Archive for the 'There’s Just Something About Mary' Category

We’re in the Loser Cruiser hauling to Marley’s horseback riding party. We’re late. I’ve chucked Mare a pair of jodphurs and boots and she is trying to squeeze into them around her dress with her seatbelt on.

“I can’t … I can’t …” — and here it comes. A Meltdown.

My shoulders are inching up toward my ears. Now Mare is sobbing.

“Mare,” I say, “it’s not a big deal. If you can’t do it now we’ll do it when we get there. Really, it’s not worth freaking out over.” But she is freaking out and now I am freaking out.

She’s high strung. She’s dramatic. I indulged her too much as a toddler and now she has no coping skills. She’s never going to be able to manage a corporation or a surgical team or an embassy and people won’t like her and she’ll be That Girl and it’s all my fault.

She’s crying and I am resisting the urge to shout at her to get her shit together. I’m pretty sure that would be wrong.

We’re at the barn. Mare’s dressed, she bails out of the Loser Cruiser and runs to the ring, where the kids are gathering for their rides. I turn my attention toward my middle child.

Her chopped hair is spewed out in a million directions. She has chocolate and glitter on her face. Interestingly, she has no shoes.

“You have no shoes,” I say.

She blinks.

I take her, barefoot, up to the ring and sit. And that’s pretty much where I plan to stay for a good long while. Marley rides, Mare rides, the other kids ride, and it’s fun to be back at the barn again.

The riding party comes to an end and the girls escort their horses back to the stable for untacking and grooming.

“What about me?” Renny asks, looking around the empty ring. She has sat patiently in my lap the entire time.

“You have no shoes,” I say. Her face crumples. I am a big fat jerk. She has sat here so nicely and now she is not getting a ride.

“Oh, put her on,” says the barn owner. “She can go for a ride barefoot, it doesn’t matter.”

“C’mon,” I tell Ren. We run toward the stable together, she bare-legged in the coarse winter grass, not even pausing over the little rocks.

The barn owner tells the instructor to bring a horse over and I tell Mare to get her boots off and pass them to Sister. Mare instantly complies, but the boots are tight she’s having trouble getting them off, and Ren’s waiting for her ride and … here it comes. The Meltdown.

She’s high strung. She’s dramatic. I indulged her too much as a toddler and now she has no coping skills. She’s never going to be able to manage a corporation or a surgical team or an embassy and people won’t like her and she’ll be That Girl and it’s all my fault …

“Mare, why are you freaking out???” I finally say. She stops mid-wail and looks at me with a deep exasperated sigh. She puts both hands on my shoulders and says,

“Momma. It’s what I do. I’m a person who freaks out.”

I stare stupidly.

She’s not me.

You freaking dumbass. She. Is not. YOU.

“Oh, okay,” I say.

She nods and goes back to hauling on the boots and wailing. She gets them both off, we ram them on her sister, and Doodley skips happily over to the horse and scampers up.

She hasn’t ridden all winter, and I have a moment’s panic wondering if she remembers how.

“TROT!!” she screeches — and Rumples is off like a super-charged slug with a lame hind end. And a bad hangover.

“Hey, Mare?” I say.

“Yeah, Momma?” she’s standing in bare feet, watching Ren happily bully her horse toward the ring.

“You’re a really neat person. I really like you.” She smiles at me.

“I’m gonna go untack,” she says. “And give Sterling a treat. And Wilbur, too. You know he’s in a stall today because he keeps wandering off to see the neighbors? — He’s really sad so I’m going to play with him a little.”

“Okay,” I say, and watch as she strides back to the barn, long and lean with piercing blue gaze and bare feet and wild blonde hair in her eyes. In that moment I am totally in love with the girl she is and the woman I know she will be.

Mare’s sleeping over at Marley’s. Renny is inconsolable without her, but we’ve compensated with a breakfast trip to Peach Cobbler. Ren’s in a booster, coloring in a tattered yellow Arthur coloring book. She is sipping milk and munching a bowl of strawberries while she waits for chocolate chip pancakes.

“Are you going to be a big sister???” sings the waitress in a high-pitched voice, as she sets a plate of pancakes down.

“I am!” Ren says. “I am also a little sister. Mare is my big sister, she’s not here, she’s at Marley’s she’s six.”

“WOW!” says the waitress. And then to me, “How old is she?”

“I’m three.” The waitress has not heard her and is still looking at me for an answer.

“How old are you, Ren?” I say.

“I am three,” she says. “And Eden is the little sister.”

“Is it a boy or girl?” the waitress asks me.

“A girl,” I say. Ren has narrowed her eyes.

“I said it’s a sister,” she says. The waitress turns to her.

“Are you gong to be a greeeeeat big sister?? What are you going to do when baby spits up? YUCKY, right??” she then leans over and tickles. Ren’s. Belly.

Ren takes a bite of pancake and turns away from the waitress, fixing her eyes out the window.

“Are you going to be Mom’s big helper??” sings the woman. “Are you a big girl, now??” Ren’s clear blue gaze is unwavering.

“She’s all zoned out,” the woman says to me.

“Yeah. Haha.” I say.

