Eight-year-old sleepovers, at your house. Parents' nightmare? Nay, I say. A chance to experience other people's children, with all their wonderful peculiarities. One of my daughter's BFFs is with us tonight, and it's been one of the most fun evenings I've had in a long time. Maybe you're coming to conclusions about my marriage I would rather you not, but if so, cut me a break. I'm in my mid forties and I've been married for a decade and a half. Novelty rules.
Tonight, it comes in the form of M., a child I've known pretty much since she was in the womb, and yet every time I see her, she blows my mind. Case in point: in the van, riding home from a traumatic (for me) visit to the grocery store, in which I'd felt the need to apologize repeatedly to the blank-faced check out girl when my 4-year-old sat in the cart between the sushi and the toilet paper sobbing hysterically because she didn't get to be the one to put the green juice on the scanner, M. provided the elaborate (and successful) distraction of a made-up universe combining features of the outside world flying by on Military Cutoff road with her own visionary elements, like trees that grow toys and sidewalks that sprout tin soldiers. My children eagerly joined in, carried on the tide, and the 4-year-old's distress was utterly forgotten, without me having to lift a finger to do any parenting. Sweet.
Later, at the rez, there was a dance party, including hat-wearing balloons in honor of my eldest's "actual" birthday (the party's next week). M. staged a wedding, between herself and her stovepipe-sporting balloon groom. The script went like this:
"Will you marry me? Here's a ring." (a black balloon, that had earlier represented an evil plague in a completely different vignette)
"Why, yes, darling, I will."
"Blah, blah, blah, we're married....okay, I'm dumping you, me and my ring are going to live happily ever after." (I'm not kidding: this is word-for-word.)
Me: Well, congratulations, I hope you two will be very happy.
M: [cracks up]
Later, again: "Story time" aka "We're being as cute and funny as possible so you won't make us go to sleep"
Av: Once upon a time there was a fart, named Fartle. And he had a friend who was a burp, and her name was Burpette.
M.: You should change his name to Fartio, so they can be like Romeo and Juliet.
Me: [No verbal response. Stunned.]
Later still: "Okay, girls, let's brush teeth!" (this is me).
"Where's my toothbrush?"
"Same place it always is."
"I want to draw with crayons before bed."
"No, it's getting late."
"Well, where's my toothpaste?"
"I don't know, ask your father."
"Why can't I draw?"
"We've covered this. It's late."
"Why isn't Elena in bed?"
"I don't know, ask your father."
"Are we going to make more green goo tomorrow?"
"I don't know, ask your - "
M : "Can I borrow some liquid saline?"
[Record needle slides off noisily.] "Uhm....liquid saline?"
"Yeah."
Okay.
We slow it down. We put on tea tree oil lotion and Burt's Bees lip stuff and we have foot rubs, and we start the humidifier, and we talk about all the nice stuff moms do to help us when we have stuffy noses at night...we find our stuffed animals and we snuggle in together, and we set boundaries about who can wake up who and when and under what circumstances. We make decisions about the lighting.
Conversation between me and the husband, after I "put the kids to bed":
Him: "So they're down?"
Me: "Sure, sure. I just explained it to them - you can get up in the morning if it's after seven, but no waking the adults until after seven-thirty. I made them repeat it several times, I'm sure they got it."
Him: [pregnant pause] "If the water swallows you and you drown, it proves you're not a witch. This has that sort of logic to it."
Me: "I'm not gonna bother lifting my middle finger. Please, just go ahead and picture it."
She's sweet, and she's different, and she's one of my daughter's oldest friends, whom she's going to miss so deeply when she moves across the country next month. I will miss her indelible contribution to my family dynamic on the occasions I get to experience her uniqueness. And I'll miss my friend, too - her mother. It won't be as easy to get together, but I have a feeling we'll still get the opportunity once in a while. I hope so.
