"Shush"i

Yesterday was Charles’ birthday and we went to an all-you-can-eat sushi restaurant with friends.  While I was paying the bill, Charles headed out to heat up the car.  Chayce went after him, asking if we were going to go to the movie theater after.  Since Charles was already by the door, Chayce had to use a voice that was a bit above what we call an “indoor voice” – the kind of voice he knows he has to use if we were at a museum, library, church, hospital, or restaurant.  When Chayce passed this one table, an old(er) lady leaned closer to the aisle, toward Chayce, and said, “Shush!” as if we were at the library, and she was the librarian reprimanding Chayce for clapping like a monkey using cymbals. 

I.  SAW.  RED.

We’ve never had problems with Chayce at restaurants.  He’s never been the kind of kid who would disturb other diners’ gastronomic experience with harsh cries, or loud protests when his food takes forever to arrive.  He has never sprinkled anyone with salt, jumped up and down our booth, flung dessert, or bumped into waiters because he was running up and down the aisle.  Apart from his sporadic singing of Tagalog songs (in a reasonable volume), he is generally good. 

So I stopped in front of the lady and asked her, “Did you just ‘shush’ my child?” 

She pretended not to hear me, and started to pour soy sauce in that little rectangular saucer for her sushi that wasn’t even there yet. 

I asked again.  “Did you.  Just.  Shush.  My. My, not your, child?” 

She looked up and just stared at me stupidly.  If she was trying to communicate with me telepathically, I have no idea.  Before I walked away, I told her, “You do not ‘shush’ someone else’s child.  You tell the parent if the child is disrupting your meal, but do not tell a kid to be quiet especially when he isn’t even loud to begin with.  This is not a library.  This is not a church.  If you wanted to eat in peace and quiet, go back home and eat by yourself.  Or go have a picnic at a cemetery.  You look like you should already be six feet under there anyway.” 

The last sentence was said in my mind. 

Maybe I shouldn’t have done that; I had no idea what that lady’s story was.  Maybe she was already having an off day.  Maybe she just discovered that her husband was cheating on her when she followed him to the movie theater, so the last thing she wanted to hear was a kid who's overly excited to go to one.  I don’t know.  All I know is that I didn’t want to leave with this lady thinking she had every right to tell my kid to keep quiet when, number 1: Chayce wasn’t even loud, and number 2: the place was 2 paper lanterns and 1 bird origami above a flippin’ fast food so she shouldn’t expect an atmosphere akin to a five-star restaurant.

I generally avoid confrontations, especially in public places.  I am an advocate of the smartness of walking away from fights, but one thing I’ve discovered from being a mother is that I can be scared and brave at the same time.  Thinking about how uncertain our futures are, or that someone might bully Chayce when he goes to school, I get scared like a germaphobe is scared of that .1% of bacteria that Lysol just could not kill.  And then there are times like this when my inner wiatch comes out, and I just couldn’t walk away without giving the source of my aggravation a piece of my mind.      

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaand rant over.  

Back to my regular programming, folks.

Date a Girl Who Writes

Date a girl who writes.  She might be a bit difficult to find because she’s content to be in the background, watching people from afar.  She searches their faces and body languages for something she can infuse her fictional characters with.  The girl in her story will bear a striking resemblance to the waitress at the coffee shop she frequents, and you will recognize yourself in her hero because he sleeps the way you do – on your side, with knees a bit drawn up – and makes the heroine laugh with the kind of humor that she tells you just makes her day.

When you see the girl who writes, you’ll know it’s her.  She’s the one with ink-stained fingertips and a callused middle finger from the pressure of pens and other writing instruments.  She will also seem like a good candidate for Extreme Hoarders: the Notebook Edition.  Notebooks!  Journals!  Diaries!  She carries one with her at all times, and another one in the car.  Some blank, most are filled.  The ones that are full of entries are hidden all over the house:  on the bookshelf, behind books she thinks no one will read; in the cupboard, beneath the fine china that’s taken out only once a year; and under the mattress, where it is too predictable that it will be the last place anyone would look. 

