Remember when you brought your first baby home from the hospital, and you sat by his crib and watched his chest rise and fall? And you seriously felt like you were communicating with him on a psychic level: "Breathe, baby. In...out...in...out...in...out..." You knew if you stopped willing your child to breathe he probably would, in fact, stop breathing.
I was engaging the same logic at the spelling bee this morning; I had my Mommy Psychic Gears turned up to full power. When my boy stepped to the microphone, I spelled the word SO LOUDLY in my head that I knew he could hear, because he loves me so much and oh, our hearts, how they beat as one.
He sailed through the first round. Then he stepped up to the mike for the second round. I was ready for it. He was ready.
The judge read, "Staccato."
[Insert screeching sound]. Staccato?
How on earth do you spell staccato? Two c's? Two t's?
I gulped. Adam gulped. Neither of us knew. And he missed. But I totally blame myself. No fourth grader should know the word staccato, but a 35-year-old momma? It is completely reasonable to expect that I should know how to spell it and be able to clairvoyantly implant that spelling into my child's brain.
Ah, well. You can't win' em all.
(By the way, Adam isn't disappointed at all. He's just glad it's over, and he's glad that he has an excuse to stop studying those hard words.)
(And also by the way, may I just tell you much I loved to learn that so many of you have your own spelling bee trauma? Aren't we just the brainy little bunch?)
