Mama Scouts

There are mothers out there who drive me crazy. They brush their hair before dropping their kids off at school in their undented minivans. They smile sweetly while bringing over an amazing meal on their way to Infant CPR class in preparation for adopting child #2. Luckily, I'm friends with lots of these moms, so I know that something's gotta give in one area in order to fit something else in. Your hair is brushed at morning drop off? Likely your kids ate lukewarm toaster waffles in the car for breakfast. You ran five miles three times this week but only made dinner twice. Your car has no crumbs inside, but you haven't seen your kitchen counter in six weeks. It's a good thing I have this perspective, else I'd be hiding from my parental insecurities with a bar of chocolate and a People Magazine in my closet.

I had a parenting breakthrough this month and feel like I earned a new badge on my Mama Scout sash: Crafty Costumes. This was a major breakthrough for someone who is hit by the craft bug only about once a year. We own pipe cleaners and yarn and all that crap but I'm clueless as to what to do with it. Halloween gets closer and I break out in a cold sweat hoping someone will offer up a costume that my children will want to wear. And since Halloween lasts for two weekends around here what with school carnivals one weekend and the real deal the next, I have to be doubly prepared as one costume doesn't usually hold their interest across the span. Last year we got lucky with the darling clown costumes that were my husband and his siblings' 37 years ago. They don't fit this year. Sawyer was handed down an awesome lion costume that I think might work for both weekends. It's a cross between the Cowardly Lion and, as Tom pointed out, Rod Stewart.

Jordan is more difficult: she's sensitive to how a costume feels, how hot it'll make her. She's done with the princess thing although still somewhat taken with fairies. She loves animals and wanted first to be a skunk. But wearing black pants and a long sleeved shirt was more than she could fathom. The tears and whining were beginning. And then I had the sudden flash of inspiration: she could be a flamingo! She had pink shorts, a pink t-shirt, a pink boa to pin around her shirt, pink wings, bare pink legs... She could make a beak from construction paper. As she waited 'til the last hour, she wound up looking more like a pink fairy as she opted for a leotard rather than shorts and a t-shirt, and had no interest in a beak. Still, I was proud of my idea and think with another two boas, a couple of hangers for better wings, and a beak, she would have been a convincing flamingo. Perhaps it's wishful thinking for a 5'3" mama to believe her offspring could pass for a long-legged bird, but at least I'm not short on imagination. (Since I'm also an actress mama, she's lucky I didn't take her to the zoo and make her study the physicality of the birds as well.)


Sawyer's homemade costume came to fruition when he and I joined some friends for a visit to the annual Renaissance Fair (it just irks me to write Faire). His friends had costumes long-planned but he didn't. In retrospect he probably would have been quite fine wearing the perfect turquoise gown in just his size that's still in the costume box, but I wanted to give him a boy option as well. Helplessly staring into our girl-heavy costume box, I pulled a felt hat and macrame belt left over from his renaissance-themed graduation a year and a half earlier. And then turned pajamas into leggings, and a dry-clean only Saks Fifth Avenue gold lame shell handed down from my couture aunt into a tunic (forgive me, Sally). Viola! He looked absolutely adorable and Renaissance-y! Imagine how devastated I was when just after parking the car Sawyer pulled apart his felt cap. Redemption came in a $2 knight's helmet given to him by our friends. The gold lame really set the copper tones in the helmet off. Quite striking!
The Renaissance Fair is such a trip. I am always blown away by just how dedicated people get. There are apparently a lot of women who yearn through 51 weeks of the year while trapped in subdued mother clothes and office-friendly blouses to rip open their bodices and prop, tremulously, their bosoms atop a tightly laced corset. There is a goodly amount of loose flesh at these fairs, I've found, and in equal measure the geekiest of the geeky male teenagers who transform themselves though costumes and customs into the in-crowd in this world. By the end of the day I honestly can't take another person addressing me as "m'lady" or speaking to me in stilted speech with healthy numbers of "ye" and "perchance" thrown in. But it's great people-watching. Despite the inflated state of my own bosom, I was without corset, preferring instead the sanctity of my nursing bra and certain that I'd flash enough of it's contents through constant nursing to fit in appropriately. I was blown away by my friends' costumes, great nods to humor and creativity that I would have felt threatened by had I not also been embraced by that humor and witness over the years to their own challenges as parents. We do a good job of learning from each other about discipline and so on, I just need to ask for a little help in this area.

Now if I can just remember how to thread the needle to get the damn badge sewn on to my sash, I can start working on some other badges. Sewing is not one I'm close to earning, sadly, but I must have five or six already (including a master badge for childbirth, yes!) and if I can remember where I put them while working diligently towards a housekeeping badge that may never be attainable, I'll really start to look like I know what I'm doing. (I can just imagine the scoutmaster - as I think I've finally cleaned my whole house, she goes over to the table I'd cleaned hours earlier, running her finger across it and holding it up saying, "I don't think so, girlscout! Wait you never graduated from Brownies, did you?" Thank goodness I've got eighteen more years to fill the sash up - my father the Eagle Scout will be so proud!