Date a girl who writes because she will romance you with words.  She can – and will – find a thousand different reasons why you’re the one she loves, and then she’ll tell you those in about a hundred different ways.  She will give you love letters.  Regularly.  You will be looking forward to finding quirky notes from her in your socks, in the pockets of your favorite jacket, or taped on the cd she knows you listen to on your way to work.  On your special days, don’t count on her leaving you a wall post on Facebook; she finds that utterly impersonal.  What you can count on is receiving the greatest love letter you will ever read in your entire life.  Until she writes you another one, that is. 

Give her a hand-written letter in return.  She might release a sigh of exasperation over the absence of an apostrophe when you wrote “Its you I want to spend the rest of my life with,” but you would have also taken her breath away.  A girl who writes understands the importance of the written word. You will never regret pouring your heart and soul into doing that because that will make her love you even more.  

Fail her.  A girl who writes knows that in the middle of every story, difficulties happen.  She understands that with life comes conflict, and she looks forward to the denouement where tensions subside and loose ends are tied.  She will forgive you because she is prone to viewing love through rose-tinted glasses.  She will give you a second chance just like she’ll write her book another chapter.  But don’t take advantage of her.  Do not be a distracting subplot that takes the focus away from the main story.  She might be disinclined to write you off because you are her favorite, but she is aware that characters carrying dead weight could hold her story back.  She will be sad when you go, but her life will go on.  She will write another chapter without you in it.  She will get over you. 

Be patient with her.  A girl who writes has her idiosyncrasies.  She believes non-readers are treacherous to the human race, so pretend it doesn’t bother you when she wrinkles her nose and rolls her eyes when you talk about your friend whose fondest memory of books was when he used one to kill a spider.  Resist the urge to cover her mouth, or tell her to “shut up” when she tells you how she would do a movie, a book, or a commercial differently.  When she proceeds to tell you how exactly she’d do it “her way” (translation: the right way), just think about how much you love her.  Or mentally count to a hundred.  Slowly.  When she’s upset, allow her to throw words around – figuratively and literally.  When her diary lands on your feet (or slams on your chest/head), she is telling you to stop wasting your time asking, and start reading.  If she walks away, leaving her innermost thoughts in your hands, she is giving you permission to read everything in it.  She is inviting you to enter the world as she sees it because she wants to navigate it with you. 

Date a girl who writes because you will never be terrified to be yourself around her.  Let her peel off your layers because she understands the complexity of your character.  She will also remind you that while money may matter, it’s not everything.  People who write for a living don’t do it to get wealthy.

 Date a girl who writes because she will make dreaming even more beautiful.  The dreams you can easily turn into reality – the big house with a pool, two kids (a girl and a boy) with dark eyes and even darker hair, a career that will allow you to give not only the things that your family needs, but the TIME that they need, and a dog – will be interwoven with fantasies she has imagined for you.  The house will be in a place where the ocean is in your backyard, and you can lie down on the sand while you try to locate the Great Bear and the Seven Stars.  Your children will inherit the best in both of you, and their names will have wonderful stories behind them.   Your job will give you the means to ensure that your little boy has the complete Thomas the Tank train set, and your little girl goes to science camp and ballet classes, while allowing you to be an actual presence in their lives to guide them as they grow up.  And that dog?  You will adopt that three-legged stray, and she will be torn between naming it Boo Radley or Anais Nin. 

Date a girl who writes because you deserve it.  Because when the cold winter of life that is old age descends upon you, she will be there to describe the warm summers at the beach when you felt the sand on your feet, and let the waves lick it away; the balmy spring evenings when you dined al fresco, and took long hand-in-hand walks; and the crisp autumn days when you took pleasure in the sight of the leaves bathed in the colors of the sunset.  She will never let the moments that have passed be forgotten, or its moods be gone, because she will recapture it with her pen, paper, and heart.   With the girl who writes, you get to live life twice.