Category: Motherhood

. . . and I don’t even have a license.

No, Really, Here’s Proof I’m a Bad Mother

I know I gave a compelling reason why I’m a bad mother recently, but here is the real proof of my unfit parenthood.

Today I offered to watch a friend’s almost-2-year-old in addition to Babygirl and DaycareKid. My friend is expecting her second child in a couple of weeks and I thought she’d probably enjoy having a moment to herself before her newborn arrives.

Naptime came and I laid DaycareKid on the queen-sized bed in YoungestBoy’s room (“Do not get off this bed!”) and then I plunked Visiting Baby in the playpen in YoungestBoy’s room (and left while she screamed her head off) and then I took Babygirl to her room for her ritual viewing of “It’s Potty-Time!” a video which features a song with these lyrics: “She is a super-duper pooper. She can potty with the best. No more diapers to get in her way. We are very impressed!” Another song includes the words, “Wipe, wipe, wipe yourself, always front to back, carefully, carefully, now you’ve got the knack.”

Lucky me. I get to watch this stellar children’s video twice a day. So, the video ended and I laid Babygirl in her crib with her dollies and her blankets.

Half an hour later, I hear her calling my name. I completely ignore her. I need naptime! I need naptime like . . . well, like flowers need the rain. (That song just popped into my head.) I need naptime like I need oxygen; well, okay, maybe not oxygen, but like I need a shower every day. I just can’t function up to par when I’m all sweaty and smelly and have hair like a Before picture in a magazine make-over article. And while I can exist without naptime, believe me, I’m a much more pleasant and civilized mother when I’ve had a little break for lunch and reading.

I decided to wait until 2:30 p.m. before I answered her urgent cries. Yesterday, she cried, then slept. I hoped for the same today. Precisely at 2:30 p.m., I first rescued Visiting Baby, then carried her to Babygirl’s room, where I found my precious darling daughter with her pointer finger somehow pinched in the top railing of her crib. She was stuck. I unstuck her–it was a matter of angles, really–and held her and told her how sorry I was and she bounced back like a trooper and said, “I hurt!” and “Finger stuck!” as if it had been a Very Exciting Adventure.

See? Proof! I think she’d been standing there with her finger dented between the wood and latch while her nose ran without a diaper on for quite some time. She does not seem to have held a grudge, which is the beautiful thing about children. They always forgive you and move on. Later, they’ll learn that some people will just keep hurting them over and over again and they will stop being generous with their forgiveness, but for the very young, every day is a new chance.

Now, on to other matters.

First, thank you kind internet friends for your comments on my previous post. It’s odd how a situation will serve as a catalyst and propel a girl into a murky emotional swamp. I tend to wallow around a bit when I feel those moods coming on. The older I get, the more I am able to examine the feelings for what they are, feel them and say, “All right. Time to stand up straight and be a grown-up.” Feelings come and go, after all, but a good man who’ll just hug you when you try to cry without making a sound . . . that’s forever.

Now, just something I noticed while reading a parenting book the other day. First, I read Parenting With Love and Logic, a book I highly recommend, both for its good writing and its reasonable approach to parenting. Normally, I get really confused and bored while reading parenting books. I read a lot of them before I had kids and thought I had parenting all figured out (ha ha ha ha ha) and since then, haven’t really come across a striking book I could recommend. But this book is a must-read for all parents. I’m not kidding. I’ll wait right here while you go to Amazon and order it.

Then, I read a second parenting book, Into Their Hearts by Valerie Bell. Although it probably had sound ideas, I could not concentrate because this author overshadowed everything she said with her use of exclamation points! I’m not kidding! In one chapter, I counted 64 exclamation points! In only eleven pages! I wondered if she is the kind of chipper cheerleading chick that is excited! About everthing! And always has her hair carefully styled! Sixty-four exclamation points! In eleven pages!

This author is hereby banned from every using another exclamation point. I decree it and so it shall be. If she uses all the exclamation points, there will be none left for the rest of us when we really, really, really need one. Conserve the Exclamation Points. (See? That slogan cries out for an exclamation point, which leaves me in a quandry, really. To exclaim or not to exclaim? If Valerie Bell hadn’t already used all the old growth exclamation points and harvested them willy-nilly without regard to the world shortage of exclamation points, there might be a spare one growing in an old growth exclamation point area for such a time as this.)

In other news . . . well, there is no other news.

Mr. Snowman Blows a Fuse

Saturday morning means donuts at our house. My husband usually heads to the hole-in-the-wall donut shop and brings home a dozen warm donuts, which our kids then pounce upon. Babygirl ate the frosting off three of them this morning. Sometimes, there are a few left over for breakfast on Sunday morning.

This morning, my husband delivered the donuts, then went to the church for a pre-marital counseling appointment. I decided–what in the world was I thinking??–to sort through the storage room (10 x 10 feet of stuff) to find cast-offs I could donate to the church rummage sale, which takes place in two weeks.

Anyone with children understands the freakish nature of clutter. You have a child–or twins–and then suddenly, your garage is full of carseats and booster seats and outgrown toys and boxes of baby clothes and random wire hangers and ten thousand boxes of junk you can’t quite figure out how to handle. Not to mention four years’ worth of Martha Stewart “Living” magazines.

