SPOT ON

Gabby has a zit.

It’s not just any, run of the mill blemish. It’s the elephant in the room. It gets there before her. Her sweet face has been swallowed by this red, pulsating BLOB. My youngest daughter has this beautiful alabaster, sensitive skin, and she’s only NINE. It’s too early for such things. I’m not ready.

So being her mother, I tried to make her feel better. We washed it; steamed it; soaked it. We tried not to poke it. We talked about the redeeming qualities of selecting just the right shade of cover-up. And then we honed our skills at the proper application of it.

We were dealing with life's unfair blow to Gabbo's nose in stride.

Then her sister brought the subject up on the bus the other day in front of  her friends and made her feel badly.  We’ve all been there —that point of unwanted attention leading to public humiliation. It’s horrifying. I was horrified for her.

She was coping fairly well with the whole situation until that point, and so was I. I hadn’t even tried to POP it.

Gabby came home with tears. This is a rarity. My kids are made of some tough stuff. 

Gabbo: “Mom she made EVERYBODY laugh about my nose on the bus; even the HIGHSCHOOLERS.”

(Yes, my 4^th and 5^th graders ride the bus with the high schoolers. It’s not a perfect world. The only thing I can do is try and get them to sit as far away as possible and out of ear-shot . Apparently not this time, though.)

Me: “Oh Gabbo, I’m sorry. But you know EVERYBODY gets zits. Zoe will get one sooner or later and maybe then she’ll be more understanding.”

Gabby: “I know but …”

Me: “Gabbo …. And yours is not just any zit. It’s a special zit. It’s …. Well it’s more like a TOO-MAH!”

I said this last part in what I imagined to be my best Arnold Schwarzenegger voice.

Then I started laughing. And I couldn’t stop. It was Friday night. It had been a long week battling this zit and everything else life cannoned our way. My defenses were down.

And, of course, the Schwarzenegger reference didn’t resonate with Gabby, so she asked me what I said. So I got myself together and…..said it AGAIN!  

“ITZ AH TOO-MAH!” 

Then I collapsed into even a bigger, shameful ball of giggles.

It was just Gabby and me in the room. No one else was around to witness this horrifying scene of Mom-gone-wrong. She sort of looked on with a combination of confusion and wonderment and a little crying laughter.

Eventually I collected myself and tried to hug away any lasting ill-effects of my blemish — I mean my blunder.

It dawned on me then why, maybe, our three children are pretty capable of coping with life's knocks. 

Sometimes I think that if our children survive the likes of us — their parents — the people who love them more then anything else in the world, then really nothing will keep them down.