The Wasabi Bros

 Part I - Bad Manners

January, 2024

Being a parent is the toughest and most rewarding role anyone can have. I started this blog nearly 10 years ago, pregnant with my first son, in an effort to impart some of my personal knowledge and growth in this experience as an aid to readers. Every person and every kid is different, but there remains much common ground. Yet as my boys grow up, there is even more to share and conversely, less of a desire to do so as I cannot gain their properly informed consent to reveal their lives to the world. I suppose an argument may be made about this from the beginning of their lives, but as they become their own people, it is becoming a prime factor to consider. When does a parent have the right to share? The past year my writing has thus been offline, yet there are pertinent parts that I feel can be shared online too. 

Parenting takes and provides courage. I have terrible vertigo, but have faced my fear of heights (including taking the gondola up to the top of Mammoth, sweating a smile laced with outright fear) both to show my boys that courage is facing one’s fears and encouraging them to do the same and also in order to show them, for instance, the top of Mammoth. 

This past year the boys became ardent skiers and can now bike everywhere. They also discovered board and card games with a passion. M has a particularly astute grasp of Monopoly and has mastered becoming a real estate mogul, liquidating the family members’ portfolios with no mercy. Nothing burns faster through your money than kids, except for a Monopoly game with M. He usually ends with all the properties and about $5k in cash which I didn’t previously think was possible and for a slice of a second considered whether there were Monopoly consultants one could engage to up my game. L is not as adept in Monopoly, having the unusual strategy of being so prudent with his money that it leads to improvident consequences. While I admire his frugality, he has considered that property is a fungible asset and that you can perhaps make more money with a few hotels on cheaper properties than being the proud but imperiled owner of Park Place and Broadway. 

I’ve taught the boys Blackjack and am usually the dealer to teach them the house advantage and why “casino” is an apt name for a place that brings about disaster to so many. They saw this goulash of glitter and gallows on display when we took a road trip to hike Death Valley, check out Hoover Dam (the boys were quite impressed) and took in a side trip to the urban fields of Las Vegas. M described it aptly as “a lame theme park” (not having ever been to one but discerning that rides were to be a pertinent part). That said, the boys loved walking the Strip and revelled in the kitsch decor. 

I also use Blackjack, Monopoly and other games to sneak in some math as the boys rebelled against Kumon assignments. For the moment, I have let them go in favour of my clandestine approach which has been successful and the boys’ calculations and their speed have improved with the games (there’s nothing like needing your brother to true up, it seems, to calculate that his proffered figure is somewhat emaciated). 

The boys have also gotten into Minecraft. M was disconsolate the other day as he was on a survivor mode (as I understand it) and wanted to get back in to building mode, but kept dying. He ran up to us, a deluge of tears flooding his face, “I died!” - and true enough there on the screen it said “You’ve died”. Unfortunately, my reflexive reaction was to laugh. It was not well received to say the least. 

It has come to my attention that I am a parent who repeats certain phrases ad naseam (one view, proffered by my children) and when pertinent (my perspective). One example that foments frustration is “budi brat, not a brat” (the initial part is in Serbian, “be a brother, not a brat”), proclaimed when the boys are arguing. There’s a lot of maize in that phrase, I admit. 

Last year M vociferously advocated for a birthday party, which he hadn’t had for some years, partly due to the pandemic and partly due to the fact that his birthday is in the summer. We noted that while his brother, born during the fall semester, has parties, M conversely gets to celebrate his birthday in beautiful parts all over the world as we summer. M was not persuaded by this argument and we relented by fabricating a party earlier in the year. Success! The deal was he couldn’t get any presents from the family and had to wait for his birthday. This was initially blithely agreed to and then quite begrudgingly as the day and the prospect of no present loomed closer. 

