Just to let you know, I changed the comment feature so everyone can now comment. You no longer have to have a blogger account to do so. Of course, I reserve the right to revert to my former policy if necessary.

I wish she was here too, but this is the best we’ve got!

Spray adhesive residue covers my fingertips. Black tempera paint blotches dot my palm. Tiny particles of styrofoam cling to my black shirt.

I just finished creating a giraffe and an elephant to decorate our church for Vacation Bible School. Last year, I didn’t have to worry about decorations for even a second because I had a fabulous mother-daughter team who handled it all. This year, the mother in that team has the nerve to travel to Scotland and much less interest in creating “Serengeti Trek” here at home. So, I’m pitching in, doing what I can before I leave.

I have phone calls to make, forms to create and print, details to set straight so that Vacation Bible School will run smoothly when it begins four days after our return. I know I’ll be exhausted. Since I’ve done this three previous years, I have assembled a great team of volunteers, so I won’t worry. Everything will be fine. I won’t worry. Everything will be fine. I won’t worry. Everything will be fine.

This morning, my mother had a garage sale with a friend of hers. I left my husband at home with the children and went garage-saling–my mother’s house was my second stop and I found her yard full of people and many unpacked boxes. What chaos! I immediately set to work unpacking boxes and displaying items. They had lots of stuff. I haven’t heard how much they made, but when I stopped by after 5:00 p.m, they still had enough for another whole sale.

While my husband put Babygirl down for her nap today, I took the boys, my brother-in-law and my niece and nephew to the pool to swim. My niece didn’t have a swimsuit, so we left the boys at the pool and went shopping for a suit. The rain and chill of the past week(s) disappeared and the sun shone warmly today. My boys all three got a little sunburned. I gave a little lecture about “your body, your responsibility,” but they will never remember things like putting on their own sunscreen.

Last night, the carpet cleaner arrived about two minutes before my hair colorist arrived. My husband was supposed to be home at 6:00 p.m. to take care of Babygirl while I had my hair done, but he was at the pool with the boys and since it turned out to be “Ice Cream Social” night, they stayed late–until almost 8:00 p.m. Babygirl ended up not being any trouble, though, during the carpet cleaning and foil-highlighting session.

And now I have perfectly clean carpets and newly blond hair.

Yesterday morning, I took Babygirl with me to run errands. (It happened that I didn’t have any daycare kids.) She is a pretty good partner, though I did buy two unnecessary items at the grocery store (our last stop of the day). She was a good girl as we went from the bank to the shoe store (pink Chuck Taylor Converse shoes for her) to Target to Burger King (I ordered a Whopper Junior meal for me and a Chicken Tenders meal for her and ended up with a Chicken Whopper for me and a cheeseburger for her–why can’t they ever get an order right?) then to the bank (again–I had too many transactions to do all at once in the drive-through) then to the grocery store.

So, that’s why I haven’t been writing anything interesting and amusing.

I wonder if spray adhesive will come off with fingernail polish remover? I wonder if I have any fingernail polish remover? I wonder if I really will be ready to leave by Thursday?

Summer burst in without knocking first. Our rainy May turned into blazing May, ninety degree temperatures two days in a row. Originally, the weather forecasters said we’d have clouds and rain over the weekend, but glory be! They were wrong.

At 6:38 a.m., Grace woke me, asking if it were time to go to the “beach.” When she says “beach,” she actually means “pool.” She knew that today the pool would open.

Instead of getting up at 6:38 a.m., I slept in five minute increments, sometimes ten or twenty minutes increments. She woke me over and over again, asking for a drink or socks or a new video. And with much vexation, I’d do her bidding, then crawl back into bed. Then, just as I’d drift back to sleep, she’d appear at my bedside again. I didn’t get up until almost 9 a.m. and then, Grace raced me to the shower, stripping her clothes off and jumping in before I had a chance. She showered for twenty minutes while I cooled my heels, changed the sheets on the bed, put away clean laundry and puttered.

At noon, the kids were splashing in the pool, exulting in the eighty-degree heat. Grace sat for a long time on the edge of the wading pool before turning onto her tummy and sliding feet first into the water. I appreciate her slow, methodical approach to life. I’m like that myself in so many ways.

We stayed only until 1:30 p.m. Grace needed a nap. So did my husband.

