“I’d like to come up here sometime on the bus with my friends,” Jack said, giving me a sideways glance, “just, you know, us.”
We were loading up the truck after an afternoon skiing. Everyone was wet and tired and happy, full of burgers and fries from the lodge. My fourteen year-old’s tone told me he was apprehensive about breaking his news.
My first thought was how much it’s taken to get him to this place: able to gather his own gear, and load himself into the truck. Long ago there were struggles to dress both boys, expensive lessons, and bribes of hot chocolate if they would take in at least two or three runs with us on the bunny hill before calling it quits for the day.
You can read until you pass out. Whatever. We’re both still crawling into bed with you later.
I’m a light sleeper. So one wee hour not so long ago, when pint-sized Colin stood at my bedside, he only had to softly clear his throat.
I opened my eyes.
Oh, hello little person.
Then I was wide awake. What the? The fact that this kid was here meant he had climbed from his crib and over the baby gate secured AT THE TOP OF THE STAIRS. I pulled him into bed, dooming either or both his dad and I to a night of severely interrupted sleep unless somebody moved to the couch by morning. Our queen bed was big enough for two adults but not the addition of one toddler sleep gymnast.
I have long been of the opinion that kids should be able to keep their rooms the way they want. Or maybe it’s just that I rarely feel like cleaning up their space, nor do I feel inclined to yell them into cleaning it themselves. There’s enough other stuff to yell about during a normal day. I tell the kids as long as they don’t keep dirty dishes or stray cats in their rooms, and there’s a clear escape path in case of fire, we’re good.
So, we all know that kids must have great immune systems because they put just about everything in their mouths, right? What about the rest of us?
I was at the grocery store once with Jack, who must have been three years old, because he was big enough to be uncomfortable sitting in the cart’s kiddie seat, but not so big he could see over the checkout counter.
On this excursion, I had pulled his hands away from the candy at the point-of-purchase display for the umpteenth time, and was paying for my groceries when I noticed people from the next aisle – the next few aisles, actually – looking my way and grimacing.
“Mom, this feels funny,” I heard Jack say.
I turned to see him running the length of the handrail separating ours from the next aisle with his tongue out, on the handrail, moving back and forth along its length.
Gwaaah.
I am so glad to be past that stage. I am also glad to be past the stage when the same kid would announce to everyone in the restaurant that the guy who left the restroom just before him and my husband did NOT WASH HIS HANDS. Gross. Dad, WHY did that GUY not WASH his HANDS?
Yeah, and dude, why were you licking the handrail in the grocery store? Seriously?
There is nothing like living with little petri dishes-slash-children to make you realize that we are further away from a global plague than one might think, otherwise we’d be goners by now.
It was the littler one who caused the most serious shiver moment in public when he was a baby.
We were at ShopKo, shopping for God knows what would cause us to navigate our way through traffic on what I’m sure was a Sunday afternoon. We were closing in on the checkout stand when he had the world’s worst diaper blow-out.
if you have ever had a baby in your care, you can understand how someone can be an absolute disaster south of the equator, and perfectly happy up north at exactly the same time.
Colin’s diaper was, at this moment, completely failing to contain the carnage. So was his onesy, his footie pants, and coat. Brown, smelly goo was slopping from him to cover the whole front end of the cart just as I was entering the checkout line.
Fortunately, I had reinforcements. I sent Mike through to pay for our goods and watch the elder of the two hooligans we had produced lest he recreate the whole licking incident, while I took the younger, explosive one into the restroom.
I couldn’t pull him from the quagmire he’d created and just leave the cart in any good conscience so I wheeled the both of them into the restroom in one, big bubble of stink. Another woman was exiting a stall with a little girl, looked at me and my little stink bomb and sighed.
“Oh, I don’t miss those days,” she said.
Whatever, lady. Shut up with your sympathy.
I pulled the baby from the cart, changed him and cleaned him up the best I could.
I tried to clean the cart, too. Have you ever done that? Shopping carts have many cricks and crevasses. Oh, Jesus. This was bad. Anyone else touching this cart, anyone putting their precious baby in this cart, was going to be stricken with cholera or whatever touching feces caused.
I took the baby and the cart back out to the customer service desk and waited in line.
