Tears came. Yes, he’s my boy, I thought. He may be the little s*** who first licked the minivan, the one who peed on Minnie Mouse, and the one who clobbered his sister after she was a little s*** to him, but he is my boy.
We walked back to the busy waiting room. Vivian, you walked between your dad and me, shoring each of us up with your hands.
“What do you think about ordering pizza for dinner when we all go home?” your dad asked.
Vivian, you squealed your assent and let go of our hands.
“Perfect,” I answered.
And when those long hospital hours were over and we got to take both of you home, we did order pizza, just after we recycled our daily parking pass.
Good Lord, I love you both.
Always,
Mommy
PART FIVE
KINDERGARTEN, OR WHY I HAD A BREAKDOWN
I PUT THE MENTAL IN ENVIRONMENTAL
The good thing about being a teacher is that you have the summers off with your children. The bad thing about being a teacher is that you have the summers off with your children.
In my early, delusional years of parenting, I wanted my children to grow up to be outdoorsy and to become self-sufficient, unconcerned with appearances, and able to pee in the bush. In pursuit of these three objectives, we scavenged some gear, loaded our van Joad-style, and set off for the Wild West. We left our second-hand reference book, Camping for Dummies, at home, where it served as a paperweight for Vivy’s preschool art collection.
We were wedged into the minivan, a veritable family puzzle of gear, food, and stuff. I couldn’t even see Vivy or Will. Three hours later, with the lyrics from a SpongeBob SquarePants DVD carved into my long-term memory, we descended into a valley once inhabited by dinosaurs. The fact that we were going to an area where bigger-than-RV creatures became extinct should have been my first clue that this wasn’t going to be a warm and fuzzy, immortalize-it-in-a-pretty-scrapbook trip. The second omen came when the park ranger told us there’d been three rattlesnake bites in the campground that month. Stay out of long grass, he advised. And with that cautioning, I eliminated the third objective of the trip: teaching my kids to pee in the bush.
We pulled our loser cruiser into Lot 33 and began to unpack.
“That’s the age Jesus was when he died,” I said.
“What are you talking about?” Chris asked.
“Our lot number, thirty-three. Don’t you think it has some sort of sacrificial quality to it? I turned thirty-five after you knocked me up. Being pregnant was a sacrifice.”
Chris threw a box of junk food out of the van, missing my toe by an inch.
“I’ll take Sunday School Trivia for $400, Alex,” he added, fixated on my Jesus comment.
“Ha, ha. Very fun—” I began, until a gust of wind swept away my response, one of our unsecured tarps, and a kid.
Chris rescued the wayward tarp. “Let’s set up the tent before we’re blown to Montana.”
Now, in most families I know, especially my own, an invitation to set up a tent marked a shift from happy-enough gathering to family fight. Setting up a campsite gives way to divorce court arguments over important matters: where the tent should go; how to hammer in a plastic peg without breaking it; whether the tent is squared or on level ground; and how concerned to be about the location of children.
Parenting Tip: Camping is the fast track to divorce court. Stay in a hotel instead, preferably without your kids. Or anyone else’s kids.
“Where are the kids?” I asked, trying to jam tent poles together without breaking my blood blisters.
“Beats me.”
“Have you seen the other poles?” I asked.
And then I noticed a blur of action. Will and Vivy were using two tent poles as scythes to smash through long grass. They couldn’t piss off rattlesnakes more if they tried.
“Get over here, right now. The snakes are getting ready to bite you.”
Lesson #1: Camping could kill you.
We continued setting up our Taj Mahal, purchased at a garage sale. We squabbled over which way the fly went, repositioned it repeatedly, always managing to get it wrong. I was about to issue a parental advisory for foul language when Chris spoke: “William. Put that #$%*ing axe down.”
“You left the axe out?” I asked. “They could kill—”
“Where the heck am I supposed to put it? In the garage?”
Lesson #2: Camping could kill you.
