I Prayed for McDonald’s

When I was a youth (I'm not gonna say when I was “little” because at a BMI hovering around 35% for most of my life “little” is, at best, an incredibly misleading portrayal of me during childhood) one of my favorite meals was a Super-Sized Big Mac Meal with Dr. Pepper. I’d eat that meal whenever, wherever it was offered. My affinity for the Golden Arches was so great that even those 3 days I claimed to be vegetarian in the 7^th grade did not deter—I just gobbled up a double order of fries…because that was healthier, obviously. 

Fast forward 20 years and I now have a BMI in the healthy range, and 4 kids for whom I am responsible for keeping alive and turning into decent human beings. While my kids have consumed their fair share of Happy Meals, I generally try to feed them a healthy, balanced diet. I never restrict how much they eat (unless it’s sugar or absolute crap, like chips or fruit snacks) but I try to keep an eye on what they’re eating and encourage healthy choices. I pride myself on a balanced approach, and my kids are generally healthy, non-picky eaters because of that.

Generally.

My husband is currently on a 2-week hunting trip (okay, ten days but a nice, round two weeks makes me sound like more of a martyr). It is inevitable that anytime he leaves for longer than a couple of days, shit hits the fan—which is weird as I do 75-80% of the parenting when he is around (he’s busy with the whole “supporting the family” nonsense our finically-driven society demands, but whatever)—I chalk it up to one of those laws of physics: the inverse relationship between dad’s physical proximity to children and mom’s ability to handle their shenanigans. This correlation doesn’t usually present itself until a couple days into my husband’s absence. Most of the time, days 1-2 are pretty smooth sailing. The kids are usually tucked into bed earlier than usual, everyone is fed and taken to where they need to be (school and soccer and horseback riding and violin, oh my!) and my patience well is moderately full.

For instance, this trip, my husband left on Saturday. After he pulled away, I took down our redneck riviera sized above ground pool, did some laundry, made some chili and watched Georgia beat Notre Dame. Sunday, while we didn’t go to church, we talked a lot about Jesus, went to three different stores and bought fall décor. Got home, we decorated the house and I got down in the floor and played both Jenga and Twister with the rugrats. We had friends over and ate pizza and I watched the Emmys with my girlfriend while all six kids ran around and played. I was winning at the parenting game.

Then came Monday.

I’d like to blame my grouchy mood on the fact that I started getting a cold over the weekend, but more likely it was my Downton Abbey marathon session that had me up until 12:30 AM that was the culprit--I don't do well on little sleep. But whether it was my cold or poor life choices, I got up already a little tense. My girls had asked to shower that morning so when I went into the kitchen to start breakfast my eldest was standing there, in the middle of the floor, confused and sad-looking.

The following is an honest and accurate representation of our interaction:

Me: What’s wrong, Rugurat?

Her: (*tearfully*) My hair is making my back wet!

Me: (*slow blinks*)…

Her: (*inconsolable noises*)…

Me: (*slow blinks*)…

Her:…(tears and snot everywhere)…

Me: Well, did you ever consider putting your hair in a ponytail or, I don’t know, a towel?

Her: (*still visibly upset*) Okay…

That kicked started my incredibly compassionate speech about how I have always had a very low tolerance for stupidity and standing there crying about wet hair making her shirt wet was, without a doubt, stupid. (Please hold the Mom-of-the-Year Awards, it gets better).

After finally getting her hair tied away and off of her back, I proceeded to make everyone bacon and eggs and toast and smoothies. Thankfully, four offerings afforded each child the opportunity to voice their own unique complaint about breakfast.

As I’m sure you can image, I was incredibly graceful about all of the whining and in no way retaliated by throwing their ingratitude back in their cherubic faces because I am not a monster. I also handled the 5-year old’s inability to find socks for 30 minutes in a similarly graceful fashion and did not toss the balled-up pair which had been on the floor, laid out specifically for him, directly at his gap-toothed grin.

When the eldest couldn’t find the shin guards and socks I had (repeatedly) asked her to place in her soccer bag the night before I absolutely did not lose my cool and give her another lecture on how stupid/lazy actions do not make one stupid and lazy but they surely don’t offer any evidence to the contrary.

I finally managed to get everyone dropped off and they only kicked out one loose receipt in the drop-off line; but, beware of false prophets, my friends. Do not take such a miracle as a positive sign of things to come.

Because when I picked them up from school that day—the madness ensued. I had made the tentative game plan to get them McDonald’s for dinner that night to keep things less chaotic—Mondays we have horseback riding and soccer and won’t usually get home before 7:30. I told them this as they piled in and everyone seemed happy with the idea, even though there was one or two calls for alternate fast food establishments. From school pick-up, we drive 30 minutes one-way for my 2^nd born’s horseback riding lessons. Twenty minutes into our drive, she asked me if I had remembered her boots. I respectfully told her that I did not take horseback riding lessons and was therefore not responsible for making sure “I” had everything I need. (Note that consistent parenting, folks. If you’ll recall, earlier I was annoyed that my eldest had neglected to collect her soccer gear even though I had repeatedly reminded her. Now, I was disproportionately annoyed with my younger daughter for suggesting I should have reminded her to grab her boots). I’m a good mom.

