Mommy, can you please go away?

The above is what Elspeth asked me in the bath the other night, before she bounced a ball off Beatrix's head. It had been a red letter day for Elspeth. I stood in the doorway and took notes, attempting to remember in just what sequence the craziness happened.

Wednesdays are my extra kid days, because that is when I keep an eye (and teach music to) two or three additional sweetpeas while their mama is at the doctor. Usually my friend Sally takes pity on me and whisks Elspeth away for the morning to run with her son, Benjamin, but today Sally was absorbed in oldest son's field trip and not in the series of small comic crises that knit the fabulous Cockroft fabric.

Let me also preview this day by recalling the memory of a recent nightmare I endured: someone gave me a long-division problem. My dream-self tried to slog through this problem but hopelessly lost her way, and the dream ended in despondence and hopelessness. This horrible dream became reality when the oldest boy arrived with a whole slough of long-division problems. I optimistically sat down beside him at the table and began working alongside him on a piece of scratch paper until Martin took pity on me (laughed, actually), and sent me away: "You can't trust Aunt Kim with numbers. . ."

So Martin stayed with the children. . .hallelujah. . .and I zoomed off with the two smallest to farmer's market, where I spent approximately sixty dollars on the end of the season items, most interestingly, a bunch of celery made up of gorgeous stalks about three feet long.

A hot-dog for Elspeth and I was back again. The kids were finishing up their work, Martin was on his way out the door, and all was right with the world. And then, to crown the morning, the handsome UPS man dropped off Martin's and my early Christmas present to each other: a player for our SansaFuze (our nifty Mp3 player). I took it out of the packaging with one hand (the other, needless to say, busy with Beatrix on my hip), and set it up. Turns out the process was longer than I expected--the thing needed software downloaded, which I started--and I don't know whether it was during this process that one of the children spilled hot soup all over herself or not. Shortly after this clean-up, the three kids left with their grandma and I called Martin, pumped about the SansaFuze player, and blasted him with music over the phone. Sounds great! I enthused. I had done my research on this one, planned carefully for a long time, waited until just the right time to buy--and like all of you who live on one income or pinch pennies regardless, we were pretty excited to spend money on something we really wanted (besides milk or water or eggs or diapers).

I had anticipated playing some stunning guitar music on this player for a long time, and after I hung up the phone, (regardless of the fact the children should have been going down for naps), I turned up the volume. And noticed that--yes--the speakers were buzzing! Like an old car stereo. I couldn't believe it--I was inordinately disappointed. After troubleshooting for a while and then calling Martin completely exasperated, I tried to put the disappointment behind me and bundled the children off to bed.

(The other night, I must tell you, Elspeth learned how to successfully climb out of her crib. Was it the third time she came downstairs, cute as a button in her nightgown, or the fourth time Martin paused our movie, when we realized our days in the shade (our days of legal and approved toddler confinement) were over?) At any rate, after several disciplining sessions on Wednesday afternoon where I dragged Elspeth off the bed and deposited her back in her big-girl bed, I felt surprised and encouraged to hear--absolutely NOTHING from her room. Splendid! She had fallen fast asleep!

So I read chapter after chapter of Dr. Doolittle to Merry, all about the despicable Pirates of Barbary and how Dr. Dolittle (with the help of a rather large shark) convinces Ben Ali, the most horrid of the pirates, to give up his rude ways and become a birdseed farmer instead. And Ben Ali agrees. This scene is enough to give hope to the most exasperated parent. Change is possible, and indeed it seemed as though it were as I read to Merry in peace and quiet while Beatrix and Elspeth slept obediently in their proper places. Like little bitty angels no less.

I was finishing a chapter in bliss when I heard the front door creak open. Martin was home already? Could the day just get better and better? But no, it was not my dear husband at the door but the middle child, all devil, cute as a button, covered in sand, who had let herself quietly down the stairs and out the door and who had been playing unsupervised for about an hour or so. Let me tell you too that Martin has made one gate for the fence, but not the gate that matters most: that is, the one at the end of our path for the postal carrier which leads unhindered into the road a foot or two away.

It was through this gaping hole that Elspeth later that Wednesday afternoon kicked a pumpkin from our recent trip to a farm. The pumpkin bumped down the stairs, down our walk, and then in some parody of a picture book or silly song, went galumphing down the road toward an approaching car. "That's my pumpkin!" Merry cried. I bravely and clumsily took off barefoot after the runaway pumpkin with Beatrix bouncing along on my hip and retrieved it before a car made it into pie filling.

This takes us to the evening, where I somehow still had the gumption to act like a responsible adult and not order pizza. In an effort to lighten the nonsense in our freezer, I finally bit the bullet and thawed an enormous box of cheap fish which Martin purchased a good year and an half earlier in hopes that we would eat more [cheap] fish and live longer lives as a result. I have been avoiding this box of [cheapo] fish because I know something about [cheapass] fish: if it is cheap, it tastes like it was cheap. The same applies to bad, cheap fish as applies to bad men: you can try to disguise it (with breading, for instance), but you cannot change it. The nasty remains. But I am trying to be economical and not waste food, and so I cut open these leaking, smelly bags of fish and began to deal with what would become our supper. These tepid fillets kept coming. There was an ungodly amount of the stuff, and it did not smell good. I filled two large sheets full of fillets, fixed two different ways, and shoved them into the oven. And then I had to go to work ridding the kitchen of the essence de YUCK (as my cousin Jordana says) with a bottle of Windex and papertowels.

Martin finally arrived home and it turns out he had just had a lovely tea at the tea room in town so he wasn't terribly hungry--too bad for that poor man, because the nameless fish he had bought was plenty and the eaters were few.

What can I say? I took a bite and refused to eat more, and as I watched Merry polish off hers, I began hoping we would not spend the night retching. Martin had not eaten much of his, either--"What kind of fish IS this?" I asked him, and he shrugged. "I'm not sure," he said, "It's cheaper-than-cod. I bought it from Wal-Mart [a year and a half ago]."

GO FIGURE.

I scraped every last of those endless fillets into the trash, and we ate my friend Tonya's amazing bourbon applesauce for supper (in new, clean dishes, mind you)--even the baby ate the applesauce, and whether it was the bourbon or the sugar, we all felt happier for it.

That night as Beatrix splashed maniacally in the bathtub, sucking like crazy on her lower lip, trying in vain to reach one of the bobbing bath toys, I stood and watched my children and though I was alone (Martin teaching) and though I was still tasting the fish from dinner at intervals, I began to relax. The day was almost over, and though I did not know at that moment how Elsepth would fling a box of dried spaghetti noodles all over the sun room the very next day, I would be ready. For these days do run by all too slowly and then all too quickly: blink, and another day is ending, sigh too long and I miss the magic in the chaos.