Occasionally I'll look at my offspring and wonder how in the world parenthood happened to me. I still feel just like me, fully separate with my own past, thoughts, and (ugh, I hate this word) dreams (shudder) but to three little girls, I am simply Mommy. Occasionally I'll try to share a good personal moment with them: Guess what? Mommy got a story accepted today!--but I'm lucky if I get more than a passing glance. They wouldn't care if I built the ark, not really--I'm Mommy and then I'm Mommy and I will forever be Mommy. And it's okay with me--that's natural and good (I'm under no illusion that they will never question the job I'm doing--they already do!). Still, whatever my popularity rating is or will be, I'm still Mommy to these three children, and I'm grateful for it.
Occasionally, I realize that there are signs that I am, indeed, a parent of three--I mean, beyond the obvious. Take, for instance, my second cup of coffee. It likes to live in the microwave and be discovered stone-cold at lunch time when I go to heat up a bowl of macaroni and cheese for a child. My mother's coffee and my mother-in-law's coffee loved to be cold and forgotten in the microwave, too. I mean, how many times can you, in good faith, reheat the same coffee in one day?
Remember this one? Is it funny yet?
After eating an enormous salad for lunch today, I was starving right around three o'clock. So I decided, while I was working on yet another draft of a short story, to treat myself to a hot cup of tea and a slice of apple pie with whipped cream. I've been saving this treat for a long time and this was a perfect opportunity: Merry at soccer and Elspea and Bea glued to the television (no guilt here). I actually managed to sit down when a friend came to the door, and I felt bad eating my pie in front of her, and then Martin came home and Merry was all in a lather about the inserts to her soccer socks--oh, you know how it goes. It wasn't until I was fixing supper that I happened to glance into the dining room where Elspeth was bent over a bowl, just about to take a bite--
NOOOOOOOOOO! MOMMY'S PIE!
I dashed in there and I ate that pie up, congealed whipped cream and all. It was delicious.
Finally, after supper tonight, I asked Merry to clear the table.
"Why do I have to be the one to clear the table?" she complained.
"Why did I have to be the one to cook dinner?" I echoed.
"I thought you liked cooking dinner," she countered.
"I thought YOU liked clearing the table," I said. She cleared the table without saying another word. WHAT UP, MAN?
Someday I'm going to remember these conversations and I'm going to laugh till I cry. Right?
* * * *
This is the thing every full-time parent realizes at some point, standing in the doorway, watching a child dump out a box of couscous on the kitchen floor or shove a pussywillow up her nose or step smack-dab in their own feces. Someday, this is gonna be hilarious. Someday, when I'm old and the kids are in college and I'm sitting with my friends drinking coffee, we are gonna totally bust a gut.
During the middle of the day, those before-dinner desperate minutes when you should be crunching peanuts and swigging beer but instead the house looks like it's been shaken by a giant toddler--during so many moments, the answer is always the same, though the questions are myriad:
Who's going to break up this fight?
Who's going to comfort this child with a tiny scratch who is crying like her arm was amputated?
Who's going to orchestrate meals, dole out snacks, smile at visitors, tuck a phone between their ear and shoulder while they simultaneously change a diaper and keep the kitchen from burning down?
Answer:
You got it. Put your own name right there and weep. Or laugh. Or nod with a seasoned air.
Anyone ready for school to begin?
I wish you could see me right now. I am salivating like a dog waiting for a package of hot dogs: me, me, me, me!
Truth be told, I am enjoying the last week of full-on girl time as we wait for the breakfast&bus mornings to return. These are times when I am so glad I chose to be home with these insane but precious creatures we call children, the ones that throw arms heedlessly around my neck no matter how much I resemble a boiling teakettle. They don't seem to mind the heat. I guess I shouldn't, either.
