THE MATURE HARD TIMES ALTERNATOR

I recently became aware of an extension to an earlier hypothesis around the distribution and amelioration of Hard Times. This revelation came about during a moment where it was all I could do to keep my sanity because waaaaaaaaaaay too much stuff was going down. In the presence of my children, I had a major – and, apparently, noticeable --  lapse of my usual Momveneer* of steady competence and cheer – and Guess What!

The kids could actually handle it.

G, usually happily – to his mother, scarily - devoid of Executive Function and Mundane Practical Concerns/Attention, became suddenly attuned to things he’d never seemed to even register before: “Mom, don’t you need to put your turn signal on here?” he asked, to my utter astonishment (filtered through a murky haze of despair). “You seem like you are not focusing,” he told me a few minutes later. “Do you need to take a break?”

Meanwhile Z, who is not known for being forthcoming about her intentions or actions, became crystal clear, meticulous and solicitous: “May I get a glass of water?” (My reaction, percolated via a thick fog of dejection: HUH???) “May I get you a glass of water too?” “How are you doing, Mama?”

It gradually dawned on me that what I was experiencing was a manifestation of The MATURE Hard Times Alternator. I had been well aware of the machinations of The Hard Times Alternator (THTA) in my children, but did not know that it was also potentially a major player in any Full family dynamic. Adults are usually a peripheral factor in the HTA equation. I hadn’t realized grownups sometimes – however momentarily - merit this sort of ethereal (yet, when necessary, child-incorporating) intervention!

Figure I – The Mature Hard Times Alternator in Action, utilizing the

    “Poorly Behaved” Model of  Poor Behavior

This flare-up of The Mature Hard Times Alternator is not something I would want to incur too often. I like to let my kids be kids, and I think some of their response was out of anxiety. Plus, that sort of disastrophe pile-up is not something I’d like to endure with any frequency. It was nonetheless liberating and reassuring in the way it revealed the junior Full Spectrums’ potential capabilities -- and to see them step up when called for by TMHTA.

This holiday season, may your HTA in be in good working order; and may your MHTA be at the ready…should that by any chance become necessary.

Love,

Full Spectrum Mama

*Veneer! I said veneer!

THE COMPLAINT DEPARTMENT

It's that time of year when some of us lucky chums begin to feel more complainous.

What's that you say? Any time of year is a good time to feel complainous? Why, that's why Partial/incomplete Monochrome Persona (PiMP) and Full Spectrum Mama (FSM) have teamed up to create that handy dandy button over there on the right so that any time can be a complaint time.  

However, the “holiday season” can be quite grim. Knowing that your COMPLAINTS will be complained in a timely fashion for our annual COMPLAINT DEPARTMENT anniversary guest post -- with all the flair of PiMP! -- might be Just The Thing to ease your holiday woes.

This year, we at TCD continue to accept Junior Complaints, Short Complaints and Long Complaints, all to be suitably complained. Acceptable COMPLAINTS may be funny, whiny and/or dire. Please send all COMPLAINTS to jineffable@gmail.com.  

All this is not to say, as per usual, that TCD is open.  Yet somewhere…far, far away…lies the always-accepting, ever-enduring, firmly-shut COMPLAINT DEPARTMENT. You may be assured of that, alrighty.

Sincerely,

Partial/incomplete Monochrome Persona

Factotum, THE COMPLAINT DEPARTMENT

Guest writer/Troubleshooter @ Full Spectrum Mama

Ancestry

Holidays can be a little bit tricky in a Full Spectrum household. Take Easter, please. The morning egg hunt presents huge problems when one child goes Machiavellian (strategy, speed, ruthlessness; goal: vanquishing cousins, sibling…result: victory) and one goes aspergian (general neural overload - candy, neural/visual/auditory overload – frolicking cousins, warp-speed sibling; goal: vague…result: paralysis, tears). (Please see self-explanatory Figures 1 and 2.) Ditto, Birthdays: think piñatas, favors &c.  We have adapted by focusing on the pre-filled Easter basket, the set number of packets – one for each child – in the piñata, and so forth.

                      Figure 1                                                                                            Figure 2

St. Patrick’s Day, too, has its potential pitfalls. Over oatmeal breakfast on that fateful day, I was sharing an uplifting story of how the children’s Scots great-grandfather would wear a button on his bum that read, “Kiss me, I’m Irish,” much to their Irish great-grandmother’s chagrin, when Z asked me, “Mama, am I Irish?”

[Censored!] I was completely tongue-tied. There was a long and (to me) somewhat uncomfortable silence. I’d’ve preferred to have been thinking about many other questions right then, including my ongoing internal debate over which is better as the face ages: the jowl-less wrinkles of your skinnier folk or the wrinkle-free jowls of the pleasantly plump?

Ahem. Since Z was adopted from China, I have a ready-made response for one of the hardest questions: “Why didn’t my birth mother keep me?” China’s one-child policy –for all its questionable aspects – offers the option of a simple answer to this complicated question: “Your birth Mama gave you up because she had to, since in China most couples are allowed only one child.”

But what about this question? Is Z Irish or not? Clearly she is not genetically Irish. But her maternal great-grandmother was fresh off the boat from Ireland. Pardner, G and I are all genetically part-Irish. As I sat there, mouth agape, Pardner (Thank you universe for Pardner! Thank you! Thank you!) came to the rescue, assuring her in a strong brogue that, “Everyone’s Irish on St. Paddy’s Day!”

“Good,” she said, “because the leprechauns are going to come to our school this weekend and turn everybody’s chairs over.”

Oh.

Walking into school several weeks after St. Patrick’s Day, Z asked me, “Mama, if we can have ancestors…can we also have ‘anbrothers?’” After I stopped laughing and, frankly, bragging to everyone I ran into over the next few hours about how funny Z is, it hit me that she is still thinking about ancestry a great deal.

Maybe all those Easter eggs – and all those other material, tangible, often-edible (and sometimes eaten even when not-edible) things -- feel vitally important to a little girl who’s not quite sure what’s inside herself.

Next year I am just going to say, “Yes. Yes, you are Irish baby. Because you are mine.”

Love and leprechauns,

Full Spectrum Mama