A Walk in the Snark (15 page)

This post reflects the domino effect of what all this togetherness has wrought. It isn’t pretty.

My husband likes for the whole family to go run errands with him.

I would classify this as classic
Mancode
behavior.

Let me explain.

You can imagine my tween girl’s joy when her daddy announces that he, now we, are going to The Hardware Store, that male bastion of testosterone since time immemorial, all together as a familial group.

Won’t that be
fun
?

By the time he’s dragged her out from under the bed with cries of “Can someone adopt me, please!?” and we’re on our way, our little guy is usually jumping out of his skin with glee to see all of the cool gadgets that are only available in the most amazingly, awesomest amusement park of a store ever invented.

Joy.

This is about when my husband will give me THE LOOK.

If you are a parent, or heck, if you’ve ever even been in a relationship, you know THE LOOK. It’s the silent “You better come in with me and save me,” look.

This is where my husband and I differ, oh shall we say,
philosophically
, on the subject of running errands as um, say, a pack of hyenas.

You see, if he went by himself, he could go get his nails, washers, and other Dude Whatnot of Power and be back in ten minutes. Now. I realize that a lot of father/son bonding goes on in the inner sanctum of the hardware store, away from the prying eyes of us females. I am not trying to deny my boys their tool man destiny.

But little dude IS only five. He’s still in the temper tantrum phase; the “give me it; I don’t care what it is, I just want it so I can forget about it, but I still want it right now or I’ll scream” phase delivered in that ten-decibel pitch that we wish only dogs could hear.

This still leaves plenty of time for future boy bonding at The Hardware Store.

So back to THE LOOK. I ignore it. I’m just not going to go into the Toy Emporium of Wonder and Temptation to help out my husband this time. Nope. Call me a bitch if you want. If disagreeing with my husband means I’m being a bitch, so be it. I own it, baby.

See, here’s the thing.

I love that my guy wants us all to be together. I truly do. But how about for a meal, or the park? A walk on the beach? Buying a new hammer or making a key as a family might make it more fun for HIM (yeah, I don’t get it either). But for us? As my tween daughter says, it might be selfish on our part but dude, you’re a daddy.
Man up and do the yucky stuff by yourself.

Daughter rolls her eyes (a no-no), but only I notice since husband is dealing with screaming hyena boy who wants to join him in
all the magical fun
. I retreat suddenly and with deep interest into my iPhone, while my tween plays “
How to Become the Drama Queen You’ve Always Dreamed Of
,” on her Nintendo DS. Husband breathes a sigh loaded with the trepidation of the condemned man he is and gives in.

“Fine,” he mumbles in defeat. “But no toys,” he tells our son with false bravado, which is soon drowned out as puppy boy scrambles over drama queen faster than a lobster in hot water. “Ouch!” she cries loudly in protest. “Shhhh,” I whisper soothingly, reminding her that we have quiet now, at last. For a few blessed minutes anyway.

And we breathe.

Divide and conquer really is the best way to go for the mundane stuff—errands get done quickly and without all the fuss. That is, when I can convince my husband to actually do what I suggest. (Note: A mother running errands alone is strictly prohibited. Mothers are not allowed time alone. It is written.
The Mancode
, Chapter 5, page 102.)

The ideal errand situation is usually boy-boy, girl-girl—given our “perfect” (see Rachel laugh) boy-girl ratio. Plus, it gives us all a chance to do that bonding stuff you’ve probably heard so much about.

Spending money really does bring you closer to your kids, ya know? Even if it is just the boring stuff.

In
that
situation, this bitch actually loves to man up.

***

THE BEST HUGS

Even though I joke about the difficulties of having Puppy Boy and Wonder Man and their hardware adventures, I have no regrets about the course I took in my life.

The sadness of losing an ex compares not at all to the loving men I have in my life now.

Like my Lukas. Now age five. See that little dimple on his left cheek? I kiss that multiple times each day, even though he tells me he’s all sold out of kisses. He’s in love with iCarly but still wants to marry me. He says my green eyes are the prettiest he’s ever seen and my red hair makes me “hot.”

He nuzzles my neck and begs me for snuggles. I would eat him if I could. His favorite word is metamorphosis.

I don’t know who writes his material.

My youngest child is five years old. My boy. Lukas.

He is a love. Well, to me anyway. Although he and his sister (my eleven-year-old daughter, Anya) bicker with each other constantly, he has nothing but kisses, snuggles, nuzzles, and compliments for his mama.

