Mac spent all day home yesterday complaining of a stomach ache that seemed to come and go. Or perhaps was never even there to begin with. He wakes fine today.
Sailor, on the other hand, does not want me to get out of bed and leave him. “I had a bad dream,” he tells me. He recounts the dream in surprising detail and I reassure him that I am here now and he is safe. I ask him to get dressed in his warm comfy clothes and he tells me he would rather stay in his warm comfy pajamas. At breakfast he complains that his mouth hurts. “Your throat?” I ask. Through cereal I see a swollen spotted tonsil that is no doubt strep throat. I call the pediatrician and say I think my little boy has strep. I am told there are no available appointments today and so the doctor will call me later. I repeat that I think he has strep and say that a phone call is not going to do him any good, he needs to see a doctor. My mind is already alternating between options: go to the ER or back to the old pediatrician who never didn’t have an available appointment to see a sick child. I only call the doc for 5% of all that goes wrong with my kids. The other 95% I take care of on my own, so when I call it's cuz I really mean it.
Wea re given an 11am appointment at which I spend $20 to be told what I already know: Sailor has strep.
Then I drop $100 on a new vacuum cleaner.
And my car is rattling. Seems like everything is falling apart today.
I expect Mac to wake up sick tomorrow morning.
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Friday, November 7, 2008
Friday, November 7, 2008
Sailor: "Mom, thanks for the pirates back. I’m really enjoying them."
Sunday, November 9, 2008
We have a big party to celebrate our candidate’s fabulous election to the white house. I drink as much champagne as I can but don’t even catch a buzz (and I don’t like champagne by the way). Mac, on the other hand, is accused of being drunk. From the 2 sips of champagne I allow him and his brother. I don’t think so.
Monday , November 10, 2008
What are we doing today? Sailor keeps asking me. He knows his Judo class starts today and wants to know how many things he has to get thru before his late afternoon class. Not as many as originally planned, as the shoe store I planned to be at when they opened at 9am does not have the boots I want for the boys. And the dinner plans we made last week fell thru. Nonetheless, we still have to grocery shop, go to the library, gymnastics, have lunch and playtime with friends we haven’t seen in over a year, and then go to Judo.
On the walk over, an elderly Asian man is having trouble mounting the curb. I stop the stroller and he accepts my offer of help.
“Wow, Mom, you really are a doctor,” Mac says as we walk away. “I think being a doctor really is in our blood.”
Sailor is a natural at Judo. I watch him. He is intent and serious and handles himself with skill and grace. His partner is a boy of about 10. Mac on the other hand as usual cannot stop giggling. He laughs at everything and giggles thru the entire session. He has too much energy. I think he needs to just run track. Both boys get to borrow the uniform shirt, called gee. They ask about the different colored belts. Sailor surmises that white is the training color, yellow is the trainer and black is the master. Smart kid.
November 11, 2008
Today is Veterinarians Day, according to Mac, and so we have a day off. We go to lunch with my dad at Ed Debevic's. Kids declare it is ok to eat the fries becuz "it's a special weekend today." I can't believe there is NOTHING healthy on their menu. I don't miss that place at all. And I haven't eaten fries since Memorial Day.
We spend the morning shopping for boots. It is getting very cold already and I know we will need them sooner than not. Not a fun spending of the money. Now we are on round 2 of trying to build the 1300+ piece Lego MTT (StarWars thing). This is not a project to start at 4:30 on a Tuesday afternoon!
At dinner – pbj, apples and carrots, becuz I have a stomach ache from eating French fries – Sailor is in some sort of manic mood. He is very funny, but annoying too. He is shooting rapid-fire questions at us that are so fluent one would think he were possessed of some sort of disorder. “Why do you have hair in your nose Mommy? I don’t’ have hair in my nose. I have buggers.”
Sailor wants to know if today was a Judo day. “Will it be Judo day when I wake up?” Oh how I wish they could go to Judo every afternoon. They were so great yesterday I want to see them excel at this sport! This one seems so much more valuable than some of the others they have taken. “Why is Judo Chinese?” Mac wanted to know yesterday. I wanted to tell him that if he could have stopped giggling for single moment he would have heard that it is Japanese. Did I mention, the Sensei is kinda cute. And apparently single.
Sailor: "Mom, thanks for the pirates back. I’m really enjoying them."
Sunday, November 9, 2008
We have a big party to celebrate our candidate’s fabulous election to the white house. I drink as much champagne as I can but don’t even catch a buzz (and I don’t like champagne by the way). Mac, on the other hand, is accused of being drunk. From the 2 sips of champagne I allow him and his brother. I don’t think so.
Monday , November 10, 2008
What are we doing today? Sailor keeps asking me. He knows his Judo class starts today and wants to know how many things he has to get thru before his late afternoon class. Not as many as originally planned, as the shoe store I planned to be at when they opened at 9am does not have the boots I want for the boys. And the dinner plans we made last week fell thru. Nonetheless, we still have to grocery shop, go to the library, gymnastics, have lunch and playtime with friends we haven’t seen in over a year, and then go to Judo.
On the walk over, an elderly Asian man is having trouble mounting the curb. I stop the stroller and he accepts my offer of help.
“Wow, Mom, you really are a doctor,” Mac says as we walk away. “I think being a doctor really is in our blood.”
Sailor is a natural at Judo. I watch him. He is intent and serious and handles himself with skill and grace. His partner is a boy of about 10. Mac on the other hand as usual cannot stop giggling. He laughs at everything and giggles thru the entire session. He has too much energy. I think he needs to just run track. Both boys get to borrow the uniform shirt, called gee. They ask about the different colored belts. Sailor surmises that white is the training color, yellow is the trainer and black is the master. Smart kid.
November 11, 2008
Today is Veterinarians Day, according to Mac, and so we have a day off. We go to lunch with my dad at Ed Debevic's. Kids declare it is ok to eat the fries becuz "it's a special weekend today." I can't believe there is NOTHING healthy on their menu. I don't miss that place at all. And I haven't eaten fries since Memorial Day.
We spend the morning shopping for boots. It is getting very cold already and I know we will need them sooner than not. Not a fun spending of the money. Now we are on round 2 of trying to build the 1300+ piece Lego MTT (StarWars thing). This is not a project to start at 4:30 on a Tuesday afternoon!
At dinner – pbj, apples and carrots, becuz I have a stomach ache from eating French fries – Sailor is in some sort of manic mood. He is very funny, but annoying too. He is shooting rapid-fire questions at us that are so fluent one would think he were possessed of some sort of disorder. “Why do you have hair in your nose Mommy? I don’t’ have hair in my nose. I have buggers.”
Sailor wants to know if today was a Judo day. “Will it be Judo day when I wake up?” Oh how I wish they could go to Judo every afternoon. They were so great yesterday I want to see them excel at this sport! This one seems so much more valuable than some of the others they have taken. “Why is Judo Chinese?” Mac wanted to know yesterday. I wanted to tell him that if he could have stopped giggling for single moment he would have heard that it is Japanese. Did I mention, the Sensei is kinda cute. And apparently single.
November 4, 2008 Election Day.
“It’s Election Day, Mom!” Mac wakes me when the alarm rings early. He might as well be waking me with, “Merry Christmas,” his excitement is so earnest. The day – the entire day – is charged with an electricity, an energy … a calm. Election day. The day it will be decided whether we will have another 4 years of the same or if we will finally be able to show the world that the people of America are not stupid!
My boys and I wear our shirts: “A Vote Today ROCKS Tomorrow!” Mac asks me, “What will we do if we don’t win?” I don’t have a good answer for him. I don’t know what we will do.
At school many of Mac’s friends tell me they voted with their moms this morning. Math Genius Boy shows me his mom’s voting receipt. “Look! Here’s my recipe!”
I wait all day, til school is over, to vote. Mac wants to come along. To be part of history. Sailor does, too. I can barely resist walking over to the polling place. But I wait. I want to share this experience with my children.
Dinner is served in the living room so we can begin watching the hours of tv coverage. I am a wreck. We are not going to win. We can’t. Something will happen. It just can’t be… How am I going to sit here for 4 to 5 miore hours?!?!?
Both boys have fallen asleep on the sofa when the news comes quietly on the television screen: Barack Obama has been elected president of the United States of America. I cover my mouth to silence the longest scream of my life. Tears streak down my cheeks. I am in shock. I can’t believe it happened. WE WON!!!! Our country is about to change, to unite, to be freed from the bonds of a man who should never have stolen his way into the leadership seat in the first place. Change! It is here. We won!
Mac is too tired to be awakened. Even when a boy from his French class is on tv. I don’t even try to wake Sailor. There will be champagne tomorrow – “That drink you said, that I have never had,” Sailor said earlier today.
I couldn’t sleep last night, I was so nervous about Election day. I doubt I will sleep well tonight, either, from the excitement!
How will we celebrate tomorrow? I wish we had Victory t-shirts! The tv commentators are flagging – with relief I assume. They have been thru a stressful night, with the rest of us. My father, my children’s GrandDad, recognizes the strength of this night, “I never thought I would see this in my life time.” He will live to see the first Black man in the White House. And it only took me 40 years to understand the magnitude of the power of one person – to understand the importance, the right, the privilege to vote! I voted with pride today.
America – Yes we can!
November 5, 2008
I am so tired! I am in the shower trying to wake up.
Sailor comes in, “Hi, Mommy.”
“Hi, Sailor.”
“What are going do today?”
“We have a playdate with Braden.”
“Where are we going to put it?”
“At the art studio.”
“Ahhh.”
The world is a different place today. “I felt like I was 6 inches taller this morning,” said one man. It is a sunny, warm day. There is not a single newspaper to be had from any newsstand. There is a feeling of hope. A feeling of quiet jubilation. A feeling that maybe everything will turn out alright after all.
Except my kids are fighting and Sailor is crying becuz Mac just hurt him. Must do damage control. Some things never change.
Week 8
I realize I should not be measuring our school years in weeks. It’s like a countdown to summer – well it actually is a countdown to summer – but it’s 40 out of 52 weeks! That is too much to count down. It is more than ¾ of the entire year. I have to stop. I have to get over this whole school thing. Even Mac is happy to go to school. Likes school even. And I don’t mind him going. I just wish I had more time to spend with him, to figure him out, to be happy with him, to find the baby in him that he once was and whom I had exclusively.
I am loving my days with Sailor. Most of the time, anyway. He is funny and happy and helpful. Most of the time, anyway. He is still prone to little tantrums and in fact had several today during which he stormed off to his room for things that didn’t seem all that worthy of such drama – a popped balloon, Mac wanting to do a puzzle on his own…. He is still a moody child, but for the most part I am really having a great time with him.
It is Monday night. A busy day, as usual, with no time to slow down for anything from drop-off to pick-up.
Sailor amazes me by agreeing without fuss to walk to pick up Mac after school. It’s raining and his stroller was not covered before the shower began. So he dons green froggy rain boots and matching rain coat, which we realize is too small. I put on boots and grab Mac’s firefighter red raincoat and matching “barilla” (as Sailor calls it). Sailor holds his pirate barilla overhead and I hold Mac’s above my own head. And it is not the first time that it strikes me: I am walking down the street using my little boy’s umbrella and I don’t care. I actually prefer this smaller, lightweight version to the adult model, which always seems a bit clumsy and awkward. Perhaps too large for my small frame. The thought crosses my mind that I should buy myself a little girls’ umbrella, maybe a lady bug one or a flowery thing. Hello Kitty, maybe. But, I realize, it would be impossible to get away with using this. Using my little boys’ umbrellas is ok, because I have little boys. Using a little girl umbrella would point big fingers nasty to my growing insanity as a mother.
At school we fight to find Mac. It is never easy to find or be found through the ever present sea of multicolored umbrellas. Dipping low and holding umbrellas high we try to sneak in close. When Mac emerges with his usual smile and comes forward for his usual hug he turns down his rain coat. “I’m fine now,” and so he is, as he has on gloves, a hood and his puffy vest. “I found this in the bottom of my locker,” he tells me. I wonder how long it has been there. It’s not as if his locker is some sort of abyss.
“How many days til Mac’s Halloween party?” Sailor asks me this afternoon. Good, an opportunity to do a lesson on the days of the week and math. See, this home school thing is working just fine. I put up one finger for each day remaining before Friday. He does the math and then figures out the subtraction for how many days left after we take away each day. When he gets to the last day, he says, “And then the party day!” Later at night he shows Mac what he knows: he holds up his pinky finger and tells his brother, “This day is your party!” No context, just this information. I hug him and tell him how nice it was to be with him today.
Last night we were talking about an illness called cystic fibrosis, which a few good friends have. Sailor says it this way, “Six four five Brosis,” sending me to the computer to email said friends and pass along what is sure to be a good laugh. “What is it really?” he always wants to know when he catches us snickering at something he says. I am always loathe to correct him.
They are asleep now. I should be too. But what I really want to do is spirit them off in the night. To somewhere new. Mac wants a bigger house, “like all my friends.” I am uncertain which friends he is talking about but the majority of the friends who come to mind live in house not much bigger and sometimes even smaller than our house. It makes me wonder why he thinks a bigger house would be better. It makes me sad that he feels this way at 7, and at the public school no less. I thought we would avoid this until he was older, or forever because I wasn’t even able to get him into the fancy private school down the street where the children live in houses whose elaborate kitchens are bigger than our whole place. I thought I would avoid the unpleasantness of this shortcoming simply because he is a boy and I didn’t think he would ever notice enough to care. I can’t fix everything he wants me to fix. Not on my own anyway. I can’t get him a bigger house. I can’t get him a baby sister. I can’t get him a new dad. I can try but I can’t make promises and I can’t give him his heart’s desire on a platter. Even tho I would if I could and I know he deserves it. But I do so much for him already. I guess “so much” is just not enuf. Love is not enuf. It never is….
I am loving my days with Sailor. Most of the time, anyway. He is funny and happy and helpful. Most of the time, anyway. He is still prone to little tantrums and in fact had several today during which he stormed off to his room for things that didn’t seem all that worthy of such drama – a popped balloon, Mac wanting to do a puzzle on his own…. He is still a moody child, but for the most part I am really having a great time with him.
It is Monday night. A busy day, as usual, with no time to slow down for anything from drop-off to pick-up.
Sailor amazes me by agreeing without fuss to walk to pick up Mac after school. It’s raining and his stroller was not covered before the shower began. So he dons green froggy rain boots and matching rain coat, which we realize is too small. I put on boots and grab Mac’s firefighter red raincoat and matching “barilla” (as Sailor calls it). Sailor holds his pirate barilla overhead and I hold Mac’s above my own head. And it is not the first time that it strikes me: I am walking down the street using my little boy’s umbrella and I don’t care. I actually prefer this smaller, lightweight version to the adult model, which always seems a bit clumsy and awkward. Perhaps too large for my small frame. The thought crosses my mind that I should buy myself a little girls’ umbrella, maybe a lady bug one or a flowery thing. Hello Kitty, maybe. But, I realize, it would be impossible to get away with using this. Using my little boys’ umbrellas is ok, because I have little boys. Using a little girl umbrella would point big fingers nasty to my growing insanity as a mother.
At school we fight to find Mac. It is never easy to find or be found through the ever present sea of multicolored umbrellas. Dipping low and holding umbrellas high we try to sneak in close. When Mac emerges with his usual smile and comes forward for his usual hug he turns down his rain coat. “I’m fine now,” and so he is, as he has on gloves, a hood and his puffy vest. “I found this in the bottom of my locker,” he tells me. I wonder how long it has been there. It’s not as if his locker is some sort of abyss.
“How many days til Mac’s Halloween party?” Sailor asks me this afternoon. Good, an opportunity to do a lesson on the days of the week and math. See, this home school thing is working just fine. I put up one finger for each day remaining before Friday. He does the math and then figures out the subtraction for how many days left after we take away each day. When he gets to the last day, he says, “And then the party day!” Later at night he shows Mac what he knows: he holds up his pinky finger and tells his brother, “This day is your party!” No context, just this information. I hug him and tell him how nice it was to be with him today.
Last night we were talking about an illness called cystic fibrosis, which a few good friends have. Sailor says it this way, “Six four five Brosis,” sending me to the computer to email said friends and pass along what is sure to be a good laugh. “What is it really?” he always wants to know when he catches us snickering at something he says. I am always loathe to correct him.
They are asleep now. I should be too. But what I really want to do is spirit them off in the night. To somewhere new. Mac wants a bigger house, “like all my friends.” I am uncertain which friends he is talking about but the majority of the friends who come to mind live in house not much bigger and sometimes even smaller than our house. It makes me wonder why he thinks a bigger house would be better. It makes me sad that he feels this way at 7, and at the public school no less. I thought we would avoid this until he was older, or forever because I wasn’t even able to get him into the fancy private school down the street where the children live in houses whose elaborate kitchens are bigger than our whole place. I thought I would avoid the unpleasantness of this shortcoming simply because he is a boy and I didn’t think he would ever notice enough to care. I can’t fix everything he wants me to fix. Not on my own anyway. I can’t get him a bigger house. I can’t get him a baby sister. I can’t get him a new dad. I can try but I can’t make promises and I can’t give him his heart’s desire on a platter. Even tho I would if I could and I know he deserves it. But I do so much for him already. I guess “so much” is just not enuf. Love is not enuf. It never is….
