Sparkly Green Earrings

by Melanie Shankle

  A few weeks later I was talking to my friend Deidre at work and perhaps singing a chorus of “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” as I lamented our potty-training troubles. Deidre had two daughters in elementary school who appeared to be totally potty trained, plus I knew I could count on her to be honest. After all, she’d told me a few days earlier that my new aviator-style sunglasses looked terrible with my face shape. I didn’t feel like she’d be afraid to be up front about my lack of potty-training expertise.

  Deidre said the problem was we needed to go cold turkey. No more diapers, no more Pull-Ups, no more couch that doesn’t smell like urine. She said the trick was to put Caroline in big-girl underwear and then set a timer for every thirty minutes and take her to the bathroom. Because, sure, it wasn’t like I had anything to do other than clean stains off my rugs and cry every thirty minutes.

  But I figured it couldn’t hurt to try it since my method of praying and begging God for mercy didn’t appear to be working out. I drove back to Target to acquire some pretty My Little Pony underwear, because attractive, child-appealing underwear was an important part of the equation, according to Deidre. The next morning I showed Caroline her new underwear and told her that the pretty pony with the pink mane would die if it got any tee-tee on it.

  I didn’t really say that. But, oh, I thought about it.

  I made a huge deal of the responsibility that comes with beautiful underwear and told her we’d work together to make sure she remembered to use the potty. And we made it through the first day with only one minor accident. Then we made it through the second day with no accidents. And then, on the third day, she actually began to tell me when she needed to go to the bathroom without waiting for the timer. And then I threw away my new aviator-style sunglasses because clearly Deidre was a genius and knew what she was talking about.

  Praise Jesus! My baby was going to pass the two-year-old class. She was going to make it after all, just like Mary Tyler Moore. Someday we’d be able to pack her bags for college and not have to explain to her new roommate why she had a case of Huggies in the back of her dorm room closet.

  But my celebration was short-lived when I realized there was still an issue. While Caroline had mastered the art of tee-teeing on the potty, she had yet to poop on the potty. In fact, she outright refused to do so. It took me a while to figure it out because I am very slow, but it began to dawn on me that she had trained herself to wait to poop until I put on her nighttime Pull-Up right before she went to bed. I’d get her out of the bath and put on her lavender-scented lotion, her Pull-Up, and her sweet little footy pajamas with the pink monkeys all over them. Then we’d cuddle up in the rocking chair in her room and read bedtime stories. Shortly thereafter she would excuse herself to “go tell Daddy night-night” and come back to me five minutes later smelling like a sewage plant.

  After about three nights of this, I followed her into the living room as she went to tell Perry good night and discovered that she made a quick pit stop behind the armoire that houses our TV to do her business. All red-faced and squatting behind the armoire. Like she needed her privacy to poop in the Pull-Up her mother was going to have to change three minutes later.

  I desperately tried to outsmart her by changing up our nighttime routine. I’d wait to put on her nighttime Pull-Up until the last possible moment, after I’d given her more than several opportunities to go do her business on the toilet. But, oh no, nothing beat the comfort of the Pull-Up. You know how you hear about those primitive tribes in the jungle somewhere who won’t let you take their picture because they’re afraid it might steal their soul? That’s how Caroline was about her poop. As if letting that part of her go down the pipes was the equivalent of saying good-bye to her very soul.

  Meanwhile the clock was ticking on our back-to-school date and whether I’d be able to truthfully tell the serious preschool that Caroline was completely potty trained. I reasoned that she was completely potty trained between the hours of 8:45 a.m. and 2:00 p.m., and that’s really all they needed to know. What happened in the privacy of our home and my child’s Huggies was our personal business.

  So I signed her up for the three-year-old class and initialed on the dotted line that she was, in fact, completely potty trained. Thankfully there was no official exam or anything. But I did receive a note a few days later informing me Caroline’s new teacher would be making a home visit prior to the beginning of the school year. Naturally I requested that her visit be sometime in the morning hours.

  So Mrs. Green came to visit. My first indication that things weren’t going to go well was when Caroline decided to hide under the dining room table. Even at three years old, Caroline never passed up an opportunity for social interaction. It wasn’t like her to not want to entertain our guest with all manner of musical instruments and conversation.

  Mrs. Green appeared to be very warm and personable, so I decided to take this opportunity to question her about the dynamics of bathroom politics at the school. “How does that work? Do you help them at all? Like if they need help pulling up their pants or buttoning a button?”

  “No,” she replied with a smile. “We really encourage completely independent toilet abilities. All children should be able to wipe their own bottoms and button their own pants.” Good night, am I raising a rocket scientist? What three-year-old can wipe her own bottom and button her own pants every time? I know some grown-ups who are still working on those skills.

  Mrs. Green went on to explain that there wasn’t a bathroom in each individual classroom but rather one bathroom located in the courtyard area of the school. She said the teachers usually sent a group of kids to the bathroom at the same time, and that way they could help each other if needed.

  Well, sure. That sounds like a brilliant plan. A bunch of three-year-olds whose parents have most likely embellished their potty-training abilities for fear that they won’t make the Ivy League all going to the restroom together. Why not just send in a group of monkeys and call it a day? The whole premise seemed fraught with potential disaster.