We decided to put him in preschool last year. For several reasons, really, the most significant being that he’s smart as a whip and got bored with me at home. He would sit on the couch and watch SpongeBob while holding my hand, kind of like a little old man.

Sweet, but not very stimulating for either of us. Plus there’s only so many times one can take apart the remote and the phone.

Lukas did not initially take to preschool. He cried. He screamed. He wanted his mama. Even when I taught and repeated this mantra to him: “Mama
always
comes back.” This went on for several...months. Yeah, I know.

Fortunately, he’s at the same school as my daughter, they know us well, and they are wonderfully sweet, extraordinarily patient people. They would assure me, “We’ve done this many times before, Mrs. Thompson. He will calm down eventually,” as they would drag him literally kicking and screaming from my car, or pick him up from the asphalt he had decided to lie down on and not budge from, as I would leave in tears.

And, ultimately, they were right. Lukas did calm down. He made friends. He found his way.

Now he leaves in the morning excited to see his two buddies, ready to show them his “sick” new shoes or to bring his lovely teacher a tiny little present from the outer reaches of his Transformers drawer.

Yet every day when he comes home, he tells me “Mama, I missed you SOOOO much!” and he sits in my lap and gives me giant, squeezy, heart-melting hugs. “What do you miss?” I ask my little, precious love. “Your eyes (he loves my green eyes)—and your hugs.” Hmmm...” Don’t you gets hugs at school?” I ask him. He looks at me with those giant, beautiful, huge, brown long-lashed eyes that all the girls will love and swoon over when he’s a teenager and says, “No. Not really.”

Right then and there my heart starts to rupture. He tells me that his one little buddy and he hug each other hello and good-bye (so sweet—males hugging so easily) but that’s it. That’s the only hugging going on when that little precious boy is away from me.

See, here’s the thing.

You entrust your little beings to a school that you’ve chosen with intense research and with that check you write each month (or the taxes you pay). It’s a leap of faith, if you will, that they will care for and love and oh yeah, teach your children well. But for the littlest ones, one would hope that they would also give them hugs. Lots of ’em.

When he blows me a kiss good-bye every morning, I know in my heart that Lukas is being well taken care of: that he will be given two healthy snacks, that he is learning his ABCs, that he will get a bandage if he falls down. But will he be soothed and hugged if he misses his mama at nap time? Will he be told it’s all right to cry if he’s sad?

In short, will they see and even revel in the same preciousness in him that I do, or will they just hope that he give it a rest already? Or is this more my issue than anything else? Am I really just being neurotic mommy and should I just have some vodka and give it a rest already?

His teacher tells me what we’ve known for a long time—that he’s so very, very smart. (But, as Kathy Griffin says, doesn’t every parent think their child is “gifted?”) She knows that when he gets wound up that it’s best to just let him work it out on his own because he’s also very, very stubborn. That most of the time when he cries there are no actual tears—and I know this is true because he does the same thing at home. He’s a little “furian” as my husband calls him, a name he adapted from that Vin Diesel (hottie) sci-fi movie—“defiant to the end,” which is apropos here.

So obviously my boy is healthy, happy, and knows his numbers. He comes home cheerful from preschool, for the most part. When I pick him up, Lukas literally stops whatever he’s doing and runs at me full speed and leaps into my arms, where he hugs me with all his might, sturdy little arms around me as tight as he can, sweet kisses on my cheek.

And that, my friends,
that
—the running at me with pure joy on his face just to see
me
; the forgetting whatever he was involved in that was taking his full concentration, to get to the person that he can’t wait to touch; the long wait through the day for the giant hug that I am so lucky to be the recipient of—that makes my worries about the hugs all okay.

Because
our
hugs are the ones that count.

***

*Poignancy Alert*

THE MOMENT

My little guy and I are so bonded—on every level there is. I often look at his unconditional love for me and think how lucky I am to hold this precious gift in my hands every day.

I don’t understand how anyone can willingly give that up. I’m NOT a quotey kind of girl. If you want to share quotes with people, fine. Just do it quietly and without a lot of fuss and I’ll probably like you.

And yet…this particular Goethe quote I read when I was in high school; I cut it out of a magazine and kept it on my fridge in college. It stayed with me through various boyfriends and moves. This little slip of paper made a huge impact on my life.

I took it down when I met my husband.

I thought I was done with it. Apparently not.