Doing Something

Today my son had a friend over, an official play date. My motherhood calculus worked like this: one three year old boy (in diapers) + one three year old boy (in diapers) = a small taste of the apocalypse. As it turned out, it was a marvelous day, one in which I got more done (and by that I don’t mean cures for disease or essays on philosophy, but organizing closets and drawers) than I have on any other day over the last three weeks.

The date concluded with a conversation between those two small boys, hands entwined, as follows:

C: “Do you like my new poos (shoes)?”
K: “I do, I do, sure. I love them.”

My two daughters never played with their friends like these cats. The boys needed no guidance from me. They listened to me. They listened when I said don’t crack the hockey stick against the glass door, or don’t drink the bubbles, or don’t smack each other’s heads with water guns on the trampoline. Every time I asked them to stop, they did. Like when I said don’t take apart the train table and don’t chew food and spit it out and laugh, because I get that that can be funny, but it’s not THAT funny.

It’s a new world for me with boys. When I pulled up to his driveway, C said “tanks for takin’ me home.” Like a drunken soldier, he was polite to the end.

My girls were so busy today – in the ‘hood and at Brownies, it almost made me miss them. I even had time, while discussing who would pick up who with a neighbor, to inquire as to the laundry detergent I sniffed on her kid: it smelled clean and good and I wanted some of that. We both admitted this was an utterly lame and embarrassing conversation, but I swear if we were ballsy enough we might have shared coupons.

I let all three stay up a little later tonight (7:30) as if they had earned some collective reward for not entirely pissing me off me today. When they were packed off in bed, I sent off another update about my 22 year old cousin with leukemia: it’s only been one week and two days, yet the list of people who care and want to know swells so huge. Her parents send me updates daily, which I add to in my own way and then pass along. I feel gratified to “do something” and am completely aware that there is little I can do.

It occurs to me that this feeling, this idea, this thought, sums up my life completely. I push “send” on the email button and I hope for the best.