by Joyce Slaton posted in Mom Stories
I have finally figured out something that’s been bothering me for years. It’s the reason I’ve so often found myself wailing at Violet “Why are you being so crazy on your birthday/Christmas/Easter/the first day of summer?” We have a tendency to get into giant fights on days when special things are happening, and now I know why. The special days are awful because of the specialness.
Violet is a real creature of habit, which I’ve known for a long time. Changes in routine throw her off. I know to expect a week of whining and general attitude after each daylight savings time change, and we still put her to bed at 7 p.m. because every time we try to move it later she’s a pill the next day. We eat breakfast by 8, lunch at noon, and dinner at 6; you can set a watch by us. It’s not me that wants it, either. It’s all her. Every time we deviate from the schedule there is hell to pay.
And to be truthful, Vi’s not alone. I volunteer at her school weekly, and whenever there’s a fire drill, an assembly, any change of the routine, I can tell the difference in the class. That’s the day they’re all chewing on their sleeves and punching each other. Even when it’s something great, the change in routine makes them nuts.
So why did it surprise me that after a day of delirious fun at Violet’s school carnival Saturday, we were dragging away a column of screams, practically by the hair?
“I’m HUNGRY,” she emotes, planting her feet at the school gate. “My feet hurt! I can’t walk anymore!”
“Violet, we have to go home, that is where the food is,” I tell her reasonably.
“I’m HUNGRY!” she shouts back at me.
“Right, well, we will feed you! We have to go home.”
“Mommy, I’m hungry!”
“Are you nuts or something? I keep telling you, let’s go where the food is.” I start to pull her hand away. She screams like she’s been burned. People are looking. Fury bubbles up in me like sap. I emptied my wallet for you all day and this?
“That hurts, that hurts! Daddy, Mommy hurt me!”
“Oh my God, all I did was grab your hand,” I look at Phil mutely. You get she’s nuts, right? It’s not me. You get that? He stares back at me, helpless. We are both wondering how we’re going to get this small crazy furious person across the street to our house.
“Hungry, hungry, oh,” she weeps.
“Come on,” says Phil, cajolingly. We play Good Cop/Bad Cop sometimes. “Come on, I’ll just take your hand and” she screams again. “Wow, not in my ear. Just, just, you have to come with us, and we can get you some food.” Somehow that works, and she accompanies us across the street and into the building, but promptly settles down in the lobby and refuses to move.
“Good Lord, this is insane, I’m going to go make you a drink, you will have to come up and get it,” I tell her from the staircase. I make a peanut butter banana smoothie for her and coax her up the stairs with a crooning “It’s cold and frosty.” She is hot, I know, and tired, and hungry. But she takes one sip of the smoothie and starts crying.
“It doesn’t taste good, it tastes like water, I won’t drink it.”
I’m done in at this point because I realize I’m considering smacking her right on her bare shoulder with the pancake turner, and I have to go in my room and lock the door and stare out the window thinking about a Caribbean island where there are no children allowed, just waves and warm sand and darting blue fish and cold beer. From the kitchen I can hear her wailing “I’m hungry!” and Phil responding “What do you want to eat?” over and over again.
But I can’t hear it, I’m on a Caribbean island, far away, making elaborate plans of how I’ll never go to another carnival, no, never again. Never again. I have a headache, Violet. And now I’m crying too. You break me down.
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