Archive for the 'Momma's Smoke'n Crack' Category

Let me put this in context for you:

 I had been up until 1 in the morning finishing student papers.  I nursed Eden at 1:45; 3:45: 5:45 and 6:30.  Ren and I both slept until 9:00.  School starts at 8:00.  Mare was annoyed.

There was no taking Ren to school at that point, so she came with me and the baby to the  gas station and the bank, executing a full Post-Birthday Meltdown on the way home when Barbie’s shoes wouldn’t stay on.  Of course we hadn’t stopped to feed Eden. 

The house looks like it has been hosting frat parties for the last three consecutive nights, only instead of empty beer bottles, the floor is littered with Barbie packaging, shredded wrapping paper and miscellaneous food scraps.

FYI I had just checked the weather channel and it’s going to rain Saturday when we expect 18 screaming little girls and Sleeping Beauty.  I was thinking about that a lot.

So I banged the front door open, dragging my screaming children behind me, trying not to panic about housecleaning and money and rain.  I set Eden down, went over to the table to get her cereal bowl, to the sink for water, back to the table again.  Ren followed, barefoot, whining about this or that.

We had absolutely no idea we were passing back and forth within inches of the bottom half of a very large dead squirrel.

With a fluffy tail.  And, like, colorful entrails.

I finally noticed it when one of the cats shot guiltily past me.  How does a cat “shoot guiltily?”  I don’t know.  I guess you live with anything long enough you kind of get to know its moods.  But something about the way he ran out the door made me stop and turn to look on the gorgeous handmade rug Cute Husband earned as a young boy selling carpets in Turkey.  (‘Nother story for a ‘nother time.)

The point is that there the squirrel was.  The bottom half of him, anyway, bleeding into that fine carpet.

“Momma … what’s wrong?” Renny asked.  I had whisked her around to face the dishwasher.  The new dishwasher. Nice, stainless.  Free of intestines. 

As far as I know.

I was standing next to her thinking Step Two was eluding me.

I seized into giggles.  This happens to me.  Most often when I am placed in a position of responsibility with absolutely no idea how to proceed and there’s a corpse on the rug.

“Why we staring at the dishwasher?” Ren asked.  I couldn’t answer.  I was wiping away tears and gasping for air.

“Because,” I finally said.  “There’s a dead squirrel on the rug.”   And your mother’s idea of problem-solving is to fixate on kitchen appliances.  WATCH AND LEARN, KID.

Finally I did what any self-respecting liberated independent woman would do.

I ran across the street to the neighbor’s house.  He’s in construction, and works from home.  Over the last two years he’s always had whatever we didn’t — sand for the driveway, a spare shovel, tips for fixing the gutter.

It wasn’t until he was standing, pale in my kitchen, shovel in hand, that I understood what I had done to him.

“You might have been better at this,” he said, swallowing, staring at the Corpse.

“Perhaps, but it’s too freaking late now, get in there.”

No, no, no.  I totally didn’t say that.  I didn’t say anything, it’s hard to talk when you’re gazing at a dishwasher.

“MOMMA THE GUTS ARE COOOOL!” Ren said.

“I’m sure they are, Baby,” I said.

I heard Nice Neighborman gag.  I am a terrible person and I just don’t care.

He got the squirrel, swung around with it on the shovel, not looking, heading for the door.

I didn’t have the heart to tell him he left one paw behind.  Maybe he noticed and didn’t have the heart to tell me.

He pitched the squirrel over the hedge.  The little fluffy tail soared and landed right in the middle of the Secret Garden, where the girls take their tea.  I didn’t have the heart to tell him that, either.

Okay, well, whatever.  I plugged Ren into a Barbie movie with a bowl of strawberries, mixed up some cereal, sat Eden down, and began to feed her.

I thought about things.  Mainly, about the rain Saturday.  How was I going to deal with that? 

“Momma?” Ren asked, coming toward me, “can I have some more strawberries?”

“REN!  LOOK OUT FOR THE–!”

“Coool!!  SQUIRREL FOOT!”

“Want some milk with that?”

“Yes, please, Momma.”

“Nice manners, Love.”

Now, what to do about the rain?

I am nursing Eden on the couch in the kitchen when she bites me. Hard.

I yowl and right at that precise moment remember the custard for the strawberry ice cream is on the stove. I stand up to rescue the custard and instead send a glassful of ice water in a wide fan across the floor, ice cubes and all. The custard has become a glob of scrambled eggs floating in curdled milk.

I say my favorite little swear, my precious one saved for the worst sorts of crises. The one that’s so delicious my Dad would never forgive me if I shared it with you.

I say it because it is now six o’clock, I’ve been promising them we would make ice cream all freaking week, I finally got it done and now 8 eggs and two cups of milk are wasted and dinner is so late and I need these kids to go to bed tonight or I will lose my mind and tomorrow will start badly …

“I am so excited for ice cream!!” Mare says in that little I’m-such-a-freakishly-happy-well-adjusted-child-voice.

“Yeah, well … go to the family room, please,” I say.

