July 23, 2004, 9:00 a.m.
She Who Nags Is a Drag

It is a sunny, sweltering day, and Phoebe is almost unbelievably buoyant. She's wearing a life-vest, inflatable armbands, is sitting in bright yellow rubber ring, and is clinging tightly to an unsinkable blue foam "noodle." Only her legs are in the water, yet with each ripple she shrieks as piercingly as if she were alone in the dark of the storm-tossed Atlantic. I should mention that she is also wearing black goggles, and looks like a downed biplane pilot.

Violet is also gripping what she delicately calls a "newdle," but in her case there is no invisible ditching. Violet is the sort of girl who will someday go yachting in the Adriatic. She kicks glamorously past her shrieking sister with a serene smile. Molly and Paris, meanwhile, are negotiating the terms of a game.

"Let's see...," Paris puts his splinted hand ruminatively to his chin. "I guess I'll be a sting ray."

"Fine," Molly says quickly, "Then I get to be the killer whale."

"Hey, wait, I want to be — "

"Ah, but you've already said — "

"You can both be killer whales," I call irritably from the shallow end, "For goodness' sake, the whistle's about to go any second, you'll waste all your time bickering — "

"Okay, I'll be a sand shark."

Tweeeet!

"Everybody out of the pool," calls the lifeguard from behind mirrored sunglasses. For ten minutes every hour, all children are banned from the water.

"Everybody out — " I hear myself parrot, and snap my beak shut.

I have mentioned before how having children teaches one things about oneself that one does not know. In the early days, I walked around like a joyful Ancient Mariner, seizing people by the lapels and telling them all about my discovery of a vast, extraordinary, and hitherto unsuspected reservoir of maternal tenderness that had lain untapped for years beneath the hard, dry surface of my selfish career-gal self. This falls into the category of What Having Children Teaches You: Pleasant.

The more extensive category of What Having Children Teaches You: Dismaying, contains, it turns out, a reservoir that is more like a Cassandra's box. In this reservoir, or box, are endless quantities of tedious, prefabricated comments of the sort every childless career-gal self swears she will never utter. These include, but are not limited to: "You're not going out of this house looking like that," and "I told you so," and "Go put a sweater on, I'm cold." With the advent of children, one recapitulates a long evolutionary line of hector and reprimand presumably originating with Lucy, the Australopithecus. One discovers a fantastic inherited capacity for nagging. One tires of the sound of one's own voice, as I did on this very day on the steps leading up to the swimming pool.

Molly: (Wincing as her bare foot meets a rock) Ow!

Me: Put your shoes on, please.

Molly: It's okay, we're almost there.

Me: (Chippily) Why do you suppose Daddy and I buy you shoes, sweetheart? To. Protect. Your. Feet. Got it? Put them on.

Molly: But —

Me: Is there some reason you will not wear your shoes?

Molly: No. Okay. Sorry.

Me: (Splashing uncontrollably into the Reservoir of Nag) I'm not sure you're aware, Molly, but other people take considerable trouble to ensure that you have food to eat, and a house to live in, and shoes to wear. Your feet grow, you need new shoes. So I pile everyone in the car, we go and get you a pair of shoes. To pay for those shoes, Daddy must work long hours. He does not work just for fun, but —

Voice of inner narrator: For goodness' sake, calm down, woman.

Me: — to pay for our house, our food, and your shoes. So, if it isn't too much to ask, how about you get into the habit of wearing your shoes?

Molly: Please don't be cross, Mummy. I have put them on.

Me: (Huffily, yet already appalled at myself) Thank you.

At the pool, two dozen children sit impatiently on the edge, waggling their toes in the water and waiting for the whistle-blow that will allow them back in. Molly comes over and tucks herself under the edge of my towel.

"Mollikins," I say, looking earnestly at her, "Please forgive me nagging you earlier about your shoes."

"That's all right," she says.

"The content of what I said is true. You really ought to wear your shoes. But I wish I had used a more pleasant tone of voice."

"Thank you, Mummy," says she, "I will."

"One needs, as a mother, to keep things in order," I continue, as much to myself as to her, "But one must be vigilant to keep from turning everything into a total nagfest."

Tweeeeet!

Everyone leaps in, including Molly, and I sit bathed in happy redemption for, oh, perhaps three minutes. At which point Violet thrashes cheerfully in the water and cries, "Help! I'm drowning!"

"Please don't say that," I call.

"I'm drowning!" she yells gaily, unaware of my burgeoning scowl, "Help! Help!"

"Violet," I hiss, leaning out from the edge of the pool, "Don't ever say that again unless it is true. Saying 'I'm drowning' in a swimming pool is like the boy crying wolf. It's like someone shouting "fire" in the middle of a crowded — "

There is the mocking sound of that inner voice, heard only by me. Will you calm down? She's only four years old —

"Sweetheart," I recover, in friendlier tones, "Please don't say "help" unless you really need it."

"Oh. Okay, Mummy!" And she splashes off.

This is how it starts, isn't it? You spend 20 years organizing, cajoling, prodding, and delivering homilies to less experienced persons, and if you're not careful, you turn into someone else's interfering mother-in-law. Help!

— Meghan Cox Gurdon, an NRO columnist, lives in Washington, D.C.

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