Tag Archives: kids

Paradise Family Style

Fluffy white clouds move across the incredibly blue sky.  Waves crash upon the shore just a stone’s throw from my spot on the lanai.   Lean bodies bob in the surf, waiting for the right swell, then rise with the ocean, toes clinging to boards, falling back down as the wave ends in foam and bubbles, only to paddle out to begin again.  Gazing past the palm trees at the scene before me, I sip my lime laced Corona, and sigh.

Sounds good, don’t it?  Well it was really like that, some of the time, but the truth is, it was one heck of a trip just getting my family to America’s Eden in the South Pacific:

It starts out all right on a flight from San Francisco to Honolulu, but things go awry after catching a connecting flight to Maui.  Seems we had more than enough time to make the transfer, but our bags didn’t.  The baggage agent assures me that they will be on the next flight.  Maybe.  Or maybe the one after that.  Or maybe they will deliver them to our lodgings later.  Much later.

Okaaaaay….

Well, the next flight is due in twenty minutes, so might as well hang around for the luggage, right?  The kids are over-tired and out of control, but that’s just another day at the beach for us.  As we wait, the twenty minutes turn into an hour.  We watch in confusion as the arrival screen shows the flight as on time, then late, then on time, then removes it off the board all together.  When we do finally collect our luggage, we figure now we may as well wait for my parents and sister to arrive at the baggage claim since their flight is only another half hour away.

I watch anxiously as weary travelers straggle in from the gates to wait around the carousel where my parent’s flight is listed.  Scanning the crowd, I cannot find my mom and dad.  Worried, I try my dad’s cell phone, then my sister’s.  Surely somebody would have called me if something had gone wrong!  Anxiety turning to fear, I run down the open air concourse in the humidity until I come to the ticket counter, and race up to an available agent.

“My parents were supposed to be on flight 34, but they didn’t arrive!”  I gasp, wiping sweat from my eyes.

The agent looks up, smiles vacantly, tip taps into her computer, and calmly replies “That flight’s delayed two hours.”

“Oh,” I gush with relief, “I was so worried because the screen shows it as on time…”

“That flight’s delayed two hours,” she repeats with the same vacant smile.

Okaaaaay….

So jump ahead in time a little, the relatives arrive, and we help my folks with their luggage cart over to the line for the rental car shuttle bus.  We wait, and as the person before us finishes loading and jumps on the bus, I begin to load the parents’ luggage as quickly as possible, not wanting them to stand in the hot sun.  Neither one walks well, and I want them seated.  At the same time, from the other direction, some bozo starts throwing luggage on, completely disregarding the fact that we waited in line and it’s our turn.  So pushy little broad that I am, I don’t back down, I just keep tossing luggage to the poor driver who’s putting ours in one pile and Bozo’s in another. 

“Why don’t you wait until somebody else is finished?” Bozo says acidly.  “There’s a line here.”

“I waited in line,” I snapped indignantly, “you came from the other side.  And I cannot leave my parents standing in the sun any longer.  They’re handicapped.”

“Not my problem,” Bozo dares to say.

I am on the step of the bus, Bozo is on the curb and he’s sort of a runt anyway, so turning back toward him and leaning in close, I am about three inches from his face when I bite loudly, “You’re an asshole.”  I hope he caught some spit with that.

People on the bus turn and stare, but Bozo shuts up.  At the car rental he shoves his son off the bus before it’s fully stopped, ordering, “Get in line, quick!”  For his efforts with his son’s life, he ends up about four customers ahead of us.  The snaking line positions us directly across the rope guide from each other, but while I check out his lycra encased chubby wife and decide she’d be a candidate for “What Not to Wear”, Bozo carefully avoids looking at me.  Yeah, that’s right, little man.  Don’t mess with angry Greek/Italian women.  We’re mean.

