Don't Lick the Minivan

by Leanne Shirtliffe

  So when Vivian asked about babies, I told her about vaginal births, C-sections, epidurals, placentas, and adoption.

  William, of course, started out listening, but his Y-chromosome wiggled so he wandered away to partake in his own creation ritual: build, destroy, repeat.

  Stereotypically, Vivian and I stood in the kitchen and spoke about all things birth related, rendering my degree in Women’s Studies useless.

  “Do I have to have a baby?” Vivian asked.

  “No, Sweetie,” I said.

  “But I want a baby.”

  “Then you can have one.”

  “But I don’t want to get it out.”

  “Trust me,” I said. “After nine months, you’ll want it out.”

  “But I don’t want to have a baby come out of my vagina.”

  “I understand that.”

  “And I don’t want the doctors to cut me with a knife to take the baby out.”

  “I understand that too. They do give you medicine.”

  “Is it by needle?”

  “More or less.”

  “I hate needles.”

  “Well, you likely . . . Um . . . why don’t we—”

  We were interrupted by an epic crash in the living room. A Tarzan yell erupted and William started to hurl the remaining blocks at the windows and walls. Evidently I wasn’t the only one stumbling and flailing.

  “Can I just buy one at the hospital?” Vivian asked.

  I rewound the tape in my brain, trying to recall our conversation.

  “Great idea.” I said, seeing a way out. “You can buy a baby at the hospital. When you’re thirty.”

  Parenting Tip: To entertain your children, give them way too much information when they ask a question, especially if it involves explaining where babies come from.

  IT’S NOT AN ICE CREAM TRUCK, IT’S A VEGETABLE TRUCK

  I don’t make hot breakfasts unless they’re for Christmas dinner; I don’t change dishtowels until they walk to the washing machine on their own; and I don’t do laundry. I’d fail as a 1950s housewife, or as a 2010s one. This has impacted my children’s vocabulary. Sure, they know some new words that I didn’t as a child: Internet, Twitter, time out, girls night out, sarcastic, and margarita, but they also don’t know some basic household words, including iron.

  I had a weak moment that spring and let my children do a craft. Someone, who’s now in the Witness Protection Program, gave William and Vivian a lifetime supply of Perler beads. If you don’t know what these are, you’ve won the lottery. Put down this book and do a happy dance. Essentially, they are miniature plastic beads that will assault your vacuum for the next four years. They’re also something little kids could choke on, but if you don’t bother to read the fine print, you’d never know that.

  Parenting Tip: Even lazy parents will occasionally let their child do a craft. Keep such moments of weakness to a minimum.

  Still, I let my children attempt this Perler bead craft. God knows I couldn’t help them with it; I have the finger dexterity of Kermit the Frog.

  Anyway, I was on standby vacuum alert, sucking up the Perler beads when they hit the floor. When Vivian and William finished, I had to iron their creations in order to melt the plastic pieces into a beautiful glob.

  After an impromptu scavenger hunt, I discovered the ironing board. It was making out in the back of a closet with the bread maker. When I found the actual iron, William asked, “What’s that?”

  I looked at him. “Are you serious?”

  He nodded.

  “Vivian,” I said, “do you know what this is?”

  “No.”

  “It’s called an iron.”

  “What does it do?”

  “Well, it takes wrinkles out of clothes. Grandma uses one.”

  Of course, Grandma also used window cleaner, Mason jars, and Bundt pans, none of which my children knew either.

  One word William and Vivian did learn early was ketchup. It is an undisputed, unproven fact that 207 percent of children would not get their daily fruit and vegetable servings were it not for ketchup.

  Parenting Tip: If you count ketchup as a fruit or vegetable, it’s likely your child is eating a balanced diet.

