Mom Over Miami - By Annie Jones Page 0,19
platter big enough to allow me to spell out Congratulations in nachos, I decided to bake a cake. A fellow soccer mom is on her way over to pick it up this morning to take to practice today. Guess I’d better get stirring!
Ha-ha. Sorry to couch my column in a bad pun, but speaking of couches, our furniture should arrive this afternoon—thus my inability to take aforementioned cake to practice. Also my aunt Phiz—that’s my father’s sister, Phyllis Amaryllis Shelnutt Shaffer Wentz—sent word a few days ago to expect a surprise today. Something from China, I suspect. I only hope it’s not food, because it might get crushed in shipping. That’s the way the cookie crumbles. You know, China? Cookies? Chinese fortune cookies?
Well, if you haven’t guessed it by now, I might as well come right out and tell you. I have no business writing a column on the misadventures of modern motherhood. I am a phony. I’m not funny and I can’t write and most of all I can’t write funny.
Please, be wise. Do yourself a favor—do us both a favor—and toss this paper into the recycle bin with this column unread.
What do you think of your great idea to send my work to the paper now?
Sam dragged a beanbag chair across the living room, plunked it down by Hannah, then dropped onto it like so much deadweight.
The purple faux-leather, two-for-the-price-of-one accessory sighed, then crunched softly as he settled in. They’d let him pick out the pair of so-called chairs as a last resort to give them something to sit on and add a touch of hominess to their barren living room.
“Did you say hominess or homeliness?” Payt had asked when they lugged the things in the house.
Sam wiggle-walked his chair closer to hers, stirring up enough static electricity to make a few of his hairs stand straight up.
She started to caution him about taking better care of the furniture, but one look at the green—according to Sam: “The exact color of lime Jell-O when you stick a flashlight in it!”—blob beneath her and she gave up.
Sam kicked his feet against the chair.
Hannah turned another page in the Bible that lay open in her lap. She knew he was bored. He’d told her so eleven times already, and it wasn’t even 9:00 a.m. yet. The kid just wanted some attention, but between her writer’s block and her I-can’t-get-anything-right blues, she just didn’t have the energy to entertain the boy right now.
Finally Sam leaned in to peer over her shoulder. When his chin touched the skin on her bare arm…
Pop!
“Ow.” She rubbed the spot where the tiny electric charge had gotten her, then bent to give the boy’s face a quick going-over. “You okay?”
“I’m bored.”
“I know. But are you okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Good.” She went back her Bible.
“And bored.”
She held her breath and tried to concentrate.
He leaned in more until his brown head obscured more than half of the book. “What’cha doing?”
“Looking up a new Bible verse that I think might work as my new encouragement.”
He looked up at her, his nose crinkled. “Encouragement?”
“Motto?” That didn’t really sum it up properly, either.
He shook his head.
“Okay, you know how Grandpa Moonie sometimes says, ‘Peace. Be strong’ to me?”
He nodded.
“Well, that’s from the Bible. And my dad used it to…”
To make me feel like I could never measure up because no matter how hard I tried I never felt at peace and I sure never felt strong?
Unless anxiety-leading-to-inaction counted as a kind of peace, and hardheaded was the same as strong. Hannah lifted her gaze heavenward. “I just want to pick out a verse that fits me better.”
“How will you know when you find it?”
“I don’t know, hon.” She sighed and closed the Bible slowly so that she could savor the smell of the leather and the rustle of the thin paper. Just holding the book gave her some measure of comfort, and she drew on it. “Truth be told, I’m probably just looking for a procrastination.”
“Is that like a proverb? Where is it?” He slipped the book from her lap and opened the pages.
“What?”
“The Book of Procrastinations.” The crisp pages fluttered as he flipped through, his eyes intent on the headers. “Is that in the Old Testament or the New Testament?”
“The Book of Procrastinations?” Hannah smiled. “Neither Old nor New Testament, sweetheart. Procrastination means putting things off. I suppose you might find those in the Book of Hannah.”
“Show me.”
“Oh, um, Sam, honey, I was making a joke.”
“You mean Hannah isn’t in the Bible?”
She blinked.