Saturday afternoon, Sean and AD took a break from deconstructing Christmas and walked to the park to enjoy the rare winter blessing of sunny and 74.

I finished up a few things and then walked over to join them. As I made my way across the street I could see Sean on the swing set with another boy, both trying to touch the clouds with their toes.

I walked up behind them and listened to them chattering little boy nonsense for a few seconds before the other boy noticed me standing there.

“Your grandma is here,” he said to Sean.

Sean turned his head and saw me standing behind the swing set and then quickly turned back without meeting my eyes.

“That’s my mom,” Sean said quietly in a way that pieced my heart.

No greeting or further acknowledgment was made of my presence.

I’ve been mistaken for Sean’s grandma a number of times in the past five years and honestly, it hasn’t really bothered me. In fact, I usually find it kind of funny.  This time I didn’t find it funny because it wasn’t about me. It was about Sean and his brand new awareness of how others see me.

I don’t really much care what other people think about me but to think that I might be an embarrassment to my child hurt my heart a little bit.   When I embarrass him in front of his friends, and I will, I want it to be on purpose.

Up to this point, in Sean’s eyes, I have been a vision of motherly perfection.  Like a clumsy affectionate puppy dog, he is happy just to be in my company.  He is oblivious to my wrinkles and graying hair and imperfections.  It has probably never occurred to him that his mom is “a little older” than the other kid’s moms.

But now, I could tell in his voice, in the softly defensive way he said “that’s my mom” that he had taken his first bite of the bitter fruit that falls from the tree of a social awareness.

And I wanted to whack him on the back of the head and make him spit it out.

Every night before bedtime, and sometimes before school, Sean and AD will read at least one chapter from a book of children’s classics.

Having gone through most of the other more exciting and well known titles, we are down to Pollyanna. But he is just as enthralled with Pollyanna as he was with The Swiss Family Robinson.

Stepping up to chapter books like Tom Sawyer and Oliver Twist has presented many opportunities to talk about some of the more unsavory and unpleasant aspects of life.  Many of the characters are orphaned or suffer cruelty at the hands of those who should protect them.  And there is always a concern to AD and me over how much of this kind of information is appropriate for a five-year-old.

But the thing about Sean that continually amazes us is how wise he is beyond his years and how tenderly perceptive he is about the human condition and matters of the heart.  Although we would certainly like to claim credit for that,  it’s simply the way God made him.

If you don’t recall or haven’t read the story of Pollyanna, she is a young girl who was orphaned and goes to live with her Aunt Polly who is a cold and crusty middle-aged spinster.  Aunt Polly suffered a thwarted romance early in her life which left her bitter and she has never gotten over it.  Aunt Polly has a big house, yet she makes Pollyanna sleep in a hot, stuffy, bleak attic and in general gives Pollyanna no affection.  Nonetheless, as the story goes, it is Pollyanna’s way to see the silver lining in every gray cloud.

At one point in the story, AD stopped reading and looked over the book at Sean who was lying in bed.  “Why do you suppose Aunt Polly is so gruff?” he asked.

“I think she has a children ache,” Sean said quietly.

“Oh Sean,” AD sighed, “I think you are so right. A lot of times when people are gruff on the outside, and sad or mean, it’s because they are hurting on the inside.”

It’s true. I had a children ache once too.

This morning, after I dropped Sean off at school, I pulled into the McDonald’s drive-through for a cup of coffee to fuel my daily adventures in wallpaper scraping. 

This is one of those McDonald’s where the drive-through wraps around the building so that as you exit the building, you have to pass not only in front of the cars in the drive-through but you also then have to cross a small parking lot where other cars are bypassing the drive-through and yet other cars are backing out.  I find this set up to be especially precarious as on more than one occasion I have nearly been run over as I exited the building by someone in a McHurry. 

It would be somewhat less of a problem if people would just drive sensibly and drive 5mph through the parking lot, but I know this is America and driving sensibly probably interferes with your individuality. However, if you are one of those people who barrels through the McDonald’s parking lot while yacking it up on your cell phone, be aware that there is always a good chance that a) a toddler has wrenched away from her mother’s grasp and is darting across the parking lot or b) someone in an enormous SUV is backing out and can’t see you. It’s a tragedy just waiting to happen. 

