The Beauty in the Beep

I live my life through a series of beeps.

Beep. The alarm’s going off. Time to get up and attempt to squeeze in a workout before Sutton leaves and the kids look to me alone for their survival.

Beep. The dish washer’s done….or the washer…or the dryer. I was going to sit down and enjoy a few breaths, but that sound reminds me that there are jobs to be done and that I’m already behind for the day…the week…the month…you get it.

Beep. I left the fridge open. I was grabbing Suttie a juice pouch when I noticed that Molly was trying to ride the dog (who shouldn’t be inside anyway) while simultaneously throwing goldfish like she’s on a parade float.

Beep. I’m spaced out at the green light at Publix. Sorry, dude in the sky-high pickup with off-road tires that have never seen dirt. I was trying to devise a way to bend the space/time continuum so that I could fit in Suttie’s haircut, lunch, naptime, and dinner, all before ball practice tonight. But I hear ya. That Natty Light isn’t going to buy itself.

Beep. Dinner’s ready. It’s okay, but not great. I’m going to have to make the kids count bites on this one. “Three more bites or no pudding for dessert. Two more bites or you’re on iPad restriction. One more bite or we kill the dog.”

The days are filled with a thousand other beeps, some real, some imagined. A thousand other demands on my time, my energy, my mental resources.

They are all blessings.

Beep. The alarm’s going off. I’m healthy and able-bodied enough to work out. I have a husband who will handle the morning chores so that I can.

Beep. The dishwasher’s done. We had food to eat that left dirty plates that are now effortlessly clean. The washer’s done; the dryer, too. We have clothes to wear, to shield our skin from the harshness of the sun or cold. They reflect who we are and what we like. We chose them freely and paid for them without worry or guilt.

Beep. I left the fridge open. Where we store more food than we need and where nutritious staples mingle with treats. Since day one, it’s never been empty, never left the kids wondering if there would be something inside. It even beeps to remind me to shut the condiment-laden door.

Beep. I’m spaced out at the green light at Publix. We just finished buying more food for the fridge. My worries consist of the timing of a haircut and eating this food and letting my child play a game. And I bought beer yesterday.

Beep. Dinner’s ready. It’s hot and it’s filling. I had time to prepare it. I tried hard. I’ll try harder next time. It opens a discussion with the kids about being thankful for what you have. It reminds me to be thankful.

Yesterday, we celebrated House Day. We hung home-made construction paper chains and drew pictures of houses and made cupcakes (because all celebrations require cupcakes). A week ago, I didn’t know what House Day was. Now I do. Suttie explains it best. “It’s a day to celebrate your house and that you have a house because some other people don’t. It’s like your house’s birthday where you say ‘I like you, house.’”

He came up with the idea after we had a talk about the child we sponsor and his living conditions in post-earthquake Haiti. He told me about his festive plans, and my first thought was, “Oh no, this is gonna be a lot of work. One more thing for me to do…” It was a weak moment. A moment I regret, but that I choose to carry with me to remind me that I’m blessed. And if I can’t respect my blessings enough to celebrate them, then I deserve them even less than I thought.

Beep. The alarm’s going off. No workout today. It’s house day. Today, we decorate and draw and sing and dance. It’s hokey. It can’t be like this every day. But today it is.

Beep. The cupcakes are done. They’re delicious. The kids don’t like them because they’re key lime, which means more for me. #blessed.

Beep. The computer is up and running so that we can look at pictures of houses from around the world, marveling at how other people live. It’s the first time that I’ve ever seen a yurt.

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I live my life through a series of beeps.

They are all blessings. They aren’t the beeps of monitors attached to a sick child. They aren’t the beeps of a smoke alarm as our house sits ablaze and our belongings turn to ash. They aren’t the unwitting beeps of the mail carrier’s horn as he drops a foreclosure notice at our door.

They are friendly, and they are welcome.

A week ago, I didn’t know what House Day was.

Now I do.

House day pictures

The one that made me cry.

Tomorrow Suttie turns 5. It’s impossible to digest that it’s been 5 years since I was cleaning my baseboards, anticipating being induced the next morning, and thought, “Hmmm…am I in labor?” 5 years since I called my friends who’d already had kids and my mother to ask them if I was in labor. 5 years since I called Sutton at work and told him to meet me at Burger King because I was, in fact, in labor, but had waited to take a shower, apply makeup, and straighten my hair, thereby putting us into a bit of a time crunch. 5 years since I met a chubby-cheeked, completely snuggable little boy who, thank the Lord, still likes to cuddle with his momma.

