The Five Strands of A Sedentary Empress

On a lighter note...

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We forgot to send out Valentime's to Jack and Shamus and Rylan!, the wee one shrieked over toast with raspberry jam and chocolate milk.

Valentine's, with an 'n', not with an 'm', I corrected wearily.

I'll say it the way I want to say it, mom, she rolled her eyes.

Sure, if you're life's ambition is to clean toilets and wash down walls that have been splashed with urine, I say before slurping my coffee.

What?! she asked, aghast.

Would you like to call one of them to wish them a belated Valentine's Day?, I say, changing the subject.

Oh yes! I certainly would! Let's start with Jack, okay mommy?

Whatever, I grumble as I reach for the phone.

I forget what it's like to be four and to be full of enthusiasm for things like Valentine's Day or birthdays. I had intended to mail out some valentines to her cousins, but they're three, three and almost two, respectively, so I figured they wouldn't notice, nor would they care. Plus, they're boys, which means they are hardwired for indifference when it comes to anything involving romance or stretches of sentimentality. They'd be excited if there were heart-shaped piñatas, something they could bash at violently with sticks until it split open, letting the candied guts fall to floor with a cellophane crunch and crack.

When my sister K. answers, I tell her in my blurry morning voice that Kat wants to speak with Jack, which she finds logical despite his rather shaky grip on verbal communication. I hand the phone to my wee one and listen to her prattle on about the chocolates her daddy gave her, and the valentines she got from school, and then she hit on the movie she watched and the show she wants to see today and before long, I realized that she was behaving like every other woman on the planet: talking incessantly because the man is saying nothing.

To Jack's credit, he eventually did ramble on in his growly, deep voice about 'cordas', which are electrical cords, his very favourite thing on the planet. He is fascinated about anything involving electricity, always has been, and it's a constant worry for his parents who are convinced he will light up like a Christmas tree eventually. Whenever I visit, lights flash on and off, vaporisers activate and deactivate, appliances whirr about inexplicably. I think it's weird and endearing all at once, but mostly I'm just glad my kid isn't into it.

Then, there's Shamus, whose love affair with vacuum cleaners comes before anything else in his life. When you step into the doorway of his home, the first thing he'll tell you is that he has a 'Dyson', the vacuum cleaner to beat all vacuum cleaners, and though he is three, he will plug it on, move the attachments about with expertise, and move about the entire first floor leaving nary a crumb in site. Rylan, the littlest one, who can only say 'meow' and 'hi' is built like a tanker truck and he lives to torment his older brother, by throwing his entire body at him, biting him, ripping hair out by the handful. My sister's home is always in a state of disarray, with a vacuum cleaner constantly in the middle of the floor, ready for action, and two little boys throwing their bodies into walls, into furniture and into each other. They shriek, they yell, they howl, and going to her home is a little like visiting an insane asylum. Put the other nephew in with them, and I find myself clawing at my skin, ready to explode with expletives and ridiculous threats. Visiting becomes more like a sporting event, a test of endurance, and the worst bit of it is that I have to pretend I find them adorable, that I actually like being around them. I eye the door with longing, desperate for one or all of them to develop narcolepsy, trying to figure out how to slip a shot glass of whiskey into their sippy cups or bottles just so I can have a bit of quiet, a moment of clarity, and feeling myself become increasinly intolerant and angry of my sister, or sisters, for their unfathomable concession to these thirty-something pound marauders who can't even pee in a toilet yet.

Along with his bizarre love of vacuum hoses, Shamus is usually also naked from the waist down, fiddling with his penis, indifferent to the eyes on him. Do ya like my penis? he smiles as he fiddles. I wonder when this will stop being funny. Rylan bites, and I always joke that Shamus would do well with wearing a protective cup if he can't manage to keep his pants on, because it could get ugly. My sister always laughs dismissively when I do. What drives me mental is that my sister insists on calling Rylan 'Baby', which everyone is now calling him, like he has no name, like it justifies his cruelty. He's rough, destructive and laughs when he evokes tears from his brother, and he's huge, much bigger than most babies his age. What worries me is the look of calculation on his face before he goes in for the kill, though. He's thinking. He knows what he's doing, baby or not.

