It Never Rhines but It Pours (10 page)

“Diaper change!” I called after her and raced her to the changing table. “Oof, you’re such a big girl,” I complained, picking her up. “Don’t you think it’s time you wore big girl panties?”

“No,” she said firmly.

“Big girl panties have princesses on them,” I bribed.

“No,” she said again. “No want big girl panties.”

I sighed. She was stubborn. I’d read on the internet that children as young as eighteen months of age can be potty trained. I found that thought very exciting and had checked out a “How to Potty Train Your Child in One Day or Less” book from the library. The book said that by following some simple steps and throwing a “potty party” your little darling would be out of diapers in eight hours or less.

I was thrilled. No more diapers! Megan had been very resistant to potty training and hadn’t started until she was three and a half. I had high hopes that, through positive peer pressure, Cassidy would be ready much sooner. I followed the instructions carefully. Plastic Doll that can pee - check. M&M’s for treats - check. Big girl underwear with favorite cartoon characters - check. Lots of juice - check. I was ready.

I did everything by the book. We drank and drank and drank. I showed her how her little doll could drink a bottle and then pee on the toilet. We let the doll have a couple accidents. “Oh, no!” I would say in horror. “Dolly’s wet!” We drank some more juice. I sat Cassidy on the potty and waited, and waited, and waited. Nothing. The book said that the child would pee on the toilet, realize how much easier it was and how much they liked the attention and praise, and then be trained. Ha, I say.

In a four hour time period, I’m pretty sure that Cassidy peed everywhere in the house
but
the toilet. During hour four I made her play out on the back porch so at least I wouldn’t have to clean the carpet anymore. She would sit on the toilet for an hour with no result, get up, and pee within seconds. I even tried carrying her
to
the toilet
while
she was peeing so that she would get the idea that peeing on the toilet was what we were going for.
That
was a disaster.

Harvey watched the whole proceedings with troubled doggy eyes. When
he
peed on the floor, he got yelled at and thrown outside.
Why is she allowed to pee on the floor?
he seemed to say. I started to fear that he would think peeing on the floor was our new way of doing things. I gave up. I was tired, and hot, and frustrated, and Cassidy was not learning anything. Anything other than that toilets are hard, boring things to sit on and should be avoided at all cost. Just perfect.

So it was still diapers. Lots and lots of diapers. I longed for the day when I didn’t have to change another diaper. That day was still a far ways off. My mother-in-law regaled me with stories of how Mark was potty trained at fourteen months. Charming. I’m sure it’s because she’s a better mother than I am. She even offered to take Megan, back in the day, and train her in one afternoon. Implying that my technique was lacking. My mom, on the other hand, assured me that “No one goes to college still wearing diapers.” She meant that, eventually, even the hardest to train child will learn how to use the toilet. I sometimes twisted it to mean that my kids would never go to college. They’d still be wearing diapers. Not that I could afford college after eighteen years of buying diapers for two children. Mark and I would be living in a cardboard box on the street. See! You can always make a worrisome situation worse in your mind!

I was going to have to wait until Cassidy was ready on her own. She already had a complex about public restrooms (the loud flushing sound) the last thing I needed was for her to develop a complex about our home toilet. The good thing about waiting until age three to potty train, is that they become self sufficient much sooner. I have friends who have to take their two year old to the bathroom and help them on the toilet every twenty minutes. Sure, they’re potty trained, and sure, it’s saving diaper money, but it’s very time consuming. I would just smile and say “I’m not going to rush her into something she’s not ready for,” when people asked me why Cassidy was still in diapers. Inwardly, I would seethe with jealousy. Outwardly, accepting motherly calm.

Megan finally woke up and staggered out of her room. “Where’s Cassie?” she asked.

“We’re in here!” I called, scooping Cassidy off the changing table and heading for the kitchen. “What do you want for breakfast?”

Megan sat down at the table and Cassidy climbed up into her booster seat. They looked at each other for a minute. “Oatmeal!” Megan said.

“Pancakes!” Cassie cried.

“No, oatmeal!” Megan insisted.

“Me want pancakes!”

“Oatmeal!”

I watched them for a moment. Here was a perfect opportunity to teach them about putting others first. About sacrificing what you wanted for the good of your sister. About the true meaning of love. “You can each have something different,” I said. Ok. So that’s not the true meaning of love. I’ll get around to teaching them that.

Mark had headed off for work and I was enjoying my morning cup of coffee when my phone rang. It was my mom.

“Hey, sweetie!” she greeted me. “How’s your day going? How are my little angels?”

One little angel poked the other one, who then retaliated with a wild swing that knocked over both cups of juice. “Hold on, Mom,” I said.

I placed one hand over the mouthpiece so that Mom couldn’t hear me yelling at the little angels. “Megan! Cassidy! You cut that out right now! Look at that mess! No more juice today! Only water!”

I grabbed up a wad of paper towels and sopped up the mess. It had run down through the cracks in the table top and pooled on the floor. I would have to pull out the Swiffer mop to get the stickiness off the tile.

“Water?” Megan wailed, about twenty seconds late in her complaint.

“Water,” I mouthed at her, taking my hand off the phone. “You still there, Mom?”

“What’s going on?” she asked.

“Nothing,” I said innocently. “Why?”

“I heard yelling.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really. Is everything ok?”

“It’s fine. We’re fine. The girls were just running off to play.” I shooed them away with my hand while giving them the evil eye so that they would know I was still upset about the spilled juice fight.

“Are you coming over today?” my mom asked.

I was puzzled. I didn’t
mind
coming over, but I hadn’t been planning on it. “Today?”

“Yes, today! I told you!”

“Told me what?”