My parents saved everything–which explains why my mom has a stash of about ten boxes of worthless junk in my storage room. She lived with us for almost two years and left a trail of her belongings when she went. When my dad died, I held the Mother of All Garage Sales to get rid of the accumulated jetsam and flotsam of his forty-seven years of life. He was a ham radio operator and a computer fanatic from way back in 1977, when he built a computer from a kit. In those days, he actually programmed the thing using cassette tapes. He died before The Internet became what it is today, which is unjust. He would have loved The Internet more than anyone alive. He’d just been accepted into a program to study writing technical manuals at the University of Washington. Anyway. Apparently, I have become sidetracked.

Junk, clutter, stuff. It’s everywhere now that we have kids. This is particularly troubling to my husband because his idea of perfect interior design is a dorm room. And not a fancy-schmancy dorm room with a built-in loft. No. He’d love nothing more than to live in a room with bookshelves, a bed, a refrigerator (for his beloved Dr. Pepper and rootbeer popsicles) and a television. All this other stuff–the stuff that keeps us afloat, like winter coats and toys for the children and a bike rack for the car we keep just because some day we might actually take the bicycles somewhere and ride them, the mostly used buckets of interior paint–all this he considers worthless junk. He wants to live in austere simplicity.

But we have kids. And we have kids’ stuff. And we have a house. And Christmas decorations.

I do my best to weed through the excess now and then. This is the first time we’ve actually lived in a house longer than four years, so I haven’t had the built-in pressure to throw dead weight overboard so we can sail to another port. This time, I just have to fling open the closets and toss stuff into black garbage bags and ditch it before the kids notice.

Which brings me back to the storage room. I thought Babygirl might be distracted enough and cheerful enough that I might accomplish sorting through at least the surface layer of debris in that room. I started–and handed her a bin of Fisher-Price Little People, the old kind that are choking hazards. She busied herself and I plowed forward, throwing stuff into a bag. Then she returned the bin to me and I found a play-toolbox for her to look at. That bought me another few minutes.

Then she saw Mr. Snowman.

Mr. Snowman is a plastic Christmas decoration that stands about four feet high. It plugs in. I figured she wouldn’t remember about the plug since she hadn’t seen Mr. Snowman since Christmas-time. She wanted him, so I carried him to the family room and plunked him on the floor, plug-side in, out of sight.

Next thing I know, TwinBoyA has plugged him in. Babygirl is thrilled and I peek in to see her hugging Mr. Snowman. I hurry back to the storage room, sort through eight-hundred Play-doh related toys, then hear shouting. Mr. Snowman is broken.

YoungestBoy has been smacking Mr. Snowman with a pillow. I told him to stop once, but he ignored me and now Mr. Snowman no longer lights up. This is a crisis for Babygirl, and how do I handle it, being the mature mother of four that I am?

That’s right. I yell. I yell things like, “Why can’t you just listen to me? Why did you have to plug in the snowman? Babygirl didn’t even know it would light up! Arg! Why didn’t you stop hitting it? Arg! I can’t get anything done around here! Arg!” (Yes, I say “arg” just like a pirate.)

Okay, fine. I call Babygirl into the storage room. She notices a package of markers–extra school supplies from last year. I have a serious addiction to school supplies and always over-buy. I say, “You already have some of those. Here, how about this?”

She will not be deterred. She wants those markers. My frustration level has reached orange now. Is that the higher level where you should look out for terrorists? That’s the level I mean.

I say, “FINE” and swoop her up, stomp into the kitchen, plop her into her high-chair, realize I can’t find paper, rip off some freezer-paper for her to use, tape it to the high-chair tray, open the drawer to get a bib so she doesn’t write all over herself and–HEY! The entire drawer front comes off in my hands.

Now I am really mad. I wonder for a second if I could be suffering from my week of PMS already. No, not possible. I am just angry because I can’t get any task finished. Babygirl is crying and rejects the marker after all that.

I take her out of her seat, comfort her and sit down with pliers and a hammer and Liquid Nails to repair the stupid drawer. This is the second drawer to break in my kitchen. I fix it, then retrieve the other broken drawer from the storage room and fix it, too. By the time I finish, I am calmer. I return to the storage room. Babygirl fixates on Mr. Snowman again.

So, I get a screwdriver and replace the bulb in Mr. Snowman. It still doesn’t work. I investigate further and conclude that Mr. Snowman has blown a fuse. As I am doing this, the boys are in the next room goofing off. I tell them to be quiet, to stop, to STOP! Moments later, YoungestBoy is crying because TwinBoyA did not stop and now he’s hit YoungestBoy in the eye with a stuffed Barney–the purple dinosaur.

Alert! Alert! I’m immediately back at Orange Level, yelling stuff that sounded to my kids like “Wahnk-wahnk-wahnk-wahnk-wahnk-wahnk” just like in a Charlier Brown special. I should be carried off to solitary confinement and have my vocal cords severed. I have blown a fuse of my own.

I give up. I fix lunch for the younger kids and the older kids make themselves something. By the time my husband returns home, I am normal, no longer frothing at the mouth and convulsing, but my kids gleefully tell him, “Mom is having a bad day.” I feel like I’m going to be sent to the Principal’s Office at any second.

