Something New (15 page)

Not three seconds after I finish polishing the post, the oven timer goes off. I am suddenly, acutely, aware of my surroundings: of the savory aroma of lasagna permeating the air, the way the light has dimmed in the kitchen from the onset of dusk, the muted silence that fills the house. I feel as if I have awakened from a glorious fit of creativity and my senses are more alive than they have been for a long time.

I click the Publish button, then stand and stretch and head for the oven. The cheese on the lasagna is golden brown and bubbling as I set the pan on the granite counter. Wandering through the shadowed house, I turn on lights, taking in the warm homey feel of each room as it becomes bathed in light. At the archway between the dining and living rooms, I pause and lean against the doorjamb. Jonah and Matthew are both sprawled on the couch, side by side, heads flung back against the cushions, hands clutching the Wii remotes, fast asleep. I stare at them, memorizing the moment with my mind’s camera.
I don’t need my Nikon. This image will be emblazoned in my brain forever.

I have many such moments like this. And as I watch their chests rising and falling in unison, I realize that when I rummage through the memories of my life with my family, most of the images that rise to the surface are not of the big events or the milestones. The images that come to mind are ones like these. Simple and pure and so wonderfully real that my heart aches with gladness. I love my husband and my children. I love my life. I even love the fact that both Jonah and Matthew are drooling onto my favorite sage green suede couch.

Well, that last part maybe not so much.

O
f
course, all that gooey love business can evaporate in an instant. The next few days are a flurry of meltdowns, arguments, tantrums, and overall discontent in the Ivers household. The only good thing to come out of this block of time is that I have plenty of material for my blog. Bridget Jones, that contemporary literary icon, comes to mind every so often; her philosophy is that when your love life is terrific, everything else in your life falls spectacularly apart. And that is true for me. Only, it’s not my love life but my reinvention that’s on track.

I am up to four miles a day on the treadmill and am conscious of the way my thighs jiggle less than they did three weeks ago. I have reinstated my nightly Lines-Be-Gone regimen. I am eating healthfully, choosing fresh fruit and vegetables over processed snacks and limiting my carb intake, albeit surreptitiously at dinner, where Jonah seems to be
itemizing and calculating my caloric intake as though he is preparing for an anorexia intervention. And I am faithfully writing my blog every day like clockwork, allowing myself fifteen minutes to read my comments before delving into the creation of the new post. (Each day, with each new post, I see that my hits are increasing steadily, and although I still haven’t sampled my competitors’ posts, I am more than pleased with my efforts.)

But over this next week, my familial relationships are as strained as Israel and Palestine, and, like the United States, I feel powerless to do anything about it. Each subsequent day brings forth a new conflict with a different family member, and by the end of the week, I am ready to dip into my top-secret emergency fund and head for the Mexican border. (My emergency fund is not ample enough to afford me a luxury resort, but as long as the shithole motel I land in has Wi-Fi so that I can write my blog, I’ll be good.)

I don’t feel the need to recount every detail of every moment of every day, so instead, I am chronicling the specific incidents and subsequent blog posts that made up my week. Right now my blog is the only thing that’s keeping me sane, so in deference to the
P
that stands for
post
, I’m writing about piqued progeny, pugilistic partners, and petulant pretties.

Sunday, the official first day of the new week, and the day that God apparently took a union-mandated, much-deserved break, was the start of what I will surely label
My Week from Hell
if ever I get around to writing my memoirs.

I am sitting in the living room, channeling my inner goddess by attempting to mend a hole in one of Matthew’s favorite T-shirts. If I were my own mother, I could perform this
task one-handed, blindfolded, in my sleep while simultaneously juggling six dinner plates. But I am me. Therefore, I have only managed to make the hole bigger and punctured my left index finger in five places.

I am sucking on said finger when Jessie enters, fresh from her overnight with McKenna, and informs me that she will no longer tolerate the consumption of animal products in our home.

“I’m a vegan,” she announces with conviction.

I immediately pull my finger out of my mouth, worried that she will castigate me for drinking animal blood, even though it’s mine.

“Since when are you a vegan?” I ask.

“Since last night. McKenna’s a vegan. And her mom and brother, too. We had Tofurky and this soy berry ice cream that totally rocked. And not one living creature had to sacrifice its life or offspring in order to satiate my carnivorous lust.”

My first thought is of Ben Campbell and his wife’s penchant for tofu. My second thought is that Jessie is never going to spend the night at McKenna’s again. “Satiate my carnivorous lust?” Do people actually talk like that, and in front of eight-year-olds?

“So from now on, I’m only eating things that didn’t have to die.”

She gives me an earnest look that is well beyond her age. And this is the moment when I fuck up completely as a mom. I make the supreme mistake of not giving my daughter even one iota of validation. Instead, I turn her mandate into a joke.

“Well, you’re going to be pretty hungry then, Jess,” I say. “You don’t eat what I make, you starve.”

Her eyes glisten with unshed tears and she glares at me as if I, alone, am responsible for shoving grain down the throats
of gaggles of innocent geese to fatten their livers for my personal consumption.

