material guy

I never thought that I would do this, but last week I accepted it when my son refused to wear an almost new sweater which he had picked out toward the end of last winter.  He doesn't like it anymore.  I've always felt uneasy about how much modern parents (at least a lot of us) indulge our children.  Don't get me started ...
On the other hand, in this specific case of the "unwearable" sweater, it's not like this kid was asking me to buy an expensive new replacement.  He just decided not to wear any sweater until we could drag some boxes of winter clothes out.  So, later that week I bought him a $20 zip-up "hoodie", plain gray, period.  He wasn't with me and, luckily, he was very happy to receive it... In justice, he's grown a ton since last winter, and I was going to have to invest in new clothes for him anyway. So, what's the big deal - Why am I even writing this? He's no spoiled brat.

What makes this non-event even blog worthy is that it made me think about myself (me me me).  I worry.  It's so important  to avoid spoiling our kids - to prepare them for the "real world."  Bottom line: unwise/unnecessary spending is a trap.  Hmmm... how to explain?  Without stamping out their own "look" or being adamant about my opinion, I guide them toward the "don't want to waste my time and $$ worrying about this stuff"* camp...
Ha ha...you say, "You can only say that because you don't have a daughter."  Well, I admit it's probably easier.  But, I do have a daughter (my hubby's) and I love her dearly - and, yes, she's a clothes hog - but not a fashion snob.  Oh God, what would I have done with a fashion snob??? ... Aright already, I now remember... I confess.  When she first came to live with us - I struggled mightily with the contradiction between her picky taste** and my core suspicion of fashion, consumerism, and ... hair-gel.  Ha ha.

She'd offer to give L hairdos involving gel or spray, I'm sure I made panicked faces to her-- behind his back -- with my, oh so subtle, message: "Let's not get too carried away on this path..."  She had some fun with him, but she also humored me (thanks V).

Let me digress a little more from the "topic" of today's sermon.  Nowadays, I've learned how to choose clothes for V and she's started paying for most of her own anyway.  In fact, the funny (is it ironic?) part is that I like to buy her a treat because I CAN kind of predict what she'll like.  But, I've actually forced myself to stop, because she has so many clothes in so little space that she has little idea of where, what, when, or how.   She can leave a pile of dirty clothes in the basement for months... so I have to conclude that maybe she doesn't need any more clothes. sigh...

And that brings me to the point of, seriously, how much can a mother really determine? 

My older son rarely refused to wear anything.  I bought home clothes (often used) that I thought would fit.***   Anyway, this frugal fashion approach allowed me to feel smug in terms of how I compared to those who were shelling out big-time for children's clothes.  Now I see... the credit is his.

He and I have talked about it recently and he says that he was clueless about "social" things.  Specifically, his fashion sense also reflects the fact that he lived overseas for years and wore a school uniform and didn't belong to any "in" group.  When we first got back to the US (he was in 8th grade) he angrily told me one day, after he'd been teased on the school playground, that he wouldn't wear any more tightish (fitted) pants.  But that was probably as far as his fashion voice went for years.

He had better things to think about, although not his PE locker combination.  I found out later why he wore shorts practically all winter long one year. He couldn't open his gym locker, and shorts were mandatory for gym.

The first hint of strong fashion opinion was when he vetoed a shirt; he was 17.  This was a free shirt I'd found in the clothing bin in the parking lot of the grocery store (yes, I admit it - but I washed it all very carefully before anything else).  This epoch forming shirt was a short sleeved, button down, yellow and orange plaid.  And, if you're shaking your head in wonder that any mother would give such a shirt to her high schooler, back off - it was cotton. I'm almost 100% sure about that.  Anyway, while the shirt was eventually ousted, the truth is, I think P. wore it with no qualms until his first real girlfriend began to question my his fashion choices.

