14. If your kid gets in trouble, be there - NO MATTER WHAT!

This means without judgments, preconceived notions, whatever the crime, protect your kid. Chances are, it's a minor infraction: she stayed out too late with the hottie high-school wrestler dude, or Junior couldn't resist the captivating band girl and it's probably going to be okay. There's something much better about them now than us at their age, or certainly than me at their age. I had no identity and followed whatever path of trouble that called my name (or, sadly, didn't call my name but rather a name I thought meant for me...). Still, I managed to make a life, grow up, try stuff out, then have my own kid. But those early "getting in trouble" years still haunt me. I now know that it wasn't cool for my friend's dad to hang out with me in their dark apartment (which I thought was cool since I'd only ever known people with houses) and play Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon while passing me a joint. It took many years for me to admit - hey, that was off.  His kids were long gone and I was still sieving seeds from the crease of Boston's More Than a Feeling.

Somehow, though, I escaped that life, which is another story for another time. But I'm heading with my son  into the years of adolescence, puberty, hormones, nuttiness, mistrust - and I hope to WHATEVER that the foundation my son and I have built over the years will power us through and he won't have to go seeking some loser old dude rolling joints and waxing poetic about Phoenix or Jay Z or whoever it might be to catch the seeds, as it were.

At least, I hope he can ask me about that stuff.

13. If possible, have your shit together before you have the kid

Yeah, that's me talking to myself. The other day I was taking my son to shoot hoops (okay, play basketball) and he said "We've lived in a lot of different places". I stopped dead in my tracks (metaphorically speaking, I was driving) with yet another observation on my kid's part that I was as flawed as I know I am. Of course, that's not his intention or even his thoughts - yet. I have no doubt that he will share his mom stories with someone later in life. Hopefully, he and I will have communicated enough throughout his life so he will not have to spend money on therapy and instead can just share childhood anecdotes with his friends and lovers (how I hate that - please, someone, find a comparable word), but that's likely just rose-colored dreaming on my part. 

As we all know, anyone can have a baby. But...are you prepared? Do you want to give up your life and freedom? Are you ready to sacrifice, lose your perspective, be irrelevant, then wave bye bye and wonder what the f*** it was all for? Like, that's IT??

When my son made that comment the other day, instead of getting defensive or shrugging him off like may have happened to me when I was his age, I looked at him and said, as hard as it was, "You're right. Your dad and I took many years to figure out we weren't right for each other, and you had to pay the price for that. I'm sorry".

My son looked at me, and said "It's okay, I can deal". 

The question is: can I?

12. If your kid is going to Coachella (or any other hipster festival) - STAY HOME

This doesn't apply if you're chaperoning, but if you are, then hang back and stay out of your kid's way. 

There's not much worse for a child than having a parent that parties at the same party. Remember that scene in A Walk on the Moon (probably not as well I do, having seen it at least 5 times) when Anna Paquin's character runs into her mom (played beautifully by Diane Lane) at Woodstock? Her mom was making out with a guy (a "guy"? Viggo!) who wasn't her dad, and she was stoned. Not pretty. Let that be a guide. 

Save that reservation at the Ace hotel for another weekend, a weekend when your business will truly be your business. 

Let your kid be the kid for Coachella. 

11. If you were born before 1985, please refrain from using the following words or phrases:

Yo, Whatup, Word, whassup, niiice, sweet , clean, tight, sick, aight, fresh, crib, kicks, that's so obama, epic, blaze, roll, mad, deep, roll mad deep, skrilla, spit some game at, props, give props, get props, emo, active, beast, the bomb, da bomb, chill, hot, that shit was crazy, that's mad devious, dope, fat, gangsta, 'kward, baked, stripe, khue, rad, ill, holla, dude...

10. Don't get bombed in front of the kid...

...or drunk or stoned or however you want to put it. There's just nothing that makes this alright. We've all slipped up at some point and had too much to drink. When you're spanning 20 or so years of drinking, the odds are you've worn a lampshade or over-shared with a semi-friend or woken up with that guy/girl who was a lot cuter at 2:00 a.m. (or so I've read about in books and seen in movies!).

But now you've got kids. This is no longer an option. Sure, it's fine to have a glass or two of wine with dinner but when it becomes a bottle or two long after the last dish has been put away (or not put away, depending on the kind of drunk you are) then it's time to sit up and take notice. Change your ways. Look in the mirror. Do an about-face. (You get the point).