“Fine, then. I’ll starve.”

Monday hits me with hurricane force. I am a great believer in three-day weekends because frankly, two days is not enough. I know that sounds funny coming from someone who doesn’t have a job. But when it comes to raising kids, Saturdays and Sundays are those blissful days when you don’t have to get up at five just to make sure your children are clean and fed and combed and brushed and appropriately clothed and have all their belongings, including homework and class projects and items for show-and-tell (which for some reason
is now called “share”). Not that I ever truly sleep in on the weekends, but I am able to lie in bed until seven with impunity, knowing that if my children want breakfast before I grace the kitchen with my presence, they can get it themselves. Since it takes a good forty-eight hours to get into a groove doing anything, I think an extra weekend day would be nice, just to be able to fully relax into laziness. But no, Monday comes all too soon and jerks us back to reality.

It is on this Monday morning that Matthew suffers one of the worst meltdowns I have witnessed to date. And it is all because I was not able to mend his favorite shirt and, through a colossal lapse in judgment, deposited it into the trash barrel, which was collected by the smoke-spewing, ear-shattering sanitation truck only moments ago. It is safe to say that as I watch Matthew scream and pace, his scrawny bare chest heaving, clawing at the alternate shirt I provided until I fear he might rip it to shreds, his face a scarlet mask of fury, I consider that a trip to a family therapist might be in order. Or a session with Dr. Phil, which might not do Matthew any good, but would elevate me to TV personality. Maybe I could just casually mention my blog on the air.

“How could you throw it
away
?” he bellows, snot streaming from his nostrils like that girl from
The Blair Witch Project
. “That shirt was…was…was…”

I am afraid he is going to say
my best friend
. I have the urge to put my arms around him and hold him close to me, because whatever the deep-seated reason for this outburst, Matthew is truly feeling pain, and my instincts as a mother far overshadow my incredulity that the loss of a fucking T-shirt can inspire such a cataclysm. However, his rage is currently directed at me and I am aware that he would welcome a hug from me about as much as he might open his arms to a runaway chain saw.

“…my favorite!” he cries.

The shirt in question was a hand-me-down from my sister’s son Luke, now eleven, who Matthew believes saved his life at the beach last summer when the family came for a visit. Luke was learning to boogie-board, and Matthew was showing off his mediocre skills when his foot got looped around the leash of his own board. Luke, sensing my son’s distress, leaped into the foaming surf and hauled Matthew out of harm’s way before a two-foot wave crashed with ho-hum force against the sand. The fact that Matthew had been in water only ten inches deep escaped his notice, and for the rest of the trip, he followed Luke around like a puppy, waiting on him hand and foot until even Luke grew tired of the attention. But my nephew was gracious enough, on his departure, to award Matthew with a long-sleeved, navy blue, limited-edition cotton shirt with the legend
Surf or Die
emblazoned across the front, which he had finally outgrown due to a sudden preteen growth spurt.

Matthew has worn that shirt twice a week ever since, regardless of its state of cleanliness or lack thereof. When the small hole finally appeared in the armpit, he had to relinquish it to me for healing and safekeeping. And now he is looking at me like I am a traitor, a heretic, an
evildoer
in the worst George W. sense of the word. He is looking at me as though I’d stuffed his cousin Luke into the garbage bin.

“This is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me,” he proclaims tearfully.

“Jeez,” says Connor, taking his seat at the kitchen table and tucking into the nutritious meal of eggs, toast, and melon that I have prepared for him. “Take a chill pill, why don’t you.”

Matthew wheels around and glares at Connor. “Shut up, Connor!” he snaps.

“Hey!” I yell. “Watch your mouth, Matthew!”

“Or what?” he shoots back. “You’ll throw away my favorite sweatshirt and my favorite pants and my sneaks, too?”

I feel a headache coming on.

“Sit down and eat your breakfast, Matthew,” I say through clenched teeth

“I will NOT!” he screams. “I want my shirt. I want my
Surf or Die
shirt! I am not going to school without it!”

Just then, Jessie ambles into the kitchen and sits at her place next to Connor. She takes one look at the dish of scrambled eggs and shrieks.

“I
told you
I am a vegan!”

Did I say headache? No. I feel an aneurysm coming on.

Connor grins and holds his hand up in front of his face, his fingers splayed apart down the middle. “Live long and proper, dude,” he says.

“It’s
prosper, prosper, prosper
!” Matthew corrects him urgently. “Live long and
prosper
, you idiot!”

“Matthew!”

“Whatever,” Connor replies.

“It’s
vegan
, not Vulcan,” Jessie explains.

“Whatever,” Connor repeats, taking this crazy morning in stride.

“Matthew,” I say again, injecting an icy calm into my voice, “I don’t give a crap if you go to school shirtless, but you will sit down and eat your breakfast right now or suffer the consequences.”

“He has to wear a shirt, Mom,” Connor says around a bite of eggs. “No shirt, no shoes, no education.” He winks at me and I thank God at that instant that I have
one
halfway normal child with a good sense of humor.