Resilient in our complacency

Last Friday morning I opened my eyes, looked at my phone and learned a young man had shot up a Denver-area movie theater with a semi-automatic weapon, killing 12 and wounding 58 others.

My reaction probably was not unlike your own.

There's that sinking feeling -- a moment of horror and disbelief -- followed by hours and days of watching the news. Waiting for information that would make me feel better about what had happened.

Explanations, no matter how dissatisfying, tend to put me at ease. Words to file: Loner. Brilliant. Psychopathy. It won't happen to us.

We humans are resilient this way.

Of course, for a while we read and write and yell and keen. We'll wonder what's happening in the world. We'll look to place blame. We'll try and find solutions.

Mostly, though, we just tend to point fingers. We talk about the need for more mental health services despite being aware of the sad paradox: even if it reaches all who need it, therapy doesn't always provide relief.

We rekindle the battle over gun control. People on one side calling for a ban of certain kinds of guns and ammunition; and people on the other side saying we need more fire power.

Soon we'll shake it all off our slickers like rain from the cloud of personal responsibility. Then we'll simply hang up this old coat in the closet of our pushed-aside thoughts, semi-forgotten, until the next time it thunders.

Sad, really.

Because eventually we'll accept this tragedy as we have the many that have come before it and we'll move on.

We'll focus on dangers to our children that don't have such clear constitutional protections and we'll hammer away at those:

We banish the BPA lining our water bottles because of mounting doubts about its safety; we jettison the drop-side cribs that endangered our infants, the trans fats clogging our arteries and the cigarette smoke causing our lungs to be diseased.

Some will yell “Nanny State!” But we won't listen. “ I'll see your Nanny State and raise you a Car Seat Law, my friend. … Go on … tell me how that's infringed on your inalienable right to be a negligent parent.”

The discussion on gun control (and increasingly any regulation) rationally these days seems impossible. Even talking about creating tough guidelines and restrictions for those attempting to buy military-grade weapons -- is somehow blasphemy against the framers of the constitution.

I'm not sure who shaped the argument, that no regulation is preferable to sane regulation, but my guess it wasn't the good, law-abiding gun owners who value safety and education above easy access and mayhem.

Ah … But you've hear it all before.

You've said it.

You've railed against it.

You've even voted for more than one person who'd promised to take on the opposition, whichever camp you opposed.

But nothing changes.

Perhaps they are right: People who want to hurt people will find a way to do it. Why not just fight gunfire with gunfire on a level playing field? Eye for an eye.

Or perhaps it's time to let bygones by bygones, ye pacifists. Whatever will be will be.

Either way there will be other causes to cling to once this whole tragic event is behind us. We could start out slowly by banning midnight movies and work our way up to sanctioning shyness, higher education and the lack of an internet presence.

Anything so we don't become complacent.

Road food

Tiny ears can hear the tinny sound from miles away, like a whistle only a dog can hear. I know this because my children usually clamor for money long before the mangled music emanating from the ice cream truck even reaches my radar.

It's always the same:

There's usually a panicked rush to find pocketbooks and piggybanks, followed by a temporary terror that the truck has turned toward another neighborhood. The music always sounds squashed, like it's coming from a warped record or a dented loudspeaker. It could be coming from or going toward anywhere. Ominous … like the Pied Piper.

“It's creepy,” my husband says as a drab, gray truck -- colored only by photographs of artificially flavored confections – practically screeches to a stop as it nears our house.

The man behind the wheel knows where all the weak links are in his territory chain.

Our house might be the weakest.

The kids have hauled pockets-full of nickels and dimes to the curb, depositing it on the window of the van and then stepping back to see the menu and make their choices.

They bounce back and forth in a familiar dance of indecision, made even more long and drawn out of a performance by the fact that Rocket Pops are out of stock.

Ittybit, innocently enough, will settle on the most expensive treat the man in the paper hat has to offer. The Champ, ironically, will want the head of a superhero on a stick. As the driver sweeps their money into a chocolate smeared apron and settles back behind the wheel, they will declare this the best ice cream they've ever tasted.

“Blasphemy,” my husband huffs in disgust. He can barely believe he has sired children who would rather eat frozen milk and artificial colors from a battered truck than make the pilgrimage to the mecca of locally sourced homemade ice cream just a few miles up the road.

There's no sense reasoning with him.

He claims he doesn't understand the draw of bad food.

