On Wednesday the 3rd of September, our oven broke down in the middle of a pizza. We only have pizza about once a year, so the kids were looking forward to it like crazy. Italians, be warned, what comes next must be hard to digest. I warmed up the pizza in the microwave and then baked it in a regular frying pan. The idea was to get it warm and have at least the bottom a bit crunchy. The bottom turned out almost black and the entire thing looked inedible. The kids loved their very special pizza topped with extra cheese and ketchup to cover up the burnt taste.
On Thursday the 4th of September, our cooking range died on me in the middle of green beans and rice. I half expected it, since it was attached to the oven. I wanted to give up, but then my daughter came along. She secretly turned the oven on, thinking it a toy after it broke. For some reason, that reactivated the hot plate on top of it! Thanks to my mischievous five year old, we had a decent meal after all.
She told everyone she saved dinner that day, strutting around proud like a peacock.
On Friday the 5th of September, we asked my teen sister to babysit and went to my employer’s corporate party, all the while discussing how to rearrange our kitchen. We felt like we could handle our bad luck for a blissful twelve hours.
On Saturday the 6th of September, our car broke down in the middle of the road to my parent’s home. It stopped, just like that. We had to find another car and take my sister home, which made my husband late for work. His work being to clean up the party we went to the night before. Mere coincidence made me help dismantle my own employer’s party, to get things done in time. The kids had a great time, being allowed to help out dad and being at mommy’s party at the same time. They didn’t mind that they were the only ones singing and dancing in an empty tent.
On Sunday the 7th of September, I decided to bake some fine Belgian waffles. I had made a new school year’s resolution of baking cookies for the kids to take to school every week. Because the green me wants to lessen our piles of plastic waste, because the control freak in me wants to follow up on their sugar consumption, and because our daughter is just very picky when it comes to cookies (I’m not complaining). I wouldn’t let the broken oven break my resolution after just one week, so waffles it was. Broken crumbled pieces of waffles anyway. Not a single one came out in less than 23 pieces. The kids thought it extremely cool to have a little box full of waffle crumbs to take to school all week. They figured the tinier the pieces were, the more waffle could fill their snack box.
On Monday the 8th of September, I found almost all of our chickens gone. One was still there, without her head. I found her inside our completely closed den. No holes, no open door. The predator went in and out anyway. I told the kids a very cute little fox was probably very happy with his mommy’s endeavours. I also promised them I would get us a pig instead of those vulnerable little chickens. A very big one. We’ll call her Foxy.
On Tuesday the 9th of September, we bought ourselves a new car. The kind of family car I’d been wishing for, even before the previous one. Our son approved because the new car is close to his favorite colour, black. Our daughter approved even more because it had sliding doors in the back. No more accidents with neighbouring cars for her.
On Wednesday the 10th of September, I found a new kitchen when I came home from work. My husband had worked like crazy to surprise me. The oven and plates were not connected yet, but I was too overwhelmed to mind. We were getting used to cucumbers and cold salmon wraps for dinner anyway. It was a good exercise for the predicted power blackouts during winter as well.
On Thursday the 11th of September, I felt our luck was turning. We had been able to found benefits in all of our misfortunes. New car, new kitchen, new pet. Fate gave us Ethiopian New Year on that day. It’s liberating to state in the middle of 2014, that you’re heading for the year 2007.
It feels as if you can start all over.
That morning, our Ethiopian daughter went to school in her traditional white dress to show off. Our son wore his Ethiopian scarf for mere coolness. In the middle of my last science policy meeting of that day, I was already musing about our cozy evening to come, picking yellow flowers and having popcorn, as tradition prescribes in our daughter’s birth country.
That very moment, my husband called. I was to head for the hospital.
My little princess’s pristine white dress was covered in blood. She had had a nasty fall and an even nastier hole right between her eyes. They had waited for me to arrive before doing the stitching, because she desperately needed her mommy. I will never be able to wash away the image of that incredibly deep hole in her forehead. Nor of the terror in her eyes when the syringe for the local anaesthetics came by.
