the kindergartener

Right now, laying, head on my lap, mouth slightly agape, breathing deeply, looking serene and above suspicion, snoozing noiselessly, is my very own seriously five-year-old boy. Kindergarten is hard, man. Its toll has been taken. This little man is worn out.

At these moments, I am unable to reconcile this quiescent form to the fiend who accompanied me yesterday, wailing about puppy notebooks and doughnuts, through the grocery store. You see, yesterday afternoon, I had to go grocery shopping. Now, for those of you who haven’t ventured into my kitchen, let me just explain that by the time I finally admit that I have to go to the market, then what’s left in my kitchen for snacking is uncooked spaghetti, saltines, cheerios and ice cubes; and what’s left for actual meals is, well, plain spaghetti and cheerios. So off we went, at almost 6pm to the market. I pulled into the parking lot thinking, “it’s okay, we can definitely handle this”.

Not so much. It started with me requesting a cart, which the Girl obligingly got. But wait, apparently, to the Kindergartener, a grocery cart looks like a Super-Turbo Mustang Cobra XL7 (or some actual super-cool automobile), that his sister is unqualified to pilot, because he immediately and without warning walloped her and took command of the vehicle. Then, when he was reprimanded, and the vehicle commandeered by the Mother Ship, the crying and evil-eye-throwing began….

And on it went, throughout the entire grocery shopping expedition. He wants to push the caaarrrtt-aaah. I’m the worst mooommmmyyy eeevveeerrr-aaahh. He waaaannntts a puuuppppyyyy noooteboooook-aahh. We’re aaaallll stoooooppiiid-aahhh. Mooommmy-yaa, puh-leeeaasse-ahh. Oh. My. God. How I loathe that add-on syllable-a.

I applauded myself, even if no one else did, for the active ignoring, the going about my grocery shopping business as if there weren’t a four foot tall, red-faced, tear-streaked lunatic stomping behind me. Yay me! Mom of the year for sure. When we got home there was more crying, a sandwich was served to the Kindergartener on the bottom step (the time-out step), there was muttering (from both of us), there were hexes thrown as I passed (it was the Kindergartener who threw them, not me, I swear), there were threats of hunger strikes, and then finally, there was a boy asleep at the base of a staircase next to a half-eaten salami sandwich. I know, cute, right? Ugh.

After the rejuvenating bottom-step-nap, he emerged from a shower to politely ask for the last frosting flower from my birthday cake. NO! The nerve of this kid, the sheer gall, thinking, even for a split second, that I’m going to share my frosting flowers with him. No freaking way, kid. The flowers are mine, take a hike.

So now, today. This morning, I was scheduled to accept a big check on behalf of the organization I work for, from the Del Mar Rotary Club. When I say “big check”, I mean, literally “big”. Like an Ed-McMahon’s-at-your-door-with-balloons-and-flowers type of check. This was a first for me. I had to get up at 5 (a.m.!) to be sure I could get the kids up and out and dropped off in enough time to get to Del Mar by 7. All of this, actually, was a first for me, the Rotary, the big check the getting up at 5 a.m. without having just heard someone, or some dog, barfing.

Steeling myself for what has become our every morning argument where the Kindergartener insists that I told him last night, that yesterday was, in fact, Friday; I crept in to tentatively waken him. For a moment, I just studied this creature (and now, thinking of this, I understand why Microsoft Word offers scamp, imp and sprite as synonyms for “demon child”). He was upside-down on the bed, on top of the covers, pillow under his feet, a stuffed frog in a diaper and a Superman suit clutched tightly in his arms. Unexpectedly, when I finally worked up the daring to rouse him, he was quite delighted to wake in the unanticipated, rainy dark. Now, don’t misunderstand, he was still determined that today was not a school day, but was also unperturbed my insistence that, in fact, it was.

After an hour of cajoling, of tiptoeing around him on eggshells, I got him in the car and off to pre-school. Pre-school, in this case, actually means “before school”, as in a place where competent adults will gladly entertain my children in the wee hours of the morning so that I may enjoy the relative serenity of sitting in unrelenting traffic for an hour with a Venti, in a Grande cup, double shot, half-caf, lite-foam, skim caramel, pumpkin spice macchiato, with raspberry syrup and a sprinkle of basil (totally didn’t trip up the barista…still trying). And at pre-school…there was a glitch in the system.

No one showed up. Seriously. No one.

Okay, so instead of bursting into tears, I did what any rational professional woman with no emergency contacts in the same area code would do. I took them with me. Yeah, that’s right, I did it. I took them to the Rotary meeting. I bribed them with promises of doughnuts and puppy notebooks. But here’s the great thing about my kids, even the Kindergartener, they were utterly charming and well-behaved. The Rotarians insisted that instead of sitting in the Fireside Lounge of the Del Mar DoubleTree Hotel, with a stack of my business cards and two ball-point-pens, that they join us for the breakfast buffet.

By the time I got to my office at 10:40, after stopping off for chocolate sprinkle bear claws and spiral-bound puppy pads, driving said kids back to San Marcos for school, stopping into Starbuck’s and vacuuming and washing my car, word was out. Emails were flying and phones were ringing. By 11:15 I’d received four (count them…four) e-mails or phone calls from Rotarians that I’d just met that very day, saying how polite and charismatic my children were. The Rotarians were delighted, word was out, my kids are awesome. The founder and Chair of the Board, popped into my office to say how much she was looking forward to meeting these now-legendary children of mine.

So now, here he is, asleep next to me on the couch. There is pizza sauce on his face…which may not seem unusual, except that we haven’t eaten pizza in days. There is black magic marker all over the back of his right hand…but not his left, which seems weird only because he’s right-handed. His feet smell seriously bad, like old-cheese-left-in-my-car-for-eight-days-bad, while his blonde hair is bright and smells like papaya.

This few minutes, while asleep on laps, is what saves the Kindergarteners of the world from being sold down the river by their well-meaning, but exhausted and fully perplexed moms.