I did not speak to a police officer today!

I did not steer my car into another car!

We are, however, out of milk, bread and everything good to eat because although my husband’s back home after five (six?) days away, between his busy schedule and my evening work-shifts, driving to the grocery store is just the stuff of dreams.  Alas.

But I didn’t get pulled over by the police!

I didn’t crash into a stranger’s car.

Gotta focus on the positive.

Let’s review.

Yesterday I wrote a weeping post about saying a premature good-bye to my childhood a full 31 year ago.

The day before, I recounted backing into a car at my child’s school.

So what do you think I can say today to match the drama and pathos of the prior days? Anyone?

***I’ll give you five seconds to think***

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I had to pick up my teenagers from the YMCA at noon. The problem was that this task fell during my work-shift. And my husband was still out of town. I signed on to the computer at 11:15 a.m., forty-five minutes before my shift began, instant-messaged my supervisor to tell her I’d be putting in time earlier so I could leave for a bit to pick up my kids. She pointed out how nice it might have been if only I had given her warning so she could have someone covering my shift and I apologized for the collapse of my brain and blamed it on the absence of my husband.

And then, as we chatted, I realized that my shift actually started at 11 a.m., not noon, and that I was actually fifteen minutes late, not forty-five minutes early. I’ve had this shift for months, but for some reason today I was convinced that my shift was from noon until 5 p.m.

At noon, off I drove with two 5-year olds in the back, safely buckled into booster seats. I was in a huge rush–I needed to pick up the boys and get the little guy delivered to kindergarten by 12:30 p.m. I thought I’d stop at McDonald’s on the way to feed everyone a quick, on-the-run lunch. This plan depended on speed and cunning.

A mile from my house, I heard that blood-curdling sound of a police siren. A glance in my rear-view mirror confirmed my fear. He was directly behind me and I knew that I was the criminal. He strolled to my window and said, “The speed limit along Rigney is 25. I clocked you going 37.”

I handed over my license, registration and proof of insurance. He warned me to stay in the car and returned to his vehicle to check to see if I had warrants out for my arrest and if I were a habitual offender. Thank God he didn’t know about my near hit-and-run two days earlier. After a few minutes, he returned, handed over my paperwork and with a wink said, “Mrs. ____, you need to slow it down.”

No ticket!

The weird thing is that on my two prior speeding tickets (over 15 years ago), both were the result of my going 37 mph in a 25 mph zone.

At least I’m consistent.

My childhood ended on September 25, 1977, the day my dad married his second wife. I wore a long polyester dress with giant peach polka-dots and a ruffle along the bottom. Someone shuttled us to the wedding which took place on a bluff overlooking the Puget Sound. Instead of wedding cake, they had cheesecake, which I’d never had before, nor did I understand. (I know. What’s to understand, but at the time I was like, hey, where’s the buttercream?)

True, my dad had endured more than his share of calamity by the time he exchanged his second set of vows on that blue-skied September day. He’d survived a childhood with an alcoholic, his own parents’ divorce, a battle with Hodgkin’s disease while still in his twenties. He had a long scar down the length of his torso and a failed thirteen year marriage behind him. He wanted this second chance at happily-ever-after. I see this with clarity now that I am 43 years old, a decade older than he was on his second wedding day. But then I felt only the flip-flop of the world as I had known it, the shaking of everything as if we lived in a snow globe.

Sometimes, I think that when I grieve over the loss of my dad who died just after turning 47 I am really mourning the loss of my childhood. Even before their divorce, my parents were preoccupied. I caused no trouble and caught no one’s attention. I happened to be a self-sufficient child, the one my parents looked to for help around the house and assistance with the other children. I began babysitting when I was ten years old. Once, between my parents’ divorce and my dad’s remarriage, I woke up in the morning to find that my mother never returned from a date.

