New Balancing Act

Last Word

by Nancy Zintak

May 2, 2008

My mother did not speak to our family during the summer of 1972. Not a word. My sisters and brother and I found rides to swim team practice, spent the night out a lot and longed for the summer days spent watching Let’s Make a Deal! Our father suffered the same silence when he came home from work. That’s because at 7 each night, public television repeated the wall-to-wall coverage of the Watergate hearings, which my mother had already spent the entire day watching. She was an addict, hooked on the heroin of the Watergate hearings. Meals were not prepared. Mail was left unopened. Cocktails were served without coasters. Her thirst for Watergate news was insatiable. The human drama of Nixon’s denial, John Dean’s incriminating testimony with his beautiful wife on his arm, and the Southern drawl of Sen. Sam Ervin was more compelling drama than any Erica Kane scene from All My Children. '

But it didn’t begin or end with Watergate (my mother was simply a news junkie), and this was back in the dark ages, before cable. I remember coming home from school and shouting about my day over the radios. She’d have two going in the kitchen – a young, cantankerous Neal Boortz and two feisty feminists, Mickey and Teddy, would be on one radio, while the other was programmed to NPR’s All Things Considered. I resolved that I would never subject my children to such an insidious upbringing. I’d spend those precious after-school hours baking cookies, listening to and interpreting classical music and doing lots and lots of crafts with glitter! I’d be an informed voter and a good citizen and join the PTA, but otherwise, I’d dote each waking hour on the enlightenment of my prodigy. Right. Next thing I knew (like most women), I woke up and had turned into my mother! First, I started listening to talk radio to go to sleep; next, I started exercising to talk radio. The final act was when I started working in talk radio.

Like my mother, I was a full-blown news junkie. Instead of sharing snacks and crafts with my children after school, I had one ear on the news and my eyes on the editorial page. While other kids joyfully sang along with Raffi and Disney in their moms’ minivans, my kids were subjected to the crackling blare of AM radio. Fast-forward: Here we are in the midst of the presidential campaign of 2008, and I just can’t get enough of it.

Repeating history, my children come home from school and I’m watching reruns of last night’s debate on C-SPAN. I find myself saying things like “Sure, you can take the car!” (to my 14-year-old!), and “Why don’t you just sign that syllabus yourself, honey… You know how bad Mommy’s handwriting is!” I knew I needed to get some help when I heard myself saying, “Sure, you can use my credit card for Hannah Montana tickets!” The $800 bill was my wake-up call and instant intervention. I had to wean myself from news and information. So, I joined a book club and am grinding through Eat, Pray, Love so I can have normal conversations with normal non news junkie women. I’ve limited myself to certain hours of election coverage a day – which my children log and monitor – and I even took a spinning class, where you have to listen to disco music instead of my preferred talk radio. Being ill informed isn’t nearly as exciting, but I’m slowly getting better. Last week I actually bought some slice-and-bake cookie dough, and just this week I actually signed (and read!) an entire algebra syllabus.

Can a craft with glitter be far behind?