My daughter watches all of this and is usually befuddled. She doesn't get the need for violence, doesn't understand why she gets hit when she visits. She cries when they pull toys from her, looks confused when they throw food on the floor, gets judgmental when they start ripping at 'cordas' or pulling vacuum cleaners out of closets. She tattles on them for using curse words, like when Jack became incensed at an imaginary alligator, Get the hell out of here alligator, you son of a bitch!, when he called Shamus a stupid douchebag. She always looks at me wide-eyed, in disbelief and wonders aloud about why they're so 'crazy'.

They're boys, my sisters say, like it is a reason, like it excuses the bad behaviour.

But, is this the reason?

What I've noticed, aside from the irrefutable personality differences between males and females, is that a lot of people tend to allow for raucous, rough and otherwise bad behaviour from boys. Oh, there's no denying that a lot of boys naturally go for knocking each other down, or for pulling the wings off flies, but any little boy I've ever known who behaves this way usually has a parent, or two parents, who seem to just let them behave like idiots. My sister P.doesn't stop her son from pulling at his wanger, and she doesn't punish 'baby' for leaving dental imprints on his brother's leg. She expects them to throw tables on their sides, or to rip apart books, and while they do so, she sits in a chair in the corner watching, saying nothing. They're boys, she smiles weakly, like her brain is cabbage. When she gets to her breaking point, which is about three years after my own, she issues a dull-edged threat, something along the lines of 'If you do that again, you're going to get a time out', which turns my blood to lava. What the hell is this ridiculous 'time out' thing? In my sister's house, it is two minutes in the corner, during which Shamus giggles or pouts, telling her how much he doesn't like her, how he wishes she were dead. In my house, a time out is about an hour in her bedroom during which she usually cries herself to sleep, unless she gets involved with a book or toys, but when I've cooled down, we discuss what landed her in there in the first place, and I make sure she understands why she was punished. I haven't had to do that since September.

It's easy to criticize the parenting skills of other people, I know. I don't live in either of my sister's homes, and I don't see my nephews very often, but what I've discovered during some of our visits is that speaking to them like people, rather than like adorable little terrorists, gets results. When my sister looked as though she might burst into tears when we all went to lunch and Shamus would not settle down, I grabbed his meaty little hand and lead him outside the restaurant. We walked, I told him that his behaviour was not acceptable, that it would mean no more lunches together in the future if he didn't get his act together, but that I loved him and I really hoped he'd be a better boy so we wouldn't have to go that route. He returned to the table like a little gentleman, was quiet for about five minutes even, and then my sister took back over and he reverted back into being a midget from hell. I knew then it was her. Her permissiveness, the defeat she wears on her face, her lack of commitment to discipline, is what makes him insufferable. If you are not completely invested in the threats you make, if you are at all wavering in your decision, the child will know. They're kids, they're not stupid.

M. and I often discuss if we think our lives would have been different had Kitty Kat been a boy, and he always says no. He has a way with kids, actually. He speaks to them like they're intelligent, like they're capable of anything, and I remember being amazed at a family dinner in which suddenly everything went silent, and we discovered M. sitting at a table with all four kids, all of their eyes fixed on him, captivated. He was showing them how something worked, speaking in a very calm, authoritative voice, and they forgot they were impulsive little jackasses for the entire time he spoke.

He's like the Baby Whisperer, my sister K. joked. What she didn't seem to get was that he was speaking to them with the same amount of respect he expected in return. They simply gave it.

They say boys are better teenagers than girls are. If this is true, I'm in for it, I know. Right now, though, I am grateful for my wee one because at the moment she is a dream. She breaks nothing, doesn't curse at me, understands what good and bad behaviour is and tells me she loves me more than all the jewels in the 'whole, wide wooold'.

She talks incessantly, though. I sometimes find myself on the verge of madness with it.