Mom of the Year I am Not

Mom of the Year I am not, but please don't talk about me behind my back. Okay, so that does sound a little paranoid. Still, I know how people are, making comparisons between themselves and those of us parents who are, by nature, less than perfect.

Thursday, like a good mother should, I attended my 12 year-old son's middle school soccer match. His team played like the brainy-acks that they are. They lost. It didn't matter. I sat on the uncomfortable metal bleachers. I yelled. I cheered. I tried to keep up with my three other children who took the opportunity to get into mischief during my distraction. I patted the boys on the back after the game and gave them words of encouragement.

Then I snapped up my son, hustled all the kids to the car, and drove down the interstate like a blue-hair on Quaaludes. We had four more team practices to make that evening and my husband, the coach of two of the squads, kept calling to check my ETA.

In a ten minute break between pick-up/drop-off stints, I pulled out my calendar to check scheduling conflicts for the following day. My heart immediately plummeted like a rock kicked off the cliffs of the Grand Canyon. I forgot to provide drinks after the game for the my oldest son's team. Weeks before, I had promised the team mother I would do it and gushed about how thrilled I was to have the opportunity to support the boys in their athletic efforts. I had written the note to myself in my calendar in bright green.

Later that evening, I apologized to my son. "It's okay," he said. "We had drinks after the game. One of the parents realized there weren't any and bought some at the concession stand." Air whistled past my heart hurtling down toward the canyon crags.

"Who," I wanted to know. But being a boy, and 12, he didn't care or remember who.

My husband comforted me, "No one but the team mom would know it was you that forgot. Call her tomorrow and see if you can take care of drinks for another game." But my self-centered, inner voice, that thinks the eyes of humanity are upon me at all times, especially when I screw up, kept telling me that while I perched in the stands hooting and hollering, the other parents clustered together chattering about my parental deficiencies.

Again, to stop my ruminations, my husband reassured, "They didn't know it was you. They would have reminded you so you could go buy the Gatorade. Get over it."

The next day, Friday, I e-mailed my apology to the coach and asked if he could tell me who supplied the drinks, so I could make things right. It turns out, the team mom, who sat in the bleachers with that group of parents, and with me, noted my omission and rallied assistance from the other adults, but never said a word to me.

My heart splattered on the rocky riverbank of the Colorado. My inner voice rambled on about all my other flaws exposed to the world. And my confidence leaked like melted ice from a cooler drain.

Okay, I know. Mom of the year I am not, but paranoid, maybe.

I'll Rewrite This One Tomorrow, So Read it While You Can

Why is it that people who smoke think the world is their ashtray? They carelessly flick their cigarette butts to the ground after that last lung coating drag. I have overlooked it all these years. I'm a good southern girl, driven by my genes and upbringing to generously fling warm smiles and kind words, even to people who have not extended the same courtesy to me.

I'm a good southern girl who does not indulge in confrontation, course language, or crude behavior. But whoa dang if I'm going to go to my grave without telling you I would like to thump the knuckles of the Gamecock fan who didn't even bother to stub out the glowing tobacco on the end of his cancer stick before dropping it into my flip-flop while I was walking up to Gate 6 at Sanford Stadium on Saturday!

That being said, I behaved like a lady and let not one vulgarity cross my lips while hopping around trying to shake free the fiery paper adhered to the soft skin under my toes. I heaped a pleasant thank you upon the Georgia gentleman who offered me his beer to pour on my foot to put out the flame. And even as I felt my skin blistering and swelling, I smiled broadly at my husband and father, and said, "I'm okay. Let's go or we won't make it for kick off."

It's bad enough that Georgia lost that game and I had to tolerate my spouse blaming the shirt he wore (one that I gave him) as I hobbled back to the car, but it's even worse that I will feel guilty all week, probably all month, for slipping into unseemly language here in this blog. And I'll likely edit it tomorrow to say nicer things about the jerk who torched my toes.