He's not the type of man who despises McDonald's just on principal; he'd rather have a root canal than eat a McRib sandwich. “Special Sauce my eye teeth … it's just sugared-up Thousand Island dressing,” he grumbles.

That horror show of an ice cream truck is almost worse than the freak show that is road food,” he says from the comfortable cocoon of his front-porch hammock.

The kids mostly ignore his self professed high-brow tastes until rivers of neon blue, green and red start to trickle down their arms onto their sneakers.

It's hot and their truck treats are outrunning their tongues.

While I will protect this artificially flavored and unnaturally colored rite of summer passage, I won't put my white capris in harm's way. The only thing worse than an uneven cone is a rainbow colored stain on stark white clothes.

Out of desperation, they offer him a lick.

He turns up his nose at first, grousing that he'd rather eat a sponge that had been backed over by the garbage truck than taste even a single lick of a trademarked spongey character (who ordinarily lives in a pineapple under the sea, but in ice cream form has gumball eyes). Then, with a great, thespian gesture, holds out his hands to accept the horrific chore.

To watch him you'd think he was eating poison. He sputters and gurgles and bobbles his tongue.

They watch each lick with squinty eyes.

“Ok … okay,” The Champ tells his father forcefully. “That's enough. I can take it from here.”

They know their father. They know he doth protest too much.

“Listen,” I tell him as he reluctantly relinquishes the treats. “I think I hear the demonic music of the ice cream truck headed this way … . I'll buy you a frozen sponge pop with gumball eyes. I'm sure the ice cream man will be happy to back over it with his truck if you insist.”

An infrequent victory

He always wins.

It's just how it works.

She may start out with the advantage, but eventually his strategic maneuvering will overtake her in the end.

She usually doesn't make a big deal of it; don't want to be a sore loser, you know.

You can probably picture the scene:

A family of four is gathered around an out-of-the-way table at a local public house, or pub for short. It's the early dinner hour, and aside from a few patrons at the bar the place is quiet.

The kids have reached the limit of their summer-time imaginations. The parents have had it “up to here” with the stressors of the day, including their now unimaginative kids. Everyone is hungry and tired and antsy. The last thing either of them feel like taming is dinner. Even strangers can see that this is the make or break moment.

The waiter appears bearing menus and jokes that only add heat to the tiny pressure cookers bouncing around in the booth. How long before they turn from tender to falling apart is anyone's guess. The mom, out of character, orders for everyone. And they wait. The smalls beg them to play a game of checkers, which the smallest of the smalls runs off to retrieve.

When he returns he is trailed by his sister who is collecting the debris of pieces left in his wake. He didn't bother to notice that the clasp on the box was broken.

He extracts the checker board and she dumps the handful of red, plastic disks (some of which she fished out from under the booth of a couple who, up until then, had been trying to have a quiet meal.

“I call girls against the boys,” she hollers, after she shimmies out from under their table and runs for “game central.” She imagines the girls have an edge.

No such luck. The boys win.

What was lost in the game, however, is made up in timing as the food arrives as the last checker is swept from the board.

They eat. They chat. They consider how long they have until the meter runs out on this the smalls talk them into playing just one game of chess, citing an often used legal maneuver: The “you promised” clause.

This time the boy offers his game plan.

“Boys against the girls.”

But the rule of chess prove daunting. After three moves, the kids become disinterested.

The girl goes to ladies room.

The boy turns his attention to his fortune cookie, the pub's official, and complimentary, dessert.

He asks for a quarter for the candy machine, dissappears and then returns, with M & M-gooey hands, to climb Mt. Concentrating Dad.

Unsurprisingly to everyone but the mother, who knows her husband to be unshakable in his stratigic skills, he blunders forward.

Twice.

She takes advantage. How could she not?

And ends up winning.

For the first time. ...

Ever.

She is stunned, amazed and perhaps the happiest she's been in recent memory.

Happier than the time she found a parking space in the first-swoop of the supermarket's clogged parking lot or when she found pine nuts on sale.

Small wonders like these always make her smile, and talk to strangers ...

Because who knows when this will happen again.

He's not the type to let her win.

The cicada of life

“I want to keep it for a pet,” said The Champ, his attention split between me and a rather large, prehistoric-looking insect that had just emerged from the earth near where he'd been digging in the backyard.

