Bless Her Heart,

Part of being in any new country is learning the language.  This goes for Tennessee.  Although I do love it here (quite desperately, in fact), I am a stranger in a strange land...I'm here via New York and LA, and although our area is chock-full of transplants, most of them are southerners of some ilk.  

As a New Orleans native, Chip has been most helpful as a translator.  When we moved here, every single one of our neighbors brought desserts or a warm meal within the first two days of our arrival, all with notes welcoming us to the neighborhood, phone numbers, email addresses.  I was touched to my crusty, cynical core...how southern!  how country!  how delightful!  Nooooo, my husband reassured me.  They're just here checking us out, making sure the cops won't be coming to this house.  As soon as I tried emailing around for playdates and happy hour, I realized he was right.  The south is a closed community...they were watching and waiting...making sure our kids weren't brats and the cops weren't coming to our house.  It took a few months, but our kids aren't brats and the cops haven't been to our house (except along with the ambulance for my son), and the neighbors?  They really are wonderful (except crazy milk lady...).

The other code I've had to crack is the "bless her heart" code, which is southern for "you can say ANYTHING about a person if you preface it with 'bless his/her heart' " ... you can pepper it with a "poor darlin' "...  The obnoxious, sanctimonious crowd likes to end it with a "I'm prayin' for..." (eyes rolling)

As a New Yorker, I've never brought a knife to a gun fight.  I say what I mean and I mean what I say.  Always.  It's therefore not surprising that it's been terribly confusing here...the lovely Steel Magnolia mannerisms paired with the back handed insult...take the blood draw for my son's well child check...it took me three days to figure out we'd been insulted:  

The phlebotomist had my son sit in my lap, and proceeds to say, "Oh-Who's-A Big-Boy!  Bless His-Heart, It's-So-Hard-These-Days-With-All-That-Junk-Food, Poor-Darlin' " 

(translation for Yankees:  D*MN, your kid is fat, stop taking him to McDonald's and force feeding him french fries!)

Bless her heart, I could barely understand her, drawling through those snaggled brown teeth of hers!  You'd think they'd have better dental for people who work at a hospital, poor darling!

(Translation for Yankees:  Not fit for print.)

Yah, I do believe I'll get the hang of this.

Thank God I'm a Country Girl, Part Deux

I know most moms view play dates as virtual free babysitting...me?  I supervise.  I want to know what's going on when my back is turned and my daughter thinks I'm not listening.  

This afternoon, when I was spying, er, listening in on my daughter and her five year old friend as they played with two inch tall plastic princess figurines and Littlest Pet Shop animals, I overheard this delicious snippet:

Friend:  Why does Jasmine have to show her belly button?

Lucy:  Yeah!  She needs bigger pants.

Friend:  Or a longer shirt.

Lucy:  Or a jacket, or something!

Let me play that for you as spoken by California five year olds:

kid 1:  Jasmine is like, so pretty.  She DEFINITELY got her boobs done.

kid 2:  For sure!  Her lips, too!

kid 1:  And don't you think that of all the princesses, Cinderella has the most slammin' dye job?

kid 2:  There is NO way that's Miss Clairol in a bottle.  Lifted the base and a full head of highlights.  So worth it.

Okay, the satire is over the line, but not so far that I can't see it in my rearview mirror.  Although there is enough freakshow to go around here, it the variety I can contend with, and coach my daughter through. 

Yah...I'll take the humping cows over octomom any day.  Sing it with me:  Vivaaaaa Nashvegas!

Thank God I'm a Country Girl

It's our first spring in Tennessee, and the countryside is impossibly green once again.  As we acquaint ourselves with the sights and sounds of this beautiful gift, there have been surprises that make me feel like a little girl:  calving season, blossoming trees (this literally happened overnight), and the occasional 70 degree day that allows me to zip around on my blades.

Other surprises make me snicker behind the back of my hand like a 13 year old boy...like the one we saw this morning on the way to church.  

Our church is in the countryside...and I mean COUN-TRY.  Each week, we have the privilege of driving by beautiful farms, fields, horses, cows, crops, streams, and even the occasional flock of wild turkeys.  It has all been very pastoral until this morning when, in a field, there was a giant black bull mounting a cow.

I just couldn't help myself.  I elbowed Chip, snorted, and started laughing hysterically.  HE started laughing hysterically.  LUCY starts laughing hysterically.  I'm thinking, 1. does she even SEE what we're laughing at? and 2. does she know what it is?  questions answered when she pipes up:

MOM, THOSE COWS ARE DOING THE HOEDOWN!

Yes, Lucy, they are.

in the car:

lu:  mom, hugh is touching his privates.

me:  that's okay, it's very normal for babies his age to do that.

lu: oh, why?

me:  well, they're just discovering them, really.

lu:  seriously?

me:  seriously.

lu:  well, did it take me that long to discover my ooh-la-la village?

me:  your what?

lu: my ooh-la-la village.

me:  do you mean your privates?

lu: ya.

me:  and why is it a village?

lu: because, you know, it's like a town square.

me:  (internally monologuing)  ...because it wasn't enough that it takes a village to raise a child...now it's somewhere everybody gathers?  what the heck?

me:  (out loud)  you know honey, we can just call them privates.

lu:  or what's that other word?

me:  vagina?

lu:  yes, ooh-la-la pa-jiy-ma village.

pauline:  chapter 11 in our book:  the ooh-la-la pa-jiy-ma village...DEFINITELY one of my proudest moments...

These are the days...

At Hugh's most recent well child check, the pediatrician asked me how many words he knew...I didn't even know I had the ability to blush (the bloom is OFF the rose, bay-bee!) but as I desperately tried to count, I realized that a) he hardly knew ANY and b) the few he knew probably didn't count as words, per se.  Lucy, at this age knew over 100 words.  I actually stopped taking a running record at 120, figuring that we had exceeded the 20-50 the pediatricians are looking for.  Hugh?  What running record?  I am so busy simply delighting in him that I'm actually not keeping track.  This is a lovely change for me (and for my daughter, I'm sure) but in a world where parenting is a bloodsport, I am sweating in the pediatrician's office.

Does "HOLLA!" count?  Are "WOW!" and "WHOA!" different words?  Can I count his expression "lookatthat!" as three words, instead of one?  Does the fact that he calls EVERYBODY "dada" make him special?  You know, like, short bus material?  So, I flub the interview with the pediatrician, telling her that Hugh is "getting there," and "knows a few words" but looking like a meth addict mother, I'm sure.

Fast forward to our trip to Lucy's swim lesson in the car yesterday...Lucy's favorite new thing is to tell knock knock jokes.  Bad ones.  So bad, they're not only not funny, but make no sense, and then screech, "GET IT?!"  (it's adorable)  Halfway to swim, my short bus son, who STILL doesn't call me "mama" starts saying, "not not" and I start laughing.  He can learn "knock knock" but he still doesn't know my name?  Can't say words we use all day, every day in our home, like DOG?!  So I have Lucy screeching "GET IT?!" after telling a knock knock joke about tooting (and singing a song about mom and tooting...don't ask) and hugh chiming in "not not!" and I throw back my head and laugh and laugh and laugh, wishing to God I had a tape recorder, knowing that I'll already have forgotten the nuances of it by the time I get home.  Surely, the good the bad, the ugly, these are the days...

And as my friend Pauline often says, life is good.

Oh, yes.  it is.

not not TOOT TOOT GET IT?!