Traffic to our destination is obnoxious, and at one point we consider pulling over until morning to join the jalopies camping on the narrow band of beach next to the “highway”.  We finally arrive at our condos in paradise, and find out the relatives’ expensive condo hasn’t been updated since Captain Cook frolicked with natives.  Fortunately, a pleading call to the property manager solves that problem the next morning, and we are now free to enjoy ten days of carefree relaxation. 

That was a fantasy with no hope of realization.

Did I mention the Greek/Italian thing?  See, vacationing with my family is like skipping off to paradise with some unholy mixture of Chevy Chase’s Griswolds, Cher’s family from “Moonstruck”, and Nia Vardalos’ family from “My Big Fat Greek Wedding.”  Nothing goes right, we fight, we shout, we cry, we forgive.  We don’t do peaceful very well.

Still, in our chemically unstable way, we have a good time.  And we are together. 

Eventually the trip ends, and we return to our ancient half remodeled fixer, my parents to the family home where I grew up, only half a mile one direction, and my sister to her cute condo, half a mile in the other direction.  We all say we want to return to Maui next year. There is a spot in our backyard where I would like to put a bench.  I like to pause there under the mulberry tree, and look back across the toy strewn lawn to our house.  It looks cheery despite its age from that vantage point.  I can hear the shouting from within, some joyful, some argumentative, some punitive.  I can hear the children’s laughter.  And when I revisited this spot soon after our trip, I smiled to myself at our untidy yard and noisy home, realizing that really, paradise is relative.

Walnut Festival

Like many towns across America, my hometown got its start as an agricultural community.  Once just a crossroads in the midst of farms and ranches, eventually the local growers formed a small town aptly named after the local topography and primary crop: Walnut Creek.   Nuts and pears covered most of the local farmland, so I suppose it could just as easily been named Pear Creek.  When I was growing up here, there was still a considerable amount of land devoted to orchards, and every home had at least one walnut tree on the property.  There were only a few houses on our block at first, but soon the neighborhood was full.  We were proud to boast a local department store.  The town rolled up the sidewalks at 6 o’clock, and nothing was open on Sundays. 

Fast forward about…well, forget how many years, just fast forward.  OK, I’m 43.  I moved here when I was 2.  So fast forward 41 years.  Satisfied?  

The orchards are all gone now.   The town is bustling and is a shopping mecca.  We even have Tiffany’s.  But one quaint custom from the old days that remains is the annual celebration of the harvest.  The Walnut Festival takes place every fall, as it did when my mother was a girl, and probably for a long time before her memory.  The weekend before the actual festival is the Walnut Parade, right down Main Street.  Main Street is still only a two lane road, and retains a quaintness of years gone by.  A few older buildings remain, but even the newer buildings have been built with an eye toward small town congeniality.  Local families line the sidewalks, waiting for high school marching bands, local politicians, fire engines, and Boy Scout troops.  One of the highlights is the local chapter of Pearl Harbor Survivors.  These men used to walk the route, dressed in white slacks and Hawaiian shirts, but those who are left are now frail, and ride in convertibles.  Still, they get a grand round of applause the entire way, and most adults stand in respect as they pass. 

The official mascot of the Walnut Festival and of the parade is King Walnut.  I kid you not.  King “Nut”, as he is known to his friends, is dressed in long velvet robes, carries a scepter, and wears a big walnut head with a crown on it.  The eyes are huge with big Lucille Ball eyelashes, and he grins a blindingly white grin.  He used to have one eye closed in a wink, but he got a remodel some years back, since that winking eye was taken as looking a little sinister.  Small children were afraid of him.  He still isn’t much of a looker, I’m afraid, but it’s hard to make a walnut seem warm and fuzzy. 

This year my husband was sick, so he was allowed to stay home while I bravely toted all three kids downtown to watch the parade.  The high point of the entire event was when pony driven carts pulling actors promoting a local play passed by.  The ponies left a trail right down the middle of the road.  Since I am mature and sophisticated, I immediately elbowed my daughter and whispered “Look, pony poop!  Someone’s going to step in it!” 

