Mama

My big girl wished me dead today.

I don’t think she meant it. She pulled together some phrases and snippets from the various tweener shows her babysitter exposes her to on occasion and came up with a combination that had something to do with me learning my lesson in heaven.

My crime? I turned off the TV during dinner.

Daddy was home late from work and the atmosphere had been degenerating since early afternoon, when Henry decided he would boycott his nap. He was, by his own admission, “sleepy eyed,” but refused to be soothed back down.

It was all down hill from there.

The salvo my daughter fired over her crustless grilled cheese sandwich hit me right in the breadbasket. I’m so tired right now. The kids haven’t slept well and my husband and I are at odds at the moment. So when this child — this girl who I bore and feed and clothe and handle as carefully as an egg — looked at me with haughty eyebrows and told me to stick it, it hurt.

It also enraged me.

I am pulled six ways to Sunday right now. I have obligations coming right out of my ass and to hear that small, sweet voice telling me off sent me flying.

I yelled. I sent her to the naughty chair. I was mean to her, asking her over and over what it would feel like if she woke up tomorrow and never saw Mommy again.

She cried. Henry cried.

And then I cried.

Oh, it was a dandy afternoon.

It didn’t get much better. Henry rubbed a faceful of ketchup on the furniture and I grabbed him just a little too roughly after he ran, pantless, from my grasp. Finally I marched them upstairs for an early bath and bedtime, hanging on to what little dignity I had left after telling off a 5-year-old.

She gets nervous, Emmie does, when she’s in trouble, and she laughs. It’s nerves, I know it is. But to see her smile when she’s been so disrespectful already adds fuel to the fire. She tries to act older than she is, throwing her enormous vocabulary around in an effort to deflect the consequences.

She’s a lot like her mother.

I managed to get them both into bed without having a stroke and now it’s almost midnight. I am so tired that I am no longer sleepy, if you know what I mean.

I laid in bed for awhile, looking at the ceiling and feeling guilty. I barely see Emmie right now. She goes to school from 9 am to 3 pm, and by the time she gets home the day is slipping away into evening. There’s dinner and chores and homework.

I sit with her every night before she goes to bed, but she watches her TV show while I finish up my work. I don’t feel like I spend any time with her at all right now.

I miss her. I miss my baby. She’s growing up. She has two giant chompers in the front of her mouth where two baby teeth once resided. She is reading at the second-grade level. She wants to get married to Phineas from “Phineas and Ferb” and she has a secret world of girlhood friendships at school of which I am not a part.

I don’t know what happened. I blinked and here we are. I’m a walking cliche, but I don’t care. I want my baby back.

I got up from bed and walked to her pink seashell room. She lay, one arm flung over her head in a salute, on her white pillow. I hesitated for a minute but then I climbed into bed with her.

I curled around her. She sighed in her sleep and pushed closer to me.

Mama.

Mama, I love you.

She always has talked in her sleep. My name was always on her lips, back when the baby monitor was in her room. Mama! She would cry out in the night. Mama! She would murmur and roll over, settling back in.

Mama.

An incantation. An affirmation. A prayer.

Mama.

I feel like Mean Mommy is replacing that softer-sounding parent. I march my family through our days, trying my best to cram 25 hours into a 24-hour day. I am a drill sergeant, cook and chief bottle washer.

But tonight, in a twin bed with my sweaty girl, I was Mama again, if only for a few moments. She pushed me away with her long legs, turning on her side and pulling her stuffed rabbit close to her chest.

This week I took her for a check-up at the doctor, and as we talked about her new measurements — 46-and-a-half inches, thank you very much — I said she was big and little all at the same time.

“That’s not true!” she giggled, her bottom peeking out from the back of her examination gown.

“Oh,” I said. “It’s true. You’re a paradox.”

“What’s a paradox, Mama?” she asked.

“That’s when something is two things that are opposite, all at the same time,” I explained, smiling at her.

“Mama,” she said. “I am a paradox!”

Oh, how she is.

Tagged as: motherhood, The Poo