Mother's Day "Grays"

             This past Mother’s Day I was faced with a daunting personal dilemma.  However, I must admit that this dilemma was totally centered on nothing more than my vanity but it was daunting none-the-less.  It all started about ten years or so ago as my 30’s began to fade into the history books. I became traumatized by the emergence of one, then two, then sixty or seventy gray hairs.  They didn’t have the decency to evenly distribute themselves throughout my crowing glory.  Oh no!  My very rude grays conducted a full on frontal assault along my hairline.  Before I knew it I appeared to have aged ten years in a matter of days. Eventually I realized if I didn’t take action I could easily be mistaken for, of all things, someone my age!

             Like many other women, who are willing to be honest, the emergence of the “grays” shook me to my very core.  I felt as though I was standing on the continental divide of my life with my self-proclaimed “naturally youthful appearance” on one side and my uhm, “less-youthful” appearance on the other.  Whenever I looked into the mirror, which was often, the grays stood strong and unified  taunting me mercilessly.  I was sure support hose and pureed meals were soon to follow.  I was forced to accept the harsh and cruel fact that a significant portion of my self-proclaimed “naturally youthful appearance” would no longer be, well, natural.  Instead it would forever more come out of a box. Thus I became a regular in the hair color section of the beauty supply store. But finding the perfect hair color gave me fits.  For years I experimented with a variety of ‘blacks,’ ‘blonds’ and finally ‘reds’ to cover those unrelenting grays.  Ultimately it was my better half, who had been dragged into one beauty supply store too many, who ended the years of agony when he picked up a box of Cream of Nature Permanent Bronze Copper 6.4 hair color.  The hair color angels had finally smiled upon me.  There was magic inside that box!

            In order to keep the magic alive I often purchased several boxes of my Bronze Copper 6.4 at a time.  That way I was sure to be ready when the grays launched their monthly attack.  Well the night before Mother’s Day I was utterly stunned to see an entire cluster of grays gathered front and center just above my hairline.  Where on earth had they come from?  There had been no sign of them that morning.  I surely would have noticed this very large gathering.  I moved a few of my locs around and low and behold the grays had totally infiltrated the front of my head.  No worries though.  I confidently reached into the cabinet under the sink for my box of magic. O-M-G! Nothing!  I dropped to my knees and frantically shuffled through bottles of shampoos and conditioners.  My heart pounded as I realized I was out of Bronze Copper 6.4.  No magic.  So now what?  It was late no beauty supply stores were open.  It was hours before Mother’s Day, a day when all self respecting mothers want to be appreciated, exude charm and confidence, feel sexy and darn it, look youthful!  So here I am faced with the unthinkable possibility of having to actually look my age.  Oh the horror! I deserved so much better especially on Mother’s Day.

            After moping around the bathroom I nearly resigned myself to my fate.  I figured I would just have to “woman up” and deal with the situation.  But, duh, I was so caught up in my own vanity that I wasn’t thinking clearly.  Once I regained my senses I realized I didn’t have to “woman up” at all.  I had totally forgotten that Mother’s Day was “hat” day my church.  Better yet, my girlfriend had loaned me a cute straw hat to sport if I could make it work.  You betcha I could make it work!  Mother’s Day morning, off to church I went, proudly rocking the cute straw hat, tiled to the side.  It had allowed me to win another battle against those hostile grays and oh yes, keep my self-proclaimed “naturally youthful appearance” in tact!

"Readin', Writin', and Rithmatic' Again!"

When I shoved off on my blogging journey I idealistically gave myself a weekly deadline. No matter what, I would produce a blog a week and become prolific! My grand plan for blog stardom got off to an impressive start. I nailed my first three deadlines and then BAM! The wheels fell off of my ride. What’s really frustrating is that I didn’t miss the fourth deadline because I was procrastinating. Nope I missed it because of school. Not college or some deep and enriching post graduate program—but high school. You see when I participated in the spawning of a child (also known as “the boy”) I had no idea that when said child began his formal education that I too would be dragged kicking and screaming back into the classroom forced to do the K-12 grind all over again!