All three kids, um, four, if you count me, started to giggle.  Even the youngest pointed and shouted “Doo doo!”.  We eagerly watched each passing parade entrant, completely oblivious to their music, cheers, or costumes.  We just watched their feet.  When some boy scouts jumped and sidestepped right at the last moment, we pointed and laughed uncontrollably.  When the high stepping cheer squad mashed right through it, we laughed even harder.  And when the marching band pounded it right into the asphalt, well, I’m afraid we just lost it completely.  Ah, yes. What a time that was. 

The next week was the festival itself.  It used to seem enormous to me as a child, but now it seems what it is: a small, local carnival.  To my kids, however, it is as impressive as I found it at their age.  The lights, the sounds, the games and rides, are all so exciting!  They rode ponies (no poop in sight, it was a very well tended riding ring), rode the merry go round, took several trips down the super slide, and even dared the tilt-o-whirl.  They tossed coins and rings, fished for rubber frogs bearing lucky numbers, and lastly, aimed ping pong balls at endless little fishbowls filled with water. 

That was my favorite game when I was a kid.  Back then, the fish were actually in the bowls.  If you landed a ball in a bowl, that bowl and fish were yours.  Now the fish are in big tubs.  If you land a ball in a fishbowl, they scoop a fish out of one of the tubs and put it in a plastic bag.  I remember standing there throwing ball after ball when I was little, and I just couldn’t win a fish.  Finally the man running the game just gave me one.  He told me I had already bought it ten times over.  But this year, my daughter won one the old fashioned way.     

She stood in line behind the other small winners, waiting her turn to have a baggied fish handed to her.  Leaning over the railing and peering into the tubs of goldfish, she said helpfully to the man scooping “There are some dead ones.”  He ignored her, so a little louder she said “I see two dead fish floating.”  I nudged her to stop, but she just kept on, saying more loudly still “Eeww!  Some of those fish are dead!”. 

The man finally looked up briefly, and said heartily, “Oh, they’re just sleeping!  Shhh! Don’t wake them up!” 

My nine-year-old daughter raised her eyebrows, gave him a scornful look, and said definitively  “No.  They’re dead.” 

So it was with no surprise as we walked away with her little goldfish in a baggie, whom she promptly named Joey, that I saw the little guy was not exactly an aggressive swimmer.  I have told my family that there will be no more living creatures in our house until those that are there now are either in kitty cat heaven, or college.  Hopefully the children will be the ones to go to college, and the cats to that other place.  The rule for the fair was that if a fish was won, it would be taken to live at Grandma’s house, because she already has fish.  We hightailed it from the fair to Grandma’s, where Joey floated in his bag to allow his water to adjust to the temperature of the tank, and then was set loose.  

Grandma’s goldfish are big.  Everything Grandma grows is big.  Her cat looks like a small dog.  The bigger fish sensed an easy target, and chased Joey around the tank.  I didn’t think they looked all that hostile, but Julia screamed, hid her face, and begged Grandma to take Joey out before the other fish ate him.  Being the good sport that she is, Grandma scooped out Joey and set him up in his own big bowl, left over from when Grandma last fooled herself that the fish thing would stop with one goldfish in a bowl. 

Well, you may have already guessed, but Joey had passed on to goldfish heaven by the next morning.  Julia took it better than I’d expected, but she was so disappointed that I promised we’d get another, and this one we would keep at home.  At the pet store, my two sons also had to have their own fish, despite my feeble attempts to have everyone “share”.  So instead of one fish in a bowl, we left with three baggied fish, and an aquarium.  

My daughter must have ticked off the goldfish gods at that fair, because Sam, Joey’s replacement, only lasted a week.  Dot kicked off after about six weeks.  Flippy looks good, so far.  You get attached, even though they are just fish.  They wiggle their little fan tails, and come up to the glass when they see me.  Still, secretly the overworked mom part of me, and don’t tell my daughter this, but secretly that part of me won’t be too disappointed when the aquarium is acquiring dust in the garage.  I just don’t have the energy to take on any more life forms.  I’m no good with plants, and I guess I’m not any better with fish.  I seem to do well growing kids, however.  Let’s hope next year a ping pong ball in a bowl doesn’t win you a baby.  I’ll be sunk.