(If you're just now reading this, it is tomorrow and I have edited it. I couldn't live with myself, knowing I had not only used inappropriate language unbecoming to a lady, but I had also used it in print in a public place. I apologize to the young man in question. May God show him mercy for cheering for South Carolina. May the next cigarette butt he tosses out the car window blow back in and land in the collar of his burgundy shirt, as well.)

Three Truths and a Lie

How well do you know me? Can you pick the lie out of the truths? Maybe the question should be, how well do I know myself? Can I tell the truths from the lies anymore? It all starts to run together, doesn't it?

Anyway, here goes:

1) I know which one of these, variorum or variorium, is a real word, but I had to ask a lot of people to find out; 2) I love alternative rock music, even though I don't really know what it is an alternative to; 3) One of my students told me she died her poodle's fur pink with Kool-Aid, thus making a punk poodle (she swears she stopped short of clipping it a mohawk); 4) Oysters on the half-shell make me swoon, or at least that's what my husband likes to think.

"You're completely alliterate."

I'm in a marathon of editing one of the final proofs of If Mama Don't Laugh, It Ain't Funny. This morning, I sat at one end of the kitchen table and my husband sat at the other. We both, with red pens in hand, marked up copies of the proof.



He broke my deep concentration with a low chuckle. I looked up to see if he needed my attention or wanted clarification on something. He stared at the pages, however, feverishly (a little too feverishly for my personal comfort), working his pen across the page.



Minutes passed. Again, my helpmate laughed out loud. This time I looked up to see him shaking his head back and forth. He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. I decided that for the sake of our marriage we may need to conduct these sessions in individual privacy. But for the time, I said nothing and continued with my work.



Suddenly, he belted out guffaws that brought the children running to see what was so funny. Knowing I had given him strict instructions to carefully search the manuscript for typos, misspellings, and other errors, and not to read the stories, I became very self-conscious. I bore my eyes into him until he raised his head to return my glare.



"What?" he asked.



"What are you laughing at?"



"Nothing. It's just that you're completely illiterate," he replied.



"Well, thanks a lot," I huffed, slamming shut my copy of If Mama Don't Laugh. "If that's what you really think, you can stop right there!"



Baffled at my intense irritation, he stammered and muttered a few unintelligible syllables. Then his eyes lit up with amusement (which, quite naturally, miffed me more). "No, no, no. I said alliterate, as in alliteration. You know. Lucy laughs long. Mama makes muffins. You have a knack for creative alliteration. It makes your stories so interesting."



Okay. Give me a compliment and all is forgiven. I didn't even fuss at him for indulging himself in reading the manuscript while he edited. I'll save that for later, when I need him to butter me up again.

Insomnia

This week I go back to the real world - my real job as a 2nd grade teacher. Yet, I'm still in the throes of book publishing here in my fantasy wish-I-could-do-this-full-time life. It's causing me so much overflow angst that my oldest son had to have his appendix removed last Saturday.

On top of that, I have insomnia. I lay awake mentally reviewing my book contract, and all of its intricacies, for If Mama Don't Laugh, It Ain't Funny. I pre-worry that I will choke in interviews or that I will forget my best friends' names when they ask me to personalize copies of my book . I think about my classroom and my new students and whether or not I can prepare in time for the first day of school. I hope that I won't forget to show up for the first day of school like I did in a dream back when I could sleep.

From there I ruminate on grease fires in the kitchen, and escape routes from my house, and how many of my sleeping children I can carry out a window at one time. I fear I've lost the nail clippers, again, and that my toenails will grow long and gnarly and I'll end up in the Guines Book of World Records for an embarassing hygiene problem. I rehearse my Parents' Night speech. I think about my checking account. I chew on ideas for my newspaper column that I will never remember in the morning.

