Oh, fudge.

Every now and then, I do something really stupid.  The kind of stupid that might make one wonder if there needs to be an intervention in the near future.  Most of the time, I’m okay with these periodic lapses in cognitive aptitude because they remind me how utterly and completely dependent I truly am upon the grace and forgiveness of a loving God for my earthly survival.  These types of mistakes usually aren’t that big of a deal and don’t require much repair.  They’re just not smart.  However, sometimes they give me serious pause and beg some kind of explanation that simply cannot be met with the token hearkening to being “human”.  Like today, for example. It is the first day off of school for the boys’ Spring Break.  I woke up in a happy, energetic mood, ready to take on the role of mother-of-the-pack.  I thought maybe I’d take the boys hiking, or to a fun park we haven’t yet discovered, or to BYU campus to walk around and grab an ice cream.  Visions of glad and grateful children played through my mind as I fed the baby, did a cross-fit workout with Talmage, and got dressed and ready for the day.

And then I saw them.  Dark, thick, and foreboding.  Clouds began to flood the sky and darken our house. The mean looking kind that never seem to go away for days.  The pleasant breeze I had noticed outside my window when I woke up decided to turn into high speed winds and by 10:30 it was evident we would not be hiking, or picnicking at a park, or enjoying a lovely day at BYU.  Now, I’ve done Spring Break indoors with three boys by myself and it’s not awesome.  It is doable, but it depends entirely on the mood the boys are in.  If they are cheerful and cooperative with each other, it can be just fine.  But if even one of them decides to throw in the towel and just be a bum, the day is completely awful.  All three of my guys had already shown signs of grumpiness and I was not prepared for awful. I had my heart set on a happy day, and I was not willing to let these sour clouds get in the way.  What could we do today that wouldn’t cost much money? After getting some feedback from my oldest, I cheerfully gathered the boys together and announced that we would be going to Cabela’s.  We would go climb on the rock wall there, look at all the cool things, and buy some fudge for a treat!  Sounded great to me; sounded great to them.  So off we went.

Now, I had never been to Cabela’s.  But Cabela’s, I had heard, was the greatest place on earth for everything man.  Couldn’t go wrong with a place like that with four boys, right?  Mm mmm.  Not right.  SO wrong.  Talk about boring!  There was no rock wall ( I must have been thinking of Scheels), no sports stuff (why didn’t that ever register with me?)…it was just a huge camping/hunting store with an enormous collection of neatly labeled dead mountain animals, which took us approximately 7 minutes to view.  Oh, there was a little token operating “shooting range” of sorts.  That was interesting for about 5 minutes (the score keeping mechanism was broken, on all of them).  This was not what I had envisioned for the indoor awesomeness that I was to provide today.  There had to be something redemptive about this trip.  Oh! The fudge!  That was it.  Talmage had told me how he had gotten the fudge here one time with Grandpa and that he loved it, so we would get some fudge for everyone and that would turn this drive out to a fake wilderness into a success.  We entered the “General Store” and greeted the apron donning employee with multiple requests for samples (to their credit, I will say my boys were very polite when asking and were hesitant to ask for seconds tastes).  The fudge did look delicious, and there was an impressive variety.  The boys were loving their samples and quickly started shouting out their favorites.  Maybe I would even try some! But my enchantment soon faded when I glanced at the price plaque on the far right of the counter.  Could this be right?? $3.50 for one piece of fudge?  Oh…no! Do I make them share? Was I prepared to deal with contentious negotiating right there in front of the clerk and the other suckers customers lining up behind me? Not today–I just wasn’t.  So three pieces of fudge it would be.  Raspberry cream, orange cream, and mint chocolate.  $10.50.  Gulp.  But it wasn’t over.  No, just as the clerk was lowering the third 2×2 square into the box, she enthusiastically announced their special of the day…If you get 4 pieces of fudge, you get 2 more… for… free.  The sound of “free” seemed to make the moment less painful somehow.  Yes!  I’ll do it.  Phew.  I quickly chose three more: cookies and cream, dark chocolate, and moose drool (yes, moose drool. Its amazing.).  She handed me the neatly packaged box and said thank you, politely declining to take my credit card as there actually are no cash registers in the “General Store”.  I took the box and looked down at the price sticker on top. $14.00.  FOURTEEN dollars!  Oh. Fudge.  Our walk down to the real registers and out of the building was a blur.  A few minutes later I was closing the back door of the van, looking at my boys inside the car, and holding the most expensive box of treats I’ve ever purchased.  What just happened??  Did I really just spend $15 at Cabela’s…on fudge (that’s $14, plus tax, plus a 50 cent donation to some environmental cause I feel no passion for)?  Inside the car I sliced up and distributed morsels of each fudge selection as I felt the sickness of the purchase sink down deep inside me.  It is the day after Easter.  The boys have a gallon size ziplock back at home filled with Easter candy.  There were dozens of useful things in there I could have spent that money on that would have made sense to purchase.  But instead, I was handing out chocolate confections with coma inducing amounts of sugar to a car full of little men who will forget about this moment of indulgence in approximately 15 minutes.

This was an epic stupid something.

But why?  Why did this happen?  I think my explanation to Seth when he came home was that I clearly was not thinking in that critical moment of decision.  But as I’ve been pondering over this…incident, I must admit that’s actually not true.  I was thinking.  A lot.  I was thinking about a thousand different things: “How can I make this little moment memorable? The boys are with me right now on their spring break.  Talmage’s best friend is in California.  They flew there, on an airplane. Ashton has been having trouble today.  What am I neglecting with him?  Has he felt enough love from me today?  I need to make sure he gets his own pick of a flavor and doesn’t have to share.  But then that means Joseph and Talmage would have to share.  Talmage will feel like he’s not being treated like the almost 12-year-old he is, having to share with his little brother.  He has been testing his limits of independence a lot lately.  How can I show him I respect his growing need for autonomy while preserving appropriate limits?  Should I let him pay for his own fudge? But how would this moment be special, if he is having to pay?  Oh, Joseph forgot to wear his glasses again today.  He probably can’t read the descriptions on the fudge.  Does he really want raspberry cream? Should I ask her for yet another sample?  Oh boy.  There are more people behind us.  Where’s the stroller?  Ashton’s pushing it.  That’s not good.”

As I am becoming more and more aware of my flaws as a mother, I am also becoming more cognizant of ways in which I am improving and growing.  And I am realizing that these little moments of failure aren’t necessarily signs that I am failing.  Because every time I do something stupid like this, I learn a little more about myself.  Sometimes those are things I can feel good about; sometimes they are things I know I need to eliminate or adjust.  Today I learned that I care a little bit more about the creation of a moment than I do about money.  And while I may always cringe at the memory of having spent 1,500 pennies on fudge, and hopefully never repeat this mistake in the future, perhaps it is a good thing that my thoughts were thus engaged.

I am a mom.  With everything that passes through our brains in a given instant, sometimes we buy $14 fudge.  And I think that’s okay:).