The hour from seven to eight on schooldays has to be my worst! When the kids leave for school, the door closed tightly behind them, I stand on the other side and just shake. The bottom of my shoes are full of `Captain Crunch'; every coat, jacket and sweater is out on display and every light in the house is on. Suddenly, surrounded with unbelievable stillness, I look around and miraculously spot Jimmy's shoe lace, Deborah's pencil case, Vicki's school bag and Kim's milk money — the objects of a frantic search. I think I spend more time on my hands and knees during this one hour than any monk. Next time I buy furniture I'm going to check the underside first because I see it more often.
The amazing story is that everyone remembers leaving everything they own in the middle of the kitchen table before they went to bed and "somebody must have stole it during the night." I sometimes envision a burglar going over his `catch': 1 sneaker with Ritter on the toe, a beat-up grey St. Paul Federal folder, three Campbell Soup labels and a sweater without buttons. Oh yes, the burglar also has a partner who roughs up the clothes that have been checked out and ready for school (cross my heart, Mom). This partner rips buttons off the blouses, puts ketchup stains on the fronts of the shirts, tears out hems, cuts holes in the socks and removes shoe laces.
After everyone has sufficiently blamed each other and dressed themselves, they remember today is Art Class and they MUST have 14 three-pound coffee cans with the lids cut into daisies, 10 skeins of multicolored yarn all cut into 3-inch pieces, and an orange leaf from 27 different types of trees found in Abraham Lincoln's back yard during the Civil War. As I climb down from the twenth-seventh tree, I discover the assortment of notes that have suddenly appeared on the kitchen table — all needing immediate attention. I realize I have just ten minutes to decide which high school we want Kim to attend...whether Vicki will have free open-heart surgery in the gym on Friday as scheduled...when we want the pipe organ Deborah ordered delivered...which I'd prefer, escorting the first graders on their Marathon Merry-go-round Outing or chaperoning the 8th graders on their midnight Swim & Shambles Sock Hop. Also, the school would like the tuition paid in full by 8:01—in dimes — and has furnished a card with 3,500 little slots for my convenience.
At this point I would have run back upstairs and hidden, but the bathroom was flooding. I can never understand why everything in the house falls into the toilet in the morning. As I approach the bathroom I'm thinking, "I'm just going to plunge whatever it is right down and not go fishing for it," until I find out it's my glasses which I left on top of the Kleenex box for just a second.
While I'm running from room to room, the children who usually have no concern for the pattern of my life are asking: "Does it matter if the dog eats the coffee cake?" "Do you know I'm holding up my underpants with masking tape, and the gym teacher wants to talk to you?" "Why did you buy these yucky pears with the fuzz on them?" "Do you care if I have spaghetti for breakfast?"
I should have known better than to expect anything good to come from a day that began with the sound of Jimmy's voice yelling "I can't get the refrigerator door closed," and the return yell — "Oh Jimmy! are you gonna get it!" Yes, morning prayers were definitely invented by a mother running downstairs.
So, the morning hour begins and ends abruptly...both times with a prayer. As I close that door behind them, their having been dressed, fed, cared about, and kissed, I never let go of the knob without that mother's constant prayer: that I will see all four of them once more at 2:30 on the other side of that door.