Picking My Battles

 

Donna Petree

 

I’ll be doing another give-away soon, so thank you to everyone who left a comment.

 

“You’re not the first to have told me this,” I retorted as fourteen-year-old Thing1 turned down the volume on my paleo-tunes playlist to get me to stop tapping my hand on the steering wheel to the beat.

He was right of course. I have bad taste.  It’s been confirmed not only by my kids but people who have actually paid bills, and I try to enlighten people when I hear that accusation.  I don’t actually have bad taste; I have no taste.

I mean, I can taste a lot of things. I’m just not that picky.  I believe you shouldn’t be picky about anything except your battles, of course.  But when it comes to the good things in life – music or dessert – I don’t pick; I go all in.

Once upon a time I was embarrassed about my inability to discriminate, but a week ago, after Giant Gadget Co. Inc added the digital equivalent of cupholders to my smart phone, I gave up drinking while I drive.

Allow me to explain.

My complete lack of taste has created an odd collection of music. If I know I like it, I buy it.  If I’ve heard it on the radio and not hated it or it’s on sale, I download it. If the record cover is shiny enough, I add it.

Some days I hit the shuffle button and end up happily listening to a bubble-gum sweet death metal tune followed by an operatic miss-terpiece. Most of the time, though, I try to feng-shui my music into themed playlists (it has to have a theme).  I had a list for work and writing, for driving, and even for thinking about fitness (I find a nice new age list pushes those thoughts right out of my head).

Thus the stage was set for the ultimate battle between nature’s arbiter of taste – the teenager – and the truly tasteless – the parent.

As Thing1 wrapped up the liberated tween years, he was no longer content to sink down in the front seat when my dino-tunes were playing.  Now he insisted I feel his painful self-consciousness or at least pretend to worry about what the person in then next hermetically-sealed air-conditioned vehicle thought about my music.

Hoping that faking sympathy for the predicament of his adolescence would make me feel sympathetic, I gave in, creating Teenager-approved Tunes lists as well as Annoying Animated Soundtrack Lists for passengers under ten or for those want to study music-induced stress disorders.  I even let myself feel enough shame to make a list with a little something for everyone in the family but containing none of the really bad music that mom likes.

And then there was a shrinking list of music that mom was allowed to listen to in the car for the few minutes a day it wasn’t being used as a taxi.

Last week I learned that the music-aphone’s new feature was about to revolutionise the world by letting Thing1 make playlists from playlists.  This was news.

“Meh,” said one of my co-workers. “Who needs lists?  Doesn’t the driver make the rules?”

It was a slap in the face, and I needed it.  I realized I was having a sympathetic second adolescence, and it was waxing hysterical all because I’d forgotten one of the golden rule of motherhood:

She who chauffeurs the kids is too busy unclogging toilets to worry about what their friends think.  About anything.  

And anyway, who else can teach a child the humility that only comes from the experience of watching a dumpy middle-aged mom – your mom – dance to Earth Wind & Fire in the checkout line?

So the next morning, without warning, I gave up the digital cupholder.

We got in the car and I tapped the shuffle button on my music-aphone as we headed to school.  I drove and drummed, humming along with some Whitesnake song from nineteen-eighty-I-could-still-zip-up-a-size-six.

“Mom.  Please.” I hadn’t heard a cork pop which would explain the absence of any whine, but I could smell Thing1’s mortification.  I smiled at him and launched into the next pitch-imperfect verse as we turned onto a busy road full of witnesses.

“Here I fold more laundry on my o-o-own,” I crooned.

“Mom, it’s bad enough you don’t have any taste”  My teenager moaned as I mangled another line,  “but don’t you have any dignity?”

“Oh no, honey” I answered. ”They make you drop that when you check into the maternity ward.”

“But what about me?” he asked as we got closer to school.

“Oh don’t worry, you don’t have to go to that extreme,”  I said.  “Most hangups have an early expiration date, and then you can enjoy life again.”

“I mean really, mom,” he said. “It seems like an easy choice to me.   I mean even if the tiger was helping you with the garden and doing my homework was the lady, I’d pick the tiger.”

“I think you need to go take another look at that homework,” she said.   “And, anyway, who’s to say that working in the garden with me isn’t really the tiger?”

“Anything’s better than doing homework,” he said as he picked up the shovel and began piling wood chips into the wheelbarrow.

“You know you’re not getting paid for this?” she asked.

“I know,” he said.  “I just want to help.’

“And skipping homework isn’t the payoff?” She said as she yanked weeds from around the blueberry bushes.  “You can put the next load on this row,” she said, gesturing to the un-neatly planted clump of bushes.

“I got it all done,” he said.   He threw a few more scoops into the wheelbarrow.  “I think I did anyway.”

“You think?” she asked.

