For the first time in ages and ages I found myself wishing that I didn't have my Zoë. It lasted about 10 minutes, but it then disappeared when I looked in the backseat of my car at her little confused face. Looking at me and wondering why I was crying.
It was one of those days where I felt like I had said "Zoë come here!" for like the 800th time. I suck. I'm the worst mother. I can't control my child. She's MORE than all of her three with her new little pink, Payless, cowgirl boots, fists on hips, and determined face. She’s standing there, mesmerized, by the horrid machine that eats quarters in order to pick up some cheap, stuffed, ugly toy. This insipid man is letting his daughter play/lose over and over and over, and I just know that Zoë wants to play too.
"Zoë come here!" I said it again. In the restaurant, in the parking lot, in the shoe store, and now in the grocery store. She had pushed her little mini-me grocery cart around picking plums, "taking" her blood pressure at the machine (and then helped mommy take hers... a bit high even), then spent ten minutes in the Easter candy section, picking her Jolly Ranger jelly bean egg.
Post checkout and here I am. "Zoë come here!" I'm getting the CPS-calling burning stares of strangers (in clarity today I think more imagined than real). Nine hours of working. Rain-soaked, nearly two hour commute. Frazzled single mom. And now at 8:15 (which in toddler time is like 11:30pm) a trip to the grocery store.
Finally, I feel it. That quick, heated rage of embarrassment, anger, humility gets to me. "Zoë come here!" I quickly swoop up my little pink cowgirl (who now is screaming and kicking) and put her in the cart. It feels too heated. I want to just burst into tears right here in front of the checkout counters. Rushing out into the pouring rain, I know I wasn't really that rough, but you feel like you are George Foreman at this point, and any physicality to your child feels about ten times rougher than you are really are. You feel like some horrified person is going to run over and snatch your child from you.
What should have been five minutes to get tampons and milk had now turned into a 45 minute pleading, prodding, over-purchasing trip. Like herding a baby cow while wearing a blindfold. Bad Mommy, bad Mommy!
Into the carseat. Groceries in the trunk. "Mommy, open this!" to the jelly bean egg. Turn on the engine. And now tears. These from me.
I turn to open the egg and see her little sad, confused face. "Zoë, come here." No exclamation point. I unbuckle her carseat and she comes into the front seat to give me a hug. That smile. Ok, it does pass.