My daughter breezed — no, absolutely stormed – through her milestones. In those early years, nary an hour passed without discussion about it. I would be talking to people in checkout lines or at the bank, and of course, the topic would always somehow turn to my extraordinarily interesting child. They might offer up some anecdote about their own children, now adults or teenagers or middle-schoolers, but amazingly, my experiences with my daughter were always more interesting, more profound, and more prominent in these discussions. No doubt these people had heard plenty of stories about when little So-and-So first walked, funny things little So-and-So said, issues with So-and-So’s adenoids, but I’m quite certain these stories paled against my own. Beautiful, intuitive, possibly a savant or one of those “indigo children,” my daughter was just someone that warranted a lot of excitement.

When it came time for preschool registration, we were horrified to learn that our child did not receive a priority placement and was instead put on a waiting list! Clearly certain factors needed to be brought to light, for example our financial pliability and willingness to serve on the advisory board as well as volunteer as dishwashers and snack-preparers — essentially whatever was necessary. Thank God we gained access through a friend of a friend to the preschool director. And thank God we were able to slip ahead of that poor autistic child that had previously topped the waiting list. Of course, we assume in light of his — well, in light of him — that he could afford to wait a year or semester. We hate to say it, but it was far more criticial that our child’s special talents be brought to fruition as quickly as possible. So, the front of the line for us it was!

My daughter’s in public school now, and I’m discouraged by the lack of personalized attention she receives. We recently had a parent/teacher conference, to which we brought a small notebook of questions (e.g., when can we have her tested by the gifted and talented program director?), constructive criticism (e.g., wouldn’t sliced fresh strawberries be a more appropriate morning snack than Goldfish crackers?), diagrams (e.g., a brilliant re-order of the current classroom seating arrangement, to relocate our daughter away from the less savvy readers), and photographs (just because we knew the teacher would not believe all the cute things our child does at home!). Well, I’ll be darned if the teacher didn’t keep us to this horrible, standardized boilerplate for parent/teacher conferences. For God’s sake! As if those parents in the hallways couldn’t be asked to wait a little longer for their turn!

Recently we began receiving notes from the teacher about our daughter’s “behavioral issues.” As if our child can be expected to wait in a line when she’s not at the front of it! Doesn’t this so-called blue-ribbon teacher realize our daughter is the shortest student and can’t tolerate having her line of vision obstructed? That’s what the occupational therapist said, at least. Apparently, it’s a spatial thing. I’ve heard it’s an early marker for leadership skills, as well. And really? Our wonderfully independent child has to wait for permission after she asks to get a drink? She has to sit down when told? She can’t physically act out her frustration whenever someone else is Student of the Week? What is this? Communism!?

This morning on our way to school, I had to slip our minivan around the car in front of us at the four-way stop in order to shave 30 seconds off our travel time. Passing on the right in a school zone may not be legal, but an exception should be made for those of us who are, well, a priority. Of course, I then had to again slip my car around to the front of the line in the roundabout where I lingered maybe a little longer than usual to make sure my daughter’s fresh strawberries were secured in her BPA-free snack kit. I don’t really care if it bothered that rule-follower behind me, with her ordinary child and her ordinary life. What was that little space there for, if not for people with higher priorities and more special children than the others? I have learned that rules are made to be broken in the name of special, special people — like us. Everyone seems to be forgetting that we’re kind of a big deal.

It’s Not Really Bathroom Reading Unless It Has Rusty Toilet-Base Pee on It

Yeah, He Takes a Little Milk in His Chocolate

Later Evidence Suggested That Walking Naked in Groin-High Boots Feels Good…Really Good

Well, As Long as He’s in There, Maybe We Should Ship Him Off Somewhere

Toast
The Sad Thing about This One? I Was Standing Right Next to Him Washing Dishes and Didn’t Notice He’d Put Bread in There!

Goal: Foster Hypertension Independence

Goal: Foster E.Coli Independence

Foster Inappropriate Elimination Independence

Foster Diabetes Independence

Goal: Foster Violence Creativity

Foster Putting Parmesan Cheese on Your Penis Independence

Foster Bollocksing Grammie’s Costly Beauty Products Independence

Foster Bollocksing MY Costly Beauty Products Independence

Don’t judge me. You’ll see. He’s going to be amazing.

