I Shouldn't Even Say This

You know how you like to look as if you have things together? Or at least you try to keep from looking like a lunatic? You might be frothing at the mouth, screaming at your kids, but the phone rings and you say, "Hello?" in the sweetest voice imaginable? Or someone says to you in public, "How are you?" and you say, "Oh, fine. Busy, but fine!" when you are really thinking, "I'm drowning! If I have to wipe one more nose or smell one more stinky kid, I will throw myself out the window!"

Mostly, I strive to appear like a sane woman who has it sort of together. I mean, most days I don't wear foundation and mascara and blush, so my face is bleary and lipless and blotchy which is always embarrassing when someone unexpectedly stops by. And recently a mom-friend told me she'd never seen me in jeans, only sweatpants, which is purely coincidental, because I don't wear sweatpants all the time. Really. I don't. But I don't look like Sar*h J*ssica Parker, dancing my way through a Gap commercial, either. (Everytime I see that, I think, she's my age, which is clearly wrong.)

But I know people think I am calm and sedate and rational. And today I wasn't. At all.

I shouldn't even say this--after all, what will you think--but today my twins made me furious. All I wanted them to complete for school was one unit of spelling and a few vocabulary lessons. Simple, right? They both woke up with the emotional stability of a teenage girl experiencing premenstrual syndrome. TwinBoyA actually narrowed his left eye at me while snarling through a curled lip when I went over his science assessment from yesterday. Both twins refused to do their spelling. Their defiance is what set me off.

Pretty soon I was gritting my teeth and demanding that they work. They dug their heels in. The baby was fussing in my arms while Babygirl and DaycareKid squabbled over toys. At some point, TwinBoyA expressed his displeasure with me by walking through the kitchen and casually knocking a high chair tray and a couple other items to the floor. He has been throwing things in fits of anger since before he could walk. He used to throw furniture--the child-sized rocker was a favorite--but now, he just slyly displaces things--I will find a stack of CDs on the floor or a pencil snapped in two and discarded behind a chair.

When he purposely tipped things onto the floor, I went berserk inside my head. I pursed my lips into a tight line and then went to his room and opened his headboard and threw his stack of playing cards on the floor. I dumped his bedding (unmade bedding) on the floor. I tossed some books on the floor. I emptied a plastic container full of blocks on the floor. TwinBoyB watched me do this. He was completely shocked. I did not care. I took the folded laundry from the couch and deposited it on the floor between their beds.

Both boys went upstairs and I found them playing Nintendo. I took the controllers out and told them to finish their lessons. They tried to make deals with me: "We're not doing spelling. How about if we do music instead?" No. No. No.

I was so angry that I fantasized about grabbing the car keys and leaving the house. I imagined enrolling them back in public school next year. In fact, I called TwinBoyA over to me and I informed him how very close he was to returning to school. I said, "So if you'd like to be back in the halls of school, having people make fun of you, just go ahead because that's where you're heading."

I thought of Mt. St. Helen's . . . how it explodes when there is no easy outlet for its molten lava. I was like that volcano today--bubbling with fiery hot fury.

I thought I was such an easy-going, calm, patient, loving person. And then I had kids. Motherhood is a continual lesson in disappointment with myself. I thought I'd be better. I thought I'd have more control over how this situation turned out. I thought my kids would be more like me and less like themselves. I thought my kids would want to please me.

I thought parenting would be a stroll through a flower-filled park (quit laughing) and instead, it turns out to be an uphill climb in the rain. At night. Carrying four kids on my back. Without adequate footwear. Or a light. Or food. And all the while, they are chattering in my ears and arguing and calling each other "Stupid."

My kids are more like magnifying glasses than anything else. They have supersized spotlights which peer into the very corners of my being, illuminating the cockroaches and dust and mucky ugliness that lurks in me. I much preferred the public me that I used to know, the unruffled person who was unchallenged and unquestioned, the person who excelled at things she tried. My kids will never know that person. They only know the screaming me who retaliates like a child and who says things like, "STOP. TALKING. TO. ME."

For the record, I did clean up the mess I made. So did TwinBoyA. They also both finished their spelling units and we discussed their behavior later. They promise to be better, to do better, to work harder tomorrow.

When TwinBoyA said I overreacted, I peered at him and said, "Child, if you light a fuse, you just might set off a bomb."

I need a vacation.