A comedy of horrors

Round about 6:12pm this fine evening, I posted on Facebook, "How is it only 6:12pm?"

The reasons for this included the fact that since I picked the boys up at 3:15 it felt as if 95 hours had passed, and two, just out of the bath, they were wearing underpants and hoodies -and Jack an epic butt-cut- and posing in extremely suggestive ways.

If anyone wearing Star Wars underpants and an Ash Ketchum-inspired hoodie can be suggestive. Or should be.

Jack: "I'm the hottest guy in town!"
Oliver: "What's that mean?"
Jack: "I'm the sexiest guy in town!"
Oliver: "What's that mean?"
Jack: "PRETTY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

And then Oliver pulled his pants down. Duh.

I said, "Boys, I am going to sit on the couch and do my crossword puzzle. You can A) go upstairs and be loud, or B) stay down here and play more quietly."

Obviously they chose B and then acted upon A. I poured more wine and hid my crossword from prying Jack eyes because, and actually I am proud of this, I do NOT share my crossword with ANYONE until I've had at least 13 go-rounds with it. Even then I only gift "you should know this even though I don't" softballs. Invariably, Tom doesn't know and Jack does, and I'm irritated and impressed, respectively.

Tom does, however, ALWAYS and immediately understand the freaking pun theme. I rarely do and don't care. Because I'm that kind of SAT-vocab girl.

Anyway, we finally(!) made it upstairs and found that Guppy (my favorite fish) was seizing on the bottom of the tank. Shit. So inopportune, Gup. I love you, but you choose bedtime to die?

I was SO thankful I had two glasses of wine in me because I haven't been this sad about a pet death since my childhood cats (except for Scarlet, who always wanted to suck my fingers.) I made a very brief speech about not letting animals suffer (brief because I wanted to get that poor fish to the toilet), and we came to an agreement that euthanasia was the right course of action.

Jack: "It is Earth Day and now he'll back in the cycle." or something deep like that. I concurred effusively.

Oliver: "Mom, you put him in ve net, and I'll carry him to ve potty."

So we did this, and as he lay mercifully still at the base of the bowl, we each said something nice and the boys shed tears.

Jack was itching to depress the flush lever. I could feel and not stop his impulse. Oliver, who is completely stunned by even the smallest of decisions, could not fathom depressing said lever. As I watched Jack's arm reach out to crank that baby away, it was as if in slo-mo that can't be stopped. Away went Guppy and down rained Ol's always-ready, abundant tears.

Shit again. 

Before I could do anything, Oliver slapped the crap out of Jack. Jack's tears began to flow, rivaling Ol's. Both boys flew to their rooms, each pleading with me to COME SNUGGLE WITH ME NOW.

Mother effer, where is my wine?

I went to Ol because really, to have your friend flushed away before you're ready would be the pits. After multiple consolation attempts, I decided to just get real.

"Ol, it is so sad about Gup. I totally understand how you feel. I remember the first beloved pet I lost. It was one of our cats, and El and I made a cross out of wood and painted it and planted it over the cat's grave. And then one day, a fat man named Junior mowed the cross down."

He laughed so hard I thought he might fart again, a result infinitely more likely than any other. From the other room I heard Jack ask, "WHAT? What was his name? And he mowed down the cross?"

Those boys snort-laughed to beat sixty. Junior! A handmade cross turned into wood chips! Where's that cat body now?

Guppy was gone, but not forgotten. Until Oliver remembered and cried again, and so on Friday we're getting Gup #2. He was my favorite.

Hilarious and compelling results of persuasive writing study in school

For the past few weeks, Jack's third grade class has been studying persuasive writing. I am thrilled about this for several reasons, the primary one being that Mr. J tends to think, "You should do X because I like it." is a sufficiently compelling argument for anything. 

I have suggested that it's not, but as all parents know, your own children often do not hear you in the same ways they hear other trusted adults, like teachers. Reason #981 that I have zero interest in home-schooling the boys.

That Mrs. B and Mrs. T have said persuasive writing is cool and useful has made it so, and I have enjoyed recent examples of this work directed just to me.