With the axe safely lodged into a tree, we grunted the fly into place. Another gust of wind tested our plastic tent pegs, at least the ones that weren’t broken. Our tent was miraculously erect, but we had little time to admire it. We were distracted by the gaggle of kids across the road, some sort of extended-cousin-mix party, where offspring outnumbered parents 13:1. They careened down the road on bikes, without helmets, practicing wipe out techniques and comparing lesions. The moms and dads were modern day versions of SCTV’s Bob and Doug McKenzie: six adults drinking beer and belching around a fire.
We met our still-drunk neighbors again that afternoon on the small beach and watched neglect-in-progress as their progeny committed numerous transgressions: throwing beer bottles into the water, tossing shovels full of sand on us, and trying to provoke my son into a water fight. When one little cretin two-hand pushed Vivy into the hole she dug, we voted with our feet and left.
Lesson #3: Camping could kill you.
While roasting wieners and marshmallows over open flames for dinner, Vivy and Will found new reasons why families like ours should have the campground ambulance on speed dial: They attempted to poke each other with marshmallow forks in some sort of medieval fencing practice, as they stumbled around the campfire.
Lesson #4: Camping could kill you.
Night approached. We crawled deep into our sleeping bags and awaited the beauty of nighttime silence. Instead, we were greeted by car doors slamming, the park ranger driving around in his diesel truck, the neighbors arguing about who could flick their beer cap the farthest, and a generator reverberating off cliffs. Yes, the guy five sites up had powered up his generator because he was afraid the dead bodies in his freezer would go bad. Although his motor partially muted the amateur guitarist who sang “Dust in the Wind” for sixty straight minutes, the generator still sounded like a rescue helicopter circling overhead.
Lesson #5: Camping could make you want to kill.
The kids settled into a fitful sleep, and I suffered mental anguish known as The Bathroom Dilemma: Was I tired enough to fall asleep immediately, or should I crawl outside my mummy bag, trudge into darkness, and pee so that I might be able to ward off a 4:00 AM trip to the outhouse? This quandary replayed in my brain like the annoying buzz of a nighttime mosquito.
Lesson #6: Camping could make you want to kill.
Sleep eventually won until Vivy’s screams trumped the generator. She blurted out, “William, stop cheating.” Evidently the pinnacle of a five-year-old’s nightmares is a cross between sibling rivalry and dishonesty.
Morning came, as did rain and a cold front. We put on all of our clothes and braved the outdoors. We could see our breath. We watched convoys of vehicles exit and envied the people who’d given up.
We built a fire and cooked omelets, but lost our children.
“Where are the kids?” I asked yet again.
“In the van,” Chris said. “They opened and closed the door themselves. I think they even buckled themselves in. They’re reading.” One look at the van confirmed this. Will and Vivy, in layers of mismatched clothing and untamed hair, exiled themselves into a familiar emblem of civilization: the minivan. Though they didn’t learn to pee in the bush, they had, after all, become unconcerned with their appearances and self-sufficient—in their own way.
Lesson #7: Camping was overrated.
Someday, when Vivy and Will present this book to their therapist as Exhibit A, they will call me Rain. As in on-their-parade. In addition to not taking them camping again, I also campaigned against cr
afts.
To punish me for my many transgressions, God gave me a daughter who fancies herself a pint-sized Martha Stewart. If Vivy could isolate enough hydrogen atoms, she’d attempt to make the sun. She loves crafts, and every adult I’ve ever spited has given her crafts as gifts, from the aforementioned Perler beads to scrapbooks. To me, scrapbooking is Dante’s seventh circle of Hell. To Vivy, it’s halfway to heaven. This could be why religion is rarely a safe topic of conversation.
One warm summer morning, as I stood in the kitchen and read reviews of movies I’d never see, Vivy pulled out one of her how-to craft books. She had already bookmarked twelve pages, which was a dozen too many.
“Can we make the castle?” she asked. “Please?”
I took my eyes off the Colin Firth movie promo. “No.”
