Everything I’m Not and Then Some.
Talk about unleveling the playing field.
Cute Redhead is on a business trip and high-tailed it outta’ here this morning bright and early to get where she was going. It’s rare that the planets line up like this, but it happened this time, and both of us are having to be out of town. Not at exactly the same time, but overlapping a bit. And just enough to require a few hours of getting the kids’ delivered to and from school and covered until she gets back just a few hours before my return flight.
So, today was All Hands On Deck as I made the breakfasts (normal), the lunches (normal), got them to school (normal), picked them up from school (not normal), and juggled homework, dinner, extracurriculars, bath, teeth, reading and all the rest. Normal, normal, usually tag-teamed, not normal, definitely requires more hands than I have, normal, not normal, etc., etc.
But, I have this thing about being the only cook in the kitchen. And it’s just that: when it’s All Hands On Deck, you’re the only cook in the kitchen. And I sort of…well. I sort of love that.
It’s way more easier to position myself as the Buck Stopping Here, Bucko, than it is to negotiate (and renegotiate) all the things parents negotiate (and renegotiate) every single day. You get to where you don’t even remember when you noticed it last. You just do it. Maybe not always with the best disposition, but you do it. I mean, it all seems to somehow get done.
Still, when Cute Redhead is away, I find myself recalling my days as a short-order cook, about a hundred years ago. If you’ve ever had that particular job, or any restaurant-type job, you know that everything rises and falls on timing and order. And as with one cook in the kitchen calling the shots, I just happen to find one parent running the household easier.
Running the household.
I won’t bore you with a litany of what I kept moving along all by myself. It’s, if you ask me, on the insulting side to sit here and write anything like this to other parents as though I could possibly tell anyone anything they don’t already know twice. And even threading humor into doesn’t change that. So I won’t.
I’ll just tell you that I have done it, can do it, did do it…and with a precision and mastery that was entirely deceiving.
And by deceiving I mean that for the whole day, while Mom was away and everything fell to me to see that it didn’t fall apart? Well…not only did everything not fall apart, it was a smoother operation. And though I’m holding myself to not detailing the details (you have your own), I do want to convey that it ran like a well-oiled machine. Logistically and emotionally. Three kids, fed, listened to, read with, hovered over (“…your ’9′ is backward, sweetheart. Other way.”), cleaned up, cleaned after and put to bed with absolutely no hitch.
Until.
Cute Redhead called from her hotel to check in.
And my house of cards came crashing down as the phone got fought over and passed around (read: pried from cold, dead fingers) so that each one could talk to Mom. And in the space of two heart beats I realized that no matter how clean the house is (it’s pretty clean at the moment), no matter that all the laundry is done, folded and set in piles that can be walked over and ruined tomorrow, no matter that they had a great meal and all the homework got completed, and I was basically able to clone my attention span enough to cover each and every whim and question…
…none of it matters.
Because as soon as they heard her voice, I realized…
…they’d been hearing it since before they were born. And there is nothing I could do to ever eclipse that Perfect Thing. I don’t think I can describe their faces to my satisfaction…but the way they lit up—scratch that: it just came to me. They didn’t light up. I mean, not on the outside. They lit up inside. That’s what their eyes did as they took the phone and filled her in on every little thing that’d happened in their lives today. And it was a lighting on the inside I know only I recognize. I know when they’re talking to their mom. I know that face. I know those eyes. I know the tone and tenor of their voices when she does what she does. Which just so happens to be way more powerful, and far more important than everything I can do and then some.
But before you think I’m feigning some sort of humility and acting as though Her Part eclipses Mine: trust me, no. I’m not new here. I’m just saying that it arrested my attention, in the best way, when, in spite of running the household with mastery and precision…there is nothing
nothing
like a mom (or a dad) connecting with their kid across the line, across the miles, across every ache and pain.
Hold this a second.
The H1N1 virus visited our house a few weeks back. Very mild. The regular flu made this thing look like sniffling and clearing your throat. Total yawner (thanks media, you did another bang-up job). Sure the kids lost two days of school. Big deal.
But that’s where my indignation stops. Because the four-year old son of one of Wife’s coworkers is, right now, battling it. And, as much as I hate writing this, it’s the truth: we don’t know if he’s going to make it. We’re praying. We’re waiting. These are…obscene thoughts. But it’s the reality.
Just like the other family in the neighborhood who lost their dad to a rock-climbing accident last weekend. Just like my friend who’s husband succumbed to cancer three years ago and still finds a way to go on with her two kids. Just like the mom who wrote me about barely being able to breathe, let alone laugh, since her husband didn’t make it through a tragic accident in July. Two daughters. Teen and preteen, disoriented into a new and not very forgiving normal.
So.
I’m just saying I miss Cute Redhead’s smile, her laugh, her freneticism and (I’m back now) the way she can cook a single meal and make the kitchen look like she called in an airstrike.
And I hope to God I never only get to remember what it is to see on my kids’ faces what she, and only she, can draw out of their young hearts.
I’ll have a Cup of Mud some dough well done with cow to cover and Adam and Even in the alley.
this story reminds me of a saying a friend told me when i was a new mother, “Mommy is the name of God to a child”…..thanks for this one….and hand over the kleenex please.
“Mommy is the name of God to a child.”
*arrow straight to heart.
Hand the Kleenex over when you’re done.
Thanks for making me cry. Really, thanks.
Tears. Heartbeat. And Silence.
Silence.
One of the best things I have ever read.