The terror of being abandoned has never fully left me. And yet isn’t that a fundamental truth about life? People leave, sometimes willingly, sometimes without choice. My dad left us the first time because he wasn’t happy married to my mother, living in our little tract-house in Whispering Firs. He left me the second time when cancer killed him.

I lived with my dad and stepmother when my mother remarried six months after my dad’s wedding. My 29-year old stepmother proclaimed that she never wanted children, and yet, there we were. My mother’s new husband didn’t want us all–only me and my baby sister–my dad said, no, they all stay together. I remember him asking me: who do you want to live with? I was eleven. Who asks an eleven year old to choose?

After we moved in with my dad, I hardly saw my mother. She had a new husband, a new full-time job, a new apartment. I navigated middle school alone. No one asked what I ate for lunch (an apple every day or a bag of corn-nuts bought from the snack bar). I bought my own clothes. I rode my bike to school and then home again. No one reminded me to do homework. Despite a couple of good friends in high school, I always felt alone. Loneliness was my dependable companion from the moment my childhood ended until the day I left for college. I was close to my baby sister, seven years my junior, but not with my brother and sister who were close to my age.

I lived down the hallway in the last bedroom on the right. It was painted lavender and had a lock on the door which I always locked behind me. I came home from school on days I had no extracurricular activities and went straight to my room where I’d play the piano or read. I could tell from the sound of the car engine that my dad or stepmom approached our house on the dead-end street. The only difference between me and a renter living with strangers was that I didn’t pay rent. I did, however, buy all my own shampoo and clothes which I washed, dried and put away myself. I was a roommate who cleaned up after herself.

My parents didn’t mean to abbreviate my childhood. They didn’t purposely treat me like an adult when I was a mere child. My self-sufficiency disguised my longing to have someone sit by my bed and stroke my hair while I fell asleep. Being self-contained saved me even as it closed the door on softness and childhood.

I’m grown now, but I grieve the passing away of my childhood as if it happened only ten minutes ago. Why didn’t any of the adults in my life treat me like a child when I was just a little girl? I was never abused and I am grateful to have been spared what too many children have to endure. But still, I wish I could remember even one time when someone scooped me up and twirled me around just to hear me giggle with glee. I wish I had a memory of snuggling on my dad’s lap, of having a storybook read to me while we rocked. I wish I could recall a day of laughter, a time when someone took me out to eat pie other than that time my dad took me to a restaurant to break the news that he was divorcing my mother.

“But I will always love you,” he said. He never said those words again.

He loved me; I know that. But in my family, we were all broken. Jagged edges preventing us from embracing. Like the shrub in my backyard, I am covered with sharp quills, the better to keep you away.

And then I cry because I’m alone.

My husband drives carpool. Every afternoon, he picks up four boys from the local elementary school. However, today he is in Michigan enjoying some guy-time with his college buddies.

My neighbor, the morning carpool driver, drove afternoon pick-up yesterday and will pick up tomorrow. Today, though, I had no choice. I was the designated Carpool Driver.

I was also scheduled to work from 8 a.m. to 11 a.m., then had a phone conference from 11:45 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., drove a kindergartener to school at 12:30 p.m., and was scheduled to work again from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. and 9 p.m. to midnight. Having no choice, at 2:55 p.m., school dismissal time, I instant-messaged a co-worker and told her I’d be back in ten minutes.

An optimistic estimate, sure, but I’ve done it before. I time my departure so that my boys will be the last ones to be picked up so I don’t have to sit in line and inch my car forward while wondering why everyone in the world is so inefficient and slow-moving.

I did not count on road construction and a detour. Drat.

I did not plan on waiting for the departing buses to pass by on the road which was narrowed to one-lane by yet more construction.

When I pulled up, though, no children were in sight. A moment of panic struck, but then the boys emerged from the school and crowded into the van. When the last boy sat, I backed my van up slightly, looked to make sure no vehicles were approaching and caught sight of a furious woman leaning out of the car window behind me.

A car behind me? Where did that car come from?

