Chalk

Welcome to our cult.

I’d never really considered chalk until my toddler became absolutely obsessed with it. It has taken on religious significance: “Chalk, chalk, chalk, chalk,” he repeats.

He likes to put his chalk in his shopping cart and push it down our street. The chalk inevitably falls out of the holes in the cart. It’s part of the game. He flings the cart down the street, and the chalk goes flying so we yell ,“Chalk, chalk!” before picking up the pieces, only to have them fall out again. I’ve started to put them in my pocket because sometimes they fall out so frequently we can hardly get down the street and it feels unnecessarily stressful.

We always run into a neighbor or two along the way and they always feel the need to comment on the shopping cart. “The grocery store is pretty far from here!” They’ll say, but we don’t care. We keep pushing the cart. Sometimes, E lies on the sidewalk, drawing with his chalk while older women try to express concern without sounding distrustful. “Is he sad or just tired?” They ask. “He’s drawing with his chalk,” I say.

One day, we run into the kind mother who gave him 20 pieces of chalk - left on our doorstep after I mentioned the only piece of chalk he had is now so small it hardly functions. I tell her she’s made his life with the chalk having taken on “an almost religious significance.”

“Mm…” she says, before chasing after her own toddler on his bike.

“It’s fine,” I think, “she doesn’t have to get it.”

His chalk marks have now taken over the neighborhood like impermanent graffiti on the sidewalk, on fences, on picnic tables. It’s a good strategy for bringing people into our cult (obviously I am a member).

One morning, we are both sick, pushing the cart full of chalk towards the playground that is being rebuilt. We see a dog and the owner tells us she’s 16 years old and very confused. She lets E pet the dog and I try not to cry. Mortality has been hitting harder since I watched 30 min of the Andrea Gibson documentary (more I cannot manage).

I stopped complaining so much in group chats and just started summarizing things in vague statements like “next level of wowzers!” Being sick while your child is sick takes parenting to the next level and I’m no longer trying to earn mom of the year badges, openly admitting it’s pretty unmanageable in moments like these without lots of support.

E has never been a “good” sleeper; he was colic due to being squished in the womb; he is massively self determined, which has meant he very much says “no” as a toddler. At the library, I look around at us all managing the emotions of our precious little humans like ticking little time bombs. I realize motherhood is a form of survival and that I am fully playing into the pop culture narrative that we are losing our minds.

Let motherhood have this moment. It’s long overdue and let me be in my chalk cult with my tiny best friend, scaring the neighbors.