  While I was privately pondering the serious preschool’s bathroom etiquette, Caroline continued to hide under the dining room table. She had no interest in Mrs. Green or the stuffed animal she’d brought in an attempt to break the ice. After a while we gave up, and I walked Mrs. Green to the door and thanked her for her time. And shortly thereafter discovered that Caroline had taken that opportunity to poop in her pants.

  That’s when I got on the phone and began to call around to other preschools to beg, borrow, or steal any potential openings for a three-year-old girl who could kind of/possibly/not every time go to the bathroom by herself but who was in general really cute and terribly charming.

  Which is how we ended up at a new preschool that didn’t take itself too seriously. A preschool that realized kids enjoy peanut butter and jelly a lot more than brussels sprouts and occasionally need a little help wiping their bottoms or buttoning their pants and that none of these things are really indicators of who’s going to qualify for Mensa membership in the future.

  Chapter 12

  We Don’t Throw Sand

  The other day I was on the phone with a customer service representative from AT&T, which means I am playing fast and loose with the term customer service right now, but that’s not the point. Anyway, I heard myself say, “Yes, ma’am, thank you for scheduling an appointment for me to get my Internet fixed in two weeks with a six-hour window of uncertainty. I really appreciate it.” When everything in me wanted to scream, “Are you kidding me? Two weeks? And you can’t narrow down a time frame to less than six hours? You are dead to me. Just like my Internet.”

  But I didn’t say that, because my parents taught me appropriate social skills and I’ve mostly learned to suppress what I’d really like to say in favor of something that’s more polite. It’s one of those things you take for granted. Until you have a child of your own, you forget that all of us come into this world with a completely selfish nature that makes us inclined to scream
, “No! It’s mine!” at any given opportunity.

  All that to say, Perry and I had really given no thought to how we would attempt to teach Caroline appropriate social skills. And it’s really one of those things we should have thought about, considering our daughter comes from two parents who have been known to speak first and think later.

  In fifth grade I once got detention because I didn’t think my PE coach had kept score correctly during a game of kickball and I made the mistake of loudly declaring, “Three plus two equals five, and if he doesn’t know that, then maybe he should go back to fifth grade.” Shortly thereafter, I found myself sitting in the office of our principal, Mrs. Archer. Which is a whole different story because she had these long, talon-like fingernails that still make me feel a little bit afraid when I think of them.

  Mrs. Archer called my parents to tell them about my smart mouth, and I ended up grounded for the next week. But I learned an important lesson. Watch what you say to a man who probably had dreams of coaching college football and instead ended up wearing polyester coaching shorts that are too tight and refereeing a bunch of ten-year-olds as they play kickball.

  I wish I had some great wisdom to impart about how to teach your child appropriate social skills, but the jury is still out on this. At least twenty-eight times a day I tell Caroline, “Tell her thank you,” or “Make sure you say, ‘Yes, ma’am,’” or “You need to apologize for leaving that popsicle to melt on top of Daddy’s toolbox.” But there are still plenty of times I hear her tell a friend, “NO! I don’t want to play that game!” or “You’re not invited to my birthday party!”

  And we all know there is no greater insult in the world of elementary school than the threat of rescinding a birthday party invitation. Even if the party isn’t for eight more months.

  When Caroline was about a year old, we began to work on teaching her to say “please” and “thank you.” And she got pretty good at it. We patted ourselves on the back and felt like we were doing a pretty good job. Check out our adorable little fifteen-month-old with her impeccable manners. She says “please” every time she wants another piece of banana. We believed we might be raising the next Emily Post.

  And then came our first summer at the neighborhood pool, when the dodgy politics of the baby pool came into play. If you think I’m kidding, it’s because you’ve never spent much time around a baby pool. All the mothers walk in loaded down with crab floats and princess tea sets and pushing their precious toddlers in strollers. Toddlers who just happen to be dressed like senior citizens on a beach in Miami, complete with enormous sun hats.

  It’s all fun times until you actually take your baby out of the stroller and she enters the treacherous waters of the baby pool, where the kids think everyone else has the best toys . . . until they see someone else playing with their crab float and unceremoniously yank it out from under the poor, unsuspecting child who was relaxing on it (probably while peeing in the pool, because let’s not kid ourselves about that). All the while they’re yelling, “No! It’s mine! Mine! MINE!”

  In the meantime the mothers are all shocked and horrified by this behavior because why would our children behave this way? Never mind that every single one of us might get into fisticuffs with someone who dared to go into our closet and wear our new boots since they’re “mine! Mine! MINE!” We are perplexed because it’s just a crab float, not the pair of new Frye boots we’ve been coveting for the last three years.

  But we wade into the baby pool to help our children navigate this new social terrain because that’s our job, and we smile at our fellow mothers as we do our best to be polite even while we’re thinking that maybe Harrison’s mother should drag in her own crab float next time if Harrison so obviously feels his life isn’t complete without it. Why should our child be punished because Harrison’s mother wanted to stroll into the pool unencumbered by a large, inflatable member of the crustacean family?

