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Our older brother in Virginia always says, ‘Little kids, little problems; big kids, big problems.’ Perhaps the sizes of the problems don’t vary all that much, in truth, but the degree of complication certainly does. And this week, there were lots of complications, which I’m blaming on the full moon.

It began Monday night when our four boys plus one of their friends called from a dark country road to report that they had a flat tire. Joe grabbed his car keys; I grabbed a bottle of water, and we were out the door, intent on rescuing them, while still talking to them on the phone.

We returned before we got in the car however, because apparently, even though they make this trip to their friend’s house weekly, and even though they’ve done it at least twenty times before, they couldn’t tell us where they were or even what route they took to get there. Fortunately, Max was with them and Max knows how to change tires. That was the beginning – the full moon was yet waxing.

Tuesday morning began with Jeremy expressing his minor moral dilemma and wondering what I would do in the same situation. “There’s this guy in my guitar class,” he explained. “It’s my favorite class and he’s a total jerk; I once hung out with him for a brief period in junior high, but he’s a jerk, and I haven’t seen him in years. Now he’s in my class, and he’s making it so I dread going to class. He’s always talking to me, and I want to have nothing to do with him! He lies to the girls in class telling them he’s free and single, when he’s married and has a kid . . . but if I don’t talk to him, I’ll look like the asshole, because he’s the most popular, most outgoing and most friendly guy in class. Everyone likes him – they don’t know him . . . it’s no big deal, it’s just I’m thinking about it all the time . . .”

I advised him that instead of cringing about the thought of seeing liar-dude in class, he should pretend it’s a combo class – guitar and politics, explained to him that it’s a necessary part of life — learning to be nice to those we detest, and to practice his politics.

“Fake it?” he asked.

“Don’t think of it as faking; think of it as being sophisticatedly politick,” I advised.

“Got it. Thank you.” He said and disappeared out the door with his book-bag over his arm and car keys jiggling in his hands. Tuesday’s moon was an easy influence, but it was just tipping into full-moon position.

*****

Then came weird Wednesday. I had just sat down at my desk, hoping to get a bit of work done after dinner, when Max rang the doorbell. “It’s Max”, I hollered, hoping one of the kids would get the door. He appeared and said “Where’s Joe?”

“Out in the garden, I think, what’s up?” He looked excited; his face was beaming. “I got something to tell you, but I want to tell you both, together.” My immediate thoughts went to ‘my god, I’ve become mother of all, and Joe’s become father of all, but I wasn’t going to squish his happiness; it tickled me that he wanted us together to do a formal delivery of the news. Formality is a missing creature in this culture, so you have to take advantage of it when it rears it’s lovely head.

Mae went to get Uncle Joe, while I offered nineteen-year-old Max a seat. The ring of the doorbell brought others from the house; they also took chairs in the circle of my office.

“Look at this,” said Max, studying his digital camera for a moment and then passing it to me, then Joe, for a look at a set of about a half dozen photos. “My God, Max, these are fantastic.”

Joe agreed. Max had taken black and white photos of a woman, stretched out naked on a sofa — a very cliché thing to do, but the lighting, the lines, the overall imagery was so different from anything I’d ever seen before, so fresh, so interesting, that both Joe and I were totally captivated, going through the set more than once and then landing back on the first photo that was so unique and intriguing. We were ‘ohhh-ing’ and ‘ahhhh-ing’ over the photos and remarking on how talented Max is and encouraging him to keep studying because he has a true gift.

He told us, then, that he got paid to make this series; his very first commission. He was beaming and we were very happy for him. Again we congratulated him.

This being a small town and my brother being a nosy, horny bastard, Joe asked, “Who’s the woman?”

“Danielle Sparks” replied Max, with a bright grin.

Joe looked like he got slapped in the face. He lifted his reading glasses, dropped the camera on his lap, and stuck his neck out all in one swift movement. His eyes were wide as he said “You’re kidding me, right?”

