Bernard has already run ahead, but Clara is walking unsteadily in front of the stroller, where the twins are giggling. I paid a lot of money for a stroller that has a special platform for her to stand on, but she refuses to use it. She’s a “strong-willed child,” which my mom would have called “a problem child.”
“Claraaaaa!” I sing to her. “Let’s play a game called walk in a straight line!”
Clara changes direction again, and the front wheel of the stroller clips the back of her leg. We’ve got a toddler down.
Bernard doesn’t mind that his sister is yowling in pain in front of his school, but the twins are both parrots, and even though they are not even a little bit hurt, they join their sister in creating a full-on a cappella chorus of screaming children. For a moment, I consider just leaving them all there, getting in my van, and driving away. Maybe all the way to North Dakota. Maybe South Dakota. Maybe even Kansas, depending on traffic. I’d throw the Kidz Bop CD out the window on the freeway and stop at the McDonald’s drive-thru just for myself. I’d eat my fries one at a time instead of trying to pour them down my throat while they’re still boiling hot just so I can have enough calories in my body to survive wrestling the twins in and out of their car seats.
My daydream is interrupted by a mom. A mom! She’s clearly already done with drop-off, and she’s on the way to her car. “Hope your morning gets a little better.” She winks at me. “We’ve all been there.”
Be normal. Be normal. Be normal.
“Great, how are you?” I say, and she graciously pretends that makes sense. I want to say more, I want to ask her if she has time to get a coffee, or if she wants to meet up before pickup. But I can tell from her outfit and her car that she’s on her way to the office. That she takes her coffee like she takes her meetings: standing up at an ergonomically designed desk.
Parents aren’t allowed past the front door of McKinley on the first day of school, owing to some “misunderstandings” between staff and parents that have only been alluded to vaguely in the daily emails that Gwendolyn sends from the Mom Squad. Instead, all the moms have congregated in groups on the front lawn. They look so natural, like this is something they do every day: just stand around with their friends in cute outfits having regular conversations.
Be normal. Be normal. Be normal.
Today, I know, my thoughts will become things. Today, I will meet Gwendolyn. I’ll give her the gift I made for her—a throw pillow that’s printed with some of her best Instagram photos—and tell her how much her account has inspired me. She’ll be so flattered, but also humble. “You inspire me,” she’ll say, bringing me in for a hug. “I love this.” Then we’ll have a special coffee date. Then we’ll be friends; and next year, she’ll be posting photos of all our kids on the yearly spirit quest through Joshua Tree, which I learned on Wikipedia is not just a U2 album that my parents forbade me from listening to because they believed that secular rock music was the work of the Devil but is also a place where Gwendolyn takes her family each year just to revive their spirits and renew their sense of purpose in the world.
Gwendolyn is standing with her closest friends. I don’t know them, but I know of them. She tags them in her photos. One of them makes jewelry and the other one has shoulder muscles that make me slightly scared and a little tingly in my swimsuit zone. Neither of them has as many Instagram followers as Gwendolyn, but they are definitely Cool Moms.
“Hi, Gwendolyn!” I say. I was hoping it would sound normal, but my voice catches in my throat, and what comes out is more of a gurgly whisper, like I’m a troll hiding under a bridge that Gwendolyn James is walking across in her eco-friendly, fair trade shoes.
“Hi, Gwendolyn!” I try again. The conversation pauses, and for a moment, the sun that is Gwendolyn shines upon me.
“Hiiiiiiii,” she coos back to me.
I don’t know what comes out of my mouth next. It’s a collection of every thought I’ve ever had but cut up and rearranged like the verbal equivalent of a ransom note made from magazine cutouts. I watch as Gwendolyn’s smile turns to a pained grimace, and then as her eyes shift to meet those of her friends.
I’m blowing it. NO. THOUGHTS BECOME THINGS. I am doing great!?!
I thrust the gift bag forward, suddenly embarrassed by how childish it looks, how cheesy my bubble letters must look to a woman who taught Gwyneth Paltrow brush calligraphy. Gwendolyn smiles, but there’s a hint of something else there, like the smile the woman at the grocery store gave me when she took my phone from my screaming toddler. I’m imagining that, of course. My meditation app would tell me that I am letting my thoughts wash me away in the tide of anxiety. I sweep away that anxious thought and struggle for the next thing to say.
“Would you like to have coffee?” I croak, but the moment is over. Gwendolyn’s voice, clear and confident, eclipses my own little whisper. “Thanks so much,” she says to me, and turns back to her friends, closing the circle behind her.
5
Amy
Sometimes, when I’m sleeping, the actual dream will be interrupted by an email notification. It’s like my dream is the computer screen and whatever is happening in my subconscious—I’m running through my high school trying to make it to my math final, or I’m trying to swim away from a shark but the ocean has turned into nacho cheese—will be interrupted by a soft ping and a small window, bearing only the first part of an email that is always, always marked as urgent.
Subject: 911!!! Call-in info for 8am conf??
Subject: URGENT where tf is our packaging copy??
It’s like having a nightmare within a nightmare, and after a night like that, I always feel cheated, like those eight (okay, six and a half) hours I spent being interrupted by imaginary emails should count as work hours.
The reality of my day isn’t much different from that nightmare. I’m the Sales and Marketing Director of Coffee Collective, a forward-thinking curator of highly crafted coffees that disrupts the traditional bean-to-cup coffee model by reimagining your morning routine. If that’s hard for you to comprehend, let me put it this way: we sell coffee.
I’m good at my job. No, I’m great at my job. In the past eight years, I’ve single-handedly built us from a hobby company founded by a bored rich kid named Dale, who Mike calls the Child Executive Officer (not fair, Dale was twenty when he started the company, which is legally an adult), to a legitimate business enterprise that supplies overpriced coffee that is most definitely the same stuff you can buy at Costco, but in a folksy craft paper bag with a “hand-stamped” logo across the front.
My boss, Dale, is a mostly-well-intentioned rich kid who will tell you and anyone who asks that he dropped out of college to pursue his dream of building a business on his own. The thing is, anyone with Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram and a little time on their hands can scroll through his posts and see that, really, he failed out of three different state schools before his parents gave him a large chunk of money to keep him busy and out of the family business.
I was Employee #1 at Coffee Collective. I met Dale when Dylan and Jane were still little, and I was working crazy hours at an ad agency downtown. I dropped Jane and Dylan off at daycare before the sun was even up and picked them up when it was dark. I saw them for maybe forty-five minutes a night before they fell asleep, and I spent most of those forty-five minutes on my laptop, anxiously replying to client emails. On Saturdays, we tried to explore farmer’s markets and pop-up shops in the city, to spend as much time as a family as we could. One sunny spring day, while Mike and I argued over whether a thirty-dollar jar of local honey was in the budget, I saw him: a dopey loner standing awkwardly at a folding table with a cheap vinyl banner duct-taped along the front. He made eye contact with me, and my motherly heart swelled in pity for this doofus. Two cups of coffee later, I was buzzing with ideas and too much caffeine. He needed branding—actual branding, not just the default font in Microsoft Paint. He needed a sales rep and a marketing director. He needed a point of view and some confidence. Dale nodded along with everything I said, a mixture of awe and fear on his face.