I rolled my eyes, rolled down the window, waved exuberantly and said, “Sorry! Didn’t see you!” Then I pulled around the van in front of me and intended to go home.

Irresponsible, you might conclude . . . leaving the scene of an accident, you might say . . . hit and run, call the police, you might accuse.

But I didn’t even feel my van tap her little silver car. I knew that if I’d actually hit her, I would have felt a jolt, a bounce or at least a bump. I felt nothing.

Still, she pulled her car faster than necessary past me into a parking spot. With a sigh, I pulled mine into a spot, too, and got out. She was standing with an outraged look on her face, studying the front of her car and said (with some disappointment, I thought), “Well, it’s just a ding.” She ran her fingers over the bumper and I saw absolutely nothing. Not even a smudge of blue paint from my van. HELLO? That’s why God gave us bumpers, for those occasional little bumps, even imperceptible ones.

“I’m so sorry,” I said. “I didn’t see you there at all.”

She didn’t acknowledge me. I returned to my car.

Then back to the detour, where I found myself in a line of ten cars. I swerved onto a side street, went a block down and raced through town. I was like Jason Bourne, on the run through an Italian city.

I pulled into my driveway and saw the neighbor’s dog loose, the dog that bit a kid last summer. I turned to warn the kids and one of the boys said, “Uh . . . ” and I said, “OH! I was supposed to drop you off! But I don’t have time . . . can you stay for awhile?” and I’m thinking that if I were a fifth grade boy I might have said something to the driver if she appeared to forget to drop me off at my house several blocks away . . . but he said nothing until I had pulled my keys from the ignition.

I warned the boys, “Do not stay in the front yard. Do not run. That dog bit a kid.”

We got in the house, I looked at another boy and said, “Was I supposed to drop you off?” And he called his house and his dad was home, so he walked a few houses over to his house. (And luckily, he was not eaten by the dog.)

I was away from my computer for a good twenty minutes. And in that time I’d managed to:

1) Get stuck in construction.

2) Hit a car. (Barely, invisibly, hardly at all.)

3) Get stuck in traffic (in a tiny little town with no stop-lights!).

4) Forget to drop a kid off at his house.

5) Scare all the kids spitless of the wandering dog.

Good times were had by all.

At 5 p.m., my mom arrived to accompany me to the mall parking lot where I waited for AAA to come and open my van with its keys locked inside. He arrived after only twenty minutes and wasted no time in breaking into my van. Awesome.

I can’t believe I backed right up into someone’s car and then immediately thought of half a dozen reasons why it was her fault. I am very good at deflecting blame, at least in my own mind. Also? I should not be allowed to drive carpool. I do not have the patience nor the driving skills.

Okay, well, I’m not a watch.  Today I am just a harried housewife with an absent husband.  He went to Michigan to an unofficial college reunion, which I think is fantastic for him.  How lucky is he that he still has twenty friends from college who take time out to get together for a (very) long weekend?  So, three cheers for him and now he owes me one.  Or maybe we’re even.  Something like that.

In an attempt to be helpful, he drove himself to the mall and took the shuttle to the airport.  He left at 5 a.m. or some ungodly hour, so that was kind of him, right?  He arranged for a friend of ours to pick up the van from the mall and drive it to our driveway . . . leaving me out of the loop entirely.  Fantastic, right?  Except that he locked the keys in the van.  Do we have a spare key?  Why, of course!  It’s on the key-ring that is locked in the van because doesn’t everyone just put all their keys on one ring?  Anyone?

Well, so, now I have to go hang out at the mall parking lot long enough for AAA to come and unlock the door for us.  How long can that take?  An hour?  Two?  Fifteen minutes?  I don’t know, but I do know that tomorrow is a long day for me (I work three shifts, 8 a.m. to 11 a.m., phone conference from 11:45 a.m. to 12:15 p.m., 1 p.m. to 5 p.m., 9 p.m. to midnight–guess what I’ll be doing between 5 p.m. and 9 p.m.?).

