Mediocre Parenting (3)

It’s summer, and that means it’s time for three year olds to have new adventures. In a fit of bravery, I decide to take my son Mendel to the movies. Having very cowardly allowed my in-laws to make the first trial run, I load him in the car, and take him to the dollar theater. Just in case this whole deal backfires, and he runs screaming from the theater within the first half hour, I decide to not overspend. Besides, $2 for Horton Hears a Who seems more than enough, considering Jim Carrey is in it. I don’t much care for Jim Carrey, who, with his tendency to overact, has been cast in entirely too many children’s movies. My kids, needless to say, adore him.

When we arrive at the theater I am pleasantly surprised at the fact that the only other visitor is a mom with a newborn and a two-year-old. Certainly, they will make more noise than Mendel; I greet them enthusiastically and silently rejoice. “I am sorry,” she says, while gesturing in the direction of the newborn. “You might hear some wailing during the movie”.  She has more kids than me, they’re younger, and she admits defeat in advance. I like her instantly.

            The fuzzy feeling doesn’t last. That’s all right; I didn’t expect it to. There is something wrong with the projector, the movie starts twenty minutes late, and approximately ten other mothers in various states of disarray arrive. One mother balances the youngest of her four children under one arm while trying to hand out snacks to her other kids. One of them immediately spills her complete kiddie popcorn, and the woman doesn’t even get to sit down before she has to turn around to fix the mess. This time I have good reason to feel superior; from very early on, my husband and I have made the decision that snacks at the movie theater are not an option. Since Mendel’s six-year-old sister hands down all parenting rules on a regular basis, he knows this already and doesn’t even bother asking. The notion that all this self-congratulatory thinking might cause me some very bad karma later on doesn’t even occur to me.

In anticipation of a movie that certainly isn’t worth the trouble, the screen shows movie trivia slides in an endless loop. “That man is naked!” the child behind Mendel screams in response to a picture of a man with his shirt undone. Her mother tries to placate her into shutting up, but the child finds it necessary to repeat the same line twelve more times. When she finally has uttered the word “naked” enough, Mendel takes over. I let it go; anything I say will fall on deaf ears. After all, we’ve been here half an hour by now, and he has not yet seen anything that resembles a movie. When it finally does start, I sigh with relief; for the next hour and a half, he will be entertained. Except, he spends more time sitting backward in his seat, giving the child behind him the death stare, and then he walks around and climbs over the seats making various ballet poses, all in order to avoid sitting next to his mother. Afterwards the staff makes the questionable decision not to turn the lights on, which means I can’t find Mendel’s dark blue shoes. I refuse to feel around the floor for them, and have to ask for help. When we finally come out, his socks are as black as night from the nasty floor (what the hell is that? No way do socks get this dirty from spilled popcorn and gummy-bears!) and we barely make it in time to pick up his sister at summer camp.

For some odd reason, I haven’t quite reached the end of my rope, and I take both of them to the grocery store. We have to buy some essential things like mayonnaise and chips. When it turns out all the mini shopping carts are being used by other children, Mendel throws a fit. To help him get his mojo back, I get one of those unwieldy big carts that has a complete truck attached to it; I silently curse the store managers for not ordering 500 mini carts when they opened the store. Don’t they realize how much easier shopping is when little kids have their own cart? Besides, these big things don’t turn, they are too big and block the aisles, which means every time you stop to look at something other shoppers get irritated. Fun, fun, fun. Mendel, meantime, has decided to move on and starts punching me and asking for a cookie. I tell my daughter to “please take him to the bakery and ask for a cookie and say please and thank you and if you need me, I’ll be right here, banging my head against this metal pole.”

Finally, it is time to check out; my daughter insists on placing everything on the register while I have my hands full trying to simultaneously open my wallet, find my frequent shopper’s card, and convincing my son to not run away into the parking lot, but stay by my side instead. “I’m not sure what belongs to who,” the cashier says. I look at the groceries she hasn’t scanned yet. Sunny D. Cheesy Puffs. Frozen French Fries.

I admit it’s all mine, although, to my defense, I also bought celery stalks. “I’m not buying anything”, the lady behind me says. She looks disdainfully at my shopping, and I can see the cashier (tired and wary herself) think: then why are you here? I wish she would say it out loud. I glance at the lady with her size 2 jeans and her perfect hair, and realize she reminds me of me. I suddenly feel like screaming. “I used to be like you!” I want to tell her, “I used to be thin, beautiful and haughty! I used to go to the supermarket to buy cigarettes and nothing else! I used to look down on those bedraggled women with uncombed hair who couldn’t control their kids; the women who haven’t seen the inside of a beauty salon for at least two election cycles, and who think putting on lipstick before leaving the house is not a necessity! And now I am one of those women, and no, I haven’t showered in over 24 hours, I haven’t had a full night’s sleep in seven years, and guess what, some day you will be just like me!”

But I don’t. Instead, I mumble that I’m sorry when she is –of course- done paying for her Marlboro’s before I can get my act together, and finds herself having to squeeze past my yellow-and-blue truck. Without being asked, my daughter grabs two shopping bags and starts carrying them out to the car, while holding her brother’s hand so he won’t run into traffic. He gives his other hand to me, the way he should, the way he’s been taught, but which he almost never wants to. They look happy in anticipation of getting home, unwinding, eating the unexpected bowl of cheesy puffs, while waiting for their French fries and celery sticks. My daughter happily refers to it as “the best dinner ever”, a line that never ceases to make me feel good, even though she uses it every day. My temporary attack of bitterness and self-pity, brought on more by sleep deprivation than by the lady-in-line, vanishes instantly. I give myself a mental slap in the face; enough already. So what if I didn’t shower this morning? My children don’t care and neither should I. Sure, I don’t look and feel the same as I did in back then, but do I want to be 21 forever? Please. It’s not as if I was that cute in college anyway. Still, the look on supermarket-lady’s face stays with me for the next few days, as if to remind me that I have to set my own priorities, and that my 37-year-old self can’t –and shouldn’t- fulfill expectations I had when I was 21.