Don't Lick the Minivan

by Leanne Shirtliffe

  “Hey, don’t forget the company forgave us that,” I said. “Look, I’ll clean it up, and I’ll get Will to help.”

  “Don’t bother,” Chris said. “I have to figure out a way to get all the water out of the vent. I’m pretty sure there’s an elbow joint in there.”

  “Right, OK,” I said, pretending I knew what that meant. “I’ll just go actually watch the kids until Mom and Dad get here.”

  THE NEXT TIME YOU COME OUT OF THAT ROOM, YOU’D BETTER BE BLEEDING

  My dad sat in the time-out chair in our living room. He hadn’t done anything wrong, but I suspected it was as far away from chaos as he could get.

  Will and Viv wrestled in the middle of us. It was cute for the first round, but each progressive round, they added some new mixed martial art to their attack repertoire. Thai kickboxing was the latest.

  Dad watched them with a slight grin. I suspected that he was remembering his days of growing up unsupervised on a farm with four brothers, all competitive. Was he thinking about the time they made homemade grenades from gunpowder they’d found in an abandoned building? Or was he remembering racing cars on the frozen river behind his farmhouse?

  My reverie was interrupted by the sound of a foot hitting a rib.

  “OK, that’s enough,” I said.

  I had spent six years as a parent cultivating my authority, which was now on par with that of a gnat.

  Viv and Will progressed to ground fighting. “Stop it.” I took a deep breath and changed tactics. “Let’s play a game.”

  Will released the headlock he had on his sister. “Can we play What Am I?”

  Viv squealed. “Can I go first? Can Grandma and Grandpa play? Please?”

  I looked at my parents. My mom smiled; she’d do anything. My dad, his football build still evident decades later, looked skeptical.

  “We’ll see,” I said, buying us some time. “Viv, you start.”

  Viv hopped around the room.

  “Frog!” Will yelled.

  “Nope.”

  “Bunny,” I offered.

  “Nope.” More maniacal hopping entertained us. Viv paused to put a teddy bear down the front of her pants and proceeded to hop again.

  “Kangaroo!” Will shouted.

  “Yes,” Viv said, as she performed a Caesarean section on herself to rescue the stuffy.

  Chris went next. Lying on his back on the couch, he stuck his legs and arms straight out toward the ceiling and feigned sleep.

  “Sloth,” both kids said, disappointed that Daddy’s acting repertoire was limited to this slow-moving beast.

  Will took his turn. He strutted around the living room walking like an ancient Egyptian who was nodding his head relentlessly.

  “Rooster?” Viv said.

  “I was going to say cock,” Chris said.

  My parents laughed. After ten years, they were used to their son-in-law’s sense of humor. In fact, I was pretty sure my mom’s giggles had turned to silent tears, a frequent occurrence when she enjoyed a double entendre joke.

  “I’ve got one,” my dad said.

  I paused. I’d never seen my dad play a game that wasn’t cribbage.

  He stepped into the middle of the carpet, bent his big frame over, pointed an elbow to the ceiling, and did some sort of shuffle. Whatever he was doing, it was convincing.

  Will and Viv shouted out the names of random animals, including camels, elephants, and warthogs.

  My dad added a few variations. He was in character, and he was doing this animal justice.

  Finally, after more guessing, I spoke for the room. “I give up.”

  Dad sat back down. “It was a killdeer.”

  There was a pause, before looks of confusion from the kids and laughter from the adults.

  “I never knew killdeers had pointy elbows,” I said.

  “Grandpa?” Will asked. “What’s a killdeer?”

  “It’s a bird,” he said, possibly disappointed that his suburban descendants would deign to ask this. “A type of plover,” he added.

  “Of course it is.” I wasn’t about to admit I thought a plover was a type of tractor we used in the 1970s.

  “I was doing their broken wing act. It’s what killdeers do when predators are around.”

  “And you did it well, Dad.” I said. “Want another beer?”

  On the second night of my parents’ visit, all went well enough. Even Chris was low key, neither burping the alphabet for the kids nor suggesting to Viv that the next book she should get from the library should be Junie B. Jones Robs a Bank and Flees to Mexico. By the time bedtime rolled around, Will decided he wanted to kiss only Grandma and me goodnight. Fair enough, I thought.

