When a child is born, everyone around seems to spend the
first few months and years analyzing whom the child looks like. Friends, family
everyone asks, examines and deliberates over various features, oohing and
ahhing as they identify resemblances between a child and a parent.
When it came to my kids, there was never much deliberation.
“Oh my God, she looks exactly like your husband. It’s scary.” I can’t tell you
how many times I’ve heard that. It’s almost like I didn’t participate. Each
time I had another baby, my mother would say “I love Rob, but I mean, how many
versions of him can there be? Is anyone going to look like you?” We all know
how babies are made, and as I’m reminded of as my oldest daughter is studying Punnett
Squares in 9th grade biology, aren’t genes supposed to COMBINE? OK
my oldest has red hair. That’s where it starts and ends. My husband’s genes are
so strong that some of my friends think that even if I had married someone
else, my children would still look like Rob. Five girls, one boy, and they’re all
clones of him, each one passing through my system, inviting in fifty pounds of
baby weight and emerging as if she (and one little he) had been conceived by
Rob and several other males in his family. Alright, well maybe the 7th
will look like me. Just kidding mom.
But I’m over the looks. There are lots of people out there
with six kids who look nothing like them, I just don’t know any of them.
What about personality traits, character, mannerisms, all of
that? Well, here’s apparently where I hit the jackpot. All of my neuroses seem
to have been transmitted effortlessly to all six, my older girls already
exhibiting the nervousness and stress the night before an exam that I always
did. Nail biting. Munchies. Sleeplessness. Wake me early to finish studying in
the morning. Nerves are not in Rob’s DNA. Is it a girl thing? Apparently not.
Barry might look like Rob’s twin on the outside—even down to body language and
build, he walks the exact same way Rob does, does not run very fast like Rob (he’ll
probably be a Soul Cycler)--but on the inside he’s well endowed with everything
a growing boy dreams of being endowed with: strong Schacter anxiety. He’s afraid
of the dark, afraid of a door closing, afraid of elevators. I’ve also given him
a little bit of my OCD—he will not go to sleep until each and every one of his
legos and cars are in a certain position on his dresser.
I’ve also done an incredible job ensuring that sensitivity
and insecurity were passed on to the next generation. I always say Rob is a bit
like Jan Brady. Do you remember in the Brady Bunch movie, where Jan decides not
to wear her eyeglasses because she doesn’t like the way she looks? On her walk
to school, as she crosses the street unable to see moving traffic, a car almost
hits her, slams on its brakes, and the driver gives her the finger. Jan just smilingly
waves back. That’s Rob--criticisms, insults, teasing, all of them roll off his
back. He wouldn’t notice someone giving him the finger and if they did he’d
probably say, “hey what’s up” and tell me how much he loves that guy. He’s not
easily offended.
No Jan Brady genes in our kids. They’re more like high
maintenance Marcia. They see it all, hear it all, and they care. A lot. And for a long time. Nothing is
rolling off anyone’s back. It sits on their back, piles up on their back, and
stays there for days, weeks, even months. And it’s hard because Rob doesn’t
really get it yet since as I’ve said he’s not genetically programmed this way.
He hasn’t figured out that when adolescent girls break out with a few pimples,
they don’t appreciate their father asking if he can play connect the dots. He
hasn’t figured out that they don’t like when he says “let’s paint the town red”
once a month. He hasn’t figured out that they don’t love comments about how
much they’re eating—“girl’s gotta eat” he cheers them on when they’ve perhaps
indulged a little more than usual. You’d think 15 years into raising a house of
almost all girls, and being married to me, he’d start to learn from his
mistakes and incorporate some of his daughters’ feedback but alas that hasn’t
happened.
He also hasn’t learned that girls don’t want to be grilled
about every conversation they had with every friend, and every comment every
teacher made, and a literal play by play of every sports game or bar mitzvah
party. Because what inevitably happens is that what starts off as innocent
curiosity, and genuine fatherly interest becomes a runaway train of questions
that eventually lead to answers that leave the interrogated daughter in a really
bad mood. And that’s something we try
desperately to avoid.
I’ll give you an example:
It’s Saturday night and a daughter has just returned from a
party or get-together:
Rob: How was the party?
Daughter: Fine.
Me: Great, cutie, good night. (short and sweet is how I play
it)
Rob: Who did you hang out with?
Daughter: I don’t know, a bunch of people.
Me: Ok good night, get some sleep (I try again to get them
out fast)
Rob: Were you included?
Daughter: Yeah, I guess.
Rob: Was someone mean to you?
Daughter: No
[note: daughter’s
calm, happy mood is starting to fade]
[note: Rob does not
notice and continues]
Rob: What did you eat?
Daughter: I don’t know I didn’t really eat.
Rob: Why didn’t you eat?
Rob: Did someone upset you?
Daughter [now with a combination of sadness and frustration
on her face]: I don’t know Dad. Goodnight.
But unfortunately this is not good night. Now thanks to Rob,
a distraught daughter returns to our room in tears convinced her social life is
a mess and we then spend the next hour trying to console her while getting
yelled at. Like Leslie Nielsen in the Naked Gun unknowingly leaving a trail of
damage behind him everywhere he goes, Rob has not put it together that his line
of questioning has brought about this turn of events. We’re dealing with girls
I always have to remind him, girls wired like me.
But is it just a girl thing? Not in our house. When Barry
did not find himself a winner at his sister’s recent “Cake Wars” birthday
party, he spent the next hour crying hysterically to the 10 year old judge that
she’s mean, and he’s so sad, and this was the worst day of his life. Sensitive?
Yes. But Barry is not all Schacter. He might be overly nervous and sensitive,
but he is remarkably unself-conscious as I saw last week at a school block
party. Seeing a DJ and being too afraid to go on the bouncy slide with his twin
sister, Barry opted instead to jump onstage.
