Misheru

It seems strange to be writing about culture shock when there are so many other things going on in my life — new baby, friends and family visiting, parties, etc. — but I finally feel, after five years of being back in the United States, that I am okay living here.

It’s weird.

I told my friend Sheleen about it the other day, how I like driving my big Volvo, and how I enjoy my energy-sucking fridge with superfluous ice (crushed and uncrushed) and filtered water in the door. How I sold my european, super-energy-conserving washer and dryer and bought a new, big-ass American washer and dryer that can wash and/or dry more clothes than I can carry in one shot. I can’t get over this. All this time I was waiting for my washer to heat its own water and spend an hour and a half sprinkling tiny bits of water and spinning about an armload of clothes at a time, when the rest of the U.S. could load a week’s worth of laundry into their washer and 30 minutes later — wa lah! Finished! I felt the way settlers must have when the well was finally finished and they didn’t have to haul water from the creek anymore. (more…)

I had promised myself some time ago that I would not try to copy Dooce when I write. After all, when people want to read Heather Armstrong’s website, they actually go to her website, not mine. Besides, copying is a cop-out, after all. I have to put myself out there, not someone else.

But.

I love Dooce’s idea of writing a letter to her daughter every month. I have envied this idea for quite some time. It is actually not new to me; when I was a kid, I read this book called Memo To Myself When I Have A Teenage Daughter. The book is about a teenaged girl (big surprise) who writes memos to herself (big big surprise) and then it turns out her mother kept a diary when she was a teenager that she shows her and reveals all this stuff about her character. As a pre-teen, I loved it. For most of junior high and highschool I wrote pages of inane, boring stuff about my life, purely to use as a torture device for my future offspring.

So the idea of writing a letter once a month is dangerously close to this other idea of writing for a future child, and I was automatically attracted to it. But, is it really ethical to copy somebody else’s idea? Hmmmmmm.

Ah, what the hell. It’s the Internet.

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I wish I could wave a magic wand and make myself a great mother. A Donna Reed/Dharma type that always knows just how much or how little to do of everything.

Unfortunately, my semi-authentic Harry Potter wand doesn’t seem to be working.

I am home, and Ben is home, and Maya is home. This is familiar territory. After all, I was home with Ben for three years. Three years. I should be used to the stress of constant inane conversation about SpongeBob, or understand that the sparkly pencil is not actually a sparkly pencil, but a super robot lava wand that shoots and burns Batgirl and Bat-baby. I am, of course, Batgirl. Or Lava-girl. What I am not, unfortunately, is Wonder Woman.

Marti and I are not big talkers. One thing I noticed about going to work is that by the end of the day, I am tired of talking to people. Talking makes me tired. It takes my energy. Small-talk makes me doubly tired. Talking about SpongeBob, Teletubbies or Super Heroes pushes me right over the edge.

So what do I do with my adorable 4-year-old boy who loves to talk, non-stop, from the moment he wakes up in the morning until he collapses into bed at night? I want to answer his questions (which are endless). I don’t want to be that adult that says, “Because I told you so,” or “It just is, all right?” but I am quickly becoming that person. I don’t know any other way for him to learn that it is not okay to hound people all day long, or that sometimes he has to obey adults simply because they ask him to. These skills are not a joke, and not having them can be crippling in adulthood. I just hate being the adult teaching them. I want to be the hip, cool parent that is totally understanding and doesn’t yell or get frustrated but instead has this amazing rapport with her kids. I am not that person, however. I am a real, live grown-up who worries about my kids being able to hold down a job or, at the very least, attend a court proceeding without talking back to the judge.

And that, my friend, royally sucks.

How am I? This was my response to a dear friend who just e-mailed me after 6 months of being absent and unreachable in another country:

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