  Now, some nutritionists might say that ketchup should not be included in the food pyramid. To them, I say go wild: have unprotected sex and see what happens when your offspring spits out a real tomato. If human experimentation is not their thing, I invite them to borrow my children for six months. By the end of those 729 days of babysitting, not only will ketchup be on the pyramid, but mayonnaise will be a protein, and chocolate-covered raisins and Cheez Whiz will be milk products.

  William has put ketchup on everything, from pancakes to his sister. I think it’s his version of peanut butter. I am a peanut butter nut. I put it on bananas, chocolate, ice cream, and apples. Ever since I saw my dad adding salt to a peanut butter sandwich, I realized it was the world’s most versatile food. Unless you’re allergic.

  But back to William. On this particular day he ate ketchup on his rib eye steak, a heinous act that the beef lobby is petitioning Washington to make a crime in forty-seven states. Actually, William was not so much eating steak with ketchup as he was eating ketchup with a side of steak. Because William tended to eat in layers, saving the best for last, his steak disappeared faster than bad investments.

  And then he went into efficiency mode, licking the plate of ketchup.

  “William,” I said. “Please use a fork to eat the ketchup.”

  I mean seriously. We were raising these children to have manners.

  We were also raising them to see vegetables as a deterrent, another strategy that has yet to be the subject of a parenting book.

  In the summer, the loudest sounds in our suburb are garage doors humming closed, lawn mowers sparking to life, and the occasional ice cream truck. Nothing like using the distorted sound of “It’s a Small World After All” as an impetus for lying to your children.

  Whenever the ice cream truck circled our neighborhood, William and Vivian would ask what that sound was. Each time, we answered the same: “It’s the vegetable truck.” We first uttered this refrain when our twins were two.

  By the time they were in preschool, they’d announce, “The vegetable truck’s coming.” Then they’d continue playing, unmoved by the thought of door-to-door turnips.

  Parenting Tip: Never tell your child that the ice cream truck sells ice cream. Tell them it sells vegetables.

  “Mom, the vegetable truck’s stopping,” Vivian said. She and William opened our back door and climbed onto the patio table, giving them a direct view over our fence. If you remember the sitcom Home Improvement, think Wilson on stilts.

  “Jenna’s getting vegetables,” William announced. Now that our twins were nearly five, they were extra curious.

  I watched Jenna, our neighbor, disappear behind the truck.

  A moment passed. My lie hung in the summer air.

  The ice cream truck and its ditty started up the street.

  Jenna walked down the sidewalk, ice cream in hand.

  Vivian and William muttered to each other before screaming, “Mom!”

  I tried to perpetuate the lie. “Jenna’s eating frozen broccoli. Really. It’s not an ice cream truck. It’s a vegetable truck.”

  “Then why is there a picture of ice cream on the truck?”

  The myth disappeared faster than the jingle.

  Add this to the list of things William and Vivian can tell their therapists in a decade.

  HOP ON POP, IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN

  The month of May brought with it many things: my husband’s birthday, which usually fell on Mother’s Day, something nearly as unfair as child slavery; mosquitoes; and the birthday of my twins. It was the latter that caused me stress. If Monty Hall offered me three doors, where number one was lunch with Martha Stewart, number two was a dengue fever convention, and number three was a kids’ birthday party, I’d choose the Psych Ward. At least they’d have
good meds.

  Not only was Vivian a child who asked a lot of questions, she was also a kid who could spot if you weren’t listening. I could not get away with using fillers like “really,” “uh-huh,” or “interesting” while my mind thought of important items like how Colin Firth would sound saying my name with his yummy accent.

  “Mom? Mom!” she said. “You’re not listening to me.”

  “Yes, I am. You were saying something about Max. Or Ruby. Or their absent parents.”

  “No, I wasn’t. I was talking about mosquitoes.”

  “Well, they both can be annoying,” I said, starting to chop carrots for chili that my kids wouldn’t eat.

  “Mom!”

  “OK, I’ll listen this time,” I said, shelving my Kingdom of Firthdom until bedtime.

  “Do you know mosquitoes only live for a few days?”