When it was all over, we promised her pizza. One from the local Italian, because the oven still didn’t work. Also because we were too exhausted to think of anything creative at 8 pm.
In the car back home, my daughter told me she couldn’t believe how lucky she was.
I thought I’d misunderstood.
I was having a very hard time staying composed. After this unbelievable week, my stress buffer was in shambles.
And my daughter, covered in deep stitches and steristrips, told me she felt so lucky?
“Of course,” she said. “We’ll have pizza night two weeks in a row!”
Do your kids also help you get past the most dreadful passages in your life? Can we learn from their ability to find innocent fun on every occasion, no matter how bad?
This is an original post to World Moms Blog by K10K from The Penguin and The Panther.
Photo credit: Live Italian. This picture has a creative commons attribution license.
Whenever a child is sick at home, the others go on about how “lucky he/she is that (s)he can stay at home”. I tried to explain that (s)he is not lucky, (s)he must feel miserable and would much rather go to school than stay at home in bed. It would appear that I am the only one who see the bad side of being unwell! The sick child does enjoy being smothered with attention, having lunch with mom, sharing a movie with her, and eating in front of the TV. So yeah, there are plenty of small blessings in a day and maybe it takes the eyes of a child to see them…
I love your post. So real and so relatable.
I can certainly relate to the ‘being sick’ jealousy! My kids compete about the days they’ve already spent in the hospital with me. My daughter is winning… She still talks about how wonderful it was to have me all for herself for day and days… I must admit, it was a very good exercise for her attachment issues!
Oh dear Lord what a week! I hope your daughter is better?
Children are often more resilient then we give them credit for. They are though little people.
Never for as long as I live will I forget the moment when my eldest tilted her wheelchair so only the back wheels touched the ground and announced broken leg up in the air, that she was a wild horse.
She’s all better. She will have a scar, but because she is likely going to wear glasses (again) in the future, so you won’t see much of it.
And your daughter! Hilarious! I think she would get along great with mine 🙂
I’m in tears! I hope the rest of your September went well!!
You are so not alone in this!!!
Jen 🙂
Well, September is over now, and we survived!
October can’t possibly be worse, so I’m staying positive!
I love how kids can really see the simple immediate pleasures through what we perceive as chaos! The truth is that half of luck is just feeling lucky for the blessings you do have.
Indeed, no looking back, no looking forward, just immediate pleasure! She was so right!
Oh my gosh Katinka!
I applaud you for being able to find the good over and over.
At some point I would have just sat on the ground to have a well deserved pity party. Your daughter is amazing. She sounds like quite a handful, but at the same time so precious!
Rest assured, I did have my pity parties! When the kids were asleep…
And yes, she is amazing, that daughter of mine!
Wow, Katinka, what an amazing post … it has literally given me goosebumps!
Strangely enough we’ve had a similar string of incidents … including our car breaking down. We were on our way to celebrate my husband’s birthday (by spending a night in a little town roughly one and a half hours away from Cape Town) but we never got there, because the car stopped half an hour away from our destination. We ended up spending the day on the side of the road waiting for a tow truck. To add insult to injury it cost us R 1 500 just to get back to where we came from…and the car can’t be repaired. (Currently my husband and I are debating whether to allow the mechanic to source a replacement engine or to sell the car as scrap)
My dear departed grandfather always used to say that any problem that can be solved with money isn’t a real problem because money can be earned, borrowed, received as a gift or won. The REAL problems are the ones that no amount of money can fix … like a terminal illness or life threatening injury. Your daughter is absolutely right … and not just because of the pizza! 🙂
This is just too much of a coincidence! I hope you will find a solution for your car…
I love that quote of your grandfather! I promise I will use it when our next disaster comes around!
Wow what a week Katinka! I have had weeks like that and they are hard to go through, but I am a firm believer in all things happen for the best, and it seems your daughter feels that way too :-). There really is a silver lining to every cloud. I hope the rest of the month went better for you!
Yes, my daughter sees silver, pink and rainbowy linings everywhere. In fact, she IS my silver lining!