(scene opens up in kitchen)
Me: (tiredly making lunch and drinking cold coffee)
Delta: Mommy, can I ask you some questions? (sits on stool)
Me: Sure honey, what’s wrong?
Delta: How many more days until life gets easy?
Me: (extreme feelz) I wish I could tell you.
(cut scene-flashback, opens in foyer of Universal Studios hotel, two people having a conversation)
Me: (quietly) Beta, you’ve been talking about food all day.
Beta: I’m hungry all day.
Me: (epiphany moment) Beta, do you eat your feelings?
Beta: (serious face) Yeah. (dork face) Its because they’re so delicious.
Me: (letting it go, talks for other times) Well, its because you put cheese on them.
(flash forward, six people in parked van, most red eyed from crying)
Everyone: (collectively mired in personal misery and sorrow)
Husband: (reaches out, touches wife’s arm gently to get attention, mimes eating)
Me: (nods, collects self, sits up straighter, calls over shoulder) Beta? Do you want to go put cheese on our feelings?
Beta: That’d be great.
Me: (waves to husband to work the car machine)
Gamma: Why are we putting cheese on our feelings?
Husband: I think we’re getting something to eat.
(scene opens in tossed dining room)
Me: So how was school? Any homework? (sips coffee)
Beta: Yeah, English. I have to find a word that describes me that rhymes with the sound of my name.
Me: (pause, confused) You have to find a descriptive word that rhymes with your name? Or one that starts with the same letter?
Beta: (instantly exasperated) Rhymes with my name!
Me: (pretty sure he’s wrong) There aren’t going to be any descriptive words that sound like your name, honey.
Beta: (falls apart, verge of tears) It has to rhyme with the “L” sound.
Me: (staying calm, grits out) Rhyme is the wrong word. Rhyme is “bat, cat, rat, prat”. Starting with the same letter is completely different. (Points to computer) Get on Thesaurus.com and look up a word.
Beta: (hysterical) But I don’t even know what word I’m looking for yet.
Me: (slams hands on table) Would you just trust my judgement for once and get on the computer!
Beta: (does so, stares at blanks screen for five minutes, quivering with tears)
Me: (sighs deeply, leans over to type)
(close up on screen shows word “argumentative”)
Me: There. (conversationally reads) Belligerent. Combative. Contrary. Litigious. Litigious is a good word. That starts with the letter “L”.
Beta: (bright and cheery) Yeah! It is a good word.
Me: (stares into the blackness that is her coffee)
A mile walk to pick up the car from the shop included lighthearted conversational topics such as:
“Beta, accept the fact that you are wrong. Do not be that guy that has to justify why you had to be mean to someone. It is not her fault you have to be a jerk, it is your fault you wanted to be a jerk. No one wants to be friends with that.”
And
“Gamma, breaks are for the weak. We do not stop for a rest at the end of every block, we walk until we get to our destination and then we rest. The longer we take to get there, the longer we will be walking.”
Beta was arguing with me that the Tibetan script on the book he’s reading wasn’t really a language because the word/letters weren’t matching up numerically to the English words above it. Just blew his mind writing words in Hindi to show him how languages don’t match. I’m gonna hazard a guess he’s reassessing my person by the way he’s staring at me across the table and the words I just wrote. Yes, children, I was a fully formed interesting person before I became your professional sandwich maker and chauffeur.
