Here’s something, as a friend of mine might say.
It’s about 9 a.m. on a Tuesday, and Max and I are on the back end of Mia’s school drop-off. This is a few weeks ago, mind you, but the routine is generally the same: I roust Mia out of bed and make breakfast for the two of them. I wrestle Max to the floor and put on his clothes, and I hector Mia into putting on hers. I badger them both into brushing their teeth, and then I finish the job for them myself. I harry them into their shoes, heckle them into their jackets, and hound them into the car, and we set out.
That’s a lot of wheedling, I know. And yes, I used thesaurus.com in writing that graf.
Then we get to school, park, and run to the mudroom, where Max and I stand by and listen to my watch tick as Mia slowly changes out of her jacket and into her “indoor” shoes. We walk Mia to her classroom and say hello to Mrs. Hamilton, and then I persuade Max to leave behind the Matchbox cars in Mia’s class and join me on a stroll past the fish tank and through the old nunnery to the front of the school.
It’s a slow stroll. Slower than the shoe-changing. Max likes the fish tank a lot.
Finally, we’re back outside, on our way to the car. This is a long set-up, I know, but there’s a reason for it. Here we are, it’s been about an hour and a half of me barking orders and pleading and occasionally using a voice that, I’ll concede, can come off a bit churlish, but now the pressure’s off, Mia’s in class, and the only thing left to do is to kill a little time and have some fun. My voice, in other words, is no longer sharp, and my mood is no longer edgy. I’m, you know, relaxed.
So when Max declares a race to the car and breaks into his awkward, straight-armed gallop of a run – ba-bum, ba-bum, go his footsteps, just like a heartbeat – I play along, slouching like Groucho and affecting a phony run just fast enough to stay close behind him.
“I’m gonna beat you, Max!” I tease, breathing down his neck. “I’m gonna beat you to the car! You’d better run, Max! Better run fast, because I’m gonna beat you!”
To which Max responds, in a panicked shriek that belies just how much he loves this, “No, Daddy! Don’t beat me! Don’t beat me Daddy!”…
…just as a group of four moms passes us coming the other way.
So, um, that’s kind of awkward.
