Too many hang-ups
Telemarketers don't want to talk to you.

by Terri Mauro

Perhaps it's some sort of cosmic payback for all the times we've hung up on telemarketers: Now, they're starting to hang up on us. No sales pitch, no asking after our well-being, no offer of incredible savings--you say hello, and all you get is "click." Man, that must be making somebody feel good.

Get 'em while they're young
Why adopt a baby when you can adopt an embryo?

by Terri Mauro

There's a certain school of adoption thought that says the younger you get 'em, the better. Mindful of the damage that years in a foreign orphanage or domestic foster care can cause, cautious adoptive parents figure to cut their risks of serious problems by choosing children who've had as little exposure to those institutions as possible--which is to say, newborns, infants, babies, clean little slates that have yet to be sullied by uncaring handlers.

I can't really quarrel with that. My own two kids, adopted from a Russian orphanage at ages four-and-a-half and two, are certainly living proof that institutions are not great places to grow up. I often wonder how much farther they would be in their development if they had been with us from birth, getting love and stimulation and therapy and hugs from day one instead of day 1,642 or day 730. They would be different kids--and that gives me pause, too, because I kind of like them the way they are. Their personalities were formed during those early years just as surely as their disabilities, and their personalities are pretty neat.

I've always thought that adopting an older child with identified special needs was the way to go--you get a fully formed little person with a personality, interests, abilities, and, if you're lucky, toilet-training skills, and a road map of where to start looking for problems and getting help for them. Adopting an infant seems to me like ordering one of those mystery-grab-bag packages from a catalog, a box with a big question mark on it. Who knows what it may hold? I prefer my gifts unwrapped, with lots of descriptive information attached. There are surprises enough even with that.

But if people want to go with the infant behind Curtain Number Three, well, again, I can't quarrel. We all have to decide what's right for us and our families. Some couples take it a step further and start a relationship with the birthmother before the birth, assuring she gets adequate prenatal care and gives the baby as much of a chance as possible to start life flaw-free. And I suppose that's prudent, and so I won't quarrel with them either.

But a recent item in Newsweek makes me worry a little for the way this obsession with youth may end up. It seems that, far from settling for a baby, you can now adopt an embryo. A couple in Florida has six embryos left over from infertility treatments, and wants to offer them for adoption to "good Christian people." Now, folks, I know it's tempting--bypassing the birthparent (geneparent?) altogether, getting a child fresh from the test tube, starting almost but not quite from scratch--so tempting that it might become the next big adoption front. But think about it: Can you imagine the awkwardness of those yearly reunions of six siblings born to different parents? The measuring up of which child is doing best, the judgments made on the parenting skills of those who are falling behind?

One good thing about adopting kids out of institutions--there's always somebody else to blame.

Be prepared
A mom's purse becomes an Emergency Play Kit.

by Terri Mauro

Not long ago, I left my purse at McDonald's. (Parental forgetfulness in the face of overstimulated children is a subject for another column, to be sure; the last time I lost a purse, it was at Chuck E. Cheese.) I called to see if it had been found, and the manager checked inside the purse they had for identifying marks. "Does it have...flash cards?" he asked. Yep, that would be mine.

Before I became a parent, I must have had personal items in my purse. Maybe a lipstick, maybe phone numbers of friends to meet for lunch, maybe a paperback, maybe a prescription. It's been said that the contents of a woman's pocketbook could be a portrait of her personality, and I must have had one of those--a personality--at one time.

But now my purse contains flashcards. And Matchbox cars. And the kind of candy that will keep my son from having a meltdown. And wrappers for those candies. And tissues for collecting those candies when they've fallen out of his mouth. And bandaids for imaginary boo-boos. And favorite fidget toys. And pen and paper to draw with. And crayons. And maybe a few coins--not to spend, but to spin or stack or slide.

My purse has become an Emergency Play Kit, full of things that can be pulled out at a moment's notice to occupy antsy children. Driver's license, credit cards, cash --they're all nice, but superfluous, though in a pinch I have let my son line up all those pretty credit cards on the floor. Mom's bag better always have another trick in it, because unrelieved boredom is not a pretty sight. Order taking too long at the restaurant? Hey, I've got flashcards!

When the kids were much younger and my son was still in diapers, his diaper bag used to be the toy bag. After a year or two of accumulating books and cars and stuffed animals and every fast-food toy ever distributed, it weighed approximately two tons. I couldn't bear to lug it around, so I started carrying diapers and wipes in my purse. The purse was large, and the purse was soon heavy.

These days, I have a tiny purse, just a little wallet-sized slip of a thing on a strap, but you'd better believe it's big enough to hold plenty of options for amusements. I've left the house without money, without my driver's license, without my keys, but I never go out without toys. Got some hidden in my jacket pockets, just in case.

The trouble with e-mail
If you're in my face in my living room, it's personal.

by Terri Mauro

When it comes time to examine the decline of civility here at the dawn of the new millennium, e-mail will have a lot to answer for.

Oh, sure, people behave badly in their cars, they behave badly at work, they allow their children to behave badly. They yell at each other on TV talk shows and sue at the drop of a hat. Movies encourage a kick-ass attitude toward one's fellow man, sit-coms specialize in rude rebuttals. There's certainly enough excuses for abuses to go around.

