check your sugarcoat at the door

this morning’s change of heart

At some point in life, even the best parents are going to be annoyed by kids. Maybe not even their own, though I’d probably call bullshit right to their lying face. Kids, mostly, are pretty cool. What with the outright truth and unadulterated opinions and statements and words that are so completely asinine in kid-speak that they make the essential comedy punch line.

But sometimes? Annoying. And Kiddo’s two best friends at school? ANNOY-ING. While my kid could probably drive the sanity straight out the back of a normally very calm human being, I choose to believe she is nothing but charming in my absence. However, these two girls, are not charming in their parents’ absence. Or in their presence, as I’ve learned recently. They are in-your-face, fourteen notches higher in volume than any normal conversation across, say, a football field should ever be, and demanding as all hell to come to our house and see our stuff and our pets and why have I never been to your house, Kiddo’s mom?!? And I’m all, Because I’ve trusted myself around small humans until the moment I met YOU.

Then again, maybe I’m just a weird human with slight elbow room requirements and decibel preferences and the need to say goodbye to my kid before you tackle her and scream into her face AND PROUNOUCE HER FIRST NAME WRONG, STILL, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD THERE IS NO ‘T’ IN HER NAME. I would know.

So this morning was an almost exact repeat of the first day of first grade. I’m not sure why but there were fat tears and snot sniffles and the chin up in the air defiance that meant, I swear, I’m trying, Mom. Naturally, I was a billion shattered pieces of human there on the blacktop, amid the hopscotch outlines and there in the distance were the friends. The two best friends that I normally have to shrug off my leg like an overactive puppy. I flagged them down. They barreled into Kiddo, as usual. I knew they’d distract her from the missing me that Kiddo was doing and immediately, they’re in her face and squawking and guess-what-ing. I asked them both, “Today is going to be a great day, isn’t it?”

With all the noise and energy they normally display, they choired, “YES!”

And I was convinced and Kiddo was convinced and I suddenly totally appreciated those little girls more than I ever thought was possible.

-CJ

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