Green Buttons

Parenting is hard. If you were perusing the newspaper, just hoping to find a magic cure for sibling rivalry, teenage angst, or raging hormones, you’re about to be disappointed. Being someone’s parent is very much like managing an automated factory that makes buttons, for instance. The employee who runs the button molds always runs late. Half of the time he doesn’t place the plastics in the right cylinders. The red buttons all have blue streaks, and the brown buttons wind up a putrid green. The woman who is over the packaging machine typically forgets to line up the backer boards, causing the cutter to snap most of the cartons in half. And, as the manager, with a floor full of putrid green buttons and chopped up cellophane causing you near decapitation as you slide to and fro, trying to negotiate a retreat to the fire escape, you cannot help but blow a fuse or two here and there. But, the machine operators weren’t trained on molds and packaging. Messing up royally is the only way they will improve. So, you trudge on, blowing occasional fuses and sliding on broken button packages, just trying to stay employed in a cruel world. This, my friends, is parenting. At least, this is how parenting seems from the inside out.

I have affectionately diagnosed myself with PRD, positive reflective dementia (made up term). Looking back, empty nester that I am, I only remember the good times. I remember that we camped at Lake Tyler and hand fed a nice raccoon. PRD has faded the nightmare of my children threatening death to each other over who the raccoon loved the most. PRD made me forget we had to sleep in a tent when it was still 90 degrees at night. PRD erased the part where the highway was shut down during our return home. PRD caused me not to recall the part about the air-conditioner going out in the SUV, the near meltdown over the convenience store selling 7-Up instead of Sprite, and the unending complaints about attacking mosquitoes. Maybe I’m imploring you to not get so worked up over all the little things. Perhaps I’m tr ying to tell you that the blown fuses hurt a little when the PRD lets up and the memories come flooding. Frankly, I’m ashamed of some of the things I said/did in the full nest years. I damaged young psyches, hurt little feelings, diminished my childrens’ joy. But, mainly, I just said no. I said no a lot.

Recently, I was contacted by someone who was near and dear to my children for many years. There was a trunk that surfaced in the back of a garage, chock full of trinkets that belonged to my daughter, things I hadn’t seen in 20 years. I am currently sifting through teenage Chynna’s memories, many years after her passing. I have tap shoes. I have competition dance jackets with award patches. I have books, monogrammed bags, and crochet projects. I have diaries. Do you read the diaries of a daughter that died? You absolutely do! I crave the things that have gotten soft and blurry in my brain: her voice, the shape of her nail beds, the upturn of her nose, the sound of her laughter. Reading her diaries sharpens the focus as if you scooted the projector back a few inches. Everything is cr ystal clear again.

Most of Chynna’s diary entries center around a single boy & her best friend, Kristi. She loves this boy. This boy might ask her out. This boy cut his hair, but he’s still so cute. This boy took someone else to a dance. I sort of want to punch this boy in the nose now, though he turned out to be a great human being and is married to another one of their classmates. But, the pages I am drawn to, the ones I have read and re-read hundreds of times this week, all hinge on a moment when I said no. Considering my life today, the irony cuts me like a pair of rusty kitchen scissors, deep and ugly. Chynna found a cat and a litter of kittens. Her father said no, I will not allow you to keep one or all the cats. Her mother said nor will I allow you to keep one or all the cats. While she writes of our grand plans in trying to find homes for the entire litter, we didn’t. I’m sure I had the best of intentions. Certainly, the button mold malfunctioned right after the packaging machine went kerpoof for the millionth time that week. Surely, I tried but wound up sliding around on cellophane and collapsing dreams. I guess that’s all I’m trying to say to you. Putrid green buttons are better than no buttons at all. We’re all still learning how to work in this factory. But, cats are a different story. Always say yes to cats.