Salon.com > Jennifer Moses

Meet the Screamers

Tue, 02 Nov 1999 17:00:00 +0000

My kids are loud. Very loud. Yes, I know that your kids are loud, too. But trust me, my kids are louder. How do I know? I just know.

When my little daughter snuggles up to me on the sofa at night to tell me she loves me, the sound of her voice almost ruptures my eardrum. Her twin brother has a yelp that makes my skin crawl. And as for their older brother, he's so loud that, at 10 years old, he sounds like Rocky Balboa right after the big fight.

The ear, nose and throat specialist we finally took him to said he had one of the most advanced cases of vocal nodules he'd ever seen in a kid, and recommended speech therapy on the double. He went on to say that if my son didn't get a grip on his own voice and learn to use it more gently, he'd have to undergo a surgical procedure that would basically sand the nodules off his vocal cords.

So now I go around threatening my kid with an operation if he doesn't pipe down. As threats go, it's not terribly effective. Threatening to take away his TV time works much better.

My brother-in-law calls us "the foghorn family."

"SAM FINISHED OFF ALL THE TOASTED OATMEAL? NO FAIR."

"TOO BAD, YOU IDIOT."

"YOU'RE THE IDIOT."

"I AM NOT AN IDIOT, YOU IDIOT."

The belles of St. Mary's

Tue, 01 Dec 1998 20:00:00 +0000

I'm trying to explain to the pretty, slightly tipsy, blue-eyed and blond-haired woman who has been telling me about her school days that, in fact, I myself am not a graduate of the St. Mary's School. I'm telling her, somewhat awkwardly, that I have merely come to the reunion as my friend Sarah's "date," but the minute the word "date" is out of my mouth, I realize that I may have made a semantic boo-boo. Indeed, the woman (Class of '52) blinks rapidly behind her glasses, and then says -- in the broad, flattened vowels and up-and-down cadences of the Old South -- "Well, aren't you girls lucky to have each other then?"

"Yes we are," I say.

Time for One Thing: Anxiety

Tue, 10 Nov 1998 20:00:00 +0000

I'm an extremely anxious person, and always have been. It's not that I suffer from the kind of paralyzing anxiety attacks that, I'm told, feel like a combination of a heart attack and the onset of schizophrenia. But I do live with constant low-level and sometimes not-so-low-level dread -- a kind of second skin, worn on the inside. I'm anxious when I have too much work to do, and when I have too little. I'm anxious when my house is filled with the noisy chaos of family life, and when -- save for the thud-thud-thud of my hyper-beating heart -- it's silent. I'm anxious when I'm upset, and anxious when I'm happy -- especially when I'm happy because who the hell gave me the right to go along all sunny and chipper? My anxiety is non-situational. It just is.

It's also situational. For example -- and I know this isn't original -- I'm afraid of flying. After all, airplanes are held together by Elmer's glue and piloted by guys with blow-dried hair. The combination has always disturbed me. Fortunately, I've been able to develop a technique for helping the pilot keep the airplane where it should be. It's very simple, really: The night before my trip, I get a really bad stomach ache, and when I get on the plane the next day, I begin to sweat so profusely that people stare at me. Then I pray. My husband insists that it is not my pre- and during-flight ritual that keeps the plane aloft, but if I say so myself, the proof is in the pudding.

Waiting for Hurricane Georges

Tue, 13 Oct 1998 19:00:00 +0000

Three weekends ago, as we braced for Hurricane Georges, my husband and I didn't know what to expect. Since our move from Washington, D.C., to Baton Rouge, La., three years ago, the only hurricane we'd experienced was in a melodramatic play -- a combination of bad Faulkner and bad Tennessee Williams, with a little Oprah thrown in. The actors stomped around onstage in wet clothing, uttering things like, "When the Lord in His Terrible Glory speaks you don't got no choice but to listen, baby." But now it was real life, and the storm was heading straight for the Big Easy, and after that, to us, here in the state capital. It looked like it was going to be a whopper.

My husband had been an Eagle scout, and he doesn't like to be caught unprepared. During the one year that we lived in Los Angeles, we kept a row of jugs filled with water along the wall of our kitchen, in case we had an earthquake. By the time we moved out of our apartment, all our earthquake water had turned a sickly shade of green and smelled. But now it was 10 years later, and my husband, in something approaching a full-scale panic, called me from work on Thursday and asked me if we were stocked up on batteries, canned goods, water, paper supplies, Band-Aids, sterile gauze and flashlights.

Letter from Baton Rouge

Thu, 20 Aug 1998 19:00:00 +0000

BATON ROUGE, La. -- On Monday night, we in Baton Rouge, along with the rest of the nation, were glued to our TV sets. But by Tuesday afternoon -- splshtttt -- it was as if the whole televised spectacle hadn't even happened. I heard one lady in the supermarket compare the president's speech with premature ejaculation: all sweaty buildup, then over in a moment, and in the most embarrassing way. But in general, it hasn't been a big topic of conversation, at least in the circles I travel in, which, admittedly, are somewhat limited: the parents of my three kids' friends, my neighbors, my professor husband's colleagues at LSU, the other moms at my 9-year-old's bus stop.

Today when I got to the bus stop, the usual gang of (mostly) moms were gathered around their Chevy Suburbans, BMWs and mini-vans, chatting about this and that, but not about the president and Monica Lewinsky. Which in some ways is weird, because folks in this part of the world generally love talking politics. The bus stop is on the periphery of the Garden District, a well-heeled, tree-lined, blue-blooded neighborhood that's considered "old Baton Rouge" -- and the kids are from well-to-do, well-educated and well-informed families. But no one was interested in talking about the president. I had to press.