I really liked that plaid shirt (it was a brownish orange).
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FOOTNOTES
* And as I've gotten older, I think I'm more open-minded about this "camp."  I'm almost Darwinian about it.  But it doesn't change the fundamentals of what I'm saying: it still feels like a trap for the gullible or less aware.
** picky taste is not the same thing as being a fashion snob, but it does imply that things had to be "just so" and this often involved something that cost more... In spite of my obvious ambivalence, I want to say that I never begrudged her taste, or resented it if she didn't like something I chose.  I remember really really well one Christmas my little sister and I got coats as our main Christmas gift.  I was probably 15.  Well, I found mine to be hideous (reddish, with a brown fur-like thing on the hood).  When I didn't wear it, my own step mother said something disapproving about me and told me how expensive it had been!  So, that's the thing - I totally understand taste at that age.  It isn't about me being controlling or cheap  (not that I'm saying that I don't have these, and many other, bad qualities).  It really is about being able to understand and manage the cost of  our fashion choices - that's what I want to give my children. 
*** most embarrassing used clothing story for me, (I was really poor at the time).  I  would buy him used dark blue pants in the US (Goodwill, garage sales, etc.) for the Costa Rican school uniform.  One year I bought a pair with a very clear line of faded cloth down the front of each leg (where the crease ran).  They were in good shape, though, and so I thought I could disguise the fade-line.   I colored it in carefully with a pen... Subtle, I thought, until I saw him walking with his class in an independence day parade in the bright sunlight.  

More thoughts on paradise... Costa Rican development and tourism

     Anyway, back to the question of paradise.  In spite of all the problems of a third world nation, I was  impressed by the commitment to the environment that I saw in Costa Rica.  Being part of a small population must give one a sense that one's efforts can have a real impact - I heard someone in San Jose talk about how a gold mining company had been harassed and prevented from investing by those crazy environmentalists* (The comment was made by a Costa Rican who wanted more development).   But the truth is that gold mining, as I've heard it described, has some incredibly negative associations.  When you look at the environmental and economic legacy of industrial gold mining, things like contamination with mercury or cyanide spring to mind. I've also read that the tonnage of earth that has to be moved to find minuscule amounts of gold is ___ (hmm... I'll look it up and insert it later - but the ratio leads one to doubt the morality of gold as jewelry or even as currency).
      On the other hand, way back in the mid-80s, when I lived in Costa Rica, the government was struggling to keep small scale gold prospectors from destroying protected land in a national park near Golfito (Corcovado).  If I'm remembering correctly, the prospectors used water at high pressure to just denude the land... No need to romanticize artisan gold mining, it can be very damaging also.
      My point is that, rather than being a simple black and white issue of "keep all mining investment out", IF citizens are able to force a large company to play by fair rules, in the end, this may leave the country better off than a sort of wild-west gold rush event. The large international corporations are easier targets for the ire of locals.  Whatever their specific gripe (labor conditions, environmental damage, unfavorable concessions), nationalism allows alliances between sometimes unlikely partners.  While I'm no fan of unthinking nationalism, this type of protest can lead to positive reforms for labor or the environment; i.e. it's easier, in a democracy, to pressure and shame a large corporation to change than it is to stop abuses by local producers (especially when you're dealing with fragile economies).

     So, Costa Ricans are determined to design their own style of development, and I support that.  Tourism has been an incredible boon to the ability to just say NO to some international corporations, but tourism itself is, at best, a mixed blessing.  This reminds me of a phone conversation I overheard in the pulperia (small neighborhood shop) near the school where L studied English.  I thought the guy's prices were a tad high, and after this conversation I knew why (assuming he wasn't just charging us extra for being foreigners); he was about to invest in a friend's tourism venture (restaurant/hotel).  How do you keep the country's most beautiful areas from being over-developed, while still allowing the average Costa Rican to feel as though tourism can be a ticket to well-being?