Week 7 – Happy Columbus Day
Sunday I ask the boys what they would like to do tomorrow on our day off.
“Go somewhere we haven’t been before,” Mac says.
“Like where?” I ask.
“Africa?” Sailor suggests.
It is late and I am up not-watching a movie on my laptop ad I ponder all that I have done today while also pondering why it is that is seems people around me feel I am not pulling my weight or something absurd like this. If I were to list all that I do in a 12 hour, I’m sorry, in a typical 17-hour day, I would put you all to sleep, as well as myself. Somewhere between the simultaneous breakfasts and lunches and KP duty and laundry folding, checkbook balancing, playground trip, phone call returning, credit card inquiring, floor mopping and hand scrubbing, dinner preparation, bathroom cleaning… it goes on and on and yet, the outside demands continue to mount and I am loath to tell anyone “no”…
Monday night we are lying in bed reading one of Beverly Cleary’s Ramona (or as Sailor calls them, RE-mona) books. There is reference made to a paste pot. “What is that?” Mac asks. I do my best to describe paste and the little pot it came in, comparing it a little bit to a glue stick.
“Is it still real now?” he asks.
In fact I have no idea whether or not paste still exists but I can still remember how paste smells.
“Cuz I think I have seen a waste pot,” Mac continues.
“A paste pot,” I correct.
Tuesday morning I am in the shower and Sailor is naked and awaiting his turn under the spray. “Mommy, why does my dingle hopper stick out?”
“It wants to play.”
“How do I make it go back down? I keep pushing on it but it won’t go back down.”
“You have to leave it alone and it will get tired and go down.”
I get out of the shower and Sailor gets in.
“Mommy does water make it go down?”
“Um… cold water does, I think.”
“Well my water is not cold but my peeper went down.”
“It’s tired.”
“Maybe it got bored. Mommy, you know when my peeper sticks out it stretches.”
“Yes, it does.”
“Why does it stretch?”
“So it can play.”
“How does it play?”
I quickly think back to Sailor’s confession of last week and realize that this is a child who, if given too much information, will want to experiment with such info. I chose my words carefully, knowing that this is not the time to be “tell-it-like-it-is honest mom.”
“Well it’s kind of a grown up thing. It plays with girls…” I let my voice trail off.
“Mommy? Are you going help me wash my hair?”
“Yes, sweety, I will.”
Whew! That was a close one!
It’s brisk out this morning. It feels wonderful to me. Cool but not bitterly cold yet. Mac is not warm enuf in his raincoat tho so I offer to swing by on my way to Sailor’s soccer class and bring him a hoodie. I sign into school and enter the office. I hold out Mac’s hoodie to the office secretary. I expect she will take this clothing item from me and deliver it to Mac before recess. “Oh, his class is down in the auditorium. You can just take it to him.” I nearly fall over in shock. No pass to walk the halls. No lecture about how we can’t go into the school and disrupt the classroom teachers. No threats or warnings. What the heck is going on here?! Have I passed some sort of initiation test? Is the principal letting up on his lock down? Are the office ladies getting lazy? I say simply, “Ok, thank you,” and head to the auditorium, Sailor in tow, and search the big room to quietly deliver Mac’s sweatshirt. This school is really something.
Wednesday
This morning Sailor is eating string cheese. “Why do they call this strip cheese?”
Sailor has been sent to his room to find pajamas. “These are a number 5!”
When he puts them on the cuffs are a little short.
“Look! Wrists! I see wrists.” He goes back to look for a size 6.
“Go somewhere we haven’t been before,” Mac says.
“Like where?” I ask.
“Africa?” Sailor suggests.
It is late and I am up not-watching a movie on my laptop ad I ponder all that I have done today while also pondering why it is that is seems people around me feel I am not pulling my weight or something absurd like this. If I were to list all that I do in a 12 hour, I’m sorry, in a typical 17-hour day, I would put you all to sleep, as well as myself. Somewhere between the simultaneous breakfasts and lunches and KP duty and laundry folding, checkbook balancing, playground trip, phone call returning, credit card inquiring, floor mopping and hand scrubbing, dinner preparation, bathroom cleaning… it goes on and on and yet, the outside demands continue to mount and I am loath to tell anyone “no”…
Monday night we are lying in bed reading one of Beverly Cleary’s Ramona (or as Sailor calls them, RE-mona) books. There is reference made to a paste pot. “What is that?” Mac asks. I do my best to describe paste and the little pot it came in, comparing it a little bit to a glue stick.
“Is it still real now?” he asks.
In fact I have no idea whether or not paste still exists but I can still remember how paste smells.
“Cuz I think I have seen a waste pot,” Mac continues.
“A paste pot,” I correct.
Tuesday morning I am in the shower and Sailor is naked and awaiting his turn under the spray. “Mommy, why does my dingle hopper stick out?”
“It wants to play.”
“How do I make it go back down? I keep pushing on it but it won’t go back down.”
“You have to leave it alone and it will get tired and go down.”
I get out of the shower and Sailor gets in.
“Mommy does water make it go down?”
“Um… cold water does, I think.”
“Well my water is not cold but my peeper went down.”
“It’s tired.”
“Maybe it got bored. Mommy, you know when my peeper sticks out it stretches.”
“Yes, it does.”
“Why does it stretch?”
“So it can play.”
“How does it play?”
I quickly think back to Sailor’s confession of last week and realize that this is a child who, if given too much information, will want to experiment with such info. I chose my words carefully, knowing that this is not the time to be “tell-it-like-it-is honest mom.”
“Well it’s kind of a grown up thing. It plays with girls…” I let my voice trail off.
“Mommy? Are you going help me wash my hair?”
“Yes, sweety, I will.”
Whew! That was a close one!
It’s brisk out this morning. It feels wonderful to me. Cool but not bitterly cold yet. Mac is not warm enuf in his raincoat tho so I offer to swing by on my way to Sailor’s soccer class and bring him a hoodie. I sign into school and enter the office. I hold out Mac’s hoodie to the office secretary. I expect she will take this clothing item from me and deliver it to Mac before recess. “Oh, his class is down in the auditorium. You can just take it to him.” I nearly fall over in shock. No pass to walk the halls. No lecture about how we can’t go into the school and disrupt the classroom teachers. No threats or warnings. What the heck is going on here?! Have I passed some sort of initiation test? Is the principal letting up on his lock down? Are the office ladies getting lazy? I say simply, “Ok, thank you,” and head to the auditorium, Sailor in tow, and search the big room to quietly deliver Mac’s sweatshirt. This school is really something.
Wednesday
This morning Sailor is eating string cheese. “Why do they call this strip cheese?”
Sailor has been sent to his room to find pajamas. “These are a number 5!”
When he puts them on the cuffs are a little short.
“Look! Wrists! I see wrists.” He goes back to look for a size 6.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Week 6 – To Tanzania!
Monday night. I have just sent Sailor off to wash his hands. He protests and stomps away from the dinner table. I follow him and find him peeing, and so return to the kitchen.
A moment later he emerges. “Mom, you have to come see this.” He is very serious and his anger has dissipated.
“Look!” he points into the toilet bowl. “There is a too-pon stuck there.”
And so there is.
I apologize.
I flush.
I flush again.
Our new toilet has very minimal water pressure.
I grab a tampon applicator from the garbage can and use it to encourage the “too-pon” to disappear.
I apologize again.
Thank goodness the finder of this lovely object was one of my own and not a guest!
Late at night, before I make my before-bed breakfast and bring a book to bed, I am in the bathroom alone (a rarity of course, especially now that we have no bathroom door). I open the large box of “too-pons” that Sailor and I bought today and inside there is a little package of panty liners, free with my purchase. The neatly wrapped package beside the regular tampon box, inside the jumbo tampon box … it all brings me back almost 30 years to the day that my pre-menstrual kit arrived in the mail. You know the one, you had to send for it and when it arrived you took it to your parents’ bedroom and opened it in secret so your little brother or sister couldn’t see what was in your “starter kit.” All the mini pads that made you feel like a grown up just to wear one around the house for an hour and the maxi pads that were so think they scared the crap out of you, and even a belted pad to make you think twice about entering into puberty at all. No too-pons. No panty liners back there in 1978. Just a few well-written pamphlets on what to expect when you are expecting (your first period!). I haven’t thought about my “starter kit” in years. I wonder if it is still under my parents’ bed. I wonder also what puberty will be like with boys.
Wednesday
We oversleep by too many minutes. I have been turning off the alarm and falling back to sleep. I realize the reason I hate to get up on school days and today is a prime example. By the time I am done making Mac and Sailor two separate and different lunches and full breakfasts and cleaning up supplies and dishes from my work I am wondering if things might be easier if I moved the microwave and toaster over to the top of the dishwasher next to the sink. I am exhausted and we barely make it to school as the bell rings. At the enrichment center I pick up Sailor out of his stroller and tell him I want to hug him all day. “But I have a class,” says the boy who, a month ago, cried and begged not to have to attend the same class. “I will always hug you forever, even when I have to go to school, then when I am home I will hug you again.” He admits he will one day go to school. He breezes thru his class and we take a really long walk to the farm in the zoo. We had a great time there on Sunday eating beans and tomatoes with a farmer. The boys have asked to go back and while Mac is at school Sailor ands I are free to visit the garden again. And heck, the farmer was really attentive and cute. But he so busy with school groups and we can’t get near. We play for a little while in the farm house and then meet my dad for lunch.
Late in the afternoon I have Sailor in my lap again. “You can hug me forever now, Mommy.” So I do. I hold him like I will never let go. He leans back and I kiss his beautiful lips. I see a woman smile at us. I hold him tight and lay my head against his. Shortly he whispers, “Mommy? Are you asleep?”
We stop in LUSH on the way home from Mac’s piano lesson. The boys like to wash their hands there with the fun soaps. I am in the middle of learning about a $48 face cream when Mac needs a bathroom. We go back to the music school where Sailor and I bump into a mom from Mac’s school whom we have seen probably no fewer than twice a day every day all week. “We see her everywhere! I think she is a secret agent like Kornorlius,” he says, referring to a character named Kornelius in one of Mac’s Geronimo Stilton books.
We are all tired when we finally make it home after 6pm. I put a pizza in the oven and Sailor in the shower. Tomorrow is Yom Kippur so we will not go to school, which means we can blow off homework and watch a movie. Sailor and I got several movies from the library on Monday. Sailor tells Mac of my pizza and movie plan. “We are going watch a movie called Back to History.” You know the one, the 1985 classic, starring Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd and the Flux Capacitor.
Sailor has been showing his helpful side lately by toothpasting everyone’s toothbrush, not just his own. The mess is bad but his effort cannot be criticized.
We spend our Jewish day off at the suburban zoo. Sailor helps me carry his stroller up 4 steps and I am certain the spinach is working!
Saturday morning, in two separate rooms, the boys are singing, "Upside, inside out ... I'm a believer!" It's little Ricky Martin meets the Monkees!
A moment later he emerges. “Mom, you have to come see this.” He is very serious and his anger has dissipated.
“Look!” he points into the toilet bowl. “There is a too-pon stuck there.”
And so there is.
I apologize.
I flush.
I flush again.
Our new toilet has very minimal water pressure.
I grab a tampon applicator from the garbage can and use it to encourage the “too-pon” to disappear.
I apologize again.
Thank goodness the finder of this lovely object was one of my own and not a guest!
Late at night, before I make my before-bed breakfast and bring a book to bed, I am in the bathroom alone (a rarity of course, especially now that we have no bathroom door). I open the large box of “too-pons” that Sailor and I bought today and inside there is a little package of panty liners, free with my purchase. The neatly wrapped package beside the regular tampon box, inside the jumbo tampon box … it all brings me back almost 30 years to the day that my pre-menstrual kit arrived in the mail. You know the one, you had to send for it and when it arrived you took it to your parents’ bedroom and opened it in secret so your little brother or sister couldn’t see what was in your “starter kit.” All the mini pads that made you feel like a grown up just to wear one around the house for an hour and the maxi pads that were so think they scared the crap out of you, and even a belted pad to make you think twice about entering into puberty at all. No too-pons. No panty liners back there in 1978. Just a few well-written pamphlets on what to expect when you are expecting (your first period!). I haven’t thought about my “starter kit” in years. I wonder if it is still under my parents’ bed. I wonder also what puberty will be like with boys.
Wednesday
We oversleep by too many minutes. I have been turning off the alarm and falling back to sleep. I realize the reason I hate to get up on school days and today is a prime example. By the time I am done making Mac and Sailor two separate and different lunches and full breakfasts and cleaning up supplies and dishes from my work I am wondering if things might be easier if I moved the microwave and toaster over to the top of the dishwasher next to the sink. I am exhausted and we barely make it to school as the bell rings. At the enrichment center I pick up Sailor out of his stroller and tell him I want to hug him all day. “But I have a class,” says the boy who, a month ago, cried and begged not to have to attend the same class. “I will always hug you forever, even when I have to go to school, then when I am home I will hug you again.” He admits he will one day go to school. He breezes thru his class and we take a really long walk to the farm in the zoo. We had a great time there on Sunday eating beans and tomatoes with a farmer. The boys have asked to go back and while Mac is at school Sailor ands I are free to visit the garden again. And heck, the farmer was really attentive and cute. But he so busy with school groups and we can’t get near. We play for a little while in the farm house and then meet my dad for lunch.
Late in the afternoon I have Sailor in my lap again. “You can hug me forever now, Mommy.” So I do. I hold him like I will never let go. He leans back and I kiss his beautiful lips. I see a woman smile at us. I hold him tight and lay my head against his. Shortly he whispers, “Mommy? Are you asleep?”
We stop in LUSH on the way home from Mac’s piano lesson. The boys like to wash their hands there with the fun soaps. I am in the middle of learning about a $48 face cream when Mac needs a bathroom. We go back to the music school where Sailor and I bump into a mom from Mac’s school whom we have seen probably no fewer than twice a day every day all week. “We see her everywhere! I think she is a secret agent like Kornorlius,” he says, referring to a character named Kornelius in one of Mac’s Geronimo Stilton books.
We are all tired when we finally make it home after 6pm. I put a pizza in the oven and Sailor in the shower. Tomorrow is Yom Kippur so we will not go to school, which means we can blow off homework and watch a movie. Sailor and I got several movies from the library on Monday. Sailor tells Mac of my pizza and movie plan. “We are going watch a movie called Back to History.” You know the one, the 1985 classic, starring Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd and the Flux Capacitor.
Sailor has been showing his helpful side lately by toothpasting everyone’s toothbrush, not just his own. The mess is bad but his effort cannot be criticized.
We spend our Jewish day off at the suburban zoo. Sailor helps me carry his stroller up 4 steps and I am certain the spinach is working!
Saturday morning, in two separate rooms, the boys are singing, "Upside, inside out ... I'm a believer!" It's little Ricky Martin meets the Monkees!
Week 5 – Make it a Short Week
Monday night. Mac is in Lego Heaven in the playroom, putting together the much-coveted StarWars MTT. Sailor and I are indulging in a late-night movie with popcorn and organic rootbeer. It’s almost 8:30pm. Mac accidentally stopped the movie while we were making popcorn and I have to queue it up again. “Stop! I want to watch that!” Sailor says, as a preview for Stuart Little 3 jots across the screen.
“What?” I ask, not stopping the DVD.
“That was Sewer?”
“Sewer?”
“You know. The little mouse.” He is so darn cute. “Part three-ee.” I laugh at him. I want to squeeze him he is so cute sometimes. Like just before when I sent him into the kitchen to make popcorn. He’s five now; I think he is up for the task. Poor Mac was not even allowed to eat popcorn when he was 6! I instruct him, step by step what to do. I hear kernels of popcorn bounce on the floor and look up from the Lego instructions. “Don’t worry. Everything’s under control,” says my little man as he walks across the kitchen floor in his brand-new and slightly too large boxer briefs from GAP Kids. In one hand he has the 1/8 cup scooper filled with kernels. His other hand hovers beneath to catch potential spillage. I watch him scoop kernels from the big popcorn bowl and load them into the hot air blower. I am laughing so hard at his cuteness. “The baby is making popcorn,” I whisper to Mac.
“Why are you guys so darn cute?” I ask my freckle-nose boy who is so intent on his Lego project.
“Because you raised us,” he says, seriously.
Later: Sailor asks, “Wanna see my snake? It’s a Boa Instrictor.”
Tuesday. We stay home for Rosh Hashanah. No, I am not religious. But my father prefers that we not attend school or classes and hey, who am I to argue with a day off from school. So we sleep in (I do, anyway, til after 8:30) and wake to find Mac has, true to his word finished his homework, which he did not want to do last night. The time noted on his homework sheets is 7:20 and 7:30. As in a.m. Funny how they are so easy to rise on non-school days. We plan a do-nothing day. Immediately upon my arise Mac needs help with the MTT. The colossal Lego project in the playroom. Apparently some pieces are missing from the pile of 4 million Legos Sailor and I sorted on Sunday evening. I find two pieces in something I built that is sitting in wait of its attachment to the mothership. But other pieces are missing as well and I suggest we dismantle the MTT, resort the pieces and begin again. My suggestion is met with hissing and booing.
One of the kids asks me if I am hungry and I request a bagel, knowing full well neither of them is capable of handling the big knife to slice the tiny bagel.
