Picket Fence Post

Item #1: Father’s Day

I went on the record, years ago in fact, as detesting both Mother’s and Father’s Days. They put you in an impossible situation, if you’re married and both sets of your children’s grandparents live within a reasonable drive away. You’re supposed to celebrate your spouse — or “help” the kids celebrate the parent on the special day – then you’re supposed to celebrate your own parent and your spouse’s parent as well. If you’re lucky enough to have your own or your spouse’s own grandparents around, you’ve got to throw them into the mix and honor them all at the same time. On the same day.

In some families, if one grandparent gets to see his or her grown children plus the grandkids ON the actual Mother’s or Father’s Day and the other one doesn’t, there’s likely going to be hell to pay and feelings are hurt. The sulking can get ugly. I’ve heard stories . . . but I can’t tell them to you or else the folks who’ve told me their stories will kill me.

That being said, I’m still struggling — procrastinator am I, this being the Thursday before Father’s Day — with what to do for Father’s Day. The Picket Fence Post kids and I are planning on taking The Spouse out sometime this weekend to let him pick out a new grill so he can be the Grill Master of the Universe and no longer cook outside on a grill where flames shoot out of the bottom. But then there’s the question of my dad and The Spouse’s dad . . . while I’m trying to work this whole thing out, I’d love to hear how you readers out there handle your Mother’s Day/Father’s Day situations.

Item #2: Born First

For better or for worse, when our twins were born almost 11 years ago, The Spouse and I decided that we wouldn’t tell them which one was born first. We didn’t want them to grow up thinking that one was the “older” sibling and the other was the “younger” sibling, or have the “older” sibling think that he or she was able to boss the other around, etc. A mere 16 minutes separated their deliveries and frankly, we didn’t think nor did we want those 16 minutes to matter to them or to their perceptions of who they are or will be. We planned on telling them when they were older, when we didn’t think being technically “older” or “younger” would really matter to them.

When they first inquired about it, we were able to get away with the line, “You were born at the same time.” But as they got wise about pregnancy and childbirth, they figured out that babies don’t emerge from the womb simultaneously and they began asking questions. In the meantime, the outside world, for some reason, pestered all of us about their birth order. When The Spouse and I would refuse to tell people who was born first, they’d give us a shocked, disapproving looks, as if we’d just told them they needed to wear more deodorant. “Why in the world,” they asked us, “wouldn’t you want to tell us?” “Well why in the world,” we responded, “does it matter to you?”

The breaking point with The Girl and The Eldest Boy came last night when they demanded to know. Now. “You know a secret about my life!” The Eldest Boy shouted tearfully. So we told them. The one who was born first was clearly happy, though that individual promised not to lord it over the other. The kid who was born second was horribly disappointed, saying that some kid at school once said that, “Kids who are older are smarter.”

“Sixteen minutes,” I told the child, “it’s only 16 minutes. It doesn’t make any difference at all.”

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