    Anyway, from a purely personal perspective, the frustrating thing I found (as the type of tourist who hopes that her tourism dollars go to improve the lot of Costa Ricans, and allow the nation to continue to support a green agenda in general) was that so many of the souvenirs were "hecho en la China", even things that surely could have been made by Costa Ricans: coffee mugs, decks of playing cards, watch bands, textiles, jewelry, you name it.  I had to make a special effort to find local products.  And this was true even in the airport stores selling relatively expensive knick knacks to tourists; a saw an employee holding up a nice piece of textile with a coastal/beach motif.  He was holding it up for someone else, and like a spoil-sport I asked if it was made in Costa Rica.  He said, "Yes," but I looked for the tag which said ... either Indonesia or the Philippines, I can't remember.  The worst case, though, (not that I did much shopping or touring) was the very expensive gift store at the site of the teleferico tour near the national park Braulio Carrillo; at least half of the items for sale were from China, and it just seems more galling because this is a private company that touts it's commitment to the country's ecology. 


* During this (2010) conversation about environmentalists' opposition, I remembered reading about a similar case in an old textbook which, miraculously, I was able to find when I got home.  In 2002, Costa Ricans successfully organized to stop Harken Energy (Texas) from off-shore drilling. That year the new president said that Costa Rica could not be "an oil enclave or land of open-pit mining." (Global Studies: Latin America, 11th ed. McGraw Hill, 2004, p. 198;  It was originally from an article by Mark Engler & Nadia Martinez  in New Internationalist, October 2003).

Paradise?

From our recent trip to Costa Rica.

This is on land that OQ and his wife own near Golfito.   Their plan is to preserve it as a wildlife refuge, and they were hoping to buy more land nearby to put together some sort of ecologically viable wildlife corridor/refuge.  Apparently, they wrote up a proposal and got some sort of grant from an international organization but, as O explained it to me, they figured out their idea was unfeasible after finding out how much $$ people were asking for local land.  In the end, they turned the grant down. Sad, no?  Apparently the real estate frenzy is affecting paradises far and wide.

But, no parking lots on this paradise, anyway -  We had to hike to this spot!

True, it was only about 12 minutes from where O parked his vehicle on a dirt road; still, it was a challenge to the mothers and at least one of the boys.  On the way back, as I recall, some of us took an adventurous route up the mountain side, while others took a longer tamer route... There may have been a rescue involved.  It's all a blur now.  In this vein, I simply can't resist... I have to post one more picture; here's our good friend who braved this adventure with us (below). Because he's not my son, I've blocked out his face (pretty bizarre effect, huh?).  I just love the pose... for some reason it's making me remember how my sisters and I used to perform "Tiptoe through the tulips." I've named the photo "Mud meets flip flops" or "El Barro contra Las Chanclas."

 PS - Many thanks go to wildlife photographer "D" who risked life, limb and scorn to get these shots.  Check out the fantastic detail in the mud.

nuke your brain

About a month ago I went to a movie with L and a friend.  Before the film there was a preview of a movie about a girl who pretends to have sex with high school boys who need help to fit in.  We got to see this preview two days in a row because we were at the movie theater two days in a row (no, not normal for us either).
I mention that last fact because it helps explain why L was prepared to respond so succinctly to this preview. 
In one scene the girl and her mother are having a heart-to-heart.  The mother says she also had a bad reputation in high school. 
Daughter asks, "Why?"
Mom replies that she "slept with a lot of people, mostly guys." 
Daughter, "Mo-om!" She sounds a bit shocked, but it's not really the right response...
So, I felt a bit nauseous after seeing this "funny" scene the first day.  But I guess I wasn't the only one; the second day, L said in a loud voice to his friend, "If my mom said that to me, I'd nuke my brain."  He actually got a laugh from someone behind us in the theater.  

