It’s a nice saying, but it sure doesn’t apply to my house.
Things just migrate around here. I try to keep some semblance of order, but with an almost-four-year-old and an almost-two-year-old, it’s a losing battle. Toys and clothes appear in the strangest places. Matthew’s blankie often shows up in the bathroom basket where we keep bar soap. I got into bed a few weeks ago and found a Matchbox car in the sheets. That, I should add, was preferable to encountering a plastic frog in the same place (call me a sissy, but I actually screamed at that one).
But the prize for odd object/location pairing has to go to this:
When I rack my brain trying to figure out where Luke has put his missing sandal, somehow I never think to look next to the Panko breadcrumbs.
Matthew and I spent the morning doing some mother-son bonding. We went to his favorite toystore, where he played with the train tables that are set up for the enjoyment of the under-six crew. On our way out I told him he could choose an animal from the display near the front door. Our family has now increased by one cow (named, according to Matthew, “Cow”).
We stopped at the supermarket, picked up a few items, then had a lunch at the park under a big shade tree. After some climbing and sliding on the huge play structure, I gave my little guy the five-minute warning. I was almost out of time on my parking meter. But we’d make it, right? And if we were a minute or two late, what are the odds that the meter man would happen to find our car, out of all of the hundreds in the big old downtown?
Good thing I’m not a betting gal.
We were standing across the street from the car, waiting for the light to change, when I saw it: the insidious little meter vehicle hanging out just alongside my car, with a man sitting in it, bent over his little touchpad thingy. Oh, come on, I thought to myself. I’m like five minutes late; seven at most. I hoped that if I got over there before he’d tucked the ticket under my windshield, I might be able to tug at his sympathy. I’m not the type to bat my eyelashes to get out of a ticket — never have been, actually — but I figured that maybe if he saw me walking along with an adorable little boy wearing playground dirt on his face, that maybe, just maybe, some generous instincts would prevail.
As I opened the door and got Matthew into the carseat, the meter man came over towards me. “I’m here now,” I said, somewhat hopefully. “Is it okay?”
“No,” he said, tucking the envelope firmly under the windshield. “You’re too late.”
Aargh.
I thought of saying something in response. Oh, but I was only five minutes late — seven at the most. Perhaps I could go with We would have been on time, but my son does not walk very fast with these short tired legs of his. Or perhaps, Come on, you heartless automaton. I’m just a mom giving my son a fun day out and you are going to totally ruin it with your stupid, stupid ticket.
But some part of me decided that arguing back just wasn’t the thing to do. Because, after all, I was late. The meter was red. When you park at a meter, you know the rules. And some little part of me realized that maybe, even though my son is only three years old, this was a chance to show him what it means to accept that you have made a mistake and to take responsibility for it.
I think my teaching life comes into the picture here. So often, I’m in the place of that meter guy, with students (yes, or parents) who accept the rules and policies in advance and then later try to argue their way around them. Frankly, it happens all the time. And it drives me nuts. And I guess I don’t want my son to see his mom trying to manipulate or guilt-trip some city worker who is, after all, just doing his job. Sure, there is a place for clemency in life; if there are big extenuating circumstances, I have been known to cut my students a break. I won’t deny that some mercy from the ticket guy would have been nice. But still, I can accept the fact that I was at fault. I can take responsibility. I can even be graceful about it, more or less.
So in addition to a cow and some nice playground memories, I came home with a $35 dollar fine. That, frankly, is painful. But I also came home with a little bit more clarity about what kind of mom I want to be, and what kind of men I want my boys to be, and how the one influences the other. I learned that sometimes you just need to grit your teeth, hold your tongue, and woman up.
And next time, I will leave the park with a lot more time to spare.
When you sit down to pray, do you ever just start to cry?
It’s happened to me a few times. Most recently, it happened last Friday. Scott was working late, and I was doing the evening routine solo. To make matters worse, I had this raging sinus headache that felt like someone was sticking a wide needle of pain way up where my nose and my eyebrow meet. Tylenol did not help. Advil did not help. The other options seemed to be a huge dose of caffeine, or else having my head surgically removed.
The kids, naturally, were doing their normal evening routine. Luke was resisting getting his diaper changed and trying to squirm out of the sleeper I was wrestling onto his body. Matthew did not tell me he had to go pee-pee until after there was a puddle on the floor, dousing his Thomas the Tank Engine crossing gate. And I was snappish and curt and felt totally unloving.
After both boys were finally in bed, I took my throbbing head to the computer and pulled up Loyola’s Three Minute Retreat. Maybe, I thought, a little prayer and some soothing instrumentals and a lovely photograph of nature will do what over-the-counter drugs could not. And as I read the meditation and started to pray, I began to cry. Why? Because I felt like I”d failed my kids, those little beings who often drive me nuts but who mean so much to me. I’m only human; I know I can’t expect to be gentle and patient all the time. Every mom gets provoked and has bad days. But I had crossed my own line of what I think is okay. I had let too much snappish energy get into my dealings with the boys.
