I suppose I am thankful that the superintendent had the foresight to call classes the night before. There was no mad dash down to the kitchen at 6 a.m. to see if the school left a message on our voice mail as to delayed starts or cancellation. But now, there is the doubt. Was the cancellation premature, made in the anticipation of a projected storm path? I’m not sure that 6 inches on the ground at 9 a.m. is necessarily treacherous conditions. It seems that school could have gone on but then that’s me talking from the other side of 11 a.m. when the children have tired of board games and books and cocoa. This is after my attempt to shift their focus out of doors, into the wonderland of ice and snow drifts, became abject failure.

We prepared for the outing with the requisite Where are my gloves? and My snow pants feel too tight, followed by kicking around on the floor trying to remove offending snow pants and tearing a hole in the fanny seam. And then there was a cry of I can only find one boot, which resulted in the removal of every last thing from the mudroom closet before the missing boot could be located beneath a new jumbo pack of paper towels. And then there was the small protest that amounted to I hate my hat because it makes me look like a baby, that inspired tears and an eventual compromise, Yes, you can wear the orange face mask that makes you look like you just robbed a 7-Eleven because I think the tell tale gap that was your front teeth actually helps to underscore the fact that you are a six year old not a dangerous criminal.

It was 10:13 a.m. and I was exhausted and skating the brink of my patience before we had even made a footprint in the pure white snow. The kids and dog bounded around in the frothiness for a few minutes, let me fire off a few pictures that will allow us to lie to ourselves in the future and look back on the day as a joyful success and, then, the whining began. Before I could even shovel off the back steps there were surly complaints and snow balls hurled and a steady drone became a constant begging to go back inside the house which was, just a few seconds before, “The Most Boring-est Place In The Entire World.”

And so we trudged back to the door, wrestled it open against the weight of the wind and tumbled back inside to remove the hats and the gloves and the boots and the snow pants. We heaped our outer wear on the radiator. Our sock feet stamped through pools of melting snow on the floor. The dog dashed to the living room and shook frigid dampness all over the carpet and the couch.

My oldest child, leaning against the door jamb between the living room and hallway, watching me towel off the rug, said, in the jaded, tired-of-life tone he’s recently perfected, “It’s 10:32 a.m. and I’ve got nothing to do.”

And I mumbled, “Only ten more hours of nothingness to go, but who’s counting?”

There was an awkward silence before I unplugged it from the wall and walked over to the waste basket beside his desk. I dropped it in, feigning indifference, perfecting a what-do-I-care flip of the hand. It landed right side up, the sad embodiment of childhood innocence there at the bottom of the wicker trash can. I left it there all weekend, hoping he might reconsider. I anticipated a whispered, “I think I’d like my night light back,” sometime during the dark, cold night. But he was more than fine without it. He was positively glib with self importance by Sunday. Announcing to his sister, “You are still a baby because you need your closet light on at night and you sleep with a doll.” He said this with a snarl, indicating that being a baby was the absolute worst thing one could be. When in fact, Judd Nelson’s character from The Breakfast Club has few redeeming characteristics and I miss the baby version of O acutely.

He hasn’t quite gotten around to rejecting the 1200 stuffed animals that reside in his room but I am steeling myself for the possibility. I will miss you Pooh, Camel, Wild Thing, Sock Monkey, Ugly Doll and Snowy Owl… Sob. The end of an era and the beginning of some new stage of development for which I am ill prepared. Are their books on how to do this surly, smart-assed stage well? I am on my way to f-ing this up. HELP!

So here are two things I’m feeling thankful for today.

#1
I am thankful for a dead fish named Robby that is now in my freezer. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not thankful that he’s dead in the straight up, Oh-joy-I-don’t-have-to-take-care-of-that-damn-fish-anymore kind of way. I’m thankful for the sorrow that his passing elicited in my O. (That sounds bad too, let me explain.) Just when I was beginning to think that O had completed his transformation into Judd Nelson character from The Breakfast Club, his fish dies and he sobs and gulps and asks to be left alone with Robby to say his goodbyes and I am reminded that there is still a sweet, sensitive, compassionate individual in that little boy body. I needed to see the softer side of O. It had been eclipsed by sarcasm and surliness for the last few weeks. I find it easy to forget that O is only seven, when he has so seamlessly adopted the attitude of an adolescent. So R.I.P. Robby, there beside the frozen blueberries and the Eggo waffles. We’ll bury you properly beneath the tulip tree when the ground thaws.