Last week, I had an idea for the perfect mother-journal I can keep for him. After all, if I were to try to write about him in the way I wrote about his sister, it would be a terribly short book. Instead of transcribing the 15 new words learned each day and the smattering of insightful observations uttered from a rosebud mouth, I’d be writing, “You’re still calling every animal ‘cat,’ and your feet are still too fat to for Target shoes.” So what I’d need for him, to suit his unique personality, would be a photojournal that pieces together the story of who he is, and all that he has destroyed. On the other hand, I’m not sure if this a photojournal of his destruction or my negligence: When you look at this, don’t you wonder if anyone is even watching this kid?

Day One: Exploring Big Sister’s Gallon Bucket of Perler Beads

Day Two: Fun with Daddy’s Lug Wrench (Can You See Where He Put It?)



Day Three: Nobody Was Going to Poop Today Anyway, Right?

Day Four: Who the Hell Put this at Eye Level?

Day Five: The New Face of Cage-Free

Day Six: Seriously, We Constantly Find Piles Like This around the House

Day Seven: Thanks for Helping with the Cat Shit

We go around the block, and my daughter is giddy as she’s asked to make the sirens go off by pushing down on something black on the floor. The back of his seat to hers, my son gazes out the window with something like seriousness. This is men’s business, his face says. I have places to go. Large, yellow combines in the soy and corn fields around our neighborhood are laying bare the land. I wonder if the farmers are tired of hearing the sirens as the day’s demonstration continues. My son looks out over the fields. He’s sitting in a fire truck. He’s watching combines ripping parched crops from their rows. His meaty hands look swollen as they press down on the seat. Places to go.

Afterward, we go into the station and we sit amid the crowds of people eating cheap hot dogs that look like the fat fingers of dying men. My son rips his hot dog out of the bun and throws the foil aside. He tears at the meat with his teeth and washes it down with water stolen from my daughter’s cup. He gets on the ground and pulls at an old piece of vinyl, his face reddening and shaking with exertion. Leave this to me, his expression says.

There is an old couple sitting across from us. I’m pretty sure they’re farmers, because they look like farmers. The man has an overbite of yellow teeth. His skin is parched, and his CAT ballcap is sitting high on his head, like someone set it there without him knowing it. He’s laughing at my boy. It’s a hearty laugh, a Skoal laugh, the laugh of a man who has just shot a big buck or watched his boy clean a fish for the first time. He walks away and comes back with a pile of napkins. He plops them in front of my son and says, “How about some napkins, feller?” My son picks up a paper cup to wash more meat down his gullet, and finding the cup empty, throws it across the table. It hits the man’s wife in the face, and as I’m apologizing and pulling my son’s hands down to his lap, the old man laughs a proud laugh and says, “Boys will be boys.” He couldn’t be more delighted.

My son is two, but already I see him being welcomed into the boys’ club. Whenever he destroys something or calls out to a dump truck or steps on a bug or turns away disinterestedly from a flower someone has shown him, faces light up. Men cross their arms and smile knowingly. When he falls, the sympathy is smaller. When he throws or jumps, the expectations are higher. He pees on things and holds with one hand things his sister always held with two.

No amount of boy can counteract the sweet, innocent softness of being small and new. He can step on all the bugs he wants, but I know he’s scared of dogs and lions and sometimes plays with dolls and always wants his mama when he’s had a bad dream. But deep down, I know he’s looking at me and thinking, “She can think I’m as cute and small as she wants, but I can buckle my own goddamn seatbelt, and I’ve seen tractors and ridden in fire trucks. I have places to go.” And today, that made me smile.

This post is part of Intentional Happiness.

Dear Good Samaritan,

Thanks so much for picking up my stroller yesterday on campus! I know you said you needed a description, so you could make sure it’s mine. Well, here goes:

In the back pocket of the stroller, you’ll find a Huggies brand diaper full of (now day-old) poop with some gnawed-off, partially digested strands of my favorite blue cashmere scarf in it.

Right around where the metal hinges on the left side of the stroller, you will find some taupe-colored stalagtites. These are throw-up chunks from yesterday morning. If it would make you feel better, I can bring the new sweater I was wearing, so that you can verify the chunks on its sleeve match up with the stalagtites on the stroller.

On the right hinges of the stroller, you will find some avocado. Yes, that is avocado. It turns black after several weeks hours.