“But I –!” Mare says.

“MARE!” She goes. I look at dinner and realize it won’t be ready for another 40 minutes. There are no more eggs, and no time to go get some and start another batch. Eden is wailing.

Ren comes out and I send her back to the family room, too, and then Mare comes out again and WHAT IS IT WITH THIS KID who never listens to a word I say any more and is suddenly the queen of the world? — and I send her back without telling her I’ve killed the ice cream and I AM SORRY YOU DIDN’T GET THE COOL MOTHER.

I plate supper. I’m doing it one armed, the wailing infant in the sling, refusing to be soothed by any of the normal crap that’s supposed to work. Mare and Ren are refusing to stay at the table where I have asked them twice to stay.

Holy shit I have three kids.

I get the platter of rice to the table, I set out plates and drop down a pile of napkins.

“Is it rice or couscous?” Mare asks as I run back to the kitchen for carrots and green beans, all the while toting a child who is howling as though someone she’d never done a thing to had bitten her on the nipple.

“Momma,” Mare scowls at my food, the meal I have labored to produce for her this fine afternoon. “Is this rice or couscous?”

I don’t even know how to answer, can’t wrap my mind around it, just want this night to end. I go back to the kitchen for drinks. Cute Husband is on the deck getting the pork chops off the grill.

I turn around and Ren is back in the kitchen.

“Momma, is it rice or couscous?”

And that is when Momma goes super-nova. Really. She folds in on herself and then allllll the little atoms that make up her entire person spatter out across the Universe, followed by a shockwave of sheer destruction.

“Sit in time out!” I tell her in a voice that make her go immediately.

“DIDYOUPUTHERUP TO THIS?” I spit at Mare. She nods her head “yes.”

“I told you both to stay at the table!”

“But I just wanted to know if it was rice or couscous!” she whimpers.

“GO!” I say. “Sit over there and do a time out.” She hasn’t done a time out in about a year. She slides miserably over to the spot on the floor I have pointed to. It’s near a curtain, so she wraps herself up in it and starts to shake.

I am a big fat asshole and I know it.

A few minute pass. I work on quieting Eden. Babies, I think, are too much a part of their mothers to be soothed if their mothers are stressed. She refuses to settle, which fires me up further, which doesn’t do much for her, either.

I ask the bigs to come sit with me. Mare hides in the curtain. Eden is still wailing and I am wondering what life would be like as a Congressional aid with nine years’ experience.

Cute Husband comes in with the pork, the girls sit at the table silent and sad, and Ren asks meekly, “Daddy, is it couscous or rice?”

“Couscous, Baby,” he says.

Just like that. He answers the freaking question. And they both nod and start eating.

It bubbles out of me, from down in my gut where all that stuff is. From the same place that just by whatever grace of God won’t let me stay too sad for too long, won’t let me take myself too seriously.

I start to laugh.

How absurdly simple. He just answered the question. Of course. Now why didn’t I think of that?

“Are you okay, Liz?” he asks.

My family — all blessed four of them — are staring at me. I have finally lost my mind and they are there to witness it and it isn’t fun.

Which strikes me as even freaking funnier so of course I am laughing some more.

Mare is in the tub before she will speak to me. We are two hours behind schedule, but I know the tub is important so I have drawn one and put nice soap in it and she lets me scrub her hair and then I say,

“You’re mad at me.” I let a long pause go by.

“The time out was unfair,” she says, and it is the start of my daughter addressing me person-to-person, defiant and hurt and holding me to account for the decisions I have made for her.

I think she is right. And I think she needs to be apologized to. But I also think she doesn’t really want to be that right, yet.

“I overreacted,” is the most I will give her. “But you pushed me to it. You pushed all day and you have been having a hard time doing what I ask the first time.”

“It’s the first mistake I’ve ever seen you make,” she says. Her eyes are full of tears, and I see fear lurking behind the anger.

“Oh, that’s totally not true,” I say. “I burned the ice cream a good twenty minutes before that.”

She laughs.

“And let’s not forget how many times we’ve been late to school. Or, good grief — your lunches. Let’s not even talk about how many times I’ve been late with that, right?” she smiles.

“We all make mistakes, Love,” I say. “It’s possible that I was stricter with you than I needed to be, but you absolutely drove me to it. You need to take responsibility for that and work harder to do as you are asked the first time, okay?”

She scowls. The anger is a relief to us both, but it breaks my heart. I silently rinse her hair, grieving that I have disappointed her. Wishing I could put my arms around her and tell her how sorry, tired, overwhelmed I am and ask her to forgive me and love me again.

I marvel at the bad decision I made to be so angry at her, and how the very same mind and heart responsible for that figured out how important it was to let her be angry back.

The children’s school — Happy Progressive Smiles — has sent home a sheet on which we are to pledge our commitment to some act to help the environment in honor of Earth Day.

I wanted to count saving the hospital peri bottle from the landfill by bringing it home for the girls to use in the tub.

“That’s inappropriate,” Sunbeam said.

She is such a buzz kill sometimes.