Sheep and Goats

by Anna Kunnecke

This is how they separate the sheep from the goats, the good mothers from the wanton wenches: school supplies. 

For preschool my daughter needs bags: a bevy of bags, so very many bags, a whole flock of bags.  Drawstring bags, cup bags, laundry bags, shoe bags.  I must acknowledge that it's not as bad as the old days, when my mother had to make ALL of my school things to spec--from handwritten Japanese instructions, naturally--bookbag, fork and chopstick case, lunchbox wrap with complicated ties and Velcro... it was awful.  No, I am very lucky because now, see, I can buy that all ready-made. 

However.

You pay for that, and not just in money.  You have to broadcast your inferior status as a mother, because the ready-made bags only come in two colors: electric blue or barmaid fuschia.  Needless to say they are all festooned with manic crawling characters so loathsomely cute that they make me want to brush my teeth with gravel.  Also needless to say, my daughter adores them.  She wants the bunny-kitty with pink hearts for eyes and little purple stars for brains, the ones with bouncy purple pigtails and fluffy salmon clouds.  They make my eyes hurt.  They make my teeth hurt.  Oh gravel, purge me of the loathsome sweetness. 

If, however, I were the kind of mother who were willing to make bags with my own two hands, in other words if I were someone who really loved my child as a mother should, my fabric choices would widen.  Now they would include sweet tintype trains, twining strawberries, and crisp blue gingham dotted with ladybugs.  So lovely were these fabrics that I had a brief identity crisis right there in the fabric aisle. 

I am bad at sewing, I hate it, and it has proven to be a sucking vortex of time, money, and dignity.  This is because the finished product usually requires much weeping and many extra trips for new materials to replace the ruined ones.  But there on the precipice, torn between the tasteful bolts of respectability and the public declaration of garish shortcoming, I waffled. 

Not for long.  Fate saved me: I asked the child's opinion on the ladybugs.  "Not blue, pink," she announced, pulling out of the rack of lovely fabrics the only sour note, a bright fluorescent pink.  Thank heavens.  That snapped me out of my sewing insanity immediately.  She gets a blue bag, the only plain one in the store, because I am mean beyond words.  The absence of cartoon characters leads me to believe that it is not actually intended for children, but for a specific mysterious purpose, perhaps storing one's dentures and hearing aid, or toting cans to recycling.  I don't know what that purpose is, but her teachers will, and they will read its coded message and look at me with pity and understanding, silently acknowledging my acceptance of my second-rate mother-status. 

Oh well.  If my daughter doesn't like it, she can sew her own damn bag.  I may be a charlatan wench, but I'm excellent at childproofing.  Good luck finding the needles, kid.