That’s what I get for attempting to accomplish anything.

I managed to fill my trunk with donations for the garage sale. After I put Babygirl to bed, I delivered the bags to the church basement, then went to Target to buy more school supplies. My addiction to spiral notebooks (10 for $1.00) needs professional attention. When I returned home, we went to the pool where we met my mother and my neice and nephew. We swam until we were water-logged.

The warning level has returned to purple, or wherever it is that all you have to be concerned about is someone giving you a dirty look. Tomorrow morning, leftover donuts and then we head to church, where hopefully I can be redeemed.

Stuff That Really, Really Drives Me Crazy

1) Break-downs of major appliances. My trash compactor decided to go on strike. Unfair labor practices or something. Well, too bad for Mr. Trash Compactor. He’s going straight to the landfill where he can lounge around with refrigerators who freeze eggs and washing machines who will no longer agitate. I paid Mr. Sears Fix-It Guy a hundred bucks last time Mr. Trash Compactor quit working. I will not pay anymore. Mr. Trash Compactor, buh-bye!

2) Bowls and glasses which break upon impact. Geesh, I’m so sick of sweeping up broken glass and then vacuuming up the remaining shards so baby feet will not be punctured.

3) Gritty floors.

4) My boys’ horrible aim. Now, listen. I don’t have one of those things, but I have used the garden hose and it’s just not that difficult to hit a target! I’m sick to death of my boys’ bathroom which smells exactly like an outhouse. I don’t camp because I hate the stench of outhouses.

5) Really bad, stupid, inattentive drivers. But we all hate them, so I will move on to number six.

6) Stubbing my toes on errant shoes. Why can’t people at least kick their shoes out of the path of my feet? Seriously? When I kick off my shoes–which admittedly, I leave in every room of the house–I put them in corners and tuck them into nooks so no one will trip over them. No one extends this same courtesy to me.

7) Thinking up dinner plans every night. Preparing dinner every night. Hearing people say about dinner, “Ewwwww, that’s nasty.”

8) My kids discarding their trash randomly. Mr. Trash Compactor probably quit working in response to my kids’ complete disregard to his feelings. The only person who likes to put trash in the compactor is Babygirl. But then again, that wasn’t trash she just put in there.

9) Late people. I am not exactly always prompt, unless I’m with my husband, Mr. Fifteen Minutes Early, but I do arrive at my appointments and obligations within five minutes of the start-time. My siblings think that if you merely arrive on the same day. that’s close enough. That’s why we had Easter Dinner at noon. And 1 p.m. And 2 p.m. My sister brought her kids’ to YoungestBoy’s fifth birthday party an hour late. And it was a small party. She arrives chronically late to work–forty-five minutes, an hour, whatever, and takes my neice and nephew to school late. Every day. My sisters and my brother claim this is a family trait, but it’s not. It’s just rude and inexcusable.

10) Doing things out of order. I am sequential by nature and I tend to get frazzled when I have to do something in the wrong order. I get crazed when I am interrupted ten thousand times in the middle of something.

This explains my general insanity. Stay tuned for even more exciting details and enter our sweepstakes to win a stay at Western State, Washington’s finest mental institution!

On Being a Good Mother

I sometimes hear mothers say with great confidence, “I am a great mother!” This is often in tandem with a complaint about a mother-in-law’s meddling ways and criticisms, but still. There are women–mothers–who absolutely know that they are doing a fabulous job.

I am not one of them.

I worry. A lot. About whether my kids will be the ones who inhale glue or walk on railroad tracks or become fixated on pornography. I waste time wondering if my boys will grow up and marry cold-hearted women who are bossy and sarcastic and then blame me. I am terrified that my kids really won’t remember anything except the times I scream, “This is driving me crazy!”

Maybe that’s why I take so many pictures. We always look really happy. The kids seem to be having a great childhood. Yet, I have no confidence that I am a wonderful mother.

See, a wonderful mother plays Monopoly with her kids whenever they ask. She makes a hot, homemade breakfast and packs a delicious, nutritious lunch that her children eagerly eat. She doesn’t wear June Cleaver pearls, but she does have on matching clothes and a cute haircut. And make-up. She never yells and her laundry is always caught up. Oh, and she doesn’t fly into a frenzy when yet another glass bowl bites the dust right next to the baby’s feet. She needs no time to read, to think, to shop, to write, to talk with grown-ups. She is completely, slavishly devoted to her children, even the older, smelly ones.

I fret that the boys are going to freak out some day about the fact that they are adopted. I worry that they have fantasized a Perfect Mother in their heads–she probably resembles the Perfect Mother I have in my head. I torture myself with the reality that the twins cannot remember the times they slept on our floor in the middle of the night and the times we took them to playgrounds and the times they ran through the sprinkler and rolled in mud and shrieked with laughter. They’re approaching the “I’m bored, this is not fair, no one ever listens to me” stage of pre-adolescence. They can’t remember the first four years of their lives when they were the center of our universe.

