Being a grown-up (despite a sore head and spilled sushi)

Here’s one thing I’ve learned about adulthood since becoming a parent: sometimes, you just have to remind yourself to be a grown-up. Sometimes you even have to say it out loud. That was what yesterday evening was like for me.

After many complicated hours of helping my husband through an uncomfortable post-surgery day (he was operated on for hernias), I went to watch my 11-year-old’s baseball team play their championship game. They won, which was great. But any time it gets to be seven-thirty in the evening and my 7-year-old daughter and I still haven’t had dinner, things are bound to go downhill fast.

As they did. Sort of.

I told Holly she could not join the team for their post-victory ice cream celebration because she and I needed to get home to let the dog out and to unload groceries, and also because it would have been too complicated in terms of carpool arrangements. She sulked. “Besides, while I was grocery shopping I picked up a plate of sushi for us to share!” I told her.

She loves sushi. But apparently not as much as she loves post-victory ice cream celebrations, as she made clear amidst the sulking while we packed up the car after the game to head home. Closing the hatchback when I was finally done, I forgot to step back and the bike rack slammed against my head. What’s really surprising about this is that it’s only the second time that I’ve collided with the bike rack since we put it on the car a month ago. Once I walked into it and then yesterday I stood in the way of it while closing the hatchback. Twice isn’t bad in one month for someone as spatially challenged as I am, but that didn’t make it any better when it happened.

Rubbing my head and trying not to let out a sob, I buckled myself into the car.

Holly asked if she could eat her half of the sushi on the way home. “No, you’ll make a mess,” I said.

She began to whine. “But I’m soooo hungry!”

This is the problem with baseball season. We leave for games at about five, much too early to eat first, and get back about eight, much too hungry. Holly repeatedly gets dragged along, though she has very little interest in baseball (and, as I lamented to another player’s mother earlier this season, because she’s four years younger, she’s not interested in the other players yet either, which could have potentially made the games more appealing to her). Dinners on baseball nights are neither timely nor nutritious.

So of course I caved. “I just know you’re going to spill it, but okay then, eat it in the car,” I snapped. We drove three blocks. I heard a squeak of protest from Holly and looked into the rearview mirror to see sushi rolls splayed all over the back seat next to her.

I did the only thing I could think of at that moment: pulled over into an empty parking lot and let out a primal bellow of frustration. “That’s why I told you not to eat sushi in the car!” I wailed to her.

And then it was time for me to take a deep breath and remind myself to be a grown-up. The fact was that I hadn’t told her she couldn’t eat sushi in the car. If I’d said that, she wouldn’t have been eating it, and it wouldn’t have spilled. She’s resistant, but not defiant. Had I said no, she would have complied with that.

Instead, I said no and then let her argue me out of it. For that, there was no one to blame but myself, and despite the fact that my forehead still hurt from the bike rack run-in and I was crushed to lose my sushi dinner, I knew it was time to be mature and fair.

Yes, time to act like a grown-up. Holly piled the spilled sushi back into the plastic tray while we drove home. I felt calmer and my head started to feel better. Holly ate the sushi rolls that hadn’t fallen. I congratulated myself on not letting the situation – driven by my own frustration – deteriorate more fully.
After all, I reminded myself, what’s the most important thing when you bash your head with your own bike rack? To be certain that no one saw you. And although it happened on a well-populated residential block, I had no evidence of any witnesses. So I’d saved face, if not forehead.

When we got home, I contemplated the remaining sushi rolls for a few seconds. They looked so tasty. But I knew what else had been on the same seat where they fell: boots, sneakers, cleats, backpacks (which had previously been on school corridor and auditorium floors), and of course the dog.

Then I had an idea. I could rinse the sushi rolls. They weren’t all that porous; water wouldn’t damage them. A quick blast of water in the kitchen sink reassured me that each one was dog-cootie free, and I ate them happily.

Be a grown-up. Simplistic and trite. But to paraphrase Ferris Bueller, so’s adulthood, sometimes; or at least so are its requirements. And those are the times when that silly message comes in most handy.