Something New Read Online Free Page B

at three thirty. Jessie also has ballet at three thirty, and because her dour-faced Russian ballet coach informed me that it is “dire zat she be here
on time
!” I have to drop Matthew on the field at three twenty and leave him in the care of the other soccer moms while I race to the far end of town to get Jessie to the studio. At four thirty, Connor has karate, Matthew has Wilderness Scouts (held at the local Y, which has acres of concrete—the only sign of “wilderness” is a five-foot-square, balding patch of yellow grass), and Jessie has rehearsal for the elementary school musical. This year, they are doing
Charlie and theChocolate Factory
and Jessie is delighted to have been chosen to play an Oompa-Loompa, not realizing that every child who auditioned got to be an Oompa-Loompa.
    As a mother, I am duty bound to be at all of these activities at the same time, but until cloning becomes mainstream for humans, I must alternate on a weekly basis. Today I am sitting in the bleachers adjacent to the soccer field, having dropped Jessie off at ballet and returned in time to watch twenty minutes of Matthew’s practice before I have to pick Connor up at baseball (which is mercifully nearby) and race back across town to pick Jessie up, then watch in the rearview mirror as all three of my children struggle to change clothes in the car while their safety belts are firmly locked in place.
    Matthew does his best to kick the ball toward the opposing goal, and I find myself thanking God that he makes it all the way down the field without tripping over his own feet. At ten, my second son is in the middle of a painful and somewhat awkward growth spurt. His feet are two sizes larger than the norm for his age, and he hasn’t managed to synchronize them with the rest of his body. It is almost as if they have little brains of their own, which are constantly firing opposing synapses to the ones shooting from the brain in his skull. It is painful for a mother to watch, and I try to be sympathetic to his plight. But I am hard-pressed to say the right thing to him to make him feel better. When I make light of his situation, he gives me a lower-lip quiver like he’s about to burst into tears. And when I make supportive statements, as in “You’re going to tower over your peers in six months,” he merely shrugs disbelievingly and tells me that six months is
forever
. So mostly, I just say nothing. I applaud his successes (like now, when he’s gone ten whole minutes without falling on his face) and overlook his failures (like when his left foot got caught in his bicycle spokes and he took a majorheader onto our driveway). They say that the key to successful motherhood is choosing your battles. In my opinion, the key to successful motherhood is knowing when to shut the fuck up.
    As my attention wanders from the soccer field to the group of onlookers, I am once again struck by the way in which my fellow parents interact. There are clear demarcation lines drawn around the small groups of moms, and I think that no matter how far we advance as a species, socially, human beings never really evolve beyond high school. The cliques for thirty- and forty-somethings are as powerful as they were in our teens. I remember my Grandma Phyllis, who spent the final ten years of her life in a seniors’ community, telling me that even octogenarians have cliques. (She was proud of the fact that she belonged to the group of “easy ladies” who claimed that sexual intercourse was the best possible way to pass the time while you were waiting to die. To this day, I can’t pass the Rolling Hills complex without thinking of my Nana having sex. Ewww!)
    I see Nina Montrose, most likely homecoming queen of her alma mater, relay some juicy tidbit of information to Gloria Gisler and Jenna McCray, and I assume it has something to do with her recently enhanced, gravity-defying breasts. Gloria touches a finger to her collagen-inflated lower lip and Jenna conjures an