Truly, this is a no-brainer, but we've all forgotten on occasion and the look on Junior/Juniorette's face when the apologies abound in the light of day is one of the most sobering moments in a parent's life. And there are parents who have more of a "live and let live" attitude than I do. We've probably all heard the refrain, "When I was a kid, my parents did ________ and I turned out fine". Well, I suppose that's one philosophy and it also depends on how one defines "turning out fine". I'm not so sure I fit that bill, but I'm harder on myself than I should be. Besides, isn't the cycle of life that we want better for our children than we had, whatever that may be? 

Perhaps topping off that glass can wait for Mommies' Night Out or Poker With The Guys (yes, I've stereotyped the sexes). 

Or, as my brother puts it, "Bar time".

 

 

9. Ipod+bad rapping= no no!

When this song came out, I was flitting from one club to the next in downtown NYC. It was the days of Deep, Soul Kitchen and Nell's on a Sunday night. I thought I was so f*****g cool with my Def Jam bomber jacket, fat sneakers and bamboo earrings. But the truth is, I looked like a poser. I'm a white girl from the Midwest. What was I thinking? Well, there it is - I wasn't thinking. I was young, I was searching, I was in the thick of the coolest thing in the country.

But it's 20 years later. I'm not on the cutting edge of anything (even using that tired cliche proves my point) unless you count subscribing to KCRW and shopping at Trader Joe's. 

I love music, and I manage to stay current. Occasionally, though, I'll take a trip down memory lane.

I've learned it's best to keep that to myself, at least when singing along.

8. Rein in the self-righteous indignation in front of the kid

This is a big one. It's also not terribly funny and I struggled with blogging about it. But it's important for me to not only point the finger elsewhere, but also take myself to task.

I learned this lesson the hard way, and I know that this event will be a "jump out" for my son when he looks back at his childhood. Just as I remember my parents not allowing me to go on a class trip in 8th grade, so will he remember his mom's self-righteous indignation resulting in getting kicked off a plane on the way to Spring Break when he was in 2nd grade.

Here's what happened. The irony of this story is that the night before we were leaving, I'd gone to see "Friends With Money" and horrifyingly related to Frances McDormand's character and thought "I'd better watch my Ps and Qs" (well, it probably wasn't as platitudinous as that). Just because I think things would work much better my way, I wasn't running every single business on the planet and it was possible I looked like the jackass and those other people might have some clue as to what they were doing.

But twelve hours later I forgot all of that. Twelve hours later I was on an overcrowded plane. Southwest had changed their policies without alerting me (what?!), and I'd ended up in Boarding Group C. Inching our way to the back of the full plane, immediately paying the price for carry-on overpacking, there were no two seats together. I looked around, panicked (with my 8 -year-old and my abandonment issues) and wondered how I'd get through the flight 16 rows away from my son. I saw the harried flight attendant, and asked her gently -- okay, my version of gently -- if she would mind making a request to the rest of the passengers to switch a seat with a mom and her son. 

Here's what happened next: no one heard her announcement, I asked her to repeat it, she berated me in front of the other passengers and my son for not having "wakened up early enough to get to the airport on time", and a nice woman near us offered up her seat. This mercifully put my son and me one row apart, both of us in aisle seats. I got us situated, seat belts fastened, cream cheese on his bagel, and then I stewed. I sat in my seat boiling, repeating her chastisement like a mantra in my mind. And that was the moment, that life-changing moment we've all faced, the moment in which I could have made an out-of-character decision (remember? last night? "Friends With Money"?) and I didn't. Instead, I got up, walked to the back of the plane and told "Amber" that I "didn't appreciate the way she spoke to me in front of my son and the other passengers".  I said my piece, then sat down in my seat, ready for the flight.

The next thing I knew, my son and I were being escorted off the plane to the terminal, where the FBI waited with questions. "Amber" had decided to exert her power, and linked the word "threatened" to me. That's all it took. We were banished, our luggage brought to us and our flight cancelled.

In the end (phone calls, tears, my son's father demanding restitution, etc.), we were on a flight out the next day, apologies from the airline overflowing and only mild schedule irritations on the other end.

However, I knew that my self-righteous indignation, whatever its roots, caused the Event. Maybe it was time to look inward. 

Maybe it was my business that needed some overhauling.