Mission Accomplished

Eleven year old daughter came home from middle school. "Lost my cell phone." She said. Just like that: plop, the truth, deal with it. My first thought was that my husband was going to have a coronary which was immediately followed by the realization that my husband was going to have a coronary.

He didn't have a coronary, though his face (handsome, muscular, jaw like George Clooney's) did soften with disappointment. The truth of the matter was that we were as much to blame as anyone. "Get your cell phone", "Do you have your cell phone?", "We got you a cell phone for a reason." Yada, yada. (Are you as sick of the words Cell Phone as I am?)

Two days later, when the phone still hadn't surfaced, I did what I do best and that is to take masterful control of the situation because, dog-gone-it, how in the heck else is anything going to get done about it?

"I'm taking you to school tomorrow." I told her. "And we are going to find that phone."

Her face fell. I mean, fell.

"And the baby?" She asked, meaning her seven month old brother. Nightmarish visions of her mother (gasp!) pushing a baby stroller through the halls of her middle school were, I'm sure, dancing tormentlingly through her head.

"Oh, he'll be there." I assured her. I mean, it wasn't her fault that the phone hadn't been found, but I had a job to do.


The size and scope of my mission increased the next morning with the discovery that my husband had taken the checkbook without leaving a check for her french horn tutor.

(That's all right. Shake it off. I've handled more than this.)

We all load into the car, drive across town and buzz the buzzer to get into the school. The secretary let me in, but she also let me know that no one was allowed into the school until 7:15.

I thanked her for the information but, as I was on a mission, nothing--not even a little protocol--was going to stop me.

So, with a 21 pound baby on one arm, a french horn under the other, I retraced my daughter's steps with her. No luck. Until we happened to run into her math teacher who tells us that although she found a phone, it couldn't possibly be Susanne's because the name on the phone was Suzy-Q.

Apparently being a math teacher is a far cry from being a rocket scientist because it was indeed my daughter's phone.

"What do I do now?" She asks me.

"You begin your day," I tell her, my face aglow with accomplishment.

Back in the car, I venture farther into the Burbs and through several school zones to my husband's golf course. He gives me the checkbook, kisses the baby, tells me he's got to get back to work, so long.

By this time, the baby's had it. Nothing about the morning even resembles our routine. Nothing. And he's not afraid to tell me about it.

After turning at the wrong turn and going the wrong way at the school's one way, I trudged, victorious, into the school office.

My daughter was paged and the look on her face when she came into the office and I put the check in her hand and she had witnessed, once again, how mommy had single-handedly wrestled the world into order, was GOLDEN.

Mission Accomplished.

You can do what you want to me, you can say what you want about me, but you cannot stop me.
--Anastasia