A long line.
I waited through conversations about nonfunctional vacuum cleaners and the repercussions when one doesn’t have the receipt. Finally I got to the front of the line with the soiled cart and the baby held in the crook of my arm that felt like it would break off.
“How can I help you?” The guy asked.
“Um. My child soiled this cart. It was pretty bad.” I said in a low voice. “I think what you should do is take the thing outside and hose it down before anyone else is allowed to use it. Either that or incinerate it. That would be good. Do you have any budding arsonists interested in testing the ignition point of the plastics on this cart?”
“What?”
“I need you to make sure this cart is taken out somewhere and destroyed, or sanitized. My child here has had a major diaper blow out and I don’t want anyone touching this cart before it’s cleaned.”
“I … what?”
God almighty.
“My baby SHIT in this CART.” I said. “It was huge and leaked and seeped into every crevasse and I want to make sure no one else touches this thing before it is sanitized,” I said. “DO YOU UNDERSTAND?”
“Uh,” he said.
I couldn’t take it anymore. I had just yelled about poop in front of a long line of people in the customer service line at ShopKo.
I turned and headed for the door.
An older woman leaned out at me as I rushed past the group.
“Honey, really, thank you,” she said.
***
Thank YOU for voting. It encourages me to keep oozing this stuff out.
Today was the first family ski trip of the season. This activity is gobs easier than it used to be. These days I say: “we’re going skiing this weekend,” and everyone says “hooray.”
But as any parent knows, take an activity you used to happily schedule vacations around, spend absurd amounts of money on, and risk life and limb to do, add really small children, and you get stuff around which future therapy sessions will revolve.
When the boys were younger, I’d spend the afternoon prior to ski day gathering hats, coats, gloves, socks, long-johns, helmets and ski pants from wherever they’d been scattered the last time a big storm dumped enough snow on the driveway for sledding.
Another teenager came to live with us this week. Given the stories you hear from me about the one we already have, you might think I’m self-medicating. Hold off on the intervention, we know what we’re getting into.
And not second-hand either. When we told people we were going to host our first foreign exchange student, we were regaled with horror stories, similar to what happens when someone finds out you’re pregnant, and feels compelled to share the most hair-raising details from their own labor and delivery.
But we’ve yet to experience any horror, hosting through the Rotary Youth Exchange Program, and the student who just moved in is our fourth.
Santa should hang out and put the Legos together with you. Oh, wait, he does.
When our kids were still visiting Santa I tried to manage their requests.
Santa: “What can I bring for you this year, buddy?”
My cute kid: “Abba babba doodie,” or something. It’s hard to hear crouched behind behind Santa’s broad back – the best position from which to provide necessary coaching.
Me (sotto voce): “Matchbox cars and Star Wars Legos, Santa. MATCHBOX CARS, STAR WARS … and, and books, lots of BOOKS.”
Santa: “Ho, ho. Is that right? A big screen TV for your bedroom? Well, have you been a good boy?”
“HEY! you BASTARD” I whisper-yell in the most threatening mommy voice I can manage from a semi squat, “are you LISTENING? I SAID STAR. WARS. LEGOS.”
It’s the time of year when the air is crisp and it’s possible to catch refrains of holiday carols or tantalizing smells drifting from someone’s kitchen. For many the world is filled with more holiday traditions and preparations and nostalgia and whimsy than they can shake a stick at.
Unless you’re 14. Then the world is mostly full of people trying to piss you off.
The statement “I’m bored,” can be such a siren to parents, calling for the lamest of responses. Beckoning for attention: Come, sink into depths from which you’ve no hope of ever emerging once again sane or whole.
C-man & his buddy taking in laps after their Journey Through Hell (aka The Swim Meet)
This weekend’s swim meet induced a weighty case of sports anxiety in my eleven year-old.
I know. Swimming? Sports anxiety? What’s going on, Richie Incognito in the locker room?
Both boys have participated in rec league swim team for the last six summers – on advice from their swim instructor when I complained after multiple lessons that they still acted like it was their first time blowing bubbles under water.
Swim team ended the dog paddling. They went from barely staying afloat, to swimming half a dozen laps in the time I’d be mustering courage to exit the locker room in a swimsuit.
