Sunday School Fall Lineup

Sunday School

This Sunday morning marks a fall ritual in our home.  The first day of Sunday school for the new season.  It’s not quite as good as the fall NBC lineup of shows, but it’s what we have to work with in our family.  It’s the only day of the year my oldest son, who is leaving for seminary next year, pops up out of bed sans the alarm.  He is teaching the middle school kids this year.  He showers, shaves, puts on his nice khakis with plaid dress shirt and appears in the kitchen resembling the cover of an LL Bean magazine.  The fall/winter edition.  He informs me as I stand doggedly with one eye barely open at the sink, pouring water into the kettle, that he has already walked the dog and fed the chickens.  I wish I had that kind of enthusiasm just once.  My instinct is to kick him, but instead I give him a thankful hug and kiss.  Looking at him right now, he reminds me of some 50’s iconic dad. He just needs a pipe.  The littlest one lopes down the stairs and I can hear her singing.  She reminds me of the CEO of a major Fortune 500 company.  She’s all business at age five.  She enters the kitchen.  “Mommy, what is the weather going to be like today?”  “If it’s going to be too cold, I’ll need to wear something warm.”  She has already brushed her teeth, her hair, and has found a long sleeved wool dress.  She has also ratted out her brother and sister for being mean to her already this morning.  She is currently in the process of painting her toenails to match said dress, and has chosen flip flops to showcase her freshly polished toes….that now match her wool dress.  She grabs a muffin from the pantry and gallops off into the living room.

Next comes my middle-school aged son.  He woke up less than five minutes ago.  He’s already come down stairs wearing a wrinkled t-shirt, a pair of black basketball shorts, socks (mismatched) and flip-flops.  I think those clothes were on his floor this morning, and I’m not really sure he’s brushed his teeth.  However, he has dumped about a gallon of stinky pre-pubescent body spray on his body, and now the air has a thin cloud of napalm like film hovering the living room’s atmosphere.  I’ll stay in here for a while.  I think I need my inhaler.  I haven’t been around that much haze since fraternity parties in college.  

It is also a ritual  each year on this special day that my oldest daughter stumbles down stairs with white-blond hair askew, and her award winning Meryl Streep-esque monologue which always begins like this.  “Mommeeeeeee.”  (It’s always very drawn out and dramatic.  She should surely win an Emmy for best drama.)  “Mommeeeeee, (eyelashes batting heaving, lip hanging down to her knees) I have a migraine.”  Her siblings see this brazen show of fortitude and roll their eyes.  She looks at them as if she has just witnessed kittens being sacrificed to hungry canines, and works up hot, fresh tears that honestly, I am in awe at.  And with that, she has once again charmed her way out of the first day of the season opener known as Sunday School, and I too now have an excuse not to shower today.   For I am her trusty sidekick; her partner in crime, and today, this first day of Sunday school, the family will leave for church, leaving Meryl Streep and I alone with our comfy blanket, the couch, and a nice hot cuppa tea to start the day.