SYDNEY
“Mommy!”
“We’re not late, baby. I got this,” I assure my daughter, smiling in the rearview mirror, knowing that’s exactly what she’s yelling about.
Do you have days where everything is going well, and you’re like, happy?
The sun is shining. Nothing pisses you off. You could spill your coffee all over you and get rear-ended at a stoplight, but you don’t even care because your day is fucking wig. Uh, don’t google what wig means. I did, and you get an array of wigs you only wished your hair looked like and still don’t know why your neighbor’s fourteen-year-old daughter says it.
I’ll save you the trouble, honey. It means amazing.
Do you see that chick in the Mercedes with her almond milk latte with her sugar-free splash of hazelnut? The one wearing sunglasses, hair curled so perfectly that it looks effortless, and her makeup on point and contoured to make her face look slimmer?
She’s beautiful, isn’t she?
And I bet, if I had to guess, she’s having a wig day.
For the sake of full discloser, I am not that girl.
Look to the left, little more… right there at the stoplight in the minivan being honked at. That’s me. And yeah, I was staring too, which explains the honking behind me.
Or I’m being honked at because I’m not sipping on an almond milk latte with a splash of sugar-free hazelnut. I dumped that on myself when I nearly blew through a stoplight trying to make it to preschool drop off on time. I’m not wearing sunglasses because who the fuck needs sunglasses when it’s raining? Also, my hair isn’t curled. It’s in what I like to refer to as my this-is-whatcha-get look that consists of a half-assed I-might-have-drank-a-bottle-of-wine look. And the makeup… why bother? I tried to do the contoured look once. I looked like I was preparing for a tribal ceremony. They’re called ceremonies, right? Never mind.
I am not, in fact, having a wig day.
Nope.
Instead, my toddler is screaming at the top of her lungs about being late to school. I’ll tell you something about toddlers while I’m on that particular rant. They think getting in your face and screaming their request at maximum volume is an effective way to get what they want across, and to be totally honest, they’re not wrong. I hear her loud and clear, and her distaste for my tardiness.
Remembering I was trying to make a call, I click the volume button on my steering wheel. “Hello? Are you there? Nahla?”
Silence. Nothing but dead silence. Picking up my phone from the center console, I stare at it while it drops the call. Stupid cell phones. Every time you need them, they don’t work. Or they need an update.
I try calling her back but it won’t even connect the call. “Shit!” Tossing my cell phone in the passenger seat, I turn left on the road the school’s on with two minutes before class starts.
“Shit, you said, shit,” Tatum notes from the back seat, smiling at me.
Thank you, swear police.
She repeats literally everything you say, but the words you want her to. Which is why my husband and I enrolled her in a private school. I’m hoping they can break her trucker tendencies.
I know what you’re thinking. Jesus, this lady is a nut job. Here’s a spoiler alert if you didn’t catch on. I totally am! But there’s a reason behind it, I assure you. You see, friends, I’m an artist. I strive on creativity and obsessive behavior. I don’t do schedules (can’t remember to check them), or rules (forget them most of the time), and getting up before ten in the morning isn’t my thing. Up until a few weeks ago when my nanny suddenly quit, that worked well for me. Now I’m carpooling my baby girl around while she screams at me for doing everything wrong.
“You can’t park there!” she yells from her car seat.
See? Told you.
“Where do I park?”
Tatum jabs a tiny finger in the direction of the school. Scanning the parking lot, I finally notice a sign that says Student Drop-off in big, bold letters. Okay, well, clearly I wasn’t paying attention.
“It’s raining,” she notes, reaching for her umbrella next to her.
Putting the van into Drive, I pull forward to the correct drop-off.
Tatum is unbuckling herself before the van is even stopped. “I’m late,” my adorable three-year-old deadpans. She’s not amused with me.
My feisty little blonde baby, she’s type-A personality. I’m type S. It stands for shitshow, I assure you.
Unbuckling my seat belt, I make my way out of the van to get her out. I know I have a button that will open the door, but I want to squish her cute face before I send her off to school. Look at her. Almost three feet tall and twenty-eight pounds of adorableness.
I lean down to her height and place my hands on her shoulders. Blonde springy curls blow lightly with the wind slapping my face. “I’m sorry Mama’s such a mess.”
I’m granted a smile. The same one she gives me when she realizes Mommy is struggling to get it together. Her hands meet my cheeks. “I love you, honey.”
She calls me honey. She heard Collin call me it once, and she kept saying it from then on. I love it. Adjusting her raincoat that’s way fancier than mine, I lift her up out of the van and squeeze her to my chest. “I hope you have the best day ever.”
Wiggling out of my grasp, she slides to the sidewalk and smooths out her bohemian dress. My daughter’s wardrobe looks something similar to a seventy-year-old gypsy lady, but I love her and her eccentric style. “I have to go. Don’t forget me.”
“Aunt Sadie is going to pick you up.”
There’s a split second where I see relief in her eyes. Yep. My twenty-one-year-old rock-star-loving sister is more reliable than me. Fact.
After watching my reason for existing saunter off into school, I try calling Collin, my husband.
I’m met with those highly obnoxious tones that tell you your call failed and the words “I’m sorry, your call cannot be completed as dialed.”
What the fuck?
I pull my phone back and stare at it. No bars. Okay, I don’t have a signal. Had the storm this morning knocked out a cell tower? For a minute, I sit inside the van and think about what we did before we had cell phones.
Crap. I don’t know. I can’t even think about what I do next. What do I do?
Coffee. I can do coffee, and that will make everything better.
ANNOYED AND RUNNING on anger and the handful of Cheerios I stuffed in my mouth, I eye everything in the display case at the coffee shop, desperately wanting a cake pop for breakfast and knowing I shouldn’t. I gained thirty-five pounds when I had Tatum three years ago. I’ve been hanging on to fifteen of it, and I can tell you exactly why I can’t lose them even though I blame it on approaching thirty and having a mom bod. It’s because I eat like garbage. Dessert for breakfast, um, yes, please.
Overload of sugar in my coffee? Hell, yes, sister. Bring it.
And that, my friends, explains my mom bod.
After standing in line for a little over five minutes while the girl behind the counter flirts obsessively with the college men that seem to be infiltrating this particular Starbucks, it’s my turn. “I’ll take a bagel toasted with cream cheese, a venti cold brew with white mocha sauce, heavy cream and extra caramel drizzle on top.”