Last night at dinner, Henry said, “When I grow up, I’m going to be the President. Then a doctor. THEN a dentist.”
He ate some more couscous and then said, “OH! And a MOVIE MAKER! You know, the special effects guy.”
And Charlie said, “When I grow up, I’m going to be a SHOEMAKER!”
Then my heart exploded with pride. Or possibly laughter. Hard to tell.
I’ve had it with winter. I know, I know, we’ve hardly had any winter at all, in comparison to, say, people in Minnesota, but the thing is that here in Oklahoma, we’re not PREPARED for winter. We don’t have enough snow plows, for example, so it takes days for the streets to clear. Even after the snow and ice melt, the streets are still hazardous, as we have to dodge the ginormous pot holes that appeared during the freeze. Most of us don’t own snow shovels, so our driveways are still covered in ice. Our kids don’t have snowboots or ski pants because they would never wear them, in a normal winter.
We’ve lost our pioneer spirit, I think.
The door on my side of the garage (yes, I have a side) isn’t working properly, hasn’t been since the ice storm. It opens about six inches and then closes again. But it won’t STAY closed, no no, you have to manually STOP it at the bottom of its arc, or it just keeps popping back up, but only six or so inches, not enough to get the car out, just enough to let the neighbor’s cat in. It is infuriating. In the morning, I go out in the garage, manually open the door, load the kids in the car, pull out into the driveway, get out of the car and manually close the door. This closing part is hard as there is no handle on the outside of the door, only the inside, and our north-facing driveway is still a solid sheet of ice. Every morning I pray that this will not be the day I fall flat on my ass trying to slam the door without smashing my fingers.
I really should teach the boys how to call 911.
When I come home, after I slide up into the frozen tundra of our driveway, I have to pick my way up the walk to go in the front door. Every day, I worry that THIS is the day I will not have my house keys with me and I will wind up locked out. Again. I leave my car in the driveway for the rest of the day, and then Wade pulls it into the garage at night, and spends five or ten minutes trying to figure out what’s wrong with the opener. Last night we stood in the freezing cold and discussed what the significance of a GREEN light on one sensor and a YELLOW light on the other might be.
In the end, we agreed that we had no idea. Also, that it was cold in our garage.
I’m not a good winter person. My very cute down jacket doesn’t cover my ass, so I’m always cold; I had to buy gloves at Target today because I don’t own any. My skin is dry and itchy, and I’m tired of wearing my snow boots every day.
I am completely unprepared for winter.
The boys have gone back to school today, and the ice is melting, and my house is blissfully quiet. So desperate was I for the quiet that I turned NPR OFF this morning, even though Diane Rehm had Roy Richard Grinker on, the anthopologist who wrote Unstrange Minds, a book about the rise in autism. Grinker’s argument, according to Judith Warner, who has read the book while I have not, is that “the dramatic rise in the incidence of autism in the past few decades is mostly-– if not entirely-– the result of more and better diagnoses.” I buy that, and initially I was looking forward to hearing Grinker talk about his book, but a few minutes into the interview I realized that all I wanted to hear was the sound of my empty house, and perhaps the kettle boiling.
The boys were also ready to return to the status quo. Last night, Henry was telling me how tired he was, and when I said, yes, it’s been hard to be off our regular schedule, he said, “But HOW do we get the schedule BACK?” I told him that we would get up in the morning and eat breakfast and get dressed and go to school, and that would get us back on track, and he nodded and said, “That sounds good. That sounds like the schedule.”
Charlie, of course, woke up this morning and immediately (before he was even out of BED for god’s sake) announced, “I DO NOT WANT TO GO TO SCHOOL.” He always says that and he then he always goes, happily, to school, and almost always greets me at the end of the day by saying, “I LOVE my school.” But as Wade points out, you have to give him credit for trying. Every. Single. Day.
I spent the morning crossing things off my to-do list: I lined up a contractor to do some major work on the house (moving us two weeks closer to actually SELLING the house), and ran errands (new contacts, tailor), and did laundry (oooh the millions of sandy towels). I made a longer to-do list for the next few weeks, mostly of house-related stuff (why oh WHY didn’t I paint the bathrooms LAST week, when we were iced in? WHY?) and I balanced our checkbook and paid bills.
I drank tea and read the New York Times and listened to the silence.
I’m surprised, these days, at how much I rely on having this block of time to Get Things Done. This is the first time that BOTH of the boys have gone anywhere outside the house for any extended period, but I have a hard time remembering what I did when they were home. I think the answer is NOTHING; I didn’t take clothes to the tailor or paint bathrooms or read the Times or drink coffee while it was hot. I did things with the boys, all day every day, and in between the things I tossed laundry in the washing machine and emptied the dishwasher. Or, sometimes, I didn’t, but it all got done somehow.
Kathryn and I were on the phone one day, and she described the full-on mommying as “this five minutes of my life,” which I thought was so very smart, especially for a woman whose kids are still IN the full-on phase. But she’s right; I don’t know how it happened but here I am, five minutes later, with two children who go to school ALL DAY, and who come home from school and play together (often without me, at their own request) and dress and undress themselves (multiple times a day) and feed themselves (and clear their own dishes) and THEN sleep all night in their own beds.
I blinked, and here we are.
Henry has been asking for me to lie down with him at night, in his bed. “Get under my covers, Mommy,” he will say, and I’m always happy to oblige, if only to be lying down for a minute. Lately, in this crazy window of complete unscheduledness, he has started to worry about not being able to sleep. One night last week, he said, “I used to not sleep at night, and you would come and get in my bed.” Yes, I said, I did. “You slept here every night.” Yes, I said, for a while I did. But now you’re sleeping better, and so I sleep in my own bed. “But what if I CAN’T sleep?” he asked, clearly worried. Then you come and get me, I told him, and I will lie down with you.
He sighed, relieved, and said, “Lie down with me now and then I think I will go to sleep.” And he did.
*Knock knock.
Who’s there?
Interrupting Cow.
Interrup–
MOO!
The Blizzard of ‘07 was a bust; instead of the predicted, nay guaranteed, ten inches of snow we had more like ten flakes (and a day of not-quite-freezing rain). Bottom line: SCHOOL IS BACK IN SESSION.
Thank god.
Wade asked tonight if I wanted to meet him for lunch one day this week, and I said no! not this week! because I have a million things to do! like get a new watch band and find the paint for the master bathroom and wash the millions of towels we have been using to wipe our grimy shoes off and . . .
And he laughed and said, yes that watch band is going to take you ALL WEEK.
It’s an odd size watch, you know. It could take a while.