And as I sat there wiping my eyes, thinking about it all, something broke my silence. It was a whispered “Mommy?” from the hall outside Matthew’s room. Clearly, he was not in bed.
My instinctive reaction was irritation. Almost immediately, though, something else took over in its place. I could picture Jesus grinning at me and saying, “Here’s your do-over.”
I got up and met my little boy in the hall. He mumbled some fabricated reason for being out of bed — “What is that box in there on the kitchen counter?” And oh, the sweetness of that little guy in his footed sleeper — it made my heart hurt.
I firmly but very lovingly got him back in bed. I patted his head and felt like my normal mom-self again. He smiled at me and snuggled happily into the pillow as if he was now ready to go to sleep. He didn’t come out of his room again.
It’s one of the lifesavers about being a mom: the do-overs, the second chances. Thank God for them. And thank God for quiet moments of prayer, because sometimes it’s the only thing that helps us recognize the do-overs when they come to meet us, pad-pad-padding down the hall, with tousled hair and a tentative little smile.
Okay, so I wear pants about 98% of the time. It’s not that I dislike skirts — I actually like wearing them very much — but since my day usually involves standing in front of a classroom for hours and then going home and kicking a soccer ball around the lawn with the boys, I find that trousers are just more practical. So those dresses in my closet don’t get a lot of airtime.
But a week or so ago, I was getting ready to go meet my mom, grandmother and aunt for afternoon tea. It was a nice enough day to wear a springy green dress and high-heeled sandals. I emerged from the bedroom in my fresh, oh-so-feminine ensemble.
Matthew, who was eating lunch, glanced up from his plate. “Mommy, you look nice,” he said. He looked curiously at my dress. “What’s that thing called?”
This song — by Catholic singer/songwriter Marie Bellet — is gorgeous. I have to say, it pretty much captures my life as the mom of young kids. There are so many moments when I just want to fast-forward to what I imagine will be a simpler time, a time when the kids are older and just less work. But when I wish that, it means that I’m wishing away the crazy but beautiful here and now, when the boys are so young and so sweet and so innocent. This is a blessed time, this ordinary time. This song is a beautiful reminder of that.
So Happy Mother’s Day to all moms, grandmothers, foster mothers, godmothers, and all who play a mother’s role. May we always cherish this ordinary time.
I saw about fifteen minutes of them. I came home from a jog this evening and my husband had the TV on, so I caught a small snippet before dinner. Sadly, it was the section where they award all the prizes for Short Feature (otherwise known as Best Random Filmette that No One Watching At Home Has Seen) … in other words, not the highlight of Oscardom, from my [admittedly limited] perspective. But whatever. I got to see two young acresses whom I don’t know (Carey Mulligan and Zoe someone?) present the award and I got to marvel at their outrageous dresses, which is really the whole point of the Oscars, isn’t it? This is especially true when you, like me, see one movie a year. Once upon a time, I used to see nearly all of the Best Picture nominees. What changed? Oh, right; I had kids.
Speaking of which, it hit home to me just how much we have to control our TV-viewing now that Matthew is at the very impressionable age of three. At one point, the Oscars happened to show a clip of some movie with a large, warty, voracious-looking alien creature, and I instantly clicked the TV off. Alas, I was not quite so quick on the trigger when Ben Stiller came out, with blue skin and yellow eyes, made up to look like an Avatar character (or so I think. That did not happen to be the movie I saw last year.) Matthew stared at him, wide-eyed, and Scott and I instantly spun into damage control mode. “Ha Ha Ha! Look at him! He’s so FUNNY and SILLY!” Oh, man. Matthew is in a phase where many things are “scary.” Last night he got frightened by a crumpled piece of cardboard under the dresser in his room. If he comes wailing into our bedroom at 3 A.M., I’m sending him to Ben Stiller’s house.
But anyhow, it was still a fun fifteen minutes. And though I don’t savor the Oscars like I used to, I know that it won’t be long before this phase of parenting changes, and I’m able to see at least a few of the Best Picture nominees again. Heck, maybe I’ll be able to take the boys to some of them.
So at about 1:20 today, exhausted from shepherding recalcitrant students through Macbeth, I checked my email. There was a message from Lukey’s daycare provider, letting me know that my little man had taken off his diaper while [ostensibly] napping. Needless to say, the diaper contained more than just pee, and my avant-garde little Picasso ended up smearing this exciting new artistic medium all over the crib and wall. “Please make sure you send him in a onesie next time!” she begged.
Suddenly, shepherding recalcitrant students through Macbeth didn’t seem nearly so bad.
I forwarded her email to my husband. About five minutes later, there was a message from him in my inbox. “Should I bring her some flowers when I pick up Lukey?” he asked.
I'm a formerly lapsed Catholic who likes to write about faith, real life, and how the two intersect. Oh, and I love Mary -- check out my book Mary and Me below!
