That Ugly Formica Table

I have been having a particularly stressful few weeks this past month and was contemplating it all on my way to work this morning.  Nothing major, just basic life stuff like flat tires, employee woes, house renovations and work stress, all of which you can add the suffix #firstworldproblems to.  No matter how trivial they all seem, the culmination of them all at once had me desperately searching my memory bank for my quieter, simpler “happy place”.

And out of the blue I found it: my grandparent’s Formica kitchen table.

You know the kind of table – the one with the wobbly tin legs that is a mixed colour or barf green and fecal brown that matches perfectly with any orange corduroy couch.  The kind that has cigarette burn marks on it and a wrap around metal piece that lifts off around the edges.   The kind that signifies for me hours and hours of card games, lovingly made grandma meals and late night surprise snacks.

This morning, I could think of nothing better than the simplicity of life when I was young and used to spend entire weekends sitting around this ugly table.

I had never really taken the time to think long and hard about my visits to my grandparents’ house.  They were a regular part of my childhood, and always something I looked forward to.   Theirs was a simple bungalow with décor and appliances that matched beautifully with this god-awful Formica table.  My Grandpa’s high tech stereo system played non-stop 88.1 cheesy soft listening music and it was there that I got introduced to such greats as Carly Simon, Neil Diamond and saxophone jazz.

In hindsight now its seems CRAZY to me that my grandmother never had ANYTHING better to do ALL weekend other than play cards with me.  I used to wait impatiently at the bathroom door for what seemed like HOURS for her to get ready in the morning.  (This was probably about as stressful as my weekend would get.)  FINALLY after a few jokes about “not falling in the toilet” (that had me on the floor in peals of laughter every time) my grandma would emerge and the card games would start.

We only ever played one game: Mexican Poker.  And I know for a fact that it is not just my retrospective memory that makes me believe we played it incessantly; we did.  We played for hours in the morning until Grandma had to get up to make lunch.  After calling Grandpa in, we then sat at around the table and ate cheese dreams or tuna sandwiches and banana muffins.  My grandpa and his dentures could win a contest for the slowest eater in the world.  Unfortunately his slow eating also paired with a robust appetite so I would often have to sit for a good 30-60 minutes after finishing my own meal, listening to the sounds of his dentures clickety clacking as he calmly and thoroughly chewed his cheese dream and then patiently scraped every last speck of muffin off the muffin wrapper with his Swiss army knife.

As soon as lunch was done and Grandpa was back out puttering in the garage, the cards would come out again and the game would resume.  We played so hard we sometimes forgot to get dinner ready on time.  We played so hard we had cramps in our hands from shuffling.  Over time we established brilliant theories on how cards started to arise in sequence if you played for long enough and finally had to resort to getting a proper card shuffler to ensure accuracy and relieve our sore hands from the monotonous duty.

We played so hard that one night when the clock struck 11pm Grandma poked her head up from her hand and realized for the first time that evening that Grandpa was missing.  She quickly went from competitive card mode to flat out panic when she also realized it was 11pm and WAY past my bedtime.  I THINK we might have also forgotten about dinner, too.  We searched the house high and low for Grandpa but he was nowhere to be found.  Grandma assumed the worst, “Oh SHIT, Lyssie,” she said with her gold teeth gleaming deamonously, “I think we’re in big trouble.”

It was right then that we heard the front door open and in walked Grandpa who had gone out to surprise us with a big bucket of KFC – our midnight treat.

I can so vividly remember the intense feeling of happiness I felt that night, enjoying a bucket of KFC with my grandparents at midnight, sitting around the Formica table, rehashing the scores of the last 5 round of poker and laughing at Grandma’s neurotic terror over losing Grandpa. 

When I think about today and my stress over picking the right stone for our new fireplace, having to replace a tire on my SUV, signing the kids up on time for the correct sports teams and activities,  it contrasts starkly with the easy happiness of those weekends at my grandparents house.

I hope, in the midst of our busy lives, I will make time to have moments like those with my own kids.  And I hope my kids will have weekends with their grandparents that leave them feeling loved and connected.  And I hope that one day someone loves me the way I did them; enough to have them crying on their way to work one day over the simple memory of an ugly Formica table.

