Where is it? I know I left it here somewhere. If I am to reach these
children, I need to have it. It was just here…You know what I am talking
about. It is long and thin and has a bugle at the end of it. It
resembles an Alpine horn. If you don’t know what that is, imagine your
grandfather’s pipe only a lot bigger. It is my Mama mouthpiece, and it is the
only thing that gets the point across when my children experience a
momentary loss of hearing.
Take the other day. We were walking across the parking lot and my
four-year-old daughter bolted to the car on a whim. I had left my mouthpiece
at home. Luckily, no one ran her over, but even my shouts of warning
fell on deaf ears. Or the time my two-year-old son splashed in the puddle
just when I told him not to. It wouldn’t have been so bad if he had
been wearing his rubber boats, but he was wearing sneakers. After that, he
was wearing very wet sneakers and sporting a lovely cold.
Even when I use my mouthpiece, the message that blows through it
usually reverberates long enough in my children’s minds to have a minimum
impact. You can see it in their eyes.
“Mama just said something. I would recognize that voice anywhere.” And
yet they continue on, doing whatever they are doing despite the
repeated warnings blown through the horn.
When my children were very little, their Playskool recorder served its
purpose very well. Not only was it a source of entertainment, but it
was equally useful as a preliminary Mama mouthpiece when things got a
little hectic.
“Get your shoes ooooooon,” I would speak in low, slow tones into the
recorder’s microphone. “Get off your broooooooother,” you could hear me
saying at any given point in the day. Woefully, the microphone act lost
its appeal rather quickly, and I was forced to resort to more drastic
measures. That’s where the whistle came in.
When I thought of having children, I swore I would never be the
whistle-wearing-clipboard-toting-Soccer-Mom-in-a-mini-van type that you see
everywhere on school playing fields after hours. It wasn’t going to be my
fate to stand on the sidelines and blow the whistle at my poor kids as
they huffed across the grass, running after a black and white ball.
My children aren’t even school age yet, and I have gone from whistle to
horn. Perhaps I should go back to wearing the whistle. Give me a
second. I need to make a note of it on my clipboard. Oh wait, I left it in
the mini van…
============================
Christine Louise Hohlbaum, American author of Diary of a Mother:
Parenting Stories and Other Stuff, has been published in over one-hundred
thirty publications. When she isn’t writing, leading toddler playgroups or
wiping up messes, she prefers to frolic in the Bavarian countryside
near Munich where she lives with her husband and two children. Visit her
Web site: http://www.DiaryofaMother.com.
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