#2
I am thankful that I am NOT my neighbor BB. It’s not that BB doesn’t live kind of a charmed life with four great kids, a doting husband, a terrific house they built themselves. It’s not that BB is constantly shaming me with her selflessness. In addition to mothering four children (two of which she adopted from Korea), she teaches English as a Second Language, is the host mother to an A Better Chance student in out town, is an esteemed and active member of her church and helps her husband run their design and construction business in her free time. So there’s a lot to learn from BB and perhaps I should want to be her, BUT, after spending an evening at BB’s house, I came home eternally grateful that it was BB, not I, that was deemed competent enough to handle her household.

During the three hours that we drank a few glasses of wine and ate too much pizza, BB’s two youngest children, boys she has lovingly dubbed “The Weasels”, turned the house completely upside down. Weasel One, who is nearly three, peed on the bathroom floor, wiped it up with a stray sock and then threw the sock in the toilet. While Weasel Two, who is almost 2, washed all his big sister’s Webkinz in the bathtub, soaking the entire bathroom and then proceeded to blow them dry while standing in an inch deep puddle of water. BB just sighed and shrugged and said, “Until there’s water dripping through the ceiling above our heads, I’m just going to leave them alone.” She poured another glass of wine.

After supper BB pulled out the kettle to make some tea, only to find that The Weasels had stuffed all the Box Top coupons she had been saving for the elementary school fund raiser into the kettle that was already full with water. A year’s worth of clippings melted together in one big soggy cardboard slump. She laughed.

By the end of the evening, Weasel One was fully naked sitting on the kitchen counter eating Captain Crunch from the box and Weasel Two was emptying the recycling bin in the mudroom and pushing cans and bottles and yogurt containers through the dog door. I scurried home to the calm and the clean that is my house and breathed a deep sigh of relief, thanking the gods that I am not BB.

Now on to child number two…since the Kindergarten doesn’t have enrichment, I have a year to panic about this. Believe me, we’re getting some flashcards and drilling those “sight words” because I am not filing two law suits against the same school in two short years. Too expensive, too exhausting. G doesn’t know it yet, but she’s this family’s last great hope for academic excellence. There’s just one thing I’m worried about and it’s this picture…

Does the fact that my child stuffed her ears with Silly Putty before falling asleep indicate brilliance (a rather creative solution to the problem that was frightening monster noises in her closet), or lack of foresight (hair entanglement, pillow staining, large chunk of hair chopped off to remove orange rat’s nest)? I think I should destroy this incriminating photo so that it may not be used against her during the future trial. I’ll be damned if she’s not going to be the valedictorian of the 1st grade, Silly Putty or no Silly Putty. And there will be an immediate injunction against all sticky manipulative substances in my house, including, but not limited to, Play Doh, Modeling Magic and clay. Any breach of this injunction will be considered a serious criminal offense that merits an hour in the dark, scary coat closet and a limit on dessert intake for several long, joyless days. I’m not interested in molding artistic children, I’m only concerned with academic performance. So the fun’s officially stopped and it’s work books and word families from here on out.

Right now I’m picturing O in Saturday detention, (it’s possible he could start this childhood form of incarceration any day now with the attitude he’s sparked) exchanging riffs with the Principal Vernon.
Vernon: You’re not fooling anyone, O. The next screw that falls out will be you.
O: Eat my shorts.
Vernon: What was that?
O: Eat… My… Shorts.
Vernon: You just bought yourself another Saturday.
O: Ooh I’m crushed.
Vernon: You just bought one more.
O: Well I’m free the Saturday after that. Beyond that, I’m going to have to check my calendar.

Soon he’ll be wearing the kind of t-shirts I associate with rednecks and teenagers. Something like…