Give Me Your Shoes

“I have to be there [quick look at clock] five minutes ago. Take them off, now.” When your 17-year-old warrior-to-be is pointing at your flip-flops with this level of intensity, there’s only one thing to do. Take off the shoes. She slips them on and runs out the door. (Oh, no need to close it, honey, I think it’s much better to blast air conditioning into the backyard; it keeps the squirrels calm.) She squeals out the driveway. As the car vanishes, it's time to ask, as it often is with Emma:  what just happened? 

As best as I can piece it together from the soon-to-be-issued Coroner’s Report, Summer Happened. Here in the dog days of the official When Does School Start? season, I have found myself living with a couple of teenagers for whom the term “of the moment” seems a little too well-thought-out. Planning ahead? Devoting a brain cell or two to the concept of what might be needed for the journey that lies ahead? That’s not the way we roll. It’s so much more fun to race back to the house after a dashing departure, panting, flapping and screaming out a litany of lost objects in tones of rising pitch:  Phone! iPod! Money! Shoes! Cranium!

Gosh, it’s all so … hmmm, I think “impromptu” might be a good way to put it, don’t you think?  At least, that’s what I’ll call it after I pop another Xanax and have a moment to lie down.

It wasn’t always like this around here, I’ll have you know. I used to start the dinnertime drill every night promptly at 6 p.m., thus allowing for two hours of full-bore mommying and four more hours of Fielding Complaints, before defeat was declared and sleep won out. This household was a haven of order and ritual and a big old boatload of beginning-with-the-end-in-mind, none of which seems to have made the slightest impression on either of them.

Exhibit A is the Car Meal, a recent trend that gives me the whim-wams, but who’s asking what I think. The Car Meal is a result of the inability to count backward in any credible way. Let’s say, for example, that you are a peppy little ingénue who is currently in rehearsal each night from 6 – 10 p.m.  Your ride usually arrives at 5:30 p.m. When, then, should you enter the kitchen, with a plan toward preparing an evening repast that will sustain you until you return home at 11 p.m.?  If you said “4:30” or “5:00,” take a look in the mirror right now. You Are Old. Not Good for your Age or Well-Preserved, just Old. Here’s why -- the correct time to start thinking about dinner, when you have a 5:30 p.m. ride coming, is 5:25 p.m., and not a minute sooner. 

Here’s the procedure. Swan into the kitchen and look around, beseechingly, at all the appliances, as if a fully cooked meal might be popping out of one of them at any moment. Sigh and say, “I guess I ought to have some dinner,” pausing for a long, sad look at mom. Watch her spring into action. Think to yourself that there’s a little pep in the old girl yet.

Four minutes later, leave the house with your Car Meal in tow, and make sure it’s a good one. Fiala girls do not go for foldover bologna sandwiches or spotty bananas. Insist on nothing less than a freshly baked ciabatta with thin-sliced turkey, or perhaps a perfectly warm bowl of pasta with homemade pesto.  What about a hot-off-the-griddle batch of potstickers, along with a container of dumpling sauce?
 

I watch more cutlery and pottery head out my door each day than a Steak ‘n Shake car hop.  It’s only a matter of time before they begin demanding white tablecloth service, all delivered on a little lap tray. “And mom?  Those votive candles were getting a little dim last time, so try to use fresh ones tonight.”

I’m not quite sure how this happened, how I ended up with children so behind-schedule and lacking in vitality that the thought of running upstairs to get one’s own shoes is purely unthinkable. But here I am, barefoot, just counting the days until the first day of school.