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The kids and I spent the morning strolling the streets of Rockport with my father-in-law; mostly window-shopping but occasionally wandering into a souvenir shop (of which there were many). My mother-in-law and G.G. had wisely parked themselves on a shaded bench in the park and waved us on hours before. As the sun climbed higher in the sky and the kids’ blood sugar levels plummeted from salt-water taffy spikes, I suggested we head back. My father-in-law shook his head: “There’s one more store we have to visit.”
The kids took up the chant, “One more store! One more store!”
I sighed and assented. There is no persuading my father-in-law once his mind is made up.
He set off at a brisk clip down Bearskin Neck. Small, Medium and Large trotted after him like he was piping a tune on a magic flute. The gap between us grew larger and so he was 30 feet from me when I saw him reach his destination. I actually gasped in horror when I saw the sign:
He and the kids tromped in. I stood outside and took this picture.
You get what you deserve.
And I felt I deserved a moment to myself.
(In all fairness to my father-in-law, who is a wonderful man and grandfather, the House of Glass has a lovely toy store in the front of the building. While I might not have allowed the kids to walk past hundreds of dollars of breakable items just to get to some toys, in the end, nothing was broken. And as they say: All’s well that ends well.)
After I checked into the Cape Hedge Inn, I told the kids we were hitting the beach. Small, Medium and Large hastily scrambled into their suits. A measure of their excitement: no one complained when I applied sunscreen.
We were on vacation with my husband’s family—his parents, brother, sister-in-law and their two children, K and G (ages six and three), as well as his 85-year-old grandmother whom the kids call G.G. (Great-Grammie). We were missing only my husband’s sister and her family and – there is no way to write this without the words dripping with irony – my husband.
Small, Medium and Large’s first ocean experience was idyllic. We spent the afternoon under the sun, jumping waves, squealing over seaweed and selecting the smoothest pebbles to bring home. More than once I wished my husband was there with us (he was arriving the following evening) to see the kids at their carefree, fun-loving best.
Fast forward a few hours. I have lugged all the beach toys, rocks (did I call them pebbles?), blankets, towels and coolers back to our motel room, made all the kids shower and change, rinsed and wrung out four bathing suits, cleaned the cooler and found dry clothes for myself. I am exhausted and so are the kids. Unfortunately, when my kids reach exhaustion they refuse to allow themselves to feel tired. Instead, they push themselves to that level beyond exhaustion – super-hyper-drive-your-mother-crazy-energizer-bunny-stage. They are entertaining themselves by bouncing off the walls. Literally. It is 7:30 p.m. and we haven’t eaten dinner.
My sister-in-law drops by our room to invite us to go with the rest of the family and dine in town. At a restaurant. After telling her that is sheer madness, I politely decline—opting for what I hope will be a lesser form of torture: a visit to the grocery store.
Our drive to the store is blessedly quick. Once I have located the entrance (on the far side of the building from where we have parked), we troop in. I hand Liam a basket and take one for myself. At first, we navigate the aisles like a school of fish; as a group, we dart in for tasty bites and shy away from oncoming predators. But by the time we reach the bread aisle, our school has disbanded. We look less like fish and more like an ineffective cowboy with a poorly managed cattle herd. I yell at the rogues and attempt to head them off at the pass. More than once, I wish I had a cattle prod.
We reach the checkout counter where a bored teenager with heavy eye-liner scans our groceries. I have over-estimated stuff to buy and there is no bagger so I do it myself. After we make it through the exit, I breathe a sigh of relief. It’s then that I hear a noise. Nora has dropped her new flip-flops. I freeze. And it dawns on me.
“Did we pay for those flip-flops?
She is silent.
“Nora! Did those flip-flops make it onto the checkout belt?”
She shakes her head vigorously. Her eyes well with tears. “I forgot!”
The bags I am hefting suddenly feel heavier. I close my eyes. For an instant, I consider just continuing on, going back to the motel. But I can’t. I will not intentionally set my six year old on the road that could end with her crafting a shank out of a cafeteria utensil. This is one of those “teachable moments” the parenting experts are always on about. Damn them.
“C’mon everybody. We have to go back inside.” I herd the kids back toward the doors we just exited. They start an ascending chorus of “Whys” and “Do we have tos?” but they are stumbling in the right direction. A young couple stares at us wide-eyed as we pass them on their way out of the store. I think to myself that we are a walking advertisement for birth control.
The doors close behind us. I can see our cashier just beyond the next set of doors. But they remain closed. We are trapped in this glass box until someone leaves the store.
Liam notices that we are being captured on the security camera’s monitor and begins doing the “butt dance.” Nora and Henry drop their bags and begin shaking their butts at the camera too. They are hilarious. I am nigh hysterical. Suddenly, the doors hiss open and the group of German exchange students that had been testing Axe deodorant sprays in aisle seven are standing on the other side. I stop telling my kids to stop and stride purposefully through the cloud of pheromones. Small, Medium and Large follow me meekly.
The flip-flops make a smacking sound when I slap them on the conveyer belt. “We forgot to pay for these.”
The cashier shrugs, scans the tag and says, “That will be two dollars and seventeen cents.” I hand her the money silently.
She is handing me my change when Liam leans forward. “You really ought to tighten up your security. I mean, my sister walked right out of here and there weren’t any bells or anything.”
