Mission: Impossible Mom Style

Summer has arrived, dethawing my frozen, winterized body.  We have waited all year long for this.  To get the kids outside without snow, to enjoy play dates at the river and afternoons by the pool.  The luxury of long, balmy evenings when it feels like time pauses. The warm air caresses my pale skin like a hug as the clouds dance with color overhead and sun just doesn’t feel like leaving the sky.

But the one thing about summer is, while the sun is your savior, it is also your demise. The sun, which hangs warm and high in the summer sky, is the same sun which rises at 4:45 am, creeping it’s a rays between blinds and under the black-out curtains in my children’s bedrooms.  The light which wakes up said children and causes them to think that, since the sun is awake, they should be, too. The same summer sun which calls me out of bed and on a morning walk, warm sunshine on my face and a cool breeze to my back, also calls my children.  And they listen, much better than I do.

Enjoy It

The main thing I want from summer is to enjoy it, to enjoy the hot and long days.  The second thing I want from summer?  To get my kids to sleep past sunrise.  This is not an option.  For moms, this is survival.

Recently, my son’s blackout shades broke.  And as we know as parents, blackout shades are a necessity.  A life and death importance.  We must have blackout shades in order to survive, to keep the kids (and therefore us) asleep a little longer.  But now, with broken blackout shades, the sun now has free reign to cast his rays as early as he feels so inclined to do in my son’s room, which should be a crime.  We have ended up in a “I wake up at 5:30 am when the sun rises” fiasco that has become my son’s morning routine.    

Yesterday, while a cute, lightly freckled boy gazed upon my sleeping body before 6 am, rage and exhaustion boiled to the breaking point.  My husband finally took the broken blackout shades down.  Turning to me, he asked if I could take care of it.  My mission, if I chose to accept it, was to get the curtains to the tailors.  This was my Mission: Impossible.

The Scissor Bird is nestled into an old tiny home which has been converted into the tailors.  It sits just a few blocks away, not a three minute car ride from our house.  The parking lot is smaller than the house which holds the tailors, shaded by an oak as old as the city.  A parking lot which can be watched through the glass doors of the small house.  Run in, drop, run out.  Simple task.  Could I find some time between the hours of 9 AM and 5 PM today for a two second stop at the tailors to get the blackout shades sewed?  No problem. 

After the breakfast rush and chaos of getting three children ready for the day, I piled my brood into the car and headed towards the tailors.  I swung my car into the parking lot at 9:30 am to a dark building, greeted with a sign that said, “Closed. Hours of operation 11 to 5.” Resigned, I tried to brush off the mild irritation brought on by my failure.  I made a mental note to swim by after our park play date. 

In typical mom fashion—between the park, the lunch date with Grandpa, afternoon naps, and the craziness of the day—I forgot about the curtains.

The sun crawled lazily across the sky, afternoon turning towards evening.  I didn’t notice much between the wrangling of children, breaking up of fights, wiping of butts, and the throwing of sweet potatoes into the oven for dinner.  

The Curtains

As the sunlight slanted through the western-facing windows of our family room, still bright with the intensity of a summer day but beginning to hint at the coming evening, I remember.  The curtains!  Some good little fairy had whispered in my ear, some subconscious part of my mind realizing the coming night would usher in another impossibly early morning.  “Don’t forget,” it whispered.  My mission was reborn.

I turned towards the clock on the oven.  Miraculously, it said 4:30 pm.  I had thirty minutes.  I could do this!  I grabbed my keys and rushed towards to door to gather the kids.  As I placed my hand on the front door handle, I heard my phone start to ring.  It’s my husband.

“Where are you?” he says.

“I’m home.”

“Good.  The guys are coming to pick up the mattress.  You need to stay home until they get there.”

The mattress, which has been a ridiculous months-long project, is finally getting taken care of.  However, I still want to shout, “I don’t care about the bed!”  (I do.)  I just want to get these curtains out of my house and to someone who can fix them!  Disappointment and irritation wrangle for control of my emotions while my rationality tries to settle both of them down.  At least we’re getting the mattress taken care of.  One problem solved, another left undone.  I would have to be satisfied with that.