Such was the case this morning.  Today, as I was waiting in the drive-through line, I saw this elderly couple shuffling out of the building, linked arm-in-arm, holding each other upright.  Before they passed in front of my car, the gentleman caught my eye to make sure I wasn’t going run them over. I gave them the go ahead sign, he saluted and off they shuffled.  Just as they passed in front of me and were about to step into the parking lot, a sporty little car came zipping past and nearly ran them over. 

I gasped and put my hands to my face afraid of what I might find when I opened my eyes.  By the grace of God, their reflexes were miraculously quicker than their gait and they stepped back just as the car whizzed past and pulled into a parking space. 

I was really angry. I did not need that kind of adrenaline surge before I had my coffee.  As I waited for zippy car driver to get out and head towards the building, I rehearsed my mom lecture. I was ready to roll down my window and bring the matter to their attention in no uncertain terms. 

But zippy car driver turned out not to be a young person but a spry elderly woman.  And somehow a mom lecture didn’t seem right. 

Because I couldn’t think of anything else to do, I just shook my head at her instead as she passed in front of my car, but she didn’t look my way.

Here’s where all you lovely people who left nice comments yesterday will turn against me.  But it has to be said. This financial crisis? It’s your fault. Well, not all your fault, but you are a component of this complicated mess.  No, no, not you personally.  Well maybe you personally, I don’t know, but I mean you and me, the American public – Democrats and Republicans and yes, even those wacky Independents, those crazy kids. 

This crisis has been in the making for the last 40 years.  Universally speaking — which means I’m speaking generally and not specifically about you or your child, because no, you are charming and responsible as is your child — but we have done a cruddy, cruddy job of teaching our kids about money, teaching them to understand its power and teaching them to respect it.  We’ve not taught our children to delay gratification, to save up, to be good stewards.  We’ve got to do better and not to overstate it, but our nation depends on it. We can’t keep going on this way.

I think most of the people who got caught up in mortgages they couldn’t afford were not bad people, but people who did not understand what they were getting into, people who were drunk on the notion of getting nicer homes for their families, people who did not understand money.  I think mortgage lenders took advantage of them because they could and because they were getting rich in doing so.  I don’t want my child to be taken advantage of in this way, I want him to understand how the system of money works.

So then, Step Two of Antique Mommys Bail Out Plan includes Mandatory Financial Education starting in 1st grade or sooner.

Yes, you read that right — 1st grade. Or sooner.

I personally think that financial education, like sex education, would best be taught at home where parents can teach their children not just about the mechanics of money, but also about respect. Since that obviously is not happening, our education system needs to teach kids the fundamentals of economics, credit and compounding interest and the importance of saving and the consequence of buying things you can’t afford with money you don’t have. And I just don’t think you can start too soon.

Earlier this year, we bought Sean the book The Ox Cart Man, a very simple story about a farmer and his family who work the land and bring the fruits of their labor to market. It is a story that explains at the most basic level the economic cycle from farm to market and back again.

Reading the story has presented us with many opportunities to talk with Sean (a four-year-old) about how the things we buy at the store get there and how we pay for them, where we get our money to pay for the stuff we buy at the store and how our family always always has to balance our supply of money with our demand for the things we need so that we don’t run out of money – not just for today but well into the future. He has been hearing this message since he was about two. By the time he’s 18 and heading off to college, hopefully it will be engrained in his thinking that money is a powerful and precious resource that is to be handled with care and respect. If not, he will be in for a hard lesson because, unlike the government, his parents will not bail him out.

I urge you strongly to start talking to your kids about money right this very day and to make it part of your daily conversation. Look for opportunities for them to experience the consequences of good and bad financial decisions now while the price of a mistake is low.  But more importantly remember that you already ARE teaching your kids about money by your own spending and saving habits and attitudes. They are watching you closely.

So then.  What are you going to do to be a part of the solution?  Other than the extra $7000-$10,000 you’ll be paying in taxes.  What are you going to do to equip your children to be financially responsible adults and change the fate of our nation? 

