Overall, I think I was a good mother and a decent step-mom. I have memories of situations I wish I’d handled differently, mostly involving not taking their side when I should have. But overall, I was a pretty good mom. And I’ll be an even better grandmother, one of these days, I hope. Hint, hint.
The Tell-Tale Tail started as a spontaneous joke but went on far too long. It crossed the line from funny-instructive to something entirely else.
My kids generally learned appropriate skepticism from this kind of joke, the category of joke into which The Tell-tale Tail falls. I had fun while they learned to discriminate truth from falsehood, stories from reality, jokes from lies.
One time my friend Bertie and I took our toddlers to Ardenwood Farm, a wonderful historic park in the East Bay, near where Bertie and her husband live. My son, Max, and Bertie’s daughter, Dora, were at the stage where they were just learning to read. Max was trying hard to read the labels on the pens surrounding the farm animals to Dora. He sounded out triumphantly, pig!
I turned to Dora with my serious-joking face and said, Dora, you probably know that pigs go mooooo. I pride myself on the verisimilitude of my animal voices. It was a good moo.
By the way, do you know the story about the origin of the word verisimilitude? Two Maine farmers, brothers in their late teens, were milking cows very early in the morning. The taller one made a moo sound, and then asked his brother, did that sound good? His brother said, nodding seriously, ver' similar, dude.
Dora looked at me blankly, then at her mother. Then back to me. And finally, a heartbeat later, she laughed. She knew that pigs didn’t say moo. Moreover, she knew what pigs did say, and which animal said moo.
The key elements of this kind of instructive joke are: 1) know your audience, and be sure they’ll get the joke; and 2) don’t let it go on too long, if they don’t get it right away.
If the audience doesn’t know within seconds that pigs say oink, admit your error. Oops! Wait! It’s cows that say moo. My mistake, you add.
The Tell-Tale Tail went bad because it violated both principles.
Max was three years old. We had our noses in a book, looking at an image of an embryo, at the stage where it looks like a shrimp. It has a tail, Mamia! That was his name for me, back then. Did I have a tail like that, Mamia?
I said, you did! Everyone did, when they were inside their mommies’ tummies, working on turning into a baby human. I continued, as embryos get closer to being a fetus, the tail goes away. Once you’re born, the only remnant of the tail is your tailbone, the little bone at the end of your spine. Max was riveted to the story. A tail! How unlikely and amazing! He felt his tailbone. Wow!
A very small percentage of people are born still having a tail, I continued. At this point, I was still speaking truth. I’ve looked it up just now, and forty cases total have been reported in the literature. Rare to be sure, but technically true.
I told Max, but it’s just a simple surgery to remove the tail, and you can’t really tell afterwards, except for a tiny scar. This is probably true, too.
And then I started down the path to a bad outcome.
I’ve been waiting for the right time to tell you this, I said to Max. You were born with a tail. You're old enough to know this now.
Max looked up at me, eyes round as saucers. Those are the little plates you put under a teacup, with a biscuit propped up next to the cup.
I said to him, don’t worry. The doctor removed it right away, and the scar is so small you don’t even notice it.
Max believed me, I could see that. So instead of confessing my dumb joke, I carried the story further into the absurd, hoping that he would realize I was pulling his tail. Leg.
I said, you know that box of baby things we keep in the Top Secret Place? He nodded, eyes big, power of speech evaporated. Well, it’s in there, in a little bag. They let us take it home from the hospital.
The Top Secret Place is a storage area in our house that you can get to only by going through the Secret Place. The Super Secret Place is on the other side of the Secret Place, and you can get to it only by moving the stairs.
I don’t mean this to story sound like the Cask of Amontillado. It’s purely coincidence that Max and I are descended from Edgar Allan Poe, through my DNA dad.
Do you want to see it? I asked. What the heck had gotten into me. Maybe some vestigial EAP alleles.
Max followed his mother, the person he trusted most in the world, through the hidden door that leads to the Top Secret Place after you pass through the Secret Place. The box was on the top shelf, labeled Max’s Baby Things.
I took it down, and we opened it. Inside was the onesie he wore home from Stanford Children’s Hospital. The tiny socks that wouldn’t stay on his feet. A little blue baby hat, and the high-tech baby bottle that would allow him to go back and forth between nursing and formula.
I slowly pulled out each item, taking my time to enjoy each one, deliberately extending the suspense. For a few minutes Max was quiet. Waiting.
Then he started getting desperate. Mom! he said, clenching his fists. Where is it?
Must be at the bottom of the box, I replied. And I continue to bring out more items, describing each one.
He started crying softly, and that must have shocked me back to humanity. The spirit of EAP relinquished me. Finally.
There’s no tail, Max. It was a stupid joke.
Pause. My heart twisted sideways.
I wasn’t born with a tail? Max asked. No, I replied. It was a bad joke. I’m so sorry.
You could see him struggling with what had happened. He let me hold him and comfort him for a just a few seconds while he continued crying.
And then realized I was the enemy. Max pulled away from me and wailed, I am so mad at you! He ran out of the Top Secret Place, back to his room, flung himself face-down on the bed and sobbed. Quite justifiably. I’d done an awful thing. Instead of a joke, a funny lesson in healthy skepticism, I’d violated his trust.
I have been apologizing for this terrible joke-gone-wrong for twenty years. Max has long forgiven me, and now tells the story himself, laughing.
I haven’t forgiven me. It’s horrifying to know that my motherhood can cross over to evil, even for a few minutes, overcome by a need to tell a funny story. Horrible.
Overall I was and am a good mother, but not that day.
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