Most recently, I have worried that the addition of the younger children has robbed the older children of everything–of our time, of our money, of our attention. YoungestBoy was born just as the twins went to kindergarten. I couldn’t be the Room Mother. I couldn’t go to their baseball games. I couldn’t practice with them so their baseball games weren’t so humiliating. I answered, “No, the baby is sleeping,” too many times to count. I shushed them constantly.

They have to share a room. They have to share their toys. They have to be nice to YoungestBoy, even when he’s being a pain in the neck.

And then, just when things were getting manageable, we had Babygirl. YoungestBoy was four and a half.

I do not recommend this spacing. At all.

I wish for each of my kids that they could be Only Children. I wish they had their own room, their own space, their own solitude. (Or maybe that’s just what I wish I had!)

I can only be cut into so many tiny little pieces. I feel like the kids get their piece and whine, “No fair! He got a bigger piece!” I am never enough.

My hope is that what my kids lose–attention, time, money, things–are outweighed by what they gain–companionship, lessons in getting along with people, lifelong friendships with their siblings, experience, compassion, generous spirits.

My ultimate fear? They grow up, never find meaningful work, never find lifelong love and blame me.

(Yes, this is another premenstrual syndrome entry. My neurosis comes in regular cycles. How convenient.)

Going in Circles

Babygirl slept until 8 a.m. today, so I did, too. That was a lovely start to a day which turned out to be dizzying. I went in circles, lopsided circles with a baby on one hip, trying to get stuff done. I sort of cleaned out the laundry room, including the grime under the utility sink and the stack of stuff balancing on the freezer. I cleaned the boys’ stinky bathroom. Then I tried to clean up the kitchen, but Babygirl refused to be put down and I can’t do dishes with one hand, so I thought I’d straighten up the living room, but got distracted by the laundry. And, of course, I have three boys to supervise. And the baby always wants something, even if it’s just an audience while she empties the dirty-clothes basket in the laundry room.

After lunch, my husband took the boys to the middle school ball-field, along with their twin friends, to play a little baseball. While he was gone, I went to Bargain Street Liquidators, where I heard they were having a $2.00 clothing sale. I found a pair of Liz Claiborne pants and pair of capri pants and a shirt for Babygirl and a little blue cardigan for her, too. I bought YoungestBoy a pair of sandals. I bought my husband a short-sleeved, knit shirt that retailed for $42.00–and I bought it for $2. I love a bargain. Of course, it was hard to pick through the deep bins to look at everything, especially holding Babygirl in one arm. She suddenly feels like a fifty pound sack of flour when I’m holding her while shopping.

She grew impatient with shopping, so I promised her a cookie and drove through McDonald’s to buy her one. And five more, too, which I somehow ate. What? How did that happen? I had five cookies for lunch. Very nice. Someone, please, slap me now.

We were home only a short time before the boys returned. And not just my boys–but their three friends, too. They had a wild time of playing hide and seek and running around in the yard and making a lot of noise. I cleaned out my dresser while they were playing and then came downstairs and sat in the backyard with Babygirl. The weather was so perfect–in the upper sixties, low seventies, I’d guess. My husband was at church, participating in the interview of another youth pastor candidate and his wife.

John came to pick up his kids at about 5:30 p.m.–by then, I was feeding everyone a nutritious dinner of frozen pizza and corndogs. At 6:00 p.m., TwinBoyB was in the bathtub, TwinBoyA was in the shower and I was vacuuming the living room, wondering how it was that I was busy all day, working all day, not sitting down all day–and my house was still a wreck! I was half-way through, thinking that I just might actually be ready to go to dinner at 6:45 p.m. when I suddenly realized green salad! I was supposed to bring a green salad to the dinner. Oops.

At 6:12 p.m., Babygirl was in her pajamas, YoungestBoy was in the tub and I was nursing Babygirl to sleep. She had no nap all day. By 6:25 p.m, she was asleep. My husband had arrived home and was washing YoungestBoy’s hair and getting him ready for bed. I went to the bathroom and did what I could to make my face presentable and to arrange my hair in some semblance of style. Have I mentioned lately how much I hate my natural curl?

By 6:35 p.m., I was ready and downstairs assembling a salad out of the Romaine I found in a drawer. I had only a carrot to add to it. Sad, very sad, indeed. I made salad dressing and we hurried out of the house, minutes after the babysitter arrived.

We were late for dinner, but not very. The youth pastor candidate and his wife made an excellent first impression and proved to be outgoing, competent, smiling young people. He was 23, she was 22, and I suppose we seemed so old to them, but I remember being 22 as if it were yesterday. The dinner was delicious, though it was very funny that the main dish was Chicken Divan, which involved a lot of broccoli, which my husband hates. He’s made a crack about broccoli before she pulled the hot dishes from the oven, so we all had a good laugh about it. He was in fine form, telling amusing stories and cracking jokes. The host couple are fifteen or twenty years older than us, in a different stage of their lives. They have a beautiful home, quiet and clean and gorgeous. I suppose in twenty years I might have a clean, quiet, gorgeous home. One can always hope.

My home is not clean now, but it is quiet. The kids are all asleep–or are faking. My husband went to bed after I reminded him that we lose an hour of sleep tonight. It’s 11:10 p.m., then, suddenly, boom! An hour gone! Tomorrow will be a long day because there are lots of meetings after church and tomorrow night.

