A Vitch a Ghost and a Mummy

Emma Lowell conditioned her hair with shampoo for three days before she realized that she had bought two bottles of shampoo instead of one each. She had a system: shampoo on the left, conditioner on the right.
For three days she picked up the bottle on the right, saw that it was shampoo and fumed about the kids carelessly, or worse, purposefully, switching them. It would have been funny if it wasn’t going to take another three days or more before she would both go to the store and remember when she was there that she needed conditioner.
This is exactly the life she was determined starting around age 14 to avoid. She assiduously planned to become a foreign correspondent dashing off to exotic lands to report on crucial stories. No husband, no children, no boring PTA meetings. And yet, here she was living in a small town in New England organizing a car pool and teaching Sunday School to four-year-olds.
It tedious. It was demanding. It was filled with challenges that she never imagined. Managing the budding career of a six-year-old soccer playing ballerina. Navigating the grocery store with a sneaky two-year-old randomly tossing into the cart Hohos, toilet paper and cans of beans. Ensuring that the middle school’s only quarterback arrived at god awfully early morning games in the wilds of suburban Massachusetts guided only by directions that are completely wrong. Convincing a pre-pre adolescent that reading really is more fun than video games.
Maybe late night parties and lunch with dignitaries and getting shot at by rebel forces would have been more fun, but Emma had a dishwasher, microwave and washing machine. And at the end of the day, she was showered with sweet hugs and kisses.
When she had time, Emma ran a small business taking photographs of prized pets, but she didn’t have much time. Most of her energy went into maintaining some semblance of organization in her house while feeding, nursing, ferrying, entertaining and generally loving her four children. There weren’t supposed to be so many, it just sort of happened. Once they got started, it seemed more natural to have babies around than not.
Thomas was the first. Now 11, he was athletic and intense. He was the captain of team and yet he had an underlying sense of silliness. He was often dragging his brother into playing practical jokes on the family and unsuspecting friends. Not that nine-year-old Jack needed much dragging. He had a solid sense of humor himself and hoped one day to be comedian/magician like the one who came to his friend’s birthday party and blew rubber doughnuts out of his nose.
Julia, about to turn seven, seemed to have inherited all the seriousness that skipped over her two older brothers. In second grade, she was reading on a fourth grade level and very proud of it. She was sure she would be a doctor when she grew up, or a figure skater.
Just barely three-year-old Amanda was full of surprises, starting with the fact that she was here at all. Her parents were all set with three rambunctious children, but apparently Amanda didn’t want to be left out of the fun. Somebody miscounted something or lost count of something and the very day Emma finally decided to send the crib off to charity, she found out she still needed it.
They were individually and collectively more fun, insightful, thought provoking and delightful than Emma had ever expected.