{"id":1203,"date":"2006-10-25T15:00:00","date_gmt":"2006-10-25T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog2\/2006\/10\/hide-and-seek\/"},"modified":"2006-10-25T15:00:00","modified_gmt":"2006-10-25T15:00:00","slug":"hide-and-seek","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/2006\/10\/hide-and-seek\/","title":{"rendered":"Hide and Seek"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have pitched this to the “Coupling” section of the Boston Globe mag. I think it’s pretty funny. Maybe some of you with kids and multiple pressures and stresses can relate!<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019ll never forget the burning humiliation and frustration of that summer\u2019s night, twenty-something years ago, when my mother knocked on my bedroom door, saying in a tense voice, \u201cSusan, he can\u2019t spend the night in there,\u201d referring to Ned, who was to become my husband several years later. But we did not know that at the time. All we knew was that we were adults (both of us, nineteen) and I could not believe how unreasonable and Medieval my parents were turning out.<\/p>\n

I stepped out into the dark hallway and looked at her in disbelief. Ned and I were living in the same dorm room back at college, after all. But Mom\u2019s lips had that tight, gray look and I knew there was no arguing with her. \u201cI can\u2019t believe this,\u201d I muttered angrily, sending Ned into the guestroom. I chafed at the injustice, and also at the need to stuff all my piping hot libido back where it had come from. But I also remember thinking, \u201cIf Mom is this mad, Dad must be even worse,\u201d and I shuffled back into my girlhood bedroom alone, secretly relieved that she had come to do the scolding, rather than Dad.<\/p>\n

After that Ned and I simply stole time together, coming up with ever more creative ways to evade my parents\u2019 rules. Like the time later that same year when I told them I needed the car to visit my sister in Williamstown, but instead I drove to Cambridge, to M.I.T. where Ned was working that summer. I called my sister and confessed how I planned to dump her for my boyfriend that weekend.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh,\u201d she said, laughing. \u201cYeah, go ahead. I completely<\/span> understand.\u201d After all, she had grown up with the same parents. She knew all about sneaking around them. I headed off to Cambridge, where I had never been, without a map or directions, just a street address. But I knew eventually I\u2019d find Ned because I had the determination of a young woman in love \u2013 and in lust.<\/p>\n

It turns out that the determination of a young woman in lust has nothing on the determination of an older woman in lust. I don\u2019t really understand it, let\u2019s just say that in my forties my husband and I have had a kind of a blessed Renaissance in our love life. But we are also blessed with three children. And so we have a problem, reminiscent of our old problem: finding ways to be together without their knowing.<\/p>\n

Max is our fourteen-year-old. Hiding from Max is tricky. He is always around in the evening, on the computer, which is in a room in the middle of the house. Nothing gets past him, literally. Plus we live in an age where children learn, of necessity, the facts of life very early. And we live in progressive Massachusetts, where such things are often part of the elementary school curriculum.<\/p>\n

Because of his age, Max is allowed to stay up until past 10 on a school night. Because of our ages, Ned and I usually can\u2019t stay up much later than 10 on any night. This poses a big problem, in terms of discreetly meeting our needs. Like the a time recently when we slipped upstairs at 9, and he teased us innocently for always going to bed so early. Later, we felt energized enough for some Jon Stewart. When we crept back, Max was still there, online.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat must he think?\u201d Ned whispered to me. \u201cHe\u2019s got to know something\u2019s going on.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe he doesn\u2019t put it all together,\u201d I said hopefully. But my face was bright red, and I could not bring myself to look at Max or to tell him that he should have gone up an hour ago. I think I barked something at him from the other room, so I wouldn\u2019t have to guess at what he knew.<\/p>\n

Ben, who is eight, is an even thornier challenge. He is still of the age where he might forget to knock on a closed door. Happily, we live in a battered old Victorian, whose doors have swollen into the doorjambs and so nearly every one of them has to be pushed hard to open it, giving the guilty party a little reaction time. Nevertheless, my husband and I had a moment\u2019s panic one recent passionate Saturday morning when we stole upstairs, figuring that we had just enough time, breathless with excitement at the chance for being together in the fresh morning light, as opposed to the dark, tired evening. Nat\u2019s video had just started, Max was on the computer, and Ben seemed to be busily drawing.<\/p>\n

What we didn\u2019t count on was the eight-year-old boy\u2019s sudden, inexplicable need for Legos. Even with that door tightly closed, when I heard the light patter of those little feet in the hall, just a few feet away, I felt as if I\u2019d had cold water spilled all over me.<\/p>\n

Actually, it was worse: I felt as if my mother were standing right outside. What goes around, comes around, I guess. And when you\u2019re being naughty, you can run but you just can\u2019t hide.
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I have pitched this to the “Coupling” section of the Boston Globe mag. I think it’s pretty funny. Maybe some of you with kids and multiple pressures and stresses can relate! I\u2019ll never forget the burning humiliation and frustration of that summer\u2019s night, twenty-something years ago, when my mother knocked on my bedroom door, saying […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pSTth-jp","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1203\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}