I'd seen the hollow, amber-colored shells affixed to trees where the cicada nymphs had left behind their childish things and flew off with new adult wings to sing their songs, attract a mate, lay eggs and start the whole, long process of life underground again. Yet, with such long spaces in between sightings, a person tends to forget in the meantime.

After all, no matter how amazing these creatures are, cicadas have a face only a mother -- and it would seem a boy, newly five -- could love.

“I will name him Clorindo Ramindino Insectivorianda, and he can sleep in my room.”

Honestly, his declaration surprised me a little, having just hours earlier responded to five-alarm shrieks demanding that a tiny beetle and a slightly oversized cricket – neither of which were close enough to touch him – be inducted into the insect relocation program.

Though perhaps the attraction is something he inherited. As I watch him study the insect's almost iridescent segmented body, it occurs to me that so many big moments in our lives as a family have been marked by the reawakening of these gentle giants.

On our honeymoon, hiking in New Zealand, my husband and I tramped for miles along the coastal track of the Queen Charlotte Walkway as the cicadas made a wall of noise almost as impressive as the scenery and twice as memorable.

After Ittybit was born, five months after to be exact, we travelled to D.C. smack-dab in the middle of the cacophony that was the awakening of the 17-year-cicadas. Everywhere we went, golden hulls and red eyes followed us. It was an event that rivaled the emergence of cherry blossoms a thousand times over.

These bugs – harmless to humans – are found all over the world and are “born” in their own time. Although some are annual, most live underground for years, growing incrementally as they feed on the juices of roots. Once mature they burrow to the surface and shed their skins revealing transparent, veined wings and luminescent bodies. In the five or so weeks they live as adults, they are busy. The song the males sing to attract a mate comes not from air moving through a throat but vibrations bouncing around resonating chambers in their abdomen. The female deposits hundreds of eggs into slits she makes in tree branches. Six or so weeks later the eggs hatch and ant-like nymphs burrow into the ground where the life cycle continues.

It's no wonder they are seen by many cultures as symbols of longevity, love and renewal. They connect the past with the present.

The Champ has heard this all before as has Ittybit, who's been assured we will return to D.C. in May of her 17^th year to meet her cicadas' sons and daughters.

She's got a while to wait.

The Champ can't wait another minute. He runs off to find a box, comfy pillow and fleece for his new pet. And returns to heartbreak.

“Mah-meeeee!” he wails. “You need to get rid of the dog. Clorindo Ramindino Insectivorianda is dead and she ATE him. Look, she sucked him right out of his shell!”

“Ah … honey. She didn't eat Chlorine Ramona Insectivous-er-whatever. He's just gone off to find a girlfriend. And guess what? Maybe, when you are 12, you will see his children. Right here in our backyard.”

Blank. Stare.

“He's going to have babies?!!! Here?!? Ewwwwwww.”

The best part of any movie will always be talking about it afterward

“What was your favorite part, Mama?” she said between mouthfuls of steamed dumpling and bites of broccoli.

We had just seen “Brave,” and were seated at a table in the restaurant next door to the theater, debriefing. I use the word “sitting” loosely. Neither Ittybit nor The Champ could contain themselves. Eyes flashing, mouth chirping, she was practically levitating off the seat. Swashbuckling with chopsticks, he was attacking his meal with the ferocity of a wee Scottish lord.

“I really liked the witch's workshop,” I said, explaining that I loved looking at all the animated carvings and listening to the way they clanked together as the hero of the story, Merida, blew in following the mysterious “wisps.”

“Oh, that was good!” she exclaims. “Yeah, that was good,” echoes her brother as he tries to spear his meal. Truth be told, however, more than the work of foley artists, the thing I loved most was that its hero is a girl.

I loved that “Brave” is all the things you could want in a lifetime let alone a movie, whether you are male or female. It has lush landscapes, a loving family, action, adventure, humor, ingenuity, failure and redemption. And it is as much about acknowledging duty as it is about breaking tradition.

Things we wrestle with for all our lives not just for 90 minutes in a darkened room filled with the rich smells of popcorn.

Most of all, though, I loved that girls as heros won't be as novel a concept to my children as it was to me when I was their age. And that girls don't have to become boys to find or measure their worth.

“What was your favorite part?” I say a little too loudly, drowning out the bagpipes in the soundtrack of my imagination.

“I liked when the free brovers ate all the cupcakes. They were like free little pigs. That was funny,” said The Champ, his own mouth full of dumpling.