As though called by the same good fairy who reminded me of the curtains, the pickup truck pulled up almost as soon as I was off the phone with Ryan.  The mattress men had arrived.  They disappeared upstairs and within a few minutes our mattress is being carried on their two sets of overworked shoulders.  I’m equally shocked and appreciative of their efficiency. 

I head back to the kitchen to finish dinner prep when the clock above the oven catches my eye.  4:49 pm.  Seriously?  I have sweet potatoes roasting in the oven.  My kids are shoeless vagabonds running amuck in the backyard.  This is not a good time.  

And yet, the tailors is only three minutes away.  If I can just get my kids in the car, I can make this happen.  A ten minute errand, max.  My sleepless soul won’t let me give this up.  Life or death hang on the line.  Or at least my sanity does, which is basically the same thing.  

I can hear the Mission: Impossible theme song whispering in my ear.  Dum. Dum. Duh-duh.  Dum. Dum. Duh-duh. 

I run out to the backyard, tell all the kids we’re going on an errand.  Grumbles and whines about how they’re playing pour out of their three precious mouths.   I am immune, a mother unwavering in her determination.  A woman on a mission.  I throw three shoeless, grumpy children into flaming hot car seats, herding them like a sheep dog, barking orders and snapping at limbs to get them tied in so we can go.  Dum.  Dum.  Duh-duh.  Dum.  Dum.  Duh-duh!

I hop in, throw the car into reverse, and turn around to back up when my foot stomps on the brakes.  The mattress pick-up men are parked in the street, completely blocking the driveway.  I can’t move until they do.  And while they were the fastest mattress removers I’d ever seen in my house, apparently that didn’t translate to getting said mattress into the truck.  The summer heat seems to have morphed their bodies from iron mattress worriers into sloths.  I want to appreciate the difficulty of the task of moving a king-sized bed down stairs, out a house, and up into a moving truck in blistering summer heat.  But all I really care about is that they get the heck out of my way.

The minutes tick away.  4:51 pm.  4:52 pm.  I can feel my body tense with each passing moment.  My anxiety, born out of wrangling children into the car, is now feeding off of passing time, consuming more of me with each passing second.  

The truck begins to move.  4:53 pm.  Dum. Dum. Duh-duh. Dum. Dum. Duh-duh!  I can do this.  Back up the car, turn onto the street.  We’re moving!  We’re driving behind the mattress delivery truck, which thinks it is more snail then vehicle.  Please, please drive faster.  I go to turn, the truck doesn’t.  Freedom!!

Down the street, around the round-a-bout.  4:54 pm.  Turn right, onto the main road, drive one block, turn left.  4:55 pm.  No matter how fast I drive, the time goes faster.  Unyielding, uncaring.  4:56 pm.  Dum. Dum. Duh-duh. Dum. Dum. Duh-duh.

And there it is!  A beacon of light in the darkness of my sleep-deprived mom life.  The Scissor Bird.  

I swing into the parking lot, willing the shop to still be open.  No “closed” sign sits in the window.  I can taste the sweetness of victory.  I have achieved my goal.  Success is mine.

I throw the car into park, grab the curtains, yell at the kids that I’ll be right back, and throw open the glass doors to my salvation.  I am here.  

The tailor is a short, blond lady.  She’s on the phone, Facetiming with someone in a language I don’t understand (which is everything besides English.)  She’s in no rush to acknowledge me.  I’ll wait.  She can’t tell me she’s closed.  I’m already inside.  

Finally, she ends her call and turns to me.

She takes one look at the curtains and promptly says, “I don’t do those.”

The polite smile on my face doesn’t change, but I know my eyes can’t hide the devastation that has just happened to my world.  My life, in a split second, has fallen apart.  I will never sleep again.  I will go crazy.  My child will come to wake me up at 5 am forever, at which point my sanity will snap and I’ll spontaneously combust, explode.  The end.

The tailor rummages through her drawers, pulls out a little purple business card.  

“You go here.  She does those.  She open ‘til 6.  You go now.  Good price.”  And with that, she turns away.  I have been dismissed.

