the pieces of my life

My mother was here and getting ready to head to the train to go back to New York. Adam was driving and Pie going with them.

Me: Bye, Pie! Have a nice trip to New York!
My mom: Oh, are you coming? That will be so much fun!
Pie: Really? I can go to New York?
Me: Yeah, sure, why not! You can go.
Pie: Really?
Me: Yes!
Pie: But wait a minute! What about school? I’d miss school.
My mom: There are plenty of schools in New York! I’m sure we could find you a good one. You’ll go to school there.
Pie: Um, nah. I’d miss Jasmine.
Me: What about me? Wouldn’t you miss me?
Pie: Well, we could Skype.

My children are 5 1/2 and 7 1/2. And already I’m becoming obsolete as a mother.

My kids had a growth spurt. I don’t mean in height—my poor boy is still shorter than some of the kindergartners when he leaves school through the girl’s classroom. But they’re definitely growing. My kids are their own people. This week, Pie had a dentist appointment and I was told, most definitely, that I should stay in the waiting room and not accompany her in. She’s becoming this sporty little creature, feeling sad that hockey was over, but happy because T-ball, soccer, and lacrosse all start up again soon. She brings home private papers from school from her BFF, Jasmine. She has a BFF. She has announced that there are two boys she has a crush on.

And then Doodles. When Pie had to be at the dentist, Doodles had an after school class, so he simply walked over to the neighbor’s by himself when it was done. He rides his bike around the neighborhood with a friend. He puts himself to bed. He gets himself up and dressed in the morning. He calls Tab himself when he wants to play with her. He can change a roll of toilet paper. Recently, it was a gorgeous spring-like night, and my two were simply gone. They left the house and I didn’t see them till it was dark, except for my occasionally peering out the window to see if I could find them. They teemed up with four other neighborhood kids and played basketball in another neighbor’s backyard. When they were hungry, they came home. I didn’t even mention that it was a half hour after bedtime.

I read the entire Little House series to my kids. In These Happy Golden Years, I found myself teary as Laura and Almanzo marry and Laura leaves home. “I’m going to move with you,” I confide in my kids, and while Doodles rolls his eyes, Pie grabs my arm happily, as in “Of course you will.” But, of course I won’t. And she’ll be grateful for that.

But for now, I still relish their childhood. And there’s still plenty of it left. The boy will still, almost without thought, grab my hand as we walk home. The girl still crawls into our bed late at night. And they both still love for me to read to them. The two are currently in competition to see who can memorize the Four Questions in Hebrew because they both want to be the one to say it at our seder. Pretty soon, my youngest won’t be so young anymore and they’ll try to pass the job off onto someone else.

Sigh.

Continuing the trend in which I expose my children to things which are not completely age appropriate for them (the “F You” song, which Pie has deemed too offensive for her to sing even alone in the house with me; The Princess Bride, which scared Pie; The Wizard of Oz–a children’s play version–which scared Pie), I allowed my children to watch the TV cut of School of Rock… which scared Pie.

Yes, that’s right. My girl jumped at School of Rock. When kids were disobeying. “Scary!” When it looked like Jack Black was going to get into trouble? “Scary!” When he got caught? “Scary!” She didn’t want to leave the room (with me), but she didn’t want to watch it either. Up till the end. When the kids rocked out. At which point, she “loved it!”

The boy was a little bored by it at first, but by the end, he was dancing around the family room, shirtless, in his pajama bottoms.

For tomorrow’s movie night, I’m thinking Fast Times at Ridgemont High. It’s about a school, so it’s fine, right? Right?

Yes, my husband did go by the store today for an iPad 2. The AT&T store was supposed to get in a shipment, but alas, they had not. They could order one for him… that would come in two weeks. No thanks, he said. He’s going on a business trip overseas and he’ll simply buy one when he returns.

He didn’t want to deal with the mall lines, so he came home without one, much to the distress of my children. “The iPad 2 came out today?” the little one asked with wide eyes.

“Yes, it did,” he said.

“And you didn’t get one?”

“No,” he told us. “And, you’ll be disappointed to hear that the St. Patrick’s Day version of Angry Birds came out.”

“I want to play it!” yelled the boy.

“Too bad,” I said. “Daddy is going out of town.”

“So? Can’t I still play it?”

“The iPad goes with Daddy,” I told him.

“Harumph,” both kids said.

“You can play it when I get back and I get my new iPad,” Adam told them.

