Page 1 of Not How I Saw That Going

One

Lyndi

Are there detention centers for four-year-olds?

This should not be the thought going through my head at 11:00 a.m. on a Wednesday morning. Yet here I am.

I can honestly say I’m not surprised by my delinquent four-year-old’s actions. I knew it was going to be a day when he peed the bed. We’ve only been in the store for thirty minutes and so far he’s already accidentally knocked a can of paint off a shelf and tried to play hide-n-seek behind the towers of toilet paper.

For a split second, I allow myself to dream of the prison cell my ex occupies. Silence and syrup-free walls. I could use a vacation.

“Crew.” I grab his arm before he can take off toward the donuts, again. “Can you help Mommy and go pick some string cheese?”

“Okay!” He skips to the doors a few feet down as I breathe a sigh of relief and turn back to the hot dogs.Which one is the cheapest but also contains the most natural ingredients?

“Ma’am!” I’m snapped back to the moment when a Walmart employee approaches me, out of breath and sweating through his blue polo.

“You need to get him out of there.”

“Get who out of…” My eyes drift behind the man, to where my child has enclosed himself in the fridge and is dancing through the cheese with that maniacal laugh I know so well. My stomach drops. “Crew!”

Why didn’t I make a pickup order?

You know what they should tell you in the hospital, right after giving birth? Before they drown you in all the information you will inevitably forget? To never, under any circumstances, bring your child to the store. It’s simply too overwhelming for their developing minds, and for their mothers.

“Well, are you going to get him out or not?” the guy asks, his fingers reaching for the radio on his belt.

He asks this as if I have a choice.

I hold up a hand before he does something we will both regret. “Don’t get all jumpy, junior. I’m going.”

I hike up my high-waisted yoga pants and straighten my “soccer mom” tee, readying myself for battle.

I can do this. I cantotallydo this. My child listens to me one hundred percent of the time and I’m a wonderful mother. Even if… okay, he’s trying to climb the shelves now.

I approach the fridges, ignoring the eyes of those who have stopped to watch, and face my child, alone, just like I have every day for the last four and a half years. I was never more scared than the day I had brought him home from the hospital to a barely furnished apartment, all of two hundred dollars in my bank account. But we have figured it out, together. Crew chose me for a reason. And I will choose him over and over again.

I pick a door two away from my flight-risk child and crack it open. “Crew, honey,” I say, my voice so sweet it’s practically dripping with the kind of sugar he can’t resist. But I’m not new to this planet or this child, so this only has a fifty percent chance of working. “Can you please get out now?”

“I don’t want to!” he yells, jumping up and down on the bags of cheese like he’s in a bounce house.

“No more sleepovers at Aunt Maddie’s.” Threats are the next weapons in my arsenal. I’m using them for all I’m worth. “No candy either.”

“I’m the boss of my body,” Crew fires back.

Gah.It’s so annoying when my attempt at good parenting comes back to bite me in the butt.

“Okay, have fun. I’m going home.” Reverse psychology is my last tactic.

“Bye!” he hollers, tossing around handfuls of shredded cheese.Please tell me the bag was open already.

That’s it. I’m out of ammunition.

My shoulders droop. I’m in so much trouble.

I’m so tired of feeling like all I do is let Crew down. I want to be more for him. Not just for him, but for me too.

I take a steadying breath—I’ve got this—then face the fridge again, ready to take on the world. My world.