“Oh … I liked it all, especially the part where she fixes the tapestry and everything goes back to being the same only better,” Ittybit says.

“But that's not … what happened … not exactly ...” I stammer.

“Sure it is. She didn't sew very well but it was good enough,” she says with conviction.

“It was more than just a ripped picture. It was the relationship between mother and daughter that had been damaged; the tear was just a symbol of that bond. They actually had to fix their relationship.”

“That's what I said.”

It's interesting to watch movies with my kids. To see the symbolism sail straight over their heads, where it will hang around (once the movie is released to DVD and I fall prey to little pestering) until one day they see it with more mature eyes. And something else clicks.

And as much as I want them to see what I've seen, I know we all experience the world a little differently. We come to our understanding with filters … some I've installed … some friends have installed … some they've discovered themselves.

“You know what I really frink the best part of the movie was?” says The Champ, moving on to the fortune cookie portion of the meal.

“Let me guess?” replies his sister. “The sword fighting? The horse? The boy who had a tattoo on his face?”

“Nope. I liked that the mom didn't die. … These movies always kill the mom.”

They both start to laugh, and it strikes me: The best part of any movie will always be talking about it afterward.

Home office

Now that I am ungainfully employed by the Corporation of Cyclical Chores – a completely imaginary Subchapter S corporation -- I am forcing myself to get dressed each morning and face the day (and the school bus driver) at 8 a.m. wearing something other than a bathrobe and fuzzy, pink slippers.

Free of my windowless cubicle, my days are spent milling around the Home Office checking in on the various departments that make CCC (as I like to call my imaginary firm) run like a top … the wobbly kind.

As chief exective of CCC, I wear many hats.

For example, as head of appropriations I usually stare blindly into the shopping cart, wondering what I can throw in there that will magically prepare itself once I get it home. Raw meat during BBQ season seems to be the best option. The head chef is as protective of his grill as the laundry czar is of keeping red items from infultrating the white. All it will cost me is a beer.

More worrisome is how to handle the dishwasher. Sure … he shows up to work consistently (being built-in and all) but he tends to leave everything he washes crusty and unappealing, causing me to have to redo everything by hand.

I'd fire him, but I've asked around. My problem isn't unique. He's just a hollow shell and replacing him would not only be labor intensive and costly, but also unlikely to solve the problem. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

Then there's the three-foot-tall house elf who speaks in riddles and is always on some secret mission to empty and redistribute any and all prefolded garments produced by the laundry department, which, turns out, operates at a daily albeit at an inconsistent capacity.

I don't even want to think about the cleaning crew. They are about as organized as a pack of rabid squirrels and only half as tidy. I tend to try and pull that hat over my eyes.

Perhaps, though, the most surprising of the hats I wear fits only loosely and has a wide brim offering a surprising amount of revelation and protection.

Gardening.

Frankly, it's a job that, in my previous life, I had likened to sewer cleaning or carrion removal: Knee deep in dirt, breathing in the rancid smell of defeat.

Whatever I attempted to grow either failed to germinate or choked the life out of every other lifeform around it.

The thought had occurred to me that now, with my hours expanded, my duties varied and my compensation greatly devalued, the only way I could balance the inequity for myself was to grow something with value added.

Food.

Cabbage instead of Cosmos. Tomatoes taking the place of trillium. Peppers where once peeped peonies.

Even the shareholders of my fictitious firm … the people who clamored for pancakes and bacon as I poured yogurt on granola … were sneering at my plans to turn around the company. They beggged me to reconsider.

“What will the other imaginary companies say? What if there's a hostile takeover?”

Sure … it looks out of place – an imaginary corporate headquarters landscaping its entryway with edibles, protruding akimbo, where ornamentals had once appeared orderly.

But I press on. When the greedy shareholders get their hands on the fruits of this labor, they'll be glad they invested. …

Of course, that's my plan. Get them hooked now because next year we're going co-op.

Holding my breath

I often hold my breath.

Not just during the angsty times: doctors visits, teacher conferences, all manner of difficult conversations.

But also when I'm thinking. When I'm listening. When I'm writing. When I'm rearranging my closet in my mind's eye.

I just forget to exhale. It's an unconscious, momentary thing. Like a blink you squeeze shut until you tear up or see stars.

I've always held my breath this way.

Still, it makes my husband nervous.

He thinks it's all about him.

