First published in the Tri Town Transcript Sep 27, 2016
By Esther C. Baird
Back to school is a tangled up time of year. What I want this time of year is to have it both ways. I want summer and school, freedom and schedule. Spontaneous lunches and bagged, home-made lunches. OK scratch that. I never want to make school lunches.
But this confusion and existential angst has created an inability to think clearly about basic parenting decisions. Is it the end of summer? Or is it fall? Stay up late, or go to bed? I feel dazed by the transition and our two girls are on to me.
Let’s take a recent drive through Dunks. The girls were getting Coolattas, which is a healthy choice for children if you believe sugar and emulsifying powder is healthy. And even if you don’t, when the temperature outside is set to a non-autumnal broil, a small Coolatta is unlikely to zap too many brain cells, plus by the time I am done taking all my Mommy Tax sips, it’s more like a mini than a small.
As we pulled into line, they were singing and laughing and generally being kind of hyper, more summer than school, and I could feel the confusion set in. Did I welcome the chaos or did I resent it?
And as I mulled this, a disembodied voice somewhere in the car said, “Can you order us mediums?“
The Dunks employee said, “Can I take your order?”
“Yes, please,” I replied. “I’ll have two medium Coolattas.“
My girls gasped. Why? What had happened?? I stared at them and they stared at me.
My youngest, wide eyed, said, “Thank you, Mommy!!”
My eldest burst into laughter.
Wait what? I had ordered mediums? I had been lost between summer and school. I can’t be held responsible for nearly a gallon of synthetic frozen vanilla slush!
The next week I accidentally bought them each king sized Reese’s bars. It was a moment that stunned all three of us into chocolate peanut buttery silence.
But the coup de gras came, where else, but Costco. I can hardly type this.
I was with my younger daughter, vainly searching for that rare and elusive school supply: the 4×6 index card, not it’s ever present and reliable 3×5 cousin, no, the one index card that seemed to have vanished from the North Shore. I can’t explain why we couldn’t find it. I just know that I was frazzled and feeling resentful about school. School was making my girls grow up too fast! Or, wait, was it thrilling to see the people they were becoming? Was it both?
“Mommy, can’t I pleeeaaassee have this giant teddy bear?“
I stared at her holding the bear – it’s bigger than her. It’s bigger than me. Yes, that giant bear. Don’t talk to me about it. I have said ‘absolutely not’ one million times before to the giant bear.
But this time?
“Well, I am not carrying it around.” And I wandered away, perhaps in search of a Costco sample size of sanity.
She waited. Was that the end of the discussion? Did she just need to cart the bear behind me? Was it really that easy?
I guess so. Because now, Revere, named after one of our new paint colors Regular Readers will recall from the last column, lives at Casa Baird.
Further Revere goes up and down the stairs each day so as to always be with our daughter. But guess who is too small to safely carry a horse sized teddy bear up and down the stairs!?!?! So, guess who carries it? Upstairs and downstairs. It lives between two floors, up and down. I live between two seasons, summer and fall.
We recently took a picture of our daughter with Revere lying next to her looking, for all intents and purposes, as if he’d passed out. His mouth hung open and his head lolled back. I could only sympathize. The life of a bear, the life of a mom: one foot in one world, while the other foot is sprinting into the next. Hoping to pause long enough take a nap on a couch somewhere in between, or at least to grab a seasonal coffee.
Coolatta or Pumpkin Spice Latte?