Mrs. Sicherheit wrapped Bobby’s sandwich (organic, gluten-free, dairy-free ancient grain bread with organic, free-range turkey and avocado) in organic waxed paper and slid it into his lunch box, then pulled a bag of organic grapes out of the fridge. A pang of worry hit her, as she thought of how even natural sugars might rot his teeth. But he did like grapes so much.
“Mom?” A pale boy of five came to the other side of the kitchen island, bringing the smell of antibacterial soap. “Can I help? Please?”
“No, buddy.” She smiled approvingly; lately he’d been so good about washing his hands for the full sixty seconds. “I’ve got it. Why don’t you play with your nice foam blocks while I finish packing your lunch.”
Bobby’s shoulders drooped a little and he shuffled over to the large soft basket of pale blue high-density ultra-light foam blocks. As soon as his back was turned, Mrs. Sicherheit slid open the two child locks on the knife drawer, pulled out a knife, and snapped the latches back into place, checking to see if he’d seen her do it. Fortunately, he was busy dumping out the basket.
Bobby was a good boy…usually, but she’d seen him near the knife drawer the other day, and she didn’t want to take any chances of him learning how to manage the locks.
She’d sliced half of his grapes before he got bored with the blocks and headed back over.
“Mom, how come you always slice my grapes? Sammy’s whole grapes are so much crispier. I like them better that way.”
Her eyebrows went up. “Sammy? Isn’t he your classmate? I can’t believe your teacher allowed choking hazards like that into the classroom. And trading food! What if it had been some kind of allergen?”
“Oh, no. Sammy didn’t trade me food. He dropped one on the floor and I ate it. It was nice.” Bobby said, pulling unconcernedly on one of the cabinet doors. The child lock only let it open a few millimeters, not far enough to let his finger get pinched inside—she’d checked—and then pulled it back in with a rattle. Bobby seemed to like the sound.
“It wasn’t as good as the peanut butter cookie that Hunter dropped, though. How come you never give me those?” Bobby kept rattling the cabinet door, unaware that his words had nearly deprived his mother of the ability to breathe.
“You ate a peanut butter cookie off the floor?” she finally managed to gasp. “Peanuts are allergens! What if you were allergic? You could have died!”
Bobby shrugged. “It was yummy. Hey, can I do that?” He abandoned his door rattling, and reached for the bag of grapes.
“Sweetie!” Mrs. Sicherheit regained her voice and twitched the suffocation hazard out of reach just in time. Why did they pack grapes in plastic bags, anyway?
“Mom,” Bobby whined, “You never let me do anything.”
“We play board games, and read books, and do puzzles!” Mrs. Sicherheit stared at her son in disbelief. There was hardly a moment of her waking hours—outside of work—when she wasn’t doing enriching activities with him.
“Yeah, but I wanna do something different.”
“What if you put on your sunscreen and your helmet on and ride your bike with the training wheels up and down the sidewalk inside the fence?” Mrs. Sicherheit sliced the last five grapes, snapped them into Bobby’s snack container, then added some organic kale to his lunch. Kale was packed with minerals and antioxidants, she reasoned. Surely it would help counteract the high glycemic index of the grapes.
She put in the ice pack that would keep the lunch box at appropriate, food-safe temperatures until lunch time—no lukewarm brown paper bag lunches for her child, thank you very much—-and glanced at the clock. “It’s about time to go to school, honey. Go put your shoes on.”
Bobby ran towards the door to change his house slippers for his organic cotton canvas natural-fit ultra-protection anti-slip sneakers.
“Don’t run,” she called after him, helplessly. “You might hit yourself on something.” As he continued with unabated speed, she consoled herself with the thought that even if he did hit something, at least there were foam pads on every edge and corner that he could possibly bump, so he wouldn’t be hurt too badly.
The ER doctor hadn’t been very polite when she’d brought Bobby in last week after he’d tripped while running on the sidewalk—and after she’d told him so many times! The heartless brute had outright refused to x-ray Bobby’s hand, and had even gone so far as to suggest that putting a bandaid on a child’s scraped palm was a waste of his time!
“Don’t forget to hold onto the railing,” she called out as they went down the stairs to the garage. Even with her and her husband both working overtime, it was so hard to make ends meet, and the copay from the ER visit had brought the credit card awfully close to its limit. They couldn’t afford another visit.
And then there were food prices these days, and insurance bills, and the new car payment…
Still, high as the car payments were, it was worth it, she had to admit, as she unlocked the SUV purchased earlier that year for its rollover resistance rating and super-advanced air bag system.
Bobby climbed into his rear-facing seat with the advanced side impact protection—fortunately he was small for his age, and still fit under the fifty pound limit for the rear-facing seat with its superior safety rating. She already had sixteen tabs open in her browser on her work computer, comparing the pros and cons of the various forward-facing options for when he finally had to switch.
She double-checked and tightened his harness, made sure he had no hard or sharp objects within reach, wondered for the seventy-fifth time why they didn’t recommend wearing helmets inside the car as well, and then pulled out her phone to check the air-quality rating. Bobby hadn’t showed any tendency toward asthma…yet, but it couldn’t hurt to be careful.
Luckily, the air quality wasn’t bad, and she started the vehicle. The trip to school was uneventful—she always got them both up fifteen minutes extra early so that they could avoid the three most crash-prone intersections in town, and arrived at the small, exclusive, nurturing (and ruinously expensive) kindergarten he attended.
She handed him his lunch box, kissed him on the forehead, and handed him over to the teacher who walked him across the street and into the building.
She watched till he was out of sight, then headed to the nearest coffee drive-through. She loved Bobby with all her heart and soul, but he was so exhausting! How could anyone possibly manage more than one child?
(Photo by Dmytro Koplyk on Unsplash)