By the way, has anyone seen the forks?  What forks?  The forks that belong in my kitchen drawer.  Try as I might, I can only find two forks in the house.  We are all reduced to eating with the small forks, which I think are meant to be dessert forks, if we were hoity-toity.  However, I always consider those “kid forks,” and make the kids eat with them except now I eat with them, too, because where are all the forks?  Did the dish run away with the fork?  Are the forks hiding somewhere with the unmated socks?  Are my forks participating in a practical joke on someone’s lush lawn?

I am a plain wrist-watch, an old time piece with two hands tracking the time click by click. Unless you really pay attention, you won’t see me move. I have two hands, but no second hand. I track the time with unremarkable steadiness. I self-wind, gathering energy from the day-to-day motion of life. You expect me to tell the time and that’s what I do. That’s all I do. I do not ring, ding, chime, glow, dong, glitter or buzz. I don’t have a playlist, a digital display or a diamond encrusted band.

I am content with my nondescript fate. I observe time passing. I inform the observer that time is passing.

I am not a fancy pocketwatch, dangling on a chain. I am not a grandfather clock, bonging with sonorous notes. I’m not a cuckoo clock, chirping in discordant song. I am not a slick digital clock with buttons and settings and tiny computer chips hidden inside. I’m not a stop-watch, ticking careful seconds, timing events, urging competitors to set records.

I keep time. I am inconspicuous, reliable, dependable.

Your disappointment with my boring, unfashionable steadiness is hardly my fault. I am what I am. When you expect me to boom out the melody of Big Ben or burst into a top-40 tune thanks to an internal radio, you might as well expect chocolate milk to fall from the sky.

I am a plain wrist-watch. I keep time.

Fifteen years ago, they were still snuggled in their mother’s womb, probably kicking each other. No one expected them to be born the next day, but their mother rushed to the emergency room and Twin A was already pushing his way out. He was born late that night. Half an hour later, his upside down brother was delivered by c-section. A few minutes later and he would have had an entirely different birthdate.

I had no idea that my baby boys had been born. Their mother had not yet made a parenting plan. They were nine weeks premature and spent the first weeks of their tiny lives hospitalized. She visited them every day, growing more and more attached to these babies she intended to relinquish for adoption. Then, when one baby was healthy enough, she brought him home. A few weeks later, his twin brother came home, too.

But circumstances and hard times led her to conclude a few months later that placing her baby boys for adoption would be the best thing for everyone. That’s where we enter the story.
The story of how they joined our family is a complicated one, fraught with twists and turns and one very dismal, dark night full of bitter tears.

And so tomorrow, we will celebrate their fifteenth birthday. And I can’t help but wonder what she will do tomorrow. Will she pause and cry? Will she eat cake? Will she look at the calendar and think only three more years and they’re adults? I think about her and wish I could reassure her. They are doing fine, even though some days I wonder what in the world I was thinking when I declared that all I ever wanted in the whole wide world was to have children.

They are funny boys, addicted at the moment to Rock Band, the video game. One is learning to play the guitar and the other is going to start piano lessons. They have a bunch of friends in the neighborhood. They are learning to be good big brothers, to defer to the younger kids. They cook and find the idea of a sandwich for lunch simply unthinkable.

Last week, they impressed me with their lack of complaints when I took them early to help at their great-grandmother’s house. They worked in the yard on Saturday without complaint. One of them helped in the church nursery on Sunday, again with no complaints. Shocking, really.

They are good boys with soft hearts. They are closer than brothers, for they are twins. They have always been together and talk late into the night. They love each other, even as they irritate each other.

They are both taller than me and each have sprouted a chin hair or two. They’ve embraced deodorant and toothpaste. I no longer do armpit checks after showers (glory be).

I still remember the first moment I saw the fuzzy fringe of hair on the backs of their sleeping heads.