Yet I never cease to be amazed at the things people will say to each other in e-mail--which, after all, is hardly anonymous, and often even archived for posterity. The jerk who cuts you off on the highway rarely tosses a business card through your window so you'll know where to reach him, but the person who flames you on an e-mail list is likely to include full name, e-mail address, workplace, perhaps city and state of residence, perhaps something about the family. Hey, you moron, come visit my Web site!

Often, I suspect, the moron part is unintentional. I've done a lot of thinking about the way disputes develop in e-mail discussion groups--the way one person will overreact, then the other person will overreact bigger, and then other overreactors will pile on in a frenzy of righteous indignation--and I'm convinced that there is a fundamental difference in the way one feels about sending e-mail and the way one feels about reading it.

The sending of e-mail has a certain impersonal feeling to it. It's not a letter that you have to type and sign and read and address and stamp; it's not a medium that requires any thought at all. Often you're corresponding with people you've never met and are never likely to meet. You may have a warm feeling of familiarity toward them from reading their writing in previous posts, but they really don't exist in the way that somebody you see in physical form on a regular basis does. You may actually like them better than people you see in physical form on a regular basis, but the stakes are lower. You're likely to express your opinion a little more liberally, your sense of humor a little more sharply. You spout, you send; it's fast, it's fun, it's freeing. It's only e-mail. Nothing personal.

But reading e-mail is very personal. You're sitting in your nice safe home, basking in the warm glow of the computer. Maybe you're in your pajamas, maybe your kids are playing nearby. The message comes right to you; maybe it goes out to 2,000 other people, too, but it feels like person to person. It mentions you by name. It misinterprets your words. It accuses you of not knowing what you're talking about. It's hard not to see it as a personal attack. What someone may have meant as a quick shot from the lip becomes a shot to the heart. Your blood pressure goes up. Maybe you yell at the screen. Maybe you yell at your kids. Your mood turns sour.

And then you write back, shooting fast, sending without thinking, to that anonymous but offending party out there in cyberspace. And that party, reading your response in her peaceful home in her pajamas, may wonder what in the heck you're talking about and why you're so blooming sensitive. And will write back as though the hurtful words were yours. And so on and so on and so on.

E-mail is a medium without much capacity for nuance. Dry humor or simple bluntness can sound like hostility, and people who have never met can't easily judge one another's intentions. Emoticons help--they're like little handshakes, showing that there are no concealed weapons. Time would help more, but an e-mail program that automatically held up messages for 24 hours and then asked if you really want to send that would probably not be around for long.

Eat less, weigh more
I cut their food, I pour their juice, I gain their weight.

by Terri Mauro

News flash: In a startling discovery, medical researchers have determined that the large portions people are eating these days are contributing to the rise in obesity. That's right: Too much food can make you fat. Who knew? It's groundbreaking findings like these that remind us time and again that medical researchers have way more money than they know what to do with.

Do you speak mom?
What we have here is a failure to communicate.

by Terri Mauro

It has come to my attention that my children and I do not speak the same language.

I'm not talking here about their native Russian--they've been Americans for five years now, and had precious little language when they came home to begin with. No, this sudden lack of a common language is a recent thing. It's as if, to take a cue from "Star Trek," the universal translator that had been allowing us to understand one another is on the fritz. Sometimes they understand me just fine, and sometimes I might as well be speaking Klingon.

Apparently my daughter's translator works better than my son's, because she often takes it upon herself to interpret for me. That's the only explanation I can find for the fact that she repeats everything I say to him. "Buckle your seatbelt," I say. "Buckle your seatbelt," says she. Her bossy tone is almost exactly the same as mine. I try to convince her that there can only be one Mama, and that would be me. She nods, but in her eyes I can see that she has knowledge in this matter that I do not possess. Perhaps it is just that it is the job of big sisters to be bossy, and she is powerless to resist. Or maybe she knows that without her to pass my message on in a language he can understand, her brother wouldn't listen to me at all.

Which he quite often doesn't. There are the times when I ask him to do something, and he doesn't. There are the times when I ask him not to do something, and he does. Then there are the times when he asks me a question, I answer it, and he asks me exactly the same question again. Clearly, though it sounds to me as though I am speaking English, it's Greek to him. Or else there's some sort of insidious plan afoot to slowly drive me insane.

The Tower of Babel effect explains so many things that have been puzzling me about my children. The other day, I sat down with my daughter and reviewed some material for a test. She didn't know the answers, and so I told her quite clearly what they were. Fifteen minutes later, I asked her the questions again, and she looked at me like she had never heard any of this stuff before. I was worried that perhaps her brain had turned into Swiss cheese, but no--I was just babbling along in my incomprehensible parent language, and though she didn't want to make me feel bad by pointing it out, she can hardly be expected to have understood a thing. Guess the universal translator was glitching out again.

As do all people who don't quite understand each other, we will find ways to communicate, my children and I. Certain gestures, certain looks, certain tones of voice--they know when Mama means business, and are getting better at guessing what on earth I could be wanting. And I am trying to be patient, and speak slowly, and clearly, and loudly, more so with each repetition I have to make. I know that one day they will heed my words once again. Sure hope it happens soon--before they become teenagers, and then their language becomes incomprehensible to me.

copyright © 2000 by Terri Mauro