And while today and tomorrow will be days of remembrances – “remember when he pooped while you were giving him his first bath, remember when he was terrified of that stuffed cow, remember when he used to say ‘Bee-ya’ instead of ‘Bailey,’” there will also be days of looking forward, which is something we do all the time anyway: “He’s so sweet and sensitive; I’m already dreading his first broken heart.” / “The kid’s crazy smart. We have to make sure that he uses it for good instead of evil.” / “He’s going away for college. That’s final.”

5 seems big to me; 5 marks a change. He’s transitioning from little kid to kid. He’ll start kindergarten in the fall. He’s losing all of the lisps and language hitches that sustained his babyhood. He says “dominoes” instead of “donimoes.” He wants to take showers and apply the shampoo himself.

This post seems sad, and, of course, in a way, it is. I’m his mother. My chest clenches tightly when I hear him say “Mom” more than “Mommy.” My eyes mist when I watch his toddler videos and realize that he’ll no longer play with “Tono the Train”; it’s Thomas now.

But it’s happy, too. He’s 5. He’s healthy. He’s happy and blessed. He knows love, how to give it and how to receive it. I am so immensely proud of him. He’s caring and good and kind. He’s no longer afraid of a stuffed cow, and it’s been weeks since he’s slung mashed carrots on the walls. He makes me a better person by reminding me of what gentle innocence can be.

So, tomorrow, when he blows out a giant #5 candle with his eyes closed and makes a wish for more Skylanders or for a later bed time or for the end of all human suffering (each equally likely), I’ll be making a wish as well. A wish for his continued happiness, a wish that, as he grows, he doesn’t lose the qualities that make him essentially Suttie, his goodness and his compassion. A wish that he will grow up strong and confident, but that he won’t do it too quickly. That we’ll have a few more years of Legos and Ninja Turtles and wanting to hang out with Mom and Dad, years of just being a boy who should be in no rush to be a man.

Take one step closer, my friend, and find out what Lemon Breeze tastes like…

I’ve been on mommy blog hiatus because, when I add teaching into the mix of my already hectic schedule, I have to save all of my creative energy for writing comments like, “Do you even come to class?” or “Your incorrect use of there, their, and there makes me want to drink bleach” on student papers.

But I’m breaking this self-imposed interval for an important public service announcement: Keep your #%$% germs at home!

This has been the sickest year in the O’Neal household to date. And it’s not because we’re unclean…I scanned the first few lines of a study with a bunch of statistics and other maths that said that our lax bathing schedule actually increases immunity.  And it’s not because we don’t take vitamins…since they came out with gummies, we’ve been all about the supplements.

No, it’s not any of these things. It’s you. You who stood behind me at the grocery counter sneezing into the ether. You who coughed on your hand and then used it to open the door at work. You who *gasp* waved at my toddler when your stomach was doing noxious flips.

And, unfortunately, it’s me. Because I have also made the unwise decision to grace a public forum with a snotty nose and a sore throat.  But no more, I tell you! Because I’m a firm believer in you get what you give, and maybe if I don’t give anything, I won’t get anything. Karma is law.

The worst sick moment of the year for me came when my son and I struggled with a weeklong bout of H1N1. SWINE FLU, people! The entire week I had to rely on my husband and thank my husband and grovel to my husband. It was excruciating because, if anybody insists on being the martyr of the family, it’s me. And here he was heating up towels and making soup and running out for Gatorade and just being all kinds of obnoxiously caring.

I will NOT go through that again.

So the next time you get the sniffles, and you think, I’m just gonna run up to Publix for a bottle of wine and a free cookie, DON’T. You hear me? Because if I’m there and I see you wipe your nose with your hand and then open the freezer, I’m gonna start shouting, “Unclean! Unclean!” and spray your ass with Lysol.

P.S. Pick up milk.

Dear Future Suttie and Molly,

You’re welcome.

You’re welcome for whooping your tails when you needed it. You’re better for it, which means that it was worth the tears (yours and mine…secretly shed in the closet after the fact).

You’re welcome for caring enough to show you love but also discipline and love in the form of discipline. I have seen too many children with constant praise and no punishment turn into butthole adolescents and asshole adults. I don’t want that for you, and I wasn’t put on this earth to make you feel good about your bad choices.

