It was a good visit

I was slouching on the park bench with a large coffee and my phone in hand. The kids were scattered around the playground that was splayed out before me, not needing my attention in the slightest. I was about to check my email and catch up with Twitter when a woman and her daughter walked toward me. I knew them from when Colum was in nursery school, just over three years ago. I wouldn’t have recognized the daughter in a million years and the kids didn’t remember each other at all, but us moms hadn’t aged a bit. Funny how that works.

We sat together and chatted, catching up. Well, mostly I went on and on and freaking on, inundating her with the minutiae of our daily routine and how I was coping with three kids at home and all the surplus freelance work I had this summer. Because I think “How are you?” is an offer to help me micromanage my life. Or I just hate awkward silences. In any case, it’s worth the shot because I definitely need help.

So we caught up and the kids played. My three running all over the place, far apart and then back together again, engrossed in some ever-expanding, open-ended, narrative driven free play as always. It’s a perpetual whirling of spontaneous characters and exotic settings and short-term obstacles and long-term goals, of running and laughing and, “Okay, okay. So let me be Sally now and you be Max and Mary will be the bad guy and EEEEEEK, she’s coming to get us!” Kids, right?

We sat on the bench and watched the kids playing. We watched my kids playing together, anyway. The other girl sort of looked on from the periphery, smiling at whatever glancing nods of recognition came her way and then doing her own thing. She kicked ass, by the way, on the monkey bars. And we talked about how I mostly work at night but I can also answer emails and spend a half hour here or there during the day because the kids are old enough now to entertain themselves. We talked about her too, finally, and how her daughter probably watches too much TV because she’s an only child. My kids also watch too much TV, I say, they just fight over the channels more. I also learn that a puppy is a lot of work. It’s a serviceable reminder.

And then we have to leave because we were only there to wait for my car to get an oil change and a tire patched. We hardly ever come to this park anymore, on the other side of the neighbourhood. Neither do they, it turns out. Well, hopefully we’ll see you again soon. Yes, absolutely, for sure. Hopefully.

It was a good visit, as good as those kinds of things ever go. They both seemed well, mom and daughter, and genuinely happy. She made a passing mention about only having the one baby and then deciding to get a dog. I smiled and we talked about how expensive puppies are. I didn’t ask about why they didn’t have another. I never do. Sometimes it’s a choice and sometimes it’s not and sometimes life just happens the way it does. It hardly matters.

But as we walked back along the main street, crossing at the lights, and then turning the corner to cut through a side street to the other main street, I couldn’t help but feel so full of love and life. As Irene dragged her feet and whined about not being able to walk and needing, needing right now this very minute, an ice-cold lemonade and then as I piggy backed her while Colum pushed Mary along in her stroller so very, very, omfg, very slowly, I felt like I’d won the lottery to end all lotteries. I couldn’t imagine what I’d ever done to deserve it all.

There was a time when I felt defensive about having three children. That was when I was pregnant and people would arch their eyebrows and ask, “Oh, you’re having another one?” Or it was when I was juggling a hungry baby and a tantruming toddler and I forgot it was show-and-tell again and there was crying in the supermarket line up and never being on time for a t-ball game and never-ending strings of dinner and laundry and getting through the day just seemed like too great a hurdle to even contemplate all at once. I felt like a travelling circus show, taking all my kids out on my own, and I was pretty sure most people agreed.

I don’t know if it’s me or the children or the time of year, but it’s different now. We walk along the street and people smile at us. “What lovely children,” they say. “You are so blessed.”

And I am.

These three kill me every day.