Last week my kids’ school sent an email reminding parents about some of the upcoming theme days they have planned, and I wanted to scream, “But we already had red shirt day (for Valentine’s), pink shirt day (anti-bullying), and crazy hat day (who knows why) just last month!!” The dress-up days for the next few months include, but are not limited to: superhero, “tacky tourist,” outdoorsy, blue shirts (for autism), Disney, sports teams, and tie-dye.
Now, it’s already difficult enough for me to keep up with three growing children— ensuring at all times that they have proper-fitting, weather-appropriate clothing, shoes and accessories. I exist in an endless loop of buying and selling new and used kids wear, and I deeply resent how the school expects me to have all this random clothing handy for 16+ theme days a year.
I’m sure some parents genuinely take pleasure in dressing their children up, but I do not. I’ve never wanted to dress anyone besides myself.
When I first got married, I told my husband I didn’t really care what he wore, and I had no intention of buying him clothes or forcing him to dress a certain way. This is how I like to remember that convo going: I lowered my sunglasses, gave him a once over and said, “Just try to keep up.” Then I walked off with serious steez.
But you can’t really leave little kids to dress themselves (fact: mine would wear the exact same thing every day until it disintegrated, just like their father does), so I’ve tried to streamline the process as much as I can and reduce my mental load. I buy 90% of their clothes from one store, where I have a good grasp of the fit and sizing. I try to have at least one of the girls wear boys’ styles for expensive items like winter coats and boots so we have a nice string of hand-me-downs for their little brother. I note their preferences (one only wants to wear jeans while another refuses to wear jeans). I try never to buy anything at full price, because—as with school theme days—a sale on kids’ clothes is always just around the corner.
Still, I’m sometimes caught off guard, like when I bought a perfectly good sweater for one child who, after I’d already put it through the wash, refused to wear it because “the arms feel weird.” Or last summer, when I ordered shorts from an unfamiliar brand in size 9/10 for both girls (who were, at the time, ages 9 and 10), and discovered they were way too big, even for me.
At least the girls will eventually grow into those shorts. What I hate most about clothing my offspring is feeling behind or unprepared. Actually, that’s what I also dislike about being a mother: you try and try to gain a sense of equilibrium, and then the next thing comes along to knock you off balance again. You’re always running to keep up with your children’s latest developments. You’re always running to keep up with life as it whizzes by.
I have no solutions, of course, for how not to be overwhelmed by parenthood and its relentless demands. Instead I have a poem, which might be more useful anyway.
The History of Mothers of Sons
by Lisa Furmanski
All sons sleep next to mothers, then alone, then with others
Eventually, all our sons bare molars, incisors
Meanwhile, mothers are wingless things in a room of stairs
A gymnasium of bars and ropes, small arms hauling self over self
Mothers hum nonsense, driving here
and there (Here! There!) in hollow steeds, mothers reflecting
how faint reflections shiver over the road
All the deafening musts along the way
Mothers favor the moon—hook-hung and mirroring the sun—
there, in a berry bramble, calm as a stone
This is enough to wrench our hand out of his
and simply devour him, though he exceeds even the tallest grass
Every mother recalls a lullaby, and the elegy blowing through it
Sniff. I guess I’ll stop complaining for now.
:) Teresa
What is happening even?? Closet Dispatch is a free, limited-run weekly newsletter by Teresa Wong, who forgot to check if her kids were wearing green today for St. Patrick’s Day.