Monday was Teacher’s Day. Why, oh why, is there not a school calendar? As soon as I arrived at the school gate
in the afternoon, vaguely wondering why there seemed to be so many flowers
around, the girls accosted me, notified me of the holiday, and demanded to know
why they had not been prepared with gifts for their teachers, as their friends
had been.
One of my problems as a mom is that I lack the ability to
formulate a plan and not tell the girls about it, which then means, that, as
far as they are concerned, said plan is etched in stone. The other problem is that I so readily
come up with unrealistic plans.
And so, while trying to simultaneously shoulder the Rooster’s backpack,
make sure the Princess wasn’t lacerating ankles with her rolling bag, field the
girls’ clamor for a snack, and navigate the crush of grandma’s, parents, SUV’s
and motor-scooters that surround the school gate at pick-up time, I muttered
something about how maybe we could make brownies that night and the girls could
belatedly hand them out in the morning.
It’s not even worth going through the number of things I had
to forget to make that plan seem reasonable, if only for an instant. Suffice it to say that, after cajoling
and pleading my way through the three solid hours of homework that I’ve come to
know as the Monday Special (during which time I barely allowed the girls to
stop long enough to enjoy the fresh pork-buns the ayi had made at the Princess’ request), making cocoa
substitute for baking chocolate and caffeine for sleep, the morning found me
tying silver ribbon around little saran wrapped brownies, the dainty packages
kind of losing their charm when squeezed amid elbowed-aside dirty dishes and
set to a soundtrack of me shrieking ablution instructions (“don’t forget your
Coochie and Booteeeeeeeeeeeyyyyyy!”).
I was still naked in my room when I told the girls to push
the elevator button, which is why they were
in the elevator when I came out and
discovered that I couldn’t find my cell-phone (normally dispensable, but since--with
my mom still in the US, MTH in Japan, and me supposed to be at work in just tick,
tick, tick, an hour--the ayi would be picking the girls up at school and spending
the night with them, today pretty much the opposite). I hollered to the girls to come back in while I hunted,
which they did, realizing as they hit our door that the Princess had left her
book bag on the elevator, which was now headed for parts unknown.
The ululations that ensued--the Princess wringing her hands
and trying to find someone to blame, the Rooster openly weeping at this rending
of the fabric of her universe and clearly picturing the Great and Powerful
Teachers’ response to the astonishing irregularity of an entire book bag lost,
my own impolitic exhortations to “shut the f---- up everything is going to be
fine!” in a shriek that clearly implied the opposite, all interlaced with the
tweedle of my cell-phone as I called it from yet another cell-phone I own (the
idea of just taking THAT phone with me only just now--I kid you not--having
occurred to me)--will live with me forever as the sound of real-deal
panic.
The elevator returned, of course, just as I closed our front door with my cell phone in hand.
The Princess’ pink bag was sitting jauntily proud of itself in the corner of
the car. The screaming stopped
immediately, we got in, hit the button for the first floor, and had just begun
our descent, with me reminding myself not to blame China, that this kind of
chaos could (and would) happen anywhere, when the girls realized they’d
forgotten to put on their green Young Communist Sprout neck-scarves. This, the girls had previously told me,
is a sin punishable by ASKING WHERE YOUR SCARF IS. I looked at my watch, and the girls looked at me with “you
know what you have to do” looks. I
pushed the button for our floor.
Just as I did, I swear, the Princess’ bag smirked at me.
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