Is It Friday Yet?

I live in a nuthouse, of which I am, of course, the chief nut.  Mmmm, nuts.  I just started a diet…that sounds good.  Oh, where was I?  Right, a nuthouse.  We are loud and disorderly.    And late.  Always late!  L-A-T-E. 

I just realized that if I added another T, I’d have a latte.  I love lattes.  I wonder if there’s some sort of sick correlation there.  

But I digress.  The point I was eventually going to make is that the members of my loving but goofy family all conspire against each other to ensure that we never arrive anywhere on time, or at least not without a frantic rush.   We cannot seem to pull our family together into a well trained get-your-butt-out-the-door team.   And when our butts do get out the door, it seems somebody always forgot something, has to go poop, feels like hurling, can’t get his/her seatbelt buckled, feels compelled to have a tantrum, and so on.  Since my husband is at his job in San Francisco all day, most of this chaos is usually with Cashew Mom (mmm…) at the helm.  I try.  I swear I try.    

My husband understands in principal, but I’m not sure he understands just how nerve racking it is being me.  Every now and then, I like to give him just a little taste of 24/7 in a Planters can.  (Mixed, salted. Mmmm…. ) 

Take last Thursday, for example: 

My bed was warm and comfy.  Daylight was just beginning to peak under the blinds.  I cracked open an eye and squinted at my watch.  That’s right, I wear my watch to bed.  I’m too nearsighted to see the clock.   6:45. Good, I could log Z’s for another 15 minutes.  

15 minutes later I checked my watch again.  7:30!  Impossible! 

“Aaaargh!”  LATE!  We were going to be LATE!  I flew out of bed, shouting to my husband that we were LATE! LATE! 

I stumbled to my son’s room and shook him awake. 

“Get up, Buddy!  We’re going to be LATE!” 

“Huh?  Ok, I have to go potty.” 

Moments later I simulated a small earthquake with my daughter’s bed as the epicenter to get her moving.  She groaned and rolled over.  The trembler went up a couple of notches on the Richter scale.  

“OK, OK, I’m up!” she said, pulling the covers over her head. 

I yanked the covers off the bed, including the sheet.  Hard to snuggy up now! 

In the next 25 minutes a frantic scuffle ensued, jammies flying hither nither, small socks rudely tugged onto reluctant feet, cereal scarfed, homework hastily crammed into backpacks.  

“OK, let’s go!’ 

“Wait, I can’t find my jacket!” 

“Aaaargh!”  I was beginning to sound like a pirate. 

“What’s going on now?” my husband asked. 

“Jacket, jacket!  She can’t find her jacket!  We’re LATE!” 

“Not my problem”, he said, newspaper under his arm, headed toward the bathroom. 

Whoa!  Hold on there a minute, cowboy!  Not your problem?  Well, I didn’t have time to argue the point, but I was about to give him a problem.  A big one.           

We headed out the door, and started toward school.  We live less than a block away from the elementary school, yet we are always late.  LATE.   And it’s not all mom’s fault, because it’s a hell of a trip down the street.  My oldest son likes school, he just hates the walk.  He thinks I should drive him, but the closest to the school I can get a parking space is two houses down from our own.   We don’t need to drive just to get two houses closer.  

“Owwwie!  My shoes hurt!  My toes feel funny!”  My son stopped mid-sidewalk, looking tortured.  

“What’s wrong with your shoes?  They were fine a minute ago!” 

“I hate these shoes!  They’re too big!  My toes don’t touch this part!” he said, pointing to the tip of his shoes.  “I want my old shoes back!” 

As patiently as I could muster, I explained that when your toes touch the end, your shoes are too small.  That’s why we bought new shoes. 

“If you still don’t like them by the end of the day, you won’t have to keep wearing them, but I think you’ll get used to them. 