But hey, my underwear drawer has been purged and now I will be able to get dressed without picking through through maternity underwear first.

What I Lost

Today, for a second, I thought I lost my mind. Then I thought I lost my boy. Then I thought I lost my mind again.

My husband asked repeatedly throughout the day: “Does Youngestboy have a ride home from school today?” I kept saying, “Yes, he does.” My neighbor, Beth, (I think of her as Saint Beth, she’s so wonderful) usually takes him to and from school. So, after dropping off the twins from school, Husband runs an errand. The twins get out of school at 2:55 p.m. YoungestBoy’s school is dismissed at 3:20 p.m.

At 3:15 p.m., I’m out in the backyard, hacking away at the ivy while Babygirl plays nearby, and suddenly, a conversation with Beth pops into my head. She told me Thursday that she could take YoungestBoy to school today, but not pick him up because after today’s field trip, they were going to just stay in Olympia and visit friends.

Had I lost my mind? Apparently!

So, I grab Babygirl and rush inside and try to figure out what to do. Husband does not have a cell phone with him because he broke his charger. My nearly-11 year old twins are home. DaycareKid is sleeping and won’t wake up until 4 p.m. I decide to throw DaycareKid’s carseat in the car and put Babygirl in it and drive to the school (which is less than a mile away). Babygirl screams when I attempt that. Okay. I buckle her into her beloved stroller instead. I tell TwinBoyA that I’m going to get YoungestBoy and that I’ll have my cell phone with me and that he is not to answer the door.

I walk as fast as possible, out of our circle and down the path through the woods to the school. One bus is leaving as I hurry around the building to the front. I see children but I do not see YoungestBoy. I speak to the guardian of the children, a blond woman holding a clipboard. She not only does not know where YoungestBoy is, she is not sure who he is, either. Have I now lost my boy?

The principal strolls up. She knows nothing. She tells me to check in the classroom. No boy.

I now frantically push my stroller out the building and back up the path towards home. I am breathless and sweaty and worried. Have I truly lost my mind? Where is my boy?

I round the corner and see Beth’s van in my driveway. Turns out her friend in Olympia canceled their plans and Beth forgot to tell me.

Ack!

All’s well that ends well, I guess.

Yesterday, I went bowling for the first time in years and years. All I have to say is if you haven’t been bowling for a long time and your bowling skills are rotten, be sure to bowl with little children who are worse than you are. And use the bumpers. I almost scored 100.

Who Said Housewives Don’t Have Fun?

Woke up with a start yesterday morning at 7:04 a.m. after a remarkable night of sleeping without interruption. How did that happen? Unfortunately, I was supposed to be showered and dressed and in my right mind by 7:00 a.m. Lucky for me, DaycareKid was late and didn’t arrive until closer to 7:30 a.m. I spent an unshowered day watching kids. YoungestBoy was home all day because his kindergarten class will be going all day on Monday to a field trip. So today, the afternoon class had the day off.

Babygirl had her second mid-day bath. She started pulling at her clothes and once undressed indicated that she wanted to get in the tub. She had a great time until I outraged her by washing her hair.

DaycareKid left a bit before 4:30 p.m. We ate dinner. (Don’t even ask, I’m such a failure as a cook to this family. My husband doesn’t want to eat dairy products, beef or pork and he doesn’t like most vegetables. My 10 year-old twins don’t like vegetables or any food mixed together–TwinBoyA is disturbed by food that is too crispy. YoungestBoy is going through an extremely picky phase and refuses dinner entirely, preferring cereal and milk and bananas and cheese. None of the boys like any food mixed together or anything with suspicious ingredients. Babygirl is a toddler and embraces the widest ranges of food. I cannot please these people. I made lasagna this week, from scratch. Only one person ate it. It’s frustrating when you cannot make any type of casserole, use dairy, beef or pork or vegetables. And my husband says I don’t like cooking–which is not true at all. I just don’t like cooking for ungrateful whiners.)

I showered after dinner and dressed in clean clothes. I put Babygirl to sleep at 7:10 p.m., then went to the church for my first meeting with a new small group. We’ve formed a group for young couples, which is kind of funny because at 39, I am the oldest and my husband stays home with the kids, so I’m not a couple, either. But they are nice people and I know all the women from the church nursery. We all have children who are toddlers or preschooler (except one couple who is a military couple who both graduated from West Point).

The discussion lasted until 8:30 p.m. and then we chatted until it was 9:15 p.m. We joked about how I was going to the grocery store afterwards and how pathetic it is that going to the grocery store alone is a thrill for some of us.

At 9:15 p.m., I headed for the grocery store. In my advanced state of exhaustion, it took me until 10:38 p.m. to finish shopping. I had to go up and down every aisle (I had no list) to look at everything. My son, TwinBoyA, has a cooking project planned and needed bizarre items from white chocolate to jumbo shrimp and something from nearly every aisle besides.

