One evening last week Bill was tucking Emma Grace into bed when their conversation turned to extended family. They began to discuss our Atlanta cousins, of which there are four. Uncle Mike and Aunt Susan have identical twin daughters, Colleen and Margaret, who just turned three in March. For their birthday, Emma Grace made each cousin a bracelet from her beading kit and painted them each a birthday card with watercolors. We mailed them just about a week and a half ago.
Uncle Mike and Aunt Susan also have identical twin sons, Jack and Padraig, who are- shockingly- eight months old. And even more shocking, and horrifying to boot, is that we have not yet seen these boys, have not journeyed south to meet them, have not made the time or taken the trouble to make their acquaintance.
But we want to meet them Very Much.
As demonstrated by the comment Emma Grace made that night, about a week ago, when her father was tucking her into bed. Of Jack and Padraig Emma Grace declared, “They are my favorite people I’ve never met!”
One of the persons injured in The Big Drop of five weeks ago is my friend and neighbor, Laura Motta. She and her husband Nick have become dear friends over the four and a half years they have lived here. We’ve shared Thanksgiving dinner with them four times, and for the last two years have been treated to Christmas Eve dinner, Italian style, at their house. And last year we started a wonderful tradition: once a month we dine together, alternating one another’s houses, and “teach” each other how to make traditional meals from our respective countries.
What that means, of course, is that we’ve taught them how to make meatloaf, and that eating at their house is vastly better than eating at ours.
But there is a bit of confusion surrounding Laura and Nick and our other friends. Because when Laura married Nick, she didn’t take his surname. So where it is easy to refer to our other friends as “the Stiths,” or “the Noodles” (which is what we lovingly call the Newells), or “the Maxsons,” we have no simple moniker for the Italians. And so that’s what we call them: “the Italians.”
One afternoon last week Laura called me on the phone, and Everett answered it. He chatted with her briefly, then handed the phone to me. He was still in the room when I finished speaking with her, and he looked at me strangely. “Who was that?” he said. “That was Miss Laura,” I said. He raised his eyebrows and narrowed his eyes, and gave me a long look, full of suspicion. “She sounds,” he said, and then paused meditatively, meaningfully, and finally said, in all seriousness, “…Italian.”
We now have a Game Boy. I knew it was coming; I knew it would come. Who can resist these hand-held devices with their fast-moving games, tiny control buttons, and only slightly varied, maddening music? Answer: Not William. Three weeks ago Sunday he used some of his savings to buy a used one, and it has become The Light of His Life.
Ever the control freaks, ever attempting to limit screen time and all of its Adverse Affects, we have restricted GameBoy use to half an hour per day, and for the most part, William has curbed his playing to fit within the confines of this restriction. He and his brother are clever, however. His half-hour long since over, each boy will find new ways to eek out more time: “Mom, can I just show Ben how far I’ve gotten?” “Mom, can I just teach Clay how to play?” And the one that Just Isn’t Successful, even though I want so much to be a great, fun mom: “Mom, can I teach you how to play Game Boy?” Because the truth is, I don’t want to know.
But the other day, I just knew that William’s half-hour was long since spent, and yet there he was, hunched over that silly square that was beeping and blipping and singing Heaven Knew What. “How long have you been playing?” I asked him. And he said he Didn’t Know. He Didn’t Know, but it was, at the very least, an hour.
So he lost his Game Boy privileges for the next day, and he took this news (mostly) like a man. But when the Next Day dawned rainy, he asked me, in all seriousness, if I had known it would be rainy that day. When I said no, he said, “Well, you shouldn’t have taken the Game Boy away from me, because what will I do now on a rainy day?”
Well.
I had to remind him that prior to a few weeks ago he had suffered rainy days without a Game Boy All The Time.
How ’bout a book, son?
But you know, he is a good boy. He really and truly is. And he quit his belly-aching, and took his lumps, as my Nana used to say, and suffered through. And I think maybe we are being Really Stingy with the Game Boy time, and should Reconsider.
And maybe I should learn how to play.