Mac disappears into the kitchen and minutes later returns with a tray. My breakfast. Toast. Soggy toast. “I microwaved it instead of toasting it.” With jelly. Saturday night’s leftover broccoli and tofu – cold and with too much sauce. “I poured the sauce and whoa! A lot came out.” And a glass of hot tea. Perfect. He is 7 now. I think I need to teach him how to cook. I tell him this is a wonderful breakfast and choke down as much as I can.
My mom calls. “Are you going out today?” No, I hadn’t planned on it. She needs the challah, the bread for the Rosh Hashanah dinner. $71 later we have 2 loaves of challah and 4 bags of groceries from Trader Joe’s. By dinner time, Sailor has new shoes to wear to the fancy meal and a haircut (he was starting to look like Sandy Duncan all of the sudden) and Mac has had his bangs trimmed.
We watch a DVD while waiting to go down to dinner. “Mommy,” Sailor whispers, “I know what sex is.”
Oh really? “What is it?”
Whispering still, “You take off your pants. And your underpants. And you snuggle up really close.”
“Yes, that is exactly right,” I tell him. What more needs to be said?
“And when I am a grownup I will do that!”
Oy!
“Yes. When you are a grownup. That means you have to be at least 18.”
Wednesday, 1:23pm. Sailor should be just finishing up a soccer class make-up right now. Instead he is in his bed. Why? Because he refused to play soccer and so we left. Why? I have no idea. “I hate soccer.” That is all he had to say. We will talk about this when he wakes up at 3:00 to go get Mac from school. I am way too stressed about Mac’s field trip tomorrow to even get into this with Sailor right now.
Mac’s field trip. I asked the teacher if I can drive him to the destination. She said to ask the principal. He ran it by the Public School Board. And emailed me back with very specific instructions. What a hassle. This morning Mac says he wants to go on the field trip tomorrow but he does not want me to drive him. So my choices are: drive him anyway; let him go on the bus and accompany him; let him go on the bus and stay home; take Mac and Sailor to the aquarium on our own field trip. No matter what I do I will be unhappy. I will be a bad parent. He will probably be happy if I let him go on the bus and accompany him. I have always hated field trips both as a student and as an adult and now as a parent I have no reason to feel any different. In desperation I post my problem on a mom website. I get all sorts of responses that pretty much all tell me to send him. Many suggest I go on the bus with him. But what I neglected to mention in my post was that I hate the bus for myself too. What good will it do to go on an unsafe bus to protect my child and leave behind my other child in my wake? I am so stressed and worried about this! What is my problem?
This morning Sailor went to his enrichment class. When it is over the parents get to come in and watch a video of the kids. They perform a very short play – acting out a story, really. “Did you get to play the bunny?” I ask him. “No. I played the mom,” he says. I watch the video and the thought of Sailor making his theatrical debut playing the mom is so funny I am biting the insides of my lips trying not to laugh out loud. I am shaking in my seat. This is hilariously funny to me but also I am so proud of him.
10pm. Mac changed his mind and is now afraid to go on his field trip cuz they do a mock fire and he is afraid it's real. And both boys are snoring so I think they may be getting sick. This school routine and all of Sailor's classes (and his mood swings all day!) are SO much more exhausting than our summer routine, even tho our summer days were jam packed. I feel so trapped by the 7am alarm and our need to be at school on time and today's freezing morning did not help one bit! I'm sorry to sound like I am complaining but the school year is starting to crash in on me again and it does not feel good at all!
Thursday
Mac backed out of the field trip so I slept in with Sailor in my arms becuz he wet the bed.
After French I take the boys to Erehwon in search of winter coats (baby, it’s COLD outside!), which we are sure to need sooner rather than later.
“These are so cute!” I say.
“But those are girls’ coats,” says Sailor.
“I know, but they are cute.”
“Yeah, but Mom, we are not girls!”
After dinner I find this note on the kitchen table. It was from yesterday sometime.
Sailor: I know King Fu! [Demonstrates some punching moves.]
Mac: That’s boxing.
Sailor: I know something what’s not boxing.
Friday. Sailor and I have been recruited to assist with picture day at Mac’s school. Sailor is a trooper, traipsing up and down the stairs and across the school over and over to get the classes and bring them back down to the auditorium. We encounter 7th graders who were worse at lining up than kindergarteners; 4th graders taller than me; teachers who treat their students with no respect; Mac’s teacher who was the most respectful of all to her students; and 12-year-olds who looked like they were 15. It was a very revealing day. And the witch who taught Mac last year was by far the worst, even deliberately mispronouncing my last name. For our morning of work we were given complimentary photo packages. A $33 package. What a nice perk!
“What?” I ask, not stopping the DVD.
“That was Sewer?”
“Sewer?”
“You know. The little mouse.” He is so darn cute. “Part three-ee.” I laugh at him. I want to squeeze him he is so cute sometimes. Like just before when I sent him into the kitchen to make popcorn. He’s five now; I think he is up for the task. Poor Mac was not even allowed to eat popcorn when he was 6! I instruct him, step by step what to do. I hear kernels of popcorn bounce on the floor and look up from the Lego instructions. “Don’t worry. Everything’s under control,” says my little man as he walks across the kitchen floor in his brand-new and slightly too large boxer briefs from GAP Kids. In one hand he has the 1/8 cup scooper filled with kernels. His other hand hovers beneath to catch potential spillage. I watch him scoop kernels from the big popcorn bowl and load them into the hot air blower. I am laughing so hard at his cuteness. “The baby is making popcorn,” I whisper to Mac.
“Why are you guys so darn cute?” I ask my freckle-nose boy who is so intent on his Lego project.
“Because you raised us,” he says, seriously.
Later: Sailor asks, “Wanna see my snake? It’s a Boa Instrictor.”
Tuesday. We stay home for Rosh Hashanah. No, I am not religious. But my father prefers that we not attend school or classes and hey, who am I to argue with a day off from school. So we sleep in (I do, anyway, til after 8:30) and wake to find Mac has, true to his word finished his homework, which he did not want to do last night. The time noted on his homework sheets is 7:20 and 7:30. As in a.m. Funny how they are so easy to rise on non-school days. We plan a do-nothing day. Immediately upon my arise Mac needs help with the MTT. The colossal Lego project in the playroom. Apparently some pieces are missing from the pile of 4 million Legos Sailor and I sorted on Sunday evening. I find two pieces in something I built that is sitting in wait of its attachment to the mothership. But other pieces are missing as well and I suggest we dismantle the MTT, resort the pieces and begin again. My suggestion is met with hissing and booing.
One of the kids asks me if I am hungry and I request a bagel, knowing full well neither of them is capable of handling the big knife to slice the tiny bagel.
Mac disappears into the kitchen and minutes later returns with a tray. My breakfast. Toast. Soggy toast. “I microwaved it instead of toasting it.” With jelly. Saturday night’s leftover broccoli and tofu – cold and with too much sauce. “I poured the sauce and whoa! A lot came out.” And a glass of hot tea. Perfect. He is 7 now. I think I need to teach him how to cook. I tell him this is a wonderful breakfast and choke down as much as I can.
My mom calls. “Are you going out today?” No, I hadn’t planned on it. She needs the challah, the bread for the Rosh Hashanah dinner. $71 later we have 2 loaves of challah and 4 bags of groceries from Trader Joe’s. By dinner time, Sailor has new shoes to wear to the fancy meal and a haircut (he was starting to look like Sandy Duncan all of the sudden) and Mac has had his bangs trimmed.
We watch a DVD while waiting to go down to dinner. “Mommy,” Sailor whispers, “I know what sex is.”
Oh really? “What is it?”
Whispering still, “You take off your pants. And your underpants. And you snuggle up really close.”
“Yes, that is exactly right,” I tell him. What more needs to be said?
“And when I am a grownup I will do that!”
Oy!
“Yes. When you are a grownup. That means you have to be at least 18.”
Wednesday, 1:23pm. Sailor should be just finishing up a soccer class make-up right now. Instead he is in his bed. Why? Because he refused to play soccer and so we left. Why? I have no idea. “I hate soccer.” That is all he had to say. We will talk about this when he wakes up at 3:00 to go get Mac from school. I am way too stressed about Mac’s field trip tomorrow to even get into this with Sailor right now.
Mac’s field trip. I asked the teacher if I can drive him to the destination. She said to ask the principal. He ran it by the Public School Board. And emailed me back with very specific instructions. What a hassle. This morning Mac says he wants to go on the field trip tomorrow but he does not want me to drive him. So my choices are: drive him anyway; let him go on the bus and accompany him; let him go on the bus and stay home; take Mac and Sailor to the aquarium on our own field trip. No matter what I do I will be unhappy. I will be a bad parent. He will probably be happy if I let him go on the bus and accompany him. I have always hated field trips both as a student and as an adult and now as a parent I have no reason to feel any different. In desperation I post my problem on a mom website. I get all sorts of responses that pretty much all tell me to send him. Many suggest I go on the bus with him. But what I neglected to mention in my post was that I hate the bus for myself too. What good will it do to go on an unsafe bus to protect my child and leave behind my other child in my wake? I am so stressed and worried about this! What is my problem?
This morning Sailor went to his enrichment class. When it is over the parents get to come in and watch a video of the kids. They perform a very short play – acting out a story, really. “Did you get to play the bunny?” I ask him. “No. I played the mom,” he says. I watch the video and the thought of Sailor making his theatrical debut playing the mom is so funny I am biting the insides of my lips trying not to laugh out loud. I am shaking in my seat. This is hilariously funny to me but also I am so proud of him.
10pm. Mac changed his mind and is now afraid to go on his field trip cuz they do a mock fire and he is afraid it's real. And both boys are snoring so I think they may be getting sick. This school routine and all of Sailor's classes (and his mood swings all day!) are SO much more exhausting than our summer routine, even tho our summer days were jam packed. I feel so trapped by the 7am alarm and our need to be at school on time and today's freezing morning did not help one bit! I'm sorry to sound like I am complaining but the school year is starting to crash in on me again and it does not feel good at all!
Thursday
Mac backed out of the field trip so I slept in with Sailor in my arms becuz he wet the bed.
After French I take the boys to Erehwon in search of winter coats (baby, it’s COLD outside!), which we are sure to need sooner rather than later.
“These are so cute!” I say.
“But those are girls’ coats,” says Sailor.
“I know, but they are cute.”
“Yeah, but Mom, we are not girls!”
After dinner I find this note on the kitchen table. It was from yesterday sometime.
Sailor: I know King Fu! [Demonstrates some punching moves.]
Mac: That’s boxing.
Sailor: I know something what’s not boxing.
Friday. Sailor and I have been recruited to assist with picture day at Mac’s school. Sailor is a trooper, traipsing up and down the stairs and across the school over and over to get the classes and bring them back down to the auditorium. We encounter 7th graders who were worse at lining up than kindergarteners; 4th graders taller than me; teachers who treat their students with no respect; Mac’s teacher who was the most respectful of all to her students; and 12-year-olds who looked like they were 15. It was a very revealing day. And the witch who taught Mac last year was by far the worst, even deliberately mispronouncing my last name. For our morning of work we were given complimentary photo packages. A $33 package. What a nice perk!
Week 4
9:49 Monday night. Sailor is in his own room. Screaming. “I.Want. To. Stay. With. Yoooooou! Not. By. Myself!” We have had months and months of him goofing around at bed time and my threats to send him back to his own bed have been empty. Until last night. He fell asleep and lasted til roughly 5am.
I am biting my cheeks to keep from laughing at him as he stomps into the dining room. A very tiny man in oversized boxer briefs. “I don’t want to! Whenever you put me in there I will get ouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut. So I want to do what I want to do. Not what I am doing. I want to do is go to sleep with you. I have other plans to do! Not same plans as you-ooo-hooo.”
Except I am not sleeping. I am trying to work and trying really, really hard not to start screaming myself.
So the boxer briefs. Sailor shows up at dinner tonight clad only in a pair of little underpants. Mid-meal he notices that his undies have made a mark around his belly. Everything else he owns has been upgraded from size 4 to size 5. But he is still wearing the little size 4 unnies, as he used to call them. He is 5 and he needs new unnies. Momentary thought process: Do I buy him all new underwear or do I buy Mac the next size up, which is 8 and give Sailor all the hand-me-down size 6 unders? Poor Sailor. An underpants shopping spree for him has quickly turned into an underpants shopping trip for Mac. Second Child Syndrome strikes again.
Mac has a friend over after school today. I think it might be fun for the boy’s little sister to play with Sailor. The mom and the nanny agree with me but the look of horror on the boy’s face at my suggestion is priceless! The little sister is eager to come over though and so we trek back home and I bring out snacks and Sailor wakes up and Mac shows off and is snotty and I have to keep a running dialog with a foreign nanny who is actually quite nice and when it is over Mac is hot and sweaty and smelly and I send him to a shower, which he thankfully can take on his own now.
For dinner he wants me to make “something you have never made before.” A great idea, except it is 5:15 when he suggests this and so we end up with last night’s spaghetti and the end of the frozen meatless meatballs. Maybe tomorrow I can “just look in my cookbook and come up with something new” as Mac says.
After school Wednesday I learn by calling one of the Room Parents that the field trip next week will have to be reached by bus as it is nowhere near our school. So now not only do I have to fake Mac an illness next Thursday morning but I have to somehow figure out how to recant my offer to chaperone this trip. My instinct is to go straight to the teacher with a note stating that I withdraw my permission for Mac to attend the upcoming field trip. But I am not keen on airing my personal issues with Mrs. W just yet. I may just tell her I can’t chaperone after all and apologize for the inconvenience and then just call Mac in sick next week. No further explanation needed. And yet the whole thing already has me feeling unsettled. How can they send home a permission slip without stating the exact location of the field trip?? Don’t blind side the parents!
My boys, in a snit of obstinance, decided not to heed my request for goodnight kisses tonight. How many times can a girl have her heart broken in a week?
Thursday.
Sailor and I spend part of the morning with our eye doctor, a man whose daughters I babysat every Saturday night through high school. His manner today is decidedly cheery and he is great with Sailor. After completing many tasks and being praised for doing so well, Sailor is declared mildly nearsighted, a half diopter. -.50. As compared to Mac’s -1.25, which allowed him to spend the summer completely glasses free. And my near -9, which renders me nearly blind. This comes as little surprise and I know that by 1st grade Sailor will also be wearing glasses to school.
While waiting outside school to pick up Mac my sister calls to tell me Dad is sick again and may be heading back to the ER. Tonight is open house at Mac’s school and she is going to fill in as sitter for my boys. All my regular day-to-day problems fall to the side as I contemplate the possibility of my dad re-entering the hospital. And yet, I go along as if nothing is wrong, willing – if you will – my father to be well.
Sailor is grumpy after his nap and does not want to go to French class. Mac is game until he sees the substitute teacher. What’s with these two today? I do some calm and patient and gentle bribing: If you want to go play at your friend Michael’s after school on Monday, you will have to go to French today, otherwise we will have to do a make-up class on Monday instead. It works and I spend the remainder of the 1 ½-hour class talking with a beautiful Black French mom, who happens to be a neighbor of Barack Obama, about why it is imperative that we get Mr. Obama into the White House. When we get home my dad is eating dinner and all seems well. I change clothes and take a phone call with my college best friend and make it to school just as the principal is about to speak.
After the State of the School address I snag a mom whom I like a great deal but whose son caused my son quite a bit of trouble last year. We eat from the massive buffet in the gym and then head up to our respective sons’ classrooms.
Most of the parents had their time in the classroom while I was eating, so I share Mac’s teacher with only three other parents. It’s nice. Except one of the parents, an obnoxious, loud mom has taken the smallness of our group to mean that this is her time with Mrs. W and sees fit to comment on her every comment or ask a question following each. I wait until everyone has left to share my thoughts about Mac riding a school bus to go on a field trip (I won’t let him). She understands. What a difference from last year! "Can I try to talk you out of it?" sh easks. "Yes, you an try," I acquiesce.
In Mac’s desk he has left a “Surprise” for me: A note with a math quiz that he has written. I happily fill in the answers. I am pleased with this open house.
I don’t get home until nearly 9pm, the time of the season premier of the final season of ER. I let the kids stay up and watch with me. A huge mistake as tonight’s episode is remarkably gory and a major cast member dies. I am in tears, sobbing on the couch. Sailor alternates between asking me not to cry and bringing me tissues and reassuring himself that this is not real, “Right, Mommy? He is just pretending.”
He is visibly upset after the show. “We should not have watched that stupid movie!” Not sure which upset him more: seeing the blood and guts on tv or seeing me crying.
Friday.
“Now that the hustle of summer is over…”
Hustle of summer? Seriously? Hustle? What ever happened to the lazy days of summer? This radio commercial is obviously taking some serious liberties.
At school one of the two little black boys (I hesitate to call him “African–American” because I have absolutely no idea from where his ancestors hail) approaches me and with his deep voice, “Hey Mac’s Mom! My mom asked me to ask you if you are having Mac’s Halloween party again this year.” I cup his soft cheeks in my hands and tell him I am not sure yet. He is an adorable and hilariously funny little boy. “Tell your mom we want to have you over to play after school soon,” I tell him.
“Well see I go to this Daddy Daycare like thing after school so I don’t know if I can just come over.”
“No sweety, we won’t just take you. I’ll arrange it with your mom first.”
“Oh, ok.”
