Maternally Challenged

...And Then, Just as the Tension Gets Unbearable...

...there is some welcome comic relief.

It's the Night Before School. The 10-year-old is having yet another hissy fit and is upstairs moaning, "I'LL NEVER SEE MY FRIENDS...." over the realization that her middle school class schedule is....well, what it's been since last Thursday, but she's just now decided to freak out about it. The six-year-old is in the bathtub for the second time, having emerged the first time with her hair still a mass of gooey hair conditioner. We're bearing down on bedtime, and the six-year-old is stalling.

"Get out of the tub NOW," I say.

"Okay," she says, and hauls her sopping little six-year-old self out of the tub. "But first I hafta do my WET NAKED DANCE! YEAH, BABY! OH YEAH OH YEAH OH YEAH!"

School Angst

...And as if shopping weren't bad enough, I am now dealing with two drama queens who are suffering from severe cases of pre-first-day-of-school jitters. Waiter? Can you bring us another round of Xanax?

I remember the pre-school jitters, I keep telling the girls, who of course don't listen--so I'll tell you, dear readers. When I went to elementary school, back when the dinosaur tracks were still fresh, you were in elementary school up through grade seven. And then the state of Georgia, in its infinite wisdom, packed you off to high school, where you were a sub-freshman (a lower life form even than algae). I went from a one-story elementary school with four halls and about 500 students to a sprawling three-story complex of buildings housing about 1,500 students, some of them with prison records. (Okay, I don't really know about the prison records. But years later, as a reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution assigned to cover legal affairs, I ran across the name of somebody from my old high school on a list on Georgia Death Row inmates. I remembered his sister from my school bus; she had a face like a hatchet.)

Anyway, I asked my older sister to help me through my first day, and she grudgingly agreed. (I realize now high school was no picnic for her, either.) The first day of school came, she walked me upstairs to my homeroom (room 225, Mrs. Stephens), pushed me in with a shove between the shoulderblades, and said, "See ya." That was my "orientation."

These days, educators have pre-first-day-of-school orientation, and it helps.....temporarily. The effect wears off after 24 hours, though, at least around here. My 10-year-old, Rebecca, has already had one freakfest this morning because her best friend wasn't available for a playdate. Said best friend is at home stressing out about how she and my daughter don't have a bunch of classes together, and my daughter's reaction was not sympathy--oh, no, that would've actually made sense--but outrage that her best friend didn't feel like coming over right that red hot minute. "She's like, 'Oh, it'll never get BETTER...'' Rebecca said to me in exasperation, and I said, "Yeah, well, I've seen that reaction a lot myself"--just in time for Rebecca to interrupt me with a geyser of tears and the proclamation "I DON'T HAVE ANY FRIENDS!!!" Etcera, etcera. Here's some advice: if you are the parent of a tween, do not allow yourself to express amusement at irony. It only riles 'em up more.

Suzanne, the six-year-old, meanwhile, has been busy developing a great big honkin' Attitude, which has been piled on top of an already existing Sassy Streak, so that we are treated to a run of comments like, "Hello Mommy poo poo head, I love you more than anything....NOT!" Suzanne has been lobbying for a playdate too, but six-year-olds are more tied to their parents' schedules than 10-year-olds are, and so far our quest has been fruitless. I bent over the other morning to kiss her awake and her first words upon returning to consciousness were, and I am not making this up, "I NEVER GET ANY PLAYDATES..." This has begun to morph into "Mommy, you don't love me..."--delivered while giving me this Bambi-eyed look, and I am ashamed to say that I have fallen for this way too many times. "Of course I love you, Bunny," I've said, and I've stopped to give her a big hug, only to hear the same thing again about half an hour later. Yesterday, my too-long patience finally snapped, and I told her that for the past two weeks, since her dad's taken some vacation time, we've done nothing but hang out with our kids and try to show them a good time with trips to the pool, outings to Luray Caverns, trips to the waterpark, movies, etc.etc.etc. and how telling me I didn't love her was just NOT FAIR and if she did it one more time I was gonna SCREAM.

So she stopped. Her new complaint? "Nobody does what I tell them to do." I'm going to refer her to her sister, who has long held a similar grievance. Because I have to go look for the Xanax bottle.

Good Thing JC Penney Doesn't Sell Firearms

I've spent the afternoon shopping with my 10-going-on-14-year-old, who starts middle school on Monday. I need to lie down.

I thought (silly me) I knew a thing or two about how to put an outfit together, but today I found out I am hopelessly Fashion-Impaired. I know this because my daughter tells me so, very loudly, every time I pick something off the rack to test her reaction, which is always "NO."

"I want to be stylish," Rebecca tells me. "Not dumpy." Okey-doke. I see a pair of capris, gray pinstriped with a pink belt. This, I think, would go nicely with the array of pink shirts she has picked out (she loves anything as long as it's in pink), but it turns out I am wrong, wrong, wrong. This time, she doesn't even say no; she sees me pick it up off the rack and holds up her hand as if I am a vampire and she is wielding a crucifix. She turns and walks away, looking at the racks of clothes and pronouncing, "No, no, no, no and, let's see, NO." You'd think she was Anna Wintour, that's how imperious she sounds. But I bet Anna Wintour doesn't wear ratty pink and white sneakers with a t-shirt and polyester pants when she is making her fashion pronouncements. Or any other time, for that matter.

"There is NOTHING here," Rebecca announces a moment later, after having given the juniors department a thorough 30-second assessment.

"Let's keep looking," I suggest, which is greeted by a loud sigh, and if there were a thought bubble above her head, it would read, Why did God curse me with such a dimwit  parent? I catch the eye of another mom one aisle over. "I hear nothing," she says, and grins.

"Mom," Rebecca says, speaking distinctly so that even a dumbass like me will understand, "I said I want stylish." Stylish, apparently, means heavily decorated. Solid colors are out of the question; the more sequins, the better. "Good Lord, Rebecca, are you auditioning for the Porter Waggoner Show?" I ask. She turns those beautiful hazel eyes to me and fixes me with a blank look. "What?"she says--which gives me the giggles, because it was a good line,  you have to admit, and I just wasted it on the wrong audience; even my fellow mom has moved out of earshot. But it doesn't matter, because Rebecca has  been distracted by a pair of leopard-print leggings. "These would go great with my new leopard print top," she says, and I think, Yeah, if you want to look like Eartha Kitt circa 1965, but this time I keep my mouth shut. What do I know? I am just a mom. A mom who still has a finicky six-year-old princess to shop for and who is wondering, at this moment, what it would have been like to have had boys.