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Excerpt from SAHM I Am: Tales of a Stay-at-Home Mom in Europe by Christine Louise Hohlbaum (2005)
Mama, have you seen my…?
Somewhere between saying “I do” at the altar and the first labor pains, I became Chief Geographical Locator of All Things Lost. It was a subtle beginning as Chief. The first time my husband misplaced the keys to the car in our new house, I heard him call my name.
“Honey, have you seen the car keys?” he queried innocently. I breathed two-three-four and exhaled. Another labor pain shot through my back as I flipped through some papers on the kitchen counter. I managed to unearth the keys from a pile of catalogues and expel more breath. My husband looked relieved that he had found them, or rather I had.
This episode repeated itself again shortly after my daughter’s birth. I was a first-time mom with a lot more on my mind than the location of my husband’s car keys. With the birth of our first child, my life had changed fundamentally and forever. I was only eight weeks into motherhood, but already was beginning to feel the seismic shift in my relationship to the entire world, not to mention to the lost or misplaced. To this day, I am cursing myself for having been so efficient in finding my husband’s keys. At that moment , everything changed.
In the next year, my daughter started smiling, learned to clap, took her first steps, and became a talkative and curious toddler. Her first sentence revealed she was her father’s daughter. She asked me, “Where’s Rabbit?” She and her favorite stuffed animal were inseparable for the first three years of her life. Again, I assumed the role of Chief Locator. At the time, I congratulated myself for finding Rabbit so quickly and thereby preventing a major meltdown. She had cried rivers of tears the one time she caught me washing Rabbit in our front-load washing machine. Squashed and thoroughly drenched, he was pressed against the glass door with his paws next to his face. If I hadn’t known any better, I would have said that he was scowling at me. My daughter had wailed her heart out at the sight of the poor stuffed animal. So when she was finally able to ask me where he was, I was glad to have found Rabbit quickly and without a tear shed. It was only later that I grew to regret my ability to find things.
My daughter is four now and is quite capable of dressing herself, brushing her teeth, and retrieving a glass of water when thirst calls. But she still asks me where her favorite bracelet is, where that particular pair of shoes are, or where she might find the sweatshirt that she swore was hanging on the hook where it always hangs (not that she is the one who hangs it up every time she enters the front door!).
Oftentimes I envision my daughter standing in front of the bedroom mirror on her wedding day as she places the veil atop her head. In my daydream, the guests downstairs are buzzing with excitement, the tables are set, and the car that will usher her to the church is parked outside. Suddenly, I can see the ring bearer running upstairs in a frenzy. He cannot find the wedding rings! I feel the tension in the room heighten until I calmly walk to the dresser drawer and pull out both rings from their boxes.
Children invite an immediacy into the lives of their parents which they never experienced before they had kids. In my family’s case, it seems inevitable that nothing is as dire as when we are about to leave on a car trip. I spend thirty minutes rounding everyone up and preparing them for the impending journey. We are never without snacks, water bottles, blankets, books, activity bags, and a change of clothing for each child. These items are a requirement for any trip over twenty minutes.
The moment the car door finally slams, it never fails that my daughter or son requires one forgotten item or another. Who retrieves the desired object? You guessed it! I do!
Asking Mama to find this or that has become a science in my family. It is not out of laziness or an unwillingness to find things themselves. I truly think that my family believes I possess magic powers. It’s my mother’s fault, really. Whenever I would lose something as a kid, she would simply say, “Pray to St. Anthony, the patron saint for all lost things.” Now, we weren’t raised Catholic, so the canonization of Ole Anthony fell on fairly deaf ears. But I will tell you that, by golly, 90% of the time I would find whatever I was looking for.
My ability to find things no one else can just may be a genetic thing. My sister Celina can tell you where the scissors are in any household she has visited for more than fifteen minutes. It is both eerie and downright practical. Neither of us has to tape our scissors to the refrigerator for fear of losing them. We both own only two pairs, one for upstairs and one for down.
One night I lay awake fretting that my inner compass would fail me some day. What would happen if I suddenly lost track of where everything was? What would my family do then? I decided to test it out the next morning.
“Where are my glasses?” my husband asked just as the pads of my feet had hit the floor. I gave him a look of innocence and shrugged. Knowing full well that they were in the bathroom where he had left them the night before, I suppressed a smile and scurried out of the bedroom and down the stairs to the kitchen.
While our bedroom is on the top floor, the children’s rooms are below the kitchen, in the basement. Downstairs in his bedroom, my two-year-old son, Jackson, was just waking up. “Where’s Sissy?” he mumbled, looking for his sister and rubbing the sleep from his eyes. I allowed myself to smile more widely this time.
Sophia was rounding the corner. She saw me holding Jackson and said, “Where’s breakfast?” I couldn’t help but laugh out loud.
Recently, even my son has gotten in on the act of testing my ability. He learned to talk much earlier than his sister. He has been building sentences for months already. Lately, he has taken to asking me “why,” a question form that usually comes much later. To my dismay, however, his favorite question is, “Where’s Papa?” The moment his father leaves for work in the morning until he comes home at night, I am pelted with the same question over and over again. “Where’s Papa? Mama, where’s Papa? Papa? Papa? PAPA?” To save my sanity, I have begun to make a game out of his questioning.
“Where’s Papa?” squeaks his little voice. “At work, honey,” I say patiently the first ten times he asks. We color, listen to music, play with his cars and trucks. He is distracted for ten minutes.
Then comes, “Where’s Papa?” “In the barnyard,” I say. “Where’s Papa?” “At the supermarket.” “Where’s Papa?” “On a river boat.” “Mama, where’s Papa?” “At the zoo, honey,” I reply, not without a tinge of malice. I have learned not to play this game while my four-year-old is around. Sophia picks up a very different meaning, and one day the game backfired.
“At the zoo? The zoo? Can we go to the zoo, too?” she whined. She hopped around with such joy at the prospect of seeing Papa at the zoo that I couldn’t resist. I actually found myself driving to the zoo an hour one way through Friday afternoon traffic because I had allowed myself to take it too far. Indeed, Papa was not at the zoo, but no matter. They were! When they saw the elephants, giraffes, and zebras, they momentarily forgot they even had a papa. We went from exhibit to exhibit in a giddy flurry. At the zoo, I thought myself immune to the duties as Chief Locator, but Fate would not have it. Just as we entered the gate to the park, a stranger with two small children in a double stroller approached me.
“Excuse me, Ma’am,” he began politely. “Do you know where the bears are?”
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©Copyright
2005 Christine Louise Hohlbaum. All rights reserved.
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