Thursday, September 03, 2015

They All Lived to See Another Day


When my first son was small, he dropped his pacifier to the floor.


I quickly picked it up, washed it with soap and hot water and gave it back to him. When my second son was small, he dropped his pacifier. I picked it up, dipped it in my iced tea glass to give it a rinse and gave it back to him. When my daughter was born, she dropped her pacifier. I picked it up, stuck it in my mouth to clean it and gave it back to her.
All three of them lived to see another day.

I once let my toddler daughter crawl into her bed with a face and jammie’s covered in peanut butter. 
She was tired. I was tired.
She lived to see another day.

My son dropped a dish on the kitchen floor when he was around 8 or 9 years old and it shattered.


 He looked at me with eyes wide, worried he was in trouble. There was a pile of dishes on the counter at the time and I just looked at him, swept my arms down the countertop and pushed every single one of them onto the floor ~ where most of them shattered into pieces, next to the dish he broke. And I just grinned at him and laughed. “Dishes don’t matter, we can always get new dishes. Accidents happen.” We never, ever ran out of dishes. But my son grew up and eventually, I ran out of time living at home with him as his mama.
We swept up the broken glass and laughed that day.
We lived to see another day.

I sent one of my sons to the first day of Kindergarten with his shoes on the wrong feet.


We didn’t notice it until years later when someone pointed it out in the “first day of school” picture we posted during his graduation party. 
He lived to see another day.
And nope, he doesn’t even walk funny.


I did lie to my kids about one thing when they were growing up.



When we drove by a summer pond full of cows cooling themselves in the water, I told them those cows had no legs and every morning a kind farmer brought a crane out and lowered them, one at a time into the water to float for the day. Of course, my kids figured out those cows had legs. 
We still called them floaters when we saw them.
And they all lived to see another day. 

When my three kids were really little, we once spent the entire day together in the bedroom, on the bed in our pajamas, watching TV and eating popcorn.



When it got dark, we just pulled up the blankets and went to sleep in a bed that was kind of full of kernels. I’m pretty sure a random cat or two were snoring in there, too.  It was the only room with air conditioning. It was hot out. We slept like rocks that night.
They all lived to see another day. 

She had a lunch box, but more than once I sent my daughter to school with lunch in a brown paper bag. The sandwich was shaped like a sandwich. The potato chips had salt on them.
The Oreos were double-stuffed.
She thrived and grew.
She lived to see another day.

My kids went to half-day Kindergarten and didn’t learn to read until long after Mrs. Ihde introduced them to The Letter People. They all read just fine now.
They all lived to see another day.

My children will tell you they got spit baths on the way into church many Sundays. I dispute this twisted reporting of family history but it’s three against one. 
One fact remains: 
They all lived to see another day.

When I was a busy mom, if I mopped the kitchen floor once a month, I was doing good. There were usually baskets of unfolded laundry sitting around. Our cats favorite place to sleep in the afternoon sun was on the kitchen table, right about where the main dish would sit a few hours later during supper. The toilet paper roll was usually empty.
No one except mom seemed to understand the mechanics of it. 



We cheered the big fish they caught even though Dad sprained his ankle running to help reel it in, camped out in woods during a thunderstorm even though our sleeping bags got ruined and stayed up late to watch Dr. Who with them even though we were really, really tired. 

They grew up wayyyy faster than we ever wished.
And they all lived to see another day.

Through the years, my kids came home with pockets full of rocks, random bugs, naked lady playing cards and baby bunnies. On bulk trash day they came home with cracked hamster habitats, old televisions, aquariums and cement lions from the neighbors curbs. Into our autumn front yard they dumped bags of leaves to make a big pile to hide in, after raking up all the neighbors yards.

"Weren’t they so nice to let us do that, mom?”
They played in mud puddles, caught earthworms on rainy nights and sold them from the back porch, kissed our dogs, dressed up our cats and ate the occasional sandwich smeared with full-on-fat mayonnaise that was a week past the expiration date.  

I should have checked expiration dates more often.
I could and probably should have used more Lysol.


I definitely could have spent more time sweeping.
I could’ve stayed up just a little later to sort all those socks, too..
I didn’t. I was pretty lazy.

Honestly, it was just more fun to hang out and not take life too seriously.
Guess what?
The coolest thing happened. 

They all lived to see another day. 

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