We met up with friends at the park this weekend, a father and his two kids, and as us grown ups stood around chatting, the kids went racing off to join some loud, funny, complicated game going on near the motorcycles. We passed the baby back and forth, laughing and talking, keeping an eye on our rough and tumble boys, stepping in to remind them to play gently with each other and all the other kids in the park. Didn’t matter whose kid one of us was talking to–most of my friends have adopted a tribe mentality when it comes to offspring, and are as likely to grab and kiss or calm someone else’s kid as they are one of their own.
Into this mix toddles a little guy who couldn’t have been more than 18 months old, all bluff and swagger. I watched the little guy wander off towards the motorcycle where my son was rocking back and forth, racing a little girl whose pigtails are whipping her back and forth. Next thing I know, my son is howling in hurt, his special howl for hurt feelings, not hurt limbs, and I ask what on earth is the matter.
Well, the toddler had screamed at him. So I scooped up my boy and agreed it must be horrid to be yelled at by anyone, and off we went, back to the motorcycle, back to the toddler, who led away, by the hand, back to the climbing equipment. The next time my son cried, I caught the little guy in the act: the toddler, back at the motorcycle and frustrated that he couldn’t get the big boy to get off right that very instant, had slapped my son. I scooped the little guy up into my arms and patted his hand. “Gentle, gentle!” I explained to him, and patted my poor, beleaguered son on his head. Back to the climbing castle, then.
Over the course of the afternoon, I redirected, distracted, and otherwise tried to contain one very opinionated toddler who seemed without parents that day. I played with my son. I snuggled my friend’s son, and fed his infant daughter Cheerios. As we were all packing up to go home, a father apparently couldn’t contain his curiosity any longer. “Are you that little guy’s mother?” he asked me, pointing to the toddler who was now demanding that I watch him go down the slide for the millionth time. I did a double take. Was this guy serious?
“Um, what? No, he’s not mine.” Flustered, the father explained, “Well, you’re talking to him and… the way you’re treating him… I mean, I thought… You treat him just like he’s your own son!”
I laughed. “Nope, never met him before. Don’t know where his parents are. But someone’s got to stop him from wailing on the bigger boys!”
But then I took a look at us, standing there on the playground, and laughed at what a family we would make, my precocious boy, my friend’s rowdy boy, a little baby girl with the woad-laden sprit of a true Pict, a crazy Buddhist voodoo man ten years my junior with less than the full compliment of digits, this chocolate cake-colored little opinionated toddler stranger and me, far too wide hipped and 60-hours-a-week corporate to do anything but laugh out loud at what a great treat it is to be mistaken for a traditional family unit.
Photo creds: Spring-O-Rama by Bryan Costin on flickr.
