Mission Impossible

There's a Cub Scout mom that is seriously the most creative person I've ever met. Need a song about the Pinewood Derby? She's written one. Need a skit about saving the environment? Check. Need trophies or certificates made out of a few pipe cleaners, some broken crayons and an old dot matrix printer? Done. She can do it all, with the barest of supplies and the shortest possible notice.

Suffice to say, I am not that mom.

I have been dreading the mother of all craft projects -- Mark's California Mission -- for five years now. To me, it represents a time to show just how few craft skills I have, and how unlucky my poor son is to have such an artistically-challenged mom.

Along the way, friends have kindly given suggestions. But just saying the words "Build it with sugar cubes" doesn't really help me. I can use all the sugar cubes I want; at some point, I'm gonna need a blueprint to give it shape. (Never mind the fact I have a son with dia betes, a sweet tooth and no self-control -- using sugar cubes is just asking for trouble!)

The next suggestion, which I thought was awesome, came from my niece Hannah, who offered to sell her mission to Mark for ten bucks. I yelled, "Sold!" at the exact same moment Mark scoffed over the high price. Then he reminded me he was supposed to build the mission himself, not buy it from someone. (Sure, he picks that moment to finally learn ethics.)

The last suggestion, which I ultimately took, was to buy a kit. A kit! I beamed. Maybe Father Serra was smiling down on me after all. Maybe Mission Day wouldn't be the most embarrassing day of Mark's young life after all.

We bought a kit of the Santa Barbara Mission. In fact, we didn't just buy the kit, we bought all the cool little accessories that went with it: farmers, corn, a wheel barrow, palm trees, a pond and fountain, even little gravestones and crosses for the cemetery. Things were looking good!

Until this weekend, when we actually put the mission together. We followed the steps precisely: glued the paper pieces onto cardboard and cut them out. This proved a little difficult for tiny fourth-grade hands. I helped by cutting out 25 doors and windows, each of them threatening to rip and ruin at any moment.

Then we glued the pieces together. Again, I tried to let Mark do it all; this was his project, I was just offering encouragement. (At one point, I ran out of both patience and encouragement, and asked Mark, "Wouldn't it have been easier to just write a report about the mission?" He snapped back, "Yes!")

But there's one frightening moment in time that you sometimes see with alarming clarity: that make-or-break moment when you envision everything falling apart quickly and permanently. That moment came when Mark and I tried gluing the mission walls together with white glue. They simply wouldn't stick, and the whole chapel wobbled. I made an executive decision, telling Mark to stop immediately and walk away.

We resumed the project after a quick trip to Jo-Ann's Fabrics. We came home with armfuls of glue, every kind you can imagine. Those walls were going to stick one way or another.

After about four hours, we had a freestanding building and a base covered in plastic grass that kept shaking off on the floor. Mark and I were exhausted, but relieved.

Sunday morning was painting day. We carefully carried the mission outside and spray painted it with a sand-textured tan paint. Our biggest impediment was getting the cap off the paint can; that sucker would not budge. I finally smacked it against the garbage can, and it broke off in 15 pieces. Mark looked at me, puzzled, and I just said, "Sometimes ya just gotta use brute force." (I learned later the caps are child-proof, and you simply have to pinch them off.)

The paint was a huge improvement! The mission went from looking like a paper model to...well, looking like a real mission!

"Time to raise the roof," I told Mark, and he obligingly lifted his hands in the air repeatedly and made an "ooh, ooh!" noise. He brought them down long enough to affix the roof to the chapel.

Which left us with one final question -- how to attach the mission to our grass-covered base? I was pretty sure the glues we had wouldn't work, so it was back to Jo-Ann's for advice. We returned with a hot glue gun, which did the trick nicely.

And then came Mark's favorite part of all: laying out the accessories. He was very excited to place them, though I warned multiple times not to Krazy Glue his fingers together. To which he responded by rolling his eyes, sighing, and accidentally dipping his finger into a puddle of Krazy Glue.

I finished gluing the last few pieces while he tried prying the hardened glue off his fingers. "Wow, this stuff really sticks!" he proclaimed, to which I responded by rolling my eyes and sighing.

Finally, after approximately 8 hours, $90-$100, and five different types of glue (white glue, glue sticks, rubber cement, two bottles of Krazy Glue and a hot glue gun), we finished. And though I am biased, I think it looks AWESOME.

Front of the mission

The farm side of the mission.
Perspective was not our friend: notice how much larger the corn is than the people, and the people are larger than the doors into the chapel.

The cemetery side of the mission; graves and the giant gravedigger, who again can't fit through the door.

But of course, this proud smile made all our hard work and stress completely worth it:


But mostly, I am just grateful it's all over. I explained to my friend Edra that my five years of worrying is finally done. Once we deliver it to school unharmed, I will breathe the biggest sigh of relief ever.

"Yeah, I bet you're relieved," she answered. "No more worrying." She poked at the bell tower and added absentmindedly, "At least, not until next year, with his science fair project."

My stomach sank, and my heart stopped beating for a minute.

Maybe Hannah has one of those she can sell us.