* * * * *

Step Three of Antique Mommy’s Bail Out tomorrow which involves making it illegal for credit card companies to send me blank checks and unsolicited credit card applications. Leave a comment or email me with your suggestions for reform and if I like them, I’ll incorporate them and give you credit for your super awesome fiscal fabulousness.

Step One: Seize all the assets of the CEO’s, CFO’s and anyone else involved in the failed institutions with a $15 million golden parachute (or any parachute with the word million), including homes, foreign assets, art, cars, furniture and clothes that are not from Target or Wal-Mart — including the college fund for their kids. Sorry – the whole sins of the father thing. And also because thanks to their irresponsible and unethical actions, a lot of middle class kid’s college funds are gone, so it seems fair to me. Finally, they should be banned from working in the financial industry for all eternity.

In exchange for jail time, they should be given a minimum wage job so that they too could have the joy of earning a living and not be a further drain on American resouces.

That’s it. The rest of my plan needs work.

Edited to add: I just thought of step two. I’ll post it tomorrow.

This morning I thought I would go to the grocery store and buy milk. We were out of milk. So I thought I would go to the store and get milk and that would be that. We would come home with our milk, eat cereal and then get on with our lives and find the cure for age spots or build a fort in the den out of blankets. Either one.

So I mentioned to the little boy that we should get in the car and go buy some milk and if – IF! – he was a good boy and a cooperative boy, there could be something in it for him. It is probably an indictment of my parenting that I no longer even bother to pretend that bribery isn’t central to my parenting philosophy. It is. Don’t judge me people. Anytime I can buy some cooperation for $1, I’m in.

If you don’t have a three-year-old, then perhaps you are imagining that we jumped in the car, drove to the store, bought milk and a matchbox car and came home.

If you have a three-year-old, then you know that we didn’t leave for the store for another two and half hours.

What could take two and a half hours you are wondering? I wonder this too. Here is what I remember:

There was dawdling, dragging, dilly dallying, frittering, loitering, lolling and lollygagging,  slithering, dithering, stalling, straggling as well as horsing and monkeying around. There was a lost shoe, a boo boo, a shirt with an itchy tag and the grand finale — the announcement of a poopy diaper just as I snapped the latch on the car seat.

So then, we went back in the house and repeated the above in reverse order.  By late afternoon, I decided we didn’t really need milk that bad.

And there you have it. That’s what I do all day.

Recently, I got a message on the answering machine from the phone company saying they were going to cut off my phone service for non-payment.  Since I pay my phone bill automatically every month on my credit card, and I have ever since I signed up with this company a few years ago, I did not see how this could be. 

So I put in a call to see what the problem was. After obediently listening to all my options because they might have changed since the last time I called in, I pushed every button exactly in the prescribed manner.  Finally, 25 short minutes later, I finally had a human on the end of the line – Bobbie Jo from Bangladesh!

I very carefully told her my story about how I have always paid my bill with my credit card and that no other charges to this card had been denied.  And then she transferred me and I told two of her friends my story and they both transferred me and I told two of their friends, and so on and so on.  I was just like Heather Locklear in that shampoo commercial from the 80s!  I told everyone in Asia my story in painstaking detail, including my name, account number, zip code, zodiac sign, and that I once had dinner with Ralph Nader.  Until finally I was transferred to Darryl in building maintenance where this fun fun game ended when he disconnected me.  At this point, my boiling blood was racing through my arteries at the speed of light which caused my eyeballs to pop clear out of my head, bounce off my computer and roll under my desk.

Later, much much later, I learned that the phone company had requested funds from my credit card company three times but failed to collect.  And instead they decided that they should threaten to cut my phone service off for non-payment.  And it only took me six or seven hours of my free time to track down and solve their problem. Doesn’t everyone want to spend their free time on the phone doing pro bono work for the phone company?  Really, can you think of anything more fun?

Later that same week I bought a camera from a national retailer that was going out of business in our area.  Unfortunately I discovered after I got home and tried to upload my pictures that it had come with the wrong USB cord. So I drove ten miles back to the store and was given another USB cord.  I even tested it there in the store.  But when I got it home, it did not work.  It didn’t plug in “enough” which apparently is sort of important.