He is so cute.
At soccer this morning Sailor wants to know if his little galpal Christina is in class. He doesn’t see her and he whispers to me.
I work with the head coach to arrange Sailor’s fall schedule with a combo of Tuesdays and Fridays. “I really am your most high-maintenance mom, aren’t I?” The coach laughs. We have gotten to be nice friends over the past year and I don’t think he minds my antics, much. “Last week one of the other moms said you must spend all your time talking to moms,” I say, “And I said, no just me!”
“Just you,” he says at the same time and we laugh.
We are both asked by another mom to make change for $5. I pull out $3 from my wallet and Coach pulls out a $5 and $3. We laugh that together we could give her change and go buy more coffee. “What a statement this makes on my priorities,” I say, indicating the venti decaf latte, the cold vanilla milk and the warm vanilla milk I am holding.
I later spill the warm vanilla milk all over the soccer gym floor while trying to balance it on top of my latte with my chin.
Between soccer and gymnastics Sailor outgrows his favorite gym shoes: a trendy pair of blue leather shoes with a yellow flame shooting on each side. We call them his fire shoes and their $40 purchase in the spring resulted in Sailor learning to tie his shoes at 4 ½. (“I’ll buy them for you but you have to learn how to tie them.” And so he did. After 2 short lessons.)
Sailor and I spend the afternoon outside. He wearing shorts and I wearing my little denim skirt, sandals… Summer has made a reappearance and we are squeezing the very last drops out of it before we have to say good bye for another year.
Saturday is absolutely gorgeous and we spend the afternoon outside at the playground the zoo the park. It is a really nice day. We share popcorn. I work on maintaining my tan as I have a 40th birthday party to attend tonight and a wedding next weekend. When we get home it is 3:30pm and the boys head straight into their pajamas and hit the couch and pop in a DVD. I clean out the sink and start mopping the kitchen floor. “Mommy do you have anything I can eat on a stick?” I think he means a lollipop but I offer a vegetarian corn dog, which he accepts. Twice. I field his request for corn and hop into the shower. I have left myself plenty of time to get ready for my friend’s party. I start a pot of brown rice for dinner. Set broccoli in a pan of water and soy sauce. It simmers while I dry my hair. I slice tofu. The stove is on low while I am getting ready in the bathroom, the boys still ensconced in their DVD. They come to the table on time and I am ready to leave on time. Amazingly.
I am biting my cheeks to keep from laughing at him as he stomps into the dining room. A very tiny man in oversized boxer briefs. “I don’t want to! Whenever you put me in there I will get ouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut. So I want to do what I want to do. Not what I am doing. I want to do is go to sleep with you. I have other plans to do! Not same plans as you-ooo-hooo.”
Except I am not sleeping. I am trying to work and trying really, really hard not to start screaming myself.
So the boxer briefs. Sailor shows up at dinner tonight clad only in a pair of little underpants. Mid-meal he notices that his undies have made a mark around his belly. Everything else he owns has been upgraded from size 4 to size 5. But he is still wearing the little size 4 unnies, as he used to call them. He is 5 and he needs new unnies. Momentary thought process: Do I buy him all new underwear or do I buy Mac the next size up, which is 8 and give Sailor all the hand-me-down size 6 unders? Poor Sailor. An underpants shopping spree for him has quickly turned into an underpants shopping trip for Mac. Second Child Syndrome strikes again.
Mac has a friend over after school today. I think it might be fun for the boy’s little sister to play with Sailor. The mom and the nanny agree with me but the look of horror on the boy’s face at my suggestion is priceless! The little sister is eager to come over though and so we trek back home and I bring out snacks and Sailor wakes up and Mac shows off and is snotty and I have to keep a running dialog with a foreign nanny who is actually quite nice and when it is over Mac is hot and sweaty and smelly and I send him to a shower, which he thankfully can take on his own now.
For dinner he wants me to make “something you have never made before.” A great idea, except it is 5:15 when he suggests this and so we end up with last night’s spaghetti and the end of the frozen meatless meatballs. Maybe tomorrow I can “just look in my cookbook and come up with something new” as Mac says.
After school Wednesday I learn by calling one of the Room Parents that the field trip next week will have to be reached by bus as it is nowhere near our school. So now not only do I have to fake Mac an illness next Thursday morning but I have to somehow figure out how to recant my offer to chaperone this trip. My instinct is to go straight to the teacher with a note stating that I withdraw my permission for Mac to attend the upcoming field trip. But I am not keen on airing my personal issues with Mrs. W just yet. I may just tell her I can’t chaperone after all and apologize for the inconvenience and then just call Mac in sick next week. No further explanation needed. And yet the whole thing already has me feeling unsettled. How can they send home a permission slip without stating the exact location of the field trip?? Don’t blind side the parents!
My boys, in a snit of obstinance, decided not to heed my request for goodnight kisses tonight. How many times can a girl have her heart broken in a week?
Thursday.
Sailor and I spend part of the morning with our eye doctor, a man whose daughters I babysat every Saturday night through high school. His manner today is decidedly cheery and he is great with Sailor. After completing many tasks and being praised for doing so well, Sailor is declared mildly nearsighted, a half diopter. -.50. As compared to Mac’s -1.25, which allowed him to spend the summer completely glasses free. And my near -9, which renders me nearly blind. This comes as little surprise and I know that by 1st grade Sailor will also be wearing glasses to school.
While waiting outside school to pick up Mac my sister calls to tell me Dad is sick again and may be heading back to the ER. Tonight is open house at Mac’s school and she is going to fill in as sitter for my boys. All my regular day-to-day problems fall to the side as I contemplate the possibility of my dad re-entering the hospital. And yet, I go along as if nothing is wrong, willing – if you will – my father to be well.
Sailor is grumpy after his nap and does not want to go to French class. Mac is game until he sees the substitute teacher. What’s with these two today? I do some calm and patient and gentle bribing: If you want to go play at your friend Michael’s after school on Monday, you will have to go to French today, otherwise we will have to do a make-up class on Monday instead. It works and I spend the remainder of the 1 ½-hour class talking with a beautiful Black French mom, who happens to be a neighbor of Barack Obama, about why it is imperative that we get Mr. Obama into the White House. When we get home my dad is eating dinner and all seems well. I change clothes and take a phone call with my college best friend and make it to school just as the principal is about to speak.
After the State of the School address I snag a mom whom I like a great deal but whose son caused my son quite a bit of trouble last year. We eat from the massive buffet in the gym and then head up to our respective sons’ classrooms.
Most of the parents had their time in the classroom while I was eating, so I share Mac’s teacher with only three other parents. It’s nice. Except one of the parents, an obnoxious, loud mom has taken the smallness of our group to mean that this is her time with Mrs. W and sees fit to comment on her every comment or ask a question following each. I wait until everyone has left to share my thoughts about Mac riding a school bus to go on a field trip (I won’t let him). She understands. What a difference from last year! "Can I try to talk you out of it?" sh easks. "Yes, you an try," I acquiesce.
In Mac’s desk he has left a “Surprise” for me: A note with a math quiz that he has written. I happily fill in the answers. I am pleased with this open house.
I don’t get home until nearly 9pm, the time of the season premier of the final season of ER. I let the kids stay up and watch with me. A huge mistake as tonight’s episode is remarkably gory and a major cast member dies. I am in tears, sobbing on the couch. Sailor alternates between asking me not to cry and bringing me tissues and reassuring himself that this is not real, “Right, Mommy? He is just pretending.”
He is visibly upset after the show. “We should not have watched that stupid movie!” Not sure which upset him more: seeing the blood and guts on tv or seeing me crying.
Friday.
“Now that the hustle of summer is over…”
Hustle of summer? Seriously? Hustle? What ever happened to the lazy days of summer? This radio commercial is obviously taking some serious liberties.
At school one of the two little black boys (I hesitate to call him “African–American” because I have absolutely no idea from where his ancestors hail) approaches me and with his deep voice, “Hey Mac’s Mom! My mom asked me to ask you if you are having Mac’s Halloween party again this year.” I cup his soft cheeks in my hands and tell him I am not sure yet. He is an adorable and hilariously funny little boy. “Tell your mom we want to have you over to play after school soon,” I tell him.
“Well see I go to this Daddy Daycare like thing after school so I don’t know if I can just come over.”
“No sweety, we won’t just take you. I’ll arrange it with your mom first.”
“Oh, ok.”
He is so cute.
At soccer this morning Sailor wants to know if his little galpal Christina is in class. He doesn’t see her and he whispers to me.
I work with the head coach to arrange Sailor’s fall schedule with a combo of Tuesdays and Fridays. “I really am your most high-maintenance mom, aren’t I?” The coach laughs. We have gotten to be nice friends over the past year and I don’t think he minds my antics, much. “Last week one of the other moms said you must spend all your time talking to moms,” I say, “And I said, no just me!”
“Just you,” he says at the same time and we laugh.
We are both asked by another mom to make change for $5. I pull out $3 from my wallet and Coach pulls out a $5 and $3. We laugh that together we could give her change and go buy more coffee. “What a statement this makes on my priorities,” I say, indicating the venti decaf latte, the cold vanilla milk and the warm vanilla milk I am holding.
I later spill the warm vanilla milk all over the soccer gym floor while trying to balance it on top of my latte with my chin.
Between soccer and gymnastics Sailor outgrows his favorite gym shoes: a trendy pair of blue leather shoes with a yellow flame shooting on each side. We call them his fire shoes and their $40 purchase in the spring resulted in Sailor learning to tie his shoes at 4 ½. (“I’ll buy them for you but you have to learn how to tie them.” And so he did. After 2 short lessons.)
Sailor and I spend the afternoon outside. He wearing shorts and I wearing my little denim skirt, sandals… Summer has made a reappearance and we are squeezing the very last drops out of it before we have to say good bye for another year.
Saturday is absolutely gorgeous and we spend the afternoon outside at the playground the zoo the park. It is a really nice day. We share popcorn. I work on maintaining my tan as I have a 40th birthday party to attend tonight and a wedding next weekend. When we get home it is 3:30pm and the boys head straight into their pajamas and hit the couch and pop in a DVD. I clean out the sink and start mopping the kitchen floor. “Mommy do you have anything I can eat on a stick?” I think he means a lollipop but I offer a vegetarian corn dog, which he accepts. Twice. I field his request for corn and hop into the shower. I have left myself plenty of time to get ready for my friend’s party. I start a pot of brown rice for dinner. Set broccoli in a pan of water and soy sauce. It simmers while I dry my hair. I slice tofu. The stove is on low while I am getting ready in the bathroom, the boys still ensconced in their DVD. They come to the table on time and I am ready to leave on time. Amazingly.
Week 3 – Happy 5th Birthday, Sailor!
The rain has ceased. Finally. While we did not flood here, I was stuck on the expressway on Saturday and was forced to – literally -- turn my car around on the northbound lanes and head back south and exit off the on ramp. Needless to say I never made it to my destination on Saturday. But I did work almost all weekend. Except for the quick trip to Pottery Barn Kids to meet the StarWars characters.
Saturday morning I tell the boys to put on their fave StarWars costumes. They choose, instead of their store bought costumes, to make their own. Mac wears a pair of brown cords and a dark grey waffle weave shirt, black gloves and his requisite rain boots (it hasn’t stopped raining since Friday morning). He is Anakin Skywalker. Sailor puts on a tiny double breasted suit. He is Luke. They just look like kids in weird clothes. I don’t tell them where we are going. We stand in line for about 30 minutes only to have both children become either star struck or terrified, I am not sure which. Mac lets me take one photo of him with Luke, Anakin and Obi-Wan Kenobi. I have mine taken with Darth Vader. And then we leave. At which point Sailor bursts into tears. “That was not fun! It was not what I expected!” So much for great surprises.
Monday morning I am tired from being away from the boys so much of the weekend. And from staying up readying the house so that I can decorate tonight for Sailor’s birthday tomorrow. And from IMing with the best friend of a guy I like. So when the alarm rings and Mac says, “I was up sneezing all night and my stomach hurts and I don’t think I can go to school today,” I shut off the alarm and tell him to go back to sleep. When we finally get up at 20 after 8:00 I call him in sick. I know he is not sick. But my plan is to take Sailor up to the ‘burbs for his birthday photo today and I can’t take the risk that Mac will have the school call me to come get him again like last Monday.
Sailor is a gorgeous child. People have commented on him. But when he takes photos he does not let himself go and so he does not photograph all that well. So I have some trouble choosing which photos to order.
We spend the day shopping and getting ready for tomorrow and relishing Sailor’s last day of 4-ness (a term we coined two years ago when he had his last day of 2-ness!). I am not sure I am ready to have my younger child be 5 years old. I still think of Mac as 5 and in kindergarten. But it’s going to be Sailor now. I don’t think he is big enuf to be 5. He still has tantrums. Still naps. Still wants “uppy.” Still rides in the stroller. Yet he can tie his shoes. Shower. Swim. Write.
No, I am not ready for my baby boy to be 5. It seems so many, many years ago that he was born. And yet I can’t believe 5 whole years have just about passed. I remember so much about the day he was born. Mac was so little. Just 2. But seemed so big. And now I don’t even know how we got to where we are right now. And in some ways it frightens me. I am so glad Sailor is not in kindergarten now. My beautiful boy. Mac had a major change in personality when he was 5. Sailor asked me what he would be like when he is 5, how he would be different. He also showed me how big he thinks he will be when he wakes up and is 5. “What if I don’t sleep at all during the sleeping time?” he wants to know, in anticipation of the decorations I will put up while he sleeps.
At the mall today, after the photos, it gets cold. I buy the boys pants. And Sailor a pair of socks to put on under his fisherman sandals. He holds the pants up by the legs to keep them from getting dirty on the ground. Silly boy. Silly sleepy boy who loves to be carried and hugged. When he wakes he will be 5! Half a decade! And now SuperMommy must sleep.
Tuesday
Mac wakes Sailor on his birthday… We proceed immediately to the small pile of gifts on the dining room table, which Sailor is quite pleased with. Mostly toys. A DVD. A couple of shirts. And then I direct him to search the living room (the “Liver-room” as he calls it. “What is it posue-ta-be?” he asks when I ask him how he says "living room") all the while I am continuously reminding Mac that this is Sailor’s birthday.
It’s a nice day with great weather. We pick up his favorite friend on our way home and drive to the indoor inflatable place only to find not only no place to park but a “Closed” sign on the door. It is 9:30 a.m., nothing is open except Old Navy and the art store and I have two highly disappointed 5-year-olds in the backseat of my car. We have been planning this morning’s events for no fewer than 4 months. I am heartsick for the boys and wishing that I had followed my gut instinct to call ahead (I did check the website!). I drive to the Nature Museum after a quick call that tells me they are already open. We don’t have much time so we play quickly in the water area and the tree house slide area and then pet a box turtle named Harrison and look at tarantulas and walking stick insects and Sailor’s friend gives Sailor a “what the hell?” look when Sailor answers correctly my questions about camouflage. We pick up the boy’s mother and head to the Rainforest Café. When Mac was 4 we went there for dinner and he was terrified. Sailor, too young to remember, saw the big red eyed tree frog (which he identified by name) back in May and asked to go for lunch. Today is the day. It takes us forever to walk to our table as we are all in awe of the sites inside this restaurant. We are seated next to two elephants that trumpet and snort and wink and flail their trunks at us throughout the meal. It is not a relaxed meal as I attempt to engage in meaningful conversation with the boy’s mom and not ignore Sailor, the birthday boy. We have to get back for the boy to be on time for preschool but I really have to stop to pee. No sooner are we a block away from the restaurant and my friend is saying, “I don’t see you car! Did they tow it?” sending me into an unpleasant déjà vu from last summer that Sailor announces, “I hafgo potty.” I toss the keys at my friend and continue down the block to an unexpectedly fancy restaurant whose hostesses both inside and out direct us right to the bathroom without waiting for us to finish asking for it. The bathroom has deep old fashioned sinks and powdered borax soap. Our friends are waiting a block away in our car, already late for junior kindergarten. And Sailor’s poopies are stuck. My phone rings. My father on the other end can’t hear what I am saying. He hangs up and calls me back. I am in a bathroom in a fancy restaurant telling my dad yes, buy me milk at the grocery store.
Sailor falls asleep on the way to the toy store and I let him doze while I phone chat with my college best friend. Inside the store we choose 5 toys to narrow down to one good choice. Sailor wants to buy something for Mac, too. Perhaps this is a ploy to get another toy for himself. But how can you deny such generosity, and on his own birthday no less?!
Sailor takes no more than 2 bites of the birthday dinner he has so carefully planned and shopped for: Macker cheese, broccoli, corn, watermelon and rootbeer. Instead of eating he jumps back and forth between the sofa and the big chair while rest of us eat. All I can say about his racetrack cake, ala Speed Racer, is this: Scooter, $35; decorations, $25; birthday dinner, $80. Getting two little plastic cars on top of your birthday cake and mommy letting you play with them in you piece of cake, priceless! “Did you taste your cake?” we ask him. “Yes, from my fingers.” He is covered in cake and delights us all by licking the cake off the cars as if they were ribs or chicken.
I let the boys stay up way too late because is it, after all, Sailor’s only 5th birthday and so we will be tired in the morning and I will remind the boys that they chose to stay up and play and they will understand.