“Who gets your old iPad?” they asked.

“I do,” I said to their disappointment. Until…

A thought occurred to me. “You know,” I told them, “just because Daddy’s going away doesn’t have to mean anything. Daddy isn’t the only one with a credit card.”

“So?” asked the boy.

“So, we have a whole week to go buy us a new iPad 2. And then Daddy is the one stuck with the old iPad.”

And, once again, I am the most loved parent.

It is currently, per the weather channel “11 degrees, feels like -3.” The girl likes to wear dresses with leg warmers. Just leg warmers. Which leave half of her leg bare.

Me: It’s really cold out today. You need to wear tights.
Pie: I only like to wear tights once a week and I already wore them!
Me: But it’s butt-cold out there!
Pie: NO!
Me: Your teacher won’t like it. You won’t be able to go out for recess.
Pie: I don’t like recess.
Me: You must wear tights! It’s simply too cold!
Pie: Fine!

I should have known she agreed too easily…

That’s right. Bare legs. Scarf of… tights. If a new kindergarten fashion trend sweeps, don’t blame me!

(I should add that, yes, I let her go like this. She followed my request. She can’t be blamed for being smarter than her mother!)

I watched with the kids the final shuttle launch of Discovery.

Me: This makes me a little sad.
Pie: Why?
Doodles: Pie, this is what’s called the end of an era. It’s the end of an era of space shuttles.
Pie: Oh! Now I’m getting teary.

***

The boy has been attending School of Rock for vacation week. Tomorrow his band performs at a club in Cambridge. He’s been listening to the songs he’s doing over and over and over. (He’s playing drums on Blind Melon’s “No Rain” and singing on Blur’s “Song 2” and Ozzy Osbourne’s “Crazy Train.”) He’s been jumping up and down on his bed every night and every morning, yelling, “A whoo hoo!”

I can’t get “Song 2” out of my head now. So I put it on and said to the kids, “I can’t get this song out of my head!”

The boy looked at me and said, “Mom! It might help if you stopped playing it!”

Gee, why didn’t I think of that?

****

For the big show, the boy wanted another stripe in his hair, like he had last year. (This time, though, he wanted green.) So I took him to the hair salon. While he was getting it done, the girl piped up.

Pie: Mommy, I want a stripe, too!

This isn’t the first time she’s asked. I’d gotten her some colored hair extensions last year, but it’s something that comes up every now and then.

Me: Are you sure? The only reason I hesitate is your hair is so long that it’ll take a long time for it to grow out. The boy’s hair is short, so it ends up getting cut out before it looks too funky.
Pie: No, I want a stripe , too!
Me: Well, okay. Let’s go find the other stylist.

We walk over to the other stylist. We all get our hair done at this salon, so they know us pretty well. I say to the stylist, “She’d like to get a stripe in her hair.”

Stylist: Yeah? Sure, we can do that.
Me: It’s going to take a while to grow out though, no?
Stylist: Yes. But it’ll be okay. Pie, you sure you want a stripe?
Pie: Yes!
The stylist smiles at me and then turns to Pie.
Stylist: Would you like me to put in a stripe or would you rather I paint your nails?
Not even a second’s hesitation.
Pie: My nails!!
Stylist: Let’s go!
She turns to me and whispers, “That works every time.”

***

The name of the boy’s School of Rock band? Raining Colored Toasters #7

We were watching things off the DVR (catching up with Big Love, which I think has jumped the shark), when the phone rang for Adam. He told me to go back watching, but after peeking at Twitter, I felt I was missing out by not watching the Grammys, so I switched the channel. Adam was on the phone for a while, but he finally came back.

Me: I started recording the show, because Mumford and Sons is on and the girl loves Mumford and Sons.

Adam: Who are Mumford and Sons?

Me: Really? You know, “Little Lion Man.”

Adam: I don’t know.

I search online and find the video. I play it.

Adam: Oh, yeah. That kind of sounds familiar.

Me: Your daughter is more hip than you.

Adam: I expected that to happen.

Me: She’s five.

Adam: Yeah, well… [pause] Wait a minute. How does she know who Mumford and Sons even are?

Me: [Sigh.]