Sleep Rebellion Tactics

I reserve judgment on which of my children reigns victorious for this evening's competing attempts at bedtime rebellion; I will leave the final verdict to you after I enlighten you on this evening's shenanigans.  

You know those nights - -after a particularly long day of work, when all that stand between you and the couch is the daunting task of putting your own children to bed.  It should be marketed as some sort of ancient torture technique.  It NEVER goes over well.  What unfolded tonight happened in the following sequence :

1.  Rob cheerfully left for soccer, kissing both of our angelic kids goodnight as they stood mild heartedly on the front steps, waving their loving goodbyes in endearing earnestness.

2.  All hell broke loose.

After what seemed like hours, Mia started asking to go to bed (a few minutes earlier than her stated bedtime of 7pm).  I guess she was just messing with me because when I called her bluff (at the cruelly early hour of 6:58 pm) her response was an instantaneous stop, drop and wail.  By the time I had her up the stairs her legs had miraculously stopped flailing but when she then pulled a completely irresolute inability to choose her bedtime story it started all over again.

As I calmly sat in her rocking chair, waiting with the miraculous and unwavering patience that we mothers deserve a medal for, she managed SOMEHOW to calm herself down enough to pick out the same 2 books we have read every night for the past 2 weeks.

The girl likes her routine.

I closed my eyes and read the books by memory as I rocked her in her chair.  She seemed to calm down a bit but every so often reached up to pry my eyelids open.  When the stories were over I turned off her bedside light and was about to sing her her bedtime song when I felt her aggressive little FIST on my mouth, clamping it shut.

“No, Mommy, DON’T sing yet,” she said in a stern whisper, “First I’m going to tell you a story.”

My eyes popped open with curiosity and once again I called her bluff,

“OK, Mia…tell me your story.”

Mia’s story, said her husky yet sweet bedtime voice as I rocked her to sleep, went something like this,

“Once there was a man.  He was in a pond.  He was very sad.  It was scary because this man was in a pond.  He was a man in a pond. And he couldn’t get out of bed because you know why? Because he had blood on his finger.  He had blood on his finger because he SQUEEZED it.  Like this.  He SQUEEZED it like this and there was blood and it was on his finger.  And he was in a pond and he could NOT get out of bed and then his mommy came and she saw blood from his leg and he had blood on his leg and he could not get out of bed so his mommy came with blood on his finger and his leg and that’s the end.”

I have to say, it was a pretty good attempt at her very first improv story telling gig.  The story itself MIGHT have lacked a little in its plot line consistencies, character development and overall point, but it got points for creativity and ingenuity.

And it’s a whole lot better than some aspects of Toby’s approach.

Whereas Mia had delayed bedtime with her feigned-story-choosing-indecisiveness, Toby was three game plans ahead of me by the time I finally had Mia tucked in her crib.  He had laid out on his bed his two LONGEST books from his bookshelf.  They were books I hadn’t read in YEARS and together probably extended bedtime by a good 10 minutes.

And then he remembered that he hadn’t brushed his teeth.

And then he remembered that he hadn’t peed since lunchtime.

Or had a glass of water since breakfast 2 days ago.

And had lost his pillow somewhere upstairs.

(I can’t even type all f this without rolling my eyes...)

Finally it got to the time when I was able to START the epic Berenstein Bear sagas.  And FINALLY the epic Berenstein Bear sagas were over.  I sang him his good night song and came upstairs.

After my never-ending bedtime with the two of them, I sat out here on the deck, for a while, listening to the birds go to bed (cheerfully, I might add!) and contemplating how I might transpire this all into a blog post.  As I came inside (about 30 min later) to get my computer up popped TOBY from behind the kitchen counter with Mia’s hair elastic in his hand.

“Mommy!” he said in self-defense as I inched towards him, “I found Mia’s hair elastic on the floor of the bathroom and didn’t know what to do with it!  So I brought it to you!  I am just trying to help!!!!!”

Not only had he scared the daylights out of me...I just couldn't buy the explanation.  OR the tears the ensued when I explained that to him.

And so I leave it to you…was it the ingenious story telling or the fabricated attempt to “help me” that wins the day?

SPOILER ALERT: It was neither.  The winner of the night was CLEARLY Rob, who avoided all of the above shenanigans with his Monday night soccer game.