This is a two year old ramble that I came across. Maybe you already read it. I am sure I did, since I actually wrote it, but I didn't even remember. So maybe you forgot too...
Seven year old rockstar: Aspen. The pantsless wonder. No
matter how many pairs of jeans I buy her, without fail, every morning it is the
same pitiful cry that she has no pants. Finally, after what seems like hours of
endless back and forth trans-story hollering, she emerges downstairs with what
appear to be more holes than clothing on her bottom half. How can such a small
child make such large holes? Or sometimes it’s a whisp of tulle vaguely masked
in the guise of a tutu, over the remnants of what must have been once a pair of
tights, but have obviously lived through one too many easter egg hunts before
they crawled out of Grandma Donna’s basement and into Aspen’s undie drawer. The
odd swirls of grass stains and mud and what is questionably some sort of melted
candy can almost pass for tie dye. But not quite. Every few days I go upstairs
to the wreck that is a bedroom and see if I can find something for her to wear
before I am overtaken by the chaos. I can usually retrieve two or three pairs
of at least semi clean pants off of the floor from underneath Kizzie’s pee-chee
collection or a contraband stack of cups that have been missing from the
kitchen for three months. I stuff as many salvageable articles of clothing as I
can in her drawers and reemerge for air. This is the child that I swore would
never walk out my door: The one who goes to school with a rat’s nest on the
back of her head exactly where her pillow was stuck when she woke up that
morning. The one with last night’s chocolate ice cream high on her cheekbone,
obviously from the rim when one licks the bottom of the bowl, still worn
proudly on the bus the next day. The child that I wake up in the middle of the
night in a panicked sweat about, realizing that it has been at least two weeks
since I last asked her if she has showered lately. It breaks my heart at times,
because she’s such a pretty little thing, even with her missing teeth and
raggedy clothes, to know that people look at her and shed a little tear for her
sad parentlessness. This poor child. I remember in my early days of parenting,
when everything would be sunlight and roses and my children would always have
combed hair and color coordinated outfits. Now my youngest is conveniently
coordinated with all of the furniture, draperies and the 8 foot braided rag rug
on my living room floor. And she did it herself. I couldn’t be prouder. All the
ideals of the fairy tale life that I was to have… The shining princesses and
dreamy castle like home that is now a silly jerry rigged little hovel that Halle
delights in because of it’s similarity to the Weasley’s Bourough, if you will
excuse the HP reference. I have relinquished all visions of sparkling windows
and fluffy pillows and bury my head in the cleanest bedding I can find to catch
enough sleep so I can face another day of missing the mark. Days like this when
I have a head cold and feel like I can’t pull my brain out of the fire safe
that it’s locked in are extra hard. Just getting out of bed at 6 20 something
to get the girls on the bus is confusing. Getting clothes on myself and
remembering where I am supposed to be is extra tricky. Yesterday I was standing
in a store staring blankly at an aisle of something, when slowly I turned my
head to see a clock on the wall come rushing up at my face and crowing loudly
at me that it was 20 minutes after I was supposed to be at work. In the five
minutes it took me to process this reality, I think I must have stumbled out of
the store (hopefully with no unpurchased items, but I don’t remember) and
called one of my supervisors. I must have made up a semi-passable excuse
because nobody yelled at me later. These are days when my kids are lucky that
they get to eat, if I remember dinner. In this case it was apples and peanut
butter and popcorn, which they gallantly made themselves when they realized I
was a total basketcase and probably not gonna get around to feeding them until
the next morning sometime. They are troopers, these girls. They don’t have the
worst life ever, but it isn’t cake. I watch the younger ones eat up any one on
one attention they can find and feel bad that the hours I have to give to them
are poor quality and unfocused. But they’re doing alright. They have their
little niches and they keep plugging away. And so do I. and we keep on forging
our little world of mayhem and color. And Aspen still has no pants.
