Please Hand Me That Tire Iron…

The wheels fell off the old family truckster.

That is, the evening, which Cute Redhead and I established as the time which would remain inviolate to the normal frenetic insanity that had pot-holed them over the last several years, sort of blew up in our faces.

And by blew up in our faces I mean we almost killed each other outright.

Isn’t it enough to have to hit the ground running and get Alpha Male moving toward one of his eternal showers, then get the coffee going (*sign of Cross), and then the breakfasts, lunches-made, blah blah blah Nothing-You-Don’t-Already-Do-In-Your-House, and everyone out the door, without compounding it with the night before playing out like a scene from the Sopranos?

If you have kids in public school you know that the hours between dinner and bedtime are, the world over, the sole office of Lucifer and his angels. They are rife with mad dashes to the backseat of the car to find the missing paper that Has To Be Signed, the reading that Has To Be Read, the science project that Has To Be Graphed; everyone’s tired, short-fused, and there is no more oil cooling and lubricating the engine that has several more hours left to run on all cylinders before it sends everyone to bed.

Live and learn, right? Three nights before the new school year began, we sat around the dinner table and set forth the Way It Would Go This Year. In short, all homework would be addressed between the hours of getting home and getting fed. So doing, we’d preserve the several hours remaining for nothing having to do with school, and everything having to do with being a family. Meaning we could smooth feathers, tend to the triumphs, talk about Nothing, and basically exit the day…

…calm.

Yeah, didn’t happen. One missing piece of paper for Alpha Male and one forgotten reading worksheet for Charlie Girl, and all we were missing was the foreboding background music and a digital clock counting down the seconds until the plastic explosives blew us into oblivion.

Let’s be clear: I did not conduct myself with calmness. Let’s be even clearer: neither did Cute Wife. Let’s be clearer still: neither did the children.

But let’s thank God: they went to bed unscathed emotionally. Firmly addressed, to be sure. But unscathed. “We’ll help you so that this doesn’t happen again, honey.”

And then Cute Redhead and I talked in tones that went like this: “I sure am tired.” “Hoo boy, me too. What a day.” Which is Angry Parentspeak for: “What do you think the chances are of the authorities ever finding your body?” “You know, that’s a good question. I’ll bet you I can fit your head down the garbage disposal and make it look like an accident.”

And we went to bed sort of laughing. And sort of not.

And we woke and made a truce.

And by truce I mean I got that coffee brewing. And I poured two steaming cups while Cute Redhead (who’s hair had not yet undergone The Miracle and which looked like a surface-to-air-missile malfunctioned and blew out the back of her tresses), explored the refrigerator for the horrible stuff she puts in her coffee.

Somewhere in the smiles and the chuckling we realized (again) that if we’re going to make it through all this, it’s going to mean all hands on deck. In more ways than we can count. With more able to go wrong than seems (is) fair.

And, above all else, a lot of forgiving.

So, we revisit the System Prefs file on our household, adjust this, tweak that, and lean hard once more into doing what we can to keep the boat floating without enabling a system that should be thrown out entirely and re-engineered (read: I have an opinion on homework I’m not going to share).

Gotta go put the wheels back on the family truckster.