Ketchup Is a Vegetable: And Other Lies Moms Tell Themselves (20 page)

Aubrey woke up bright-eyed and excited about going to school for the first time. The whole family walked Aubrey to school that morning for her special day. I helped her find her seat, her cubby, the water fountain and gave her a quick kiss before I left. We stopped in the doorway to take a few more pictures and as we turned to leave the classroom, I saw Emma standing in the doorway blowing kiss after kiss to her big sister and best friend.

And
fine
— I was a teeny bit sad. I cried a little.

But it wasn’t a selfish sad. It wasn’t because I thought I was losing my baby, felt like I was useless or even that I felt older now that Aubrey was in school. I was sad for Aubrey and Emma as sisters and best friends.

Their entire lives they have known nothing but each other. It never mattered how often we had to move for my husband’s work. We didn’t have to worry about making friends; they were inseparable and together no matter where we were.

I knew I was going to miss her. I knew I was going to miss my wakeup calls, when she would crawl into my bed before dawn and whisper in my ear, “Hold me like a sthpoon, Momma,” before she curled up next to me and fell back asleep. No more sleeping late. I would actually have to set an alarm and get up before someone cried or climbed into my bed.

Our Pajama Days, or days when my three girls and I would stay in our pajamas all day long while I cooked, cleaned and organized, were over. The long days of Aubrey and Emma playing together in their pajamas, or more often than not just their princess panties, were over.

Although Emma and Sadie were still home for the time being, cooking wasn’t the same with Aubrey in school. I missed
both
of my helpers dragging dining chairs up to the kitchen island so they could stand tall and fight over whose turn it was to stir. I missed having Aubrey grab a pile of clean, folded laundry so she could refold it (read: wad up into a wrinkled mess) and “help” me.

But mostly I missed listening to her play with Emma. I missed their constant chatter and make-believe play. I missed watching them change into every princess dress they have in less than thirty minutes and overhearing Aubrey direct their imaginary princess lives. I missed watching Aubrey tie a rope around Emma’s waist then tether her sister to her tricycle as they reenacted scenes from 101 Dalmatians.

I missed their giggles and constant conversation when they were supposed to be napping, and Oh my God, I missed nap time! No more shutting out the world from 1:00pm to 4:00pm every day. Nope, my two youngest and I sat in the carpool line at 2:30 every single day.

Aubrey normally thinks she can do everything by herself, from brushing her teeth to crossing the street, but when it’s time to get dressed for school she is as helpless as a newborn babe. During her first year of school, if I could have left Sadie and Emma at home asleep while I got Aubrey dressed, packed and dropped off to school then I would’ve had time to put Aubrey’s socks on, and
velcro
her shoes for her when she claimed, “I don’t know how, Momma. I really don’t.”

But since I didn’t want to have social services take my kids — I couldn’t leave them in their beds sleeping while I took their sister to school. So Aubrey learned she was going to have to buck up and do some things herself that she would rather let me do for her.

One morning, while I packed Aubrey’s lunch, changed a diaper and fed her younger sisters, she managed to put her socks on her own two feet. But apparently, the shoes were just too much. So when I walked out to my car to take my first load of kids and stuff to the car, Aubrey followed me. In her socks, in the rain... with five minutes to get her to school.

I buckled Sadie into her car seat and left Emma with instructions to “BUCKLE UP RIGHT NOW!” and ran back inside to find a clean and dry pair of socks. Preferably two that matched. I helped Aubrey change her socks and put her shoes on her feet. We ran back out to the car to find Emma sitting in the passenger side of my car, with all the doors locked — shoving DVDs into the DVD player, one after another after another.

“Good morning!” a cheery neighbor called out.

“Um, hi…” Distracted I waved, right before I began beating on my car window and bellowing at Emma, “Emma O’Bryant if you know what’s good for you, you’d better unlock those doors RIGHT NOW!”

Getting ready for school was a
chore
, and now we’d have to do it every day… for the next eighteen years. I heard all you Mommas of older children saying, “Enjoy being home with your babies it goes by so fast.” I did
not
realize you were saying this because it gets harder! I thought you just meant that they are babies for such a short amount of time that I should enjoy the time I have with them. I really had no idea that the toddler years were the “easy” part.

Consider this my public service announcement to all of you hard working moms of toddlers out there — it gets easier, but it gets harder.

Eventually you won’t have the option of staying in pajamas all day long, you will have to get dressed
and
go somewhere. And regardless of whether you are a morning person or not, you will have to get up, feed and dress your kids and get out of your house before eight o'clock in the morning.

The transition was hard for me… I had no idea kindergarten would be this hard. Aubrey seemed to be doing fine until she came home from school one afternoon totally exhausted and fell apart. She began sobbing and telling me how much she hated school.

“Momma, I meeeeed you! Rock me like a baby, Momma.” I held her and rocked her like the baby she still was and did my best to console her.

“Kindergarten is so hard! I hate it!” She stopped talking briefly to gasp for air.

“I know it’s hard honey, I’m sorry.”

She sniffled and lifted her head off my chest, “Mommy, after kindergarten… will I be done with school forever?”

“Well, not exactly,” I said. I didn’t have the heart to tell her how many years she had left.

“But why Momma? WHY??? I hate it so much! I do. I hate kindergarten, it is so freakin’ hard!” She was crying so hard snot was running down her nose and her face was red. I didn’t dare correct her usage of “freakin’.”