“Are you upset with me?” he asks when the inevitable heavy sigh releases all this pent up air.

I tell him not to worry. “It's not always about you. … And that the exhalation hissing out of my lungs is just my body's way of making sure I don't pass out.

“I'm not mad. Really, I'm not.”

He doesn't buy it.

Truly, I have forgotten all about the argument we had the other day. I can't even remember why we were fighting. It's always something silly.

“Is Jeremy Piven playing all the bad guys in this movie?”“No, that one was James LeGros.”“No, it was Piven. I'm sure of it.”“It's LeGros.”“It's definitely Piven.”“Fine. I'll Google it.”

He barks dog. I hiss cat.

Stubborn we are.

“Oh … I guess it is Piven.”

And that eye-rolling thing? That's just a reflex. Has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I wish Google would break even if, on occasion, it proves I was right.

Win the battle, lose the war.

Anger and resentment can do that to people, small irritations blow up in their faces.

Mountains and mole hills.

I'm sure there are times he'd rather be married to someone else. There are times I wouldn't even want to be married to me.

Like the time I volunteered him to assemble a thousand piece, plane-shaped teeter-totter for the preschool playground. I smiled as I pictured him pulling his hair out over Parts A and C being too small to fit into Slots B and D.

That wasn't terribly nice of me.

But he returned the favor.

He's raised my hand for jobs that would prove equally frustrating.

Dinner? Party? Small talk?

Honestly, I'd rather put together an oscillating jet engine and try to launch him into next week.

But I don't have enough weight to hold my end down.

Marriage can seem like it is balanced on absolutes:

“You always … ”
“You never ...”

But that's a mirage … not marriage.

Nothing is absolute. None of it crystal clear.

Except for a moment or two when you catch a glimpse of your family, the children skipping along a sidewalk in the afternoon sun and your partner close behind. He's holding their ice-cream-sticky hands as they sing some nonsense songs into the air.

Small moments in our lives that are capable of filling the cavities etched by our own moments of smallness.

“Try to focus on this moment” I tell myself. “Let the other moments float away.”

This is why I married him. This is why he married me.

Heart racing once again, I notice I've stopped breathing.

And I exhale.

My son, ladies man

He's not like the other boys his age.

He likes girls. One in particular. And it isn't me.

Don't laugh. I read Freud. I understand the stages of psychosexual development include a period in which my son would develop an Oedipus Complex, try to kill his father and marry me.

Okay, not literally. But I'd played it all out in my mind as if it were the Greek tragedy.

His sister would rib him about some girl his age: “Champ and Girly, sitting in a tree. K. I. S. S. I. N. G. ...

He would punch her, declare his love for me and tell dad to pack his stuff and find another place to call home.

But instead he just looked glum; hung his head and said … “Girly likes The Other Guy.”

Then he stomped away.

Not even five yet and he's professed his undying like for a girl who, for all he knows, still thinks boys have cooties. (Not that she isn't polite when he tries to tell her a joke: “What do you get when you cut an Earthworm in half? Two Earthworms. … ahahahahaa!).

She shrugs her shoulders in the least offensive manner and runs off to play with her best girlfriend.

My son stands there smiling for a bit then inches toward her direction, slowly moving into her shadow, pretending he's not there.

Little stalker.

In the car he says her name over and over. He sings songs about her -- sweet little nonsensical ballads that liken her to a summer day … Only not Summer's day, because that would be a girl who's name is Summer and she's not like Summer. Her hair is a different color. It's black. Or dark brown. I'm not sure.”

He doesn't even care if it rhymes.

Poor kid.

He's in for a world of hurt.

He chatters away at his friends who are boys. Feeling them out while burying his true intent with yards of game theory questions: “What school are you going to next year? What's your favorite color? Do you know that birds come from dinosaurs? Did you know that bears are omnivores? Which girl in school do you like?

And of course the friend hones right in on the main dish:

“GIRLS! I don't like girls. They're yucky.”

He smiles. That's one less rival.

He continues singing: “I like girls. They are fun. They are cute. They don't know how to shoot. Rubber bands in the air. Instead they put them in their hair.

Rhyming gains importance when people who aren't your parents are listening he'll tell me later. “They expect you to know how to rhyme hair and air.”

Watching him watch others, balancing what he thinks they want with what he thinks he needs is like having a glimpse into the future.