And tomorrow, they will be fifteen years old. Wow.

I remembered to bring my underpants.  And my contact lens solution and a pair of walking shoes.  I have a purse full of pens that I like.  My room is better this year than last–even though it’s “economy” and last year I paid for “deluxe.”  The trees are pink with blossoms, the daffodils are in full bloom, the trees have leaves and the sky was blue.

I came early to avoid the headache that would result from traveling in the morning in order to arrive by noon.  I arrived at the airport with time to spare, the flight was smooth, the shuttle efficient.  What more could a girl ask for?

Well, how about a television in my room?  I fear I will be unable to sleep in the utter silence.  I brought my brand new teeny tiny iPod which might help.  Tomorrow, the sessions don’t start until 3 p.m., so I will have the bulk of the day to relax and visit the Redwood park which is nearby.

Meanwhile, I left my husband at home to cope with our four kids . . . my daughter and her friend had a fun time this morning.  They stripped her bed so they could jump on it while holding a rather large water balloon.  Anyone want to guess what happened?  Oh yes, an exploded water balloon on the bed, on my daughter and on all the bedding.   I solved that  problem by covering the bed with bath towels so that when they jumped, they’d soak up some waters.

(Now there is a mothering tip you will not read in any magazine.)

My husband is super busy this weekend–he teaches a college class tonight, has a wedding rehearsal tomorrow and a wedding on Saturday.  I think someone else is preaching on Sunday.  I feel terrible for leaving him in the lurch, but he is so kind and supportive that he kept telling me not to feel guilty, to go and have fun and that I deserve to be here.

I sure picked a good one.

All right.  Well, that’s all the news that’s fit to print.  Coming live from the Redwood forest . . . good-night everybody!

Last March when I went to California, I recall being eager and well-rested. That may or may not be reality, but this time, I feel a hundred years old and decidedly not prepared.

And here are some notes I must make before I forget.

My daughter’s first tooth fell out on Monday. She came downstairs saying, “My tooth fell out!” I responded with excitement: “Let me take your picture!” and she burst into tears. Losing that tooth scared her. I held her and rubbed her back and soon, she was okay. I said, “Where’s the tooth?” She had no idea. She’d been eating strawberries and . . . uh, I think she ate the tooth. Fortunately, she has only a rudimentary understanding of the tooth fairy, so we’re off the hook there.

Between work shifts on Monday, I drove 45 minutes up I-5 to wish my grandma a happy 102nd birthday. I wasn’t sure she’d even know I was there. My cousin welcomed me into her house and ushered me to the room where Grandma was stretched out on a brass-framed bed. The image reminded me of two things: a queen on her throne and a corpse in her casket. The bed was situated in the very center of the room, diagonal to the walls. It dominated the room. Thus, the queen-like image. But, oh, my poor grandma has aged ten years since I last saw her on February 1. Her eyes were half-open, glazed, her mouth gaped open. Her hands were folded on her chest. Her eyelids were sunken, her brow-bones prominent. She looked dead. Shockingly dead.

I sat and watched her. After awhile, an aunt came and touched her hands and to my utter shock, she responded. She asked who I was and I told her and her mind was right there. She knew me, held my hand with both of hers. She asked where my family was (at home since Grace had a cold) and we had a little conversation. I told her the daffodils are blooming–she always loved flowers so much. Macular degeneration stole most of her eyesight, but she has some peripheral vision, so she could tell when anyone came near.

I stayed for an hour and a half . . . it was such an unexpected surprise to be able to wish her happy birthday, to have her know me still, to have her warm, veiny hands hold my hand to her heart. I also enjoyed talking to my other relatives.

And now, I must go to bed. I wish I felt more prepared and less guilty.

Oh, I have to tell you this, too.

On my last three trips, I have lost my mind in various ways.

When I went to the mountains on a scrapbooking retreat, I forgot my underpants.