On the way home, I drove along the water and then through our little town with its 25 mph speed limit. I was careful to reduce my speed once I hit city limits. That’s why, when I was a mile from my house and had just turned a corner, I was shocked to see a police car with flashing lights suddenly appear behind me. I pulled over immediately and reached in my purse for my license and wondered if I could find the registration and proof of insurance quickly. I looked up and the officer (who looked too young to be an officer) was approaching my window cautiously, flashing his enormous flashlight at me. I held out my license. He took it and said, “Do you realize this is a 25 miles per hour zone?” I said, “Yes.” He said, “Do you realize you were speeding?” I said, “Was I? I’m sorry!” He said, “Have you had any tickets in the past five years?” I said, “No.” He examined my license and then said again, “Any tickets in the past five years?” I said, “No.” He said, “Okay. Slow down.” I said “okay.” I would definitely slow down. But would my heart?

And you thought being a housewife wasn’t exciting. Ha.

The Weekend

Is Monday night too late to write about the weekend? I hope not, because here I go.

My husband’s weekend was jam-packed with funerals and memorial services and a sermon and meetings. My weekend was full of kids and grit on my kitchen floor. No matter how much I “swiffer” the floor, I have grit. This is because I allow my children to go outdoors, dig in the mud and wear shoes, both indoors and outdoors. But. I digress.

On Saturday, I decided to rearrange the boys’ bedroom. This involved removing a lot of books and plastic bins from a huge shelving unit and using brute force to inch it to its new home. I moved beds, chairs. I vacuumed repeatedly. And, of course, I did all this while taking care of Babygirl and three big boys. After Babygirl napped, I took all the kids on a walk to 7-11 again for Slurpees. The weather was lovely, sunny and in the fifties.

Saturday afternoon, my husband calls and says, “Hey, when I get home later, you can go to a movie or something if you want.” Isn’t he thoughtful? I begin to look forward to escaping the four walls and gritty floors of my home. Half an hour later, he calls again to say, “Hey, let’s go to a movie together!” I say, “Oh. Okay.” Now, I have to finish my rearranging project, clean up the rest of the messy house which I’ve neglected while devoting time to my project, feed the kids, clean the kitchen, make myself presentable, bathe the children and put the baby to bed. All alone. By seven. Then when the babysitter arrives, I will go pick him up from his office and we’ll go from there.

I am an exhausted, sweaty mess with a bad attitude by the time I pick him up. And the house isn’t tidy. A girl can only do so much.

The other thing is this. I like movies that my husband would not like. I wanted to see “Against the Ropes” with Meg Ryan. I like literary movies, dark movies, psychological thrillers, critically acclaimed movies. We saw “Welcome to Mooseport.”

I must be very difficult to amuse because I did not find the movie funny. The audience was laughing, guffawing, chortling, giggling. I was shifting in my seat, trying to get comfortable. I thought the cast of character actors had been plucked straight from community theater. They were so overwrought, so unbelievable. And Ray Romano, bless his heart, was just Ray Romano. I don’t think he can act. He is just himself. Maura Tierney was exactly the same as she was in News Radio and on ER. Gene Hackman–yawn. I liked Marcia Gay Harden. The rest? Oh please. I wouldn’t even watch that on network television. It was so boring, so predictable. So not funny.

But as I said, I must be difficult to amuse, because my husband liked it. Everyone in the theater seemed to like it. Maybe I just have PMS.

Sunday was my day to be the volunteer nursery attendant. I don’t really mind since I usually end up in there anyway, sooner or later, with Babygirl. Two of the toddlers, though, had runny noses! I cannot understand why a parent would bring a runny-nosed kid to a church nursery. I am the nursery coordinator and I need to make a giant sign saying “This is a Mucus-Free Zone.” We had seven toddlers in attendance.

My husband worked all day–he had a memorial service and then meetings. We spent a lot of time outdoors in the afternoon. I trimmed a thorny bush by the gate and the kids dug another giant hole and then asked if they could fill it with water. They love to build lakes and streams. I allowed it, even though I was not in the mood for mud. At least they were getting muddy with a spirit of cooperation.

Some time over the weekend, I peered into mirror in the boys’ brightly lit bathroom and spied a strangely colored hair. I plucked it out and examined it. The pigment faded along the shaft of the hair and I couldn’t decide, but I think I may have found my first gray hair. I wanted to save it and immediately realized how neurotic and insane that idea was. So I just let it drift out of my hand. I’ve reverted to my natural color and now it is going to betray me? How is that right?

Speaking of hair, I came across a box of pictures and letters from and to my dad, which led me to another box of his family tree paperwork. And then I found the old envelope I’d searched for a few weekends back which contains a golden-red lock of hair. The outside of the envelope says in faded fountain-pen ink: “Gary’s hair.” Sure enough, I held this silky lock of her grandfather’s baby hair up to Babygirl’s head. Her hair is the exact shade. I snipped a curl off the back of her head to save before she up and leaves home for college. The days are long, but the years are short and soon enough she’ll be earning her Master’s degree and calling me once a week.

Last night, she woke up before 11 p.m., which is strange. I nursed her and put her back to bed and then dreamed all night that I heard her crying. Sure enough, she woke up stuffy this morning. She caught DaycareKid’s cold from last week. Sigh. DaycareKid still has his runny nose, too. I hate colds.

