It is 72 days until my first grandbaby is due.
(But who’s counting, right?)
My daughter, Alena, who is expecting was being thrown a shower by her church,
and she invited me and her sisters to come partake in the celebration.
Right from the start I assumed things about how this shower would go;
Mostly that a family of our kind showing up at it might really shake things.
Alena’s church is small and reverent.
We tend to…not be.
We are slightly more “circus” in nature.
Alena’s husband, Aaron, had gone early that morning to church because he is part of the music team and they had needed to have practice.
This meant that the rest of us decided to ride together, and told him to save seats.
When we arrived we spotted the long row he’d saved by emptying things out of his pockets.
I hadn’t paid attention to who sat where.
In hindsight this was questionable judgment.
I had seated myself as close to Alena as possible, not thinking about the fact that if you take a child like my youngest to church, it is best to sit somewhere where your arm can always reach her.
Paige already has a reputation at this church, after that time she once lay face down, unmoving, doing her signature shtick of that year: pretended to be a dead body on the floor for an entire service.
Not two songs in and I could sense something happening in her direction with the Mommy-sense that is most attuned when you are in church, or at a funeral.
She was far enough out of sight though, separated by both of her teenage sisters, that I did not crane myself to see what was the matter. I figured I’d wait it out until I heard screaming or sirens.
I would end up not having to, as moments later, she was hiss-whispering my name, “Mama. MAMA,” and asking if I would help her.
When I turned to look at this child I had carried within my body, I had the shock of a lifetime to see that she was, in fact, pointing the blade of a buck knife at me.
“Mama. Can you HELP ME! I opened it, but I don’t know how to close it.”
By this time my eyeballs had grown into saucers, wondering what on earth my middle schooler was doing wielding a knife I did not at all recognize in a church full of gently flickering wall sconces and mild-mannered grandmas in homemade sweaters,
but then I realized – It was Aaron.
He had emptied his pockets to save those seats without regard to which kid might sit where.
He will learn in time.
He’s about to unbox his own Mystery Baby.
Should Aaron have paid closer attention, he would have remembered that there are three main things we try to always keep Paige from.
Those things are:
- Candle wax that is still warm
- All personal banking information and
- Things that can be used in any way as weapons
But yet, there she was, holding Her Precious;
Ready to slash things open in the name of Jesus.
That knife got taken as quick as I could grab it,
but for some reason I now attribute to sudden spiking cortisol levels, I was not thinking clearly,
and I handed it back to her, in a fairytale of thinking it would stay that way forever.
This is another hindsight moment, because not long after that she was announcing she needed to go find the bathroom, and when she was still missing 15 minutes later, I realized she had taken the knife in there with her.
She returned looking mostly normal.
I took the knife away, and made a note to check on the bathroom’s wallpaper.
After the service, and after I had stopped sweating, it was time for the shower.
We were in the end zone!
All crises had been averted.
The shower was set up so lovely, and we were shown by the pastor’s wife (who was hosting) to the head table, where she gave Paige the very important job of recording who gave what gift to Alena when she opened up her gifts later.
She also told us that we were invited to go over to the table to our left and write something encouraging for Alena to read in the middle of the night on the outside of a newborn diaper.
Such an endearing thought, this game of blessings.
Of course I couldn’t stick to the script. I had to write something funny on one to entertain her.
My chosen message came as a throw-back to my 16 year old, Chloe’s, early years when she absolutely INSISTED we say this one specific phrase she had made up every night as we said goodnight to her.
Alena and I have always laughed at the nonsense of it.
I knew she would get it, and it would get a smile from her, so in my best sharpie penmanship I wrote the very deep, meaningful words:
“Goodnight, Mama Deedle. Don’t let the poopy come,”
and then I hid it under a few other diapers.
(I wouldn’t want someone to see it and wonder if it was some kind of cry for help signal)
I could tell by the way that my teenagers were clinging to each other, bent in half laughing that their kind of message was something similar.
I didn’t ask them what it was. We just smiled knowing smiles at eachother, and went to our seats, leaving Paige to walk to the diaper table alone and grin mischievously at the sharpies.
She said nothing as she returned to her seat later.
No one asked what she had written. It was a mystery.
Only later, when we were all settled in, was it revealed to the room full of women that the host would now be drawing one of those diapers to read out loud in an exchange for a prize.
You have never seen eyes dart so fast around a table.
What were the odds, though, that one of OUR diapers would be chosen, right?
(I think you can already see where this is headed)
The mystery of what Paige had written deepened when, in this moment, she leapt from her chair in a panic, clutched her shirt around her, and took off running.
When I called after her asking about who would do her gift recording job, she just called,
“Let Tessa do it,” to me backwards over her shoulder.
I was suddenly terrified to know what she had written.
The moment she disappeared from view, the diaper was chosen.
That moment will forever live in my mind in slow motion.
I heard the pastor’s wife read out a halting,
“I love you….my little….Ratatouille…Pooey?
Whose is this? Does anyone know who wrote this one?”
This was a close call for Paige. It wasn’t hers!
I knew right away that diaper belonged to Tessa.
She and Chloe and Alena have had an inside joke about Ratatouille the Musical for a long time now.
Tessa nervously raised three fingertips, with all eyes on us, to claim it.
Once it was clear that she could come out now,
Paige reemerged and picked up the clipboard for writing the gifts down that she had dropped under the table as she ran like it was a hot potato.
Ah, My precious sugar and spices,
Wielding knives in church, and nearly forcing the meek little pastor’s wife to read aloud the words of a baby shower lifetime:
“I hope you’re not Shart Master: Master of Sharting.”
That’s what my precious sugar plum had written on her first niece’s diaper.
Chloe said later as we were up late recounting it all and laughing,
“You DO realize we’re never being invited back to that church, right?”
Now that is something that is safe to say.
The Green Family – “You can’t take us anywhere;” Our life motto.
Mom Outnumbered
Hi! My name is Kerri Green; Wife to Justin, and mother to four highly entertaining daughters -Alena, Chloe, Tessa, and Paige. I am an artist, a writer, a daycare provider, a lover of people, a believer that there is humor and beauty in all things, and the author of Mom Outnumbered; a blog about real family life, and my observations of it. My goal is to make people laugh, to be there for them when they cry, and most importantly, to let them know that they are not at all alone in this up and down world. I live with my family in Sebastopol California, and I am opening the window into our life. So welcome! Come in. Sit down. Just please don’t mind the mysterious wet spots.