Pouty faced and not looking convinced, Jackson hobbled a few steps further. 

He stopped again. 

“Itchy, itchy!  I’m all itchy!  My legs itch!”  He did a wacky sort of dance, hopping and scratching wildly. 

Hmmph.  Must be allergic to walking. 

A little farther down the road he turned up the heat. 

“Ouch!  My penis hurts! My pants are hurting it! Help me!”  he exclaimed, clutching his crotch in feigned agony. 

Good grief!  Maybe he could have said that a little louder.  I don’t think every neighbor heard. 

“Well, if your pants are rubbing, just, well, move it to one side,” I suggested.  Where was my husband when I needed him?  Oh yeah, he was in his “office” with the newspaper, not having a problem.  

“No, you do it!” 

Now that is outside my job description.  And how to explain that if I helped him adjust right there on the street, I feared some passerby would think I was molesting a small boy on his way to school, and call protective services.   But time was tickin’, and I still had to return home and take a toddler to preschool.   Exasperatedly, I turned his back to the street, grabbed the waistband of his Scooby Doo undies, and gave them a good shake. 

“How’s that?” 

“Better, I guess.” 

And so it went.  Eventually we arrived at school.  LATE, but present and accounted for. 

The next day my husband took the kids to school. 

They hadn’t left the porch when he said impatiently  “What’s wrong with it?  Well, just move it until it doesn’t hurt anymore!”  He looked at me with frustration stamped across his face.  He didn’t have time to fool around.  He still had to get to work! 

I looked him square in the eye and closed the door.   I could hear my husband’s irritated voice as they walked down the steps.  “Now what?  There’s nothing wrong with your socks!”  

Smiling, I went to poor myself another cup of coffee.  I was willing to bet they’d crack his shell. 

Not my problem.

That’s a Crock!

There is a renowned child psychologist or some such “ist” who writes a syndicated column carried by our local newspaper.  I cannot remember his name, which is just as well since I am about to misquote him dreadfully, but I do know he has written several books and is considered an expert.  His picture printed just above his column must have been taken the day his hemorrhoids flared, or right after he took a sip of vending machine coffee.  He has the sourest look on his face.  He looks like someone more likely to abuse your children than counsel them.  Supposedly he has grown children, all psychologically whole, and productive citizens, but that is by his account.  I have no proof of this.  I have never seen him pictured with any sour faced children purported to be his offspring.   

Even though I seldom agree with him, I do read his column from time to time just so I can roll my eyes and say, “Yeah, right.  Like that would work with my kids!”.  Of course, I am not an expert.  I would not even say I am an expert with my own children.  I am just a regular mom doing her best to raise her children well.  But here is the point of this little tirade.  Potty training.  I am on my third and last (I believe) episode of potty training.  The Expert believes we have become a nation of potty training wimps.  Apparently children were potty trained at a much younger age when our parents were in diapers.  The secret, he maintains, is to let your child go without a diaper for a week.  Then when he messes you can put him on the potty.  After no more than a week the little darling will understand and start using the potty.  There is probably more to it than this, but that is the skeletal version. 

OK, well when my parents were in nappies they didn’t have any kind of stay dry lining, so maybe he has a point there.  Grandma probably got really tired of Cloroxing all those smellies and was very motivated to move on to toilet training.  But in regards to Dr. Expert’s method, I do not think a week of having poop and pee on my sofa is going to do Mommy any good psychologically.  And our grandmothers were home all day.  They didn’t have to worry about baby pooping in the minivan, or peeing in the dance studio while big sister practiced plies. My bigger objection, however, is that I have learned something important from my first two children.  They control their own bladder and bowels.  Yes, that is shocking news, isn’t it?  They themselves have the ultimate control over when they poop and pee, and where.  

