Long Ago & Faraway Memories of An Endless Summer

It is the end of August and school starts in 89 hours and 56 minutes.

Since mid-June, when school recessed for the summer, I have lived with three headstrong daughters, day-in and day-out, on a tight budget, with no camps to fill their days or free me from mine.

This is like enrolling in a mountaineering rope course, but instead of teaching you to climb Kilimanjaro, you hang mid-air, cold and naked against the raw edge of tween-age angst!

To make this more fun than a cushy career and a fat paycheck, I have become — a pothead.

Since then my ability to handle random acts of senselessness is greatly improved.

ME: “Oh, babe, why are you crying? “ Girl aged 11: “I hate my hair! No matter what I do it’s still frizzy! Why didn’t you wake me up sooner so I could take a shower!?!?”

ME: “Well, I, uh….”  Interruption by Girl aged 8: “MOM! She’s driving me crazy! She follows me around everywhere and copies everything I do. Get her away from me!!!!!!!!”

ME: “Well, I, uh…”  Interruption by Girl aged 4: “Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa. My sisters are the meanest sisters in the whole-wide world. Can I have a cookie?”

My steady companion, a slight but persistent headache, is leftover from grinding my jaw all night. I wonder when my cracked teeth will give way and I’ll get an appointment with one of those cosmetic dentists like everyone on reality TV shows do, so I, too, can have a pearly white smile.

I look at myself, the existential question deep in my eyes, “Who ARE you?” How did YOU end up without a nanny and a corner office?”

The unfortunate result of this stateless state-of-mind is that my husband is not only the main breadwinner; he also has become the “woman of the house.” Not that he cooks and does laundry, if I am to put women in their old-school role. Realistically, he now calls the shots. He decides things. Like, what kinds of plants should we remove from our shaggy, perennial garden border, and which furniture items should he place on Craigslist to help rid the house of a look he is just not that into.

Because I am peri-menopausal living with pre-adolescents, I regress to my former teenage self and surrender to his decorating declarations with a snarky smirk on my face, as if to say, “Sure, Mr. Asshole. Go to work all day and come home to tell me how to do MY job!” But he continues pointing things out like he studied the last 10 issues of “Better Homes and Gardens” on the ferry ride home, which is way more than I have done in the past year.

His inspection of the house comes to a stop in our bedroom where he eyes the Japanese-style duvet. “I never really liked these bedcovers,” he said. “And all these pillows on the bed. Can’t we just have the ones we sleep on?”

Sure. GONE. I mutter obscenities under my breath as I add the bedding and decorative pillows to the pile in the garage. Did he really just say he didn’t like our beige-colored living room wall?

My inner-child rage (I learned about this on Spirit Rock’s website. Om. Breathe. Om) is cut short when I hear the unmistakable sound of a toddler falling down the stairs. She has scraped only her nose, thankfully, but her eyes betray the sense that the world has let her down. Nope. Just her parents. We never replaced the wooden banister after painting the walls in the stairwell. Oops.

The rejection of my custom-made bedcovers coupled with her death defying, stair rolling has undone me. I seek refuge from my pushover plight and tell Mr. Perfect that I’m going for a walk. I grab my bag, plug in my earphones and light a spleef as I walk down the street, wondering if I’ll get thrown in jail. But all that happens is a temporary reprieve from the noise of the house and time to think for myself. This is the best time of all.

When school begins, I can only hope some extra hours without kids in the house will usher in a repossessed version of me. It can’t come soon enough. My husband has replaced the old-fashioned wooden banister with a $20 plastic pipe from the plumbing department at the local hardware store. Even though I can’t smoke from it, that pipe on the wall is looking pretty damn good and I still have a little something left from my stash.

Sigh. Only 87 hours and 19 minutes left to go ‘till school starts.

Note: School has since started. Uh, how many days, hours and seconds left ‘till summer?