I read Hadley’s first-grade supply list at the kitchen island Friday morning, and by item six I had to sit down on the stool Garrett built out of reclaimed barnwood, because Mrs. Calloway is asking each of nineteen children to bring in two canisters of Clorox disinfecting wipes, and that is 38 canisters of quaternary ammonium compounds being aerosolized over the carpet square my daughter is supposed to nap on.
The list is a document. Twelve Elmer’s glue sticks (synthetic), one box of Crayola 24s (eleven petroleum dyes, I counted in March), a plastic pencil pouch with the little zipper, three pink erasers that smell like a tire showroom, and a single “family-size” container of baby wipes for the communal bin. Family size. For a stranger’s family. I had to put the list face-down on the counter next to the kombucha mother.
The wipes are the thing, though. My sister-in-law Britt works the front desk at the pediatric office in Weaverville and is, for all practical purposes, a nurse, and she told me at Easter that the active ingredient in those wipes is something called alkyl dimethyl benzyl ammonium chloride, which she said three times so I would write it down, and which is the same family of compound they use to sanitize commercial fish-processing equipment. I am not sending my six-year-old into a room being mopped with herring spray.
So I made a kit. In a small canvas tote (organic, undyed, washed twice in vinegar), I packed: twenty-four Meyer lemon halves cut fresh Saturday morning, a 16-oz amber spray bottle of distilled white vinegar infused with rosemary from the bed by the chicken run, a soft cotton flour-sack towel, and a handwritten card on recycled cardstock explaining that lemon and vinegar together kill the same household bacteria as a quat wipe, which is a fact I learned on a podcast called Salt, Sun, and Sense and later confirmed in a Facebook group called Mamas Ditching the Quats (NC Chapter), which has 4,200 members and a pinned post with a citation in it.
I want to be clear that I am not one of those mothers who just shows up. I emailed Mrs. Calloway. I cc’d the room parent, Tessa, who is on my side about the wipes but is letting her son bring the Crayolas, which is a compromise I respect even if I cannot replicate it. The email was three paragraphs and I closed it “warmly, in partnership.” She has not written back, but it has only been since Friday at 11:14 a.m., and I know she’s setting up bulletin boards.
Last year, when Hadley was in kindergarten, I sent in a similar kit (that one was grapefruit halves, because it was January and the lemons at Ingles were Chilean and I will not get into the food miles of a Chilean lemon in a column about a different topic), and Mrs. Hennessey emailed me back the same afternoon to say, and I quote, “Brooke, I appreciate your perspective but the lemons are attracting fruit flies into the cubby area.” Which, respectfully, is what lemons do — they pull toxins toward themselves. That’s the whole point. The fruit flies were a sign it was working.
I posted the kit photo to the class group chat Saturday afternoon and within forty minutes Marlene from two doors down had messaged me privately to ask for the rosemary-vinegar recipe, and another mom (Brittany R., not to be confused with Britt my sister-in-law, this is a different Brittany) said her chiropractor’s wife runs a Telegram channel called Quaternary Ammonium Awareness Network and they have a free PDF I am downloading tonight after Hadley’s bath.
Garrett asked me at dinner if I had “considered just sending the wipes,” the way he always does, with a roll wrapped around a piece of butter, and I told him that of course I had considered it, the way I had also considered putting a Glade plug-in in our daughter’s bedroom, which is to say I considered it for the half-second it takes a healthy nervous system to recoil.
Hadley walks in the front door of Spring Creek Elementary on Monday with the canvas tote, the lemons, and a small laminated card I made on the back porch explaining what each item does. She is so excited. She has been practicing saying “alkyl dimethyl benzyl ammonium chloride” at the breakfast table, and she gets it right about half the time, which is, frankly, half the time more than the parents who are sending in the wipes.