“That you needed to come over today!”

“Why?”

“What do you mean, why?”

I shook my head in exasperation. Sometimes conversations with my mother could be a little vague and confusing. “Why do I need to come over?” I asked again.

“Because it’s the right thing to do!” she said indignantly.

“Why?” I insisted. Eventually she might tell me what it was that she had obviously forgotten to tell me.

“That’s what families do, Piper,” she explained, “They’re
there
for each other.”

“Mom,” I said. “I have no clue what you are talking about. Who do I need to be there for?” I had a thought, “Is Karen in town?” That would be great! Karen was my older sister, living out in California. I hadn’t seen her in months. It would be great to catch up!

“No, silly. I told you all about it, just last week!”

“No, Mom,” I said. “You didn’t. But you can tell me now …”

“I did so tell you! I remember talking to you about it.”

“About what?”

“We were talking about diapers and I said that I might need to buy some adult ones.”

Huh? Adult diapers? My mom was getting up there, but she wasn’t
that
old! In fact, if I looked as good as she did at her age I would be thrilled! I was hoping that I had her aging genes and would still be trim and slim in my sixties. “What?” I asked.

“You know, Depends,” was the totally non-informative answer.

Maybe I didn’t want her genes. Would it be better to have full mental capacity, or be in good shape? It would be a pity to have a nice body but no mind to go with it. On the other hand, if you had a great mind but a horrible body, it would bother you a lot more than the reverse. I’d have to think about that one. Not that I would get to choose. I just wanted to know which one to be upset about if I didn’t get it.

“Mom, why don’t you start at the beginning and pretend like you haven’t told me anything,” I suggested.

“But I did tell you,” she replied.

“I know,” I said patiently. I wasn’t going down this tangent again. “Just pretend.”

“Your grandmother is coming into town today,” she said.

Ah! Light bulbs turning on over my head. “Gigi?” I asked. That was my mom’s mother.

“No, Nana,” my mother sighed.

Nana was my dad’s mom. She was also a little crazy. As in, she needed to be in a home, crazy. She kept saying that she would sell her house and move down to Melbourne to be near Dad, but she never did. Eventually he was going to have to make her do it. She really shouldn’t be on her own. I could see Nana needing to use adult diapers. I hoped I died well before I reached that stage of life. Although, to be fair, Nana seemed to enjoy life as much as anyone. If, by enjoying, you mean complaining. Nana loved to complain.

“Oh,” I said. I love my Nana, I really do. It’s just that she can be a little much sometimes. Especially for Mom. You can’t really reason with her, and once she gets an idea in her head, it’s there to stay. She’s convinced that we never landed on the moon. It was a big government conspiracy to steal tax-payer’s money. They filmed all the landings on a secret movie set in the desert. I pointed out once that there are a lot of people working at NASA, not forty miles away, who would have to be “in” on the deception, and the government would spend more money insuring their silence than they would make on the whole con. This started her “mind control” suspicions, which were a little too close to home for me. I tried to avoid arguing with her at all costs.

“You’ll be here?” my mom begged. “I know she’ll want to see the kids.”

Yeah, right! Nana was not a baby person, and she could never keep the girls’ names straight. But Mom was right, family was there for each other. I would come for Mom, for moral support. “How long is she staying?” I asked.

Mom sighed, “She says she’s moving down here and is going to start looking at some assisted living homes.”

“So, no definite departure date?”

“Piper!” Mom pretended to be shocked then decided to be honest. “No, worse luck.” She sighed again.

“Don’t worry, Mom. It’ll be fine.”

“I know,” she said. “I just wish your father was a little more helpful. You know how he gets.”

I did. Dad tended to have to “work late” when Nana was visiting. All the fussing in the world couldn’t convince him that she was
his
mother and he should take primary responsibility for her. He would always buy Mom a nice present afterwards, but I think she would have been happier with having him around than a nice apology after the fact.

After arranging a time to come over, I hung up. Funny, I hadn’t worried about the ritual murders for at least five minutes! Trust the thought of Nana to drive even Satanic killings out of my head.

I had a lot of cleaning and laundry to do that morning. Mark was great with the kids, but I couldn’t expect him to keep up with the housework while I was gone. I was lucky that there was only a day’s worth of dirty dishes on the counter. Last time I left for the weekend, it took me a week to catch up on the mess.

The morning passed quickly. The girls played happily with a minimum of fighting and I felt strangely competent and ready to face anything. I would figure this mess out, whack the correct person, and put it all behind me. I was a Rhine Maiden! I could handle anything! We just needed to look at this with fresh eyes and it would all make sense. I determined to not worry about the Synod or anything to do with the USB until tomorrow.

The girls were ecstatic about going to Nanny’s house. I made sure that their clothes were clean and their hair combed, and gave them a little lecture about Nana. It’s hard to give advice to young children. On the one hand, you want to make sure you prepare them so that they don’t say something inappropriate. On the other, you don’t want to be stressing the inappropriate things they could say, because that will only make it stick in their minds.

“Now girls,” I said, when we were all buckled into the car. “Someone special is going to be a Nanny’s house.”

“Santa Claus!” Megan guessed.

“No, not Santa Claus.”

“Because Santa Claus isn’t real,” she said sadly.

“That’s right,” I was a firm believer in telling my children the truth. Well, okay, so I lie constantly to my husband and my kids. I meant, a firm believer in telling them truths that they could handle. All left up to my judgment of course.

Megan cut in again before I could go on. “If Santa isn’t real,” she asked, “who fills our stockings?”

I gave her a look.

“Oh,” she sounded amazed, “you and Daddy do it!”

“Yes,” I agreed. “Now, I need you to listen—”