And we are going along and going along and on Wednesday it all comes tumbling down. Permission slips for the first 2nd grade field trip are in folders this afternoon. My new school ally, the only mom I talk to regularly this year so far, says flat out, “My daughter’s not going.” It’s a walking field trip so I don’t have to worry about the bus issue. Yet. And it’s neighborhood and not on a day Sailor has a class. So I can chaperone. I fill out the form. I write in the volunteer spot that I would like to be considered as a chaperone. I do not mention that if I am not chosen to accompany Mac’s class that Mac will not be going. I will save this big X on my reputation for a later date. No point causing myself trouble before I have to, which is what I did last year. No, no point. I will wait until it comes up. Meanwhile I am still going to stay silent. But I feel the stress in my chest and wonder why I can’t just be like the other moms. And why, when I try to be, I am given a hard time about it anyway. No point trying to do what others expect of me. Might as well just do what I feel is right. Whatever that is. Even if it feels weird overall.
By week’s end it feels as if we have been back to school for months. I knew this would happen and I am pretty bummed about it. We are in a routine that is backbreaking and yet we follow along without question. Mac has his first spelling test back with a perfect score, including extra credit words. This week’s words are somewhat more difficult but still reasonable although he is expected to spell beautiful and consulting as his bonus words. It is no easy task to teach this boy to spell. But on his sentence sheet he writes “My mom is beautiful.” What a good boy I have.
Early in the week a set of 2nd graders was moved into Mac’s class to make room in their original classroom for the overflow of 1st graders, thereby creating a 1st/2nd split class. I am very glad that Mac is not part of the split class and I am happy with the children who have joined his class. Top of the list is Isabella, whose mom is the only mom I have spent any truly significant time with this year. Her little brother is rapidly becoming one of Sailor’s playmates, as we moms linger after the bell rings almost every morning now. Isabella is a tiny girl with dark hair and porcelain skin. And the attitude and self-possession of a girl 10 years older, in a good way. Mac asked me last weekend if I could guess who his new girlfriend is. I guessed Isabella right away and was pleased when he said I was correct. Mac has not had a girlfriend since he broke up with his fiancée, Anika, a couple of years ago. I am glad he has picked such a really nice girl. Between her mother’s overprotectiveness and mine we are in good shape!
Thursday morning I dress up for no reason. I have a long black tank dress that has lingered in my closet for at least 10 years. I pair it with a black high heeled sandals and some nice jewelry and voila! Hot mom. I have to go into the school office for a quick moment. I stop at the security table to sign in. The security guard asks me if I am going to a fancy luncheon. No, I tell him, I just felt like dressing up. He comments something along the lines of, “Well I appreciate it. Thank you.” I wonder which part of the dress he likes the most. I guess after all these years the dress, which clings to every part mercilessly, is still wearable, at least on a “skinny” day. I am flattered by the guard’s attentions. But by day’s end my feet are killing me. Who am I kidding. By the time I walk home from dropping off Mac my feet are killing me!
Later when Sailor falls asleep in the car on the way to finding a parking space to pick up Mac I am in deep trouble. There is no possibility that I can carry him the 3 blocks from the space I finally find. I wake him and he cries. Poor thing. But I simply cannot carry him and walk in these shoes. Which yes, I am still wearing! Who am I kidding? I simply cannot walk in these shoes!
Thursday after French class Mac and Sailor’s teacher, Elisabeth, tells me that Alec is distracting Mac in class. I am not surprised tho usually the troublemaker is Mac, and Sailor is the well-behaved child. Elisabeth thinks Mac may be bored because he is “very advanced” she tells me. I love this bit of info. Mac has been taking French on and off for nearly 5 years. I have undoubtedly spent thousands of dollars on these classes. He is now getting three days a week 45 minutes each at school. I should expect him to be advanced by now, if not at least somewhat conversational. Hurray for Mac!
Sailor finds an acquaintance named Christina in soccer this morning. He knows her from art class and I went to college with her mom (tho we were not friends then). He tells me after class that “Christina is fun to play with.” I am so pleased that Sailor is making some new friends. With no school group to help this along it does my heart good to see that he is indeed making friends in the other settings I am exposing him to.
At Whole Foods Sailor finds a cake that looks like it has a spider web on it. "Look, a Spider Man cake, Mommy!" So yes, I order him one. We have never ordered a birthday cake before. And as this is the go-all-out-for-Sailor’s-birthday year, how can I say no? It is a sweet indulgence. $20. Saves me having to bake, frost and decorate cupcakes! So I don't mind. I am tired. We spent the afternoon setting up for Sailor's party at the art studio so we don’t have to rush over the weekend.
Friday after school we have a playdate with Mac’s 1st grade nemesis. He says they are getting along this year and they want to play. While we wait outside school for the boy’s mom to finish a chat with a teacher, Mrs. S, the demon 1st grade teacher from last year, marches right up to Mac and his friend. “Hello 2nd graders,” she chimes. I want to puke. “What did we learn about how to treat trees? Is this a young tree or an old tree?” she asks, grasping the trunk of the young tree the boys have been clamoring around and attempts to shake it. “What did we learn last year? How do we treat the tree? We don’t climb on it.” She shakes and shakes the tree. Not that it moves an inch. It is strong and well rooted. I am unclear as to her motive. She does not address me. I keep my eyes turned toward the boys and then turn them away and stare into the crowd. Mrs. S. persists. Does she want me to acknowledge her? I will not. Tho I want to. I want to tell her that I will discipline my own children thank you very much. I ignore her and she eventually, after a painfully long display, turns and walks away. I hate her very presence and wish I had the nerve to tell her to stay away from my child.
The boys – my two, and this boy and his little brother – are rowdy and noisy and aggressive and … this mom and I are none too pleased. Mac wets his pants and I refuse to let him change. But give in to a dry pair of the other boy’s underwear, which I have to ask the boy 4 times for. I don’t want him to be wet all over the house. But I also want him to take more responsibility and pee when he needs to! I mean, who doesn’t have to pee when they get home from school? Every one of his friends has immediately asked for the bathroom upon arrival after school at our house. Perhaps I need to enforce the pee-first-thing-after-school rule to get him into the habit as when we were growing up. So I let him change his unders but not his pants, which were also wet. I drape them over the stroller to dry and let him suffer the humiliation of running around in his shirt and no pants. And suffer he does. It pains me a great deal to watch his tantrum, which I assure him is far more embarrassing than his lack of pants.
We opt for a sleepover in the living room for Friday night movie night. Pizza. The Bee Movie. Sleeping bags. It’s fun and the kids think it is a great idea. By 6:30 I want to go to sleep. Wish tomorrow were a rain day. Could use a day on the couch with endless DVDs, but not when it is suddenly unseasonably warm out agian!! I miss the beach!
Mid-movie Sailor decides to show off his newest skill. With a great deal of gusto and talent Sailor demonstrates his ability to “arm fart.” Yep, I am so proud of my little boy. He can tie his shoes, swim and arm fart.
“You have to cuff your arm like this,” he instructs me, cupping his hand under his armpit. He is cracking me up!
Sailor loses his enthusiasm when it is time to go to sleep but falls asleep with his hand under my shirt as he is wont to do.
And another long and tedious school week is over.
Saturday morning I tell the boys to put on their fave StarWars costumes. They choose, instead of their store bought costumes, to make their own. Mac wears a pair of brown cords and a dark grey waffle weave shirt, black gloves and his requisite rain boots (it hasn’t stopped raining since Friday morning). He is Anakin Skywalker. Sailor puts on a tiny double breasted suit. He is Luke. They just look like kids in weird clothes. I don’t tell them where we are going. We stand in line for about 30 minutes only to have both children become either star struck or terrified, I am not sure which. Mac lets me take one photo of him with Luke, Anakin and Obi-Wan Kenobi. I have mine taken with Darth Vader. And then we leave. At which point Sailor bursts into tears. “That was not fun! It was not what I expected!” So much for great surprises.
Monday morning I am tired from being away from the boys so much of the weekend. And from staying up readying the house so that I can decorate tonight for Sailor’s birthday tomorrow. And from IMing with the best friend of a guy I like. So when the alarm rings and Mac says, “I was up sneezing all night and my stomach hurts and I don’t think I can go to school today,” I shut off the alarm and tell him to go back to sleep. When we finally get up at 20 after 8:00 I call him in sick. I know he is not sick. But my plan is to take Sailor up to the ‘burbs for his birthday photo today and I can’t take the risk that Mac will have the school call me to come get him again like last Monday.
Sailor is a gorgeous child. People have commented on him. But when he takes photos he does not let himself go and so he does not photograph all that well. So I have some trouble choosing which photos to order.
We spend the day shopping and getting ready for tomorrow and relishing Sailor’s last day of 4-ness (a term we coined two years ago when he had his last day of 2-ness!). I am not sure I am ready to have my younger child be 5 years old. I still think of Mac as 5 and in kindergarten. But it’s going to be Sailor now. I don’t think he is big enuf to be 5. He still has tantrums. Still naps. Still wants “uppy.” Still rides in the stroller. Yet he can tie his shoes. Shower. Swim. Write.
No, I am not ready for my baby boy to be 5. It seems so many, many years ago that he was born. And yet I can’t believe 5 whole years have just about passed. I remember so much about the day he was born. Mac was so little. Just 2. But seemed so big. And now I don’t even know how we got to where we are right now. And in some ways it frightens me. I am so glad Sailor is not in kindergarten now. My beautiful boy. Mac had a major change in personality when he was 5. Sailor asked me what he would be like when he is 5, how he would be different. He also showed me how big he thinks he will be when he wakes up and is 5. “What if I don’t sleep at all during the sleeping time?” he wants to know, in anticipation of the decorations I will put up while he sleeps.
At the mall today, after the photos, it gets cold. I buy the boys pants. And Sailor a pair of socks to put on under his fisherman sandals. He holds the pants up by the legs to keep them from getting dirty on the ground. Silly boy. Silly sleepy boy who loves to be carried and hugged. When he wakes he will be 5! Half a decade! And now SuperMommy must sleep.
Tuesday
Mac wakes Sailor on his birthday… We proceed immediately to the small pile of gifts on the dining room table, which Sailor is quite pleased with. Mostly toys. A DVD. A couple of shirts. And then I direct him to search the living room (the “Liver-room” as he calls it. “What is it posue-ta-be?” he asks when I ask him how he says "living room") all the while I am continuously reminding Mac that this is Sailor’s birthday.
It’s a nice day with great weather. We pick up his favorite friend on our way home and drive to the indoor inflatable place only to find not only no place to park but a “Closed” sign on the door. It is 9:30 a.m., nothing is open except Old Navy and the art store and I have two highly disappointed 5-year-olds in the backseat of my car. We have been planning this morning’s events for no fewer than 4 months. I am heartsick for the boys and wishing that I had followed my gut instinct to call ahead (I did check the website!). I drive to the Nature Museum after a quick call that tells me they are already open. We don’t have much time so we play quickly in the water area and the tree house slide area and then pet a box turtle named Harrison and look at tarantulas and walking stick insects and Sailor’s friend gives Sailor a “what the hell?” look when Sailor answers correctly my questions about camouflage. We pick up the boy’s mother and head to the Rainforest Café. When Mac was 4 we went there for dinner and he was terrified. Sailor, too young to remember, saw the big red eyed tree frog (which he identified by name) back in May and asked to go for lunch. Today is the day. It takes us forever to walk to our table as we are all in awe of the sites inside this restaurant. We are seated next to two elephants that trumpet and snort and wink and flail their trunks at us throughout the meal. It is not a relaxed meal as I attempt to engage in meaningful conversation with the boy’s mom and not ignore Sailor, the birthday boy. We have to get back for the boy to be on time for preschool but I really have to stop to pee. No sooner are we a block away from the restaurant and my friend is saying, “I don’t see you car! Did they tow it?” sending me into an unpleasant déjà vu from last summer that Sailor announces, “I hafgo potty.” I toss the keys at my friend and continue down the block to an unexpectedly fancy restaurant whose hostesses both inside and out direct us right to the bathroom without waiting for us to finish asking for it. The bathroom has deep old fashioned sinks and powdered borax soap. Our friends are waiting a block away in our car, already late for junior kindergarten. And Sailor’s poopies are stuck. My phone rings. My father on the other end can’t hear what I am saying. He hangs up and calls me back. I am in a bathroom in a fancy restaurant telling my dad yes, buy me milk at the grocery store.
Sailor falls asleep on the way to the toy store and I let him doze while I phone chat with my college best friend. Inside the store we choose 5 toys to narrow down to one good choice. Sailor wants to buy something for Mac, too. Perhaps this is a ploy to get another toy for himself. But how can you deny such generosity, and on his own birthday no less?!
Sailor takes no more than 2 bites of the birthday dinner he has so carefully planned and shopped for: Macker cheese, broccoli, corn, watermelon and rootbeer. Instead of eating he jumps back and forth between the sofa and the big chair while rest of us eat. All I can say about his racetrack cake, ala Speed Racer, is this: Scooter, $35; decorations, $25; birthday dinner, $80. Getting two little plastic cars on top of your birthday cake and mommy letting you play with them in you piece of cake, priceless! “Did you taste your cake?” we ask him. “Yes, from my fingers.” He is covered in cake and delights us all by licking the cake off the cars as if they were ribs or chicken.
I let the boys stay up way too late because is it, after all, Sailor’s only 5th birthday and so we will be tired in the morning and I will remind the boys that they chose to stay up and play and they will understand.
And we are going along and going along and on Wednesday it all comes tumbling down. Permission slips for the first 2nd grade field trip are in folders this afternoon. My new school ally, the only mom I talk to regularly this year so far, says flat out, “My daughter’s not going.” It’s a walking field trip so I don’t have to worry about the bus issue. Yet. And it’s neighborhood and not on a day Sailor has a class. So I can chaperone. I fill out the form. I write in the volunteer spot that I would like to be considered as a chaperone. I do not mention that if I am not chosen to accompany Mac’s class that Mac will not be going. I will save this big X on my reputation for a later date. No point causing myself trouble before I have to, which is what I did last year. No, no point. I will wait until it comes up. Meanwhile I am still going to stay silent. But I feel the stress in my chest and wonder why I can’t just be like the other moms. And why, when I try to be, I am given a hard time about it anyway. No point trying to do what others expect of me. Might as well just do what I feel is right. Whatever that is. Even if it feels weird overall.
By week’s end it feels as if we have been back to school for months. I knew this would happen and I am pretty bummed about it. We are in a routine that is backbreaking and yet we follow along without question. Mac has his first spelling test back with a perfect score, including extra credit words. This week’s words are somewhat more difficult but still reasonable although he is expected to spell beautiful and consulting as his bonus words. It is no easy task to teach this boy to spell. But on his sentence sheet he writes “My mom is beautiful.” What a good boy I have.
Early in the week a set of 2nd graders was moved into Mac’s class to make room in their original classroom for the overflow of 1st graders, thereby creating a 1st/2nd split class. I am very glad that Mac is not part of the split class and I am happy with the children who have joined his class. Top of the list is Isabella, whose mom is the only mom I have spent any truly significant time with this year. Her little brother is rapidly becoming one of Sailor’s playmates, as we moms linger after the bell rings almost every morning now. Isabella is a tiny girl with dark hair and porcelain skin. And the attitude and self-possession of a girl 10 years older, in a good way. Mac asked me last weekend if I could guess who his new girlfriend is. I guessed Isabella right away and was pleased when he said I was correct. Mac has not had a girlfriend since he broke up with his fiancée, Anika, a couple of years ago. I am glad he has picked such a really nice girl. Between her mother’s overprotectiveness and mine we are in good shape!
Thursday morning I dress up for no reason. I have a long black tank dress that has lingered in my closet for at least 10 years. I pair it with a black high heeled sandals and some nice jewelry and voila! Hot mom. I have to go into the school office for a quick moment. I stop at the security table to sign in. The security guard asks me if I am going to a fancy luncheon. No, I tell him, I just felt like dressing up. He comments something along the lines of, “Well I appreciate it. Thank you.” I wonder which part of the dress he likes the most. I guess after all these years the dress, which clings to every part mercilessly, is still wearable, at least on a “skinny” day. I am flattered by the guard’s attentions. But by day’s end my feet are killing me. Who am I kidding. By the time I walk home from dropping off Mac my feet are killing me!
Later when Sailor falls asleep in the car on the way to finding a parking space to pick up Mac I am in deep trouble. There is no possibility that I can carry him the 3 blocks from the space I finally find. I wake him and he cries. Poor thing. But I simply cannot carry him and walk in these shoes. Which yes, I am still wearing! Who am I kidding? I simply cannot walk in these shoes!
Thursday after French class Mac and Sailor’s teacher, Elisabeth, tells me that Alec is distracting Mac in class. I am not surprised tho usually the troublemaker is Mac, and Sailor is the well-behaved child. Elisabeth thinks Mac may be bored because he is “very advanced” she tells me. I love this bit of info. Mac has been taking French on and off for nearly 5 years. I have undoubtedly spent thousands of dollars on these classes. He is now getting three days a week 45 minutes each at school. I should expect him to be advanced by now, if not at least somewhat conversational. Hurray for Mac!
Sailor finds an acquaintance named Christina in soccer this morning. He knows her from art class and I went to college with her mom (tho we were not friends then). He tells me after class that “Christina is fun to play with.” I am so pleased that Sailor is making some new friends. With no school group to help this along it does my heart good to see that he is indeed making friends in the other settings I am exposing him to.