  “Yes, I do know that.”

  “Do you think they have birthday parties?” Vivian asked.

  I stopped chopping and looked for part of my thumbnail among the carrot bits. “Nope. No birthday parties,” I said.

  “Are you sure?”

  I threw the bit of nail that I found onto the floor and shoved the carrots into the Crock-Pot—or crock of pot, as it was called in our house.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m absolutely certain mosquitoes don’t have birthday parties. They don’t even live for a year. How would they have a birthday party?”

  “Their mommy could throw one for them,” Vivian said. “They could have one every day since they don’t live long.”

  “Their poor mom,” I muttered, giving the chili a stir.

  “Why is she poor?” Vivian asked.

  “Because she lays hundreds of eggs in her lifetime. That’d be a lot of parties to plan.”

  I started to unpack the dishwasher. Vivian followed. If she were a mosquito, she’d be hovering.

  “Mom?” she asked. “What are we doing for our birthday?”

  “Waiting till we go see Grandma and Grandpa in July to celebrate it?”

  “No, I want a party. Everyone has a party in preschool.”

  I walked around her to put away the knives. She was right. Every classmate did have a party, all organized by Martha Stewart.

  “We’ll have a party,” I said. “Here. It’s cheaper.”

  “Can we get a clown?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because there are two types of people in this world—people who hate clowns, and clowns.”

  “Don’t say hate, Mom.”

  “Sorry.”

  “But why no clowns?”

  “I’m scared of them.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about a magician?” she asked. “Are you scared of them?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Why?”

  “They might make Mommy disappear.” I paused, contemplating that delightful possibility. Then I frisbee-d Tupperware lids into a cupboard.

  “No they won’t,” Vivian said. “They just make things disappear. Like money.”

  “My point exactly,” I said. “Look, Vivian. No entertainment. Just good ol’ fashioned fun and play.” I thought back to my childhood parties, which consisted of playing with a couple of cousins in the basement while my aunts and uncles drank beer with my parents around the kitchen table.

  “Can we at least have a cake?” Vivian asked.

  “Yes, I can manage a cake,” I said. “But just one. You’re going to share it.”

  Off she ran to tell William about how she had worn down Mommy and they were having the first actual birthday party of their lives.

  The next week, I emailed invites and discussed party plans with my husband.

  “I don’t do kids’ parties,” Chris said.

  “You what?” I asked.

  “I don’t do birthday parties. I’m not going to be here.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “You’re right,” he said. “It’s not. But I’ve got a work thing.”

  “No, you don’t. It’s not on the calendar. You put everything on the calendar.”

  “It’s a top secret work thing.”

  “Isn’t that in our vows?”

  “The top secret work thing?”

  “No,” I said. “That both parents have to attend the birthday party. It’s the in-sickness part. I’m sure.”

  “Sorry,” he said.

  “You realize you’re going to pay for this.”

  Chris shrugged. “I’ll help before and after. I just won’t be here for the party. I have lots of stuff for birthday parties that I picked up at garage sales. You’ll hardly need to do a thing.”

  The day before the party, I had to take William to another birthday party. Chris was out with Vivian buying more crap at garage sales that we could fill loot bags with.

  I’m not sure who opts to have a birthday party for a horde of five year olds at a pool. The parents have to stay, don bathing suits, and try to prevent their offspring from going all goldfish-belly-up in the pool.

  I wore my suck-everything-in, push-everything-up swimsuit that didn’t manage to hide my thighs. William didn’t seem to care. We waded in. I looked around. No one but dads. Evidently moms didn’t want to get into bathing suits. William clung to me like I was the Titanic before it sank.

  After discussing the NHL playoffs with a few uber-fans, William and I floated away to an even shallower area. He went down a slide and snorted chlorine.

  Another dad came over. I watched his son do some pre-Olympic flip turns.

  William sensed competition. He waded over. And blew his nose.

