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.