PokeMom

So, I've been on vacation/Pokemon torture chamber. My son has been talking to me about Pokemon nonstop with an intensity that makes waterboarding sound like a pleasant distraction on a hot summer day.

A typical conversation, that springs out of absolutely nowhere, goes something like this:

"Mom, guess who my favorite Pokemon is."
"I don't know."
"Guess."
"Give me some options."
"Ok, Turtwig, Jumpluff, Tortero, Flareon, Ivysaur or Nidoking."
"The first one."
"Which was the first one?"
"I don't know."
"So why did you say that it was your favorite?"
"To shut you up, I mean, because it sounded like the strongest one!"


But then, I had an idea. All the Pokemon have amazing powers. For example (and I'm using the cards for reference now, lest you think I have this stuff committed to memory), Nidoking has the Poison Rub power and the Pride Attack power. Leafeon has the Spiral Drain (which sounds handy if you have a clogged kitchen sink, for example) and Leaf Blade. Dusclops has Dark Mind, which makes me think that he'd fit with us bloggers! Ambipom has Astonish, that show off, and Hang High, but I don't speak Pokemon jive, so I can't tell you what that is. Of course I can ask my son, but if you think that I will willingly initiate a Pokemon conversation with him, you must be new around here.

So my idea was to develop powers for moms. Because we need them. Things we can all use to make our day, you know, easier. So that by the time 4:59 pm rolled around we didn't have the bottle of wine taking its first anticipatory breath.

Here are some powers that I suggest. Please add your own.

Power Glare: The glare shuts the kids up immediately and makes them bend to the Pokemom's will.

Teflonitis: Any insinuation that the child's rude behavior is a result of poor parenting, gets completely deflected and blamed on the accuser, instead.

Urination Prolongation: The ability of mothers to lock themselves in the bathroom to pee, and also to read "War and Peace" until their kids notice that they are Not There.

Blog Attack: Retaliatory blogging about children's misdeeds.

Power Glug: Because even with our super Pokemon powers, sometimes we need to enjoy a glass of wine. Or ten.

Kill Me Now

My 9 year old daughter does not like to read for pleasure. I've tiptoed around this issue long enough, I pretended that she was jut busy, tired, distracted, asleep. But when she told me tonight that she doesn't want to read if she doesn't have to, I put the pieces together. She would rather knit. Or play cards.

I'm furious. I'm furious because I love reading so much and she doesn't and I don't understand people who don't love reading and now one of them is my daughter.

This seems unfair.

I have always loved to read. Always. I do recall a period when I was about 12 when my parents would beg me to read something other than "Cosmo", but really, what literary masterpiece could hold a phallic candle to Helen Gurley Brown? But still, I read. By the time that I was my daughter's age, I had read most of Alexandre Dumas. Sure, there was a parental gun pointed at my head, but still.

I read through college, and when I entered law school, I was warned that the demands would be so great that I would not be able to read for please. Pfft. I never let up. I loved bookstores, I especially loved "Three Lives and Company" in the West Village. I loved the way the woman who worked there would guide the customers. "That's not a good book for you right now," they'd warn someone who had obviously crossed the barrier to friendship. In the 1990s, I heard Toni Morrison read from "Jazz" there. To this day, it has my favorite passage about NYC. I loved Rizzoli downtown, too. That's where I heard Kathryn Harrison read from her first novel. She was nervous, gorgeous and she blushed easily. I had no idea that she would become such a major talent and that I would so often turn to her books.

I belonged to book groups. After college, I belonged to a book club started by a woman I met in writing class. One of the women in it looked like Susan Sarandon and everyone was smart. Another woman belonged to two book clubs at the same time, but the second one, the fancy one, for which one woman flew in from London every month, disbanded over a fight about Huck Finn. Confession: I never read Huck Finn.

Now I belong to a book group, made up of other moms from my children's school. My daughter knows this. She knows that I love it. She knows how much fun we have. She couldn't care less.

She doesn't like to read.

Do I force her? Half an hour a day, whether you like it or not. Do it, like practicing the piano!

Bribe her? $10 for every book read! 10 books and that Nano is yours, engraved!

Or do I let it go, recognize that her strengths are elsewhere and rejoice when she knits hat #18?