  “You can’t blow your nose in the pool,” I said.

  The dad mumbled something, backed away, and went to help his son perfect his butterfly stroke.

  After the pool snot-fest, I picked up Vivian and dragged both my kids to the supermarket to buy food for their own birthday party, which was less than twenty-four hours away. I knew, because Vivian and William were showcasing their math skills by counting down. We picked up the prerequisite case of juice boxes, the vegetable tray that no one would eat, and a case of Band-Aids.

  Parenting Tip: Keep an emergency vegetable tray in the fridge. If other parents visit your home, pull it out and appear responsible.

  Then they saw them. Balloons. The helium filled ones.

  “Can we, Mom?”

  “Please?”

  “It’s our birthday.”

  “Please, Mom.”

  I sighed. “Go ahead,” I said. “One each. But only the cheap round ones.”

  They stared at the balloons longer than most men look at engagement rings.

  “Hurry up,” I said.

  “I want this one,” Vivian said. She pointed to a pink balloon that said Happy Birthday. I untangled it and tied it around her wrist.

  I looked at William. “Come on, Will,” I said. “Choose one.”

  “This one,” he said, smiling.

  I looked up and saw him pointing to a balloon with “65” on it. “The one that says sixty-five?” I asked.

  William nodded.

  “Why do you want that one?”

  “Because next year I’m going to be six, and tomorrow I’m five.”

  We made it home with the balloons. Sometime while I was unpacking the groceries, William discovered he could attach the balloon to his remote control car and bang it into my ankles repeatedly. Vivian, meanwhile, occupied herself with a gift sent by her grandparents, a stick-on mosaic butterfly. This craft could be training for bomb disposal technicians. If it were me, I would have chucked the craft across the room after ten minutes of attempting to maneuver my barely opposable thumbs. She finished. She played with LEGO figurines for a bit, before I sent her and William upstairs with their balloons to spend time with their other mother, the TV.

  Chris, who had yet to flee, pulled out nine boxes of kids’ party supplies from the garage. He was pulling out stuff for loot bags and blo
wing off the dust.

  “I’m not helping you do this, you know,” I said.

  “I know.”

  We did our respective chores in silence. In a rare moment of clarity, I realized the whole house was quiet. Too quiet. I climbed the stairs, but stopped at our landing. Lying there, in a Mattel crime scene, was a decapitated Ken doll. His head had rolled to the right of his body. Barbie lay nearby, motionless, with all body parts intact.

  “Chris?” I called. “Someone decapitated Ken doll.”

  He walked over, anxious to put his CSI skills to the test. “He looks a lot like Stephen Harper,” Chris said, looking at the head.

  I smiled, wondering how many times Canada’s Prime Minister had been compared to Ken doll.

  I continued up the stairs and chastised the kids for drawing on their bedroom walls.

  I managed to bake a pathetic-looking cake, clean the house, and think some more about Colin Firth. I bet he never made his beautiful Italian wife throw a birthday party.

  The day arrived and, true to his word, Chris’s flight impulse was activated. Shortly after he fled, the doorbell started ringing. Kids came. And so did parents.

  Parents were staying? I hadn’t counted on this. I thought every parent viewed birthday parties as I did: a chance to drop your kid off and get two hours of free time.

  Nope. Some came in.

  I made tea for the parents and started applying face paint to the children’s faces.

  If you can’t draw a circle with a compass, don’t even attempt to paint the face of a child. I attempted skulls on the boys’ cheeks and pink hearts on the girls.

  Somehow, time passed. We played pin the tail on the donkey, musical chairs, and every other childhood game I could think of. We opened gifts and had cake.

  We waved as everyone left.

  Chris returned four minutes later.

  “How was it?” he asked.

  I rolled my eyes.

  Chris hugged both Vivian and William. “What happened to their cheeks?” he asked.

  I growled. “Into the bath,” I told the kids. “And wash that stuff off.”