My husband has started taking Mondays off. So, he had today off. He took a load of stuff to the thrift store for me and then hung out. He read the newspaper, talked to me while I was trying to watch a show during naptime and took a nap. I’m glad he gets a true day off now–when he was taking Fridays off, he almost always ended up working.

I still haven’t painted my wall red. But I did iron my husband pants for the week, so he won’t have to go to work clad only in his underwear. I do have my priorities.

World’s Worst Mother

I am the World’s Worst Mother.

Today was my day “off” from watching my daycare baby. I mentioned by phone to my husband that I needed to go to Home Depot to buy some clog remover for the shower drain at some point. Since we have one reliable vehicle, I wondered if he would be staying in his office today or if he needed the car. He called me back later and offered to come home from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. and stay with YoungestBoy so I could run my errand. I said, “Great!”

At 10:45 a.m., he returns home and at 11 a.m. on the dot, I was in the car with baby Babygirl, heading for Lowe’s. I wandered up and down the aisles, looking at hardware and furniture and shelving units and boards and doorknobs and cabinets. I found exactly what I needed and after wandering some more past doors and plastic pipes and sand, I paid and came home. I did not need the full two hours and was home by noon, so off my husband went, back to work.

YoungestBoy leaves for kindergarten between 12:25 p.m. and 12:35 p.m., depending on when the neighbor arrives to pick him up. At 12:25 p.m., without my prompting, he appeared with his jacket and backpack on. Then he stood in the living room, peering out the window, waiting for his ride.

Babygirl was watching television and I was sitting at the computer, waiting for YoungestBoy to leave so I could put the baby to bed for her nap.

At 12:30 p.m., YoungestBoy says, “Will she be here any minute?” And I said, “Yes.”

At 12:37 p.m., YoungestBoy comes into the family room and says, “I don’t think she’s coming.” I swivel and look at the clock. Twelve thirty-seven? Oh no!

At that moment, I remember that Beth, the neighbor, had mentioned yesterday that she would not be able to pick up YoungestBoy, but she would bring him home from school. I said, “Oh, you’re right! She’s not coming! We’re going to have to walk!” School starts for afternoon kindergarteners at 12:40 p.m. He would be late, but not much. No big deal.

I grabbed Babygirl (who was not even wearing shoes) and my jacket and a set of keys and off we went. The school is a five or ten minute walk from our house. The sun shone and I was thankful that it wasn’t raining. As we left our driveway, YoungestBoy said, “I sure would be sad if I died today.”

I said, “I would, too. I’d be sad forever.” Then we had one of our usual discussions about death and he said he would be glad he’d be with our deceased cat, Millie, again. And then he said I wouldn’t be sad anymore when I got to heaven because then we’d be together again. Then he chattered on and on about the two little white terriers who live in our neighborhood and how he misses our big dog, Greta, who was sent away after she bit him last September and on and on.

We came down the hill through the woods and wound along the chainlink fence until we reached the teacher’s parking lot in the back of the school. They keep the back door locked, so we had to walk around the school to get into the office. When I signed him in, it was 12:48 p.m. Eight minutes late.

I walked him to his classroom and we went in. The children were gathering on the carpet for the morning circle routine. Three excited boys rushed towards YoungestBoy and said, “You were going to be the Helper today!” And his face lit up. “I am?” And they said, “No, you were, but you were late, so Lauren’s the Helper.”

They were gleeful, thrilled to deliver this bad news.

Being the “Helper” in kindergarten is the biggest honor and the best possible day you can have as a kindergartener. The Helper gets to help the teacher, be first in line, pass out papers, and best of all, have a “Daily News” written about him or her. The “Daily News” is a piece of butcher paper that records the weather, the letter of the day and a sentence about the honored Helper. There is nothing bigger than being the Helper in kindergarten–with the possible exception of being the Birthday Boy or Girl. Being the Helper is like winning the Lotto. Big. Exciting. Random.

I handed the aide his tardy slip and she asked for his red folder, so he retrieved that. His face was flushed and I knew he was using all the self-control he had. I whispered, “Hey, are you okay?” and he fell apart. His whole chubby little red-cheeked face contorted in grief. He said, “I–w-a-n-t (sob) t-o (sob) g-o (sob) h-o-m-e.” Great shuddering intake of breath. I said, “Let’s go outside for a second.”

So, in the hallway, I hugged him and he said he needed to get out of there. We walked down the corridor and he stepped into the brisk air and walked in a circle. Then I said, “Okay, are you ready to go back in?” He said, “Yes.” He wiped his eyes and composed himself.

Back we went. He clenched his mouth and marched towards the carpet where the kids were talking about the weather. He almost reached them and then he turned back and ran toward me. “I can’t do it!” he cried.

I said, “That’s okay. Come on.” We went back in the hallway and he insisted he just couldn’t stay. I said, “Are you sure you want to miss a whole day of kindergarten?” He loves kindergarten. He adores school. He thinks recess is great. “Yes.”

I went back inside to grab his coat. When I came back out, he had a hand in his pocket and he was fingering his six quarters. Fridays are popcorn day. Twenty-five cents a bag. “Can I still get my popcorn?” he said. I told him I couldn’t interrupt the teacher. I thought maybe we’d find them selling popcorn in the multi-purpose room, but we did not.