I bought some Humphrey’s Teething Tablets and Motrin yesterday, and these should be on the seat under my son’s speckled blue security blanket. If you look closely, you’ll see that speckles are actually small boogers. Yes, all boogers. (He is bonded with them and yesterday marked the 27th day he refused to let me launder the blanket.)

There is a hidden compartment under the seat of the stroller. In it you’ll find a baggy of Xanax. If you feel the need to verify that the pills now in your possession are indeed Xanax, I’d be happy to stop by around 8:30 tonight with my 18-month-old. After he pees in your floor vents, topples your CD tower, draws on your walls, and then screams in a Mariah Carey octave outside the bathroom door while you’re trying to quickly empty your bowels, you should feel the urge to palm his head like a basketball and hurl him into the next solar system. This is the time to try the pills. Once you’re calm, you’ll know they were indeed my Xanax.

Finally, if you look behind the headrest, you will find a couple of tampons taped to the canvas. Feel free to toss these out, as I scheduled myself for a hysterectomy immediately after our three-mile walk home yesterday in the drizzle without a stroller. Did I mention my son has a club foot?

Thanks for everything,
Grateful Mother

I remember when my daughter was this age, noticing parallels between our relationship and an abusive spousal one. She could be so violent, so mean. I could be so forgiving, so ready to take her back. She stepped on my feelings. I kissed her on her eyelids at bedtime and told her I loved her anyway. She pulled my hair in anger. I stroked hers as she slept. I sometimes secretly hated her, but not really. I couldn’t wait for her to take me back. I couldn’t wait to take her back.

My 2-year-old son pissed in my cereal bowl. (He’s potty training and thought it was a potty cup.) He slapped me because I wouldn’t let him drive the car. (Driving’s his favorite pretend-play game, and he’s learning self-control.) He hit my 6-year-old daughter and screamed in her face. (She was draping herself on his most prized posesssion, me.) He spit in my hand. (That’s what he does when he’s eaten something he knows he shouldn’t.) He kicked over all the freshly laundered, freshly folded clothes I’d stacked in the living room. (He can be a jerk.) Yup, that’s my son — my 2-year-old son. And I love him to pieces.

The second one is too tight. Just around the pinky toe. She says it makes it fold under.

The third one is too narrow. It causes her bones to feel somehow bonier.

The fourth one is also too narrow. You know, like a million rubber bands around her toes?

The fifth one she can’t scratch her toes in.

The sixth one is not good for toe-scratching either.

Nor is the seventh or eighth. She puts them on and twists up her face like a vegan eating whale fat.

The ninth pair leaves room for itchy toes but slides off the heel.

The tenth pair makes it impossible to curl up her toes for the auto-scratch.

“Where does it itch?”
“On my toes.”
“On your toes. Okay, where on your toes?”
“Under my toenails.”
“Under them?”
“Under them. I have to have something hard underneath so I can push my toes down on them to scratch under my toenails.”
“So, you’re telling me you need your shoes to have a harder bottom?”
“No. I need to curl my toes.”
“I can think of a few things that would curl your toes.”

The eleventh pair gets shoved back into the box, really hard, when it causes the punched-gut expression. Basically I rape the shoebox with the shoe.

After the twelfth pair, I wonder if the laces would support my body weight were I to rip them from the shoes and fashion a noose.

Rejection of the thirteenth pair infuses me with Herculean strength. I’m prepared to pick up the whole goddamn shelf and use it as a shoehorn.

There is no fourteenth pair. No fourteen!

I stack up the thirteen boxes, a monument to my kid’s extra-wide, extra-expensive feet. When in hell are we going to get beyond our $60/pair stage? Stride Rite and their stupid specialty width shoes have us by the throat. Buster Brown, where’s the love, man? 

We head toward the door, where a woman on oxygen cuts us off at the entry. She’s frail, struggling along with her No Country for Old Men tank. She makes her way between us and the door like a turtle on Xanax, and I’m beside myself with wanting to push her down. Wanting to push down a skinny old lady on oxygen!

Thank God in heaven there wasn’t a fourteenth pair. Clearly that would have pushed me over the edge. And I’d hate to go down in history as the third craziest shoe criminal after Richard Reid and that Iraqi who tried to shoe President Bush in the head. But, Lord, I came close today. Lord, I came close.

