Page 99 of Woman on the Verge

I have the girls with me for a trip to the grocery store. Once, I overheard a park mom say that she only runs errands without her children, that she counts this as “self-care.” I rolled my eyes so hard I thought they would get stuck in the back of my head and I’d see nothing but black for the rest of my life. First of all, how does she have the option to run errands without her children? Second of all,why is the bar so low for maternal self-care? I was most perturbed by the fact that I understood what she was saying. On the rare occasion Kyle watches the girls so I can run errands, it does feel like a luxury. It’s like once we become mothers, we are told that any moment that does not involve complete sacrifice in deference to our children is a luxury, something we should count as a blessing. I hated that mom for supporting this narrative. And I hated myself for doing the same.

“Mommy, can I get these?” Grace asks, pointing to a giant container of cheese balls that the manager of this establishment has chosen to place right at the entrance of the store.

“No, Grace. We don’t need a vat of cheese balls.”

“What’s a vat?”

“Hey, why don’t you get yourself a little cart?”

Half of parenting is redirection.

Grace goes to the little carts and takes one for herself. Before I had kids, I despised mothers who let their children push these little carts through the aisles. The children were always in the way, and the moms would just chirp “Sorry!” with this laugh that saidI’m just a mom doing my best. Isn’t my kid cute?

I am the annoying mom now. The universe is constantly reprimanding me for my past judgments.

Liv sits in the front of the big cart that I’m pushing. Usually, she’s well behaved and giggly in this scenario because she thinks the grocery store is like a ride at Disneyland. Today, though, she is wiggling around and whining. It’s a special kind of whine. She might have an ear infection.

Grace likes to be helpful, so I tell her to get bananas. She goes to the bin of single bananas and puts eight of them, one at a time, in her cart. Most of them are already browning, but I don’t have the heart or patience to do anything about this.

“Do we need strawberries too?” she asks with enthusiasm.

We always need strawberries.

She picks up a container, but she does it by the top, so the container falls open, and all the strawberries tumble out onto the floor.

She looks at me, and as she takes in my complete annoyance with her mishap, her face transforms from shock at what’s happened to utter devastation. There is a precarious moment of silence before she erupts into a wail.

I set aside my annoyance so I can console her and get her to stop wailing.

“It was just an accident,” I tell her, stroking her back with my hand.

Please stop making a sceneis what I’m thinking.

She calms down, and I start to put the strawberries back in the container when a guy who works there, some teenage kid, comes over and says, “Don’t bother with that. Not like we can sell them now.”

As he walks away, I hurl one of the strawberries at his back.

“Mommy!” Grace chastises me.

I miss hitting him, for better or worse, and mutter, “Asshole.” It’s possible he hears me. His head jerks back slightly, but he doesn’t turn around.

Grace and Liv have definitely heard me.

“Asshole!” Grace shrieks.

Now the kid looks at us, as do several others in the vicinity. I give him a tight smile.

With impeccable timing, Liv parrots her sister: “Asshole!”

And that’s how the shopping trip goes.

I stop by the pediatrician’s office on the way home, hoping they can see Liv because I’m quite sure something is going on with her right ear. It’s red and crusty, and she keeps putting her pinkie finger in it.

Hey you, how’s your day?

Elijah.

The dancing between two worlds has become less exhilarating and more exhausting. I want nothing more than to sit on a park bench and text him back and forth for the next hour, but I cannot, and this constraint makes me more irritable than I already was.