After dinner, my husband went to the church to gather his materials for study. I took the four kids for a two mile walk. We are beginning our training regimen for our vacation in Walt Disney World. My boys are not in shape and I don’t want to hear them bellyaching about being tired in the Florida muggy heat. They only complained a little.

When my husband returned home (about 6:00 p.m.), I took the boys to the pool again. This time, less than twenty children frolicked in the aquamarine pool. My twins played a raucous game of water basketball. Zach jumped off the diving board time and time again. I read more of Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry. Then my cell phone rang. A church woman was trying to reach my husband. I told her to call again and I turned off my phone so the call would ring at home. Then a bit later, I turned the phone back on, just in time to receive a phone call from my husband.

A church woman’s husband was rushed to the hospital. He has lung cancer and he wasn’t breathing.

Ten minutes later, we were in the car, heading home so my husband could go to the hospital. So much for his much-anticipated quiet evening of study at home. So much for staying at the pool until it closed at 8 p.m.

He called at 9:30 p.m. to tell me that the man had died. He finally returned home at 10:30 p.m.

Memorial Day weekend will never again be the same for that family.

I thought today how very small children have no concept of the future. They live here, today, not three months from now or next year. I need to stop staring off into the future and focus my eyes on my daughter’s curls as she prances in her ducky float in the swimming pool. Tomorrow is not promised. We have today.

Savor it.

One of my 12-year old sons said to me the other day, “Hey, mom, want to hear a joke?”

I didn’t really, but I said, “Okay.”

He said, “I-da-ho, you-da-ho, we-da-ho.”

Somewhere along the line, he’d heard the punchline to this joke: “If two potatoes are standing on a corner, how can you tell which one is the pr*stitute?”

The punchline: “The one with the sticker that says I-da-ho.”

So, he thinks the whole joke is “I-da-ho.”

He laughed at his unfunny joke while I stared with a perplexed look on my face. He raised his eyebrows and offered this hint to me, “Get it? I-da-hoe. Hoe. The garden tool?”

And then I laughed.

I like to keep my kids clueless as long as possible. For a long time, they thought the f-word was “fart.” In fact, I think they still do.

Prepare lunch. YoungestBoy returns home from his half-day of school. Instruct 12-year old to watch CuteBaby roll on floor. Hear Babygirl say, “The baby spit up!” Tell her, “Get a tissue and wipe it up!” Phone rings. Agree to let YoungestBoy go play at his friend’s house.

Give lunch to DaycareKid. Turn on dishwasher. Get distracted by stuffed-full refrigerator. Begin cleaning it out. Stop.

Check on baby. Discover he’s eaten half a tissue which is now wadded on the roof of his mouth. CuteBaby’s mom arrives. Confess that her baby ate a tissue. Wave bye-bye. Sit at computer so YoungestBoy can dictate the novel he’s decided to write, even though naptime begins in five minutes.

DaycareKid appears, whining. “What’s wrong?” He points to feet, mutters. Sniff, sniff. What’s that smell? Oh no! He pooped his pants! Cart him to bathroom. Phone rings again. Talk to husband. NeighborKid walks in, starts talking to me. Wave him away. DaycareKid cries in bathroom, waiting to be cleaned. Get off phone.

Turn on television for Babygirl’s pre-naptime show (“Max and Ruby”–we call it the “funny rabbit show). Wave good-bye to YoungestBoy as he climbs into his friend’s van. Find wipes, clothing for DaycareKid. Begin cleaning him. Get poop under fingernails. Put him in tub, wash, rinse. To bed he goes. Deposit poopy clothes in washing machine.

Nap with Babygirl. Answering machine clicks on. I’ve slept for ten minutes. She’s asleep on the floor. Go downstairs. Eat lunch. Wonder what to make for dinner. Call Greyhound to see how far $150.00 will take me.

Before you do anything else, you must go read Judy’s post about labels. You’ll thank me.

As an added bonus, Judy also solves the world’s problems in her post.

For the record, I have a green dot on my forehead today.

When my mother was my age, I was 18. I hadn’t lived with her–or even in the same town–for nearly half my life. After my dad divorced her, she latched on to a series of bad husbands, each one a little worse than the one before.

First Husband: My dad. Married when they were nineteen. He dragged us around the country, twenty-five moves in five years, looking for that elusive job which would be worthy of him. He divorced her after thirteen years, a bout of cancer and chemo, four kids and a couple of silent years.

