Repeat after me

“I do not make the artwork of a week-old hoagie!” 

“Say it again, Mama!” 

“I do NOT make the artwork of a week-old hoagie!” 

“AGAIN!” 

“I DO NOT MAKE THE ARTWORK OF A WEEK-OLD HOAGIE!” I clamor, this time with conviction, eyes clenched closed and maternity underwear stretched in cat's-cradle fashion around my ankles as I diligently multi-task in using the restroom while succumbing to my four-year-old’s demands. 

It’s 7:38 AM, and we’ll need the next two-thirds of an hour to successfully commute to my son’s preschool 20 miles away to make the early end of drop-off. That way, I can take my Thursday morning Zoom meeting in the school parking lot just in time. 

So I do what he asks, fully aware that the alternative of suggesting that he please wait outside the door and give me privacy would require a larger volume of mental and vocal energy. 

“I do not make the artwork of a week-old hoagie!” I repeat. (But do I? Do I make the artwork of week-old sandwiches left to dry of their condiments? Where did he get that phrase anyway? And how does he know East Coast slang for a deli sandwich when he’s a West Coast kid, through and through?) 

My son is, instead, a West Point drill sergeant and I am but a rookie buzzed-dancing through the school-and-work week morning routine wherein five out of seven days a week, three human beings, like bees, waggle dance in figure eights in opposing directions around a disruptive kitchen island as we throw gluten-free toast in mouth, zip lunch bag, sock a foot (hopefully two), and hit ‘silence’ to another spam phone call all while using a dry-erase pen to draw a check mark on a laminated morning routine chart to show that the Smarty Pants gummy vitamins were in fact eaten.  

In my morning Zoom meeting on Thursdays, I am often pretending that I didn’t just sprint for the previous two hours, that I didn’t just sneeze, pee, and do nothing about it while stuck in gridlock traffic on 580. (Got backup undies in the trunk for that! #momhack) 

But in this morning moment of pants around ankles while I desperately relieve myself (a task I’d already put off for 20 minutes to stay on track with breakfast preparation), I do open my eyes wide enough to pause and find amusement in the comedy of it all – how there is a deep, revelatory presence we can feel as parents when we are in the thickest of Cathy comic strip irony.

It’s in this presence when we successfully immerse into the mania of it all that we get to braid into the invisible electric current of the universe — all by way of these small drill sergeants ordering us into humble versions of ourselves.

We get to reach out and touch the fleshiest parts of our lives — and, as the heart-wrenching parenting IG Reels tell us, deeply experience what we’ll hopefully remember when we are 80 as we re-seek the chaotic richness of a mid-week morning requiring us to be ubiquitous, everywhere at once. 

“Say it, AGAIN, Mama!” my son megaphones. 

And, succumbing fully, I do.