I started taking the boys on “dates” some time ago - individual outings rather than together. We do the same things as we would together - mini golf, ping pong, museum, dinner- but there’s something special to a child having their parent’s sole attention. However, it was brought to my attention clearly, many months ago, by my older son L, that having my sole attention is not merely produced by the absence of his older brother.    We were waiting for the cable car and need to orient ourselves on where we would be headed after our stop, when I reflexively checked my work email. According to my son, I was next engrossed in my phone and furiously writing an email (which incidentally I remember having quite an amicable if assertive tone). L voiced his opposition immediately and clearly. “You said, this was our special time, and yet, here you are in your phone, working yet again.” This admonition was deserved. I had made a grave mistake. I concomitantly felt ashamed at my parenting faux pas and proud at that my son could so eloquently and clearly advocate for himself. He didn’t stamp his feet or shout, he simply asserted his position. The past many months after this spring incident, I have been more cognizant to turn off my phone when with the kids. 

I have also had to parent long-distance. Put simply, it doesn’t work - nor should it. I don’t want to be away from my kids, and they likewise do not wish me to absent.

The boys have decoded the internet and have begun to conspire establishing their own YouTube channel, which M wishes to call “Bad Manners”. According to the boys, gardening an audience is all about being outrageous. What do they perceive as being outrageous? Bad table manners. Needless to say, this is not a channel coming out anytime soon. 

I am not of the opinion that screen time per se is damaging, albeit I strongly believe that learning is conducted better, particularly for youth, without screens. Even in college settings - in some of the best universities in the world - students multitask through their various open media while putatively engaging in class. This is a collective loss, as the student is not fully engaging in class and is disruptive to other students. Studies have shown that devices inhibit our learning and impede our participation - but some leading professors are concerned that prohibiting all electronic devices (need excused) will lead to mutiny. That says a lot about how much we are chained to our devices and social media. 

For instance, take YouTube. It is certainly no space for unsupervised browsing but I have found a number of channels that are quite educational, including TedEd and Kyrstegratz, both of which the boys enjoy. They are also huge fans of Mark Rober and enjoy building his kits. Last year, L took the initiative of writing a letter to Mark Rober thanking him for his videos (requesting more pranks videos in a post script) and asking whether his class could have a field trip to Crunch Labs (notably, he wanted to share this experience with his class, but also his brother). How do you explain to a kid the dictates of insurance policies which I presume would be an impediment to such a goal? Well, here’s to hoping L. 

Part II- Fritz Blitz and Dom Grom

December 2024

My boys and their friends are using increasing colloquialisms and addressing all and sundry as “bro”. If they are truly enamored with something, it is “OP” (“over power”), or they give it “rizz” (an interesting development from charisma), something they don’t like is “savage” and an incredible amount of things are "suss" to name a few choice terms. I am not averse to being addressed by my name (when M is quite agitated with me, he loads his complaints by addressing me with my full name, following my style when I am reprimanding him) rather than “mum” or the like, but I was not accepting “bro”. M then went to “girly girl” which also made me fume, as I explained to him that I am nothing of the sort. I hardly own makeup, I hardly wear heels, I brush my hair a few times a month, right about the time that I’ve amassed enough of a capillary catastrophe that birds start sizing up the viability of my knots for their new abode. It is not that I am not vain, but that my laziness outweighs my vanity. Fortunately, we’ve reached a modicum of consensus wherein I am mostly “mum” or “mama”, sometimes addressed by my name with a solid side serving of “girl” (generally  followed by a song “you are my girl, you are my pearl” and the like, and then closely followed by a request of some sort).

It’s a delicate balance when you are a parent to discipline your kids while also developing a friendship with them. On the one hand, you want to have fun with your kids and nurture that relationship and more importantly present a safe space where they can reveal what they may be struggling with or where they are going etc. and on the other hand, you are the person responsible for bringing them up as safe, responsible, kind, productive and cultured members of the community. I am constantly stating to my sons that I cannot simply be their friend, even though that would be far easier. I’ve been told I’m tough. But, what can you do when the education curriculum is so weak? You need to supplement at home. My sons’ protestations that I am tough and asking for more work is understandable but not persuasive. However, I was ruminating the other day that as parents, we all want our kids to have better lives - we want more for our kids. We also - or perhaps that is just me - want more of our kids. We want our kids to not make our mistakes and to be better people. Yet, is that right? To expect more from our kids than ourselves? Then again, isn’t that the job of a parent? For it is a job. It is the most difficult and wonderful job that there is. A true labour of love. And yet, there is no pedagogic preparation - you just leave the hospital with a soul, and hope you don’t kill it or break it but nurture its light to shine bright. 

