Chapter 1

Oh, for the love of crusty cheese. What the hell is that? My rib cage feels like it’s been thwacked with the bottom of a frying pan. I reach my hand under the duvet and pull it out. It’s Sonic. My son’s favorite blue alien, not to be confused with my daughter’s choice, who is Stitch. The baby doesn’t care. Anything fluffy in dull shades of beige will do for that. Just something to slobber on, and squeeze will give her joy.

The real question was what was Sonic doing under my 3rd and 4th rib, below my clavicle. Clavicle. It’s an anatomy word I learned recently from binge-watching Dr. Temperance Brennan on ‘Bones’ on Netflix, while Tod watched the World Cup and the kids were in bed. I discovered that my husband wasn’t very observant. Actually, to be truthful, I had discovered that a while ago when he asked me where the kitchen scissors were. Fifteen years we have been together. And for fifteen years the kitchen scissors have been in the top drawer, in the kitchen. ‘Kitchen’ scissors already gave you a clue to where they were. The fact that they were scissors and not, I don’t know, a pot or a bowl told you that they were in a drawer and not a cupboard. The top drawer was the first drawer, so if you know you are looking for ‘kitchen’ scissors, and you know what size the kitchen scissors were, you would, logically, open the first, or top, drawer and immediately find them. But does he do that?

No.

No, he doesn’t.

The first thing that happens is his brain says ‘I need scissors.’ Instead of looking for scissors, his brain decides to open his gob and shout out “Sweetie! Where are the scissors?”

To which the response is, and has been, for the last fifteen years, “The top drawer!”

With a “You daft cabbage” muttered afterwards.

But I digress.

The point is, is that for someone who can snipe a pixelated character in one of his army games, from 500m away, he sure as hell isn’t observant in real life. Which is why, at night, after the kids are in bed, and he has set himself up with his console, or sport, I slip the laptop under my arm, a good cup of tea, and yell good night. But I don’t go to sleep. No, I take a few delicious hours to myself in the bedroom, to watch men get shit done in the movies. Tom Cruise making Cameron Diaz an omelet in Knight and Day, Booth whipping up pancakes in Bones; I might also indulge in Chandler Bing promising to Monica to clean up the cereal box that Rachel knocked over, in an attempt to avoid the eye doctor. Men… Fictional men, just doing stuff. It is such a simple fantasy, yet I think it is a common one that women have, all over the world.

Is this what ‘sexy’ has become for us?

Once, sexy was Jack drawing Rose like his French girl, or maybe that a vampire from Twilight, or a werewolf. We all tossed and turned over whether Katniss should choose Peeta or Gale. Now, here we all are, fifteen, twenty years later, and any man with a to-do list that he is ticking stuff off will do. For years, we might have all pined over Jim in The Office, but let’s be honest – Dwight isn’t looking so bad anymore. After all, he doesn’t just say he will fight a bear for you; he actually will fight one. Or at least spray it with pepper spray.

Gotta love Dwight.

But this doesn’t explain why Sonic is in the bed. I turn around to check. Ah. There is the culprit. It seems my son, Lukas, is curled up. I turn to look at the other end. Tod isn’t a fan of kids sleeping in the bed. He complains about boundaries and growing up, and that the bed is a sacred space between a husband and a wife. A sacred space that he snores and farts in.

I gently lift the duvet and in a clean-cut, ninja style, I manage to spin my body out of the bed, scooping Lukas up into my arms. He just fits. It won’t be long, and it won’t be any more. Just like it won’t be long and he won’t want to sleep in my bed anymore. Something that Tod doesn’t get. Children grow up. There is only a small window of experience where I get the chance to curl up next to my boy and hold his feet while he sleeps. One day, those feet will be huge, and he will loom over me like a giraffe over a warthog. I have to grab this opportunity while I can.

I carry him out of the room, into his. I sneak him under his duvet, and then I sneak myself in. A 3/4 bed just fits the two of us. Soon, we won’t be able to fit either.

Of course, Lukas is awake. I know he is. He’s been awake this whole time. But to confirm it, I feel his feet nudging into my undercarriage. My ‘undercarriage’ is what I call my lower belly fat. Something that I got at some point, although I’m not sure when. Some women blame it on pregnancy. I heard them talk about it while waiting for their kids. But I don’t think so. There are moms with only one kid who don’t have them. I think it’s the lifestyle that you share with kids that’s the problem. Let’s face it.

That term ‘running around after your kids’ is false. You don’t ‘run’ anywhere. You wish you did. You wish you ‘ran’ to the store for a few things. But you don’t. You plod. You plod, navigating your kids across the parking lot, shouting ‘stay near mommy, stay close.’ You plod around the house, bending and picking stuff off. So much stuff. Socks. Shoes. Endless little bits of building blocks. God, I hate building blocks. Tod thought he was soooo clever buying the generic ones, with a thousand pieces, at a reduced price. But that ‘thousand’ pieces ended up being nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine little pieces, and only one regular size. Ends up under the rug, in that crack in the sliding door, under the fridge… everywhere.