Driven mad by my own musings, seeking a way to stop the thoughts from coursing through my brain at bullet train speeds, hoping to find relief, I decide to pray. I start out well enough, asking for help with my anxiety, requesting assistance with achieving balance in my life, pleading to be soon lost in sleep. Thanksgiving for a thousand enumerated things follows: my children, my husband, my house, my car, my dogs, my cat, the fish, the bird, flowers, rain, clouds, pillows, porch swings, parakeets, friends, my job, creativity, corkscrews, doormats, sofas, shag carpet, the color green, dice, my health, frozen pizza, ice cream, elevators, electricity, mice . . .

Before I know it, my mind wanders and I'm on a tangent, wondering if I left the rice open, or a door unlocked, or forgot to turn on the dishwasher, or if someone will try to break into my auto to get the dollar bill I may have left on the front passenger seat, or did I put the dollar in the pocket of my pants which are now in the washing machine, or did I put washing powder in with the clothes, or what if I trip on my husband's shoe on the way to the bathroom and fall and break my ankle in the middle of the night, or if I set the alarm.

But, oh yes, praying. God bless the insomniac. Amen.

What will the children want to be for Halloween? I bet there are no hair appointments available at the salon next week. I should check my eyebrows in the morning . . .

A Book and its Cover

I never knew how difficult and complicated getting a book published could be. I thought I would land a publisher and wha-la have If Mama Don't Laugh, It Ain't Funny out in print. But there's so much more to it. Like getting a decent book cover, for example.

The other day I met with the cover artist, Stan Mullins (http://www.stanmullins.com/), to wrap up the details of the cover art. As vanity would have it, I'm on the cover of my own book. So we had to discuss things like facial expressions, clothing selections, hand gestures, and very important technicalities like making sure he rendered me without any wrinkles - artistic license, you know.

Anyway, while we hashed things out, periodically he would leave and come back with an example of other work to help me understand the process and visualize the final product. In his absences I found my eyes wandering around his studio, the walls of which featured huge oil-painted canvases. One particular theme struck me as nearly universal - women's breasts.

There were probably paintings of lots of other things, but since I have a unique, but unintentional, habit of finding reasons to feel uncomfortable, all I saw were breasts. So when he eventually got around to asking me about that particular aspect of my persona on paper, embarrassingly, all the blood rushed to my face. I have no idea what he thought I was thinking, but he remained professional and plugged along at the task.

"Do you want them to be full, large, petite, what?"

Inadvertently my gaze shifted to the walls, sifting through the options like thumbing through a catalogue in a plastic surgeon's office, and I found myself thinking, "Well, hers are nice. Or those over there could be good."

In the end, I stupidly stammered, "No artistic license. As is." Flat as the paper they're on.

What Really Irks Me

Okay, so I'm pushing my buggy through Wal-mart, aggravated that everybody in my house ate all the food from my last grocery run, two (possibly three) weeks ago. They go through it like I plan to go shopping every week. They're insatiable locusts. If it were up to me, every person would have his own IV hooked onto a little stand with wheels.


But it's not up to me, so there I was in Wal-mart, pushing my cart, minding my own business, except for stopping to talk with Charlotte about her eyebrows, waving to my daughter's old pre-K teacher, explaining to someone how to generate a master shopping list from his computer, and saying, "Yes, I know my cart is overfull. I haven't been here in a while." (And my husband always wonders why it takes me so long.)


I could have finished much sooner, except he called me four separate times on my cell. Once to remind me to get the AA batteries, once to tell me never mind about the 2" paintbrush, once to try to sell me on checking out the Manager's Specials aisle, and once to engage me in a half public conversation about our son's little problem.


But what you want to know is the thing that really, really, really, really irks me.


What gets me riled, burns me up, sets me off, boils my blood, is seeing shelves packed to the hilt with school supplies, in JULY! JULY! It's diabolical. Evil. Completely unacceptable to remind us of the inevitable before we're good and ready to consider it again.


My gosh, at least wait until my ears quit ringing from the fireworks.