For nearly a year, I spent more time on the east coast than with my boys on the west. It was a none to easy decision. I had organized my life so that I could volunteer at school events and be present for them, in a way my parents could not have for me, and then I make the contradictory decision to leave for a year. I decided to go back to school to focus on policy - namely navigating climate change and emerging technologies. My boys pointed out that there were good schools in the Bay Area, but I only had one school in mind. It would be a year, not two, and I tried to explain to them that if I had pursued a program at home, I would have little time for them for longer- double the time, in fact. I had pretensions of writing letters, but while I put notes under their pillows every time I left, I stand embarrassed that I was only able to send one long letter to each of them during my absence. Instead, I sent them texts, photos and cartoons, which digital existence seemed to diffuse our connection. I was the weekend parent, the Face Time parent- and I could tell that when I called, they were usually more focused on whatever I had interrupted. I visited them for 3 days about every 3 weeks. When I was going through their school journals after I had graduated and returned, it cut to the core to read their feelings about missing me and how short my trips back were. L wrote once that he was happy that I was coming home tomorrow, but that it would only be for the weekend and then he knew it would be another three weeks before he would see me again. The good news is that while they admonished me a bunch for leaving, now it’s as if I never left. 

During this time, my elder son, L, was bullied. A boy in his class, who was struggling with a lot at home, had decided to take out his pain on my son. Over video calls, I would tell L that people resort to anger when they cannot handle their pain. Instead of acknowledging sadness, they deny it by channeling it into anger. I could see him riven with hurt and distress, which I viscerally felt and was denied the ability to hug him or protect him as we exchanged looks and words that were translated into zeros and ones. I feared that bullying could lead to hardening of the heart as a defense. I told L, that in the darkness, we make our own light. We do not let the stygian shroud that others choose to wear, be our sartorial encasement. That’s a lifelong lesson, but better to start digesting it early.

M had given me a a large, squishy, rainbow unicorn that looked deliriously happy and stoned that he had won at summer camp, telling me it was so I wouldn't feel lonely. Stella was my college roommate. I brought her to school so that the boys could see Stella with my classmates and teachers and so she could offer hugs (a hug from Stella, is nothing but rewarding). The hugs were generally a hit, so I proffered that she should be our class mascot. This was not taken up and some people were too serious to enjoy her presence. Oh, well. 

I still had the apartment I used for school after graduation (and we were "werewolves" there), so Stella and I shared it for a fortnight with my boys. This led to tension with my neighbour who was not delighted at the sound of youthful antics across the hall. She made it a point to bid me farewell, which I initially thought was kind, only to tell me in front of my boys that she specifically came out to tell me how happy she was that I was leaving and that she would not see me again. To which M responded, rolling his eyes, as she walked off, "what a Karen!" I should not have laughed. I had been working on telling him that he must not use this term because it is a name that many women have and one we have even in our family, but I undid in one eruption of giggles, months of chiding. 

It was a wonderful experience to explore the historic city in which I lived for nearly a year with the boys as I didn't get a chance to during school. They marvelled at the cockiness of the wild turkeys that gave one a cold stare as they deliberately walked into traffic to prove their mastery of the hood. It is a marvel to see the normally acutely aggressive Bostonian drivers halt and calmly creep behind these creatures who seem to revel in their ability to disrupt. 