  Will cuddled up to me on one side of the couch. Viv glued herself to my mom on the other side. I noted that a restraining order might be in effect if my mom decided she wanted to shower or sleep.

  I thought I’d double check on the hug/kiss situation.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to kiss Grandpa or Daddy goodnight?”

  Will looked at my tall father and shook his head. Then he leaned in and whispered something to me.

  After wiping saliva from my ear canal, I repeated what I thought I heard. “You want Daddy to kiss Grandpa goodnight for you?”

  I started to laugh. So did the other adults.

  Will nodded.

  “Well,” I said to Chris, “are you going to kiss Grandpa?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I’m not really a whiskers man.”

  “And he does give nasty whisker rubs,” I added, remembering the playful torture sessions of my childhood.

  “How about a handshake, Willy?” my dad asked.

  I watched two of the men in my life grasp palms and say goodnight.

  I managed to pry Viv away from my mom and followed my kids upstairs to witness them brush their teeth in fewer than ten seconds. I read them Doreen Cronin’s Dooby Dooby Moo for the 184th time. It was one of the few books I still loved reading aloud, mostly because it let me unleash my inner Steppenwolf.

  I tucked them in, kissed them goodnight, and channeled my inner English teacher by quoting Shakespeare: “May flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.” I turned out the light and returned to the land of Adultville.

  Dad had the cribbage board out, Mom had uncorked a bottle of wine, and Chris came over to squeeze my shoulder before begging off to watch one of his favorite sports teams lose. I knew I had to give him a break since he cheered for the Toronto Maple Leafs, the Toronto Blue Jays, and the Toronto Raptors. The guy hadn’t seen a championship in more than a couple of decades. But he’s a faithful one, so he watches. I suspected it helped him practice his swearing.

  I took a sip of wine and cut the cards. A King. I lost the chance to deal. Mom and Dad talked about the weather and the latest curling bonspiel. I stared at the cribbage board, trying to remember the rules. It was one thing to forget how a killdeer defended itself from its predators; it would be an entirely bigger disappointment if I forgot the rules of cribbage, a game I’d played with my parents since I was in first grade.

  My concentration was interrupted. “Mom?” Will said.

  “What are you doing up?” I asked. “Go back to bed.”

  “Mom?” Will repeated. He showed me one of his twenty-two books on dinosaurs.

  “Go. To. Bed.”

  My dad shuffled the deck of cards and dealt.

  “Just one question, Mom.”

  “One,” I said.

  “What’s your favorite dinosaur?”

  “You came downstairs to ask me that?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s Leave-Me-Alone-A-Saurus.”

  My parents laughed. So did Will. “Mom, that’s not a real dinosaur. Your favorite is Stegosaurus. You like the plates and the spikes. They help keep Stegosaurus warm when he needs it and cold when he needs it.”

  “If you knew that, why did you come down to ask?”

  Will shrugged. “Goodnight.” He ran back upstairs.
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  I picked up my cards, one of those impossible hands that upped the odds I’d be skunked by my parents.

  We started playing. Halfway through that first hand, more little feet. Not to be one-upped by her brother, Viv snuck downstairs and squirmed her way onto my mom’s lap.

  Mom, Dad, and I finished the first hand. I was losing by ten already.

  “OK, Viv,” I said. “I know Grandma is loving this—”

  I watched them snuggle even closer.

  “—but it’s bedtime. Up you go.”

  She trudged upstairs.

  We dealt another hand and finished our glasses of wine. I heard the kids’ bedroom door squeak open.

  I was going to be proactive on this one. “The next time you come out of that room,” I yelled, “you’d better be bleeding.”

  I heard the upstairs door squeak closed. My mom shuffled the cards while my dad filled my wine glass. They understood. They’d been there.

