Sunday, September 18, 2005

The Other Woman

Today after the Sunday service, we headed to a local park for our church's annual picnic. This enjoyable event, with sandwiches provided and side dishes a potluck smorgasbord, is an almost inaudible cry from the raucous, weekend-long festivals I recall from my Catholic youth, and I'm pretty sure that's a good thing. If you're going to get drunk with church friends, it's probably better to do so in a private, more controlled environment than the shady wings of the beer tent.

As we approached the park's picnic shelter, I coached the kids to look for our exceptional fourteen-year-old babysitter and her younger sister (also exceptional babysitter material). Their mother is a good friend of mine and co-chairs the committee that coordinates the picnic, so I expected they'd be there dishing out barbequed beef sandwiches or arranging desserts on the buffet table. But as is so often the case when you give kids notice of something exciting, they were disappointed. The girls were occupied with other activities and thus not present.

Not long into the picnic, our four-year-old began clinging to my leg and mumbling, the unmistakable signal that he wants to ask me something I may or may not endorse. "Cnn rrrr bbeestr cmm ovrr tda, Mmma?" he asked.

Since I speak his language even when he's not actually speaking it, I responded, "Well, I don't know if our babysitter can come over today. We'll have to call her when we get home. Would you like for her to come over today?"

He nodded, a big grin on his face. He grinned even more when we arrived home and Daddy helped him find the sitter's phone number in the church directory. Then he stood on a stool in front of the telephone and wondered aloud, "Now how do we make the bell ring in the phone at the babysitter's house, Daddy?"

After our not-so-little boy dialed the phone himself and received an answer, he said, "Hi. It's me." There was a pause, then, "I'm good." Big smile. I imagined him 10 years from now calling a girl he'd met in biology. As Daddy coaxed the suitor to ask whether his intended could come over later, the little guy shoved the phone at him and said, "YOU do it, Daddy." Just what we all wanted to do the first time we asked someone on a date.

He was pleased to learn that she was indeed available to babysit, but he found it an incredible injustice that she wouldn't be free for another THREE HOURS. He wanted to see her NOW.

Were I not anxious to have an unanticipated hour alone with my husband, I might have been offended by his intense desire to be with this sweet girl, the one he has told me at least once or twice he likes better than me. How could there be, at his tender age, a star shining brighter in his eye than his own mother?

I comfort myself by acknowledging that: (1) she is a very attentive sitter, (2) she adores our kids, and (3) she has won our son's affection in part through one of the best-recognized means in the book--his stomach. Each time she visits, she creates what she calls "Story Snacks" with the kids, a practice I learned of through the "Our Story Snack Cookbook" published to memorialize each one. These treats typically consist of a complex and variable parfait of Life cereal, Cool Whip, Hershey's strawberry syrup, yogurt, Teddy Grahams, and peanut butter. According to the text accompanying the illustrations, the Teddy Grahams are generally engaged in some sort of water sport which is either disrupted or enhanced by precipitation in solid or liquid form. Tonight, some "singing" grapes were tossed in, possibly for nutritional value.

There aren't many moms who could top that, even on their best, most creative days. And why would we want to? It seems a good idea to let innocent love bloom where it may. Assuming the enchantment is mutual, I'm thrilled to have someone watch the kids who cares about them so, and our sitter's mom is no doubt glad to have her daughter engaged in a courtship far safer than the ones pursued by many of her high school peers.

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