So I was at the local YMCA today for #2's first swim lesson of the season, when I really needed to be at the party store and calling the caterer, and decided to distract myself from my obsessive list making, and appear like I was actually watching my offspring like a good mother, by observing the clientele. I suppose a water aerobics class was using the pool next, as toward the end of the lesson, the deck began to fill with numerous people over the age of seventy. I love seeing old people at the pool. Something about their matter-of-fact attitude about their bodies, how they seem to no longer care about sagging skin and rotund bellies, that inspires me. Their bodies are machines they are trying to keep well-oiled to carry them into another decade or two of life. Flowered bathing caps put me on a good mood, fully intending to buy one myself in my golden years, and I like to imagine the young men who used live inside these old bodies when I see faded tattoos.
Being at home during the work week, I am surrounded by old people a lot. Some of the time, this can be Oh-my-God-they-are-going-to-see-me-on-the-news-if-this-guy-drives-any-slower kind of irritating, as there is not a worse pairing on the road then the perpetually pressed for time mother with a van full of kids and her seventy-five year old neighbor who has all day, not just the fifteen minutes between preschool pickup and kindergarten drop-off, to get to the post office. Being behind the elderly at the grocery store can bring me to tears, especially when they whip out the coupon folder and either their checkbook or change purse. Then there are the old people who want to offer you unsolicited advice, like the woman who told me on a ninety-five degree day that my August-born infant needed both a hat and socks.
More often that not though, my interactions with the geriatric population give me pause in my, otherwise, decidedly fast-forward life. Walking thorough town on a beautiful day with Little Man, taking him to see the trains come into the station, seeing the smiles old men give him as he loses his damn mind after the arrival of yet another locomotive, makes think to myself, "Yeah, my son is pretty damn cute when he's not driving me berserk." Out to lunch with all three kids at a restaurant lately, a lovely, old woman stopped to tell me how beautiful and well behaved my children were, and for the rest of that meal my eyes were opened, once again, to how great my kids really are, despite feeling, most days, they only see me as a recorded voice repeating, "Don't do that!" and "Stop it!"
I was at the above-mentioned grocery store Monday, racing through the aisles, with Little Man trying to dive out of the massively heavy car/cart with the broken seat belt and being smashed in the back of the ankles by #2 who had joyfully snagged one of the child-sized carts, as I tried to gather groceries for five people, when I almost ran over a sweet old lady. Grateful not to have killed someone with the sheer force generated by a cart loaded with four gallons of milk and a heavy toddler, I noticed the contents of her cart - dog food, yogurt and Pepperidge Farm white bread. The smallness of her load made me stop, amid all the wriggling and smashing and begging for cookies, and appreciate the load of crazy I drag around with me. In fact, our grocery carts are the perfect representation of the difference in our lives. While I cannot, with any certainty, say this woman's life is empty, she could be a wicked online gambler for all I know and running back home to make a club sandwich, but by comparison, my life seemed, suddenly, very full. Full of chaos and laundry and peanut butter for sure, but also full of love and happiness and laughter. The noise in my house may drive me to madness on certain days, but it is a joyful noise the absence of which would be deafening.
On good days, I carry this perspective with me through the day, knowing that some point in the far-off future, I will look at the haggard mother in the grocery line, absent-mindedly answering her five year-old's questions about balloons, while her baby clings to her, chimp-like, impeding her efficient loading of the groceries, and I will miss burning as the sun at the center of a small universe.
On other days, I just want some damn silence and to head to the pool in my flowered bathing cap then come home and have a yogurt and some Pepperidge Farm toast.
On other days, I just want some damn silence and to head to the pool in my flowered bathing cap then come home and have a yogurt and some Pepperidge Farm toast.
*Something else I didn't need today? Communion rehearsal from 4-5:30. Guess who missed the memo that parents were supposed to stay and showed to drop her eldest off with #2 and Little Man in tow, and no carefully packed diaper bag of distracting toys? Hint: She spent ninety minutes chasing a toddler around the baptismal font while #1 complained, "All the other moms are sitting with their kids!!!"
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