See me.
That’s all I ask.
I know I’m the same size
As the girl to the left
And the boy to the right.
I know there are rows of pigtails,
Just like mine.
Nothing special about freckles.
Nothing new about inside-out clothes.
I know I look like them all.

You look like them all, too,
With your head way up there
And your hip way down here,
Spotty hands pushing up glasses,
And your pretty shoes I wish I could wear.
I’ve seen wrinkles like yours before.
Nothing new about what you’re saying to me either,
Or the way you’re saying it.
Have we met?
I didn’t think so.

You’re not my first, you know.
Not the first to try to chat me up,
Not the first to make me stiffen under your long, strange arm,
Not the first to raise an octave when you bend at the waist,
Not the first to think my size sums me up.
It’s highly suspect.
I’m not Everykid.

You’ve been smiling at baby teeth for many years;
I’ve had mine for only five.
Sorry if I don’t smile back pretty for you.
And if I don’t say hello very loudly.
And if I don’t blurt out something cute.
And if I don’t clamber to get close to you.
But I don’t think we’ve met yet, not really.

Just so you know,
I’m not the shy kid.
I’m not the quiet kid.
I’m not the nervous kid.
I’m not the lonely kid.
I’m not the sad kid.
I’m not the cuddly kid.
I’m not the sappy kid.
I’m not the bad kid.
But I could be, here and there.

I am the adventurous kid,
The untrusting kid,
The moody kid,
The broody kid,
The silly kid,
The monkey-bars kid,
The conversationalist,
The thinker,
The runner,
The wisher,
The climber,
The desperate-to-be-liked hold-back cryer,
The kid who hates being instructed,
The kid who loves to learn,
The kid who can spin a great yarn.

Here’s a little secret:
I always save the best for last.
Broccoli precedes pork chops precedes mashed potatoes,
Socks precede underwear precede twirly dress.
I like to end on a good note, with a nice taste in my mouth.
And I don’t know where to put you in the order of things yet.
Please don’t decide yet where to put me either.
That quiet voice and tentative smile you got today?
Not me.
Not really.
Not for long.
THIS is me:

First Day of Kindergarten

Into the kitchen the mob of sweaty teenagers comes, one with a basketball under his arm. He kisses the lady on the cheek as she pulls off her oven mitts. “Thanks, Mom!” he says as his friends grunt and start grabbing for the pockets, stuffing them into their cheeks like rodents. She looks at the camera and gives a knowing smile. Nothing makes her happier than being the cool mom who always has a fresh-baked snack and loves to have the whole gang over to her place, wishing she were their mom.

I am not that mom. Kids come to my house, and I’m tired of their needs before they even shut the door behind themselves. Just kidding. They never shut the door behind themselves! I immediately dispense rules to my daughter: “Only in the basement or your room, and clean up your mess when you’re done.” I also tell her, “Don’t you dare ask me to feed this impoverished nation of children you’ve brought to my house.” Well, I don’t say it out loud; I say it with my eyes. But still.

Then it starts:

“I’m hungry.”

“I’m thirsty.”

“We can’t move this giant wooden play kitchen outside and into the fort by ourselves.”

These are not my children. I will ignore their passive-agressive pleas. I really will. Because (1) that play kitchen is made of untreated wood that will rot in a week outside, and (2) have you seen my grocery bill lately? No? Well, let’s put it this way: You wanna snack at my house, you damn well better ask for one directly. With a smile. And a please. And a shiny fifty-cent piece. Because I am not UNICEF, sweetie, and you are not from a wartorn country with a food shortage. Walk next-door and raid your own fridge.

But the TV commercials keep telling me I should try to make my kids’ friends fall in love with me by cooking for them. They tell me I should do this while wearing a V-neck and khakis instead of a worn-out tee and a broom skirt with Taco Bell beans on it. They say these things will lead my children to be the sort who still kiss me on the cheek, unprompted, when they’re 17 years old.

They don’t say it with their mouths. But still.

So, even though the kids are barking like dogs and ringing a goddamn cowbell in the living room — not the bedroom and not the basement — I guess I should get them Hot Pockets and Kool-Aid now? Okay. I just have to finish strapping the play kitchen to my back so I can haul it out for them like a mule.*

*FYI, my kids are two and five, not teenagers. I don’t want you to think I have 17-year-olds that have a play kitchen.