Drive me crazy!

I filled a tumbler with ice; I free-poured raspberry vodka, and then mixed in soda water. After two sips, my stomach, which was tied in knots—seized. I poured out my drink. I sighed. I mixed another. This time Grand Marnier and Amaretto on ice. I let it sit on the counter, staring at it, as the two syrupy liquids blended and danced together to form a soothing amber liquid. I licked my lips. I took a sip. And another. Within minutes, instead of a heady wooze, I felt a rapid breathlessness. The alcohol vapor had caused my smooth and sleek tunneling-airways to turn into rumbling ramps. My breath tumbled chaotically, causing me to cough and gasp. I went to get my inhaler. Even at drinking—I was a failure!

Parenting certainly didn’t look hard…when I was a kid. There was nothing to it.

Call the kids in.

Feed the kids.

Wash the kids.

Let the kids watch Disney on Sundays.

Put the kids to bed.

My mom didn’t seem to be troubled by it at all—not from where I stood (in the back porch with my jacket dripping and my boots caked in mud.)

Nor did parenting look very hard from the sidelines, when my sister and then my friends started to have kids. I was (for a time) a favorite aunt. Not hard at all (tiring—maybe—but, not hard). No one warned me about the emotional investment a mother would make in her kids. No one!

My husband had left for a work-related trip to Saudi Arabia. I was going to be alone for six days (and nights) with our three kids. I cried myself to sleep the night before he left. He was jet setting across the world and I was juggling balls with amputated hands! I was a little off my game.

Still, I don’t know what possessed me to let my almost-twelve-year-old daughter drive the van into the garage that day. The thermometer had plummeted to the minus thirties, and stuck there, day after agonizing day. It was brutal; breathing became an occupational hazard, and ice formed underneath boots just as they hit the pavement, rendering us all ice dancers. My daily walks were out of the question. I think we were all going a bit stir-crazy.

I dunno…is it crazy to turn the heat up to 27°C (80 F) and fill Rubbermaid containers with water and pretend we’re having a pool party? Is it crazy to roast marshmallows over the gas stove while singing campfire songs? Is it crazy to take the mattresses off the beds, and use them as super slides down the stairs?

Yup, I was going bananonkers! Something had to give.

My husband was gone. My kids were pushing my buttons, like I was an old-fashioned typewriter. I wasn’t getting a full night of sleep (on account of the six-week-old puppies we were fostering). And we were sludging through the frozen landscape of our lives. We pulled into the driveway after an emergency trip to the pet store for puppy pee pads. I needed to move my husband’s car out of the garage, because my stepson and his girlfriend were coming over to vacuum out her car in our garage. After I had moved his car out, I looked at Laurèn and asked her if she wanted to pull the van into the garage. “Really?” she asked. “Sure” I said—my frontal lobe clearing going off-line.

She got in. She buckled her seat belt. She struggled to reach the pedals; I tried to coach her on how to adjust the seat forward. Instead, she went up and down, giggling as if riding one of those dollar rides at the mall. I got out and adjusted it myself. She looked at me, with a hands-in-the-air expression that said, how was I supposed to know? I got back in, and told her which was the brake and which was the gas. She lurched forward. She slowly picked up speed. “Okay, a little to the left,” I instructed. She went right. “Left!” I said. She continued right, so I grabbed the steering wheel and cranked it in the opposite direction. “Oh!” she said, as if we weren’t speaking the same language. She confidently moved forward, and when Yohannes and I realized that she wasn’t going to stop, we simultaneously yelled, “BRAKE!”

We hit the garage wall with enough force to cause the contents of the shelves above to rain down onto our hood. My mouth gaped open. (What have I done?) Yohannes jumped out of the van to survey the damage, “Oo-hoo-hoo”, he sang. I got out. The bumper seemed to be detached from its clips, on the passenger side—I attempted to ease and then bang it back into position. (That bumper was already partly damaged, I consoled myself.)

“Laurèn, honey, why didn’t you put the brake on?” I asked her.

“Well…I thought that if I took my foot off the gas, the car would just stop,” she said.

She smiled.

I put my hand up to my head.

In her defense, her last driver-training lesson had taken place at the Bumper Cars.

Next, Yohannes wanted a turn. I couldn’t say no—that wouldn’t be fair. So, I let him try driving, (not into the garage this time, I’m not a fool!). He pulled my husband’s car into the driveway. When he is particularly pleased with himself, but doesn’t want it to show, one side of his lip curls up and his eyebrows arch in anticipation. That was what I saw when I looked at my eager ten-year-old boy. He carefully eased up and over the curb and into the driveway, his concentration fierce. And then as he moved toward the brick wall, framing our garage, he slammed his foot on the brake so hard that my clavicle compressed and crunched under the pressure of the locking seatbelt. The airbags quivered.

“Pretty good—right, Mom?” he said.

“Yes, pretty good,” I answered.

“Better than Laurèn?”

“Mmmmm, well, you didn’t hit the wall.”

We laughed.

When we walked into the house, Faven was quite distressed with a bloody nose—damn dry climate! While she had been stuck in the bathroom, the six-week-old puppies pooped on the floor in their pen, and then shredded the newspaper that served as their potty, into a million tiny pieces. I stared, horrified. It was if they had been doing paper-mâché, and the gummy poop was their glue. In the midst of this mess was the puppies—passed out, bellies up, and covered in “glue”. Even the twenty-four scented candles I had burning could not pull that smell out of the air. I donned my rubber combat gear, and went in.

I have been thinking about that ridiculously irresponsible decision for a few days. One has to acknowledge that it was a bit of old fashioned fun, but more importantly, it is easier to deal with physical mishap than mental and emotional calamity. We are no ordinary family; our creation—an enigma, and our kids all blessed with special needs. We have so many diagnoses in our family that we pretty much have the whole alphabet covered! Our family slogan is, “Better living chemically!”

I don’t think there is any way to describe what I was thinking in the moment that I moved out of the driver’s seat, and gave the wheel to my daughter. There are simply times when the living becomes overwhelming, and we need some levity. I could not have predicted how much we would later laugh over the van crashing into the wall, or how proudly my kids share this story with others.

Giving up is simply not an option that I can negotiate into the current “contract”. There are many days that I would love to throw in the towel—but I don’t (yet) have a full load.