I immediately drove another ten miles back to the store to find Bubba, the fellow who had “helped” me, but he had gone to lunch and no one knew if/when he was going to come back or where the original cord was.  So now I didn’t even have the original cord to mail back in with my brand new camera to the manufacturer.

I inquired of the store manager what my options might be and he pretty much said, “You’re screwed.”  And so then I said, something like, well if this is your idea of customer service, no wonder you are going out of business and then he said something snotty and you can’t really out-snotty me, so I one upped him and then he walked away and then I may have yelled at his back.  It’s always a good day when you are shouting in public at a bald guy wearing a red vest.

Not wanting to scrounge around behind their customer service desk for my eyeballs, I took a deep breath and just stood there silently counting.  One of the clerks took pity on me and offered me a card reader doodaddy thing, which as it turns out, works just fine, but I had to go home and explain to Antique Daddy that I had just spend several hundred dollars on a new camera with no USB cord.  But hey! Look! I still have my eyeballs!

Later that same week, I drove ten miles to visit my branch bank, my bank with whom I’ve had an account for 26 years, only to find that they had moved.  I called to find out where they had moved to and then drove another ten miles to the new location only to find that they were not there either.  So I put in another phone call to the customer service person who was neither apologetic nor helpful before she disconnected me as she was transferring me, probably to Bobbie Jo in Bangladesh. And then my cell phone died a sudden death, so I couldn’t even call her back and yell at her.

Knowing that I would need my eyeballs to drive home, I merely rolled them instead and went home to lie down.

And that’s when I decided that the world needs a spanking and I needed a time out.

Hi. I’m hiding out down here in the archives with a bottle of Merlot and some cheese and crackers. Want to join me? Oh lookee! Here’s a post from last August.

We are officially in the dead of summer here in Texas.

My flip flops have melted into the pavement like bubble gum. What the mole hasn’t destroyed of my lawn, the sun has burnt beyond recognition. I can barely stand the sight of my shorts and tank tops that I couldn’t wait to wear back in April. I have soured on summer. I am ready to break up with summer. If summer were my boyfriend, I would beat him to death with my electric bill. The thrill of summer is gone folks.

Because it has been so miserable outside, Sean and I have been spending a lot of time indoors together. A lot of time indoors together. Which has given us both a bad case of cabin fever, the primary symptom of which is repeating ones self. Repeating ones self.

One afternoon last week, in a state of Freon-induced dementia, I decided to get out our Ryan’s Room Mambo Combo Tent Playhouse and assemble it in the den in an effort to occupy and amuse my child thus alleviating the symptoms of cabin fever and so that I might avoid cannibalizing my child for yet another day. Although my precious little spawn is mighty tasty – a little like cheese enchiladas.

In my mind, my very tiny blonde mind, I imagined my child sitting quietly and patiently nearby assisting me in the construction of Ryan’s Room, handing me the little white framing tubes upon request like a surgical nurse. Delusion is another symptom of cabin fever. Another symptom.

What Ryan doesn’t tell you about his stupid room is that the assembly of the 147 parts requires an advanced engineering degree, the flexibility of a Chinese acrobat and the patience of Mother Teresa. I have none of these things.

Because I am a methodical person when delusional, I dumped out all the parts and sorted them putting all parts of similar shape and size together. Because Sean is also methodical, he resorted all parts of similar shape and size into one big pile, which he stuffed into the bowels of the sofa. Yet, I managed to assemble one whole tent frame without losing it. Too much. It was a feat of engineering and personal restraint.

As I stood back to admire my work, Antique Daddy walked through and asked how I planned to get the frame inside the nylon tent form. Some people are so annoyingly logical. Of course I had a plan. My plan was to curse Ryan and his room and his tents and his mother and father. Then I would locate the nylon tent form, which Sean had filled with Brio train tracks and taken somewhere. Then I would disassemble the frame, afterwhich I would wedge my antique behind into the flaccid boneless yet cheerfully colored tent form and finally I would reconstruct the frame from the inside. Right after I remembered where I last put the Tequila.