Second Husband: Unemployed, drove a yellow van, lots of previous marriages, stepchildren. My dad took custody of us when this man came into the picture. He was 9 years older than my mother and after five years of marriage, took all her belongings in the divorce.

Third Husband: Illiterate, a lot older than her. He didn’t seem to have a job, either, and worse, he had a bad habit of breaking coffee cups and other items on her head. She left after a year and a half.

Fourth Husband: She met and married him while I was away at college, so mostly, I only heard stories and didn’t have to sit in the same room with him while he sprawled on the couch in his undershirt, drinking beer. I heard that he threatened her with a shotgun, threatened to kill himself, and was a mean drunk. She sneaked away, one box in her car trunk at a time, and disappeared from his stinky life about the time I got married. I think her marriage lasted a few years, less than five, though.

While I was busy preparing for my (first and only) wedding–that sacred bonding time between mothers and daughters–my mother was scheming and planning her escape from her disgusting fourth husband. I sewed my own wedding dress, located my own florist, picked out my cake–I did it all alone because my mother was involved in the drama of her own life. As usual.

Two years later, during the time my dad was ill and dying, she started dating again through classified ads. She ended up living with some guy with a repaired harelip for six or seven years. I only wish I were kidding. He would wear sweatpants and undershirts to family holiday celebrations. He knew everything about everything–at least he thought he did–and he tried to recruit me for a multi-level marketing scam. My mother basically abandoned my teenage sister to live with this man, but she told us she was renting a room from him. (He took in two or three boarders in his split level house.)

Remarkably enough, my mother and I now have a fairly close relationship. She lives in the same town I do now–and she lives alone. We see each other and/or talk on the phone every week. She babysits my kids. She’s 62 now, a genuine senior citizen with a handicapped parking permit. I try not to ask her about things that are none of my business, so many of my questions go unanswered, questions like, “What were you thinking?” and “How could you give up custody of your four children so easily? Did you miss us? Or were you relieved to be rid of us?” Our relationship is easy and we laugh a lot, but there are huge hunks of time and giant categories we just don’t talk about. Ever.

When I was a child, I wanted her to pat my head and tell me how pretty and smart I was, but she was busy, really, really busy. She had four children, too, and she seems to have amnesia, because she says to me, “I don’t know how you do it.” She does know, though–you just do it a day at a time, Monday through Friday, one bowl of Cheerios at a time. She doesn’t seem to remember much–her dismal marriage to my father and my brother, sisters and I overwhelmed her. She was barely finished growing up when she gave birth to three of us, all in a row, sixteen months apart and then my “oops” sister, five years later. Her early marriage limped along from one crisis to another.

What I wanted most from her was her attention. What she did most was overlook me. I was easy to ignore. Who notices the easy child, the one who achieves, the good girl, the bookworm? And then she left me and my siblings, just as I was on the cusp of adolescence, on the brink of the most terrifying years of life–middle school.

She feels guilty, I know. And I’ve forgiven her, completely. She did the best she could with what she had at the time. She gave me as much as she could. I don’t hold any of it against her.

Mother’s Day card shopping is a challenge, though. They tend towards the sappy factor: “Mother: My Best Friend, The One Who Was Always There For Me.” It’s a chore to find a plain card that just says, “Happy Mother’s Day.”

I bet if I designed a card that said, “What the HELL were you thinking when you left me for your new boyfriend? Happy Mother’s Day!” I’d make at least five or ten bucks marketing it.

He’s only two and already, he shuttles between mommy’s house and daddy’s house. This afternoon, he cried and cried and when I said, “What’s wrong? What do you want?” he sobbed, “I want mommy!” I called her on the phone, but when I held the receiver to his ear, he just stared at me with giant tears glistening in his eyes and backed away from the earpiece. He wants his mommy, not just a voice on the phone.

Bummer for him, though, because this is Daddy’s Week. They switch off and this is the week he’ll only see his mother on Wednesday night. The rest of the time, he’ll be at daddy’s house. He no longer really has a house–he’s a guest at either his mom’s house or his dad’s house.

I’ve been watching him since he was a year old and now I see him more than either of his parents do.

Something is wrong with this picture.

I don’t understand this. At all. I can’t imagine separation from my daughter who is the same age. She wouldn’t understand it.

Tonight, while I held her, she looked up at me and said, “I’m glad you’re here.”

So am I.

So am I.

I wouldn’t have it any other way.