When my daughter was little, I tried just about every version of potty training, beginning at an optimistic 18 months.  She understood.  She didn’t care.  She didn’t want to use the potty.  Messy pants?  OK.  Pee on the rug?  OK.  Whatever.  I didn’t give up, but I made no progress.  The pediatrician told me not to worry, just keep sitting her on the potty, and when she was ready, she would be “trained” rapidly.  At about 2 ½ years of age, just as I feared she would wear diapers walking down the aisle, I tempted her with pretty “big girl panties”.  I explained that she had to use the potty to wear these, and that if she went poo or pee in her panties, I would throw them in the garbage.  She really wanted to wear them.  The first day she pooped big time in her pants.  She watched me throw them away.  That was the last accident we had. 

Wow!  It doesn’t happen young, but I had the answer!  Then my son came along.  I went down the same path.  I familiarized him with the potty.  If he should happen to let something loose while sitting, I would praise him loftily.  Still, he really had no interest in getting to the potty whenever the urge to go hit him.  I tried big boy pants.  I explained just as I had to my daughter that the dinosaur underwear would go in the garbage if he went poo in his pants instead of the potty. 

The first day he did a huge doo.  I made a big show of throwing them away.  I put on another pair.  

He did another doo.  I made a big show of throwing them away.  I put on another pair.  

He peed.  He took them off and threw them away himself.  Then he went to his drawer and told me I needed to buy some more. 

When I told him “No more, you will have to wear a diaper if you won’t use the potty,” he just looked at me and said, “OK, dyepah.”  He was almost three years old when he decided on his own that he liked the potty after all, and overnight he was “trained”.  

Now I am working on my youngest son.  He will be three in March, but he is much more “babyish” than the other two were at this age.  Still, I have been going through the routine.  Oh, he gets it.  He just doesn’t want to.  Last night before bath time, I had him on the potty.  “Go pee pee!” I encouraged.  “Just like Jackie and Julia, go pee in the potty!”  He grinned happily, pointed down between his legs to the water and cried “Pee pee!”  Except he hadn’t done anything.  Eventually I put him in the bath.  He stood there proudly and said “Mommy, wah dee!” (“Watch this!”).  He then proceeded to grab his penis and direct a spray of urine across the tub, laughing the whole time.  

Recently he has decided he does not like any poo or pee in his diaper at all, which I take as a good sign.  Before he could swish around in it all day and not care.  The down side is that he keeps taking off his own diaper and handing it to me.  Today he marched up to me naked and handed me a diaper full of chocolate nuggets. 

Uh oh.   “I’ll bet some escaped!” I thought. 

Sure enough, as I retraced his steps he had left a doo doo nugget trail, like Hansel and Gretel in the forest. 

“Jerry, help!  Jamie spilled nuggets!” 

My husband ran to assist as I quickly secured and swabbed the poopetrator.  

“Wait, you missed one!”  I said, pointing at a Hershey’s kiss size brown ball of poop, camouflaged well in the multi-colored runner of the hallway. 

“Move, move!” he shouted.  “You’re on one!  No, not there, you’re smooshing it into the carpet!” 

Just now as I am writing this Jamie handed me another loaded one.  Fortunately this one appears to be fully intact.  But what now?  Teach him how to put on a clean diapie himself?  That would be helpful.  I am not stressed about this at all, despite the day’s poopisode.  After all, the first two taught me that they will go when they are ready, and not before.  I can go through the routine, but the timing is up to them.  They will respond to motivation, or will motivate themselves, when they are ready.  I’m not really sure how our grandmother’s did it.  I mean, bowel control is not new.  So maybe we really are a nation of potty training wimps.  Maybe we need to send our babies to potty training boot camp.  I don’t know.  I just know I am less stressed by letting the kids develop at their own pace, and it seems to suit them better, too.   

So Dr. Expert I-can-raise-your-kids-better-than-you-can will just have to shake his head in disgust at me, and continue to glare sour facedly at the world from his throne of newsprint superiority.  Wimpiness seems to work OK for our family, and we’re not going to doo it any other way.

Pass the Kryptonite, Please

I’m hanging up my cape.  It hurts to admit this.  I’m not even sure if I can really do it.  The ugly truth is that I stink at being Super Mom.  I’ve always been an over achiever, but I just can’t pull this one off.  I cannot meet my own expectations.

