Page 1 of Alec’s Dream

1

“Mama?”

“Yes, darlin’?” I asked, and tossed two boxes of mac and cheese into the shopping cart.

When my daughter didn’t answer right away I glanced down at Aurora, who incidentally looked like she was deep in thought.

It was never a good thing when my six-year-old was deep into anything. One could say she was curious—which actually was a nice way of saying she was six and asked a buttload of questions and did it frequently. Aurora had a question for everything and when she wasn’t asking, she was imparting whatever knowledge she’d learned in school that day.

“What’s up your butt and around the corner mean?”

I stared down into my daughter’s stunning blue eyes, something she had inherited from her father—unfortunately or fortunately for her, I wasn’t sure—and was shocked silent. Even my son, Caleb, got quiet and attentive.

“Um…”

“Today at recess, Larry got mad. He stuck his bad middle finger up and told me up your butt and around the corner. I don’t understand, what’s around the corner from your butt?” Rory blathered on, and not for the first time I thought about wringing this Larry kid’s neck.

Which was totally inappropriate and not nice but we were only a few months into the school year and the kid was already on my last nerve with the name-calling.

“Baby girl, it doesn’t mean anything. It’s just not a nice thing to say,” I tried to explain.

“If it doesn’t mean anything why did he say it?”

The question why me popped into my head as I now stood in the canned vegetable aisle wondering if the sodium in canned veggies would mummify my children while simultaneously feeling guilty I couldn’t afford fresh anymore. And like always when I thought about money or my lack of it I started thinking about my ex-husband. Which led me to wonder if a word stronger than hate had been invented yet.

“I don’t know why he said it.” I opted for honesty and instead of calling the school and demanding little Larry get his recess taken away, I figured this was the perfect opportunity for a lesson. And God knows there’d been plenty of opportunities for lessons these days. “What Larry said wasn’t nice, neither was him giving you the middle finger. Just because you’re mad at something or someone doesn’t mean you get to be unkind. Remember what I told you?”

“Kindness is free. Sprinkle it everywhere,” she recited.

“Do you understand what that means?”

“Yes. And I try to be kind to Larry but he’s always mean. He pulled Lucy’s hair and he called Paige fat and he told Mallory her new glasses make her look stupid.”

I bit my lip in an effort not to teach my daughter a different kind of lesson—the kind where I told her to throat punch the bully and there were only so many times you could turn the other cheek.

Instead, I stayed the course of teaching my children to be the better person. Or maybe it was all a ploy to remind myself to take the high road which was becoming increasingly harder these days.

“Did you tell your teacher?”

“Yes. Mrs. Phillips said she’d talk to Larry. But she’s talked to him a bazillion times and he doesn’t care.”

Of course Larry didn’t care—bullies never do. Not six-year-old ones and not forty-two-year-old ones.

People suck.

“Larry’s older brother, Peter, is a jerk, too,” my son smoothly entered the conversation.

“That’s not—”

“It might not be nice, but it’s true,” Caleb imparted, using his I’m twelve, therefore I know everything tone.

“How about we change the subject and talk about dinner?”

“Hot dogs,” Rory happily chimed in.

“We’ve had hot dogs like three times this week,” Caleb rejected his sister’s idea and my belly clenched.

I hated, hated, hated my ex-husband. Hated that I now lived paycheck to paycheck. Hated that I had to feed my children canned veggies and processed food because we could no longer afford the healthier alternative.