Getting in your zone

Today I had the pleasure of taking my four wonderful children on a major shopping trip to Walmart. Walmart trips are much better than normal grocery shopping trips because not only do you have your groceries to buy, but you also have all the other random things throughout the store to buy.

I was fortunate enough to get a cart with the two seats on the back to "contain" three of my children. These carts allow the child to hang on the side with their head sticking out so that no other cart can pass you by. It creates bonding with the children inside: "She's touching me!" "He hit me!" "She's stepping on me!" It allows them to chant - "We want chocolate, we want chocolate!"

By the time you get to the grocery side of the store you have already said about a hundred times "Please keep your head/feet/arms inside the cart." "Please don't hit each other." "Please stay in your seat." "No, you can't have that." You begin to enter the zone. If you don't know what I am talking about, then let me explain. The zone is like your happy place. It is survival. It is easy to recognize. The far off distant look on a mother's face as children are screaming. She is silent. To the trained eye a look of sympathy and a smile of encouragement. To the untrained eye they look at her thinking: "Does she not hear her child screaming?" I would like to tell all the untrained eyes - "Yes, yes we do hear them, but there is nothing we can do." You can't get mad at them, because then the looks of you are an abusive mother, how dare you scold that child in public like that. You can try bribing - but that doesn't work. I heard that today - "Looks like ___ isn't going to get his ice cream cone today." First of all, you know you are still going to give it to him in the end. Second of all, as soon as you threaten to take it away, it results in more screaming or a major tantrum. All you can do is pick up your pace and get through it with as little damage to the store as possible.

Things that bug - "Wow, you have your hands full!" "Aren't you brave!" "Look at all your little helpers!" When you have finally finished, you get to the check out, it is now lunch time and nap time and the helpful young man says "How is your day today?" I just want to reach over and smack him on the side of the head and say "Look at me, how do you think my day is going today?" But instead I give a weak smile and continue to unload my cart. The cashier then proceeds to do the worlds slowest job of checking you out. Carefully bagging each time so as not to disturb anything. I want to say to him - "Can you not hear my child screaming? Just smash the dang bread and get me the heck out of here!"

Now, not all of these things happened to me today (most of them) - I am summarizing several bad experiences. I just happened to take notice as I was shopping today of all the women in my same situation. Seems how it is summer time and all of our children are home and there is no other option than to take them with you. I saw a lot of the distant looks on women's faces. I saw a lot of frustrated mom's trying to contain their kids to no avail. While I saw a lot of unsympathetic looks from people, not just to me, but to other mom's. I also know that I am not alone. I don't think I could move anywhere because we would stick out like a sore thumb. Here, we just blend in with the rest of them. Serenity now.