Not the Mama

Today, one of EJ's campmates had a birthday party at camp, which included pizza and cupcakes for all the kiddos, as well as nifty favors---new sand shovels and pails, candy (always a favorite), mini-coloring books and crayons, mini-bubble containers, and best of all, a superball.

EJ wanted to beeline straight to the park to test out her new bucket as soon as we left school, but I was starving and wanted to eat some lunch. Selfish, selfish mama, always thinking of herself, I know. She managed to keep herself occupied for a little over an hour while I ate, checked messages, did some chores, etc., only asking me if we could go to the park fourteen times. Yes, only fourteen. When we "finally" made it out the door, she was ready with her ball, shovel, and pail, and I had my little Tervis Tumbler of freshly-brewed coffee (despite her pleading, "Do we have to make your coffee, Mom? Can't we get it when we come home and leave right now?") and a book, just in case she got occupied and I could get a few pages of fiction in.

When we arrived, there was only one other child there with his nanny, a little baby, probably no older than 9 months old. EJ exclaimed, "Oh, a BAAABBBYYYY!" but was disappointed that there weren't any other kids to play with that were a little more, well, active. Even so, when I asked her where she was setting up shop in the sandbox so I could sit and play with her, she said, "No, thank you, you can sit over there on the bench...that's where people sit." Fair enough.

Within twenty minutes, though, she was tired of all that "self-directed play," the baby had left, and we had the whole park to ourselves. It was cool and cloudy, and felt on the brink of rain. We had no raincoats or umbrellas, and although we didn't have far to walk home if we were caught up in a storm, I usually wouldn't stay out in weather like that. For whatever reason, though---maybe the lack of stress in my day, or the glint in EJ's eyes when she said that "It's okay if it rains, I have my long-sleeved McQueen shirt on, so I'll feel great even if I'm wet!"---I decided to stay and really enjoy the moment. EJ took out her new superball, and within seconds, the two of us had started our own rousing game of bounce ball, making it up as we went. It was kind of like catch, but there was some chasing, too---my main job was to bounce it as I high as I could so that it would fly above EJ's head and land somewhere in the woodchips nearby, while her main job was to catch the balls that she threw at me before I could get to them. It was so great. I found myself really laughing---laughing like I did when I was a kid, just happy to be playing some made up bouncing ball game in the middle of the afternoon.

We played this for almost an hour, with no one else coming into the park the whole time, and just had a blast. I noticed, moments before we left, that the sign at the park said, "no ball playing," but I think the caveat to that should read, "unless you are all alone and you have an awesome, brand-new superball to test out."

It may seem like a small thing, but it was really revolutionary to not act like the mama for a few hours. I didn't worry about the potential rain, I didn't think of the eight million other things I needed to be doing, I didn't rush home to get dinner made...I was just completely present with my kid. I don't want to stereotype, but I think that dads tend to do this better---they just get in there and have fun, then often have wives (like me) on the sidelines saying things like, "Hey, it probably isn't a good idea for her to pour that gallon of water into the sand while she's wearing her nice, clean sundress and we're on the way to a party," or "This is fun, but if I don't get the chicken into the oven in the next fifteen minutes, we aren't going to eat until 9:00 p.m."

When both of us were properly worn out, we walked home---it never rained, by the way, so it was good not to have wasted any energy worrying about it---and after we cleaned up, we whipped up a recently-rediscovered recipe for strawberry yogurt cake that I used to make all the time when I studied abroad. I didn't go through the fridge looking for dinner ingredients or vegetables or anything mom-like, we just made the cake and ate it, too.