And, yes, I realize that you are growing up in what many have dubbed an “entitlement culture.” And that’s fine…as long as you understand that I, too, am entitled. I am entitled to spank your butt, to revoke your freedoms, to enforce my rules, and to embarrass you in public. So choose wisely, my dear ones, so that I can invoke my other privileges of showering you with affection and rewarding your good judgment.

Now, you may be thinking, Mom, what has brought on this sudden bout of sincerity and plain speaking? Well, it all started with a normal Wednesday morning trip to Walmart. Ah, Walmart, the cradle of life for misbehaving children, both of you included, who seem to lose every lick of sense as soon as we cross that ill-maintained threshold.

On this occasion, Suttie, you were at school, and I’d remembered to load up a snack bag for Molly, so things were on the up and up. I cannot, however, say the same for the poor mother of at least three who I encountered in the food storage aisle.

This unfortunate soul was trying to wrangle her very loud, very active boys into her cart as one was ripping Ziploc containers off the shelves to build a fort and another was jumping up and down in the main area of her buggy like a ritalin test monkey. I didn’t realize there was a third until I saw her bend down and try to coax him from beneath the cart where he was hanging on for dear life upside-down with his back against the “coke rack” like a hissing possum. She was clearly overwhelmed, and I couldn’t help but think, “Woman, where is your wooden spoon?!”

Then, just as I was turning my cart around to give her some privacy in which to wrench the conch back from Jack, Piggy, and Ralph, the Ziploc engineer sauntered up to me and smacked me on my thigh. Yes, smacked a total stranger. Not really knowing what to do, I simply said, “Hi,” and looked at Mom, sure that she would prompt him for an apology or, at the very least, devour him whole. I would have been happy with either.

But instead of correcting his behavior or forcing him to admit fault, she looked back at me and muttered an exasperated, “Kids!”

I would have gone with “demons,” but I rarely argue semantics in Walmart. And after letting out another defeated sigh, she called for my attacker, leaving the containers on the floor, and wheeled her cart onward, with Bubbles still going ape-shit up top and the possum still hanging and hissing from the bottom.

Now, you two are not perfect, and Molly, sweetheart, at times, you border on psychotic, but by now, you both know that homey don’t play that. I will never be okay with you disrespecting and purposefully disobeying me or acting with the intention to hurt another. Never. ever.

And I will gladly cut other moms (and dads) slack because kids misbehave, they act up, they go wild. When they exit the walls of their homes, they think that none of the rules apply, that every store, mall, playground, and restaurant is a Lord of the Flies-style anarchist state. But as a parent, you have to do something. ANYTHING! Even a step in the wrong direction is better than no step at all. If you yell too much or lecture too much or invoke the Devil too much, you can rein it in and begin again. But if you do nothing, then their young, but acute sense of logic says that what they’re doing is okay. And if they feel validated in doing whatever they want, regardless of appropriateness, at 6, then you can’t question why they share that mentality at 16.

The whole situation reminded me of an encounter that we had with a father and son right after the 2011 tornadoes, which devastated parts of this area. Your father and I were helping to clean up the remains of a friend’s nearly destroyed home, and we noticed a teenage boy working his tail off over here, over there, doing whatever he could to help. When a local church brought around sack lunches, your dad and the boy and the boy’s father all sat down to take a much-needed rest. But the father, noticing that the boy had a lunch when not everyone had been served, told him to give his lunch to your dad (who was still waiting) and to help pass the rest out before eating his own. After the boy left, my husband complimented the father on how well behaved and hard working his son was, and the father simply responded, “I stays on his ass.” It has become our parenting mantra.

And although I hope that today was a fluke and that the mother who I met was just having one of those days (we all have them – the days when I can’t tell you “no” anymore, when we’ll have to start again tomorrow), I have a sinking feeling that her sons won’t turn out to be the well behaved, hard working kind.

So you’re welcome, my loves. I care about you enough to correct you, to hug you, to scold you, to tickle you, to question you, to love you…they are all equally important to me. You are entitled, yes, that is true. You are entitled to my love and also to my direction. And you are blessed because your father and I stays on your ass.

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Dear Mom,

Thank you.

Thank you for the whoopings, the spankings, the pops, the stink eyes, the scoldings, the lectures. Thank you for taking the time to set me right when I was wrong, even when you were tired from work and overwhelmed with my extracurriculars, when you would rather have been hugging your little girl or, God forbid, taking a moment to eat a hot dinner or just catch your breath.

It made a difference in the person I’ve become. And only through adult eyes can I truly see the value of those less-than-fun memories. I now know that it was hard for you, too…that it was necessary…that it was done purely out of love.