So we’re driving home from a morning at the tiny mall museum that is the natural history museum for Las Cruces NM and the kids are counting themselves lucky that the doctors office computers all crashed so they don’t have to have their immunizations after all. The baby is screaming and we have a conversation that goes like this.
Me: “Guess what Aidan…”
Aidan: “What?”
Me: “You should stop screaming.”
Aidan: “But I’m sad.”
So I hand him a bag of crickets which was what all the screaming was about anyhow and cringe as I look back and see them all floundering in a huge pile at the bottom of the smooth plastic bag scrambling for purchase on walls that they’ll never be able to climb. I feel for those crickets that I know are just going to be eaten in a few minutes by the ravenous lizards at home in our tank so I take the bag from his little hands and lay is horizontal on the car seat and watch the crickets climb onto the egg crate shards which allow them to keep from crushing one another. I crank up the radio and try to focus on the episode of This American Life I have on instead of the screaming which has started up again. I hear that little nagging voice in the back of my head that says I really ought to do something to help him feel happy as he’s only two after all and childhood is short, so I explain that we’ll go home and get food in ten minutes. He of course has no concept of time and still wants the crickets and keeps on screaming and it feels like a really long ten minutes.
Fast forward twenty minutes and we’re home and I’ve given them all cookies because I need to sit for a minute to recover from all the screaming before I tackle lunch and another segment of my day. I’m typing this and recalling a friend talking about how she ought to get a job because there is more emotional stability in that than being at home with little ones all day. I of course being me reminded her that we just need to find emotional stability while staying at home and learn to get a grip basically (I think that I said that all much more tactfully last night but I guess I can never be sure.) Well I think that I need to take my own advice get a grip and go and make lunch. Maybe I need to make a little sign to tape to the front of my fridge that won’t hold magnets because it’s stainless steel… You are happy, life is good, live it like you said you should.
One Response to “recollection”
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A good post. Very thoughtful. There are days I feel like running out of the house and taking the first job that I can get. I would get paid, I wouldn’t hear constant whining, my work would be appreciated. But then, I think of the sweet moments with the kids and I wouldn’t turn that over to anyone else for the world.