So I disassembled the frame, resorted the parts, crawled into the deflated tent and asked Sean to hand me one of the long white plastic rods, labeled A so that I might begin constructing our afternoon of summer fun. As I stuck my hand out to receive Part A, I felt Part A beating me on top the head. Beating me on top the head. And then I lost it. I tried to get out of the tent and have a word about respect with the boy, but I was trapped like an angry cat in a pillow case.

And then I realized I was craving a Margarita and cheese enchiladas.

7am. – Coffee
Pour first cup of coffee. Bump cup on edge of counter. Favorite cup breaks and splashes moderately hot coffee down the front of the cabinets and all over my feet. Do the walking on hot coals dance. Clean up mess.

7:30 – Eggs
Remove egg from carton to crack into pan. Drop egg on my foot en route. Hobble over to the sink to wipe yolk from between toes leaving a trail of egg slime from stove to sink. Clean up mess.

7:40 – Toast
Toast pops up. Reach for butter tub. Knock brand new tub of butter off counter. Splat. Falls open side down – of course – and not just on the floor, but again, on my foot. Hobble over to the sink and wipe butter from between toes. Take note that this is third time I’ve had my foot in the kitchen sink this morning. A new record. Put mostly clean glop of butter back in tub when no one is looking. Clean up mess. Spread questionable butter on cold toast to serve to my child.

7:50 – Call Sean to table to eat toast and eggs. Bump plate on the edge of the table launching scrambled eggs into centerpiece and pile of yesterday’s mail. Pick eggs off the table and put back on plate. Clean up visible mess.

8:10 – Get Dressed
Attempt to improve attitude with tube of mascara. Drop mascara brush down front of white shirt. Watch in amazement as mascara wand rolls off the vanity and – you guessed it – onto my foot. And then onto the rug. Consider kicking mascara wand across the bathroom until I see image of interested 3-year-old in mirror behind me. Make a better bad choice and mutter “damage” under my breath. Wipe mascara from between my toes. Remove rug and shirt to the laundry to join other collateral damage of the morning.

8:30 – Plan Day
Ask Sean what fun thing he’d like to do today. “The funnest thing I can think of is to play with you Mommy,” he says. Heart pops out of my chest and lands in a big sloppy mess at my feet where I splash around in it like Gene Kelly.

Cherries are in season.  Cherries as gorgeous and red and decadent and as seductive as any apple in Eden there ever was. I saw them at the store and brought them home. I rinsed them under the cool water of the tap and then without even bothering to turn on the lights, I sat down alone in my kitchen and ate them one by one. 

It was May of 1991. I was 31-years-old. My first husband and I, along with another couple, were in Europe. When you decide to take a two-week car trip with another couple, you know it will either go very well or very badly. The stars were aligned. The four of us spent two carefree weeks tooling around Paris, Aosta, Milan, Montreaux, Florence, Nice and Monaco having the time of our lives. We went to all the famous museums, walked along the shore of Lac Leman, stayed in a castle and sunbathed in Monaco. Things happened on that trip that are hysterical to us, but would be puzzling to others in the retelling.

Towards the end of the trip, as we were making our way back to Paris, we stopped at a roadside fruit stand in the French countryside. We impulsively purchased a bag of cherries – lovely, juicy, plump, fresh French cherries.

As the four of us sat under the shade of an ancient tree eating cherries and spitting the pits, my senses were unusually electrified. Every sensation was magnified. Perspiration, perfume and car exhaust riding the currents of the morning breeze, the blue of the sky and the blood red of the cherries, the gravelly French accent of the vendor, the laughter and chatter of our group, the humming of the nearby traffic. All of these sensations combined into a crystallizing moment in time and lodged into the cool deep of memory.

I remember being acutely aware of the moment, as though somehow outside of myself. I remember thinking that I always wanted to feel as intensely alive as I did in that moment. In fact and detail, eating cherries on the side of the road is an insignificant event but it represented one of those rare moments in life when all seems well with the world. I thought it would be like that forever, the four of us.

Three years later, my first husband died very suddenly. Soon thereafter, our friends divorced after more than twenty years of marriage. The photos of Provence are boxed up and stashed away. The memories have been swept up and put away as well.

Nothing more remains of that one morning in May but the sensation of cherries.

This post was originally published June 12, 2006.