I had lots of moments over the weekend, starting Friday, when the Neighbor invited the kids over the swim (and I will make that it’s own thing later). Sunday after church, I lured the Sub to go shopping in Burleson with the promise of lunch. We hit up the Target and had the most fun ever picking her dishes she is going to have in her place and picking the dishes that I want that none of my slop is even worthy of sitting on. My crap…my chicken spaghetti…my spaghetti…my stuffed peppers and chicken and dumplings…and my lasagna…well, I plate more like what you’d get at Luby’s. My plateware should really just be cafeteria plates made of red plastic that have a place for three entrees and two sides with some Jell-O in the corner slot.
Seriously, even The Boy tells me that Dad ‘plates’ better than I do.
So, my lust for big, beefy square plates seems a little misplaced.
However, what I went in search of is silverware. Saturday evening we were invited next door for kabobs. Next door at the neighbors’ where we’ve been banned from for nearly a year. For the first time EVER, I actually sat inside with ‘the women and the kids’ at the table and ate kabobs and this amazing rice that was made amazing by…a can of cream and chicken soup. But, my GAWD, I fell in love with the Neighbor’s wife’s silverware, which she said she acquired at none other than Target. It was chunky silverware that had the best feel of any silverware I’d ever eaten off of in MY LIFE that after church on Sunday i was hot on the trail of finding silverware like that for ME.
See, we’ve been eating with dorm-room-ware and a hodgepodge of my old post-divorce shit and his old post-divorce shit, so what I really, really wanted, all of a sudden, was to have enough forks and spoons and knives for all of us to sit down together and eat with heavy, pretty, perfectly weighted silverware…
that we got at Target.
How would I have known that while we were at Target we would take many sidetracks down many aisles, the most fun being when we were trying to find reed diffusers with a good scent. On that aisle, we found lots of scents…but most of them, to us, smelled more like they should be called ‘Granddad’s Cologne’ and ‘Grandma’s Perfume’ and ‘Dad’s Deodorant’ and ‘Aunt Pam’s Shower.’
In a word, all of it was just ick.
Seriously, who wants their abode to smell like that shit.
I love Target and all of the candles and reed diffusers and sprays LOOKED real pretty, but man…they smelled like GROSS.
But the thing was…well, we laughed so much and had so much fun smelling all that shit that smelled like ‘Dad’s Deodorant.’
We were having so much fun smelling stuff that killed our noses…then, suddenly, like my brain is apt to do, I got this thought…when I am gone…
At some point, she is going to think about how much fun we had sniffing bad-smelling shit at the Target that time…and I tried to make a mental snapshot of us laughing in the aisles of Target while our nose hairs were burning off smelling horrible, yet very pretty, candles.
It was not unlike the moments we have started having in the kitchen as I’m cooking and she is there telling me about her day and me telling her about how to do the spaghetti sauce so it ’sort of’ tastes like Grandma’s.
I think it is probably because I know that when she gets a real teaching gig she is going to no longer be living in my front room with all her smelly good perfumes and products…and the mattresses on the floor are going to be gone…and I’ll be able to sit on the couches in there because all of her clothes and schmutz is going to be gone…
It’s like my brain is saying ‘hey, take all this shit in and get all the moments you can out of this because she’s gonna be (finally) gone in the fall.
Which means that when we have one-on-one time, whether it be when I tell her how to make her grandma’s spaghetti right or listening to her tell me about a special thing that happened with a student at work or if we’re picking her future dishes or smelling crap we’d NEVER have in our houses…it’s like my brain is taking snapshots so that I can remember how much fun we had when we did all those extremely normal, day-to-day things. ..and I hope she is doing the same.
I find myself, as the girls get older, worrying that there are not enough moments like this for them. The Sub lives here, so we have more opportunities than I have with The Longhorn and UMHB and the Soon-to-be Senior and well, really, the Boy and i still have plenty of ‘moments,’ so he isn’t in on this deal.
So, I try more recently to make those moments…however, insignificant they may be…watching American Idol with the Soon-to-be-Senior…getting up STUPID early to give UMHB a hug before she went south for training for her summer job…and when the Longhorn came in today, beaten down hugely by a two-nighter with Radiohead (first in Houston and then in Dallas) I found myself thinking…let’s make a moment here, she’s only here for a week, so what did we do?
Well, we got Chicken Express and Sweet Tea and watching old episodes of Spin City.
And, guess what…that qualified as ‘moments like this.’
The thing is, y’all, is that too often we think that ‘moments’ have to be huge…DISNEYWORLD sort of moments…when really, you can have moments doing nothing more significant than eating chicken strips and watching old TV…or taking your soon-to-be Senior for a Coconut Cream Pie shake at Sonic after the orthodontist appointment…or chatting with your amazing stepdaughter about her summer job…or going to see your The Boy sing, ever so much reluctantly in the ‘Rain Forest Review.’
They are all ‘moments’ that need to be treasured.
You guys who have little ones…and you think that building Leggos is taking away from time you could be cleaning…
Well, take it from someone who cleaned instead of building Leggos…
Building Leggos (or going shopping or going to the school play or listening about who went to prom with whom or how listening to how her day went) is way more important. Just remember that THOSE ARE THE MOMENTS.
And I wouldn’t trade this weekend for a MILLION DOLLARS because we squeezed in a lot of moments.