  I LOVE THE SOUND OF VACUUMING UP LEGO IN THE MORNING

  When I was pregnant, someone gave me a CD called Mozart for Babies. I didn’t play it. First of all, Mozart wasn’t even alive when I got pregnant. Second, Mozart was more popular when he was dead. Third, I preferred Bach. “

  Although our musical tastes weren’t classical, Chris and I still exposed our kids to a lot of genres. When I wasn’t in the vehicle, Chris tended to crank bands like Public Enemy and DJ Champion, his version of soft rock. On the days I played taxi driver to my pair of kids, I’d put the radio on scan and let it cycle around uselessly, mirroring the brain cells in my head, or at least the ones I hadn’t killed yet. Every third song, Will would shout, “Stop. This is my second favorite song.”

  This time, when the snow was falling softly, that song was Lady Gaga’s anthem, “Born This Way.”

  Both Will and Viv knew the words. Every. Single. One.

  I concentrated on using my remaining brain cells to focus on driving. It didn’t work. If the distracted driving laws were to be fully effective, they’d have to ban driving with children.

  Parenting Tip: If you drive with children in the car, you drive distracted. Muzzling and tethering are two options.

  In spite of myself, I listened to the lyrics, which were about lipstick and boudoirs.

  I focused on not rear-ending the car in front of me.

  Then more lyrics sung by my own off-key duo. I heard the words “drag” and “queen” over and over again.

  “Where did you learn all the words to Lady Gaga?”

  “At school,” they chimed. That would be Catholic school. Then again, Gaga attended Convent of the Sacred Heart School, which could likely out-Catholic my kids’ school.

  I joined Viv and Will for the song’s end. When that ended, I waited for the next one. Neil Young. One of his classics: “Heart of Gold.” I let the song play. I was a sucker for poetic lyrics; if the singing was atonal, I identified even more. Hello, Leonard Cohen.

  I used the steering wheel for a drum and sang along using my own atonal talents: “I’ve been in my mind, it’s such a fine line, That keeps me searching for a heart of gold, And I’m getting old.”

  Viv said, “I don’t like this song. Can you change it?”

  Will piped up. “That singer sounds like Shaggy from Scooby Doo.”

  I paused. I may have hit the SUV in front of me. “Pardon me?”

  Will repeated, “He sounds like Shaggy. You know? From Scooby Doo?”

  I lectured my rearview mirror. “Neil Young does not sound like Shaggy from Scooby Doo.”

  “Yes, he does,” Vivian said.

  Then I smiled as my overworked, remaining cells played a convincing mash up of Neil Young and Shaggy in my brain.

  I shut off the radio because it had started to snow more heavily. Some countries might have called it a blizzard; we called it winter.

  Snow may be the best free toy ever, but if you’re a parent, it’s the devil incarnate. Snow looks pretty, much like pregnancy does from a distance. Upon lengthy examination—or personal experience—it loses its appeal and becomes mundane, unpleasant, and vomit inducing.

  At the start of every winter, we bundled up Viv and Will in snow pants that were too small, mismatched mittens that doubled as sponges, and scarves that could hang our children on our secondhand swing set. Then, I hoped that my frozen Garden of Eden tableau would last, that I would enjoy ten minutes of silence as my offspring frolicked in our fenced patch of suburban wonderland.

  Like that ever happened.

  Instead, on a lazy Saturday morning, I drank a cup of tea and listened to muffled yells, trying to classify them into some sort of screaming taxonomy for children, ranging from I-Think-They’re-Just-Laughing to Call-a-Coroner.

  Somewhere in the middle of that taxonomic rank was a muffled scream, the one that sounded like your child had no tongue. I heard pounding on our patio door followed by words. “Mom? Will’s tongue is stuck to the swing post, and he can’t move it.”

  I briefly recalled getting my own tongue stuck to my frosted window as I waited for the yellow school bus to come one morning when I was “little.” Age fourteen. It hurt less than my earlier monkey bar incident.

  I slipped on my boots and ran outside jacket-less.

  “Ahm,” Will attempted to enunciate my name. “I -ung ih huck.”

  “I know your tongue is stuck,” I said. “Can you just tear it off?”

  He shook his head and then screamed.

  “God help me, Will,” I muttered, trying to compose myself. “Didn’t you learn anything from licking the minivan?”

  “Orry.”