Exhibit A:
I received this email from Jack last night around 7. He typed it while I was in the room but instructed me to avert my eyes until he'd finished writing and closed his desktop.

dear mom,

I want to know our iTunes password. Most people in my class know there families. I promise to tell you before I buy anything and won't buy anything inappropriate. So please, I want to know it before 5th grade.

    love, your responsible son, Jack

My favorite things about this note are the generous amount of time I have to accommodate his request and his earnest statements about how he'll interact with our iTunes account. Unfortunately, as we over the weekend received a call from a for-profit university specializing in Gaming because Jack had given them all our family information whilst online ("But Mom, I thought they would just share some information with  me."), I do not yet think he's ready for iTunes access.

You should have heard the caller's voice when I said that Jack was but 8½. "Oh, I see. Yes ma'am, we'll take him off our call list right now."

It took Tom and me an hour to stop laughing.

Exhibit B:
This note, tightly-wrapped around some Legos for heft (the kid is a good engineer), was thrown down the stairs to me last night after a slight, shall we say, tantrum after my suggesting that because he'd already had two dinners, he really didn't need another. 

This note is less skillfully composed, but he got the damn baguette -plus dipping oil!- so I guess it worked. 

I spent another hour laughing about this treasure which I intend to save forever along with the other thrown-down-the-stairs notes (his preferred tactic of reaching out because we have a rule that once we have done the final tuck-in, he's not allowed back downstairs).

Kids.

Thoughts big and small

I am bone-tired this morning. Even my heel-pads ache. I gardened, ran and worked out yesterday in addition to taking Jack to a trial French class, going to the market, and actively negotiating Wii usage for hours, so there's all that, but still. 

Last night, Tom and I made a simple but superb spring dinner last night and then sank to the couch like weights dropped in a stream.

springtime caprese

We finished Episode 1 of the new documentary, Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies (based on the book by Siddhartha Mukherjee). Despite the heavy subject, it's really, really excellent. Toggling back and forth between past and present, it provides, through the sobering lens of pediatric leukemia, a thorough sense of the evolution of cancer understanding and treatment which is both fascinating and hopeful. You want to kiss the feet of the brave doctors who have persevered in the face of kids dying horrible deaths and then go hug your children and send gratitude for their health into the skies.

fava bean and mint puree; we slathered this atop griddled bread

I'm now sitting quietly on my couch, both utterly tranquil and stressed about how soon this peaceful solitude will end. T took the boys to swimming lessons about a half hour ago, so I gather I have just about 40 minutes left to read the paper and finish this post and my coffee. Naturally I know that's impossible, and while I will be happy to see the boys rush through our door and regale me with news of their progress and which Dum-Dum flavor each chose, it is mornings like these, when much of me wishes I had the whole day ahead of me and alone, that I feel so very stretched by motherhood.

yogurt chicken with aleppo and lemon, caprese salad, sauteed asparagus/english peas/Brussels sprouts and pecorino

Yesterday, after meeting Jack's French teacher and surveying the classroom, I hugged him goodbye and said I'd be back at the end.

"Je t'aime, Mom."

"Je t'aime aussi, Doodle."

What a soulful love that little boy is. I want to give him every opportunity and walk alongside him as he forges ahead in life. But that giving tends to tip the scales away from time to pursue my own interests and goals. In the most unequal of moments, I feel as if the early years of motherhood strongly suggest I put huge swaths of my life on hold. Daily. For a long while. 

I don't resent that, but it compounds the challenges of motherhood which are already great.

Friday night antipasto dinner with strawberry lemonade in wine glasses. Festive!

Children are not goals. I have hopes for my boys, sure. But other than feeling confident that I'm raising terrific humans, I don't derive from mothering them the sense of accomplishment I do in finishing an essay or laying that last bag of mulch. Nor do I feel I should, for children are people not pursuits.

the antipasto platter

At times it is utterly thrilling to feel yourself subsumed by something, but in other moments, it's discomfiting. As if a force beyond your control is reeling your soul away to an unknown land. Do you know what I mean?

a pile of zucchini-feta fritters

I love my boys with such fierce desperation. Yet within that cocoon of love I sometimes feel bits of myself slipping away, as if on a boat that's loosed its moors. I don't feel I can push back on them in the way I do T or friends; not yet at least.

Surely this is one reason so many people speak of parenthood in terms of sacrifice. I'm not totally comfortable with that word in this context, except in the most denotative of ways: there are, literally, sacrifices made (financial, for example).

But, I chose to have children, so it seems unjust to then burden them or our relationship with the guilty connotations of words like job and sacrifice. And so for now, I find my way, in moments stolen and planned, in the words swimming through my head and committed to the page. And I am grateful for it all.