God Help Her

We are in the midst of our birthday season.  Friday, my baby will be 5 (hold me!) and next week, my 10 year old technically turns 11 (but I’m pretty sure she’s mentally going on 17- hold me tighter!)

My 10 year old’s birthday always falls in Lent.   As students at a Catholic school, my kids are strongly encouraged to sacrifice important things and change bad habits during this season.  Each year, the 10 year old does her best to cheat her way into heaven and not piss off Jesus too much with her lame sacrifices. 

You see, she lives and breathes for sweets.  She would kill for them.  If I hadn’t stepped in, she may have already killed for them.    Our dog ate her huge Hershey’s Kiss from Valentine’s Day and I won’t  tell you what she did to him because I don’t have the strength to deal with the PETA freaks, but I will say that I had pry the remnants of the slobbery chocolate out of the dog’s teeth and physically put it in the bottom of the dumpster outside to ensure that she wouldn’t try and recycle.   

Imagine the roar from Chris Farley’s “Gap girl” protecting her french fries… that’s my daughter with her sweets. 

Since she’s doesn’t like my ideas of keeping her room clean, not throwing temper tantrums or not rolling her eyes (a suggestion, ironically, at which she rolled her eyes), it inevitably comes down to sweets.   She’ll suggest something like I’ll give up the blue marshmallows in my Lucky Charms or not lick my fingers after eating S’mores.  She’s a giver. 

It’s surprising that she still fights the abstaining.  It’s not like she hasn’t been warned.   

When she was 8, she ambitiously and carelessly, gave up cake for Lent.    We had a big bowling party for her birthday.  There was a huge white cake with chocolate mousse filling and buttercream icing- the kind of things her dreams are made of!  You may think this was cruel, but it was her BIRTHDAY, for Pete’s sake!  I didn’t see any harm in her having a piece of  her own birthday cake.  And the party was held on a Sunday (I never heard of this rule when I was younger, but some of the kids mentioned being able to have what you gave up on Sundays.)  She was very reluctant to eat the cake because of guilt.  My mom and I were pretty much the meddling drug dealers applying the peer pressure, at this point.   She gave in and ate the cake and had a great time at her party.

I will never forget her face looking up at me from the toilet that night asking me if God was punishing her.   Every bit of the pink and black decorated cake had come back up.  I felt so bad for her, since I was the one that encouraged her to have some, but couldn’t help but find it kind of  funny, too. 

The lesson was lost on her.

This year she gave up donuts.  Until the morning of Ash Wednesday when my husband had a fresh box on the counter that he had brought home and she quickly modified her offering of penitence- to cookies.

One year she gave up cookies.  She then ate crushed up Oreos on her ice cream- and made a quick clarification, “I gave up CHOCOLATE CHIP cookies.” 

One year she gave up ice cream.  The family ate a fast food place that also serves frozen custard and I wouldn’t let her have any.  She then wrote a legal dissertation of how “frozen custard” has a silky smooth consistence because of the pure butterfat, egg yolks and real cream they use and is clearly NOT the same as ice cream.