Last week I went on a field trip with my kindergartner to the Children’s Museum. She and I rode the bus side by side and played ‘I Spy’ as we bounced along. The Children’s Museum changes themes a few times a year, and all of the exhibits are things the kids can play with. This season, the theme is “Gimme Shelter”. I was so happy to be there with all of the other moms that I used to hang out with before I went back to work. To wear the mommy uniform of khaki cargo pants and a long sleeved Gap t-shirt and Sketchers. To sit on a tatami mat in a miniature Japanese house in the museum while my daughter brought me pretend tea while wearing one of the children’s kimonos that was hanging there.
Sarah and I (and three of her little pocket sized friends) ran all over the museum going from shelter to shelter…a birds nest, a prairie dog habitat, an igloo, and Sarah’s favorite, the tree house. She would stand in the tree house and lower plastic bananas to me in a basket while I stood at the bottom. “Come up, Mommy!” She said. I took one look at the tree house, and pictured trying to squeeze myself from the ladder into the miniature door and wisely opted to stay on the ground.
The perky sing-songy docent had told the children all about the habitats in ‘circle time’, and said that when she flipped the lights on and off, it was time to clean up and come back to the circle. On the far side of the museum there were turtle shells that the kids could strap onto their backs and run around in, and there were also two turtle shells bolted to the floor, a big one and a small one, that kids could crawl into and stick their arms and heads through. Sarah ran to the small one and crawled into it, and said “You be the Mommy turtle!” So I crawled into the other turtle shell and stuck my head through the top, and my arms through the holes and drew my knees up under me like Sarah. It kind of felt like being in stocks waiting for rotten vegetable to be thrown at me, but it was fun making turtle faces at Sarah. Just as we were getting really going on the turtle fun, the light flickered on and off, signaling the return to circle time.
Sarah popped right out her shell and went running back to the common area, but when I went to pull my head in….stuck. My knees were folded under my chest, my head was down on the floor, and my arms were sticking out past the elbows in some sort of twisted, terrapin-esque yoga position. I could not pull my elbows into the shell, and with my knees bunched under my chest, they weren’t going anywhere without causing some serious internal injuries.
After a brief moment of panic, and biting back the urge to scream obscenities in front of all the six year olds, I took a cleansing yoga breath (seeing that I was already in a warped version of the Child’s Pose crossed with Downward Dog) and managed to ease myself out, one oversized limb at a time.
I dusted myself off, peeled the gum wrapper off of my shoulder, and rejoined the group in circle time just in time to get in a single file line back to the bus. “Where did you go, Mommy?” Sarah said, as she took my hand. “Wanna play I Spy?” I replied, and walked hand in hand with her out the door.
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