Hand Sanitizer Mom

I owe a big apology for not writing here more regularly. To myself and to those who may happen upon this blog and are trying to figure out what the hell it's all about! So many ponderous, exciting and stressful stuff is swirling around and unfortunately the opportunity to sit and write is less frequent than I often hope. I guess it is a testament to being busy. Having said that, I thought I'd share something today.

My son turned four on Friday. The weekend clicked and clacked along--his first big boy bike with training wheels, family party, dinosaur cake, balloons, amazing sugar high and the inevitable crash into a cheeto-fingered, sweaty heap of sobbing. By Sunday night the whole house was overtaken by a cake and candles hangover, not ready at all to face Monday.

So this afternoon we took some time to get out in the fresh air and enjoy the playground. Simple. As usual the park was bustling with kids and the chatter of well-put-together stay at home moms in short sleeves and khaki capri pants and fresh pedicures. Jockeying their three-wheeled strollers around the playground equipment adorned with hand sanitizer and juice box hood ornaments, offering well-balanced snacks from hermetically sealed plastic containers to their jovial scamperers while making easygoing conversation with eachother. I never bring hand sanitizer anywhere. I just don't think of it, in fact, I'm not sure I even own a little squeeze bottle of hand sanitizer. I just figure that unless he's playing in dog shit or licking the port-a-potty he shouldn't contract an infectious diseases before we can get home and wash his hands. My mother never had a two liter bottle of hand sanitizer with her, I don't think they even made it in the 80's.

Today, however, is the day I so wished I was hand sanitizer mom. Instead of bolting for the swings my boy shuffled his feet around the park benches deeply focused on the little bits of this and that he could kick up out of the dirt. I thought he had reached down to pick up a stray penny or something only to find a flattened cigarette butt poking out between his fingers! That's very dirty! Don't touch that! I got the dead pan face. He turned and began bobbing up and down filling his fists with cigarette butts, straw wrappers, bottle caps--I said don't touch that! Put that stuff in the garbage can and go play! This time I got the squint-eyed scowl. I can't play until the Earth is clean. We have to take care of the Earth.


Now had I anticipated this moment of environmental concern I would have come prepared with gloves and such, but no, no I am ready to chase my four year old around the monkey bars. I'm proud, though, and want to be encouraging for the next five minutes or so and then I really want him to stop touching trash. But no. For the next twenty-five minutes my four year old insists on cleaning up litter from around and underneath the park benches. I mean everything--cigarette butts, used tissues, soda cans, broken pencils, you name it. I'm trying to coax him into finishing up in a soft voice firstly because it's totally grossing me out and secondly because I don't want the other moms to see me letting my son touch cigarette buts or worse--think I am making him clean up cigarette butts as some kind of weird pre-play chore. He'll hear nothing of it. We have to take care of the Earth. 


Ok. Let him clean up the Earth (next time be hand sanitizer mom for once goddamnit! Hand sanitizer mom is ready for this kind of situation). Pretty soon he has me assisting in the clean up process. We're almost finished cleaning about a 10 foot length and we happen upon a large wad of chewed chum. He immediately goes for it. NO! You cannot pick that up. No. That has germs, it's sticky, your fingers will get all yucky, absolutely not. He stares me straight in the face and says, Get a stick. A low under-the-breath argument ensues, negotiations end in me putting gum on a stick if he promises that this will be the last piece of trash we are going to pick up and that then he will go play like a normal child.

By now the noontime sun is pretty strong and I am getting hot from trash collection and embarrassment. I decide to take off my sweatshirt only to remember that I am wearing a tank top underneath with no bra. Come to think of it, I forgot to get changed after my morning chores. Come to think of it, these may be the same clothes I had on yesterday...........that I slept in...........and then threw a sweatshirt over to take my darling son to the park. My four year old son who now has me reduced to scraping oozing chewed gum off the pavement in a sweatshirt and no bra in the name of cleaning up the Earth.

Hand sanitizer mom would NEVER  let this happen to her.

My mother is stalking me on the world wide web

Mom, I can see your keyword search to find me lol! I love you.

Hey, while you are here, check out this recent article in the Express Times!

http://www.lehighvalleylive.com/entertainment-general/index.ssf/2012/02/burlesque_is_back.html