Mommies, Mittens, and Music

Sometimes, getting a six-year-old ready for school is like a cruel joke. This morning was one of those (too many) times for me. I guess I've been conditioned to prefer singing to a class of squirmy eighth-graders at 8 in the morning to getting my own kid out the door. Or, perhaps, being in a boxing bullfighting ring. For starters, he hadn't even completed his weekly homework packet, and this, after having received the assignment exactly one week earlier (last Friday, not this past Monday), upon my request. I thought we might have more time over the weekend to get started. Wrong again. Here he was, on Friday morning, with seven pages left to go.

We slogged through this process for over an hour. accompanied by intermittent requests to turn on the television or get the crayons so he could draw in his sketchbook. Why don't sketchbooks count toward homework? When I was that age, my thing was playing the piano. I would "practice" in order to procrastinate not only on homework, but chores, annual physicals, tooth extractions -- you name it.

It's 8:50 and we're finally ready to leave!! He's actually wearing his coat and shoes. "Yipee," I thought, "This is going to be smoother than I thought." He even ate all of his oatmeal.

So we're late. So he still had three sentences left to compose that he didn't finish. At least this was better than last week. A short-lived, contented silence...

"MOMEEEEEE!! I want some MITTENS!"

Mittens. A taller order than anyone knows. My husband is The Attic Keeper. Only HE knows where the various and sundry unmatched mittens, hats and gloves are. I think he prefers it that way. As soon as Tax Day arrives, or when he is in town, whichever comes first, Attic Keeper will remove all the storm windows, gather up the various and sundry unmatched mittens, hats, and gloves, throw in a few pairs of boots, coats and sweaters, and gleefully head up to said attic where he finds the most mysterious-colored UNLABELED Rubbermaid bins, plunks the stuff in, and seals them shut, never to be heard from again -- until, perhaps, sometime in the neighborhood of October 25. The storm windows he puts God-knows-where. They might even be in plain sight, but because they are transparent and I have a rare eye disorder, they might as well be somewhere in China.

And here's the rub. Attic Keeper is currently ensconced in a tony basement somewhere in Chicago, where he spends his days at Internet Cafes and his nights awaiting the Next Big Break as Iago when he will be whisked up out of Seat W10 at Lyric Opera of Chicago and have approximately 6:49 (minutes!) to get his adorable butt onstage and into boots and armor and warble away for real. Anyway, that's where he is. Not in my attic at 8:55 am on this day, anyway. I rarely need this stuff. I hate coats, mittens, and the like. We should really live somewhere in the tropics, because none of us really believes in outerwear.

But here I am. I'm sure my son was the only one without mittens or a coat at the zoo field trip yesterday. I wasn't being BadMom this time. I did ask him three times if he wanted to wear his coat, and he said no. It was probably a good choice, because around noontime I'm sure none of the kids needed theirs either and tried to wad them up in their backpacks or throw them at the teacher. But GoodMoms are supposed to mummify their children, and I had fallen short. I'm sure at least one or two of his smarty-pants classmates (and I know exactly who they are) chirped at him, "NOOOOOAH! Where are your mittens?" (subtext: "Doesn't your Mommy love you?") Mittens. Overrated. But here I am. Once again, it's time to play Hide N' Seek in the attic with no time to spare. Then Attic Keeper wonders why things look like a cyclone just hit up there. I never know what I need from one minute to the next, let alone where to find it. Bingo! Two bins and I got it. A pair of little black shrunken-looking Michael Jackson gloves. He loved 'em. BIN - GO. Off we go.

At school, we were greeted by Miss Shelley, the... I don't know what her title is, but she is like the Jewish mother I never had. She writes out the late slips for all the deril--I mean delinqu-- I mean latecomers at Noah's school. She knows me very well from the other two children that went before him. I have jokingly told her many times that she should just make about two dozen copies of late slips with Noah's name already written on them. Especially for Fridays, which are my "day off." Funny thing, isn't it, that this is when he is late most often?

I mutter something under my breath..."It's like pulling teeth...mumble, grumble.."

"WHY??" intones Miss Shelley with The $10,000,000 Question.

"I have to tell him 25 times to do his homework. He refuses."

"Well, what DOES he do?"

"He loves to draw. It's compulsive, relentless. He does it all the time. I suppose it's like how I was as a kid. I'd always play piano instead of doing my homework."

Miss Shelley smiled. "So did I!! No matter what my mother did, I had to practice. We're all like that, all the same. They need to know that the people who went before them all have been there, done that. My daughter teaches 7th and 8th grade..."

"Bless her heart!!" I blurted, with a pontifical gesture.

"One day, she caught a student cheating, and he wasn't very good at it. She let him go at it for awhile then summoned him over, 'Pssst. I know you've been cheating. If you're going to cheat, at least do it well. Let me show you how it's done.' The kid was flabbergasted."

"I don't think he'll ever forget that day for the rest of his life."

"You can bet not! What they need to realize is that we've ALL been exactly where they've been at one time or another."

God bless Miss Shelley. Her words sure blessed me this morning.