“I love you,” she’d announced, kissing me on the nose. “And you love me. So now we can go do happy things.” And then she’d run off singing to play some invented game involving all her stuffed animals and a box of Legos.
Ever since then, though, we’ve engaged in what she calls “doing a Maslow” every time we have a problem to solve.
“Food,” she says, writing it down in neat block letters. “We are all going to starve if we do not get some food in this house.”
“The fridge is full of casseroles. Or you could eat oatmeal. I saw some in the pantry.”
Elle makes gagging noises, sticks out her tongue, and lets her head drop over onto her shoulder like she’s dead. “Lentils, Mom. And I swear one of them is tofu.”
I should insist on casserole as nourishment. They were a kind gift; the least we could do is eat them. But I also had a peek in the refrigerator and was equally uninspired by lentils and another dish with pale, nondescript chunks that jiggled when I pulled the pan out for a better look.
“Your point is made. Number one task is buy groceries. Got it. Next up—a roof over our heads. And that’s not going to be quite so easy, Elle Belle.”
“What’s hard? We live here. With Grandpa. Roof. Done.”
“Sweetheart.”
“Mom, don’t you dare even start.”
And here we are, already, right at the heart of the difficulty. Maslow had it all wrong with his neat little pyramid, because the levels are all kinds of mixed up and interwoven. In this case, shelter is all tied up in love and belonging, meaning the tug-of-war between me and Greg over Elle.
“You have school. Even smart kids can’t just skip out indefinitely.”
“School is out in, like, a week.”
“This might be a forever thing, Elle. He could be sick for a very long time.”
“Then I can go to school here. Or—I know what! You can homeschool me.” Her face lights up as she says this, glowing like a mini sun. She’s been after me to homeschool her ever since she discovered, all the way back in first grade, that she already knew most of the curriculum.
It’s not that I’m opposed to homeschooling. It’s that I’m opposed to the ridiculous concept of me as anybody’s teacher. Plus, I would have had to do battle with Greg, who has been pushing for the gifted program. At his urging, I went to one informational meeting, which was full of zealous mothers who reminded me too much of my own, and point-blank refused.
Greg has acquiesced, for now, as long as I’ve kept up my end of what he calls enrichment and I call having fun with my daughter. We take adventurous trips to museums. Run small chemistry experiments. Bake cookies, which totally counts as math. Visit the zoo and talk to the zoo staff. We’ve watched caterpillars turn into butterflies, raised praying mantises and pollywogs, and even dissected a cow heart obtained from the butcher shop.
Maybe I would be better at homeschooling than I’ve given myself credit for, but I shake my head. “There won’t be time. I’m going to need to find a job, Elle. Add that to the list as part of shelter.”
“And while you’re at your job, who is going to stay with Grandpa? See? It’s perfect. I do homeschool and take care of him. You go to work. It’s not like you have to teach me things—there’s online school.”
“Your father will never go for that.”
“We could ask him.”
This is not a new discussion, and both of us automatically assume our battle stations, shields up, weapons ready.
Elle has both hands flat on the table, palms down. Every line of her body is alive with focused energy. Her eyes are target-locked on mine. I counter with my relaxed, confident Mom stance, the one that is meant to indicate there is not even an issue to address.
Nothing to see here; move along folks.
Not that this ever works, but I try.
“What about your friends?”
She shrugs, the one-shoulder version that says she’s hiding emotions.
It strikes me that it’s been weeks since anybody has been over or since she’s asked to hang out somewhere.
“Elle?”
She sighs. “Erica’s moving to California. And Jaimie hasn’t talked about anything but boys for a year.”
“You have other friends.”
“Well, here I’ve got Mia.”
“I mean kids your own age.”
“Why? I like Mia. She actually talks about things besides boys and TV. Besides, it’s not like Kansas City has an exclusive on kids.”
And with that, all my resistance crumbles. It’s an epic collapse and feels just like one of those videos where a large building is blown up with a demolition charge. I remember well enough feeling like I didn’t fit in at her age, how hard it was to navigate the relationships with the other girls.
Besides, selfish or not, I need Elle to be with me.
“Okay,” I tell her.
Her mouth flops open and she gasps like a stranded fish. “Wait, what?”
Suddenly giddy, I grin at her. “Great idea. Solves all kinds of problems. Add researching online homeschool to that list. And homeschool support groups in Colville. Oh, and Washington State homeschool regulations. Anything we need to present a case to your father.”
Elle’s mouth closes, her eyes well up, and she melts down in her chair. Her arms go on the table, her face buried in them, her shoulders shaking with sobs.
I freeze, an electric Taser jolt going straight to my heart. Paragraphs of intact text from the parenting books I’ve read laser through my brain. Kids need stability. Structure. Boundaries. They don’t really want change. They push against the boundaries, but they don’t really want them to give way. Elle needed me to hold the line, and instead I’ve restructured our whole world order.
“Elle, honey. We don’t have to. I thought that’s what you wanted.”
She launches like a rocket up out of her chair, sending it skittering backward across the tile. “Of course it’s what I want.” She flings herself into my lap with enough force that my chair nearly goes over backward. Both of her arms wrap around my neck so tightly I can hardly breathe. “Thank you. You don’t know.” Her voice breaks off into sobbing.
I pull her into my lap even though she’s nearly as tall as I am, rocking her like I used to when she was a little girl.
“Honey, don’t get your heart too set on this. We’ve got to get through your father first.”
She sniffles and scrubs her wet face on my shoulder. “You’re the custodial parent.”
“And he’s an attorney. We don’t want to push him too far.”
She sits back then and looks at me, her expressive face transitioning rapidly between joy, tears, fear, and consternation.
“He wouldn’t go all legal on you. Would he?”
“He never has, but I wouldn’t want to push him. He might win, Elle. If it came down to a custody battle.”
“So you’re just going to cave? You’re not even going to try? Homeschooling is the dream of my heart, and you’re going to snatch it away before it has a chance.”
These lines are delivered in true drama queen fashion with one hand over her heart, a performance worthy of an old-time silent movie heroine being tied to the railway tracks. Warring parts of me want to smile, weep, and smack her.
“No, we’re going to create and present an airtight case. That’s your assignment.”
“Got it.” She flings her arms around my neck and hugs me again. “I love you.”
“I love you, too, baby girl. Now, are you going to keep writing things down? Because we are not done with Maslow yet.”
She rubs her face on my shirt, leaving wet splotches behind, and then grins at me, impish and irrepressible. “Yes, but make it quick. I have a legal brief to write.”
“God have mercy,” I mutter. “Okay. So we’ll live here and let Grandpa pay for our room and board. Our apartment lease is up next month, so we’ll let that go. But I’m still going to need a job.”
Dutifully she writes, Find Mom a job.