As you may recall, my daughter chooses not to walk with me to school. Walking with me, she says, makes her sad. So she goes across the street to walk with Beetle and her kids. Every morning I send her off across the street. Every morning she walks happily with them. Sometimes she’ll see me–I still walk the boy, after all. But she just smiles and waves, unless I make the suggestion that I walk her to her classroom, which then sets her little face a quiverin’ and Beetle quickly takes her by the hand and whisks her away from her mean old mother.

Except this past Wednesday. On Wednesday, the girl decided she didn’t want to go to school. She really, really did not want to go to school. Refused to go to Beetle’s house. Refused to leave the front door. I finally sent the boy on his way himself, and I took the girl by the arm, and I pretty much dragged her the entire two and a half blocks to school, with her screaming and crying the entire way, “No, no, no! I don’t want to go to school!” I find it amusing how little notice this gets from anyone.

The school has a single crossing guard (the rest were all cut due to our dismal town budgets). She’s a fantasticly cheerful woman who stands on the corner we cross, and she greets everyone with gusto. I really like our crossing guard. She can make you smile on a bitter morning. She can make the boy smile on a bitter morning. That’s a feat.

This Wednesday, I drag the girl across the street to the school. She’s wailing. Our crossing guard cheerfully says, “Oh, you have someone new today! Is this a neighbor?”  Yes, that’s right. We’ve been in school for six months and this is the first time I’ve been seen with my own daughter. All I could do was look at the crossing guard and say, “I wish.”

Today was snowshoeing with the Daisies day. Eleven girls. Four older siblings. Seven grown-ups. A wide open field for clomping across. What could wrong? Oh, I know. My kids could be royal pains in the tush. Everyone else seemed to be doing fine. But mine? Not as much.

Remarkably, despite the 20 degree weather, it felt great out (this isn’t just me being masochistic–everyone agreed it was a beautiful day). No wind, pristine snow, sun out. Perfect winter outside weather.

The boy was happy… for a while. When he was off on his own, he was as happy as could be. But then I made him stick with the group. And he was sad. So very sad. And a wee bit angry. Just one Garbo moment after another: “I want to be alone!”

The girl snowshoed. And enjoyed it. For five minutes. And then she was tired. And thirsty. And. She. Wasn’t. Going. To. Walk. Anymore! Thank you very much.

Almost everyone was happy to stop. Well, just about everyone. The other leader and I brought hot chocolate for after and I made cookies for all the Daisies. The boy ate one. He asked for another. He got another! But then halfway through eating it, he overheard someone asking me what kind of cookies they were. “Cherry Chocolate Chip!” I said. The boy looked at that half eaten cookie, handed it back to me, and said, “I don’t like it.”

“But you ate one and half of them!”

“That was before I knew what it was. Now I don’t like it.”

I know, you’re jealous. Sorry. They’re all mine!

There is sadness in the house. True, heart wrenching sadness. The boy is sad because he must, once again, do homework and now he must write five sentences in his reading response journal instead of the first semester’s three sentences. The husband is sad because he built a beautiful outdoor rink but it hasn’t been cold enough to freeze properly, so we have a slushy mess in the backyard (and we won’t mention how he’s sad because he didn’t calculate the slope correctly, so the ice rink slants to a sad end). I am sad because it’s not Miami Beach and while I can handle a good winter, this is really a mediocre winter. By the time we returned, all the snow from the big blizzard had melted and last night’s big snow brought a mere dusting. Hardly warrants the homemade marshmallows in hot chocolate (I said “hardly!”).

But the saddest person of all? The littlest Medros. She is oh-so sad. Life for a five year old can be so difficult. Her heart weeps. She’s been moping about how sad she is and her heart is sad and she is sad and everything is so sad.

Me: I can understand. It’s hard coming back from vacation.

Pie: That’s not it.

Me: Is it going to back to school? It’s hard to get dressed in the morning after a week of lounging about.

Pie: No, that’s not it.

Me: Oh, you miss Nana and Peter? And playing with T Rex and Pad and Elf Girl? We had fun with them.

Pie: Yeah, but that’s not why I’m sad.

Me: Then what is it, baby girl?

Pie, lip a quiverin’: It’s… It’s… It’s because there are only two more episodes of Hannah Montana left, and I didn’t watch from the beginning so think of all the Hannah Montana I missed!

Me: Uh…

Pie: That and I want a pair of Uggs.

She’s a keeper, folks!

*Yes, I know, inflation. No more pay phones. Yadda yadda. But my 10th grade science teacher used to always say, “Too bad, so sad. Got a dime? Call someone who cares,” and it stuck with me.