Portraits

Mamakat's prompt:   Ask your child to draw a portrait of you and share it with us. (Inspired by Scary Mommy)


At some point, my son started to draw.  It's a developmental progression, of course, and small marks on the wall tend to progress to more organized efforts such as architecture.  When we pick up Zane from daycare, he usually has a picture for us.  I always ask the boy "What is it?" or "What did you draw today?"  I want to make very sure that I am holding said picture in the correct orientation and commenting on the right thing.  I've been chastised for mistaking a picture of his daddy for a tree on more than one occasion.  

Here is the first unsolicited official picture that Zane identified as his mother.  I like the organization of squiggly lines into some sort of circular form.  There is what looks to be an eye in the center of that maelstrom, and in January of 2012, this was an accurate description of me.  It was indeed a tumultuous time, and my son was channeling Early Picasso.

This is the next unsolicited picture of me that Zane officially identified as "Mom in a Tornado", drawn sometime in 2012.  I now have a head and a body with feet.  My outfit appears to be some sort of tent.  I either have no arms or I have one arm wiping my brow, I can't tell.   I can see two clearly identifiable eyes, but no mouth or ears.  I may or may not be wearing makeup, and I may have dyed my hair blonde.  Still, this effort shows good growth in fine motor skills.

It was therefore with interest that I asked Zane to draw another picture of his mama.  What colorful impressions would Zane put on paper this time?  This is what I got:

On the one hand, I appear to be skinny.  On the other, I have no boobs and I appear to have lost an eye.  I'm smiling, missing eye and all.  I do have a nose, and I do have tiny T-Rex arms, but no hands. I'm concerned that my legs seem to meld into a single appendage that looks suspiciously like a cloven hoof, because I'm not really sure what the heck that means.

What's Your Name Again?

Note: This is my post for today, 08/06/2011. But for some odd, she-must-have-been-drinking sort of reason, it published as May 6th. What can I say? Houlihan's has good chocolate martinis!

As parents, we decided that we did not want our son to call us by our given names. It would be too weird, we thought, and calling us by our first names would not clearly establish to others our relationship. We agreed that it would be best for all concerned if Zane called us Mama and Daddy or some variation of those names. Problem solved. I did not take into account my horrible difficulty with names.

I am great with faces. If I see a face a couple of times, I seem to remember that face for a very long time. It might take me awhile, but eventually I will remember where I saw that face, and then why. Yet I am terrible with names. Not only do I have trouble recalling names, even of people I know, I sometimes call people that I know well by other names. For example, I have called my boss "Mom", and my husband "Jim". Important tip: husbands don't seem to respond well to being called someone else's name any more than bosses do.

This unfortunate tendency gets me into quite a few embarrassing situations. Names that start with the letter 'T' for example, may cause me to go through a veritable laundry list of other 'T' names before I get to the right one. My nephews Tristan and Tyler have learned to just respond when I call them "Tris-Tyler" or "Ty-Tristan", but other people aren't as generous.

I get dirty looks and worse. But is that really fair? The only person I've ever given a hard time about not remembering my name is my mother. She only has one daughter, and she called me my brother's name. That faux pas requires a bit of teasing; it is some sort of law somewhere.

If everyone would just wear name tags all the time, this wouldn't be an issue. I hate wearing name tags, however, which is probably some sort of irony. I really can't expect others to do what I won't do myself.

I've worked so hard to get my son to call his parents Mama and Daddy. I did not count on those names embedding themselves so deeply into my brain. For the past two months, I have had to stop myself from calling every single female I meet "Mama". It actually takes me a couple of seconds to pause and locate the correct name. Any man who approaches me risks being referred to as "Daddy", whether he is one or not.

I am not sure what the answer is to this dilemma. My instinctive solution is to just not say the name at all, to just fake it. This is probably rude, but I hate having to ask for someone's name every time I see them. I also tend to insert a term of endearment in place of a name, so I may call the person "sweetie" or "my little cheesy-poof". That doesn't necessarily go over well at school board meetings.

Yeah, faking it is probably my best option.