My Oprah Aha Moment

I live in a house filled with my husband's DNA. They're loud talkers, they're morning people, they love a good fart joke. I'm the only person in my house that locks the bathroom door when I'm using the facilities and the "others" get irritated with me when I do. I'm an Indian in a house full of chiefs. With one exception.

Melee'. He's my kind of people. We like to think before we talk. We freckle, we don't tan. We can ride in a car for thirty minutes and never speak a word. Hey, we're not being rude, we're enjoying the scenery, we're listening to the words of the songs, we're taking it all in. When you ask us "How was your day?" we respond "Good." in our heavy Texas drawl. We are Indians of few words. He's my dawg.

But there are a couple of things about Melee' that drive me nuts. They are traits that I can't trace to anyone's genes and I was starting to worry. This boy of nine cannot open packages. No, not packages that come in the mail with three kinds of packing tape, bubble wrap and styrofoam. Boy cannot fight his way through a Poptart wrapper. When he was little it was kind of funny, a year or two later it was endearing, but he's as big as the twelve year old now, and wants to be a professional baseball player. "Melee', honey, when you make it to the big leagues, I won't be there to open your bag of peanuts." And he spills drinks, all the time. There are two things that Charlie barks about at the dinner table "Chew with your mouth closed." And "Where does your drink go?" So the phrase "Don't cry over spilled milk." really takes on new meaning here at our house. We were out on a rare lunch date with his Dad the other day, and while we are always prepared for the fact that it's going to be bad, when Melee' knocked over his completely full soda across the table and into my lap, it was all I could do to keep from going postal. Charlie had already barked "Where does your drink go? Where? Where?!" And of course he dissolved into a puddle of tears, because we're sensitive like that.

On the way home I made an emergency stop at the Walmart for a few rainy day supplies and bought him two sippy cups. No, not the toddler kind with a stopper for no spills, but those cheapy plastic cups with the straw attached to the bottom that looks like a teapot. At first he thought it was all fun and games until I rubbed his nose in the fact that I was buying them because he can't seem to get through a day without spilling a drink. (Cause I'm Mother-of-the-Year, like that). We got home and the short people started playing with their play-dough. Melee' came up to me with one of his new cups and said "Can you open this for me?" "What?" I asked. "I can't get this open. Will you open it for me?" "You can get that open." "MOM! LOOK!" He held out the plastic cup, put his hand on the lid and slipped his hand back and forth over the thing like it had been lubed with oil. "No. I won't do it. You can." He puttered around in the kitchen for a few more minutes as I watched Ace and Peach. Every once in a while I would throw out a suggestion "Use your fingers. Really grip it." "Try the jar opener." "No, seriously I'm not gonna open it for you." "Because you need to work on your hand strength."

*BING* And that' s when it happened. I always wondered when I would have an Oprah Aha moment. And THIS WAS IT! IT WAS THE PLAYDOUGH! I have four kids ages 2 to 12 and this was the first time I had ever purchased play-dough and brought it in to the home. I don't like it, it's messy, it could get in the carpet, they're just gonna mix all the colors anyway and I'll have four cans of brown. My mother used to let John play with it when she kept him, she's OCD enough to manage the mess. And Peach has been playing with playdough for a year now thanks to Mothers Day Out. But Jeremy went to a different MDO where play-dough was not a part of every day centers and his mother's a tight-ass who has a control problem. As I looked down and saw Ace struggling to squeeze and smush the dough with little success ("Momma make me a nake.") I knew that Melee' had been deprived of a vital motorskill-enriching right of passage. I don't know if I can make up for it. I often imagine him stranded on a desert island with a case of breakfast bars, quietly expiring on a beach littered with little shiny unopened packages. But now, armed with the knowledge gleaned from a lifetime twelve years of mothering, I've got a plan. Hasbro stock is currently at $18.13, keep your eyes peeled....I'm just saying...