What Everyone Ought to Know About Mom the Impaler of Mornings
Then I discover we were out of butter, so instead of toast with his eggs, he had – eggs. I don’t know why I didn’t just shoot myself then and put him out of his misery, because I guess having breakfast without toast is like having to – eat only vegetables the rest of your life. Suddenly eggs by themselves are – well – Brussels Sprouts.
I proceed to take our morning to new heights of serene happiness when I had to stop for gas on the way to school. I guess it would have just been better if we run out of gas on the way, then run the last two blocks to school in a happy parent-child jogging bliss. I can hear myself almost saying, “Do you have any idea how far I had to walk to school when I was your age?” (Just say no to becoming my mother). But I knew I would be talking to hear the sound of my own voice (and since I really didn’t want to hear my own mother channeling through me in the car) I gulped my coffee instead – wishing it was a Martini.
We arrive at school just as the second bell is about to ring, so I got the thrill of meeting the attendance girl in my dance sweats (which really make me look more like a homeless woman than a dancer) and I was pretty sure I had coffee stains on my teeth (the men reading this are sure turned on now). The morning was going so well - why think that some small part of me was fit to greet the public? She was a cute perky girl who gave Brian that “I understand how difficult mothers are in the morning” look along with the “I am sure it is all her fault and I feel your pain” nod as she passes him his hall pass.
The rest of my day went fairly well and I did manage to shower, do the hair, dawn the make-up and show up for an after school meeting with some of Brian’s teachers. It seems he is struggling a little in English and History. This is pretty typical for Brian in the first quarter of every school year and getting him to remember his learning techniques with CAPD, I was not surprised.
Unbeknown to me, Brian was sweating this meeting back at home thinking it was over him failing in school. Where he got this idea is anyones guess. I thought his father and I had made it clear that we were just checking in with his teachers to see how things are going – period.
When I got home and asked Brian to sit for a second, he begrudgingly plopped himself in the chair across from me. As I am about to tell him how proud I am of him, I look up to see crocodile size tears cascading down his face.
It took another 30 minutes for me to get him to understand that he has 2 A’s, 2 B’s and 2 C’s and is about to be invited into a problem solving competition. It felt like I was speaking Russian to a Peruvian. In the end, I wanted to buy him his own island with a beach – anything to stop that sad, downcast face. “But Brian your father and I are just trying to help you” sounded more like “But Brian your father and I only beat you every other Thursday, in leap years, on rainy days”.
He retired to his room and I retired to green tea, again wishing it was a Martini. I survived three real estate downturns, a divorce, thyroid disease, put myself through technical school when no women were welcomed, supported and fed my son all these years, and yet how is it I feel like I can’t find my way out of town with directions and a back seat driver? Don’t I understand that helping him is the same as driving a stake through his heart?
“Mom, you really have to get it together in the mornings…”
Me?
“Can we invite her to the pasta feed on Friday night?”
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