War has begun in my soul.  I don’t want to go there.  I don’t want to drive across town.  I have sweet potatoes in an oven which might not just burn and ruin dinner, but burn the house down.  I have three restless children the in car.  It’s after 5 pm.  I want to be done with this dumb errand.  I want to burn the blackout curtains.

But I also feel the pull of the curtains, the lure of sleep.  I have the curtains.  The kids are already in the car.  The other place is open and she does what I need.  Do I just give up, try another day when things aren’t as crazy and I actually have time to do this?  Or just get it done now?  

Dum. Dum. Duh-duh. Dum. Dum. Duh-duh!

I get back into the car, telling the kids we have one more place to stop. 

A small voice inside my head (I’ll call her Reason) tries to speak to me, tries to tell me I might regret this.  There is another time to do this.  My life won’t literally end if I drop the curtains off tomorrow instead.  But I can’t stop.  The mission has called and I have answered.  I’m in too deep, there is no turning back.

There are casualties of every mission.  Dinner may be the casualty tonight.  A small price to pay.  Besides, Ryan should be home soon.  Will he be able to save the sweet potatoes?  And the house?  Please Lord, let it be so.

Throw the car into drive, hit the road.  We’ve got this!  I’ll speed across town in a few minutes, be there in no time.  I am Ethan Hunt, spy extraordinaire.  Dum.  Dum.  Duh-duh.  Dum.  Dum.  Duh-duh! I am unstoppable.  

The road is not.  

The street is a parking lot.  We crawl at a pace slower than walking.  I’m tempted to ditch the car, throw the kids in the stroller that never seems to leave the trunk, and walk.  Maybe not the most rational decision at this moment, but rationality appears to have walked out long ago.  

I make the executive decision to stay in the car, an excruciating game of real-life “red light, green light.”  5:06 pm.  5:07 pm.  Inching forward across town.  

The summer sun has turned into an inferno.  I can feel the hate of the burning sweet potatoes, willing their burning torture onto us, turning the road into an oven.  Hell itself must be rising up through the asphalt.  The air conditioning is losing its pathetic battle against the punishing heat.  Beads of sweat dapple my forehead and pool against my back.  I can only imagine my baby, rear-facing and getting exactly zero cold air.  Has a child ever died of heat stroke while in a semi-moving car with their mother in the front seat?  I start to wonder if she this will be the first.  

Dum.  Dum.  Duh-duh.  Dum.  Dum.  Duh-duh. 

Shut up, Tom Cruise.  You don’t have three kids you’re carrying around for all you’re world-saving adventures.  It wouldn’t be quite so thrilling if you had to get home by 5 pm for dinner or pay for it when the kids get overtired and keep you up until 10 pm.  All those missions wouldn’t be quite so sexy then, would they?

We finally make it to the second tailors.  She’s located in the most inconvenient place possible: a strip mall with a giant parking lot devoid of any shade.  Apparently this is where every single car from the parking lot/street was headed.

Now I am forced to face my reality.  I must park.  I must unload all my children.  Children without shoes and a parking lot hotter than hell.  What have I done?  

I’m in too deep, no turning back now.

I finally find a spot located somewhere between the last row and state border.  I open the trunk and pray for a few pairs of forgotten shoes that have hidden themselves in some dark, forlorn corner of the trunk.  Nope.  Only two pairs of socks.  I can feel my poor decisions laughing in my face at this point. Dang it.  Socks have become my only hope.

Waves of mom guilt drown the anxiety and frustration that had consumed me as I slip the socks onto the feet of my children.  Am I about to literally burn my children’s feet over curtains? My kids, however, seem to think this is some sort of special game, dancing across the parking lot in their no-shoes.  Clearly the heat isn’t a match for Costco cotton socks.  Or God has simply looked down upon me with pity and has divinely protected their precious toes.  Thank you, Jesus.  

The four of us vagabonds trudge across hell’s parking lot, me shlepping a baby on my hip while two ruffians dart in opposing directions, playing a game of “who can get hit by a car first?”  I can feel eyes staring at me.  Who is this crazy woman with shoeless children in prime summer heat?  Someone call CPS!  I shepherd my herd as quickly as possible into the cover—and air conditioning—of the tailor’s.  