So, he learned something. Too bad it wasn’t the lesson I was trying to teach.
It’s my least favorite time of year again. Swimsuit season.
Unless you are a woman in competition for your own reality TV show, you know what I mean. I will venture to say, without scientific research, that most women are critical of how their bodies look in spandex. It doesn’t matter who you are or how much you weigh—even bikini clad women (how I envy you!) think they have trouble spots.
I am an average height and have a medium build. I like to eat. I don’t like to exercise. I have a horror of aerobic classes due to a marked lack of coordination and an aversion to perky people. I look decent enough in regular clothes but am reluctant to let myself be seen in skin-tight scraps of fabric that are supposed to simultaneously conceal my problem areas and flatter my assets. Call me a skeptic but that does not seem possible. Catalogues and internet sites are full of “miracle suits” for sale; women’s magazines have swimsuit style guides for all body types. Who do they think they are kidding? Am I really asking too much for a suit that makes me look good, is comfortable, is appropriate for chasing children and yet stylish enough to wear on a cruise? Let’s not forget that I’d prefer it to be affordably priced. My three children may aspire to higher education.
I have been wearing the same swimsuit for seven years. It does not meet any of the above criteria except one. I have tried others: the swim mini (can you say grandma?), the boy short (there’s a reason they call them “hipsters”), and, in desperation, the floral halter top (sing it with me – ‘Do your boobs hang low, Do they wobble to and fro’) but I keep coming back to my plain old one-piece. Now that I am really thinking about this, there were two summers that it stayed bunched in the bottom of my sock drawer. Those summers I was nursing babies and my bosom was a size that could not be constrained. What a shame it was that my stomach was uncontainable too.
About every six months, I swear to myself that I am going to get into shape. It usually lasts a couple of weeks and then I am too (insert any of the following adjectives: tired/busy/lazy/bored) to continue with the program. My biggest success thus far was in January. For my birthday (at my request!) my husband bought me three sessions with a personal trainer. My trainer was awesome and for a month, he really motivated me to work hard. I saw results – my jeans fit better, muscles I had forgotten I had made an appearance, my mid-section started looking less muffinish and more pancake like – and then we got the dog, deconstructed the kitchen, and I just…stopped working out.
This time, too embarrassed to contact my trainer, I joined a gym. Tomorrow is day one (for the 47th time) on my quest for less squishy abs. Stay tuned. I’ll keep you posted.
Today was one of those gorgeous Spring days in Vermont – the sun shone brightly, puffy cotton balls floated in the blue sky, fields were awash in shades of green and dotted with yellow.
And there I was, in my minivan, totally oblivious to the beauty around me wrapped as I was in angst. I was considering the meaning of my life and was wrestling with the question: If someone offers you the moon, shouldn’t you take it?
For someone recently did just that…and I turned it down.
It’s a flaw of mine to skew glass half-empty. Instead of marveling over the magnificence of the moon, I worried about how it would fit into my life, what toxic substances it might introduce into my atmosphere, whether I was ready to shoulder the burden of its care and maintenance.
Yes, I am purposefully being cagey and no, I won’t go into the specifics. While it’s true, in creating this blog, I voluntarily put details of my life in a public domain; it’s untrue that I eschew privacy entirely. Maybe the best part of having a blog is that as its creator, one gets to pick and choose which anecdotes to include and which to stuff in the deeper recesses of the family’s toy box. But I digress. Back to the minivan.
At the stop light, I continued the fruitless pursuit of deciding whether to regret a decision I had already made. I was in a sightless, soundless, self-absorbed zone. Although the passenger side window was open to let a certain red dog stick his nose out, I was barely aware of it until another car pulled alongside me. Their music, without any sound barriers, was at blasting volume. Paco and I looked over.
This is what we saw: Two big guys (imagine Jake and Elwood without the hats and jackets), in an electric blue Dodge Charger, staring straight ahead, singing and punching their fists in time to the beat.
This is what we heard: Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance.
This is what we did: Laugh until I snorted.
At some point during the ten seconds before the light turned green, my mood shifted. I remembered. Life is meant to be enjoyed.
As part of his school’s curriculum this Spring, Large has the opportunity to take foreign language classes – French and Spanish. He chose to start with French; I suspect largely because some of his north country friends are bilingual and it has always fascinated him that they-along with their parents-can carry on entire conversations “in code.” I thought I fully understood his desire to crack the code having spent many a meal at friends’ houses where my conversational contributions were “Oui,” and “Je ne comprend pas.” But, non.
A few weeks ago, one of these French speaking families was visiting ours. We were eating lunch at the fabulous Burlington institution, Al’s French Frys (if you haven’t been, you must – your arteries will not thank you but your salt-and-grease taste buds will). Liam was graciously pumping ketchup into little paper cups for the group when I remembered to mention it to his eight-year old buddy.
“John*, did you know that Liam has started taking French at school?”
“Yeah, I know,” John replied. “He asked me earlier how to say ‘stupid idiot’ in French.”
“What did you tell him?” John’s mother and I chorused in stereo.
John shrugged and picked up a vinegar-drenched french fry. “Stupide idiotte.”
Quelle fantastique. Liam’s French teacher must have loved that one.
*Not his real name.
OINKtales 
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