It was scorching hot, with intermittent thunderstorms. M was afraid of thunder. When they were little, I had told them that thunder and lightening were brothers, lightening was Fritz Blitz and thunder was Dom Grom, the little brother who was always trying to be loud and catch up to his older brother. We don't have much thunder in SF and its piercing sound frightening M. I was putting them to bed and initially thought the storm would aid that, but as the thunder got closer, M's eyes bulged and he held me tight. I told him it was nothing to worry about and then he asked what would happen if lightening hit our building. I told him it was a negligible possibility for that strike, but that buildings have lightening rods, and we would be fine. In a few minutes, the thunder getting louder, our building got hit and it shook from the impact. I had been wrong that we wouldn't be hit so M now freaked out that something was wrong with the building. As I was telling him not worry about that, reminding him about the rod, the fire alarm sounded. "What's that?" M asked in a panic. "The fire alarm" I answered as I opened the door to the hallway and met all my neighbors' panicked faces. "Fire!" screamed M, darting a distrusting look my way. Fortunately, it was merely precautionary.

I didn't think that M would be the ripe age of 7 when he asked me for investment. He informed me he was working on a robotics company with a classmate, which they wanted to call Boltrix, and his own train engineering company, which he wants to call Burning Rails. I asked him how much he wanted. "Just a thousand for now" M said. I asked him what percentage of the company that would buy me, and as any investor performing diligence on a company in the initial development stage, what he would use the money for, who else owned the company, and what designs he had developed. M had solid answers for everything except what he wanted the money for. His intention required a lot more than a thousand dollars. I told him to come back to me with a proper business plan.

The boys are into World War II planes and ships and attendant battles. They will rattle off facts about any plane, tank or ship model and how they were used in any theatre of the war. While L also continues to be focused on marine biology, he has also dived deep into Greek mythology. His favourite god? Poseidon of course. When L had a sleepover birthday party, the theme was Olympus and he was lord of the sea. During the sleepover, when it was high past the time of “getting to bed” I heard whispers and giggles, which I expected, and then - stentorian thumping as kids bellowed “earthquake, earthquake, earthquake!” After all, Poseidon was there…

I was not happy about the gun battles, but I decided it was a good time to learn about humanitarian law and the Geneva Convention. I was not having war crimes committed in my house- if they wanted to battle, then they had to abide by the doctrine of proportionality and by no means could they attack a non-military target, being a kid or parent without a weapon. The rules laid down, I joined in -and made M cry. In his view, I had become “vicious” -  but everything I did was well within the bounds of the Geneva Convention. Though I must say I probably could have dampened my thespian excursion and not pointed a gun at M’s head asking him to drop his weapon and surrender. The good news is he got over it pretty quickly however, deciding that I should always be on his team.

Now that the boys are 8 and 10, we can do loads more together. We hang out. That may be more a reflection of my mindset, being able to hang with 8 and 10 year olds, then the maturity of my sons, but, at least it’s fun and usually downright hilarious. M in particular is a character that stuns me with laughter. 

We spent a few days in Paris, where I took them to some of my favourite places and as it was the summer, we had the benefit of daylight until about 22.30. I took them to the Musee D’Orsay, the Louvre and walked them 10 miles each day through various parks, including the Jardin du Luxembourg. I insisted that if they wanted to order, they had to do it in French and they ran with it. While I thought I had the perfect itinerary planned, they wanted to go to the top of the Eiffel Tower and see the Mona Lisa (not one of the items I had included in our Louvre tour). I have been to Paris several times and not once did I care to wait to go to the top of the Eiffel Tower, but they insisted. Here’s the hack- you wait till the very last 10 minutes prior to closing and then there’s no line. In the summer, it’s also daylight. But, once we got our tickets, M’s stomach decided it would rather stay on the ground. L insisted he wanted to go up the top. I insisted we needed to compromise and so, with nobody happy, least of all me, as I chided them about practicing gratitude, we made it to the second floor. I also relented on the Mona Lisa, but warned them that it would be disappointing due to the massive crowds and the fact that it is hardly Da Vinci’s best painting. I find his best painting the Virgin of the Rocks (the original hands in the Louvre, there is a second in the National Gallery in London). I told them we would see the Mona Lisa and then they would appreciate the real mastery of art - and indeed, they recognized how much better it was - and not a single person was appreciating it (which makes me quite triste). L was keen on navigating, so I let him use my phone to navigate - but, in order to develop his grey matter and not deplete it - he could use the map but not Google directions. He had to find his way on his own. And he did it masterfully. Walking around Montmartre, L decided I needed a new pair of jeans, the item of clothing I have always associated with the U.S. He insisted it was necessary. He picked out a nice pair and later, looking at the old pair and wondering how L had become a fashionista, I noticed that my jeans had several holes in somewhat discerning places and realized, to my acrid embarrassment, why L had been so insistent. And what pray did the boys most love about Paris? The metro. 

