Back in the Saddle Bags

After twelve days of battling the flu, I’m finally back on my feet again. No one is as happy about that as my four year old, Lanes, who sees me not only as her mom, but also as her best friend, big sister, pet poodle, trampoline, and jungle gym. 

She was getting rather tired of seeing me slobbering on the couch, punctuating random exclamations like ‘we’re getting late for school!’ with a wheeze here and a sneeze there. Everyday she would look so disappointed when I told her I was still sick.

To celebrate, Lanes has decided to wake me up every morning by exclaiming ‘Happy Mother’s Day, Mamma!’. She circles my bed like she’s in a ring and literally jumps on me like a pro wrestler.  It’s a good thing my dutiful spouse, P, got his job settled. I wonder if extended insurance covers getting body slammed by half a camel.

While I’m rubbing my forehead and kidneys in pain, she puts a blow to my ego by adding that I am so ‘nice and soft and lumpy’. Lumpy? I sound like the dwarf that was voted off 'Snow White'.

Perhaps it’s a good time to start saving for charm school. Lanes in etiquette school will be like watching Big Foot handle fine china at a tea party. The teacher will run out screaming within minutes.

Now that I’m in good health again, the morning ‘why do we have to go to school?’ battle with Lanes has recommenced. Realizing that her pleas and tears fall on deaf ears, this week, she came up with a new plan. Instead of wailing, going limp, or feigning a fever, she stopped and earnestly asked me, ‘Mamma, do you love me?’.

I was forced to stop the assembly line going to put her lunch together and state the obvious. Who doesn’t love her own spawn? She turned her big eyes up to me and says ‘then why do you send me away? Don’t you miss me so much when I’m at school?’.  Where do kids get this logic from? I say we turn the courts over to them. 

So I told her that I send her to school because I love her and it’s for her own good and yes, I miss her, etc. I added that when I was little my mom sent me to school. Her eyes grew wide open with mischievous wonder and she gasped saying ‘aaaah, your mother sent you to school?’.

I took the opportunity to quickly put her out the door before she said 'so is that what happened to you?'. I’m sure she will say something to my mother when she calls. As it is, she thinks my parents aren’t the sharpest tools in the shed.

Whenever they call—which is daily—they tell Lanes they can’t wait to come over and hug and kiss her. She sighs and patiently explains to them that they live very faraway and they can’t just come over so quickly like when we were in the motherland.

She tells them to stay put and that she will come in a plane to see them, but they will have to wait a long time because she is all the way in Canada. Then she looks at me and shakes her head as if to say that those old folks sure are not quick on the uptake.

Any old how, the last few days, I got her ready and off to school without much ado. I did notice before leaving she would break away from me and run to her favorite stuffed rabbit, the one she holds by the ears like a freshly plucked carrot, and she'd whisper something in his ear. 

I was ready to extract the bunny from her grasp, when I heard what she was saying: “Max, take care of my Mamma when I’m at school, ok?”.  I had a Hallmark moment! Suddenly, being late for preschool didn't seem like a big thing.

She probably wondered why I wasn’t stuffing her hat on and asking her to skedaddle out the door. Instead, I gave her about a hundred kisses to her disgusted delight. She gave me instructions to stop already because she didn’t want to look messy for school. Apparently she has people to impress.

When she got home she asked me if Max looked after me and I grinned and said indeed he did. She said she needed a minute and ran to her room, hugged Max and whispered ‘thank you for looking after my mommy’ in his ear, thereby bringing on my second picture postcard moment of the day.

I decided it was a moment I wanted to etch into my brain. So when she is a teenager and brings a mangy boyfriend home, I will think of that moment before I blow a gasket. I’ll also think of it the hundred times a day she tells me to play with her because she is so lonely without a pet or a sibling.

When I related this story to my nutty sister she claimed she did the exact same thing when she was little, because apparently Lanes is just like her in every way. Good luck to me. 

She then went on to sing praises to Lanes, thereby inadvertently lauding herself (since they are apparently one and the same). Now I know fore sure that the person who invented Caller ID obviously had a sister he/she was avoiding.

When she was little, my sister loved to do fabulous things like stick bobby pins inside electricity outlets and climb onto the roof of our house.  I think that's why my parents waited so long to have me!

No wonder I watch Lanes like a hawk. Let’s hope she has enough of her sensible father in her to dilute whatever she has inherited from my sibling! Or else, we will just have to line all her clothes with bubble wrap, slap on a helmet and cut electricity to the house.

In other news, my geriatric neighbor who leaves her strollers full of trash, I mean recycling, out in the hallway has launched a vendetta on an unidentified male subject, who might be my long suffering college student neighbor.  She has put up a ferocious, dare I say unladylike, sign in the lobby cursing (literally and metaphorically) the person who stole her garbage, I mean bottles.

Considering she is always watching through her peephole and she is the only one in the building with a TV channel showing the front entrance of the building, it’s amazing that she doesn’t know for sure who did it. Perhaps she just wants to torment the college student—I noticed she does that from time to time.

One day she banged on his door and yelled at him for putting his footprint on her door.  He was almost crying when he said he didn’t do it and to end the conversation he said he will come over and clean it. I felt so bad for him. Then she told him she already took care of it. So much drama. How do I know? I could hear word for word from my kitchen.

I noticed she does prey on the meek like that—collecting souls like all the discarded items she puts in her strollers. I noticed when we first met, she thought I’d be a good bet because I liked the elderly and I was always concerned for her health.  Then one day she told me she won’t be friends with me if I’m friends with the manager of the apartment.

What is this middle school? One thing about me, I never like to be told what to do. When it was clear to her that I did as I pleased, regardless of how many megawatts I put into the smiles I flashed her, she kept me at a polite distance—until she wanted to complain about something. 

Sure enough today I’ll hear about ‘Bottle Gate’. She has also decided P doesn’t like her (thus she doesn’t like him) and I’m surprised she didn’t tell me I can’t be friends with P anymore either!

On that note, I better go do the laundry before my cranky neighbor is up for the day. For your amusement, see below a picture of the garbage trolleys, I mean my neighbor’s strollers, strategically placed next to the fire exit. More musings from BC next week…