Where in the world is Mom?

GONE IS MYGidget. Gone, my Mona Lisa.

I tumble out of bed with my cauliflower hair and twisted tightie-whities to find out she has left, finally fled, with her pretty smile and solutions to every little problem, leaving me with four children, two dogs and a stack of bills dating to 1982. Still, we have it better than most.

“Where’s Mommy?” the toddler asks.

“Who?”

“Mommy,” he says.

It was really only a matter of time, but I never suspected she would’ve left like this, after the toddler’s breakfast.

No, she’d probably leave before feeding him, which is almost always a waterfall of aggravation, the waterfall being the things that cascade out of the 2-year-old’s mouth after you try to put them in. Most times, he eats for flavor -- little bits of egg and Cheerio, grapes cut in half, torn-up toaster waffles -- then spits them all out, a Yosemite Falls of food.

If anything, their mother would’ve left before all that. Why endure such turmoil when you’re going to be catching the next bus to Fresno?

“What’d you do to her?” I ask.

“Nothing.”

“Likely story,” I say.

“Thanks,” the toddler says.

Even in her absence, he is a hale and hearty lad. In fact, there is increasing evidence that we peak as human beings at age 2 and begin to go downhill from there, gradually learning greed, jealousy, envy, vanity, lust, anger, malice, resentment, desire and hubris. Often by our early teens.

Which brings us to the little girl.

“Where’s Mommy?” she asks.

“Who?” I say.

It seems unlikely her mother would go now. Why now, after the homecoming dance, a hugely hormonal experience for the entire community. If prom is the new Christmas, then homecoming at least qualifies as Pearl Harbor Day.

Before homecoming, she and her mother bought not one but two dresses together, one the color of a battle tank.

To make matters worse, one of the little girl’s friends reportedly spent $1,000 on her dress, sending shock waves through our tiny suburb. For a moment, I thought the new sewer system had exploded.

“You’re kidding?” I asked my wife.

“I’m sure it’s beautiful,” she explained.

My wife’s wedding dress cost less than a thousand bucks. I remember because we paid for it ourselves. There was mob money in her distant past, but reportedly that was long gone.

So before homecoming, there were arguments about dresses and curfews and who the little girl would be with at the “after-party.” It was like Kissinger talking to the North Vietnamese. Measured but firm.

No, if my wife left, it wouldn’t have been after all that. Or after Halloween, which featured long, elegant discussions over whether Mary Ann from Gilligan’s Island had braids or ponytails.

“Braids!”

“Ponytails!”

“Braids!”

And there were other Halloween problems as well, like Spider-Man’s face paint. When the toddler drooled on Halloween night, red face paint melted down his chin and neck forming what appeared to be a giant tongue. Big tongues run in our family, like freckles and a twisted form of Republicanism. But even by our standards, this tongue was massive.

“What happened to his paint?” friends asked.

“He drools a little,” his mother explained.

“Like his dad?”

No, she wouldn’t have waited through all that to leave.

“Where’s Mommy?” asks the toddler again, the fear growing in his mahogany eyes. Could she really have left him, and his three siblings, and the two dogs, most of whom are snug in bed, curled in fetal positions and dreaming, no doubt, of her?

Turns out, she was only walking the dog -- not her dog, her daughter’s dog, another task for other people, another chore they never tell you about when you plunk down your money for a marriage license, which really ought to come with a disclaimer. In red ink.

This is what a marriage license should say:

“Dear prospective husband and wife,

“You are about to take a very big step. Off a cliff.

“From now on, your life will no longer be your own. It will be about sacrifice and compromise. Just when you think it can’t get any worse, you will have children. They will peak as people at age 2 and become more demanding over time. They will require total devotion. And $300 in groceries a week.

“In return, you will receive grudging gratitude and lots of ugly sweaters for your birthday, possibly purchased from Goodwill.

“Don’t feel sorry for yourself. Just be glad you have kids. Be glad you have birthdays.

“And be especially glad you still have one person in this world with which to share it all.

“Mazel tov.”

Chris Erskine can be reached at chris.erskine@latimes.com.