now fortified with impotent fury!risperdal

The scene: the dinner table
The players: Lad, snarklet, and me

The lad referred to Mr. LKM being an authority figure, yet younger than Lad. Sean looked up quickly.
“How can that be?”
“He’s 10 years younger than me, kiddo.”
“So then he’s…uh….”
“I’m 37, your mom’s 36, so he’s….”
“27!”
“Right.”
“And I’m exactly 30 years younger than mom!”
“Yes, so when you’re her age she’ll be….”
“66!”
“Right!”
“And when I’m that age she’ll be….”
Lad and I both turned towards him and smiled, as our dear little child had fun with numbers.

Sean smiled wide. “96. Or dead.”

I am cleaning, sifting through the detrius of things held onto entirely too long. I am shedding things as a snake sheds its skin. I pry open a tin, and find old inks from long ago busted pens. And as I throw them out, I remember. There is a box, sitting near my desk, unobtrusive, easily forgotten.

Three pens, all black. One rollerball, one ballpoint, one fountain. I used them for a while, then stopped when it hurt too badly. Both metaphorically and physically, as my arms seized and ached and hurt viciously when I was pregnant. I never got back into the habit.

Unscrew cases and eyeball refills. I don’t have them, but this is not a nicety or a luxury. I will order new ones, today even, and come next week I will use your pens again. For years after you died, they languished in a drawer in my desk, until the day I finally threw them into an unassuming brown paper bag and went to a Mont Blanc store. The salesmen expected nothing of the young woman in the ratty jeans and t-shirt, but once they saw what I had fell all over themselves to help me, offer to buy them from me, two of them are rare, very rare, was I aware that they’re rare? Was I sure I wouldn’t sell them? Yes. Yes I was sure, and yes, I did really mean it when I asked to buy a replacement nib and use that monstrously huge fountain pen with my own smaller hands.

We both loved pens. Ridiculously, given how dreadful your handwriting was and mine still is. You labored for years to find a pen big enough for your hand. You and mom got me fountain pens in college in the faint, pointless hope that it would help me write more legibly. You started me on this kick, you with your techno-weenie love of gadgets and yet love of a good fountain pen. I remember when mom and I scoured the antique silver section of Marshall Field’s, trying to find something- anything- good for you for your fiftieth birthday. She still has the antique inkwell and pen holder we got you.

It is that time of year now when memory rushes up and knocks me sideways, when the gloom and despair begin to overtake me and more often than not I cannot remember why until weeks after it starts. This year, I have remembered early. This year, I came across your baby book- a ridiculous thing, you? A baby?- 15 years to the day after you were diagnosed with cancer. Cancer which then suspended the next seven and a half weeks in amber but also hit the fast forward button at the same moment, a disconcerting slingshot of time, days jumbled together with appointments and news and biopsies and chemo and what ifs and being at the house for dinner a lot more often and and and.

And then you were gone.

But I still have your pens.

When just looking at the organizational prowess of creative types on Craftzine makes you feel like epic fail?

(I am decluttering, as part of Year Of Less Stuff Take 2, and reorganizing, as part of Jesus Ghey Let’s Hope It Sticks This Time, and searching for inspiration to organize pantries, legos, knitting stuff, desks, and more random craft crap than you can shake a stick at. There is absolutely zero humor in this, ergo I’m not blogging it, unless it’s things like ‘you know, I think I can throw out the pattern for how to knit an edible thong with cherry licorice ropes and a pair of chopsticks’)

We are fast coming up on the third party at school this year. As I sat at the gate at the airport Monday, gmail cheerily informed me I had new mail. I swear I need to find a way to tie a specific sound alert to a given sender, because I need to come up with something appropriate for emails for the room mother for Sean’s class. Carmina Burana, perhaps. Or I Hate Everything About You, but I’m about a decade and a half past Ugly Kidd Joe, and really, hate is such a strong word. Is there a Serenade for Nimrods?

We had a lengthy chat at the beginning of the year about Sean’s allergies. No problems! She informed me. She was sensitive! And yet, without fail, she has specified a treat that Sean is allergic to. And you know, I don’t feel the entire class should bend to our will on his allergy when it comes to what they get to eat. The dye thing is not an inhalation allergy; there are peanut kids for whom inhalation exposure is a real threat, and I don’t mind the room being a peanut free zone, truly. I figured I’d have to supply his party treats, and while it marks him out as ‘other’ and ‘different’, it’s ok. (Besides. I make sure I get him the enormous, slathered in awesome frosting cupcakes from Whole Foods. He is truly okay with this).

But for not the first time, she has specified an activity that is not safe for Sean. Last time it was bingo using red M&Ms. Fine. I can sub in hershey’s kisses, but really. Is it that big a fucking deal to not pick a candy that he’s allergic to? (Not to mention: the thought of 20 6 year olds manhandling candy and trading it? Ugh.) This time, in her infinite wisdom, she has specified an activity AND treat all in one- the kids, she has decreed, will decorate heart shaped sugar cookies with red sprinkles and red hots and conversation hearts.

Way to exclude my kid there, bitch. I will admit, an entirely naturally-derived red mist of rage clouded my sight as I sat there reading and re-reading. I shot off a polite, concerned email to her (and offered to try to source safe sprinkles and sugar and such for the entire class) and heard nothing back- meanwhile, other mothers were volunteering to bring this and that and this morning I spoke with the school nurse who kiboshed the entire fucking idea, and so I then got to shoot around an email killing the decorating idea, offering alternatives, and giving a lengthy apologetica.

The room mother emailed back within minutes. Claiming she too had spoken to the nurse! And so this isn’t a big deal, and sure we’ll do that. And then came her shot across the bow.

“And I assume you’ll be at the party???”. cc’d to everyone.

I emailed back my thanks and noted, “I’ll be there if I can move this 6 hour long meeting. The joys of working parenthood.”

Woman. Do not even start the working vs. SAHM debate with me. You thought I got bitchy about conversation hearts, you have not seen a goddamned thing yet.