Son #3 and the DIY project that almost went awry …
I have to be honest with you…I wrote this column over a year ago. It was never printed, so I decided to resurrect it. You see, many of you may be home for the Passover holiday, and I hope you will be reading my column. But, many of you are away for the Passover holiday. So I decided that since I wrote about my failures with son #3 last week, that I will take the opportunity to use this week to demonstrate how seriously I take being son #3’s mother. And then next week, I can use this forum to make fun of all the things I have witnessed while being away for Passover. It is really a win-win. Unless you don’t like or read my column and then this will just be appearing on the floor of a bird or gerbil cage near you…
So this column will be dedicated to son #3, and I will tell you the tale of the headboard fiasco of 2017. Per square inch, son #3 has the nicest room in the house. I say per square inch because it is also the smallest room in the house, but when you are the last to arrive, you get the last available room. In order to make access to the high riser easier for his old mom (since I have enabled all of my boys to know that mom will do everything for them), we moved his night table against the wall and the bed next to the night table. This way, anytime he has a friend sleep over, I don’t have to shlep the night table across the room to pull out the bed. (Of course, since son #2 has been away, his room has become a dormitory, but that is another story altogether and I am only allowed to speak of son #3 this week.)
OK, so we move everything around and then we discover that his pillows keep falling off his bed and he really needs a headboard. Easy, right? No. Because they didn’t seem to make the headboard that we were looking for.
Long story short, son #3 and I decided to make our own headboard. We went to AC Moore and bought some pieces of wood. We get home and I hammer the pieces together and voila — a headboard. Sort of. Now there is a whole not-spending-money-element to the story, and here we thought if we did it ourselves, we would save money. But then I had the great idea to call Dani Faber, who is this amazing carpenter who had fixed my cracking piano legs a few years back. The nicest thing about Dani? He didn’t laugh at us when he saw what we had hammered together. Now what he did when he left the house is another story, but to make a long story short again, he turned our do-it-yourself headboard into a real headboard. So much for saving money, but at least I am no longer afraid that son #3 is going to be impaled by one of the really long nails that I had hammered into the very thin wood.
And for the record, son #3 is the only kid still living in the house, so he gets lots and lots of attention. He gets his dinner driven to TABC at least two nights a week, and gets away with lots of other stuff we don’t need to go into. And he really is fun to go shopping with because he hasn’t inherited his father’s Monsey gene (and for those of you from Monsey, you know what I am talking about).
Son #3 was our faithful companion on our trip to Israel last winter vacation (2017). He helped Husband #1 navigate with Israeli Waze, he made all of our day trips highly entertaining, and he only made one judgmental face at all of the chocolate that I was consuming (but can you blame me, some of that stuff is kosher only in Israel. A girl’s gotta do what she’s gotta do!) And he even slept over at Sha’alavim one night so he could bond with his brother.
There is always that fine line of being a parent to your kid and a friend to your kid. I am the first to admit that I cross the line a lot. I am convinced that the relationship you have with your children is entirely based on the relationship you had with your parents. I never thought my parents (well my mom specifically, sorry mom) was my friend. Of course now she sort of is my friend in a very unusual and codependent way. (Good save, right?) But growing up — not so much. So I try to be my kids’ friend. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. But I have to say, son #3 is a great son and a great grandson. And if I forgot to mention him, it isn’t because I don’t love him with all of my heart, it is because I have narcissistic personality disorder. And admitting it is a great first step. Love you kid…Enjoy the headboard.
Banji Ganchrow of Teaneck hopes that son #3 will appreciate this additional shoutout. Next week, hold on to your cynical horses, because they will be galloping all over the place!
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