He’s still sobbing as we walk down the corridor towards the office. The principal says hello to me and I tell her what’s happening. I ask if it’s possible that we get some popcorn. She says, “of course” and makes a phone call. He says, “This is the worstest day of my life!” We wait for the popcorn, then leave the building.

I tell him I’m so sorry. He says with reproach and sorrow, “Why didn’t you remember that Beth wasn’t coming?” I said, “I don’t know. Do you think you can ever forgive me?”

He says, “No.”

I say, “Your dad is going to be so disappointed in me.” He would never make his beloved boy late for kindergarten. Being late is a mortal sin in his book (if he had a book and if sins were classified in it).

As we cross the parking lot and head for the chainlink fence and trudge back up the hill and through the woods, I say, “This is all my fault. Is there anything I can do to make you feel better?”

He is wailing and crying and red-faced. “No.”

Then he stops. “Well, there is one thing. If I could have a Crunch bar when I get home, that would make me feel a little better.”

I say, “Well, that I can do.”

He resumes crying.

I have caused my almost-six year old precious child to have the “worstest” day of his life. What kind of mother am I?

When we returned home, he ate his popcorn and Crunch bar while I put the baby to sleep. (She even napped in her crib. Hooray.) When I came downstairs, I said, “Do you want to play a game or something?” He said, “Yes. I want to play Shipmates.”

So, we played Battleship. He won, even though we didn’t finish. Fortunately, he finished crying.

Then we played Uncle Wiggly. I made sure he won, without letting on that I was reverse-cheating. In fact, he won twice.

Eventually, he even forgave me.

I talked to his teacher on the telephone and she was sympathetic and kind. She promised that he can be the helper on Monday. I love her now. (She’s brand new. YoungestBoy’s original teacher is on maternity leave and until today, I’d never even seen his new teacher.)

In the backyard, YoungestBoy practiced riding his bike without training wheels for the first time. The trauma of the morning seemed forgotten.

I tell myself that if this is the worst day he’ll ever face, he’s a lucky boy, indeed.

However, I could still slap myself for being such an idiot. As my husband would say (if he was insane enough to comment on this issue), I should write these things down! My memory is not what it used to be! Make a note! (He’s learned to just not comment, though. Even though he doesn’t comment, I know what he’s thinking, though, which is kind of funny, when you think about it. He knows me well enough not to comment, but I know him well enough to know that he is commenting silently inside his head. Six of one, half dozen of the other.)

Tomorrow will be better. For one thing, there is no school.

I Live in a Shoe

This afternoon, I found myself in my own backyard with three fifth grade boys, an almost-six year old boy who was desperate for the attention of the fifth grade boys, and three babies, ages 15 months, 16 months and 17 months. My cordless phone rang in my pocket and I said, “Hello?” and my husband said, “What are you doing?” I said, “I’m in the backyard with seven children, wondering how I ended up here!”

He laughed from the quiet safety of his book-filled office. I called him back later and asked if he’d bring home pizza. It was that kind of afternoon.

Actually, the children were all well-behaved. I only watched the 15 month old for three hours, and one of the fifth grade boys was only here for a couple of hours. But still. I feel like the Old Woman Who Lives in the Shoe. Only I can’t spank all the children and put them to bed. Isn’t that how the poem read?

There was an old woman who lived in a shoe.
She had so many children she didn’t know what to do.
She gave them some broth without any bread,
Whipped them all soundly and put them to bed

I can understand why women pay other less-educated women $3 an hour to watch over their children so they don’t have to endure the thankless monotony of keeping children alive. But the thing is, I believe that wiping a nose with love is different than wiping a nose without love. I believe that taking care of those who cannot take care of themselves is as important as making a lot of money and having adult conversations. When did childhood just become a pointless stretch of time that parents can ignore if they can pay someone else to do the grunt-work?

Well, maybe I’m jealous of women who wear pantyhose and go to offices and talk to adults all day and have lunch breaks.

Wait. I used to be one of those women and I watched the clock. I had to put in 7.5 hours a day and I started counting down at 6.5 hours. Only 4.5 hours to go, just 3.75 hours left, just 2.5 hours, only 1.5 hours, I think I’m going to make it. I wanted desperately to be at home with babies. (I never thought about being at home with ten year olds, though. How short-sighted of me.) I just knew that the work I was doing for a paycheck wasn’t meaningful. My dad’s death during that time only reinforced my feelings that life was too short to sit in an office and watch the clock. He was only 47.

So, I want to be home. I want to be the one who reads my baby’s mind. I want to be the one to monitor the snack situation when the boys come bursting through the door at the end of the day. I want to be the one who rolls around on the floor with my kindergartener. I want to be in the backyard.

Every once in a while, though, I’d like to be the one waving good-bye and blowing kisses. My day will come. (I did the math the other night while I was trying to fall asleep and realized I’ll be 56 when Babygirl graduates from high school. My mother is just turning 61 this year. I am an old mother. A very old mother.)

Here’s a weird thing.

When I was born, my grandma was 59.
When Babygirl was born, her grandma was 59.
When my mother was born, her mother was 37.
When Babygirl was born, her mother (me) was 37.

That hurt my brain. Not a good sign. That’s what seven children in one day will do to an old woman!