A TIME TO REMEMBER

This past week I got to go on a mother/son date with #1. He's 9 1/2 years old. After the movie he picked McDonalds for dinner. We talked all about 4 square, Harry Potter, the movie, and finally....girls. I asked him if there was a girl he liked at school. His eyes twinkled and I saw a little smirk on his lips. I knew the answer before he said, "Yes, why?"

"Oh, I was just wondering. Is it someone in your class?"

"Yes."

"Is she in your reading group?"

"No."

I changed the subject since I didn't really know many of the other girls in his class. But he brought it back up a minute later.

"Mom, you haven't guessed who yet."

After several more guesses I finally asked, "Is it Jessica?"

"Yes, but which one?"

"Jessica A?"

"No."

"B?"

"No." (Oh, this could take a while.)

"Jessica C?"

"Yes!"

"What is it about Jessica C that you like?"

"Her blonde hair." Pause. "And she's nice." Longer pause. "And she's very honest. She is so honest, Mom!"

I'm a little unsure how to respond to that. I'm wondering if she chopped down a tree on the playground and then told the truth about it.

"Cool. I'm glad she's nice and very honest."

"Yeah."

My sweet little son! I'm so happy that he's talking to me about those kind of things. I loved our date together. I need to do those more often!

Now fast forward to this afternoon. The 9 year old scouts have just left my house. For some reason he wants to climb onto the wall to say goodbye. He steps onto the top of a 5 gallon paint bucket (please don't ask me why it was there) and his foot immediately breaks through the lid and his lower leg is covered in water-resistent paint! He panics and starts flinging his leg around to get the paint off. It goes everywhere!

"Noooooooo!. Hold your leg over the rocks! Not on the porch!" Of course my very first thought is to get the camera, but instead I run to the backyard to get the hose. I know its quick drying and I have to act fast. But some yahoo has wrapped the hose around and around and around one of the columns. I finally get back to the front with the hose and #1 is crying. He can feel it drying and thinks his leg is going to be permanently encased in cement. We take turns sharing the hose. I'm down on the ground scrubbing with a toilet brush (It was the first thing I could find) He's furiously trying to get the paint off his bare feet.

At one point he cries to me, "You care more about the sidewalk than you care about me!"

He's wet and its cold. I finally tell him to go take a shower but first he has to take off his pants. I will not let him go inside wearing those. I can just imagine the paint drops up each stair and into the bathroom.
"But Mom, take my pants off oustide?" Oh the humiliation! I shoo away the neighborhood girls riding their bikes.

I know it was an accident and yet it seems there needs to be some sort of accountablility. After 45 minutes of scrubbing I figure the cement is as clean as it will get. I take the pants to the laundry room and ask #1 to please work on getting all the paint off. By dinner time he's still scrubbing and my laundry room is a sopping wet mess!

My Grandma use to say, "You can't win for losing." I'm not entirely sure what it means, but it seems to fit in this situation.

I wonder if by the next time he wears the pants, he'll look at the paint stains and be able to laugh. I wonder if when I go to buy a new toilet brush if I'll laugh.

He's such a sensitive sweet little boy--even in spite of it all! And I hope one day he will be able to look back and say that I was a sensitive sweet mother--even in spite of it all!