Sunday, a day of rest. Except that we were out of dish soap, laundry detergent, and those little seed and fruit-laden muffin snacks that Simon loves. Also, he needed some new shirts, Clara needed some new large footie jammies (her favorite), preferably in soft fleece, and I needed a new package of water bottles. A trip to Costco was unavoidable.
I packed Clara's diaper bag with two extra pairs of leggings and underpants (one with a picture of a cupcake on the front, and another with a picture of a tiara), as well as extra socks (her pee accidents often travel as far as the feet).
"Clara, do you want to sit in the cart or walk alongside?" I asked at Costco's main entrance.
"NO! Walk!!"
"Okay, but you have to stay right with me. Right next to the cart."
I wheeled the cart to the clothing section and started thumbing through the heaps of jeans. Simon wears a 33 x 32, a size that continuously eludes me on my shopping sojourns. It's like trying to find a toenail clipping in a ten-gallon vat of diced onion.
As I moved piles of jeans to get at the ones on the bottom, Clara re-arranged a heap of Mariah Carey's greatest hits on a nearby display. Which is to say, some ended up on the floor, while others were artfully mixed in with stacks of Ann Coulter's newest book, Mugged: Racial Demagoguery from the Seventies to Obama. Then she took off for the racks of puffy winter coats.
"Hey," I said, running after her. "Now you have to sit in the cart." I plopped her down in the back of the cart. She stood, holding onto the cart's sides. "On your bottom," I said. She grinned and squatted very low. "All the way on your bottom," I warned. She giggled and finally sat down on a three-pack of Soft Scrub at the bottom of the cart.
I grabbed two loud Hawaiian shirts for Simon (he's a quiet guy, and it's getting to be winter, but the price was right), while Clara pulled a T-shirt off a display and used it to assiduously wipe down the rungs of the cart. "Wash, wash, wash," she muttered.
"Hey, I need to go potty," I said. "Would you like to come with me?"
"YES."
The bathroom stalls at Costco are stainless steel and rather narrow for a matron with a wriggling toddler and a bulging diaper bag. Plus, Costco has these Dyson hand-driers that sound like they have a jet-propulsion engine. They practically make the skin on your hands flap, the air pressure is so high. Due to the roar of the hand driers, I couldn't tell if she was really going or not. I dipped my head between the side of the stall and the side of the toilet. My discomfort at being that close to the porcelain receptacle of Costco's female masses was out-weighed by my need to discern, through the crack between the seat and the toilet's rim, if there was a stream going into the toilet or not.
There was not. Fifteen minutes later, after a tour through shampoo and pharmaceuticals, there was a stream, albeit a very trickly one. Most of it had already soaked her striped leggings while we waited in line for a toilet. And a half hour after that, after Clara had raided all the sample counters in canned goods and meats and drank a styrofoam cup of water, there was not even a chance of a stream. Her leggings were thoroughly soaked. A flowered pair this time.
She did not want to go into the bathroom to change leggings this time. She tried to escape my grasp and run into the men's restrooms, where it was relatively quiet. I quickly changed her leggings in an alcove between the two bathrooms.
She was feeling very badly, I could tell. She was trying to explain something in worried tones.
"Oh, mess. Oh, accident."
"It's okay. It's not a big deal. And look! I have more dry leggings to make you comfy and dry. Do you want to try to sit on the potty some more? Do you have a little more to let out?"
"No. Nai no. This mess. Oh. Loud. Oh, loud."
"The pottys are too loud?"
"Huggie. Huggie, Mommy."
"Of course I will give you huggies. Huggie, huggie, huggie. Are the hand driers too loud?"
"YES."
"The hand driers are only machines that dry your hands. They're loud in this store, it's true. Really, really loud. Does that scare you?"
"YES. Baby scare machines."
I held her for awhile. Then, after we checked out, I bought her a piece of pizza. We ate sitting in a booth. I gave her a bottle of water all her own, an indulgence I paid for when she twice tipped it over.
"Machine scare," she said, pointing to the bathrooms. But a mouthful of cheese and mushroom seemed to make it all better.
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