TheMommyBlog

Monday, May 15, 2006 Our Holiday Curse, Family

First, an announcement:

We have friends, some of them teachers and computer professionals, who don’t believe in our Holiday Curse.

Thank you.

So yesterday was one loooong Mother’s Day wasn’t it? You know what I’m talking about, though no one usually says it out loud. We all dream of being pampered and some of us in fact are pampered on this day and we appreciate it—really—but secretly we wish it would just be Monday already so we can go back to mothering under normal circumstances.

My children have a highly developed sense of empathy and concern alternating with a deep vein of je ne se quois and whatever, dude. When we arrived home after the Fantasy Faire last night, I was limping from a blister and still a little weepy from limbic system overload. The kids asked why I was sad and I said, “I’m just very, very tired.”

Daphne took a long look at me and said, “You need a nap.”

“Yeah, mom, you should rest. You deserve it. Come on, guys, we should clean up so she doesn’t have to.”

“Yeah. Maybe we can make her some food and bring it to her.”

“Who are you and what have you done with my children?”

Daphne followed me into the bedroom and said, “Mama, I am very proud of you. When I was on that slide, and the air went out of it, and you climbed up and told me to jump and you caught me in your arms and I was so scared? I was very proud of you.”

And of course within minutes they needed snacks, help with baths, help with the TV, help not killing one another, help with a spill, a round of gin and tonics. But the thought was nice.

Mother’s Day is that kind of interlude writ large. It lasts all day! Starting at dawn! When they wake you to tell you it’s Mother’s Day! And there are surprises! That you can’t see yet! So don’t come in the kitchen even though we don’t know how to operate the coffee maker!

And, if you get up we will collapse into puddles of tears and woe because we wanted to bring you breakfast in bed but will never, ever actually verbalize it because that would be giving away the surprise that can’t happen anymore because it’s a surprise and you ruined it and now we can’t have the surprise and this is the WORST MOTHER’S DAY, EVER.

And you have to talk them out of it.

There are incredibly sweet moments, like when they bring out the treasures they’ve been making all week in school, the letters they wrote over and over to get it just right (“You can’t tell that I erased and re-wrote and erased and re-wrote, can you?”), the ten-pound fired clay picture frame that you hang from the overhead crystal cabinet next to last year’s fired clay hand print. This year, Logan went whole hog and made a fired-clay mask, complete with freckles pricked here and there, but the pieces holding the temples and the eye sockets together were fragile and the whole top crumbled. And then it was the WORST MOTHER’S DAY, EVER.

And you have to talk them out of it.

Phil prepared three meals for five, shopping for each one and actually turning on the BBQ and the stove for at least two of them. He spent all day making his grandmother’s spaghetti sauce and making artichokes for the second night in a row, this time just the way the kids like them. Not grilled, like the grownups liked them.

I prepared laundry for three and tried to keep the chaos to a minimum. We sat under the wisteria on the patio with coffee and the paper (me with Freakonomics) and tried to read just one measly paragraph without kissing boo boos or hearing he-did-this-but-she-started-it-and-i’m-not-ever-going-to-play-with-her-again. And ten seconds later they are dragging play table chairs up into the fort to play SpongeBob having a driving lesson with Mrs. Puff. Have you ever seen that episode? The one in which Mrs. Puff hits SpongeBob on the head with a plastic telescope and throws his chair down the slide and then he kicks her and throws her chair down the stairs? We saw it. Twice.

But of course I would take annoyance and frustration over fear and dread, but as it was a holiday, we had heaps of everything!

Dylan had been begging me to let him ride Logan’s old bike (it used to be Logan’s! Bike! but since he got a new one for his birthday last week it’s OLD). The seat’s too high and the handlebars are a stretch and it has hand brakes instead of the foot brakes he’s used to and his helmet? Well, he left it at Dad’s. So I said no. He pleaded. I said no. He whined. I said no. He finally called his dad and talked him into bringing him the helmet. Which he thrust triumphantly at me and asked, “NOW can I ride Logan’s bike?”

Sigh. “Stay on the sidewalk and practice the brakes and don’t go fast around the corner because people drive like maniacs down our street.”

Ten minutes later, just as we were settling back into cold coffee and newspapers, Logan appeared. “Dylan got killed.” Fuckwhaaa? He WHAT? Oh, he didn’t? THEN WHY would you say something like that? I shot Logan a dirty look and bolted out of my chair (“No! No! He just hit a car!”) to see my neighbor, the nurse, looking for Dylan. She explained that Dylan had been flying down the sidewalk on his bike just as her friend pulled out of her driveway in his pick-up truck. Dylan slammed into it, full tilt. She said that one minute he was lying there, and the next, he was gone.

I raced around to the front of the house, where neighbors were gathering and one of them waved me inside. “He’s in the house!” I found him in his bed, eyes wide and his quilt wrapped around him.

“Dylan, baby, I’m so glad you’re okay, can I see you? Are you hurt? Are you bleeding anywhere? Can you show me? Let’s take off this quilt and look all over. Is it just your chin that got banged?” There was a cherry tomato rising just under the point of his chin. There was also a welt across one cheek, but considering the impact it was a miracle nothing was broken. They showed me the divot in the truck’s fiberglass door runner and all I could picture was his little skull connecting with it.

“Come on, we’ll get you some Motrin (again!) and cuddle up.” He told me he tried to stop, he tried so hard but he just couldn’t and he crashed. “It’s not your fault, you came around a bend and he didn’t see you either and you were excited about riding a big bike. And I’m so proud of you for wearing your helmet. Did you hit the car with your head?” He nodded. “Then it’s a good thing I made you wait until you had it, huh?” He nodded, but I could tell he was still afraid he was in trouble and that it was all his fault.

So I talked him out of it.