“You didn’t even look at it, Mom.”
I walked over to the dining room to take a better look. I noticed a small milk spill under Vivy’s chair.
“Sweetie,” I said, “you spilled some milk. Can you clean it up?”
Vivy reached her foot out and stepped on it.
“Don’t use your sock to do that.”
“You do it all the time.”
I activated my short-term memory, which was getting shorter by the hour. “Mommy does not clean the floor with her socks all the time.”
“Yes, you do,” Will yelled from his perch in the living room.
“Do not.”
“Do too.”
Parenting Tip: To save time and cleaning supplies, mop up kitchen spills with your feet, preferably while wearing socks.
“OK,” I said, being the adult for once. “Let’s look at this book.” I looked at the craft page that Vivy had bookmarked. It had more ingredients than a recipe for duck l’orange.
“The answer is still no.”
“How about this one?”
I looked at the tiara on the opposite page.
“We can’t do that craft. We’re anti-glitter.”
“What’s anti-glitter?”
“It means we don’t allow glitter into our house.”
“Why not?”
“Because it makes a mess and Mommy hates to vacuum.”
Parenting Tip: Some issues are worth taking a stand against. Be anti-glitter.
Her face fell.
“OK, Vivy,” I said, grabbing the book. “How about this one?”
“I already made the fan once,” she said. Her bottom lip started to quiver. I was not good with excessive emotion that was not my own.
“I have an idea,” I said, smiling. “How about we make fans out of very special paper that Mommy has hidden away?”
She looked at me like I’d revealed a clue as to the Holy Grail’s whereabouts. I bounded upstairs to my closet and pulled out a package of sparkly multicolored paper, the kind that can bring the staff of Michaels to their knees. Vivy followed.
“Where did you get this, Mommy?”
“I got it a long time ago when I thought I might make my own cards to give people.”
“Did you ever do that?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I realized I can’t cut.”
“You can cut,” Vivy said.
“A little. But I’d rather write.”
She smiled.
“Can we make cards, Mommy? I can do the cutting, and you can do the writing.”
We traipsed downstairs. I grabbed my tea from the counter, closed the review of my next husband’s new movie, and sat beside Vivy and her craft encyclopedia.
We started making cards.
We continued.
And continued.
The girl had stamina that would put an NFL running back to shame.
Lunchtime rolled around. I remembered I had another child and a husband.
“I’m hungry,” Will said.
I walked to the kitchen. Chris came to help. Lunchtime preparation for me consisted of staring into the fridge for ten minutes, trying to use brainwaves to cook the food. In the pattern that was our marriage, Chris rescued me.
“How are you doing, Martha Stewart?” he teased.
“Fine,” I said. “They’re all going to end up in the recycle bin in a month, you know.”
Chris smiled. “Maybe. But admit it. You’re kind of having fun, aren’t you?”
“I’m laughing, all right,” I said, “while I put the mental in environmental.”
A HOMELESS PRINCESS AND A LION PREPARING FOR A FLOOD, EXCELLENT CHOICE OF COSTUMES
I get excited about office supply stores. I skip the scrapbooking aisle and go straight for the pens, convinced that I don’t have enough. Rumor has it that my mom had to hide my school supplies from me when I was a kid because I’d wear them out.
So, when my twins were about to enter kindergarten, I was as excited as they were. I’d grown up loving school, the rules, the friends, the coloring.
Vivy and Will were excited too. They tried on their backpacks and their shoes, parading around the house.
Then the morning came. No more dress rehearsals; this was the performance. I took the required pictures on the front step, and mentally compared their guaranteed-for-life backpacks with the brown leatherette briefcase I had had. We loaded Will and Vivy into the loser cruiser and began the journey. When we arrived at the school, we could feel the apprehension. Will and Vivy walked ahead, tentative steps and glances back at us, holding hands.
We followed.
I was a cliché: a photo-taking, tissue-wiping, hand-waving mom.