On a trip to visit friends from high school, I forgot my deodorant.

In New York, I remembered everything . . . except one day, I arrived at the office, noticed my damp armpits and realized I forgot to put on my deodorant.

I am just hoping to arrive in California with underpants, socks and deodorant in my bag. Everything else is just a bonus.

My poor 10-year old boy. I took him for a haircut today. I do respect his desire to have long hair, but once or twice a year, I insist on a trim–and he concurs, until he is perched in the barber’s chair. Then his face reflects his terror and his shock that cutting hair shortens the length of said hair. His blond long bangs are now clipped to his eyebrows and he has no need to flip his head to see. He hates this. Honestly, I didn’t intend for it to be as short at it is (though it’s not very short at all). It does look much better, though. He will not be happy until it’s long enough to put in a pony tail on the top of his blond head.

Meanwhile, my 5-year old slammed her middle finger in the door this morning when she closed it for emphasis. I told her that’s what you get for slamming doors at me. I also said to her today (while running errands), “You are making me sorry that I brought you!” and she said, “Well, you are making me sorry that I like you!”

While I was out running errands with the non-stop-talking 5-year old, my boys were all home alone for a short time. In that time period, one of the 14-year olds grabbed a handful of the 10-year old’s hair (prior to the haircut) and yanked it hard five times. The 10-year old had annoyed the usually annoying 14-year old and thus, the hair-pulling.

When I returned home to pick up the 14-year old to take him to Costco to have his glasses repaired and adjusted, my husband informed me of this hair-pulling incident. The hair-puller was sent to his room to consider an adequate punishment and that’s when I took the 10-year old for a haircut. (Which took forever because we go to a walk-in barbershop where it’s first-come, first-served. We waited for an older gentleman to be finished, then for a soldier to have his head shaved with a straight razor.)

I delivered the sad, shorn 10-year old home, picked up the 14-year old (all the while, the 5 year old is with me, chatting away) for a quick trip to Costco. On the way, he moaned to me about how awful his punishment is (cleaning the front and back yards tomorrow and not being allowed to play video games) . . . he clearly missed the point. Oh, and while I was gone, the 14-year olds got into a fight: one 14-year old annoyed the other until his brother grabbed his head and bumped it into the couch. Apparently, I’m raising juvenile delinquents or future WWE wrestlers. The kid experienced karma, though he didn’t recognize it even though it bumped him in the head–he did to his brother what his other brother did to him.

I despair that they will ever learn.

Meanwhile, I talked to my mother yesterday on the phone for quite a while. She is a mess, watching my grandmother die. My grandmother’s been mostly unresponsive the last week, not drinking or eating at all, but roused when one of her sons arrived in town (from Tennessee) to see her. She wanted to drink coffee with him. Her 102nd birthday is Monday. By then, her five children will all be in town . . . originally to celebrate her birthday, but now we will all gather around as she prepares to leave this world for the next. I wonder if I will ever see all these relatives again, all together.

My family will probably go tomorrow night to see everyone, though my mom cautioned me that seeing Grandma might be too much for the younger children. I’ll have to see. I’ve been very open with them, letting them know that Great-Grandma is dying.

And so it seems an odd juxtaposition that today I saw daffodils blooming everywhere, a signal of the world coming back to life just as my grandmother leaves this life. She loved flowers, always had a yard blooming with them.

As if all this wasn’t enough, I am leaving town again next Wednesday to attend (for the second year) a writing conference near Santa Cruz. I feel tremendously guilty for going, especially since I flew to New York last week. I’ve also had so little time to devote to writing that I feel like less of a writer this year than I did last year.

However, I do remember how refreshed I felt last year after the conference, how full of inspiration and hope I was, and how I loved the silence of the Redwood forest. I will set aside my guilt and open myself up to whatever the experience has to give me. (Also? After spending the day with my bickering children, the guilt is outweighed by desperation to get away from them . . . which makes me feel guilty.)