Laughing

     I don't always laugh easily.  At one point I saw this as evidence of my "discerning" sense of humor.  I'm pulling an image, from my pathetically small reserve of childhood memories, of myself in a dance class (me in a dance class is the only funny part of this story because I was as stiff as Pinocchio).
     Anyway, I was sitting there with my classmates and the teacher said something to us by way of helping us improve... "If you do it this way, you look like elephants..." and she did some sort of exaggerated voice and body gestures to emphasize her points.  Who knows?  Anyway, the other girls laughed, and I remember thinking, "It wasn't funny.Why are they laughing? "
     Now, I don't want to take this point farther than it could possibly go in terms of proving anything about my nature.  Still, what I'm saying is that for DECADES (and after finding that I didn't laugh in other moments or as much as others) - for decades I took this as proof of some intellectual superiority.  But now, I begin to wonder if instead it's a sign that I was missing something.
     Maybe I've always been out of the loop in terms of human connections.  Others laugh not because they don't know that something isn't funny in any objective sense. Could it be that people are laughing because they are participating in a moment of group bonding that I don't get? 
    Just the other day in the NYT there was a cool article about imitation among conversation partners: how we unconsciously imitate those we spend time with or even those we simply talk to.  They did experiments, and apparently "normal" people feel unsettled after a conversation in which their partner does NOT mimic them in some ways. (I can't think of the exact day this article appeared - but I hope I run across it again so I can include a link here.)
     I'm in awe of how many kinds of social connections are taking place on levels way beyond conscious thinking.  Or ARE they? ... (way beyond conscious thinking, that is).   Are there people out there who understand all of this and use it fluently every day like a language which they speak concurrently with English or French or Russian?
--artificial stopping point imposed because I have work to do -- still this is worth some thought.

back seat driver

So, the other day I was driving my hubby to pick up his car when we had a little altercation.  He tried to tell me what route to take and I resented his manners - His route wasn't even better than mine (seriously).  I rarely rarely drive when H is with me - and I must confess that it is very easy for me to let him drive.  I get to relax (unless we're lost and I'm on map reading/direction-asking duty) and it seems to be the only time I remember to file my nails.
But this little altercation made me think that I need to assert my rights and help H learn to be patient as a passenger.  Wait, did I say patient?  I meant QUIET.  Argh.  If I constantly told him where to turn (even when we're blocks from our house) as well as when to brake - we'd... We probably. . . it doesn't bear thinking about.  
My brilliant solution was to say that "From now on, when we take my car, I'll drive."  I have driven a few times since, although not every time, and it has already caused some conflict.

Conflict #1
We were heading to some friends' house for dinner, and I guess I said "I'll drive" in a way that H found insulting or unpleasant - plus he was practically sitting in the driver's seat already.  So, he got out, fuming - and sat in the back seat.  Yes, you heard me correctly.  Then, to show him how I was not bothered, I sang as I drove.  He had to show me that he knew why I had demanded to drive by telling me that it was because I wanted to show that I was not being controlled... No need to go into that.  I did point out, however, that no matter how upset I might have been at any point in any one of our numerous car trips, I had never sat in the back because of it. Always nice to have one irrefutable fact in one's arsenal.  But, no fears, there was no heavy bombardment between back and front seats; we had a nice dinner. 

Conflict #2
We were driving somewhere with an unfamiliar route and H was driving slowly and making the man behind us impatient.  That driver was a jerk about it, yelling at H for slowing down to look for our turn (this is on a street with a 25 mph speed limit, so it's not like we were holding up highway traffic).  Anyway, H got upset and then didn't turn when he should have (on purpose?  to bother the guy?).  H was kind of arguing back with the guy with hand symbols... It was nothing rude, but it bothered me that he couldn't ignore this person and that he let it affect him and his driving.  So, on the way back I did apply my rule; we were in my car, and I drove.  H was livid but I stated my case pretty clearly, and - I think he (secretly) admitted that I had a point.  Before we got home (5 minute drive) we had already forgiven and forgotten.

Sigh...

P.S.  I admit that, in general, H is a better driver. But, I think that the rule shall still be imposed about 50% of the time.

P.P.S.  Amazing Almost Invisible woman can predict the future... We will use H's car more often for family errands.