  Gulley texted me from the baseball fields the other day because she recognized a mother in the stands whom she’d had a slight altercation with at the baby pool years ago. Now their boys are on the same baseball team, which is just another example that God has a sense of humor. Gulley said, “Do you think she remembers I told her maybe she could go buy her own alligator float for $5.99 at Target?”

  Because that’s the whole problem. While we’re trying to teach our children appropriate social skills, we sometimes lose our own. All our protective mama-bear instincts come out, and we’re quick to see the speck in another child’s eye while perhaps ignoring the plank coming out of our own.

  Caroline had a big issue with throwing sand when she was a toddler. If there was a sandbox within a two-mile radius, it was a guarantee she would find it, dig in it for a few minutes, and then throw sand directly at the nearest unsuspecting victim.

  Around this time Gulley and her family moved to a house about a mile away from us, which was a dream come true for two college roommates who had always dreamed we’d be able to live nearby and raise our kids together. And we relished this new proximity to each other with almost daily playdates. Our thought was that my daughter, Caroline, and Gulley’s boys, Jackson and Will, were going to grow up to be best friends, whether they wanted to be or not.

  The only problem was that every time we went to play at Gulley’s house, the kids always made their way out to the huge sandbox in her backyard. Inevitably Jackson or Will would run up crying to report, “Caroline threw sand at me! She threw sand!”

  I would march out to the sandbox and ask, “Caroline, did you throw sand at the boys?” She would look me right in the eye and announce, “Yes, I throw sand.” I’d yank her out of the sandbox while declaring, “We don’t throw sand. Do you understand? We don’t throw sand at our friends. It could get in their eyes and hurt them. They could end up blind.” (I believe situations that could potentially cause blindness are an important tool in the motherhood arsenal. Threatening blindness or a trip to the emergency room usually produces results.)

  The sand problems with Caroline became an almost weekly occurrence until I finally placed a temporary ban on the sandbox until the time arrived that she could resist her temptation to throw sand.

  About a month after the previous sandbox incident, I was out of town on a business trip. Gulley had picked up Caroline from preschool and was keeping her at their house until Perry could get her after work. He arrived a little while later and sat out in the back with Gulley while the kids played in the sandbox. Sure enough, our little sand thrower couldn’t help herself, and the boys came running up to Gulley, announcing, “Caroline threw sand! She threw sand at me!”

  Perry looked right at Gulley and said, “Oh, I’m sure she didn’t mean it. I don’t think she knows she’s not supposed to throw sand.”

  Hi. Are you new here?

  In Perry’s defense, he hadn’t been a part of the weekly sand drama and didn’t really know the severity of the situation, but I think it shows our inclination as parents to always want to see the best in our children. We like to believe they are better versions of us, but the truth is, they are us. They are full of our selfishness and impulsiveness and pettiness. They want things to go their way just like we do, and they scream and yell and throw things when it doesn’t work out. The only difference between them and us is what my grandma would refer to as “home training.”

  God gives us these raw, little people, and we have to form them and mold them and teach them how to operate in society. And if we get a glimpse of all the ugliness that lies right beneath our own polished surface? Well, then, there’s a humbling lesson too. It’s those moments when I realize I have to extend grace to Caroline as she figures these things out by trial and error in the same way God lavishes me with mercy, even as I make the same mistakes over and over again.

  Chapter 13

  Letting It All Hang Out

  When Perry and I moved into our house in the spring of 1998, we discovered that our neighbor Tillie had lived in her house since the 1950s. Actually her
name was Adeline, but according to the story she told us, back in the 1940s, when her husband was in the war, she drove herself around town in spite of the fact that she didn’t know how to drive. Her driving skills led the priests at her parish to nickname her Rootin’ Tootin’ Tillie. The “rootin’ tootin’” part went away, but Tillie stuck.

  We first met Tillie when she hobbled over to bring a tin of assorted chocolate candies to welcome us to the neighborhood. She knew a good thing when she saw it, and it wasn’t long before she was calling Perry to come change lightbulbs, hang her US flag, and do other assorted jobs. She never actually called him Perry; she called him Terry, which made it all the funnier when she’d call us to request that Terry fix her clothesline or undertake whatever the chore of the day happened to be.

  Tillie’s husband died when they were seventy, and she’d been a widow for twenty-six years. Although she never had children of her own, she had a niece and a nephew who came over to take care of her. They weren’t necessarily a lot of help, seeing as how they were eighty. Every Sunday they would pull up to take her to church in their Caddy with the Kleenex box in the back window, and it was almost painful to watch them all get in the car. You could never quite tell who was helping whom, and after her eighty-year-old nephew began wearing a neck brace, he’d just pull out from the curb without ever looking to see if a car was coming. Perry and I would just hold our breath watching the whole scene unfold.

  Pretty soon after we moved in, Tillie began calling me to take her to run errands. We’d head out to the Hallmark store so she could stock up on cards for all her great-nieces and great-nephews. I can’t tell y’all how many hours I spent standing in Hallmark while Tillie opened every single card and LOUDLY read them to me. This always led to my prayers for serenity as Tillie read, “To a dear niece, you are loved more than you know.”