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The Newsletter >
It's Good to be the Ya-Ya
March 24, 2010
When I found four gold plated dessert spoons in the toe of my riding boot and pennies filling the fingers of my riding gloves, I knew Toddler World had officially arrived in our lives. By August of this year I will have seven grand children, and, frankly, I don’t look old enough to have five grand children. I am the Ya-Ya.
Being the Ya-Ya means a ton of the fun and a fraction of the worry that plagued my days as the Ma-Ma. Being a mom made me gray, and being a grandmother makes me want to learn to ride a dirt bike. It also means I have become the oracle of all wisdom for my daughters on matters of the mothering kind, leading to conversations like this:
“Mom, feel Conner’s head.” Conner’s head is small, fuzzy, and three weeks old.
I picked Conner up and felt his head. It felt small, fuzzy, and three weeks old.
“What is that?” Heather asked, pointing at the head of her second child.
“Where?”
“On the top of his head.”
“You mean his soft spot? Heather, you know babies have soft spots.” I watched Zoe’s two-year old ponytail bobbing through the living room—nothing soft about that head (Zoe—Conner’s bigger sister and official hard head.)
“I know it’s his soft spot,” she grabbed the baby from me. “But isn’t it deeper?”
“Deeper than what?” I ran my hand over his perfectly normal skull, again.
“You know! Deeper than average!” I must have looked stupid, because she decided to explain the theory of Conner’s deepening head hole. “Because, Mom, I caught Zoe poking his head with a Q-tip, and now I think his soft spot is deeper.”
Zoe, I noticed, was building a small fort out of Q-tips under the couch. She was also pouring water over her own head out of a measuring cup from the kitchen.
“Could he be lobotomized now?” My daughter’s frown was deep, pained, and serious.
I recognized this as one of those moments when I could practice my excellent reflective listening skills. (Note: Reflective listening is a technique where you repeat back to a person their very own words, pretty much because you can’t believe someone that intelligent could say something that dumb.)
I said, reflectively, “Now let me understand you. You think Zoe took a Q-tip, gave Conner a lobotomy through the soft spot on the top of his head, and now his brain is ruined. Is that about it?”
“Yes, yes. Feel his head again.”
I felt his head again, and then I felt Heather’s.
She’ll relax. She’ll have to, because one of these days she’ll walk into a bedroom and find one of the kids (sound asleep,) with their pants around their ankles, and a Fisher Price thermometer stuck between his/her knees. And through a little detective work, she’ll realize that while this kid took a nap, the other kids tried to take the sleeping kid’s temperature—rectally. They failed, but it was a close house call.
It’s what the sports commentator said a couple of weeks ago about cross-country skiing at the Olympics. “You’ve got to save something for the hills, Christina. You’ve got to save something for the hills.” Bingo!
As the official Ya-Ya, I say to the young moms out there. “You’ve got to save something for the hills, honey. You’ve got to save something for the hills.” Because if you think Zoe giving Conner a lobotomy with a Q-tip is the worst of it, you are going to lose this race.
Linda (Been There, Worried About That) Zern
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