Isobel: "Daddy, how do you spell toilet?"
Daddy: "Why?"
Isobel: "Don't ask, just how do you spell it?"
Daddy: (firmly affixing smart ass cap) "C-R-A-P"
Isobel: "Really?"
Daddy: "Yep"
Isobel: "Daddy, you might hear a sound of something falling in the (sounding it out) Cr-aaa-p...Hey that's not toilet!"
It seems like just yesterday that I let go of Izzy's hand and watched the single silent tear run down her cheek as she got into line with the other kids on her first day of school but here it was, the end of her first year already. I picked her up at the sitter's and gave her a big hug. The kind that starts low to the ground and ends up with the child firmly in your arms and the two of you spinning slightly.
"Daddy!" she said excitedly.
"Well," I asked. "How does it feel, done school and everything?"
"What!!??!" she asked incredulously.
"School's out, your finished now."
"I'm finished school? That was fast. D said I had to go to school for a long time and I told him I didn't have to go to school anymore."
"No, no honey. You just done school for this year. It's the summer time now but you have to go back to school in the fall."
"Daddy?"
"Yes my cooing dove?"
"My teacher said that this is summer vaction."
"Yes," I agreed. "VaCAtion That's right."
"So where are we going to go?" she asked.
"Where are we going to go where?" I puzzled.
"My teacher said that people go away for summer vaction. Where are we going to go?"
"I don't know if we are going to go anywhere for vacation. I don't get any holidays this year and we went to Mexico in the winter."
She sighed a giant sigh like one would make after finally landing a job on Star Trek and being handed a red shirt.
"What's the matter honey?" I asked her.
After another big sigh she finally said. "First you tell me I am NOT finished school forever and then you tell me we are NOT going on summer vaction, I guess that means we are NOT getting a puppy either?"
We Barbecue pretty much all year long (if the weather isn't too horrendous) but Izzy made her first burger a couple of weeks ago. I did the cooking and she did the flipping...and I did the cleaning off of the burger after she flipped it on the deck and I did the eating of the burger after it was on the deck because 'No way am I going to eat that, Daddy. No way...seriously I can't eat it now." I tend to make an extra or two for just such an emergency.
After Isobel's watershed(literally) moments in Mexico, we knew it was just a matter of time before she was leaping headlong into the Grandparents pool. She didn't disappoint. It was a ridiculously hot day and without any debate it was decided we would go to the Grandparents and go for a swim. To give you some idea of the temperature, even Mrs. Narrator got in the pool. No wet hair but in the pool just the same. Izzy had gone over in her bathing suit and spoke about nothing but the pool until she was finally in it...Though she insisted on waiting for her mother to go swimming and wouldn't go with anyone else first...strange for her but the first swim of the year is often about testing the water in more ways than one.
At first she was a little clingy and unsure of herself but when she discovered that she could touch bottom in the shallow end (another first) all bets were off and she was a mad pool leaping fool.
"Daddy, watch this."...splash.
"Opa, watch this."...splash.
"Oma, watch this."...splash
"Mummy, watch this."...splash... sputter... hack... hack... gag... sputter... hack.
"Keep your mouth closed, baby." I said.
"Don't drink the pool water, Izzy." said Mrs. Narrator. "It'll make you sick."
It's funny that even as recently as in Mexico this past winter, we would be in the pool with her always touching her to make sure she was not in any sort of aquatic danger but as soon as she was able to touch bottom at the grandparents pool, the panic seemed to abate. Not that we weren't still attentive, quite the opposite but Mrs. Narrator' parents' pool has become something of a summer yardstick and as soon as the bottom is touched then the race is on and the fact that the kids are growing up sinks in...
Isobel wore her bathing suit to the grandparents house and brought along a change of clothes with her. I should say some thing about this suit. It was a hand me down from one of her friends and it is a little on the big side, it has at least two holes in it, a mild stain on the front of it and it is absolutely Isobel's favourite. She has newer ones and better looking ones but they did not come from this particular friend and so they are substandard. Oma wanted Isobel to leave it there so she would have a suit to wear when she goes over for visits and over-nighters this summer. Isobel was not interested in leaving it there.
"Isobel why don't you leave your bathing suit here, so you'll have one to swim in the next time you come over?" Oma asked.
Isobel just shook her head.
"But Izzy, I need a suit." Oma repeated.
"It would never fit you." said Isobel.
Mrs. Narrator's cousin was also at the Grandparents house with her two sons and it was nice to see The Boy have someone his own age and gender to play with. Not that it isn't great that he likes to play with his sister but sometimes a boy needs to be a boy. Loud and crazy and splashy and...a boy.
Inevitably, it being the generation of electronics, a video game emerged and the three of them disappeared to play it...and suddenly there was silence. But not a suspicious silence, no just the rapturous silence of three pre-teen boys who had found something to amuse themselves that didn't involve noise or property damage.
Perhaps it is a generational thing or maybe it is because when this silence erupted with their own male children (who had no video games...certainly not hand held ones) it absolutely meant they were up to no good but when the silence comes the grandmothers... can't seem to leave well enough alone.
"What are they doing in there?" Oma asked suspiciously.
"It's quiet and nobody is running out looking for something to do or tattling or bleeding. They're fine. Leave them be."
"Please don't poke the sleeping bear." said Mrs. Narrator's cousin." If you poke the bear, it will wake up and then it will be all grumpy and whiny and want it's parents to spend money."
The boys were in the pool room for quite a while. They came out from time to time and went swimming. They were loud and splashy and boys when they came out but then they got out of the pool, ate snacks and went back into the pool room and played games again and were quiet as could be. And The Boy was right in the thick of it and it was great to see him running with his own herd...
I always considered myself a fairly rugged individual. I mean I wasn't a huge fighter but I could handle my own and there were very few things that bothered me on an emotional level. Death, war, suffering people on the televison, strife and all the other things that transpire everyday in this modern world just didn't phase me too much...yeah, then I became a parent and became the seething cauldron and often blubbering mess you see before you.
I have often caught myself posturing like some kind of silverback gorilla at the mall when I see people pass near my children that I perceive as a possible threat. I have felt my back arch and my chest puff out in attempts to make myself appear larger and more fierce. I'm dead serious. I've caught myself in the store window and only then asked myself 'w
hat in the hell are you doing?'The worst however, is the other end of the scale. I saw a clip of a movie about two of the worst people in Canadian history (yes, those two) and found myself constantly checking on Isobel as I was outside cutting the lawn...she was ten feet away from me. There's no harm in being cautious?
The other day I was driving home and saw a dead raccoon kit on the side of the road. It is that time of year and there seem to be a lot more dead young ones than usual. On this occasion the mother raccoon was trying to decide whether to remain by it's offspring's side or go back across the road and nearly got hit herself...by me and the car coming the other direction. Sad? Absolutely but the first thing that ran through my head was 'Oh, that is so terrible. Kids should never go before their parents do.' Oh my god...really!!? over a mother raccoon...no more kids, it's turned me into a cream puff.
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