God knows I’ve tried.  I bake cakes, cookies, and cupcakes for all sorts of occasions and school events.  Help in the kindergarten classroom, although only once a week, and I feel badly that I cannot handle committing to more.  I spent hours this fall putting together gift baskets for the school carnival silent auction.  I sew Halloween costumes.  Make Christmas ornaments with the kids.  Help get holiday gifts for my parents to give others since shopping is harder for them now.  Chauffeur to soccer, ice skating, basketball, dance, and birthday parties.  Help with homework.  Discipline, encourage, laugh and cry. 

But when I am not dressed as the caped crusader, no Bruce Wayne with faithful butler Alfred is left to fill the void.  More of a very mortal Oscar Madison with Felix aspirations.  My home is a pigsty.  I clean every chance I have, every spare moment.  Going to the bathroom?  Well, I’ll just grab that laundry basket and empty the dryer on my way.  Phone call?  Fold clothes or do dishes while talking.  Four mornings a week are devoted exclusively to serious cleaning.   The two oldest children are pushed to do what they can to contribute, although I have to threaten dire consequences to get results.  My husband works long hours, but spends his weekends vacuuming and doing yard work.  Despite all this, we live in a landfill. 

I know there are worse homes than mine.  I’ve seen them on TV.  They make me look like a pretty good little housekeeper.  Ever seen the show “How Clean Is Your House?”  with the two British ladies who go to the nastiest abodes in the U.S. to clean them up?   Having seen how those more than two standard deviations from the mean approach household hygiene, I think I am safe in saying the health department will not be putting yellow tape across my front door and taking my kids away.   But my hovel is bad enough that I live in fear of unexpected guests.  It takes me a week to get ready for a play date.  

There are so many other tasks left undone.  Lots and lots of papers to be filed.  The blinds I keep meaning to put up in the boys’ room because Jackson thinks his window is scary.  The ancient and filthy sheers in the office window I need to replace.   Pictures never hung.  The disaster I know awaits me in the back of my closet where the cats have been sleeping.   The mystery boxes in the garage that have been there since we first moved into this house four years ago.  The dust on my floor-to-ceiling shelves.  The huge box of photos where every memory is stuffed haphazardly.  The pants that need mending,   The toys that need to be sorted and donated, or dumped.  

And then, there is me.  I am gaining weight and breaking out.  My hair needs a cut and at least a quickie home dye job.  I am so tired at night I fall asleep with my two year old, before I’ve had a chance to brush my teeth or take nightly medications.  I look like hell and I know it.  So, I am going to have to re-prioritize and learn to live with what I cannot do before I find myself drooling in a hospital bed somewhere.    Somehow I am going to have to forego some of those things “I have to do.”  Of course, as Mom my children will always come first, but I am going to have to draw the line and make room for me.  I feel guilty even saying that. 

I would like to know how other moms pull it off.  The ones who are active in every possible school event, teach Sunday School, and are Girl Scout Leaders.  When you stop by to return something their child left at your house, they come to the door with makeup on and invite you in to their tidy home for a cup of tea.  What is their secret?  Is it a God given talent I was born without?  I can’t find any other moms who are so obviously as discombobulated as I.  

One mother I know had to rush off after helping with the kindergarten Halloween party to have her “brows done” before meeting her husband for lunch.  My plans after the party involved the grocery store and a bottle of Pine Sol.  I don’t even know what one does to ones brows that needs to be done by a third party.  I mean, I pluck the unibrow and hunt out strays, but that’s as “done” as my brows get.  I can’t imagine having the time or funds to even consider anything more.  

Another friend was commiserating with me, laughing about mom’s whose children’s scrapbooks are always up to date.  Huh?  My kids don’t each have a scrapbook.  Unless you consider their whole rooms scrapbooks.  Oh, my mistake, I was thinking of scrapheap.   I’ve already told you where the family photos live.  If my children want additional mementos of their youth their mom has saved, they will have to look in the manila folders and plastic storage boxes where handprints and crayon drawings are tucked away, in mom’s jewelry drawer where plastic bags with names and dates hold tiny teeth, and in their own memory. 