  “OK,” I said. “Stay still.” I could see my breath. “Vivian?” I yelled. “Bring me a small glass of water. Leave your boots on. Just get it. Now.”

  “Is Will thirsty?” she asked.

  “Just get it.”

  I leaned my head closer to Will’s tongue and started panting like a dog, hoping that my bad breath would melt the ice or at least knock him out. Evidently, the image of his mother bent over blowing on the swing set was too much. Will started to laugh and in the process ripped his tongue off the swing pole.

  Parenting Tip: Making your child laugh is a good way to get his tongue unstuck from a frozen swing set.

  “Ow.”

  I started to laugh.

  “It’s not funny,” he said.

  “No, it’s not. But Mommy panting like a dog was a bit funny, wasn’t it?”

  He smiled. I escorted him into the house, where we were met by Viv who was carrying a glass of water.

  “Thanks, Viv,” I said, taking it. “Drink up, Will.”

  He drank. “Blood tastes funny,” he said.

  I removed his boots and grabbed the glass so he could peel off his snow pants. I could see his tongue rolling around his mouth.

  Then he spit.

  I was just out of range.

  Blood spattered everywhere, onto the table, the wall, the floor. It missed the carpet by two inches.

  “Stop that!” I yelled. “Don’t get blood on the carpet.”

  It had taken Chris and I months to pick out an area rug that we both didn’t hate. The last thing I wanted to do was to peroxide the heck out of it.

  I mopped up the blood and the snow that had melted off Viv’s boots. Then, because it was the logical thing to do after you mopped the floor, I decided to vacuum. There were enough Cheerios under the table to drive up the price of oats.

  When Will and Viv heard the word “vacuum,” they picked up their toys quickly. We’d conditioned them, convincing them we’d suck up any homeless toy.

  Not long after I started hoovering, it happened. That pleasant sound that secretly pleases every mother. The sound of LEGO being sucked up the hose.

  “Mom?” Will screamed, hitting a high taxonomic level. “Was that LEGO?”

  I feigned innocence. Then I sucked up another piece.

  “Stop, Mom, stop.”

  I shut off the vacuum cleaner.

  “Mom, I mis
sed some LEGO. Stop.”

  “I love the sound of vacuuming up LEGO in the morning.”

  “Mom. Stop. Now.”

  Because the screams of my scabby-tongued son were reaching the Call-the-Coroner levels, I waited and watched him crawl under the chair and rescue a couple of LEGO swords.

  “OK,” he said, resigned. “Go ahead now.”

  I’LL SMUGGLE SOME PINOT GRIGIO IN THE KIDS’ WATER BOTTLES

  Winter passed, bringing us the season of soccer and the challenge of two kids playing on two different teams at two different fields. I had enough equipment to warrant a U-Haul rental. Chris was working, and I struggled as always in my attempt to get everything and everyone out the door. I sent Viv and Will outside while I gathered the last of the gear, which included my mittens and sunglasses. Nothing said soccer season in Canada like contrasting accessories.

  I rushed outside and noticed Viv and Will collecting rocks on the side of our driveway.

  I loaded the last of the stuff in the back of our minivan and walked around to open Will’s door.

  I saw this etched on his door: “William.” A sad face sat atop his name.

  “What the—” I started, not bothering to finish my sentence. “Did you use rocks to write on the—? You couldn’t have, could—?”

  Viv looked at me. I could tell she was stalling. It was the stealing-pens-from-Staples incident all over again. “I’ll crawl in Will’s side,” she said.

  “No. No. You didn’t write—” I interrupted myself again. “Did you carve things too?”

  I raced to the other side.

  I read this: “Vivian only.” There were scratches to the left of her name, where she must have tried to get the rock to work properly.

  I gasped. Then I saw more. On the rear side-panel of the van, Viv inscribed her etchings. More precisely, she composed a dedication: “on behalf of my class.”

  My kids knew by my speechlessness that they’d done wrong. I clutched my hair.

  I rubbed my index finger across one of the gorges. “This won’t come off,” I said. “Ever.”

  I heard choruses of “I’m sorry” and “We didn’t know.”