We wound up being a little early for lessons so I took everyone to BiMart where I bought my daughter some rain boots to wear to her lesson and snacks for everyone else. I don’t know the last time you were in a BiMart, but they aren’t exactly known for their fresh, organic produce. With the 4 o’clock Hangry Monster rearing its ugly head in the form of my precious off-spring, I opted to get them crap for snacks and forego the McDonald’s for a healthy meal at home that evening. In the hour that they watched their sibling at her lesson, my other three ate an entire bag of Goldfish, applesauce pouches, and a granola bar each (even though I was told by a son that, “[I] don’t like the ones with nuts in them, Moooooooooom! Fine! I eat noting!”—then he proceeded to eat it anyway).  

The instructor has a daughter my sons’ age and so they spent the time playing together—she shared her snacks with them and took them around the arena on adventures. Sweet kid. As I was finishing up with the instructor, I saw the little girl crying near our van. When I went over to check on her, I was told that one of my boys HAD TRIED TO CLOSE HER IN THE VAN DOOR. Y’all, I have never been so pissed or embarrassed in all my years of parenting. I obviously apologized to the little girl, and her parents, profusely. I also told the girl more than once that if one of my kids ever did that again to knock him on the ground and that I would have a wooden spoon conference with my son when we finally got home that evening. I berated my kid on the way to soccer and lectured him over and over again about how boys should never hurt girls and how only idiots hit people first (a mantra in our household, followed quickly by the directive that if anyone ever hits you first, you better hit them back. Yeah, my roots are in Appalachia.). Anyway, you might be surprised to hear that after the first few minutes of my lecture, the 5-year old tuned me out. I say all of this, not to suggest my son might be a psychopath—honestly this is the first time he’s ever done anything like that and I was just really ill-equipped with how to handle it—but rather to walk you through where I was at mentally at this point, which, if you can’t tell, was somewhere between needing to lock myself in the closet for a few minutes and that mom from Massachusetts who went out for milk and was found 15 years later in Key West living under an assumed name.

At this point you might imagine I’d call an audible and force my eldest to skip practice so we could go home and decompress, but no. It was SO important to make sure she didn’t miss even one, that we went to soccer practice where she proceeded to skip on the field for an hour and I fumed that I couldn’t abandon my kids to walk a few loops around the fields. Again, super selfless lady over here.

After an hour and ten minutes practice was over, so we left and when we got home I yelled for everyone to get into the shower so I could gent dinner ready, which was really worth the effort since, during the whopping 10 minutes I’d allotted for them to eat, I got to listen to them complain about the pesto pasta and salad I’d made. Finally, it was bedtime and I rushed everyone through their prayers so that I could collapse in my bed. Except, of course I couldn’t collapse because the kitchen was a disaster from cooking dinner so I stayed up an additional 30 minutes cleaning the kitchen and straightening the house after our whirlwind of an evening.

Look, I’m not over here playing the world’s smallest violin. Writing all of this down, with a little distance between me and Monday, I've gained some perspective and realize I probably come off as the villain that day (which, okay, fair assessment) but, incidentally, that perspective is what I prayed for that night when my head finally hit the pillow.

I feel like parents are constantly juggling, right? And I know for me, it seems like the more balls I have in the air, the more I focus on the ones that don’t really matter, and lose sight of the ones that are really important to hold up. As lay in bed that night I just kept thinking about how I had failed at motherhood that day. In the grand scheme of things, the world would not have stopped spinning if I had made my daughter skip soccer so we could have a night home together and not rush through dinner and bedtime; my kids and I would all have been better off had I used even a portion of the time I wasted lecturing at them to ask about their days instead; I could have spent time at the fields investing in my kids instead of hanging out with my girlfriend, wishing I was at the gym instead. Or maybe if I had gone to McDonald’s like I’d initially planned, instead of worry about if what they were eating would pass some food pyramid assessment, I would have had an additional 30 minutes or an hour with the kids where I was focused on them, not something for them. I wouldn’t have had to cook when we got home, they could have eaten at the field while their sister was in her practice or heck, even in our (very cool) van on the way home so we all could have just sat together for a while and gone through our day in a real, meaningful way, instead of the rushed, grudging few minutes we had that evening. It seems like a dumb, silly little thing but I prayed to be okay with McDonald’s—that I would be okay letting go of the temporal things I feel are important in order to embrace other things which allow me to really invest in my kids; to learn how to keep my focus trained on my kids and what they really need, which, newsflash, being a mom who isn’t a completely stressed-out lunatic matters just a little bit more than occasionally letting them eat whatever chemicals MickyD’s passes off as a chicken nugget.