The Bloody Nose - Part 2

14 minutes left I bolt out of the garage and run around the side of the house to the back door, forgetting that, for no explicable reason, I had locked it earlier. In a single move, I take the two steps in one leap, and reach and try to turn the knob. As I realize that it’s locked the rest of my body is still in forward motion. My knee slams into the window pane, there is a crash and a dull thud as glass hits the carpet inside. "Oh," I think "I just broke a window." That thought is quickly followed "Thank God! Now I can reach through it and unlock the door." I then note that the broken pane is too far away for me to reach the door knob. I check my knee for blood. As I look up, I glance inside and there on the counter are…my keys. I try my telekinetic powers, fail, and then decide to leave the practice to another day.

Tissue number two is now completely soaked through. I have two things to consider before I continue trying to get my keys: I cannot, under any circumstances, interrupt my husband’s meeting, and I cannot leave the kids in the car long enough so that it is the first thing they talk about when they get to school.

The front door! I can’t remember locking it, so hope rears its head. I go around to the front porch and up the steps to the door. It too is locked. “Et tu Brutus, et tu?”

13 minutes left I trudge back to the car and tell the kids the keys are in the house and I need to go get them. My son helpfully suggests going through the garage door. I explain that it is locked. “Why is it locked, mama? Did you lock it? Why did y……” I stop him. “No questions for the moment,” I say. My daughter has an open-mouthed alarmed look on her face. As my head leaves the car, I hear her mention to her brother something about a red tissue…

I fling open the tool box, grab a screwdriver and head back to the front door. Up on the porch, I pull the screen off, then with one hand holding the tissue, the other pushes the window up. I throw one leg over the sill, and another neighbor drives by, beeps, smiles and waves. I forget what I’m doing. I let go of the window and wave. As it falls, I attempt to catch the window with the hand that is holding the bloody tissue. I miss. The window slams into my thigh as blood drops, spreads, and looks like a Rorschach test on my leg. I think: “Giraffe! No wait...paint brush!” I force up the window again squeeze through and fall onto the floor.

11 minutes left Inside at last, I grab the keys and glance at the clock. Time has now disappeared but I can’t stop the momentum. I get into the car, remind my son of the No Question Moratorium and pull out of the garage. My nose has stopped bleeding, and a good thing too….I’m out of tissues and I’m driving a stick.

“I can do this,” I think as I hit the road. “If all the lights are green and I don’t have to sit behind a very old driver, I can make it!” Of course, all the lights are red, and I get caught between TWO very old drivers. I arrive at school, four minutes after the drop-off time. No one is out front. My knee is throbbing, my thigh aches and my lower belly hurts from the unsupported running. I rest my head on the steering wheel and start to cry. There is silence in the back seat.

I don’t get it. I don’t understand why I was so frantic. Why is getting the kids to school so hard? Why do I resent having to push, prod, negotiate and beg my way to school every morning? Routine or not, it isn’t easy. In fact, it’s the most mentally hard job I’ve ever had.

While I’m sobbing, I don’t notice my friend, Genee, pull up behind me. She pulls open one of the doors and takes my kids into school. I sit in the car and cry some more. Why on earth do I feel like such a failure? Why am I sitting here, in the car, in front of my kid’s school, crying about not being able to get my kids here on time? I look at the sweaters, hooks and library books in the seat next to me. Why do I feel like I have to take care of every one of those errands?

Genee returns, pushes the errand pile to the floor and gets in the passenger side and waits. After a few minutes, I am dried up.

“Feel better?” she asks.

I shrug. What would make me feel better is if I could just go home, stay in bed and have someone bring me soup, if someone else could run the errands. If someone else could be an efficient manager of the home, if someone else could clean the messes, buy the clothes, cook the meals, administer the medicine and worry obsessively if they have enough, got too much or will need more later. What would make me feel better would be if I weren’t trying so hard to live up to this magical perfect mother-image I cling to as my standard. That’s what would make me feel better.

“Ya’ know,” she says, “motherhood just isn’t the way they make it out to be in the books. It’s a hell of lot harder and a hell of lot messier.” Amen to that!