All I wanted was to buy a shirt

This past week, I had to take my children into Ottawa for medical appointments. Given that we live in the middle of nowhere, and I have still been schlepping around in maternity clothes at five months postpartum, I decided it was now or never (or at least, now or not for many, many months) for me to get some clothes that fit my actual size, not my aspirational, pre-pregnancy size.

A kind friend had been culling her own wardrobe recently and handed me a big armload of pants that fit. I was delighted. Now all I needed was a new shirt. Or maybe two.

That was all I wanted.

When the nearest real mall is over two hours away, and you have to schedule shopping around exclusively breastfeeding one child, medical appointments for two others, and the general needs of a needy preschooler, that makes for a full day. Thankfully, Patrick was able to take some time off during the day to come with us. The plan: we'd all go into the mall, he'd take the kids to the Apple store to see if they knew what was wrong with our laptop, and I'd go to Cleo.

Walking into Bayshore Mall with my husband and four rurally-raised kids, I immediately felt out of place. It didn't help that moments before we arrived, one of my children actually asked, "what's a 'mall' again?" It also didn't help that as soon as we got in, my little girl decided to throw a meltdown in the middle of the mall, complete with starfish flailing on the floor, and Patrick, who already had the baby in the Ergo, had to try to cajole her into walking along with me and the boys.

I knew time wasn't on our side, so I marched the boys towards Cleo. They wanted to stop and admire the massive Christmas tree that stretched from the bottom floor all the way up to the top floor through the overhangs one can peer through.

They looked down gleefully at the Santa setup where kids can get their photos taken with the Jolly Big Guy, and I looked down in revulsion to see this was stationed just mere metres away from Victoria's Secret. It was, of course, replete with larger-than-life posters of women in their underwear vamping.

Towards the kids. Waiting in line. To meet Santa Claus.

{What in the world?}

But I should have known better.

We marched along quickly towards the clothing store. Patrick caught up to us and he found a bench in front of the store where he'd wait it out with the kids while I tried on some things. I picked out two different shirts and draped them over my arm, intending to look for more, before an obnoxious, borderline-deafening noise went off. The other patrons and I covered our ears until we were informed that the noise we were cowering from was an evacuation alarm.

Of course.

So I trudged over to Patrick, who had just been telling the kids we had to leave. Now, one of my children is a deeply sensitive child. The deafening alarm noise, the sight of the mass exodus of people leaving, and the threat that something bad might actually be happening, was too much for him. He began to break down. We did our best to assure him we would all be safe. Perhaps Patrick felt completely confident. But I confess that I actually was a bit worried, too.

(It also didn't help that our last big trip to Ottawa as a family, we decided to go to the Children's Museum in Gatineau, and that was the day of the shooting at the Parliament building. The museum was put on lockdown while we were there. So my 'sheltered' children actually do have a sense of what disasters could happen.)

We got out the doors to the parking garage, but the elevator was malfunctioning so we had to carry the kids up four flights of stairs to where we were parked. There were sirens blaring down the street to compound my child's fear that catastrophe was looming, and a huge steady stream of vehicles exiting the parkade.

When we finally got everyone buckled into their carseats, we noticed that the blue-smocked Wal-mart employees who were all milling around in the parking lot near us went back in to the store. It must have simply been a fire alarm going off or something.

Yet it seemed too mammoth a task to go back in. So we drove on to Tim Horton's for coffees and bathroom breaks, and we gave the kids the lunches I packed. Patrick Googled other locations of Cleo and told me cheerfully that we had enough time for me to run in to a different mall, and I could go by myself while he drove laps in the parking lot.

Hallelujah.

As we pulled up into this other mall, I said, "Time check? How long do I have before we need to leave for the doctor's appointments?"

"Oh, about ten minutes."

Maybe other women would't have been fazed by that, but I wondered in amazement how he supposed I could get into this mall I had never been in, find the store I was looking for, hunt down the clothes I was hoping to get, try them on, pay for them and still be back in ten minutes.

I won't balk at the sight of a challenge, however. So he dropped me off, I ran in like the least coordinated bat out of Hell**, looked in vain for one of those mall directory signs telling me "you are here" and where Cleo was in relation to that, let out a groan when I couldn't find it, and ambled instead into The Children's Place and bought a dress, tights and shoes for Anna to wear to Mass at Christmas instead. Sigh. She has always had nicer clothes than me.

Now I sit, perusing the Cleo website, wondering when I'll get it through my thick skull that my only viable option for purchasing clothing is online.



**Edited to add: the phrase "least coordinated bat out of Hell" was coined by my brother. He was with my mom in our car when I was in the eleventh grade and they had come to pick me up from school. I ran out with my scarf trailing behind me, a saxophone case thumping against my leg as I tried to book it, and my backpack flapping over one shoulder. His colourful turn of phrase stuck as the perfect way to describe me in motion.

Pardon me for not giving him credit to begin with!