Do Sherpas Eat Skippy?

A really good way to know you are a Mom is if you find yourself with a tube of toothpaste stashed in your back pocket. Or pill bug exoskeletons in your dryer lint trap. Or you carry everything from spare bobby pins and tubes of Neosporin, to “D” batteries and bite-sized pieces of doggy biscuit in your purse. My sister-in-law, mother of three, became legendary for the strange things she often carried upon her person, but it’s hard to top the time she was carrying an entire package of Hormel Black Label bacon in her purse. Her family had just dropped by one Saturday morning, and as we discussed breakfast plans, she announced that she happened to have some bacon and pulled it right out of the little bag she was carrying over her shoulder!  I’m not sure how or when this happens, but as children grow, they came to view their mothers as an odd combination of sherpa and garbage disposal. “Hey! Where did this crust of peanut butter and jelly sandwich come from?!? I don’t want this on my plate! Oh, wait….Is that extra crunchy peanut butter? Mmmm….”

I have also found children to be marvelously ironic: You can’t get them to go to sleep at 9:30 p.m., but they can’t stay awake at 3:30 in the afternoon to do homework. How about the child who comes up with every excuse under the sun to NOT get in the shower, then subsequently drains a 70 gallon water heater? Furthermore, we have found that it is far easier--and safer--to bathe an angry cat than to get a dropperful of Amoxicillin down the throat of a feverish and, until moments previously, completely lethargic toddler. The  older children, meanwhile, stand around saying helpful things such as “She gets the pink medicine? Lucky!...I think my ear hurts, too.” And how about trying to argue with a tween? “If you’d only be reasonable, you’d see that I’m right.”

Speaking of irony, someone once asked my three oldest children, at the time ages 10, 8, and 6 to think of something their parents had taught them. Within nanoseconds, I had taken a whirlwind tour of the past 10 years, remembering lessons such as how to ride bikes and roller skates; how to tie up shoes and zip up jackets; how to read, to count, or for fun, to write with a crayon between your toes; how to brush their hair or their teeth, or even how to use a toilet; or how to interact with other humans in something vaguely resembling a civilized manner. (I readily admit however that by this point in their lives, one still did not grasp the basics of the use or purpose of napkins, and one could not wrap his brain around nose-blowing--”Why? It will just fill up again.”) Anyway, my sentimental eyes welled with tears as I imagined their little hearts rapturously filling with gratitude for all our loving teaching. And now they were speechless, too choked with emotion to voice just one, if they must limit themselves to one, of the myriad life skills and lessons freely shared and lovingly taught by their sainted parents. However, as I dabbed at my tears and my vision began to clear, I took in their various expressions--from distracted to vacant to baffled--and realized that they had each drawn a complete, absolute, and utter blank. “Um, I can’t think of anything….” They were pretty sure they were born into this world shooting lay-ups, reciting multiplication tables, and singing “Jingle Bells, Batman smells, Robin laid an egg….” (Okay, I admit to one or two parenting mistakes over the years.) That being said, I am also reasonably confident that at least one of my children doubted the tale of mundane mortal birth into our ordinary family, preferring the idea of gracing us with his presence in a spontaneous and glorious appearance--complete with shimmering shafts of light and an ethereal soundtrack.

Lest there be any misunderstanding, the fact that I still sing Sesame Streets songs in the shower, wear gum-ball machine earrings, and carry Sponge Bob bandaids in my purse (my youngest child is 13) is NOT a matter of irony. I’m just warming up for grandmotherhood. And just as well, too. The final irony of parenthood is the fact that I spent so much of my discretionary time (read: the hours between 2:00 and 3:00 a.m.) planning my next Mommy’s Getaway, and now that my nest is nearly empty, I wander nostalgically around the grocery store, going out of my way to walk past the Snyder’s Cheddar Cheese Pretzel Nuggets (one of Megan’s favorites), growing misty-eyed when I pass Frank’s Red Hot Sauce (Spencer’s), and feeling my heart grow all soft and mushy when I remember Jordan’s delight the year he discovered Dunkaroos in his Christmas stocking. Bring on the grandkids; my dryer lint is boring and my pockets are empty.

If The Karate Kid Is Not At Home

There is an incredible range of arthropod-ian courage among the average human: My husband, for example, thinks nothing of flattening smallish insects with his bare hand (be still my heart), but can barely bring himself to confront the butterfly’s homely cousin, the moth. Another game of valor and daring he likes to play is to catch a fly in his hand (Karate Kid for beginners), shake it up in his closed fist, and then toss it outside. 

At the opposite end of the spectrum are the folks that have my most sincere empathy, the arachnophobic or entomophobic. A phobia is no laughing matter; my arachnophobia used to be paralyzing. If I ever came across a spider unexpectedly (Hint: it’s always unexpectedly), I would require emergency transportation to my room, where I hid under the covers, with a flashlight, some holy water, a can of Raid, and a stash of chocolate, until someone came in to reassure me that the offending spider or bug had been squished into oblivion and its remains flushed down the neighbor’s toilet. Pretty similar to what the sight of Winter does to me today, minus the can of Raid. Although somewhere in my little brain, Reason (or my mother) said that I was much larger than the spider, therefore it should be afraid of me; somehow Intuition told me that if turned my back on even the tiniest spider, it would bite and poison me, tie me up with its nasty floss, and drag me back to its lair to slowly feed to its young.

Many years ago when my own brave knight was working and going to school, I discovered late one evening a huge, hulking, gargantuan, hairy, creepy, disgusting spider sitting (or standing, it’s hard to tell) in the middle of my kitchen floor. At that point in my life, about all I had in the way of grit and valor was the ability to shoo away a fairly small ladybug. And my three year old was asleep, otherwise I would have asked him. I knew I was in trouble. All I had available in my emotional arsenal was either to faint, or to run away screaming and crying, like Lord Denethor in his famous scene from “The Return of the King”: “FLEE! FLEE FOR YOUR LIVES!!!!” But as my two preschoolers were in bed, I decided on Plan C: Have someone else’s fearless husband come over and kill it for me...at 10:00 p.m.

I called my nearest neighbor and, in my most pitiful and forlorn voice, explained my terrifying situation. I asked if her husband could come help. She hesitated just a moment before replying, “Sure. I’ll send him over.” When the poor man arrived, he looked appreciably uncomfortable. I wondered if he had been on his way to bed and was tired, or if he thought it was questionable for a married man to come to my house late at night. I showed him where the beast was, just chilling in the middle of the floor, as though it owned the place. At this point, my poor neighbor who, in his discomfort, could barely set foot in my kitchen confessed his pain. “Spiders terrify me,” he whispered hoarsely.  We stood there, transfixed by the monster. While I was trying to figure out an appropriate sentiment of encouragement and confidence, I am pretty sure he was trying to figure out how to slip out unnoticed. Instead this brilliant and stouthearted man dropped a very large phonebook on the offending and offensive creature; after which he very gingerly stepped on the phonebook, for good measure.

Nowadays, after years of therapy and the consumption of much chocolate, I have come to grips with my phobias. Rather than turning into human jello water at the sight of any arthropod larger than a grain of coarse sea salt, I am able to take a deep breath, stick out my chin, and weep silently.

Share your stories! But wait until I get back from the store with my dark chocolate and D batteries.