If I could have wrapped my children up in bubble wrap and placed them in a soft room with lots of books, board games, and cookies when they were young, that’s what I would have done.  We would have sung songs and colored pictures and nothing bad would ever have happened there.  Obviously, that was not possible.  And I am not quite that crazy.  Close, but not quite.  Still, I did try my hardest to make their childhood happy and easy.  In my efforts to do that, I limited their exposure to many things.  They did not hear the news on the television.  They did not ever shop for any of their own things.  Clothes, accessories, and shoes just appeared in their closets.  (This prevented them from making unfortunate wardrobe choices.  This was really a protection for me, not them.  I kept this one going for as long as I possibly could.  My daughter swears she did not pick out any of her own clothes until at least middle school.  I call that a huge success on my part.)

But some of the things I did are rather comical, looking back.  We still laugh about what I told them when they saw an animal on the side of the road that had been hit and killed.  If it was “intact,” I just told them that the animal was napping.  But if the animal was bloody, I told them that the animal was napping because he was full after eating french fries with a lot of ketchup.  It sounds ridiculous, but when your kids are three, they believe you.  They did not believe me for very long, but it bought me six to eight months before they realized what was really going on.

By far my best white lie was not even my idea, but my husband’s!  My son was about four or five and he had recently gotten a small aquarium in his room.  He had one little goldfish in it.  I really cannot remember the name of his fish.  I think it was SpongeBob.  I was not really that fond of SpongeBob or his tank.  It all meant more work for me.  I had two young children and a full-time job, so cleaning out fish poop for weekend fun was not a highlight for me.  Well, one summer day I went to wake my son up to go to the babysitter.  It was a rare day when both kids were going to the sitter and I was going to have the day all to myself.  I was going to clean the house and grocery shop, every mother’s dream day.  As I walked by the aquarium, I spied Spongebob- belly up on the bottom of the aquarium.  He was not moving.  He was not living.  Crap.  I did my best to stand in front of the aquarium as my son dressed and then I shooed him into the kitchen to eat and quickly got him to the sitter’s house.

As soon as I got home, I told my husband that SpongeBob was dead and that we were going to have to have a funeral and burial when the kids came home later.  He disagreed.  He felt that since my son had just gotten the aquarium it would be too painful to lose the fish.  He suggested that I run to the pet store and buy a replacement SpongeBob.  This was very unusual indeed.  My husband rarely cooks up kooky plans like this.  I was all in!  I only asked that he scoop the dead SpongeBob out of the aquarium and flush him while I did a few things before heading to the store.  When I came back into the kitchen, my husband was standing there with a coffee can.  He held it out to me.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“SpongeBob,” he replied.

No way!  I was NOT taking a dead fish in a coffee can into the pet store.  My husband was sure I would need him to make sure that I chose a perfect match.  Ridiculous.  It was a goldfish, for goodness sake!  I could remember what SpongeBob looked like.  I had just looked at him thirty minutes before!

I arrived at the pet store and headed to the fish department.  There were approximately 53 aquariums full of goldfish.  Some had fancy fins.  Some had buggy eyes.  Some were dark  orange.  Some were light orange.  Some had spots.  Some did not.  Some were really skinny.  Some were short and fat.  What did SpongeBob look like? I had no idea.  I only knew he was orange!  That was not helpful information here!  I was in deep trouble.  Dead SpongeBob had already been flushed.  There could be no funeral and burial.  No going back.  I had to find a replacement.  Think, Shannon, think.  What did he look like when he was lying there belly up on the bottom of the tank?  I made a choice.  Then I had to get a store associate to try to catch the one SpongeBob II that I was pointing to as he darted around the tank.  I sounded like a complete loony bird.

SpongeBob II was swimming around calmly in his new home when my son came home.  I held my breath as my son opened the lid to feed him.

Then he stopped and said, “Mommy, something is wrong with SpongeBob.”

“No there’s not.  He’s fine.  SpongeBob is fine.  He’s good.  He’s swimming.  He’s just fine,” I said, a little frantically.

“But he’s a different color.  He was not this orange yesterday.”

Oh no. Oh no. Oh no. Think fast.

“You know what?  We bought that new food last week.  I bet that new food is full of vitamins and it’s making him so healthy that he’s turning more orange!”  I said.

“Yeah! It’s full of vitamins,” my son said.

He did not find out about SpongeBob II for many years, but we did eventually tell him.  He thought it was funny.

I have done some crazy things over the years to make my kids’ lives a little easier or happier.  It was so much easier when they were little.  I could just keep things away from them or bring the right things to them.  It is much harder as they grow older.  I have the strongest desire to make everything better for them.  And I can’t always do that anymore.  There are problems that a cookie or a bandaid just don’t fix.  I have had to adapt.  I still leave them notes.  I still bake them cookies and sweet treats.  I do their laundry when they are busy with work and school. And I am here.  When they need me, I am here.  I may not be able to fix anything, but I will sit with them through anything and everything.  Just like I always have.

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