“No, I’m not,” said Max, reaching for his forgotten camera. “She came back to town a week ago, and she called me right away to schedule a session . . . I think she needs new photos for her myspace profile . . . “

“Oh my God!” said Joe. “Ohhhhhh, I wish I wouldn’t have asked. I wish I wouldn’t have known. These pictures are beautiful and she’s – ewwwwww – I can’t look at them anymore.”

“Who is she?” I asked.

“Ohhhhh”, he moaned. “She’s that trampy girl you said you didn’t want in this house anymore.”

“Oh my God!” I said. “Those pictures are of that girl? Wow, Max, you are my photographer from now on, dude! If you can make her look good, imagine what you can do with me?”

Max beamed. Joe groaned again.

“Are you sick, Dad?” Jeremy asked, happening to pass by while Joe was groaning.

“Noooo,” he answered, but then grinned and said, “Actually, yesssssss.” To Jeremy’s confused expression, he said “Get a load of Max’s photography.”

“It’s Danielle Sparks,” said Max, attempting to hand the camera to Jeremy. Jeremy pulled his hands away and refused to touch it. “Ewww.” He said. Then, while Max was still holding the camera, Jeremy bent forward to get a look at the picture. “That’s creepy”, he added.

*******

Thursday night was a definite full-moon night and it had everyone on edge. I’m always fatigued after hours of in-town errands and Wednesday afternoon had me sitting in traffic, longing to be home, longing for the quiet whir of the air conditioner.  I arrived home to a big mess in the kitchen and four gaming boys. I had left a big note on the kitchen table that was quite explicit:

Jackson and Wills: Clean up day-time dishes before gaming. Practice instruments, before gaming. Mae: put away laundry.

I used a big, thick, black marker and it was the only item on the large kitchen table, center of the kitchen. I walked in the door, looked at the kitchen, and made a bee-line for the boy’s quarters. There I declared (for the hundredth time) that I cannot and will not cook under such conditions. Fortunately for me, the threat of delayed dinner is a big deal to our teenage boys, so the kitchen crew snapped to and immediately got busy cleaning up. Wills, however, was extremely unhappy and he looked very overtired.

“You are angry because you have to do kitchen duty every other day?” I asked.

“Yes!” he replied.

“What, you would rather do laundry and make beds, you want to switch with Mae?”

“No.”

“You want to be exempted from any chores?”

“Yes!” he said again, busy emptying the dishwasher.

“Well, tell us,” I said, encouragingly. “Present your case. Jackson and I would like to hear this.”

“You don’t know what’s been going on around here.” He said, changing the subject. “Adam kicked me out of his room, again. When are we going to finish the dividing walls in there? When am I going to get some privacy?” He asked in a pathetic, pained voice.

“This is a commune.” I said, “Whether we like it or not. That’s communal property, that sitting area in the boy’s quarters. Adam can’t kick you out.”

“But he did,” said Wills, “In front of everyone! He said ‘f**k you, Wills’, and ‘get out of my room.’ So I had to leave, and then you came home and started yelling about the dishes!” He was near to tears.

I stomped into the boy’s quarters and pulled Adam out to find out why he threw his brother out and to explain the rules of communal property. That’s when I got the rest of the story.

“I’m sorry, Mom, I shouldn’t have done that, I shouldn’t have said that, but did he tell you what he did to me?”

Grrrrrrr. “No, he did not.”