We deposited them with their teachers. I went to work, greeting my own students, who at age fourteen were less excited than my five-year-old offspring.
Later that evening, we talked about our first days. Vivy had experienced lots. Will not so much.
As they cleared the table, I asked them what kind of juice they wanted for their lunch tomorrow.
“You mean I have to go to school tomorrow?” Will asked.
“Yes, you have to go to school tomorrow,” I said. “Did you think it was a one-time thing, like a birthday party?”
He nodded.
“Better get used to it, Will,” Chris said. “You have to go to school for the next twenty years.”
Full day kindergarten proved more challenging than I remembered. Back in the ’70s, I remembered naptime, block-time, and recess-time. Vivy and Will’s school seemed to want to teach them things, concepts I didn’t learn in kindergarten or in the next three decades of my life. Things like dinosaurs and Van Gogh and lice.
After the planet debacle of preschool, we survived the dinosaur unit intact, with only a few bruises and one shattered ego—mine. Will and Vivy started coming home with dinosaur facts. If there was one thing I knew less about than the solar system, it was dinosaurs. I had enough trouble keeping track of yesterday’s history, let alone something that happened before Fred Flintstone walked the streets of Bedrock.
I knew Brontosauruses existed and gave North America burgers big enough to tip a car and piss off Wilma, but other than that I knew only three dino details, all from Jurassic Park: Velociraptors were small but fast, T. rexes could crush you, and you want to be driving a luxury SUV if ever chased by a dinosaur.
Will and Vivy attempted to correct my ineptitude.
“These aren’t Brontosaurus burgers,” Will told me at dinner. “They’re dead cow.”
“Well,” I said, “dinosaurs are dead, so that makes them kind of the same.”
“Dinosaurs aren’t just dead, Mom,” Vivy explained. “They’re stinked.”
“I bet they’re stinked,” Chris said. “Sometimes Mommy’s stinked too.”
I rolled my eyes, a skill Vivy was starting to mimic.
“Mommy’s not stinked, Dad,” Will said. “She’s right there.”
I put some mustard on my dead cow. “What did you do at recess today?” I asked, anxious to change the subject.
“I played paleontologist,” Vivy said.
I coughed. “That sounds l
ike a disease,” I said.
“Mom,” Will said. “It’s people who find and learn about dinosaurs.
Parenting Tip: Accept that all dinosaur names sound like diseases. Then bookmark the Wikipedia page on dinosaurs so your children don’t think you’re abnormally stupid.
Chris passed me the cheese. “Did you play paleontologist, Will?” he asked.
“No,” he said. “I played roll-down-the-hill.”
“How do you play that?” I asked.
“You roll down the hill.”
I pursued an earlier conversation track.
“Vivy, you actually pretended you were a paleontologist at recess?”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t want to roll down the hill?”
“No. I pretended I found the bones and horns of a Triceratops.”
I rolled my eyes again. Chris caught this and smiled at me. “So, when you were in kindergarten, you never pretended you were a paleontologist?”
I shook my head. “I just learned that word last year on Jeopardy.”
“What did you play at recess, Mommy?” Vivy asked me.
“Girls-catch-the-boys,” I said.
“Mommy was very good at that,” Chris said.
“Still am, you mean.”
If the beginning of kindergarten wasn’t enough to fast track me to the liquor store, Halloween was, as the previous year had taught me. I used to love Halloween. I have fond memories of Halloween as a child filling a pillowcase of candy, and as a college student fending off drunken animals, literally. Then I became a parent, and Halloween morphed into a day that combined my hatred of crafts with bad chocolate that I ate anyway.
On the eve of Halloween, Vivy and Will hadn’t yet chosen what costume they wanted to wear because, like last year, we hadn’t asked. When you’re five, choice is over overrated. When you’re forty, choice is temptation.
“Go look in the dress-up trunk,” I said. “Find a costume for tomorrow.” Chris had spent twenty-nine hours and four tanks of gas collecting costumes from garage sales.
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