You meander and plod everywhere, finding pieces, hurling laundry from the basket to the machine, from the machine to the line, from the line to the table, from the table to the cupboard, only to be worn once and back in the basket again.

There is no cardio. None whatsoever. It’s all core, hidden under a diet of leftover crusts and ‘mommy, I’m full’ macaroni and cheese.

“Mommy?”

I opened my one eye and looked at my son’s cute face. That ‘mommy’ was going to be the first of a few thousand today, alone. What was that thing Brad Pitt said in Troy? ‘My Glory Walks Hand in Hand With My Doom?”

Yep. That summed my kids perfectly.

“What, button face?” I asked.

He smiled.

“Where are we going today?”

A simple sentence that was created to imply that we were going to go somewhere today, like Disney World. Or Mars.

“You, little poo, are going to school!” I roared.

He shouted “Noooo” but didn’t get too far, as I attacked him with a thousand pokes and kisses, to which he squealed. I got up and pulled his shirt and school pants out, as we got into a back and forth about why he had to go to school. I wandered out of the bedroom, telling him he better get dressed, while he was still arguing about what the point of an education was. I went into my daughter’s room, and it was like a bizarre deju-vu. The Todler at least couldn’t argue. She was pleased to have her diaper changed and clothes taken off. Although as I hurled her little body on the changing mat, I couldn’t help my feel that complaint from my lower back. The combination of sleeping on a blue alien, along with three children growing in my belly, and hurling their bodies on the changing mat was taking a toll on my lumbar spine, from vertebra L1 through to L5. Thank you Dr. Temperance Brennan. Another useful anatomy tip while I watch your fictional FBI agent husband, Seeley Booth, do shit.

I stretched myself out and curled myself in, then stretched out again. Something that I remembered from my yoga classes in my twenties, when I had time and no undercarriage. Little Lucy seemed to enjoy watching me move and started copying my body movements with ease. How nice it must be to have a fresh body, straight out of the box. Not one that has stories on every edge, fold and corner.

Why does school have to start so early?

I stared at the open fridge. I have no idea why I opened it, or what I was doing. I feel like two thoughts had attempted to grab my attention and got jammed in the doorway getting there.

“Coffee?”

You would think that was my husband that said that. You are wrong. It as my son. The only little man in my life who noticed that I had been staring so long into the void of the fridge, I was starting to get a first-degree burn from the small light inside.

“Yes. Yes,” I said to him, as if I had to tell him once, and myself separately.

“I’ll make it. You can make lunch.”

Oh! Yes. That’s what I was doing.

“Cheese and ham, or ham and pickle?” I asked, grabbing the margarine.

“Cheese and ham!”

“Ham and pickle!”

“One for one goblin and another, for the other!” I said with a smile.

Willow sat opposite Lucy and started helping her with her breakfast of smashed peas.

“Open wide!” she said, making airplane noises. Lucy gurgled and gave off delightful noises.

I got the sandwiches into the boxes. Now I just had to fill up the three smaller sections. With something healthy.

God, I wished for the days of my own mom, when all she had to do was throw one or two sandwiches in, with a pack of crisps. No juice. No water bottle. No fruit. But now, the school insisted on healthy stuff. And the plastic companies that made lunch boxes insisted that you have three of them. Three healthy snack spots that had to be filled every day, five days a week for eighteen years. A total of… I don’t know. A lot. I can’t work out the math right now, but maybe later.

I wondered if the lunchbox companies were the same company that owned the healthy snack company.

I grabbed the pretzels and threw a handful in. That was healthy, right? And then a quick orange slice up for the other section, and… and… I scanned the fruit bowl. Nope. The Tupperware with the snacks… nope. Maybe.. Just maybe.. yes. Cucumber in the fridge drawer. I sliced a chunk off for the third container.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that my husband was wandering off to his study.

“Um, babe?” I asked, “Aren’t you taking the kids to school?”

He was wearing a clean, crisp white shirt, with boxers. The standard outfit of choice for remote workers.

“No, sorry, I have a meeting at 8 am.”

“But I asked you to take them. Remember. Last night, and you agreed.”

“Yes, well, I can’t. There is no time.

I looked at the clock. It was 7:34 am.

“The school opens its gates at 7:30. You could have left at 7:20, got there at 7:35 and been back here at 7:40, in enough time for your 8 am. If you had just gotten up earlier and communicated…”

“Look, babe, it’s too late now. So, I’m just going to grab some cereal and head to the office…”

“The study.” I corrected.

“The study, which is my office, so it’s the office,” he attempted to correct me.

“But I’m not dressed yet,” I said.

“Well, maybe you should have gotten up earlier,” he said, over his shoulder.

My fingers curled around the frying pan.

It would be so easy. So easy to just smack that balding head of his. I could plant him in the garden. No one would know. I’m just a little suburban mom. Would the kids and I really notice a difference…

“Mom?”

I turned and looked down at Willow.

“I can help you get dressed.”

I smiled and thanked Willow. Tod was gone. Gone to his office, not gone, like dead. Not yet, anyway.

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