At Whole Foods Sailor finds a cake that looks like it has a spider web on it. "Look, a Spider Man cake, Mommy!" So yes, I order him one. We have never ordered a birthday cake before. And as this is the go-all-out-for-Sailor’s-birthday year, how can I say no? It is a sweet indulgence. $20. Saves me having to bake, frost and decorate cupcakes! So I don't mind. I am tired. We spent the afternoon setting up for Sailor's party at the art studio so we don’t have to rush over the weekend.
Friday after school we have a playdate with Mac’s 1st grade nemesis. He says they are getting along this year and they want to play. While we wait outside school for the boy’s mom to finish a chat with a teacher, Mrs. S, the demon 1st grade teacher from last year, marches right up to Mac and his friend. “Hello 2nd graders,” she chimes. I want to puke. “What did we learn about how to treat trees? Is this a young tree or an old tree?” she asks, grasping the trunk of the young tree the boys have been clamoring around and attempts to shake it. “What did we learn last year? How do we treat the tree? We don’t climb on it.” She shakes and shakes the tree. Not that it moves an inch. It is strong and well rooted. I am unclear as to her motive. She does not address me. I keep my eyes turned toward the boys and then turn them away and stare into the crowd. Mrs. S. persists. Does she want me to acknowledge her? I will not. Tho I want to. I want to tell her that I will discipline my own children thank you very much. I ignore her and she eventually, after a painfully long display, turns and walks away. I hate her very presence and wish I had the nerve to tell her to stay away from my child.
The boys – my two, and this boy and his little brother – are rowdy and noisy and aggressive and … this mom and I are none too pleased. Mac wets his pants and I refuse to let him change. But give in to a dry pair of the other boy’s underwear, which I have to ask the boy 4 times for. I don’t want him to be wet all over the house. But I also want him to take more responsibility and pee when he needs to! I mean, who doesn’t have to pee when they get home from school? Every one of his friends has immediately asked for the bathroom upon arrival after school at our house. Perhaps I need to enforce the pee-first-thing-after-school rule to get him into the habit as when we were growing up. So I let him change his unders but not his pants, which were also wet. I drape them over the stroller to dry and let him suffer the humiliation of running around in his shirt and no pants. And suffer he does. It pains me a great deal to watch his tantrum, which I assure him is far more embarrassing than his lack of pants.
We opt for a sleepover in the living room for Friday night movie night. Pizza. The Bee Movie. Sleeping bags. It’s fun and the kids think it is a great idea. By 6:30 I want to go to sleep. Wish tomorrow were a rain day. Could use a day on the couch with endless DVDs, but not when it is suddenly unseasonably warm out agian!! I miss the beach!
Mid-movie Sailor decides to show off his newest skill. With a great deal of gusto and talent Sailor demonstrates his ability to “arm fart.” Yep, I am so proud of my little boy. He can tie his shoes, swim and arm fart.
“You have to cuff your arm like this,” he instructs me, cupping his hand under his armpit. He is cracking me up!
Sailor loses his enthusiasm when it is time to go to sleep but falls asleep with his hand under my shirt as he is wont to do.
And another long and tedious school week is over.
Week 2 – Off to a Good… Sick Day?
We are off to a good start this morning. We are on time. We are not dawdling too badly. But Mac is having listening problems and I am beginning to remember the personality he had last year while he was in 1st grade. He has already reverted back to the same obnoxious boy I did not particularly know what to do with last year. And he is not doing what he is asked to do. And we all seem different already, on just the 1st day of the 2nd week of school.
Our walk to school is fine. It is nice out, a cool autumn morning. Moments before the bell rings Mac begins to complain of a stomach ache. He wants me to pick him up. I do. He is 4’1” tall to my 5’. We must make an interesting sight. I make sure he knows my cell phone number in case he needs me to come get him.
Sailor and I are in the slow check-out line at the dollar store when the school calls. I promise to be there in 20 minutes and exactly 20 minutes later I am standing in the office filling out Mac’s early dismissal form.
There is no parking when we get home. It’s a street cleaning day. It starts to rain. The temperature drops. It feels like time to winterize our lives. We are still tan. I pull out my furry Crocs. And my flannel pj pants. We were at the beach one week ago today. And so I must laugh at myself: all summer I have been declaring my perfect idea, that school should end on the last day of June and start up again on October 1st, because it is always so hot in September.
Driving home from our futile shoe shopping expedition this afternoon (the only way to get Mac a decent pair of gym shoes is to go to one of the boutiques and drop $75, which I am not about to do) the temperature is reported at 58 degrees F. So much for the warm September it could easily (and nicely) have been.
Tuesday
My new approach on homework is working well for Mac. Instead of fighting, I set him a timer for the 30 minutes the school handbook says it should take a 2nd grader to do homework. If he gets done before the 30 minutes are up, he gets to read! He has done his homework efficiently in 15 minutes both yesterday and today. I am brilliant! Well, get back to me in a day or a week, see how it is going.
Sailor and I wait in the playground for Mac after school today. I push my little boy, who is not so little anymore. I push him on a swing. My hands on his little butt with each push. He is little. Not like the 6th graders – someone else’s babies – playing hockey on the playground in gym class. Someday he will be that big. I am so lucky to be here, pushing my little boy on a swing, in the sunshine of a late-summer afternoon. On his back there are two belts. Baby belts that he has outgrown but that I have yet to remove from his drawer. At home he asked me to strap them on his back like an X. He even laid them on the floor to show me how an X should look. Tucked into the straps is his long, plastic sword. He has some great imagination, this soon-to-be-5-year-old baby of mine.
Mac has become fidgety, antsy and totally obnoxious. We have a talk before bed and he says there are no boys at his table at school. I can’t imagine this is really the problem. Sailor has a tantrum in his room this evening over being sent there for misbehaviour. I realize he does look almost 5. All tall and lanky. And much too old to be still having tantrums!
Wednesday
I figure something out as I dry my hair this morning. My problem with Mac being in school is that it limits my time with him (which we already know) and therefore eliminates my opportunities to get this parenting thing right.
I wake up in a puddle. Or rather my backside is wet. I am fearful of rolling over, so I don’t. Sailor wakes me again at 6:30 a.m. to have me escort him to the bathroom. I am still wet. I have to pee so I know the wetness has not come from me. As I sit up in bed Mac wakes and says, “I peed in the bed.”
“No,” I say, and not so kindly, “You peed all over me. Strip the bed.”
And so our Wednesday morning begins. When I pick out Sailor’s clothes he wants to know why we are getting dressed in the night.
I am grumpy and yes, somewhat angry this morning.
At school we wend our way thru the crowd of children, parents, siblings, strollers. There just is not enuf room to get from one side of the entrance door to the other where Mac is meant to stand with his class. Why it matters where he stands before he enters the building is beyond me. And even as I watch him enter he does so alone, as if someone has told him to wait his turn and then ascend the front steps.
Sailor and I fill the front tire of the stroller with air at a nearby bike shop.
“Mom, does dinosaurs have ears?” he asks. A good question.
We head to his enrichment program, which I have neglected to tell him he has to go to today. The tantrum that ensues lasts 30 minutes.
I hoist him out of the stroller and into my lap. I explain that he is too old to behave in this manner (but not that he is too old to still be riding around in a stroller). I remind him that this is the class he attends on Wednesdays. I try everything. When the other kids arrive he is lying in my lap as if to nurse. Sometime I wish he still could. Eventually I drag him/carry him into class. He is inconsolable. Grasping for my legs. Clinging to me. Crying hysterically. This is the boy who will be 5 in six days. Perhaps he is not yet kindergarten material after all. Maybe the CPS system is right about their cutoff date. “I have to go potty.”
We walk to the bathroom.
We discuss how unkind he finds it that I did not tell him ahead of time that this was our plan for this morning.
I sit beside him in class for a few minutes.
When I retreat to the waiting area I feel like the worst mom. Not sure why. I did not yell. I did not spank. I did not back down in my resolve that he would take this class.
But being a parent, and a single parent at that, is so hard.
Midway thru class I peek in the room. Sailor greets me with a huge grin.
After class he is happy to see me. “What’s in my lunch box, Mommy? I am starving!”
He falls asleep in the stroller just before noon and sleeps for more than 2 hours.
His claims not to feel well dissipate when Mac emerges from school and wants to play on the playground.
Mac has had another nice day at school. He thoroughly enjoys his 2nd piano lesson. He has energy to play outside before dinner – who can blame him? It’s warm out. The sun is on our backs. He scooters back and forth in front of the house while Sailor cries, “No one will play catch with me!”
“Who did you ask?” I ask him. Mac declines his offer so I hop down from the porch and play a 4-year-old’s weird game of catch that is somewhat like soccer, 4 square, and volleyball all together. “Fetch!” he yells to me when he tosses me the ball, and then peals with laughter when I toss it back. It’s nice out. Nice to get some exercise with my kids. I like this. It feels different from a summer evening, tho. Homework looms!
Dinner with my parents goes well. Mac brings out the electric piano and gives us his first piano recital, having already memorized what he learned today. My dad wants me to videotape it. Even if I were to run upstairs and grab my recorder it would be too late. And there is no film left. Has been no film since the end of 1st grade.
My day felt somewhat profound as I was living it. But now, at 10:55pm, clean sheets on the bed, children asleep, laundry everywhere, lunches to make, clothes to set out, sleep to be had by me, my day seems like just another day in the complicated, crazy, but happy life of me.
Thursday. September 11, 2008.
Yeah. I know. Not a date I like to remember much less ever have to put down on paper. Not here. Not in my check book. Not on Mac’s homework.
Our morning starts out as any other. Just as the real 9/11 started out for so many. And this is not lost on me as I go about our normal routine, just as so many mothers did 7 years ago. A day that dawned so beautiful and turned so ugly in just the blink of an eye. As I was doing 7 years ago, I listen to the Eric & Kathy show on the radio. I cry thru spreading almond butter on pretzel bread, because as the radio prepares us for a brief moment of silence I am transported back to the pain of 7 years ago. This will never go away. I am compelled midway thru breakfast preparation to stop and email the host, Eric.
Eric,
I am listening to your show -- in tears -- as I get my boys ready for school. I was listening to your show 7 years ago ... changing my new baby's diaper, getting him dressed for the day... when the story you were unfolding changed my life -- my parenting style -- forever.
I am touched and impressed beyond words that you and Kathy and our crew continue to dedicate your show to remembering 9/11, even 7 years later.
Those of us whose lives were irrevocably changed by the events of that morning will never forget -- it gets easier to have a "normal" day, but only because we will ourselves to do so by allowing the bulk of the pain to stay in the background today. To not let it bubble up to the surface.
Thank you, Eric, Kathy, Melissa, Mark... for letting us remember with you.
Love, SuperMommy
Mac and Sailor's mom
They talk about how this year people seem to not want to remember. They are solemn. They are appropriate. They do this every year and every year I am moved.
What I realize is that I will never forget. That is a given. But what I don’t want to do anymore do anymore is feel the fear.
Our day is normal.
Except that the kids and I are dressed in red, white and blue, down to Sailor’s striped socks (“They are just like my shirt!”) and shirt (and shorts!) and Mac’s red shirt with the peace symbol on the front. My shirt is blue and has “American” printed across the front and a definition on the back. I wear my red jean jacket.
At home Sailor and I bake our yearly batch of cookies for the local fire station. I ask him to separate out the blue and red M&Ms from the rest of the bag. Ironically, after Sailor accidentally lets one blue M&M roll to the floor we have 11 left. We top each of the first batch of cookies with an M&M. “They are all red or blue, Mommy. Just like my shirt. Cuz it’s America Day, right?”
Right.
Sailor plays in the playground with his new friend Ryan and has ironically decided to wear some costume parts that look so similar to the religious headwear of the Islamic people.
After school and on the way to French class we drop in to the fire station and leave our plate of cookies with a simple card attached. There is no one around. We leave our treat on the desk beside a box of donuts bearing a thank you note.
We are not the only ones.
The day ends as all days end and we are no worse for the wear. It’s just another day. Except it is not. It is a day every American who lived thru it will always remember. It is a day that, 7 years ago, I would never have believed we would still be alive to see.
And for this day I am grateful.
Our walk to school is fine. It is nice out, a cool autumn morning. Moments before the bell rings Mac begins to complain of a stomach ache. He wants me to pick him up. I do. He is 4’1” tall to my 5’. We must make an interesting sight. I make sure he knows my cell phone number in case he needs me to come get him.
Sailor and I are in the slow check-out line at the dollar store when the school calls. I promise to be there in 20 minutes and exactly 20 minutes later I am standing in the office filling out Mac’s early dismissal form.
There is no parking when we get home. It’s a street cleaning day. It starts to rain. The temperature drops. It feels like time to winterize our lives. We are still tan. I pull out my furry Crocs. And my flannel pj pants. We were at the beach one week ago today. And so I must laugh at myself: all summer I have been declaring my perfect idea, that school should end on the last day of June and start up again on October 1st, because it is always so hot in September.
Driving home from our futile shoe shopping expedition this afternoon (the only way to get Mac a decent pair of gym shoes is to go to one of the boutiques and drop $75, which I am not about to do) the temperature is reported at 58 degrees F. So much for the warm September it could easily (and nicely) have been.
Tuesday
My new approach on homework is working well for Mac. Instead of fighting, I set him a timer for the 30 minutes the school handbook says it should take a 2nd grader to do homework. If he gets done before the 30 minutes are up, he gets to read! He has done his homework efficiently in 15 minutes both yesterday and today. I am brilliant! Well, get back to me in a day or a week, see how it is going.
Sailor and I wait in the playground for Mac after school today. I push my little boy, who is not so little anymore. I push him on a swing. My hands on his little butt with each push. He is little. Not like the 6th graders – someone else’s babies – playing hockey on the playground in gym class. Someday he will be that big. I am so lucky to be here, pushing my little boy on a swing, in the sunshine of a late-summer afternoon. On his back there are two belts. Baby belts that he has outgrown but that I have yet to remove from his drawer. At home he asked me to strap them on his back like an X. He even laid them on the floor to show me how an X should look. Tucked into the straps is his long, plastic sword. He has some great imagination, this soon-to-be-5-year-old baby of mine.
Mac has become fidgety, antsy and totally obnoxious. We have a talk before bed and he says there are no boys at his table at school. I can’t imagine this is really the problem. Sailor has a tantrum in his room this evening over being sent there for misbehaviour. I realize he does look almost 5. All tall and lanky. And much too old to be still having tantrums!
Wednesday
I figure something out as I dry my hair this morning. My problem with Mac being in school is that it limits my time with him (which we already know) and therefore eliminates my opportunities to get this parenting thing right.
I wake up in a puddle. Or rather my backside is wet. I am fearful of rolling over, so I don’t. Sailor wakes me again at 6:30 a.m. to have me escort him to the bathroom. I am still wet. I have to pee so I know the wetness has not come from me. As I sit up in bed Mac wakes and says, “I peed in the bed.”
“No,” I say, and not so kindly, “You peed all over me. Strip the bed.”
And so our Wednesday morning begins. When I pick out Sailor’s clothes he wants to know why we are getting dressed in the night.
I am grumpy and yes, somewhat angry this morning.
At school we wend our way thru the crowd of children, parents, siblings, strollers. There just is not enuf room to get from one side of the entrance door to the other where Mac is meant to stand with his class. Why it matters where he stands before he enters the building is beyond me. And even as I watch him enter he does so alone, as if someone has told him to wait his turn and then ascend the front steps.
Sailor and I fill the front tire of the stroller with air at a nearby bike shop.
“Mom, does dinosaurs have ears?” he asks. A good question.
We head to his enrichment program, which I have neglected to tell him he has to go to today. The tantrum that ensues lasts 30 minutes.
I hoist him out of the stroller and into my lap. I explain that he is too old to behave in this manner (but not that he is too old to still be riding around in a stroller). I remind him that this is the class he attends on Wednesdays. I try everything. When the other kids arrive he is lying in my lap as if to nurse. Sometime I wish he still could. Eventually I drag him/carry him into class. He is inconsolable. Grasping for my legs. Clinging to me. Crying hysterically. This is the boy who will be 5 in six days. Perhaps he is not yet kindergarten material after all. Maybe the CPS system is right about their cutoff date. “I have to go potty.”
We walk to the bathroom.
We discuss how unkind he finds it that I did not tell him ahead of time that this was our plan for this morning.
I sit beside him in class for a few minutes.
When I retreat to the waiting area I feel like the worst mom. Not sure why. I did not yell. I did not spank. I did not back down in my resolve that he would take this class.
But being a parent, and a single parent at that, is so hard.
Midway thru class I peek in the room. Sailor greets me with a huge grin.
After class he is happy to see me. “What’s in my lunch box, Mommy? I am starving!”
He falls asleep in the stroller just before noon and sleeps for more than 2 hours.
His claims not to feel well dissipate when Mac emerges from school and wants to play on the playground.
Mac has had another nice day at school. He thoroughly enjoys his 2nd piano lesson. He has energy to play outside before dinner – who can blame him? It’s warm out. The sun is on our backs. He scooters back and forth in front of the house while Sailor cries, “No one will play catch with me!”
