For her latest debating topic, my oldest daughter chose to make the case for why she should be allowed to read my book.  In her methodical manner she ripped apart my stated reasons for the ban: that it was too violent; contained gross amounts of profanity; and themes too mature for a child her age to understand.  She reminded me that it was Holocaust Remembrance Month and that she had been studying obscene acts of violence on a scale that would dwarf any single murder I might depict in the book.  As far as profanity, she assured me that practically every curse word in existence (even ones I might not know) was on exhibit in the girls' bathroom at her middle school.  As for the mature themes, she reminded me that from the time she was three I had been observing that she was wise beyond her years.

Despite the cogency of her logic, I am not lifting the book ban.  But her arguments did make me reexamine why  I am so desperate to shield her from its contents.  My reasons have less to do with sex,  violence or cursing than with hypocrisy -- my own. 

The narrator in the book is prone to bursting into tears in open court under the scolding of judges.  I seldom cry at home, but when I do, I make sure to do so behind the bathroom's closed door, with the tap running at full blast.  And I preach to my children that the opinions of others should not shake what they know to be true about themselves.  The book's narrator loses her temper, curses frequently, smokes the occasional cigarette, and has loved men other than my daughters' father.  She confronts drug dealers in their housing project apartments.

At home, on the rare occasions when I fight with my husband, that also takes place behind closed doors, after the kids are in bed.  I don't curse, never light up anything other than the kitchen stove to make chicken soup, still cut the sections out of my daughters' grapefruits lest they get squirted with juice, and urge them to take second helpings of green vegetables.

Perhaps my double life is more extreme than that of most women, but almost every mother I know has a side she doesn't let her children see.  We limit our kids to one Oreo, then polish off the remainder of the bag only to feign ignorance the next day when there are none left over for their  lunch boxes.  We tell them not to say mean things about other people, then gossip on the phone with our friends.  We wax poetic about the importance of fresh air and exercise, but all too often flop onto the couch with a novel instead of heading to the gym or taking a walk.

My oldest is now at the age when she wakes up every morning with legs that seem to have grown a quarter of an inch overnight.   Almost twelve,  all too soon she will decide that, when she grows up, she wants to be anything other than her mother.  But for now, I expect her to eat that second helping of broccoli, and to listen when I tell her that she cannot read the book until next year, or the year after that . . . maybe.

"What are you doing today?" my husband asks, as he sits next to me on our bed, already dressed in shirt and tie, to put on his shiny grown up lawyer shoes.

At 7:00 a.m., my feet have yet to touch the floor.  Three days into a leave of absence from my own lawyer job, this question, directed toward me with a tinge of envy, is already part of our new morning routine.

"I'm taking a group of kids to Chuck E. Cheese," I respond groggily, awake enough to watch my husband flinch slightly and any trace of envy drain from his expression.  His morning depositions followed by hours of conference calls with the West Coast are suddenly looking pretty good.

 I know not a single parent who welcomes the opportunity to hang out at Chuck E. Cheese.  It is loud, with bright lights, exploding colors, and fat-laden cheese-coated foodstuffs.  There, all things plastic, artifically flavored, or capable of breaking during the ride home in the car can be found. 

But my younger daughters still love it.  And so every once in a while, when I am feeling particularly indulgent, I will take them and a couple of friends.  Once there, I purchase way too many tokens for them to play the games, treat myself to a non-diet coke, crank Jimi Hendrix at full volume into my ears on my ipod, and pretend that I have taken some new hallucinative drug.

About five minutes into this routine, just as Hendrix was promising that there must be some way out of here. . . there's too much confusion, I can't get no relief, my youngest daughter pulled on my sleeve.  She was in the middle of playing skee ball but had already grown tired of it.  Rather than move onto another game she might enjoy more, she was determined to accumulate all the tickets she could in order to "win" one of the plastic toys that would break in the car on the way home.

Meanwhile, my middle daughter was laughing with her friend on the simulated roller coaster, totally unconcerned with tickets or toys, just soaking up the joy of the moment.  I looked around the room and noticed that the kids broke down fairly evenly into the ones obsessed with accumulating tickets and those just wanting to shoot some hoops or play with the water guns.

Let us not talk falsely now, the hour's getting late,  Hendrix wailed.  And with that, I pulled the ipod from my ears and focused my full attention on skee ball.

I was in the bookstore last Friday browsing with my three daughters.  I picked up a newly released paperback bestseller and immediately turned to the author's biography.   There the writer had described herself as "a mother first." 

I was reminded of an article I had recently read about Michelle Obama in which she had described her first job in the White House as getting her children settled into their new schools and routines.  Apparently, she also is a mother first.

When I got home from the bookstore, I looked at the biographical blurb on my soon- to-be released book.  And there it was,  for all the world to see.  I am a criminal defense attorney specializing in appellate litigation who lives in Northern New Jersey with my husband and my three daughters.  I had actually listed my daughters LAST, after my job and my husband.  I wondered if it was too late to call the publisher and fix the blurb, lest I anger the gods through my failure to incant at every opportunity that my highest calling in life is to carpool my children and pack their lunches.

Driving to the grocery store the next day, my nine-year-old in tow listening to her ipod, a question wafts forth from the back seat, a little too loudly since she must throw her voice over the sound of Miley Cyrus's (which reminds me of what an answering machine might sound like if it could be taught to sing): 

"What do moms do for fun?"  my daughter asks.

"Different things," I answer.  "Read, talk with friends, go out to dinner."

"But do they play dodge ball?" she wants to know. 

"Personally, I don't," I respond without hesitation.  "But if you want to, don't let anyone stop you."

Maybe she'll be a dodge ball player first.

I am really not sure about this whole blogging idea.  For a person like myself, who finds it difficult to refrain from inappropriate comments  even in polite company, the idea of writing something in the privacy of my home and then posting it for all the world to see sounds like a recipe for disaster.  The potential to get fired, lose friends and embarass family members is all too real.

But maybe the danger is part of its allure, the reason why virtually everyone seems to be doing it.  So much of life is edited by  others.  Your children's teachers, your work colleagues, your mother-in-law, everyone seems to have suggestions about what you should be doing and thinking.  But on your blog, secured by your secret password (so secret in fact that sometimes you yourself honestly can't even remember it), you are free to think and say anything.  Press the post button and let the chips fall where they may.