“Pre-Cursers” - That Moment When Your Little One’s Language Takes A Big Turn

            “Mommy,” my three-year old son pipes from his car seat behind me, “Did you know that beavers live in a dam?”

            “That’s right.”

            “They live in a dam,” he repeats. Giggles. While I can’t see his round, curl-framed face in the rearview mirror I can see my daughter, three years older and one seat over, looking at him with an admiring, deep-dimpled grin.

            Oh! He had learned the old curse word that actually doubles as a word that is “appropriate.”  Ha!

            Since I was a teenager I have fully embraced the release that a beefy-mouthed curse provides in moments of frustration and anger (sorry, Mom). But all cursing in my home had been suspended with the arrival of my kids; as little as I had known about childrearing, observations of the brave souls who had spawned before me had taught me that babes pick up everything, right out of the womb.

So although I had laughed my butt off as a kid watching The Bad News Bears characters continuously f-bombing each other and Coach Buttermaker (and got in trouble for laughing when I got home – come on Mom, you were the one who took me to that movie!), when I got older the occasional specter of real little tykes uttering obscenities struck me as off-putting. My Personal Cursing Guideline:  There’s plenty of time for cursing after childhood – say, from the teen years on.

            It was when my husband and I went out alone, far out of earshot of our kids, that we would let loose (ok, it was mostly me), using that same exaggerated inflections my son had used when saying dam: “How the f- are ya! Sh-, did you hear about such and such…? Wow, that really sucked!”   

            As careful as we had been around our children, I realized that the shape shifting “damn/dam” had slickly slipped through the cracks. Though amused that the kids had already caught on to this, I refrained from laughing so as not to encourage them (see Personal Cursing Guideline above).  I had to address the issue, but I also knew that even at their young ages I had to play it cool.

I say:  “Ok, there’s a dam that’s a beaver’s home and there’s a damn that’s a curse. We don’t use the curse word, got it?” [Dramatic Pause For Effect.] “It’s inappropriate and it makes adults mad.” (I left out the part about how mad adults very much like to use it.)

            I craned my neck for a better view of both kids in the rearview mirror and could see them still smiling at each other, chubby-cheeked, as they said uttered a weak and thoroughly unconvincing, “Yeeeeesss.” 

I wondered if the little sponges had picked up on my subtext; for though I had studied English in college and have an Inner Grammarian holding court in the reading/writing lobes of my brain, my mischievous Inner Word Lover and Sometimes Poet loves to skewer, skin and sculpt words into new forms. It’s this part of me that takes tremendous amusement in the word damn’s phonetic contortions. For example:

            There is The Loud, Hot Damn of Anger:

“Damn it!” (Var. Dang it, Darn it.)

“Damn you!”

“Damn-it-to-hell!”

           

There is The Damn of Awe that  s l o w l y  exits the mouth trailed by an ellipsis:

“Damn…”

“Hot damn…”

“Well I’ll be damned…”

Then there are those Demographically Designed Damns and Other Cursing Combos that endlessly tickle the funny bone of my Inner Word Lover and Sometimes Poet:

“Got-damn-it!” and “DAYUM!” Such satisfying southern twists!

“Dag nabbit!” Ye olde Warner-Brothers’ sly solution to cartoon cursing.

“Don’t be sech a dayum foo’!” Current slang doesn’t hold a candle to old standbys like one.

Even my father, who lost his ability to speak following a massive stroke, is able to eek out his own protracted version of the word:

“Damn-in-in-in!” (The fact that my son had not said, “Beavers live in dam-in-in-in,” gave my father an instant pass as a person who did NOT teach my kids the curse.)

Bar none, some of the most fun I ever had cursing was as a kid, joining in with my brothers, cousins and friends to shout the newest bad words we were learning in the very old ‘Name Game’ song: 

“DAMN IT, DAMN IT, bo bammit. Banana-fanna fo fammit. Fee-fi-fo mammit. DAMN IT!”

Ok, I’m busted; so much for having lived that Personal Guideline of mine. I guess I’ve been embracing the release of a good ol’ curse for longer than I care to admit. And naturally, until something else had caught their attention my kids continued using “beaver dam.” Each time they said it, I have to admit to chuckling on the inside. On the outside, I get miles and miles out of retelling that dam story.

To the parent of a child entering college: The most beautiful words ever written just for you

My daughter, my eldest child, is leaving the nest. Boxes of her clothes, dorm supplies and toiletries line the hallway to the front door that she had first entered a little over 18 years ago; eight pounds and eight ounces of baby wrapped in a lamb-speckled blanket, topped off with a hospital-issue knit cap. My girl.

Except my girl is a young woman, and the young woman is leaving home as everything I could ever want her to be:  Intelligent, funny, motivated, resourceful. When it comes to the business of life she's got laser focus (she earned 27 college credits through her AP high school courses - and the University she's attending has accepted all of them). When it comes to the lighter side of life she lives it heartily, zestfully, with the joyous abandon that creates life-enhancing experiences.

So I'm really not worried about her adjusting to college life, problem-solving during tough times, or being accountable for the mistakes she will undoubtedly make. I feel as confident as a parent possibly can that she is going to be ok.

What's tough right now is dealing with how much I'm going to miss my daughter. Sure, there were a few months this year - especially while we were waiting for responses from the schools to which she had applied - that her stress levels caused me to make all kinds of declarations about how she was definitely ready for college - in fact she needed to get out, get some perspective, develop some respect for me and my husband.

But the fact is, I'm going to miss speaking to her in person every day. I'm going to miss her stories, our jokes, our shared observations about people and life. I'm going to miss her whirling dervish entrances and exits - even the fact that she's always leaving mounds of clothing, splashes of water, wispy piles of make-up caked tissues, half-filled coffee cups, and all kinds of wrappers in her wake.

So I mentioned very briefly, on facebook, how separating is "tough stuff," and I added a "sniffle" for  emphasis. And what I received in return were some of the most beautiful words I have ever read on the topic of a child leaving the nest from my friend Stephan Anstey, who has two kids in college. He wrote:

"Oh yes. It most surely is [tough]. But .. it is life. It is love. It is hope. And hope full. it is a thing without measure in the beauty of it. It is a moment to treasure as this creature you created becomes this being they choose to be. Cry my friend, cry but do not weep, but for the joy of seeing such a great good miracle unfold before your eyes. Remember the moment you heard the heartbeat and wondered who this might be? THIS is who. This is the why and how and the awe of it. For years, you have been the mother of a child, and now you can see that you are the mother of something so much more than you imagined that could mean. It is so hard, but it isn't hard at all. It is all of your greatest hopes realized. This is all of the best of you exploding into the world like magic fire blazing across your sky. 

"So ... cry, because you should, but let the tears be joyful and your heart be light. That dream you dreamed so long ago, the best dream of your whole life, it was no dream at all, but this moment, this beautiful moment foretold in your heart." 

I have read and reread these words, and have wept (with joy and hope and gratitude) and wept. For though I have on some level understood that everything that's happening right now is unfolding exactly as I had hoped it would it in the proverbial circle of life, I had not understood any of the nuances of my feelings. Stephan had teased out the emotions in all of their brilliance.

I can't thank him enough except to share his words with others, and to say go check out his website www.Anstey.org and get to know him and his excellent writing better. Plus he's on facebook and he tweets and all that good stuff.

Thank you, Stephan!