"Where?" - Part 1

The best case scenario for a school day morning is that the children are both in pleasant moods, getting ready as directed, no one is complaining of a malady that would keep them from attending. The worst case, one of the kids can't find something. Many of these things can be skillfully ignored except for the following - Where are my shoes and where is my homework? Both of these questions raise my heart rate and make me start to sweat. (It’s like aerobics – after this kind of morning, I don’t feel the need to work out.) In the blink of an eye, that one word, “where” can turn a sunny, happy morning into a disaster movie.

When this sort of catastrophe strikes, I want to be the calm mommy who murmurs reassuring things to the upset child like, “take a deep breath,” and helps them re-trace their steps to find the lost item. Or, I want to be the organized mommy who has designated a place for every item and sure enough, when we go hand in hand to look together, the items are just where they should be! Or, the natural and logical consequence mommy who lets the children figure it out themselves by asking helpful questions like, “How do you want to handle this?”

Instead, I am the kind of mommy who is already running late and starts racing around the house, scurrying this way and that way, frantically trying to find the items while alternately shouting ideas of places where they should look and mumbling PG-rated obscenities under my breath. Panicked, flushed, frenzied, the search continues. After the screaming (mine) and the tears (mine) fail to produce the missing item, I start to problem solve. I think I’ve had some clever solutions to these dire situations.

Last year, Secret Service had to wear dress shoes to his charter school each day and one morning when he couldn't find his current pair, I felt like I saved the day by finding the dress shoes from the year before. Instead of gratitude, Secret kept saying his toes were scrunched and going numb. Another time, Sport couldn't find his shoes and I managed to find a matched set of pool shoes. The pool shoes fit him and I thought we were ready to walk out the door but he objected, claiming that they weren't appropriate for a snowy day. I offered him a pair of socks but he still took exception to the plan. One time when Secret was younger and couldn't find his shoes, I tried to convince him that wearing a pair of slippers would be a good idea and make him appear creative and imaginative. He didn't buy it and either did Science Girl. She said it would make him look like he was on a day pass from a mental institution. The only time I was successful was when Sport was younger and I talked him into wearing bulky snow boots on a warm spring day by saying that they reminded me of the boots a clone trooper would wear and that if he found puddles or mud, he could jump in it and I'd be OK with that.

Once, when Secret Service and I were searching for his completed homework, we thought to look in the trash can. We discovered the homework, intact, but covered with coffee grounds. While we both hyperventilated, Science Girl, composed and unflappable, placed the stained paper (with coffee grounds clinging to it) in a large plastic baggy, much as she would handle something contaminated in the lab and happily presented this to Secret to take to school. Secret looked at her like she was handing him a severed head to take to show and tell.

Science Girl and I try so hard, I don't know why the kids aren't more appreciative.