Yet my children are bright, happy, and healthy.  They are well cared for and well loved, and they know it.  My husband and I are best friends.  There is enough love and laughter around our house to please Johnboy Walton.  I know in my heart that the rest of it is just window dressing.   And that is why I’ve decided to stop trying to ditch my day clothes for a leotard and tights every time I pass a phone booth.  The desire to do it all will probably never go away, but I am going to have to work harder at not doing it all than I ever have at trying to be Super Mom.  Our family memories will be of meals shared together, human pile ups on the sofa with Daddy at the bottom, good smells from the kitchen, and the same overall warm fuzzy feeling my parents gave me as a souvenir of my youth.   They will not be of how clean the carpet was, a skinny mom with great brows, or of our lovely décor.  

So be it.  I don’t look good in a cape anyway.

Catharsis

My husband and I are going to buy a minivan.  This is big.  Not the car itself, the fact that we are getting one.  OK, the van is big, too, but that is not the issue.  Who drives minivans?  Moms.  Mothers.  Hausfraus.  Ladies who have willingly subjugated their lives and bodies to their offspring.  As have I, but the minivan is the last symbol of wifery and mommyism for me to adopt.  I have held out as long as I could.  At one point in my life I swore I would never drive a minivan, but now, I must confess, I can hardly wait. 

It is so much easier to get three kids into and out of a minivan than it is a sedan.  I can seat them far enough apart so that little arms cannot reach across and grab a Happy Meal toy out of a sibling’s hand, or poke any available body part.  There is no problem fitting one car seat and two booster seats, and it is easy to buckle all three.  No squeezing my hand between child seats searching for the seat belt latch.  No struggling to lift a little body past the booster seat to the car seat in the middle.  Absolutely no possibility of the oldest child having to ride in the front seat because three child seats do not fit across the back.  Plenty of space, plenty of drink holders for everyone.

And why should I ever have objected?  After all, being a stay at home mom is what I always wanted, and I waited a long time to get here.  I love toting them to soccer, ice skating, and birthday parties.  I embrace my life as a mom.  I just don’t embrace looking like all the moms looked when I was a little kid.  You know, warm and loving, but kind of, well, sort of like yesterday’s lettuce; post-peak, you might say.  A little thick around the middle, just past the glow of youth.  That is exactly what I look like, but somehow the minivan has come to symbolize all this for me.  So I held out.  I put up with a too-small deteriorating old sedan for too long because it was not a minivan.  I couldn’t afford anything else, either, but that is beside the point.  I repeatedly insisted that when I had the money for a new car, I was going to buy a bigger, nicer sedan, not a minivan.  Any nerdy family car was OK as long as it was not a van. 

Of course logic tells me that although there may be a correlation between minivans and encroaching middle age, that does not indicate causality.  But logic is not involved here; this is emotional.  So let’s cut to the chase.  I am on the cusp of middle age.  Some would say I am already there.  I have born three children, and I look it.  No matter how hard I work out, I am never going to be the same woman who could wear allover Lycra and look good.  So if the minivan is some sort of personal rite of passage, bring it on.  I am ready to let go of all previous prejudices, and just be who I am.  Actually, I kind of like who I am.  And that person needs a new car that can handle a family of five. 

And let me tell ya, there are reasons why these lumbering boxcars are so popular, and it ain’t their good looks or great mileage.  It’s convenience, baby.  And when kids are around, that’s what it is all about.  That, and safety.  So I am going to get the whole shmeer.   Leather seats, 6 disc CD changer, subwoofer under the driver’s seat (I have no idea what this does except it has something to do with good sound), air deflector on the hood to keep road damage down, fenderwell trim to do the same, auto doors and power seat adjustments.  I am going to be a minivan mama.  Woooo hooo!  I have arrived!