I knew from pretty early on that I hoped to raise any children I had in a fairly free nature.
Having been raised under the tight thumb of strict parents, I grew to see some wiggle room as a form of character development.
After all, all my parents’ strictness had bought them was my secrecy, and mystery miles on their car as I just did things that I wanted to anyway.
For instance, I simply used my hair to hide the triple pierced ears I’d done myself with an upholstery needle and a cube of ice in my bedroom mirror.
I had also tried for my belly button, until I nearly passed out from the attempt, and decided to move onto other less physically altering rebellions.
Through my own experience raised in a church that was heavy on the old kind of homeschool – (The kind with floor-length skirts, and button up long sleeves that some kids even had to wear while swimming) I made note of how often the kids that were pressed down the most firmly seemed pop back up most vigorously in highly questionable places.
The ones who were only ever allowed to can things and close dried flowers into hardcover books seemed to be the ones doing things like suddenly taking buses across the country in the middle of the night to start new lives with no family contact, or, say, joining the German circus.
As with most of my life, I took in what I saw as a lesson, and compared this research data to the fact that my friends in high school, whose parents let them have more freedom and just called “a reasonable hour” their curfew, seemed to grow up pretty unproblematic.
Oh, how I wanted the kind of life where I didn’t have to hide my Mariah Carey tape under my pillow, while pretending Michael W. Smith was all I listened to.
I dreamed of, just once, showing my midriff.
I think this is why, as my own daughters came, when they’d show a little more spice than sugar, I would have to do my best to hide my slight smile.
I had always pictured myself having all boys, but instead I had four daughters that my mother says are like four different facets of me.
“Yes,” I thought, rubbing my hands together.
“They tried to stop me, but I just created a ‘Me’ army.”
Although I do believe there is a value in teaching things like politeness, and manners, and proper etiquette, I cannot lie that I do LOVE a good spicy-natured child.
When I am anywhere kids are, it won’t be the little girl in a frilly dress with perfect french braids I notice most, but instead it will almost always be the one in mismatched clothes and a cape, chasing boys with a sword, that I have my eye on.
I watch them marching to the beat of their own drum boldly, and think, “Yes, Honey. Go show the world what you are made of.”
Where my own girls are concerned, it is almost like the further down the birth order they got, the more they were concentrated.
My first daughter is responsible. Quiet. Unassuming. She reads the kind of books you almost need to carry with a dolly.
My second daughter is more inward and quiet. While her younger sisters would probably be more likely to win in combat, at least number two grew the ability to handle big spiders.
My third one will some day rule a kingdom she inherits from a mystery cousin.
She will do this while convincing you to buy her bobas and fake nails while your eyeballs are spirals.
My fourth one? She will be all things. God made a final person in our family out of every single thing that was leftover.
Mark my words: She will one day speak ten languages while shooting a crossbow from the back of a Centaur that is standing where she has just started a street riot.
When I was pregnant with her, and at my first ultrasound, the doctor said she thought she could see a dissolving sack next to hers, and that meant she was supposed to possibly be a twin originally.
As we got to know her, it became family legend that she had, in fact, absorbed that twin “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” style.
She is two girls in one: The only possible explanation for her personality.
Maybe some of it has to do with the years in quarantine and what it did at her time of development.
At least that’s what I tell myself when I look into my backyard to see her running by with a rake sticking up out of the back of her pants, laughing.
“Ah. My little Live Action Mowgli.”
When questioned once about why she had returned from down the hall suddenly without pants, her very Paige-like answer was, “I don’t always need them.”
Maybe it is due in part to the influence of my father, who is somehow more amused by the antics of his granddaughters than he was his actual daughter.
It is his fault she owns a buck knife that she promptly used to swashbuckle my garage screen door.
When I told him this, he merely used the excuse that then this seemed like a good time to come over and teach her how to use all the tools needed for a rescreening.
There must be some kind of science to an “be who you are” method of raising,
because I have backed off of a lot of things and given her the reigns,
and she just takes them in her teeth and keeps on excelling.
She wanted to do soccer, and made it to the select team after only one season.
I watch her in the stands and just shake my head because she is incredible.
Just before I started writing this she had begged me to FaceTime her at a sleepover so she could do her lesson on Duolingo and “not mess up her streak.”
On her own, she has decided to learn Portuguese this summer.
Meanwhile, I’m just over here smiling at my still triple-pierced ears in the mirror,
thinking about how spice is better for you than too much sugar is anyway.
Today I told her to pack up for that sleepover she was going to, and five minutes later, my husband Justin came to me with a face we have all come to call The Angry Indian.
“Have you seen Paige? Did she go back outside? What was she carrying?”
“Why?” I asked him. “What was she doing?”
“She WAS packing her stuff up like you told her, and she had already included a foam sword, and her nunchucks from karate, but then she went outside and returned
CARRYING A HATCHET.
When I told her she could not take a hatchet to a sleepover, she said, (and I quote)
‘What am I supposed to take then?!”
After she had been dropped off, I laughed, telling him how she had taken a bow instead of said hatchet, and as she had walked out the door, had said that it was fine because she “ had a lot of other stuff in her bag anyway.”
Justin’s eyes grew big again, and he said I had better text the sleepover parent to have them check what she had meant by that, exactly.
Our text exchange went as follows:
ME: “You might want to check the inside of Paige’s bag and tell her that I wanted you to check it, because I’m just now realizing that before she left she told me that she had ‘a lot more stuff in her bag,’ and with her I just want to make sure that doesn’t include things like a knife or a taser.”
HIM: “Lol. Oh wow! Justin mentioned a hatchet.
I didn’t think I’d have to be role playing as a TSA agent.”
ME: “Slap some gloves on and start diggin’”
HIM: “I didn’t find any of the aforementioned items.
No firearms or C4 explosives either.
I DID find an eightball of heroine though, but that’s it.”
ME: “She will be fine, then. She’s built up a tolerance.”
HIM: “I figured.”
The thing is, none of this conversation actually worried or concerned me.
I know who she is because I’ve let my girls be free, but I’ve also stood back and studied them.
The Outside-the-Box ones can seem scary, out of control, until you get to know them.
All I know is, the world can have its floor-length skirts and business formal swimwear.
We are the Wild Ones.
We have ears to pierce, and screens to swashbuckle.
Everyone knows too much sugar is bad for you.
Our reputation will make legends of us.
Mom Outnumbered
Hi! My name is Kerri Green; Wife to Justin, and mother to four highly entertaining daughters -Alena, Chloe, Tessa, and Paige. I am an artist, a writer, a daycare provider, a lover of people, a believer that there is humor and beauty in all things, and the author of Mom Outnumbered; a blog about real family life, and my observations of it. My goal is to make people laugh, to be there for them when they cry, and most importantly, to let them know that they are not at all alone in this up and down world. I live with my family in Sebastopol California, and I am opening the window into our life. So welcome! Come in. Sit down. Just please don’t mind the mysterious wet spots.
