My two daughters are playing together. They're playing nicely and since this is such a beautiful (and sometimes rare) occurrence, I don't even care that the game that they are playing is called "war."
The older daughter (she is 9 years old) has decided that she and her sister will be in hiding and dodge all sorts of perils. They are running and giggling and laughing. To her, this is war. I'm not sure where her images of war have gestated.
She turns to her 4 year old sister and says, "Hey, Eve, don't forget your white flag of surrender."
My husband nearly dropped his coffee. "White flag of surrender?" he whispered harshly to me, "What are they? French?"
Our daughters are tromping around the house, hiding in places together, pretending to avoid very scary things and donning "white flags of surrender" in the event of defeat.
And me? I have mixed feelings about this whole thing. I know it's pure play. It's innocence. And, sweet mercy, it's SO nice to have them play together, not teasing one another. Playing in unison. The theme of war leaves a bit to be desired as does the defeatist flag.
If this happened, say, seven years ago, I would have assembled a United Nations meeting with my children and maybe gone to the library to research... I don't know... something about NOT surrendering. But I am a changed woman.
I have learned that children playing harmoniously together is such a gift. Just like sleeping babies are a gift. And a preteen girl who says "I love you" to her mother is a gift.
And it is a gift. My husband and I are standing around our peninsula talking, drinking coffee and watching our children laugh together. Forget Santa Claus... I'd rather have this kind of joy shoved down my chimney.
There's other joy, too... My children have taught me new languages.
In our house we can no longer say "wasps" without smirking because when Morgan was three years old she read a book about wasps and kept calling them "wasp-ps-ps-ps."
"Movie" was "moomie."
Dinner knives were called "ouchies."
And in an ever-so awkward teaching moment, a preschool-aged Morgan desperately wanted to know what the two dots on her chest were. In true mispronunciation, she called them "nickels" and we will never look at those five cent pieces the same way.
Being a parent is truly mind bending. Everything I ever expected has been almost the opposite.
Children love the most simple toys, much to the chagrin of Hasbro.
I can set up boundaries and purchase a "water table" for outside play, and still be surprised if the fun makes its way into my upstairs bathroom and through my kitchen ceiling.
I can choose to battle what my child wears, but if she's safe, modest and happy, that's what really matters.
A friend will call later and tell me that she's having trouble sleeping at night due to the perils of retired life *yawn* and I'll shamelessly smile because I have never slept better in my life.
There are some changes I'd like to make, though: In almost every single pic of me since being a mother, I know exactly what I was thinking in that moment. And almost every time it wasn't, "I'm so glad to be here." It was more like, "I am so tired" or "Did I pick up toilet paper from the grocery store?" When I look back on the pics, I can see the invisible thought bubbles above my head. And because of that, I'm trying to make a change. To do the ever-trendy "be in the moment" exercise. Ignore the phone. That sort of thing. Very hard for me.
So to commemorate my journey, I'm taking pics of life without staging.
And I'm trying to just accept who I am, what my house looks like... all the stuff desperate housefolk normally obsess about.
I'm trying to be okay right here in the midst of it.
For me, that means accepting the "gifts" that come with the unscheduled life of unemployment.
Example: The other day my husband and I found a random tap house in an industrial park and ordered a flight of some good and not-so-good brews. He pontificated with a local there about different hops and yeasts and I stood beside him feeling like Lands End met Abercrombie. But I accepted it. The whole moment. Me, feeling like his dorky side-kick. Him and me having a 1pm lunch date.
Life unstaged.
Learning new ways to say bug names.
Taking whatever I've been given and recycling it into something special.
Pickled in joy with a white flag of surrender.