“What? You think I just turned into a jerk for no reason? Ask Jeremy! He was there. I came home from school, tried to tell a story, and he started dicking with me for no reason. The story went like this. I said, ‘Jeremy, — and I was talking just to Jeremy, not Wills — I said, ’school is so cool this year, I have three hot chicks in my first period class, only one fat chick in my second period class, and then Wills interrupts and says, ‘wait a minute, I want to understand this, what class is first period?’ and I think he’s being serious, so I stop my story and say ‘Spanish’, and he says, ‘go on’ and I say ’so I have three hot chicks in my Spanish class,” and Wills says ‘any fat chicks in that first period?’ and I have to stop and think and I say ‘Yeah, I think three hot chicks and a lot of ugly fat ones, but it doesn’t matter because I sit with the hot ones.’ And then I start over again, and when I get to my third period class, Wills interrupts again, and neither Jeremy, nor I had any clue as to what Wills was doing, but then suddenly I could see it in his eyes, that grin he can’t hide, and I was like ‘f**k you Wills! F**k you!’ and he burst out laughing. So yeah, I was an asshole to him in front of everyone and I’m sorry and I’ll go apologize, but I was still pissed off about him dicking with me.”

Although I felt like I was stuck in a bad Paul Harvey radio story, neither wanting, nor needing, ‘the rest of the story’, I got it, and the new knowledge obliged me to circle back to Wills and give him a rash of shit on two counts. The first is for poking the bear – not allowed in Joetopia (‘poking the bear’ is an act of contempt and acts of contempt are not permitted in Joetopia). And then there was his second and most grievous crime — sic-ing the pit-bull (me), on Adam, while he (Wills) started the whole thing to begin with.

There was over an hour of discussion before the boys could be made to see reason.  Wills wasn’t really trying to poke the bear, so much as make a joke. (Granted, he needs practice. Jokes aren’t funny if they piss off one half of the audience.)  Apologies were eventually exchanged, the rules of community living reviewed, and it was near five fifteen when I was able to return to the kitchen to finish making dinner.

The full moon must have affected my brusband, because only a few moments later, he came bursting in the door, with a pool pump part under his arm and giving a quick ‘hello’, passed right through the kitchen. A half hour later, when I called him for dinner, he sat down and said “It didn’t work! That didn’t fix the problem so now I’ve replaced every damn part in the pump and I still don’t have the son-of-a-bitch working.”

It was quiet at the table as Mr. Grump-Grump aired his grievances against the pool.

It wasn’t until much later that he heard about the ruzie between the boys. ‘Ruzie’ — Dutch for ‘argument’. The Dutch meaning is more of a cross between an argument and a fight, and that’s the better word here, because, as more details became available, I learned that in my absence that afternoon, the boys would have pounded the shit out of each other if their older cousins hadn’t intervened.

“I’m sorry, Sis,” said my brother at the end of the day, as we sat alone on the front porch, enjoying the cool breeze and admiring the star-filled sky. “If I had known what you were dealing with, I wouldn’t have been blowing off steam about my pool pump problems.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said, “When Mae was helping me put dinner on, she asked why everyone is so irritable . . . I blamed it on the full moon.”

“It’s pretty” said Joe, pointing to the sky.

“I know it is, but it’s wreaking havoc on our domestic tranquility. It can leave now,” I said, and Joe smiled.

*******

The moon over Joetopia has turned — it must have, because on Friday night, we had a quiet, normal, evening. Adam is extremely excited about his engineering class and most specifically, his introduction to the field of genetic engineering. “I’m going to be a scientist,” he declared over dinner. “I’ll probably have to get my doctorate, to get a really interesting job, and I know that’s a lot of school, but that’s what I think I want to do.”

“You go, dude,” said his Uncle Joe, helping himself to another enchilada.

“I like you, Uncle Joe.” Said Adam, precociously, “So I’m gonna do something really great for you.”

“What’s that?”

“I’m going to clone you your very own twin nurses!” Adam delivered this animatedly, pointing his finger at his Uncle, adding emphasis to the ‘your very own’ part of his declaration.

“Well thank you, Adam, that will be great,” said his uncle, grinning. “But can you make them twin lesbian nurses?”

“Uncle Joe.” Said Mae sternly, and Joe laughed. “Ok, Mae, ok. I’ll settle for twin nurses and he can skip the lesbian thing.”

She glared at him and he laughed again. Shortly after dinner, Mae left for a babysitting job, and the rest of the evening passed uneventfully. The full moon over Joetopia must be waning.