But I am. We all are. We are so very thankful for parents who loved us well. It still brings such security to be your daughter, and I am halfway through my life. I have submitted my proposal to God for the end of your earthly lives, and it involves you dying peacefully in your sleep at the exact same time, holding hands, in forty years. I figured Dad could live to be 109 easily because he still runs four miles a day, and Mom could reach 105 because she cooked with so much oat bran from 1988 to 1991.
In the meantime, we kids will keep having babies and launching them into the world for a while, and we will still bring them all over to your house to eat baked goods and climb your trees and shoot pool while we drink wine on your porch. The middle place still has a lot of life left, so we’ll store up these years like a treasure, remembering them one day just as fondly as the first phase of our family when we were dirty kids drinking water out of the backyard hose. Of course, in a hundred years, no one will remember any of us and our story will be lost in obscurity, but for us, for all these years when we were kids and then grown-ups, when you were young parents and then grandparents, this is the only story that ever mattered, and it was such a marvelous one. The best story I ever imagined.
HOW TO (PART FOUR)
HOW TO GET A TODDLER DRESSED IN THREE EASY STEPS
1. Pick out perfectly matched outfit the night before. Secure toddler approval before bed.
2. Show toddler outfit in the morning. Recognize a violent, abrupt change of heart.
3. Listen to thirty minutes of high-pitched wailing.
4. Try to make sense of what has happened to your life. How is this what you are doing with your Monday morning?
5. Ask toddler to pick out clothes for self with some guidance, of course.
6. Suggest a shirt to match the pants.
7. Give up and let toddler leave house wearing slippers, sparkly tutu, hair in five pigtails with multiple clips, pajama shirt, and snow pants. You can’t care about everything.
HOW TO PERPETUATE WELL-INTENTIONED LIES TO YOUR CHILDREN
Phase 1: When your oldest child loses his first tooth, create a fanciful story of a beautiful tooth fairy who magically retrieves the treasured tooth from the adorable satin tooth bag under his pillow, leaving a shiny silver dollar and a trail of sparkly fairy dust from his bed to the window sill. Take seven pictures. Document in that year’s album. Put on Instagram.
Phase 2: Fast-forward to the second or third child and about twenty teeth later. The satin bag is long gone. You’ve depleted your supply of silver dollars. You are running a crap operation now. Panic as your child greets you in the morning with sad, forlorn eyes to report that the tooth fairy didn’t come (again). Feign shock at this travesty, grab a couple of dirty dollars from your wallet, and race to their room loudly insisting she must have missed it. Shove the crumpled cash under the pillow. Throw the tooth fairy under the bus to child: “She really needs to be more careful when she leaves her bounty. She is getting sloppy. I think she might be hitting the sauce.”
Phase 3: Fourth child? No shock. You’ve run out of freak-outs for teeth. The freak-out drawer is empty. You casually tell your kid: “The tooth fairy left your money in my purse because you didn’t pick up your toys last night and she was afraid of getting hurt stepping over them. How much? It’s like $1.67 in change. Just look in the bottom of my wallet.”
HOW TO GROW AN INSANELY LONG CHIN OR NECK HAIR WHEN YOU’RE THIRTY-SEVEN
1. Blink. That should do it.
Programming Note: Attend an important outing or event in broad daylight. This should ensure your medical marvel will be not only record-breaking but easily visible to all onlookers while remaining obscured in your bathroom mirror.
HOW TO TALK TO YOUR TEENAGER
1. Slowly enter the beast’s cave, throwing darting glances side to side as you scan the room for living or dead things. The smell suggests a corpse. You hope for just an old glass of milk. It’s hard to know.
2. Assess teenager on bed or at computer. If thumbs and fingers are moving, texting or typing is happening. Wait for the teenage invitation: “What?!” Ah, he sees you.
3. Initiate conversation, which is mostly just you asking questions and deciphering which yes, no, I guess, and grunt go with each question. Good talk.
4. Casually ask teenager if he knows what aforementioned smell is and then retreat slowly as he death-stares you out the door. The smell does not affect him. He cohabitates with the smell. He defends the smell. The smell is only your problem.
5. Remind yourself he does love you and this is just a phase because everything is weird in his head right now, and rest assured you have the passcode to his phone (that you pay for) should you become concerned and need to read his texts later while eating popcorn.
6. Spray Febreze liberally on everything after he goes to sleep, including his actual body.
HOW TO MEET AN IMPENDING DEADLINE
1. Worry, overthink, and over-emote about the task. Make yourself a nuisance to all listening parties. Get on at least seven people’s last nerve lamenting your deadline.
2. Get very serious about making a plan. Set up your workspace. Light a candle. Pray to Jesus and also to God. Set mug of steaming coffee next to your laptop. Adjust the lighting. Play gentle and unintrusive Pandora station on level two. Take deep cleansing breaths. Meditate for three to five minutes.
3. Check Facebook.
4. Check Instagram.
5. Check Twitter.
6. Open inbox. Delete junk mail. Despair at the rest. Close.
7. Open the impending task, file, program, or project. Look at it with your eyes. Think a couple of thoughts about it with your mind. Put your fingers on your keyboard. Await inspiration.
8. Organize desk. This is urgent all of a sudden. Throw away six pounds of papers. Find an old photo album. Reminisce for seventeen minutes. Take a snapshot of your high school prom and post to IG. #TBT
9. Get a snack.
10. Back to the project. Type two sentences. Abandon hope. The magic is gone. You don’t know anything. You are an empty vessel. The gig is up. You can’t think of one thought. There are no thoughts. It’s over. You’re doomed.
11. Check out Buzzfeed.
12. Look up your latest symptoms on WebMD. Feel sad about your obvious onset of kidney failure and/or scoliosis. Might be rectal cancer. A little hazy still. But clearly terminal.
13. Clean the baseboards in your office. This cannot wait. You cannot work in these conditions. It is unsanitary. All of a sudden, you can just see them. They are offensive and harming your mojo.
14. Lunchtime.
15. Short nap.
16. Kids are home.
17. Package up your shame and try again tomorrow.
HOW TO GET YOUR CHILD TO POOP ON THE POTTY
1. Be confident. You are a smart, educated woman not to be outwitted by tiny humans.
2. Use your God-given creativity to carefully construct a sticker chart. Hang chart. You are amazing. You have a system.
3. Buy bribes (chocolate chips, M&Ms, Skittles). Go ahead and eat some. You deserve it.
4. Lovingly explain your plan to toddler. Watch him take in your wisdom. See him hearing you. Parenting is a beautiful exchange.
5. Implement plan. Be strong.