“Who did you ask?” I ask him. Mac declines his offer so I hop down from the porch and play a 4-year-old’s weird game of catch that is somewhat like soccer, 4 square, and volleyball all together. “Fetch!” he yells to me when he tosses me the ball, and then peals with laughter when I toss it back. It’s nice out. Nice to get some exercise with my kids. I like this. It feels different from a summer evening, tho. Homework looms!
Dinner with my parents goes well. Mac brings out the electric piano and gives us his first piano recital, having already memorized what he learned today. My dad wants me to videotape it. Even if I were to run upstairs and grab my recorder it would be too late. And there is no film left. Has been no film since the end of 1st grade.
My day felt somewhat profound as I was living it. But now, at 10:55pm, clean sheets on the bed, children asleep, laundry everywhere, lunches to make, clothes to set out, sleep to be had by me, my day seems like just another day in the complicated, crazy, but happy life of me.
Thursday. September 11, 2008.
Yeah. I know. Not a date I like to remember much less ever have to put down on paper. Not here. Not in my check book. Not on Mac’s homework.
Our morning starts out as any other. Just as the real 9/11 started out for so many. And this is not lost on me as I go about our normal routine, just as so many mothers did 7 years ago. A day that dawned so beautiful and turned so ugly in just the blink of an eye. As I was doing 7 years ago, I listen to the Eric & Kathy show on the radio. I cry thru spreading almond butter on pretzel bread, because as the radio prepares us for a brief moment of silence I am transported back to the pain of 7 years ago. This will never go away. I am compelled midway thru breakfast preparation to stop and email the host, Eric.
Eric,
I am listening to your show -- in tears -- as I get my boys ready for school. I was listening to your show 7 years ago ... changing my new baby's diaper, getting him dressed for the day... when the story you were unfolding changed my life -- my parenting style -- forever.
I am touched and impressed beyond words that you and Kathy and our crew continue to dedicate your show to remembering 9/11, even 7 years later.
Those of us whose lives were irrevocably changed by the events of that morning will never forget -- it gets easier to have a "normal" day, but only because we will ourselves to do so by allowing the bulk of the pain to stay in the background today. To not let it bubble up to the surface.
Thank you, Eric, Kathy, Melissa, Mark... for letting us remember with you.
Love, SuperMommy
Mac and Sailor's mom
They talk about how this year people seem to not want to remember. They are solemn. They are appropriate. They do this every year and every year I am moved.
What I realize is that I will never forget. That is a given. But what I don’t want to do anymore do anymore is feel the fear.
Our day is normal.
Except that the kids and I are dressed in red, white and blue, down to Sailor’s striped socks (“They are just like my shirt!”) and shirt (and shorts!) and Mac’s red shirt with the peace symbol on the front. My shirt is blue and has “American” printed across the front and a definition on the back. I wear my red jean jacket.
At home Sailor and I bake our yearly batch of cookies for the local fire station. I ask him to separate out the blue and red M&Ms from the rest of the bag. Ironically, after Sailor accidentally lets one blue M&M roll to the floor we have 11 left. We top each of the first batch of cookies with an M&M. “They are all red or blue, Mommy. Just like my shirt. Cuz it’s America Day, right?”
Right.
Sailor plays in the playground with his new friend Ryan and has ironically decided to wear some costume parts that look so similar to the religious headwear of the Islamic people.
After school and on the way to French class we drop in to the fire station and leave our plate of cookies with a simple card attached. There is no one around. We leave our treat on the desk beside a box of donuts bearing a thank you note.
We are not the only ones.
The day ends as all days end and we are no worse for the wear. It’s just another day. Except it is not. It is a day every American who lived thru it will always remember. It is a day that, 7 years ago, I would never have believed we would still be alive to see.
And for this day I am grateful.
Sunday, September 7, 2008
Week 1: I Don't Wanna Go To School (Says MAMA!)
LABOR DAY, Monday, September 1, 2008. 6pm. The kitchen.
Despite the fact that I have a checklist in front of me that has everything on it checked off, the pile of school supplies Mac is to take to his first day of 2nd grade tomorrow is short one set of markers and one box of wipes. There are no more wipes hiding under Sailor’s bed and the markers I thought we had leftover from gosh-knows-what are not in my closet. “Send a note to the teacher,” my sister suggests. But I have no excuse. The supplies list came home with Mac in June on his last torturous day of 1st grade. I have had a full 11 weeks to fill the requirements of this list.
Second grade has to be better than first. It has to be! Regardless, I don’t really plan to have Mac return next year. Unless we have truly amazing year. Truly amazing.
A few weeks ago my college best friend called me in tears over her little one starting 1st grade. Full of sympathy and knowing it would be my turn soon I listened and advised. Today I want to call her. But it is Labor Day, a holiday and I know she is doing family stuff. I try my dad, who pats my shoulder and says simply, “He has to go.” I try my sister, who gives me, “Don’t let him hear you.” It’s not as if Mac wants to go to school tomorrow. Before he falls asleep he says, “I don’t want to leave you tomorrow. Can’t I go next week.” I am a good mom, so I tell him simply that no, he can’t start next week, school starts tomorrow.
I have sand in my hair and my boys and I have sunburned faces. They aren’t terribly burned so I don’t mind saying they look adorable. We spent the day at the beach. It was like being on a fabulous vacation at a crazy busy resort, thousands of people, bikinis, Frisbees. It was fantastic. A perfect end to a really great summer.
Mac’s backpack weighs a ton. His change of clothes, requested for the 1st time since preschool, is packed. The old lunchbox has been dug out and a new “Happy 1st day of 2nd grade” note is placed inside. Mac’s clothes are picked out. Sailor’s soccer uniform is laid out. We are ready to go. And I don’t want to.
I don’t want to be the fun, friendly mom this year. I was rejected as a room parent for the 2nd year in a row. And I want take a silent pill so I can appear withdrawn and unfriendly this year. Why not? I don’t want to be part of the community of parents this year. And yet I am sitting in bed, doing my nails and my outfit is picked out…
I email my college best friend:
I so do not want to take Mac to school tomorrow! He doesn't want to go either. He doesn't want to be away from us. Oh gosh! I so wish I had done more than just fantasized about alternatives for him for this year. His clothes are picked out and his backpack weighs a TON! And we had to run to CVS at 6:00 tonight to buy markers and wipes because even tho I had 11 weeks to buy this stuff, and even tho both items were checked off my list, I didn't have either thing. Have I mentioned that I don't want to take Mac to school tomorrow? We have had such a nice summer. This is our real life, the warm weather and the togetherness. Funny how when I had Mac I had no idea what I would do with a baby -- I wanted a kid! Now that I have a kid, kids, I just want them to stay little so I can keep them close.
sigh...
I made plans for a busy day tomorrow. Hopefully Mac will have fun at school. I don't plan to have him go back there next year tho.
Wish me luck in the a.m.!
We had an impromptu falalfel fest/party on the porch last night and we didn't come in til almost 10! It was so much fun!
Love, SuperMommy
I don’t sleep a wink Sunday between my kids thinking I am the bed and not the mom sandwiched between them, and my anxiety over our summer together being at an abrupt end. It is hot. I am awake and out of bed before the alarm. Not even tired. Mac has been moaning and rolling around. “My stomach hurts.” Great. I can see it now: We’re calling in sick on the first day of school.
I come to realize that when you have children, no event is mutually exclusive. Normally, for me, a first day of school would be just that and only that with all focus on that. But not today. Today is also Sailor’s first day back to soccer. It is also the day my father has scheduled the plumber to come install the new vanity and bathroom sink. What time, Dad? 8:30 a.m.? You mean precisely the time I need to be hustling my boys out the door for Mac’s traditional on-the-front-stairs first day of school photo shoot? Precisely. And please take the vanity and sink out of their respective boxes so the plumber doesn’t have to waste time doing it? Alrighty then. So at 8:00 a.m. when the boys are supposed to be finishing up their breakfasts fit for little kings and I am meant to be drying my hair, we are taking knife to cardboard and mutilating the boxes surrounding these long-awaited, and very heavy bathroom accessories.
Outside I take a few photos as my parents come out to wish us well. My mom’s best friend comes by to walk to school to wish her granddaughter well in 1st grade, and an old neighbor with whom we have never been friends happily crosses the street so that her kindergartener can walk to school with us. We are an odd groupto be sure, walking down the sunny street. And why is it hotter this morning than it has been in a month? In fact the hottest day on record this year!? Because I have dressed my 2nd grader in a sweater vest and because the beach and all the neighborhood pools are officially closed, that’s why. I realize halfway to school that I am talking more to the adults and not paying much attention to my bespectacled red-head to whom I am about to bid a 6 ½ hour farewell.
The scene outside school is one of utter chaos. As always. Working parents drop off their accustomed children. New parents hover near their timid children. I stick close to mine because he is the only person here I want to talk to. He heaves his 50 pound backpack on his back and does not complain that he has to carry his lunch box and an extra bag of supplies and a change of clothes. I overhear his conversation with a girl named Chloe, whom I do not know. “We went to Paris, and London, and … “ she names off the countries in Europe the way Mac could name off the museums we visited last week. Undeterred Mac enthusiastically responds with, “We went to Kenosha [Wisconsin; called, by Sailor, Misconsin]. Twice!”
Cameras click. Camcorders silently record these precious moments. Behind my giant black sunglasses I conceal the tears that try in vain to spring from my eyes. I don’t cry for one simple reason: If I do cry, I will be a sobbing, hysterical mess, and no one would care! I avoid eye contact with all but a new mom, whom I welcome graciously, and a mom whom I became friends with last year but whom I have not seen since June.
The bell rings. The children go inside (Mommy complaint #1, which I share with no one: The 2nd grade teachers couldn’t haul their asses downstairs and come get their kids on the first day?! Seriously?!). And that is that.
Sailor and I walk home. He has soccer at 9:30.
Or so I have written in my schedule book from now until the end of November. Apparently he actually has soccer at 10:30. And I have chocolate ice cream on the hem of my dress, which I thought was still clean after only having worn it a few hours after the beach yesterday.
At Old Navy I buy myself a new sundress -- which fits fabulously and adorably in the dressing room, but is way too big once I try to carry my purse on my shoulder, pick up Sailor, sit or move once I leave the store – and a pair of jeans for Mac.
There are two children in Sailor’s soccer class. He doesn’t want me to go to the bathroom to put on the sundress until his class is over. And when it is and he sees I have changed dresses, he is pissed! “I had to go pee! So I figured I might as well change my dress while I was there,” I explain and he is placated.
At Trader Joe’s they have everything pre-made for a fabulous falafel dinner. Except falafel. Off to Whole Foods. Then the bank. Then home to put groceries away.
Then to lunch with my dad, which is not as much fun as usual because he can’t eat anything with fat in it and has no idea what to order. And Sailor refuses to eat. And the waiter is grumpy. And my dad can’t hear me over the traffic. And he insists that no matter what happens at school Mac will survive. I don’t know how to make everyone understand that it’s not just survival that I want for my children.
Sailor plays in the playground with the 6th grade gym class while we wait for Mac to come out of school. We have kept miraculously busy this day so it has flown by. Nonetheless we miss Mac.
He comes out and true to form a smile spreads across his face when he sees me. “How was it?” I hold my breath in anticipation of his answer.
“Second grade is awesome!”
And that is all I need to hear.
He tells me who he is sitting next to (his locker partner from last year) and who is locker partner is (Isabella A.) and who he had lunch with (John) and that his class has AC and he that he was cold. He tells me his teacher is nice and had a nice voice and that she gave them pretzels this afternoon while they were writing stories about what they did this summer and that he wrote his about the Renaissance Faire we went to on Saturday and that his teacher said to spell their words the way they think they should be spelled and not to worry if they didn’t know the right way. His teacher, Mrs. W., looked happy when she dismissed the class.
We take Mac to Orange Julius for a treat, but he wants ice cream, which I won’t let him have there. We wait 15 minutes for Alec's Orange Julius. After we stop home for a moment we leave for an ice cram place only to find – or not find, as the case may be – my wallet. We walk home, grab ice cream sandwiches from the freezer and spend the rest of the afternoon at the playground.
For dinner we are having falafel. I set the falafel mix in a bowl with 1 ¼ cups of water and check the clock to see what time it will be in 15 minutes. Enough time for me to clean the front steps from Sunday night’s falafel fest. Which I am obligated to clean because my mother, whose house this is, says I have to clean it. “Your sister bought the food. I cooked it. Now you clean up the mess.” I drizzle my organic all natural enviro-friendly dish soap down the stairs and set the hose to power wash, which is a joke. Knowing full well that no matter how I proceed, it won’t be done right. There will be soap residue or the mats won’t be clean enuf or I won’t have re-wound the hose properly or I will have left too much water standing in the drain or … I am soaked up to my knees when the distant cry of a small child reminds me that I did not let mine know I was going outside.
Dinner is a hit. But only after Sailor finishes a tantrum of disappointment over the fact that I did not make the spicy green things (pesto tortellini) that we picked up at Trader Joe’s this afternoon. I am extremely calm when I explain to him that this is what we have planned for dinner tonight and this is what we are eating and while, no, he does not have to eat it, no, he may not have something else. Mac eats three falafel sandwiches. Sailor eats almost 2. “It’s yummy. It’s just not what I wanted.” A mature statement from my nearly-5-year-old. I can deal with that. We decide that I am not clearing the table after dinner anymore and that we will let whoever’s day it is to go first do it. Being an even day (today is September 2) it is Sailor’s day. He does not like the new plan. But he goes along with it, somewhat grudgingly and I ignore his mutterings. When we are all done (yes, of course I help him out) I lean down close and tell him, “Thank you for your help. I really appreciate it.” He hugs and kisses me and says a very kind, “You’re welcome. And sorry for not wanting to.”
By bed time I remember why we have had various charts up around the house at various times and see that I need to make one for brushing teeth, one for cleaning up the dishes, one for picking up toys. And, I am sure in a day or so, one for doing homework.
In bed Mac asks me what will happen if 2nd grade gets really bad in the middle or the end. He tells me he does not want to go back to his school for 3rd grade. I tell him to let me worry about these things.
And so our – our -- first day of 2nd grade ends.
Day 2: My boys eat breakfast and I make lunches. “Mac,” I ask, “what would you like in your thermos today?”
“What – I have to g oto school again?”
And so it goes.
It is roughly 25 degrees cooler this morning than it was yesterday morning, but we are ill prepared and have no jackets. In the time it takes Mac to do whatever it is that 2nd graders do on the 2nd day of 2nd grade, Sailor and I stop at Starbucks, swing by the Alderman’s office to recycle batteries and pick up free light bulbs, Sailor has a 2-hour class at the enrichment program Mac attended for 2 years while I sit in the lobby and read during (“I’ll know if you leave, Mom!”), spend $71 on jeans and sweatshirts at TJMaxx because we are freezing, have lunch and a lunch meeting, read stories at Borders, try to return a defective schedule book at Barnes & Noble (I mean really, who designs a schedule book whose pages start on Thursday?!), pay a bill at Home Depot, stop at Starbucks again … and then we are back for Mac. Sailor is asleep. Beside him in the stroller is a book/box set of a racecar kit. This wins the admiration and curiosity of many little brothers waiting with us. And when Mac walks down the stairs his eye goes right to this toy/book. “Whad’ja get for me?”
I ask him how school was today.
“Awesome, just like yesterday.”
I have managed to avert my eyes and converse with only one other mom today.
We walk to Mac’s first piano lesson. “Isabella and I can go upstairs together,” he tells me, leaving me, and Isabella’s mom in awe of our suddenly grown-up children. But a moment later they return. “We can’t find room 9.”
I escort them back upstairs.
But a moment later they return.
“I don’t want to go in there by myself.”
An hour later Mac comes downstairs, a huge grin on his face. “That was such great fun!”
Mac wants me to fill out the form for him to get hot lunch. I am glad that he has forgotten whatever turned him off of hot lunches last year – it’s a nice alternative once in awhile. For him and for me.
Both boys are exhausted, as is their mommy. Ah, school…!
Thursday night we have French class. I sneak out to Whole Foods white the boys are in class. No one seems to notice the bag of groceries when I carry it in later at home. After dinner we sit down to do homework. Mac just has to fill in 6 answrs in the front of his agenda book. Sailor works on soem workbook pages with me. It takes Mac nearly an hour to write his six words. I must remember to buy a timer. Homework is meant to take no longer than 3o minutes and I tell him I am not about to do this with him again this year. Homework is to be done. Period.
By the time we get to the end of the first week of school we are, understandably, exhausted. I wake in the dark Friday morning before the 6:00 alarm and think to myself that I do not have to be anywhere today. And then instantly remember that I do indeed have to get Mac to school. But before this is to occur I have to drop Sailor downstairs and drive with Mac to the car repair shop owned by the parents of one of his classmates. We must get the “check engine” light checked and turned off before we drive out to the suburbs for a picnic tomorrow morning – a trip that will entail a 20-minute walk back to the repair shop at 9a.m. Saturday, an 8-minute negotiation for a discount, an 8-minute drive back home and a 5-minute contemplation as to how I might pay the credit card bill I just charged for $555 to have my 12-year-old vehicle released into my posession. Mac and I walk to school and I wait outside with him. Hugging him in a moment when he looks miserable. I escort a friend’s crying little girl into kindergarten (she is a moment late and does not know where to go because the kindergarten door is closed), I sit thru a miserably long PTA meeting and have my name called out one too many times as the lauded editor of the PTA newsletter (and want to remind them all that I was not good enough to be chosen as a room parent for the 2nd year in a row). I keep to myself, don’t look the principal in the eye when he addresses us, make a note to bring him a diet Coke rather than a cupcake on Mac’s birthday in May (after he tells us he is diabetic). I spend the afternoon doing workbook pages and cleaning the playroom with Sailor. When it is time to pick up Mac we go instead to play with Sailor’s friends, the twins, who like all the rest of Sailor’s friends, are in kindergarten without him this year. At the twins’ house I drink tea with their mother as I did all last winter and realize that while in my heart the summer in my real life – warm weather and my children about me – in fact the school year has already taken over and winter will become my unwelcome real life soon enough.
