Seven thousand years ago in the early ‘90s Nora Ephron said something like you could be in the room next to your children attempting suiicide but if you are engaged in something you love chances are they will need something of you. I botched the quote but you get the idea.
Anyhow, I had one of those days yesterday. Friday night at 10:30, I said good night to Beav and he announced to me: “I have Frisbee Golf in the morning.” Good Mother would have said, “Oh honey, that is so neat you are doing that again and I know you had a great time last year!” I was Good Mother earlier this week when I asked if he was going to play this year. But the other night, Bad Mother put her hands on either side of her forehead and let out a big Oscar worthy sigh and said: “Al-right. What time? It better not be crazy early because I’m really tired and have been up at 5 every morning.” As the words were leaving my mouth, Good Mother was whacking me over the head with a bossy stick: “What time do you think your little darling was up every day this week? Just sixty minutes after you, is what!” After Beav metaphorically patted me on the head and assured me it was at ten I was placated and took myself, Good Mother and Bad Mother to bed.
So guess what time my eyes popped open and refused to shut again. Just guess.
Uh huh. Six-thirty.
What am I 80? And incapable of sleeping past seven?
So after laying in bed for about an hour, I got up, fed the dog, and messed around on the net, sent The Girl an LOLcat text from Kipper about the RABBIT we saw eating blossoms off the butterfly bush; and looked several times at the menacing pile of receipts I need to sort through only to look away from them again in a futile attempt at denial that my checkbook needs to be balanced.
About an hour after Beav’s alarm sounded and thirty minutes before we needed to leave so I marched upstairs, dressed, put my scanky hair in a twist and marched across the hall to Beav’s room.
knockknockknock “It’s a little after nine, time to get up.”
“mmmrrfffff mmmmrrrrfff ffrfmmm ffmmfmffrr“
“Are you going? Cuz if you are we need to leave in about 30 minutes.”
“mmmmffrrffmm“
So I marched downstairs and tried to decide what I was going to do. Repeatedly attempting to get him up for Frisbee Golf did not make the short list. Or even the long one.
1. I could go out for coffee. I was dressed. Mind you dressed just a hair’s breadth away from ending up on the People of Walmart site but I wasn’t going to Walmart so it didn‘t matter…Besides the second I sat down with a trashy magazine at my favorite coffee place someone would call me all wild voiced demanding to know where I was because “I have to be somewhere REALLY IMPORTANT AND YOU AREN’T HOME.”
2. I could work in the garden. The flowers needed to be trimmed up, cucumbers inspected and the fact I don’t have red tomatoes on August 21st--a troubling and tragic situation--needed to be fussed over. I also needed to smile over my cheerful zinnias.
3. I could balance the checkboo---OH FOR THE LOVE OF GOD NO! TURN AWAY FROM THE LIGHT JUNE! TURN AWAY FROM THE LIGHT! [don’t worry Dad, I know how much money I have and it’s enough]
4. I could clean the kitchen. But there’s a yucky pan I don’t feel like doing and that would be noisy and wake the little darlings up which would then probably interrupt my cleaning because someone would need a ride somewhere. And then I would complain about having to stop what I was doing…which could lead to the two part harmony song called: “If I Had A Car” (sung to “If I Had A Hammer” it’s a real catchy tune). Which then leads to me reminding them if everyone had a car no one would have food or light because we would all have to sit quietly with our hands folded neatly, trying to forget the hunger pains we were experiencing in the dark because our monthly auto insurance bill would preclude us from paying the electric bill or buying groceries.
5. I could write. Because I must. And people at my house want me to write and enjoy what I write so they don’t interrupt me and if they need me they say so and give me a few minutes. I’m not sure how this respect came about but it has and I am very thankful. I know it didn’t come about because I would grumble at them or snarl. One day, Wally was lurking around and I was fiddling with something. I looked up at him and was all wild-eyed: “I know! I know! You want to go!!” He got this Dali Lama look on his face and said: “Mom, I know you’re writing. I can wait.”
After I got back from taking Wally to his friends’ house I searched high and low for the pod.
I just hate holding patterns. I would rather they breathe down my neck when I’m doing something than wait for them to start breathing down my neck. Waiting to see if they need me. It’s an odd state of being and I think only being a parent allows you to understand what I mean. It’s one of the many things about mothering that makes me twitchy and impatient with myself. But I managed to get all Dali Lama on myself and so I:
Made myself coffee, deadheaded the flowers, pulled the weeds, harvested a cucumber and fussed over the not ripening tomatoes, sighed over my festive zinnias, cleaned the kitchen and wrote a little something.
But I did not balance the checkbook because this Puritan girl’s work ethic only goes so far.
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