Gotcha

Almost invisible woman admits she has some "control-freak" tendencies but I'm trying to ease up a bit as son gets older  and as he clearly values his independence.   When L. was young, the rule was: 1 hour per day maximum on nintendo or tv (not one hour each) and "no screen time until the chores are done."  This summer, I stuck with the chore rule, and I tried to set a turn-off time (9 pm) but I was much more laid back about time limits.
Still, a few weeks ago I saw evidence that he had played nintendo in secret.  What "evidence"?  The tv volume was off, and it was no longer set to play DVDs.  Today this happened again, and I racked my brain and couldn't think of when he could have played.  Hmmm...  last night after we went to bed??? (Now I remember that we ran out to do a half-hour errand this a.m.)

So, on both these occasions I confronted him in a relaxed way (a little teasing in the tone).
FIRST TIME:
Me: "My sources tell me you played nintendo!"
L:  "Who told you?"
Ha ha - Well, I told him I wasn't going to give him that information, but I assured him that it hadn't been his sister since I didn't want to get her in trouble... I think eventually I told him that it was something to do with evidence, rather than tattling.  Eventually he said, "Oh, I know what it was.  The wii was connected."  Ha ha!  I didn't say anything, but actually I hadn't noticed that part (my son has two gaming systems these days).  L assured me that he had connected it just for a second - and he really didn't even know why he did it.
I told him that I "chose to believe him." 
SECOND TIME:  (today)  I told him what my evidence was and he accepted that he had indeed played.  But he swore that it hadn't been the night before AFTER we went to bed.
Anyway, I didn't want to make this a huge issue -his summer is almost over, and as I've said, I'm trying to be more laid back and L has been pretty responsible over the summer. Also, one of his best friends does this act (sneak gaming time early in the morning) and we've just laughed about it.  His mom is more controlling than I (in my opinion) yet this habit in her son is something she has decided not to fight.  It seemed like a very minor transgression.
After my talk with L tonight, hubby and I watched a movie*; L came out of his room several times during the movie ("how long is this going to last?").  When it was over and I had turned off the lights, I sat in the dark living room for a few minutes pondering... I was thinking that I wished that I had talked to L about this a bit more seriously.  I did want to make it clear that it would NOT be okay once the school year started.  Mainly, it really worries me that he would lose sleep because he was waiting for an opportunity to play. (Aren't we mothers bombarded nowadays with NPR stories on the huge impact that sleep deprivation is having on the typical teenager?)
Me (thinking to myself):  "wouldn't it be an opportune time for him to come out here to the abandoned living room?" I didn't plan on waiting to ambush him, but my son made it too easy for me.  About three minutes after beginning my stake out, he came out of his room.  I heard him turn on the light in the kitchen and I sat still.
Tick tock - thirty seconds pass and I see his head peak into the living room and then POP out of view.
I called him to sit down, and I got it off my chest.  It was great.  No anger - very reasonable actually on both our parts.  We talked about his best friend - we talked about sleep - etc (and, yes, he actually participated - It wasn't just me yadda yadda yaddaing at him.  (Wait, is there a right way to spell "yaddaing"?)
The delicate part is HOW do I respond when he swears that he didn't do X or Y or Z?  I am sooo glad that I didn't angrily say he was lying because, sincerely, it was only when I started writing this that I realized that he probably DID play today (during that errand), rather than last night.  This was a no-no because he was supposed to be working on his summer reading project - but he had already admitted to me that he had played.  He was very likely telling the truth when he swore that he hadn't stayed up to play at night. 
Wow - when you think about these moments of teen-mother interaction, so many things can go wrong.  Entirely different issues than with my older children (everyone is different).  I don't remember the intense feeling of walking on eggshells with the others.... or is that just the effect of time?  But, anyway, I'm so grateful for the relatively good communication we still have (not that he's communicating everything to me).

P.S. Once last year when I got home from work late, I was sure L had been playing video games even though his homework wasn't done, and I tricked him into confessing.
Me: "You really didn't play?"
L: "No, I did not.  Absolutely not."
Me:  "So, if I go check, the hair that I put there will still be in place???"
 Wow - can you believe he fell for that?  But I'm too honest - and after he owned up, I confessed my trickery.  It was really funny.


* What was the name of that movie???