My kids, whom I spend every single waking moment parenting—teaching them to listen, to not touch what doesn’t belong to them, to say please and thank you—turn into demon children who immediately set upon the tailors with a mission to destroy either it or themselves, as though the hell rising from the asphalt has now possessed their little bodies.  They run over to the single hot thing in the store—the iron—with the determination only children have for self-mutilation and death.  Now the tailor is wrangling my children, telling them not to touch the iron, please don’t play with the mirror which isn’t attached to the wall and might fall on them and kill them, hands off the sewing machines, all while I apologize profusely for my shoeless, possessed offspring.  

I finally manage to get out the fact that I have curtains I need sewn.  She’s very kind, she can do it.

“They’ll be ready next Wednesday.  It will cost $50.” 

A week?  To sew a straight line on two curtains?  For fifty dollars?  I’m tempted to walk over to the sewing machines and sew these curtains myself.  However, I’m pretty sure I don’t know how to.  And even if I did, it’s quite likely my children would manage to bring the entire store down in the process.  I’m also sure this tailor would kick me out, a thing I’m starting to wonder if she’s about to do anyway.  

I thought dinner was going to be the casualty of this mission.  I’m pretty sure it has instead become my ego.  And my sanity.  And any shred of self-identity as a normal person I had harbored.  

And so I smile and tell her okay and try to get my three demon children back out of this store—and myself out of this nightmare—as quickly as possible.  

As we cross the Sahara-like parking lot once more, I expect one of three things to happen:  

1) Someone approaching me asking if I have a safe place to sleep tonight.  

2) Someone approaching me to offer me food stamps and any other financial assistance. 

3) Someone having called CPS, who will now approach me to assess the safety of my children.  

While I’m pretty sure that none of them will actually happen, I can’t help but hustle my shoe-less children across hell’s parking lot and into the car as quickly as possible.  Back into the oven-like car, back into the stop-and-go traffic, back to the dinnertime and bedtime rush awaiting me at home.

As I sat in the car, a ball of frayed nerves from an excursion which was supposed to take minutes and ended up taking nearly an hour, exhausted from wrangling kids into cars, kids out of cars, kids into stores, kids out of stores, kids across parking lots, and kids back into cars, I could hear the Mission: Impossible theme song whispering in my ear.  It made me realize how much this errand actually felt like Mission: Impossible.  

Because going to the tailors is as eventful, as stressful, as energy-sucking as a Mission: Impossible movie. The obstacles are insurmountable, stress-inducing, never-ending.  You must survive against all odds and—in this mission—aren’t allowed to have any casualties.  But at the end of the days, instead of saving the world, the only thing you actually accomplished was a trip to your local tailors.  

Motherhood can feel scarily like living life on a hamster wheel while someone tells you to run a marathon.  You’ve simultaneously ran for twenty six miles and gone absolutely nowhere.  You’ve both saved the world and accomplished nothing.  It can feel soul-draining and life emptying.

But the reality is we’ve accomplished a lot more than we think we have.  We may not have saved the entire world, but we have saved one world.  The world in which we live, our families live.  We keep our worlds running in the face of insurmountable obstacles and never-ending challenges, all while dragging along three completely dependent human beings.  We truly solve every problem.  Not for one world, but for the world of each member of our families.  For me, that’s five.  Five intertwined worlds to keep going every single day. 

I know I certainly don’t stop and think about everything I do accomplish every single day.  But when someone else says I’m amazing for raising three kids?  When someone else recognizes the fact that I keep five people alive and sustaining every single day?  It is only then I can only start to appreciate what I accomplish, what I’m capable of, and the way all those small victories are raising people who will grow up and go on to run the world.   

Which just goes to show how amazing moms are.  You’ve got nothing on this, Ethan Hunt.

And in a week my husband, without children, will go pick up my curtains, at which point I can start to enjoy summer by finally being able to get a little more sleep.  And all will be right with the world.

Until the next time we run out of toilet paper.  And then… 

Dum.  Dum.  Duh-duh.  Dum.  Dum.  Duh-duh!