Mom Over Miami - By Annie Jones Page 0,34
she loved about this man, she still wished…
“Sorry to call you in like this.” He moved back, waved the papers and turned toward his office again. “But I knew you wouldn’t mind.”
“But…” she whispered as she watched her darling husband disappear into his cubbyhole of an office. She brushed her fingertips over her pearls and fought to keep her lip from quivering. “I do mind.”
She did.
And she was well within her rights to mind.
She blinked at that realization. Her hand closed around the necklace and she waited for a lightning bolt to strike her for even thinking about her feelings and not just snapping to, glad for something more to do to show her husband how much he could rely on her.
No lightning.
No overwhelming wave of anxiety.
Just a sense of calm. Of resolution.
Sure, she’d clean the office up this time. But not again. If this ever happened again, she’d give her husband a piece of her mind. And she knew exactly what she’d say.
“You told me I don’t listen to myself, and that’s the root of my problems. Well, I’ve started listening to myself—a lot. And if I listen to myself too much, it might just be because no one else in my life seems ready to hear a single thing I have to say. And that has got to stop.”
10
Subject: Nacho Mama’s House column
Tessa speaks!
Oh, all right, she belched.
And hiccuped.
The combined effect did sound like a primitive attempt at communication. I have it on very high authority—Sam’s—that what my darling baby daughter bellowed out was her first-ever opinion of the state of things at our house: “Yuck!”
I have a hard time arguing about it. It sounded just like that. “Yuck!”
And her expression backed it up.
And Sam, standing right beside her as he modeled new clothes for his great-aunt, concurred. “Yuck!”
You don’t think the impending first day of school has colored Sam’s judgment any, do you?
Sam has dreaded the start of school. I know this because he can’t stop telling me all about it. And by “telling,” I mean whining.
He whines while I do the shopping.
He whines while I bathe the baby.
He even whines while I try to talk to Payt about how much the boy is wearing me down with all his whining.
It would drive me crazy (crazier?) if not for the picture he makes.
There he stands, socks drooping, eyes darting, brow furrowed, hugging his soccer ball and setting forth his case. He wishes he didn’t have to go to school. He wishes he could just go on having soccer practice and playing games with the guys. No amount of telling him that going to school would not mean an end to soccer satisfies him. By the way, I checked this whole end of soccer season matter out thoroughly. Not only is there no rest for the wicked, there is no back-to-school reprieve for Snack Mom. Kids’ soccer, it seems, knows no season.
“We want you to want to go to school. You’re going to like it” has become the steady refrain around here. Payt and I try to work it into every conversation.
Sam pouts.
Tessa belches and hiccups.
Her discontent I can handle with a dietary change.
Sam’s? I’m afraid all the cooking lessons in the world won’t help me make going to a new school palatable to an apprehensive little boy.
NOTE TO SELF: FINISH COLUMN BEFORE SENDING.
“Where did you go to school, Hannah?”
“In my sisters’ wake,” she muttered.
Payt laughed.
She shot a warning look across his profile.
He cleared his throat and adjusted his grip on the steering wheel.
“I don’t get it,” Sam said. He swung his foot, and the heel of his brand-new shoe landed on his blue backpack with a dull thud.
“Just making a joke.” She shook her head, but that didn’t quite jar loose the memories of her own school days.
“Why aren’t you more studious like your sister April?”
“Why aren’t you more social like your sister Sadie?”
Why aren’t you less like you and more like…someone lovable? That’s how the constant comparisons had echoed in her child mind.
“Hannah?” He poked the backpack again, and the lifeless lump of a thing slouched forward, bumping the back of Hannah’s seat.
Startled back to the present, she gyrated her shoulder to keep her seat belt from choking her when she looked at Sam and asked, “What, hon?”
“Did you go to the same school the whole time?” He kept his gaze focused out the window, his hand on Tessa’s car seat strapped in beside him.
“Well, technically I changed schools when I went to middle school