M, ever the marine biologist, was astounded that during snorkeling he discovered invasive fish in Mediterranean. We were on Tilos, a wonderful island that uses renewable energy and is a circular economy. He spotted a trumpetfish and a lionfish. I was at first skeptical when he spotted the lionfish. We were on the pier and he pointed to it excitedly. “It shouldn’t be here!” he exclaimed. I told him it was the sign of a warming ocean, due to our rapacious pumping of fossil fuels. 

M has been playing in L’s upper house soccer team. He is almost 2 years younger than the average player in the league and accordingly, far smaller. This goes against standard pedagogy, which advises holding boys back so they are older and bigger amongst their peers. But, you can’t go by generalizations. Every kid is different and every situation particular. We have an awesome coach and M has developed under her wing. During one match, M got hit straight in the head - and he brushed it off and wanted to keep playing! They took him out to check on him, and when I went to check on him, he admonished me for doing so, as if he needed the world to acknowledge that he was one tough guy. “I want to get a red card today” he said the other week before a game. I told him that would penalize him, and he retorted with, “why? It’s my last game.”

I can’t explain why, but I relish making the boys’ lunch and snacks. As I write this, we are on a plane, and for the flight, to keep their hydration and to nourish them, I have packets of lettuce leaves, cucumber, cherry tomatoes, carrots, red pepper, some cheese, wholegrain chips and hummus and I also relish dishing it out. I adore making their school lunches, but I was told that I needed to expand my menu. They particularly needed a break from my go-to sandwich, hummus and cucumber on wholegrain (I mean, how isn't that the best?). I have in the past few weeks wholly abandoned the sandwich and provide them with mezze instead. Fruit, veggies, cheese and chips with hummus. Yet, they ask for charcuterie. We’ve come to the agreement they can have meat twice a week for lunch (we usually have meat with dinner).

I discovered the difficult way that trampolining after giving birth to two kids has its drawbacks. As fun as it is to jump, my pelvic floor failed me and I was grateful that I chose to wear dark pants. 

I have been volunteering to help teach math during their session on Fridays in L’s 4th grade class. I was astounded at the diversity of aptitude amongst L’s classmates. Some are at ease with algebraic concepts and shockingly, a few kids did not know elementary steps like the difference between even and odd. We need to give kids more attention in public schools and separate kids. Some people argue that separation is inequitable. I would rebut this by pointing out the very definition of equity requires different treatment. That is the difference between equality and equity. How can a child progress in math if they lack the foundational structures? It’s like focusing on a bathroom for a house you haven’t laid the foundation for. The kids that are ahead, get bored, and distract the others. The kids that are behind, are so far behind, that they learn nothing from the curriculum and are also distracted. It seems the fear may be that if we separate according to aptitude that this would be definitive. But, it should not be. Regular testing should allow for kids to move between the graded classes so that they are constantly where they needed to be. If you are in a higher class, and not doing well, you should go down and likewise if you are in a lower class but start excelling, you should be moved up. If a kid doesn’t know how to divide by 2, they are not going to get algebra. It is a complete neglect of that kid’s aptitude to keep them in a 4th grade math class. Unfortunately, our public schools are under-resourced and our teachers overworked. There is no allowance for the particular attention that private schools can provide. Yet, if you leave the public system - that is, if you can afford it - for the private system, you further weaken its ability to get funds which is based on the student body. It makes little sense. Our future, are our children. Their education, is their future. So, why are we deliberately sabotaging our future? For what ends? For whose interest?