Chicago Moms Blog

The Season for Reading

I have a summer confession.  Given the chance, I could read all day.  Let the ants take over the sink of breakfast dishes, let the damp pool towels pile up; I'll be on the couch with my book. Talk about the lazy days of summer.

Spring has its cleaning; fall is all about preparing for school; winter days get filled with labor-intensive holidays followed by the survival mode until spring.  Now we have time and ease.  School-year obligations have disappeared.  The children are happy at daycamp and their world of play has expanded to the yard, the neighbors, the sidewalk, the parks, the beach, the pool.

In the last month or so I've neglected a long list of projects, 

Body of Knowledge

Solve the following problems.  Read all instructions, then throw the magazine/book/laptop across the room because one piece of advice about changing your life sounds as good as its contrary about acceptance.  

Mathematics

As of this afternoon, I weigh A pounds, which is B pounds more than last summer, C pounds more than the day I got married and the same as when I was D months pregnant.

In the last year my bra size has changed from # to $.  Wearing knit shirts and my old bras, I now appear to have X girls instead of Y.   My husband does not complain.  The conundrum:  now that I'm % years old, I've finally found the self-confidence to wear the more revealing clothes I shied from when I was &.

Brownies for Breakfast

My father-in-law fed my daughters chocolate brownies at breakfast.  

High fat, high sugar and caffeinated chocolate do not equal healthy breakfast in our house.  There's no way in hell my four and six year old could wheedle their way into dessert after cereal if I was in the kitchen.  Mia and Nora know I'd probably just snort at their request and offer them some fruit.  But this morning I was sleeping while they ate.  Randy's father had asked for breakfast duty the night before.

I had to laugh when the girls ran to me with the happy news.  

"Grampa Bob gave us brownies for breakfast!"

"I feel like Bill Cosby," said my father in law.  Randy and I laughed in recognition and started singing, "Dad is great!  He gives us chocolate cake!"

Ants! Rated NFS (Not For the Squeamish)

The screaming from my six-year-old and her playdate friend had been echoing through the house and yard for the last hour, but this particular wailing took on a different key.  Not as playful as "MIA, MIA, MIA, HELP ME TEAR THE IVY OFF THE HOUSE TO MAKE A GIANT BIRD NEST!!" nor as shrill as a genuine emergency call, this time the "MOMMY!" had a tone of thrilled horror.

"MOM!  THERE'S INFINITY ANTS IN THE BASEMENT!"

At the far end of the basement, I see it.  A roiling city of tiny black dots.  I hold back the gag reflex and try to feel thankful the infestation seems to be contained in one spot in the middle of the rough cement floor.

Years ago, when I first started teaching, I would assign my freshman English students a short story from 1938 called "Leiningen Versus The Ants."  Carl Stephenson's tale of a Brazilian plantation owner and his battle against a plague of flesh-eating fire ants is a real barn-burner.  Every sentence of dialogue seems to end in an exclamation mark: "They're not creatures you can fight--they're an elemental--an 'act of God!'"....  "And every single one of them a fiend from hell!"  Bored with the paper-flat characters and over-wrought narration of Leiningen's adventure, I dropped the story off my reading list after teaching it a couple of times.  For a time my students had seemed to like it...and the struggle it portrayed offered a simple way to teach the literary concept of conflict.  "Man Versus Nature," I would write on the blackboard.  In the September heat, my students would copy it down in their notebooks or look out the window at our lifeless view of the roof of the library. 

Damn Kids

Kids. They complicate everything.  A thousand unfinished sentences.  Plans waylaid.  You're puttering along, the machine of your day running smooth - then you hear a wail for the bathroom. Or food.  Or there's sudden silence and you glance over your shoulder to find the toddler hard asleep in her carseat.  She's sweaty and open-mouthed.  Her cheeks are adorable and your elusive dream of arriving on time and drool-free slips away.

The other day I confided to my teacher friend Kerry my dream of a weeklong writers retreat. 

Late

Friday morning at 9:15, we're due at Irving Park and Pulaski in fifteen minutes and I'm running around the house frazzled, tracking my keys, my wallet, a hat and a box of tampons. 

"Are you okay?" asks my husband, who doesn't have scheduled meetings on Friday mornings.

"I'm late and it's my period," I reply on the run.

"Then you're not late," quips my too-clever hubby, giving me the only laugh of the morning. 

As much as I dislike those doubt-filled days before the happy monthly reminder that I'm not pregnant, I hate the other kind of Late even more.

Treating The Low Grade Fever of Anxiety

While there are endless tender mercies for which we can be glad, I try to teach my daughters this way of counting the most important:  Number one, we are grateful for being together. Number two, we are grateful for being safe.  Three, for being comfortable.  And finally, we are grateful for having fun.

It’s easy to recite this list.  It’s the kind of platitude a mother says.  So I repeat it to my four year old in the airport lounge when she whines, “What’s taking so long?”  I don’t dare tell her about the just announced flight delay. 

But since three empty hours to kill in a florescent-dim airport terminal wakes up my inner Eeyore, I start picturing some unforeseen disaster and ticking off the gratitude list backwards.  Tired and bored, I stare listlessly at the carpet and don't resist as my imagination conjures up the sound of sirens and the terrible possibilities when first, we stop having fun.  And then I picture the comforts going away.  And then safety.  And finally, when I have a scene in my head something like WWII Europe, a scene where being together is the only thing we can be thankful for, I shake my head, rub my unwashed face and rally.  "Who's got a good knock-knock joke?"

Ready to be Surprised

"How many days until the first day of spring?" asks Mia, my six-year-old. 

"Let's see... March 21, give or take, minus today..."

After some figuring, we come up with a number.  I skip the warning that the actual day will likely be raw and wet.  I imagine that Mia is picturing a magical appearance of full-blown bloom, warm sun, puffy clouds, blue blue sky.  Instead of a reality check, I offer her the lamb and lion story. 

"So March could fool us and come in sweet, but go out all windy and blustery and cold, like a roaring lion." 

"Okay," she says, content with her number.

I'm impatient for warm weather too.  This year's snow was pretty but I.  Am.  Done.  Feeling puddles of snowmelt soak into my socks.  Done with the never-ending search for kids' matching mittens-snowsuit-hat-boots-extra shoes.  So done with the colorless landscape.  The razor-sharp silhouettes of the trees.

A Tale of Two Couples

Our family calendar brims with happy plans and fun holidays.  But here and there among the dates, I have a landmine to muddle through, or dodge, or manage, depending on my emotional strength that week.  Father's Day.  Mother's Day.  Certain birthdays.  

Last Saturday would have been the 50th wedding anniversary of my parents.  February 7 is such a romantic day to get married, don't you think?  One week before Valentine's Day, and on that particular day in 1959, cold with bright white skies and mounds of fresh snow.  Ron and Bernadette were able to celebrate ten returns of the day before dying together in an accident when I was four. 

The United States of Mom

 Have you seen the new Showtime series The United States of Tara? The premise of the show supposes that suburban mom Tara (played by my girl Toni Collette) reverts to multiple personalities in response to stresses in her life.  For instance, when her daughter is shook up by a threatening boyfriend, Tara's male tough-guy persona Buck comes to the rescue, whomping the bully in a way that Tara as a regular mom could never do.

Tara has no memory of her alternate lives, who include a bratty 15-year-old who befriends and relates to Tara's daughter and a prim starched apron Superwoman type.

Toni Collette is a terrific actress (I can't even think about the scene in The Sixth Sense when Haley Joel Osment gives her a message from her dead mother without getting all weepy) and she makes each of the different personalities convincing.