Mac has a date after school with Aunt Mimi. But I do not like this – not picking him up myself. So when 5:30 comes and we turn the corner to our home I am crushed to find that his father has gotten to our house first and has Mac on his back. Mac climbs down and comes to me. And I am well.
I am confused as to what day it is and I don’t feel as if only 5 days ago we were enjoying a hot day at the beach and ice cream on the porch.
I send out an email letting our friends know that we are on the road to a successful school year, and that our misery of last year looks as if it won’t be repeating itself.
We spend our weekend pretending that it is still summer. But nothing feels the same. And it is not hot outside. And I feel pressure to do something with my boys (besides watching an Andy Gibb special on tv). And the ice cream after dinner does not taste the same because my feet are cold and we are eating it indoors.
Another very busy week lies ahead. I don’t want to wish my time away until the next summer comes about. But it is so dreadfully hard to part with my child each day, knowing that the mere fact of school will continue to change him, for better and for worse, and that I have no control over this.
On Sunday night, before he falls asleep, Mac tells me I should not wake up early. Because he might be sick and might need to stay home from school. 39 weeks to go!
Despite the fact that I have a checklist in front of me that has everything on it checked off, the pile of school supplies Mac is to take to his first day of 2nd grade tomorrow is short one set of markers and one box of wipes. There are no more wipes hiding under Sailor’s bed and the markers I thought we had leftover from gosh-knows-what are not in my closet. “Send a note to the teacher,” my sister suggests. But I have no excuse. The supplies list came home with Mac in June on his last torturous day of 1st grade. I have had a full 11 weeks to fill the requirements of this list.
Second grade has to be better than first. It has to be! Regardless, I don’t really plan to have Mac return next year. Unless we have truly amazing year. Truly amazing.
A few weeks ago my college best friend called me in tears over her little one starting 1st grade. Full of sympathy and knowing it would be my turn soon I listened and advised. Today I want to call her. But it is Labor Day, a holiday and I know she is doing family stuff. I try my dad, who pats my shoulder and says simply, “He has to go.” I try my sister, who gives me, “Don’t let him hear you.” It’s not as if Mac wants to go to school tomorrow. Before he falls asleep he says, “I don’t want to leave you tomorrow. Can’t I go next week.” I am a good mom, so I tell him simply that no, he can’t start next week, school starts tomorrow.
I have sand in my hair and my boys and I have sunburned faces. They aren’t terribly burned so I don’t mind saying they look adorable. We spent the day at the beach. It was like being on a fabulous vacation at a crazy busy resort, thousands of people, bikinis, Frisbees. It was fantastic. A perfect end to a really great summer.
Mac’s backpack weighs a ton. His change of clothes, requested for the 1st time since preschool, is packed. The old lunchbox has been dug out and a new “Happy 1st day of 2nd grade” note is placed inside. Mac’s clothes are picked out. Sailor’s soccer uniform is laid out. We are ready to go. And I don’t want to.
I don’t want to be the fun, friendly mom this year. I was rejected as a room parent for the 2nd year in a row. And I want take a silent pill so I can appear withdrawn and unfriendly this year. Why not? I don’t want to be part of the community of parents this year. And yet I am sitting in bed, doing my nails and my outfit is picked out…
I email my college best friend:
I so do not want to take Mac to school tomorrow! He doesn't want to go either. He doesn't want to be away from us. Oh gosh! I so wish I had done more than just fantasized about alternatives for him for this year. His clothes are picked out and his backpack weighs a TON! And we had to run to CVS at 6:00 tonight to buy markers and wipes because even tho I had 11 weeks to buy this stuff, and even tho both items were checked off my list, I didn't have either thing. Have I mentioned that I don't want to take Mac to school tomorrow? We have had such a nice summer. This is our real life, the warm weather and the togetherness. Funny how when I had Mac I had no idea what I would do with a baby -- I wanted a kid! Now that I have a kid, kids, I just want them to stay little so I can keep them close.
sigh...
I made plans for a busy day tomorrow. Hopefully Mac will have fun at school. I don't plan to have him go back there next year tho.
Wish me luck in the a.m.!
We had an impromptu falalfel fest/party on the porch last night and we didn't come in til almost 10! It was so much fun!
Love, SuperMommy
I don’t sleep a wink Sunday between my kids thinking I am the bed and not the mom sandwiched between them, and my anxiety over our summer together being at an abrupt end. It is hot. I am awake and out of bed before the alarm. Not even tired. Mac has been moaning and rolling around. “My stomach hurts.” Great. I can see it now: We’re calling in sick on the first day of school.
I come to realize that when you have children, no event is mutually exclusive. Normally, for me, a first day of school would be just that and only that with all focus on that. But not today. Today is also Sailor’s first day back to soccer. It is also the day my father has scheduled the plumber to come install the new vanity and bathroom sink. What time, Dad? 8:30 a.m.? You mean precisely the time I need to be hustling my boys out the door for Mac’s traditional on-the-front-stairs first day of school photo shoot? Precisely. And please take the vanity and sink out of their respective boxes so the plumber doesn’t have to waste time doing it? Alrighty then. So at 8:00 a.m. when the boys are supposed to be finishing up their breakfasts fit for little kings and I am meant to be drying my hair, we are taking knife to cardboard and mutilating the boxes surrounding these long-awaited, and very heavy bathroom accessories.
Outside I take a few photos as my parents come out to wish us well. My mom’s best friend comes by to walk to school to wish her granddaughter well in 1st grade, and an old neighbor with whom we have never been friends happily crosses the street so that her kindergartener can walk to school with us. We are an odd groupto be sure, walking down the sunny street. And why is it hotter this morning than it has been in a month? In fact the hottest day on record this year!? Because I have dressed my 2nd grader in a sweater vest and because the beach and all the neighborhood pools are officially closed, that’s why. I realize halfway to school that I am talking more to the adults and not paying much attention to my bespectacled red-head to whom I am about to bid a 6 ½ hour farewell.
The scene outside school is one of utter chaos. As always. Working parents drop off their accustomed children. New parents hover near their timid children. I stick close to mine because he is the only person here I want to talk to. He heaves his 50 pound backpack on his back and does not complain that he has to carry his lunch box and an extra bag of supplies and a change of clothes. I overhear his conversation with a girl named Chloe, whom I do not know. “We went to Paris, and London, and … “ she names off the countries in Europe the way Mac could name off the museums we visited last week. Undeterred Mac enthusiastically responds with, “We went to Kenosha [Wisconsin; called, by Sailor, Misconsin]. Twice!”
Cameras click. Camcorders silently record these precious moments. Behind my giant black sunglasses I conceal the tears that try in vain to spring from my eyes. I don’t cry for one simple reason: If I do cry, I will be a sobbing, hysterical mess, and no one would care! I avoid eye contact with all but a new mom, whom I welcome graciously, and a mom whom I became friends with last year but whom I have not seen since June.
The bell rings. The children go inside (Mommy complaint #1, which I share with no one: The 2nd grade teachers couldn’t haul their asses downstairs and come get their kids on the first day?! Seriously?!). And that is that.
Sailor and I walk home. He has soccer at 9:30.
Or so I have written in my schedule book from now until the end of November. Apparently he actually has soccer at 10:30. And I have chocolate ice cream on the hem of my dress, which I thought was still clean after only having worn it a few hours after the beach yesterday.
At Old Navy I buy myself a new sundress -- which fits fabulously and adorably in the dressing room, but is way too big once I try to carry my purse on my shoulder, pick up Sailor, sit or move once I leave the store – and a pair of jeans for Mac.
There are two children in Sailor’s soccer class. He doesn’t want me to go to the bathroom to put on the sundress until his class is over. And when it is and he sees I have changed dresses, he is pissed! “I had to go pee! So I figured I might as well change my dress while I was there,” I explain and he is placated.
At Trader Joe’s they have everything pre-made for a fabulous falafel dinner. Except falafel. Off to Whole Foods. Then the bank. Then home to put groceries away.
Then to lunch with my dad, which is not as much fun as usual because he can’t eat anything with fat in it and has no idea what to order. And Sailor refuses to eat. And the waiter is grumpy. And my dad can’t hear me over the traffic. And he insists that no matter what happens at school Mac will survive. I don’t know how to make everyone understand that it’s not just survival that I want for my children.
Sailor plays in the playground with the 6th grade gym class while we wait for Mac to come out of school. We have kept miraculously busy this day so it has flown by. Nonetheless we miss Mac.
He comes out and true to form a smile spreads across his face when he sees me. “How was it?” I hold my breath in anticipation of his answer.
“Second grade is awesome!”
And that is all I need to hear.
He tells me who he is sitting next to (his locker partner from last year) and who is locker partner is (Isabella A.) and who he had lunch with (John) and that his class has AC and he that he was cold. He tells me his teacher is nice and had a nice voice and that she gave them pretzels this afternoon while they were writing stories about what they did this summer and that he wrote his about the Renaissance Faire we went to on Saturday and that his teacher said to spell their words the way they think they should be spelled and not to worry if they didn’t know the right way. His teacher, Mrs. W., looked happy when she dismissed the class.
We take Mac to Orange Julius for a treat, but he wants ice cream, which I won’t let him have there. We wait 15 minutes for Alec's Orange Julius. After we stop home for a moment we leave for an ice cram place only to find – or not find, as the case may be – my wallet. We walk home, grab ice cream sandwiches from the freezer and spend the rest of the afternoon at the playground.
For dinner we are having falafel. I set the falafel mix in a bowl with 1 ¼ cups of water and check the clock to see what time it will be in 15 minutes. Enough time for me to clean the front steps from Sunday night’s falafel fest. Which I am obligated to clean because my mother, whose house this is, says I have to clean it. “Your sister bought the food. I cooked it. Now you clean up the mess.” I drizzle my organic all natural enviro-friendly dish soap down the stairs and set the hose to power wash, which is a joke. Knowing full well that no matter how I proceed, it won’t be done right. There will be soap residue or the mats won’t be clean enuf or I won’t have re-wound the hose properly or I will have left too much water standing in the drain or … I am soaked up to my knees when the distant cry of a small child reminds me that I did not let mine know I was going outside.
Dinner is a hit. But only after Sailor finishes a tantrum of disappointment over the fact that I did not make the spicy green things (pesto tortellini) that we picked up at Trader Joe’s this afternoon. I am extremely calm when I explain to him that this is what we have planned for dinner tonight and this is what we are eating and while, no, he does not have to eat it, no, he may not have something else. Mac eats three falafel sandwiches. Sailor eats almost 2. “It’s yummy. It’s just not what I wanted.” A mature statement from my nearly-5-year-old. I can deal with that. We decide that I am not clearing the table after dinner anymore and that we will let whoever’s day it is to go first do it. Being an even day (today is September 2) it is Sailor’s day. He does not like the new plan. But he goes along with it, somewhat grudgingly and I ignore his mutterings. When we are all done (yes, of course I help him out) I lean down close and tell him, “Thank you for your help. I really appreciate it.” He hugs and kisses me and says a very kind, “You’re welcome. And sorry for not wanting to.”
By bed time I remember why we have had various charts up around the house at various times and see that I need to make one for brushing teeth, one for cleaning up the dishes, one for picking up toys. And, I am sure in a day or so, one for doing homework.
In bed Mac asks me what will happen if 2nd grade gets really bad in the middle or the end. He tells me he does not want to go back to his school for 3rd grade. I tell him to let me worry about these things.
And so our – our -- first day of 2nd grade ends.
Day 2: My boys eat breakfast and I make lunches. “Mac,” I ask, “what would you like in your thermos today?”
“What – I have to g oto school again?”
And so it goes.
It is roughly 25 degrees cooler this morning than it was yesterday morning, but we are ill prepared and have no jackets. In the time it takes Mac to do whatever it is that 2nd graders do on the 2nd day of 2nd grade, Sailor and I stop at Starbucks, swing by the Alderman’s office to recycle batteries and pick up free light bulbs, Sailor has a 2-hour class at the enrichment program Mac attended for 2 years while I sit in the lobby and read during (“I’ll know if you leave, Mom!”), spend $71 on jeans and sweatshirts at TJMaxx because we are freezing, have lunch and a lunch meeting, read stories at Borders, try to return a defective schedule book at Barnes & Noble (I mean really, who designs a schedule book whose pages start on Thursday?!), pay a bill at Home Depot, stop at Starbucks again … and then we are back for Mac. Sailor is asleep. Beside him in the stroller is a book/box set of a racecar kit. This wins the admiration and curiosity of many little brothers waiting with us. And when Mac walks down the stairs his eye goes right to this toy/book. “Whad’ja get for me?”
I ask him how school was today.
“Awesome, just like yesterday.”
I have managed to avert my eyes and converse with only one other mom today.
We walk to Mac’s first piano lesson. “Isabella and I can go upstairs together,” he tells me, leaving me, and Isabella’s mom in awe of our suddenly grown-up children. But a moment later they return. “We can’t find room 9.”
I escort them back upstairs.
But a moment later they return.
“I don’t want to go in there by myself.”
An hour later Mac comes downstairs, a huge grin on his face. “That was such great fun!”
Mac wants me to fill out the form for him to get hot lunch. I am glad that he has forgotten whatever turned him off of hot lunches last year – it’s a nice alternative once in awhile. For him and for me.
Both boys are exhausted, as is their mommy. Ah, school…!
Thursday night we have French class. I sneak out to Whole Foods white the boys are in class. No one seems to notice the bag of groceries when I carry it in later at home. After dinner we sit down to do homework. Mac just has to fill in 6 answrs in the front of his agenda book. Sailor works on soem workbook pages with me. It takes Mac nearly an hour to write his six words. I must remember to buy a timer. Homework is meant to take no longer than 3o minutes and I tell him I am not about to do this with him again this year. Homework is to be done. Period.
By the time we get to the end of the first week of school we are, understandably, exhausted. I wake in the dark Friday morning before the 6:00 alarm and think to myself that I do not have to be anywhere today. And then instantly remember that I do indeed have to get Mac to school. But before this is to occur I have to drop Sailor downstairs and drive with Mac to the car repair shop owned by the parents of one of his classmates. We must get the “check engine” light checked and turned off before we drive out to the suburbs for a picnic tomorrow morning – a trip that will entail a 20-minute walk back to the repair shop at 9a.m. Saturday, an 8-minute negotiation for a discount, an 8-minute drive back home and a 5-minute contemplation as to how I might pay the credit card bill I just charged for $555 to have my 12-year-old vehicle released into my posession. Mac and I walk to school and I wait outside with him. Hugging him in a moment when he looks miserable. I escort a friend’s crying little girl into kindergarten (she is a moment late and does not know where to go because the kindergarten door is closed), I sit thru a miserably long PTA meeting and have my name called out one too many times as the lauded editor of the PTA newsletter (and want to remind them all that I was not good enough to be chosen as a room parent for the 2nd year in a row). I keep to myself, don’t look the principal in the eye when he addresses us, make a note to bring him a diet Coke rather than a cupcake on Mac’s birthday in May (after he tells us he is diabetic). I spend the afternoon doing workbook pages and cleaning the playroom with Sailor. When it is time to pick up Mac we go instead to play with Sailor’s friends, the twins, who like all the rest of Sailor’s friends, are in kindergarten without him this year. At the twins’ house I drink tea with their mother as I did all last winter and realize that while in my heart the summer in my real life – warm weather and my children about me – in fact the school year has already taken over and winter will become my unwelcome real life soon enough.
Mac has a date after school with Aunt Mimi. But I do not like this – not picking him up myself. So when 5:30 comes and we turn the corner to our home I am crushed to find that his father has gotten to our house first and has Mac on his back. Mac climbs down and comes to me. And I am well.
I am confused as to what day it is and I don’t feel as if only 5 days ago we were enjoying a hot day at the beach and ice cream on the porch.
I send out an email letting our friends know that we are on the road to a successful school year, and that our misery of last year looks as if it won’t be repeating itself.
We spend our weekend pretending that it is still summer. But nothing feels the same. And it is not hot outside. And I feel pressure to do something with my boys (besides watching an Andy Gibb special on tv). And the ice cream after dinner does not taste the same because my feet are cold and we are eating it indoors.
Another very busy week lies ahead. I don’t want to wish my time away until the next summer comes about. But it is so dreadfully hard to part with my child each day, knowing that the mere fact of school will continue to change him, for better and for worse, and that I have no control over this.
On Sunday night, before he falls asleep, Mac tells me I should not wake up early. Because he might be sick and might need to stay home from school. 39 weeks to go!
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