be glad you have two feet

You know you’re scrap­ing the bot­tom of the bar­rel of mater­nal reas­sur­ance when your response to your daugh­ter’s ongo­ing exam anx­i­ety is, “Just be glad we can afford to send you to school AT ALL.” This is at din­ner after a water­logged day of inter­view anx­i­ety (it went fine), trans­porta­tion anx­i­ety, topped off with the con­fes­sion that the splin­ters in her feet from Christ­mas still hurt.

OK, here’s where my moth­er claims her grand­moth­er would say, “Just be glad you have two feet.” Clear­ly I come by my con­ver­sa­tion­al tech­niques hon­est­ly. But seri­ous­ly. I know a lot more seri­ous things could be going wrong right now, and I keep remind­ing Avery of them. Note to self: this method of par­ent­ing is not effec­tive. Chil­dren don’t care what BIG­GER could be going wrong. The things that are going wrong right now are all that counts.

So I broke down and looked at her splin­ters. And it turns out they aren’t, even, they’re tiny shards of bro­ken glass, I think. I have a vague mem­o­ry of a bro­ken glass in the kitchen over Christ­mas (was it here, or in Con­necti­cut? I can’t even remem­ber that much) and telling her not to run around bare­foot. Clear­ly I was too late. Well, the fact that the lit­tle shards, which I can see just under the sur­face of her skin, still are both­er­ing her near­ly a month on means a trip to the doc­tor. This on top of every­thing else that is hap­pen­ing just seems like… too much. But off we go today, after school. I decid­ed to kill two what­ev­ers with one what­ev­er, so I too am under the micro­scope: might as well get all that pesky blood work done so as to start the New Year know­ing that my cho­les­terol is still all right, etc. So no food for me until 4 o’clock this after­noon. WHAT? Now I’m whingeing.

But I must say, the long-await­ed inter­view at St. Paul’s was love­ly, accord­ing to Avery. “She remind­ed me of Indi­ana Nona!” she said of her inter­view­er. “It was part­ly her sweater, which had cats on it, and part­ly that her eyes crin­kled up when she smiled, and she was NICE to me,” she report­ed, so that was all right. Instead of being asked to iden­ti­fy a veg­etable or dis­cuss Mideast pol­i­tics, she was shown a paper­weight with a dan­de­lion inside it, and asked to describe what she saw. “I said it looked like the kind of dan­de­lion you blow on to make a wish, only since it was embed­ded in glass it might be like wish­ing on a crys­tal ball.” Sounds good to me. They dis­cussed her favorite books, and the lady asked her to rec­om­mend her two favorite books FOR BOYS. Inter­est­ing. I think it was the offi­cial “Any­thing but Har­ry Pot­ter” ques­tion, so hap­pi­ly Avery had two unusu­al books to sug­gest. I see one of them on my desk this morn­ing, so I guess she’s been think­ing about her answer.

I sat in the mas­sive pan­elled entry hall, sur­round­ed by oil por­traits of Pauli­nas past, or illus­tri­ous bene­fac­tress­es, who knows. Count­less girls rushed around, arms full of books, all dressed in, you guessed it, skin­ny jeans, bal­let flats, hood­ies and long fringey scarves. They all looked mys­te­ri­ous­ly alike! And LOTS of hair. The dul­cet tones of their posh accents rang through the hall, and I looked intent­ly for signs of eat­ing dis­or­ders, anx­i­ety dis­or­ders, social­iza­tion dis­or­ders. None vis­i­ble. In fact, three of the girls came bound­ing up to Avery as we wait­ed and car­oled, “Good luck! You’ll be fine! Wel­come to St. Paul’s!” Very impres­sive. So the lady came up to us and said warm­ly, “You must be Avery,” and shook my hand, and that was that. Took her away. I tried to read my mag­a­zine, but I was too fas­ci­nat­ed by all the activ­i­ty around, and also by try­ing, unsuc­cess­ful­ly, to imag­ine Avery as an 18-year-old. What will she be like?

Any­way, the inter­view was fine. “I don’t know what I was so wor­ried about!” she chor­tled, and I strug­gled to find a mes­sage in this. Strug­gled and failed. I feel late­ly as if every­thing I say were writ­ten in a Chi­nese for­tune cook­ie, or an astrol­o­gy read­ing. Real­ly futile and bor­ing! And any­way she does­n’t hear me. So all the exhor­ta­tions like, “See, then that means there’s no rea­son to wor­ry about the NEXT inter­view,” fall on deaf ears. Or rather ears that lis­ten and then a mouth that says, “But that one will be com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent, Mom­my!” You idiot, is the unspo­ken adden­dum. Sigh.

I’m begin­ning to see the point in a two-par­ent house­hold. It’s so one of you can walk away, shut the door, turn off the sound of your pre­cious child’s voice, and let the oth­er adult get the brunt of the vent­ing! I am steel­ing myself for the doc­tor’s office today. Actu­al­ly, a secret lit­tle part of me is look­ing for­ward to some­one else being in charge: the doc­tor will have to do what doc­tors do. I know Avery is spend­ing her school day imag­in­ing a giant fork dig­ging into her lit­tle foot. I said, “Just enjoy your school day and you can start wor­ry­ing about the doc­tor at 3:20.”

Ah, well, it will all be over soon. Exam Fri­day, inter­view Mon­day, inter­view Thurs­day, exam Fri­day. Done and dust­ed. We’ll have to think up some mas­sive treat at the end of it all. In the mean­time, be glad you have two… oh, nev­er mind. Be as whingey as you like. I’ll just cov­er my ears.