“One assignment doesn’t matter,” he said.  “I’m never gonna use half this stuff, anyway.”

“What are you talking about?  I used geometry just the other day,” she said.  “Didn’t you see the way I cut that pie into 8 perfectly equal pieces?

“One time you used it,” he said.  “And the world as we know it is gonna end soon anyway.”

“Not before dessert,” she said.  “And you’re too young to be worrying about the end of the world.”

“You’re worried about it,” he said.

“Wha?!?,” she said.

“Look at your garden, ”And your root cellar.  And all the firewood you and Dad make me stack,” he said. “You guys are getting ready the end of civilisation.”

“I’m not sure how you get that,” she said, “but you’ll still need to know history and geometry when the world ends.”

“Who needs any of that after terrorists take over the world and there’s an epidemic?” he asked.

“Well, you’ll need a little geometry to put everything back together,” she said.

“I’m serious, Mom,” he said.  “They talk about it in the news all the time.  I’m to get prepare for something bad to happen.”

“Something bad will happen, if you didn’t actually finish your homework,” she said.  “That row looks good.  Let’s get a few apples before it gets too dark to see them. ”

It wasn’t really an orchard. It was just a group of apple trees standing together.

One tree was older than she was.  She had planted two more when he was born and another pair when his brother arrived 5 years ago.  The grandma tree’s apples were plentiful and since they seemed fit only for pies, she picked those mostly.

The big and little brother trees were starting to produce more, and she pointed to a golden apple on one of the little brother tree.  He nodded and tugged it down.

“This is the first one we’ve got from that tree,” he said.  He sniffed it and offered it to her.  “Do you want the first bite, Mom?”

“You have it,” she said. “It seems like just yesterday we planted these two.”

He took a bite.  “Wow, this is a really good flavour,” he said. “Remember when I helped you pick this out?”

“I do,” she said.  She took a bite from the other side. “Whenever we plant a new tree, the first harvest seems so far in the future it’s like it’ll never happen.  But five years later, we’re freezing enough filling for a year worth of pie if I go by the USDA minimum weekly minimum dessert requirements. “

“See, you are stocking up for an emergency,” he said.  He walked to the shed and returned with a small bucket for his loot.

“I’m always prepared for that snowy day when I can’t get to the grocery store for pie filling,” she said.  “But every emergency isn’t the end of the world.”

“What about keeping up the wood stove?” He asked.

“Cheaper than oil,” she said.

“And the garden?” He asked.

“Closer than the grocery store,” she said.

“And the fruit trees?” he asked.

“What about them?” she said.

“Aren’t they part of your plan?” He asked.

“Well, sure,” she said. “But who would get ready for the end of the world by planting something that that takes 5 years to get a decent dessert?”

“So why plant them at all?” He asked.

“Because they save the world,” she said.

“Four trees won’t save the world,” he said.

“Of course they will,” she said.  “Because if there are only so hours in a day and you spend most asleep, some more at school, a few more  torturing your brother, one to play video games that we know about and another to play the ones you think we don’t know about, it only leaves a little bit of time to choose to either plant a tree make the world a little more pleasant and livable or to worry about the end of it and your video games.  But if saving the world isn’t enough, we also keep them for one other important reason”.

“What’s that?” He asked.

“Because, like the apple trees, without your homework, there would be no dessert tonight, “ she said.  “And he who fails to learn his lessons in history is doomed to miss the last piece.”

The entire weekend was spent tucking in for winter which, sadly, always involves cleaning and the recognition that we need to offload some stuff.

This doodle was not in the recycle bin, but as I moved stuff around my office, I decided I’m decidedly too attached to originals.  Combined with my neurosis-grade doodling problem, my attachment issues have created a decent stack of doodles – and not all of them doo-doo.

Then Maria Wulf of Full Moon Fiber Art and the next town over to remind me it was Give Away month and my turn to boot.  It was kismet. It was magic.  It was lucky I had decided to clean this weekend so I could go through my stacks and find something without needing to rearrange the trail of cookie crumbs so that my family could find me if I got lost during the search.

I stumbled on this sketch of our black cat, Snoop, sleeping by the woodstove from a post back in 2013, and decided it was perfect timing.

The sketch is pen and ink and a little watercolor pencil and will be included in a book I’ve just finished writing called, “My Sketchy Life.”  It’s a 5×7 doodle which will ship on backerboard and clear plastic covering (to make sure it remains one of the clean things in our house).  It’s not dishwasher safe, and, if you have a cat, expect them to request their own red-hot woodstove to sleep under.

If you’d like a chance to win, leave a comment and then take a minute to visit the other artists in our group –   Jon Katz, Maria Wulf, Jane McMillan, and Kim Gifford!

The winner will be chosen at random on Thursday.