“Because, honey, you have to learn how to read and write. Do you want to be as big as Mommy and I still have to read stories to you?”

“NOOOOO! But Momma, it is so HARD! I hab to do my work… and then, and then, I hab to go to recess…” Her voice cracked as she broke down at the stressful memories of four whole days of recess. “And, then Momma, I have to do my work, and eat in the cap-a-teria, and THEN, I HAVE TO TAKE A NAP! AND HAVE A SNACK! I HATE IT MOMMA, I HATE IT!” She was inconsolable.

“Honey don’t you want to learn to read and write like Mommy and Daddy? Then when you grow up you can have a good job that you like.”

Just to try to take her mind away from her painful kindergarten nap time memories I asked, “What do you want to do when you get big? Daddy builds things, and Mommy writes newspaper articles and books. What would you like to do?”

She picked her head up off of my chest and took a shaky breath before looking me dead in the eye and saying, “ I fink…I fink I want to write Facebooks, Momma.”

Well, chit. How was I supposed to explain to her that even though Facebook can technically be considered a full-time job, Farmville won't pay the bills or put actual food on the table?

I
was beyond excited when Aubrey started kindergarten. I thought I would have so much extra time during the day to write, work out, and get things done around the house. Life was going to get easier. Not only was my child going to be in school learning and blossoming for roughly eight hours a day, but I wasn’t even going to have to get out of my car to get her there.

Lots of schools have carpool lines these days. It is a
simple
concept. You wait in a line, single file. Just like you learned when you were in school. When you pull up in front of the actual school building, you let your child out of the car and scratch off to Starbuck’s or for your weekly pedicure… or to go home to clean the toilets, whatever.

But alas, someone somewhere will screw up even the simplest of concepts for everyone involved.

The tricky part, it seems, is not the dropping off of the child, but in the picking up. At Aubrey’s South Carolina elementary school, different grade levels get dismissed at different times, to keep traffic flowing. The kindergartners are released at 2:30pm, the first and second graders get out five minutes later, and so on with the fifth graders getting out of school at 2:45pm.

Now I’m no rocket scientist, but I
do
know how to tell time (if the clock is digital) and it seems to me that if I know my child isn’t going to be
let out of the building
until almost 3:00pm, I might not want to be the first one in the carpool line at, say, 2:25pm. But apparently, there is more than one adult in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, who doesn’t understand that they are backing up traffic for
miles
because they decided to get in the carpool line twenty minutes before their child gets out of school. And because I am stuck in line behind them, blocked in by cones on one side and a sidewalk full of students on the other, I conveniently get to wait
with
them until their child gets out of school.

After getting stuck in the carpool line twice in two days, I decided to try another tactic. I got to the school five minutes early, like I always do, and backed into a parking place that allowed me to see directly across the parking lot to the side of the school.
This
was a brilliant idea, I thought to myself. Emma and Sadie were happy in the back seat. Emma was watching a movie on the DVD player and Sadie was happily gumming her toes and cooing to Emma in the car seat beside her. I could sit there with my babies until I saw Aubrey’s class coming out of the building, jump out of the car, run across the parking lot and be back in my car before the Super Mommy next to me had time to speed-dial Child Protective Services.

“MOM-MY! I dwop my sippy cup!” Emma yelled from the back seat.

I twisted around in my seat to reach her cup and as I righted myself, I pounded the steering wheel in disgust.

“AAAAAGGHHH! You can NOT be serious!” I screamed at the gold mini-van who had just driven directly in front of me to park on a grassy knoll that was most definitely
not
a parking space.

“What is wrong with these people? You give a woman a mini-van and all of a sudden she thinks she can just
make up
her own parking spaces! Just because you have your whole life written in bumper stickers on the back of your car DOESN’T give you the right to park wherever you want to! I don’t care how many honor students and gold fish you have!”

I opened my car door and stood in the door frame to see over her ridiculously wide van and looked for Aubrey’s class. I caught the mini-van driver looking at me right before I spotted Aubrey and I did my very best to stare her into shame as I clumsily climbed down off of my car. I continued muttering as I walked past her open window, “I really can’t believe the nerve of some people! I got here early with TWO KIDS, TWO, and parked in a REAL LIVE parking space, and she thinks she can just wheel in here at the last minute and park wherever she wants!” I was furious but I
was
smart enough to snatch Aubrey and run before a member of the PTA called Child Protective Services on me for walking ten feet away from my car with my two children still in it.

As ridiculous as these people are, they’d do it. I know they would.

The members of the PTA were brainwashing my child. Everyday Aubrey came home from school with a printed label stuck to her shirt as she recited by heart her daily PTA pledge, “Momma, let’s go to Chick-Fil-A on Wednesday, October 7
^th
to have a milkshake with the principal. Everyone can go, grown-ups AND kids! We don’t have to eat dinner there, we can just go for dessert!”

“No, Aubrey.” I answered as she began to cry because
everyone
was going.

“Momma, let’s go to Cici’s Pizza on Thursday, October 8
^th
for Spirit Night! All proceeds benefit Belle Hall Elementary!”

“No, Aubrey.” I answered as she began to cry because
everyone
was going.

“Momma, if I sell ten packages of wrapping paper I can win a fabulous prize!”

Not only did my child come home from school every day with a sticker on her chest and a memorized monologue, but the school invested in one of those annoying machines that called you then asked you to “hold for an important message.” If it was
that
important I felt sure that an
actual person
would call me.