the pool." She says, "Maybe I will." Her dad says, "Bikinis are skanky." She says, "Are you calling my friends skanky?" He says, "That's not what I meant, and you.. just forget it."  There's more, but you get the point.

She spends a lot of time away from home now. The kid who used to have to be convinced, every single morning, that she should go to school will now go on vacations with her friend's families and forget we exist. I know she's just growing up and exerting her independence, but I can't help but feel left behind. Does she love her friend's mothers more than me, or are they easier to love because they don't have to dole out punishments or chores?

I shouldn't complain. I was lucky enough to be able to stay home with my children for most of their younger years. I have spent, and try to continue to spend, quality time with each of my children. This doesn't make it any easier to let others take the responsibility of caring for them. My two youngest children went to daycare for only a week before I couldn't stand it any more. Thousands of women and men don't have it as good as I did. They hire nannies or take their kids to daycare to help them raise their children while they provide for their families and build careers.

Every mother has a moment, or two, or two thousand, when she wonders if she is good enough, if she spends enough time with her child, if she is doing it right, if her child loves her and likes her. That is one of the reasons I found this essay by Mona Simpson so fascinating. It talks about nannies and the people employing them. It touches on the special bonds these caregivers make with the children they help to raise and the space a parent puts (sometimes inadvertantly) between themselves and these employees (it's hard to think of them this way).  Simpson stirs up some interesting thoughts about paying another person to love your child.

"We don’t like to mix love with money. We want love to come as a gift that offers as much pleasure and reward to the giver as to ourselves."  Simpson writes about the sensitivity woman have when it comes to admitting how much time they spend working for their career and working as a mother. She points out that we want our children to be well-cared for and loved, even when we aren't present to offer those things.
"Even more than we want good love for ourselves, we want it for our children, those vulnerable satellites of our hearts that we send, unsteady, into the world." 
The relationship can not be easy between a parent and a nanny. It's a mixture of employer/employee and skinned-knee bandager/bedtime story reader. You are paying for a service that is unlike any other. You are paying someone to try to love your child the way you do. From a parent's point of view, it's not always possible.
My favorite line in Simpson's essay says it all. "You can pay a person who almost certainly will not love you but, with any luck, may love your child."

And while I am not paying my daughter's friends and parents to love her, I am entrusting her care to them for a small while. I am confident that they do not love her like I do. Mostly because I love her in spite of her flaws, and fortunately for them, they don't usually have to see them. For now she is still mine and I can still try to mold her and shape her into the beautiful person she is destined to be, but it is not long until everything I say becomes stupid or insulting. I am bracing for it, and when it happens I will come here and cry my eyes out to you.

I realized this week how easy it is to get so used to the way we do things that deviating from that, even necessarily, can seem impossible. I was reminded of this by my youngest daughter. Yesterday was her day to clean the kitchen. The kids are on summer break for a few more months and we have given them more and more responsibility as the summer has progressed. Moira was in charge of unloading and loading the dishwasher and doing general cleaning of the entire kitchen. I must add here that Jon did tell them if they were in charge of the kitchen for the day, they got to choose what to watch on TV. This may have contributed to Moira's fast thinking during her chores.

We have almost always had a dishwasher. There were a few years where we didn't and, to be honest, we ate mostly on paper plates. We buy the detergent that comes in a compressed tablet. Usually the kind with the red ball in the middle. I have no idea what the red ball is supposed to do, but if it's there, then it must be special, right? In any case, it's easy to add soap to the dishwasher -- just unwrap the little package and throw it in. We have been out of soap tablets for a few days, and we are using powdered dishwashing detergent in a bright green box -- something I think my sister-in-law left when she moved into a place with no dishwasher. The box is hard to miss and it sits right on top of the dishwasher, a little below eye level on an 11-year-old.

It is so ingrained in Mo that you use the little tablets, that it didn't occur to her there was any other way to run the dishwasher. She didn't want to leave it undone because then she wouldn't be able to watch TV. So... you may have guessed by now that she used liquid dish soap. When I first got home from work, it wasn't apparent what had happened. I opened the dishwasher to get something and noticed bubbles on the bottom. Not a lot. I first thought the dishwasher had not finished it's cycle (it happens sometimes when it is opened prematurely). I started a rinse cycle and not two minutes later bubbles were pouring out of the bottom of the dishwasher and onto the floor. The inside filled with bubbles and after four rinse cycles, it was still a little soapy.

Moira never even saw the box that said "Dishwasher Detergent" in silver. Her mind went directly to the liquid soap, because it seemed the quickest way to get something she wanted -- what she saw as the only option.

I feel like this sometimes. The kids start school again soon and I have to work. I won't be there to see them off to school ( I leave for work shortly after they get up). This is the first year I won't be able to do this. I wouldn't be so upset about it, but Jon won't be there either. I know they are growing up and able to do it themselves, but I am so used to doing it this way, that it seems impossible to do it any other way. I could take a shortcut and arrive late at work, but that isn't really an option. The answer is right in front of my face, but I am so unused to this scenario that I am blind to it.

I need to let them do it for themselves.

Just typing that sentence hurts. All I can think is why did I have to stop working from home? If I hadn't needed to get out of the house so badly I could be there for them. It seems so silly. They are the reason I got a job outside the house, yet this job is the reason I can't be there for them. Crazy how that works, huh? I guess we all reach for the liquid detergent every once in a while.

The Police Women of Memphis is a wonderful show. I just watched a police officer go to a woman's home because she was worried about her 12-year-old grandson that lives with her. When the police officer arrived the grandson had just come home from hanging out with some men across the street that may or may not be involved in ganges.

The police woman, a tall African-American, told the kid about all he was doing wrong and that she didn't want to come back and have to make a report over his 12-year-old dead body. Then (now this is the best part) she turned to the grandma and asked her what chores she had for him. Then she proceeded to tell the kids to get his butt in the other room and start vacuuming. He leaves and she says, "I don't hear no vacuum." Then the vacuum comes on and the kid starts to do his chores. She was awesome.

I need a police woman of Moscow who will come make my kids do their chores.