I consider myself to be a relatively intelligent person. For the most part I did well in school once I got the hang of it. There was that brief stint in elementary school when my report cards were plagued with “N’s” for ‘Needs Improvement.’ Admittedly it took me a few grades to catch on to the fact that my teachers actually wanted me to listen when they spoke, or to write on the paper they gave me instead of my desk. But by about the fourth grade, or so, I finally got the hang of things. Keeping in mind my early academic challenges I purposely married a reasonably intelligent man assuming we’d have a reasonably intelligent child or better yet a phenom who would blow the hinges off of class room doors with his super intelligence. Initially the boy appeared to be bright. He learned quickly, had excellent verbal and cognitive skills and was very creative. But the strangest thing happened when the child entered high school. I was horrified to watch as he mysteriously began losing brain cells. They vanished at such a rapid pace that not even Nobel scientists could comprehend it, let alone produce the miracle drug to reverse the boy’s tragic condition. Suddenly he was unable to comprehend the simplest of directions let alone complete daily assignments or study for exams. I am amazed that he managed to make it from one class to another without assistance. In the meantime my blogging got pushed to the back burner as I was forced to nurse the child and study for on my 10th grade finals again!

Where did I go wrong?  I followed all of those parental manuals that told me to read to him nightly, set regular study times and oh my favorite, supervise him until he can work independently. As if! I’ve been waiting years for that ‘works well independently’ thing to kick in on a consistent basis. I’m keeping up my end of the deal doing everything a dedicated, responsible and incredibly paranoid mother is required to do. I’ve met all of his teachers and stay in touch with them via email, I check his grades daily and homework nightly, I make sure the child gets the medically recommended 8 hours of sleep at night and a hot, homemade breakfast each morning! During the first semester the A’s and B’s appear regularly. He emulated all of the characteristics of a bright student on his way to success in high school. All of my concerns about his poor organization habits, daydreaming, procrastinating and forgetting to turn in assignments were momentarily washed away. I thought, “Wow”, all of those lectures from the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th grade had finally taken root. I slacked off on the grade checks and actually began relying on my “brain cell deteriorating disease stricken” teenage boy to provide accurate and reliable information about what he is supposed to be doing in school. Talk about being a damn fool! When I regained my senses and checked his grades I was dumbfounded at how A’s and B’s had become C’s, D’s and even F’s. This can’t be! I kept checking the name and student number to be sure I hadn’t stumbled on to some other unfortunate child’s progress report. It’s was pointless though, Power School doesn’t lie even though I desperately wanted it to.

So now an ominous cloud now looms over the second half of the boy’s school year. It hails down a steady shower of yelling, punishments, lectures and of course joint studies. I spend countless hours trying to succeed where modern medicine has failed and reverse the loss of brain cells by pounding English, History, Science and Math (tutor required) facts and information into his head and, more importantly, trying to convince the boy that pretending the work doesn’t exist will NOT make it go away. It’s mentally exhausting especially as I wait with bated breath for the grades to come in. On the bright side I’ve definitely upped my skill level for shows like Jeopardy and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire by at least 90%. I can rattle off details about Stalin’s totalitarian government in Russia, offer in-depth literary analysis of The Scarlett Letter and The Grapes of Wrath or explain Newton’s Three Laws of Motion at the drop of a hat. I’m a walking trivia championship waiting to happen. But as a mom, turned high school drop-in,  I’m more concerned about whether the boy will actually have enough brain cells to get him through the rest of the 10th grade let alone the 11th and 12th grades. I know I can’t be alone in my agony. I’m sure other, otherwise bright and talented children, currently suffer from this brain cell deterioration disease (right?) At this point I can only continue to study and pray that the disease reverses its path soon so we, I mean he can graduate.