“Just not talking much today, huh???” the woman says. “Well, okay, BE GOOD!!” Her voice has taken on an additional serial-killer-baby-voice quality. Ren’s still staring out the window. “Be a good girl at the restaurant and take care of your sister!!” Still nothing.

“Funny,” the lady shrugs and walks away. As soon as she’s gone, Ren comes back to us, taking a bite of pancake and saying, “I wish Sister were here. It not da same without her.”

“It isn’t,” we agree. The lady comes back twice and both times Ren stares blankly out the window until she leaves, and then goes back to conversation as soon as the woman is gone.

I don’t think that woman ever knew that she’d made herself dead to a toddler.

“Momma, Ren broke her promise to me.”

I look up from the laptop. They are standing in the bedroom door. Mare looks righteous. Ren looks happy to be out of bed.

I decide to take a pass on the fact they’re supposed to be asleep.

“Ren,” I say, “did you break your word to sister?”

She nods.

“She promised she would jump off the top bunk onto her bed and SHE DIDN’T!!” Mare says.

Oh.

“Ren,” I say. “Is that true?”

“Yeah, I was scared. That was too high. And I too little.”

I stare stupidly.

Had they come in and started speaking Aramaic I would have been less destabilized.

“Well done, Ren,” I say. “That’s just excellent. Don’t you ever do anything that feels unsafe.”

“I know,” she says, hopping up next to me on the bed.

Mare is sobbing. (“Sissies keep their promises to their sissieswaaaaaa!!”)

Gwen Steffani comes on the radio singing Sweet Escape. Renny starts to wiggle happily to the beat while Mare weeps.

Seriously, Lord, how do you expect me to keep a straight face?

“It was a bad promise, Mare,” I say. “Renny can’t promise to do something that’s bad. She has to break that promise. Renny, can you say ‘I’m sorry I made a bad promise?’”

“I sorry I made a bad promise, Sissy,” she chirps.

Mare, of course, weeps.

How did I get here?

I send Ren to their room. She bursts into tears and cries for Sissy. I tell her she’s not in any kind of trouble, and close the door on her wails. I turn my attention on the older one, who is carrying on like there’s a corpse.

“Ren was right,” I say. “I’m very proud of her,” (and stunned beyond expression) “she is too little, and she knew it, and she stopped. She did the right thing.”

Mare is wailing. Ren is wailing.

Cute Husband is standing in the doorway, silently accusing me of making our offspring insane.

Finally, we settle it. I agree to help Ren make the jump, but we all agree she’s too little to do it otherwise. She flies off the top, I catch, it’s all good. Before they settle back to bed, I take her aside.

“I’m very proud of you,” I say. “Never ever do something that feels not safe, no matter who tells you to do it.”

“I know. I was right. Sissy was wrong.”

“Yes. That is the staggering part of all this.” She shrugs and kisses me.

“I kiss you, Momma!” she laughs. Cute Husband shudders audibly.

When we made the offer and it was accepted, I grinned and said, “Yay!  We bought a house.  Boy, that was easy.”

“Um, no,” said the Cast of Thousands, the multitude of People Who Have a Claim on this House We Don’t Really Own.  “You don’t own jack-squat, my friend.  Now you start seeing if you want to buy this thing.”

 So then we did the inspection, and that rocked, and then the bank said, “Oh, all right, more than a quarter milllion?  — Sure, why not.” And I said:

“Yay!  We’re buying a house this is so easy!”

And the Cast of Thousands said, “Woah, there, killer, you don’t own diddly-peep, you gotta sign a P&S.”

So I signed the little form which, when referred to in casual conversation sounds like everybody is talking about a male body part. 

“NOW we have a few questions for you,” said the financial institution which heretofore had agreed to throw all kinds of money my way without asking me any questions more complicated than, “You promise to pay, right?  Cross your heart and hope to die?”

“Mother’s maiden name?” they asked.  “Father’s mother’s aunt’s maiden name?  Father’s brother’s middle name re-arranged to make a dirty word? — and don’t bother lying, we’ll know.”

“Why won’t they leave us alone?” I asked Cute Husband.  “All I want them to do is give me several hundred thouand dollars and go away.”

But they don’t go away.  All day long they find me, and it’s starting to make me feel Big and Important in my tiny little world.

“Is now a good time to talk?” asked my Lender, with whom I have become quiet friendly.  In the hopes that she will give me money.  And, like, not scare me quite so much.

“Oh, I’m packing,” I said breezily.  “Yep, just packing.  So.  That mortgage better work out or I’ll be seriously bumming, huh?”

“Excuse me?”

“Oh.  No sense of humor?”

“We at Stiffy and Muffy do not have a sense of humor that we’re aware of.”

“Riiiiiight.”

“Let me go crunch these numbers and come back to you, okay?”

“Sure.  Right.   Ah … there’s, like, not really a chance you’re going to deny this thing now, is there?”

“There’s always a chance.”

“Oh.”

“I’ll call when I can lock you in to a rate.”

Two hours later she called my cell and got me in the mall bathroom where  Renny was threatening to get arrested for lewd behavior.