“I will paint her a picture. It will be of a diamond under the sea. Then I will show it to her and she will love it. …

And then he whispers to me: “Will you ask her to come over here ? … I'm too shy.”

Little con artist.

I can almost hear him in fifteen years: “Want to come up and see my etchings?”

I hope he doesn't expect me to arrange the showings.

Graduation day

He knows his colors. He can recite the alphabet. He can count to fifteen. He 's memorized his address and home telephone number. He can spell his name and write it so that's it's almost decipherable to the uninitiated eye. He can write with a pencil, paint with a brush and cut with scissors, though he sometimes refuses to perform any of those tasks on demand.

After this day we will say goodbye to the Marilla Cuthbert Academy for Unspeakably Charming Children forever.

A tear may sting the corners of my eye as I see him standing all fidgety-like in the backyard playground awaiting his preschool commencement. But I won't let it invite friends.

I will not cry. I will not cry. I will not cry.

I'm practically a professional at stoicsm. After all, this isn't the first time that I've witnessed a child of mine graduate from play-school to this-is-your-new-job school. It's the last time.

I will not cry. I will not cry. I will not cry.

He's stil my baby, I remind myself … thankful that even at the ripe old age of almost-four he's still a half-a-foot shorter than all of his school mates. He still looks like my baby even if he insists on speaking in full sentences, understands traffic rules and can tell the difference between a Mustang and a Corvette.

He's not ready to drive yet. There will be more than a decade of big, yellow buses in our future. They will come to collect him in the morning and bring him home in the afternoon.

I will not cry. I will not cry. I will not cry.

“My sister will sit wif me on the bus so nobody will bully me,” he says as if he's reading from a script. His sister … standing behind him. … silently mouths the words “He'll be fine.” as her eyes add the context: “sitting by himself … with the little kids … where he won't cramp my style.”

I shoot her The Look, but I'm not worried. I know they'll work it out. They always do.

“Poor guy,” Ittybit says, wryly. “He doesn't know how good he had it in preschool.”

He stares at her, waiting for an explanation. “What do you mean?”

“The work is SOOO MUCH harder in Kindergarten. You have HOMEWORK! And ASSIGNED SEATS! There aren't any TOYS in the classroom or BIKES on the playground. You can't HOLD HANDS with your friends in the hallway and you NEVER get to go on field trips ever again.”

He shrugs his shoulders. “I don't care. I'll get to ride the bus.”

She winces.

She's spent three years working her way toward the back of the bus, where the oh-so-big-and-mature third graders sit. She knows the possibility of being yanked back to the front to sit with her brother isn't remote.

“The bus is nice if you can sit with your friends,” she brightens.

“But I don't have any friends. … My friends are all going to another school.”

“You'll meet someone on your first day … just like I did. You may even be best friends forever.”

“Shhhhhh,” I say in my best I Will Not Cry accent.

Marilla and her school will soon be a memory.

It's bittersweet. Outgrowing things that have been comforting and expanding into new territory, knowing that eventually what was unaccustomed will be old hat.

I smile as he tries to balance a construction paper mortorboard on his noggin while twirling the tassel, a sparkling tendril of curling ribbon, in his never-still hands.

And, of course, I'll cry.

Unwired

A boy. 

They'd exchanged phone numbers at school. Ittybit promised to call later that night.

Which she did. After dinner and before homework.

It was a big deal. ...

To me.

The telephone was my first, tenuous, connection to independence. It offered my mind a mode of transportation and a mechanism for planning that started simply enough with a single universal question: "What are you doing?" followed by the closed-circle response: "Nothing. What are you doing?"

Boy? Girl? It didn't matter who was hanging on the line, it only mattered that the line existed and that it connected me to a disembodied voice.

For the primary school set -- too young for Twitter and Facebook -- Alexander Graham Bell's invention is as relevant as ever.

The rules of communication haven't changed much, either.

"Smile when you talk," I tell her. "They may not be able to see you, but they will be able to hear the smile in your voice.

"Remember to be polite: tell whoever answers your name; ask if you may speak to your friend; always say please and thank you."

Phone etiquette isn't innate. It takes practice, and recently we'd been having our share of practice.

Still, I couldn't listen as she dialed the boy's number and waited for someone to answer.

I clanked around the kitchen, trying to buffer the exchange.

It reminded me ... a little too much ... of my own first phone call to a boy.

I had been in second grade, too.  I didn't even know to be nervous. He was, after all, a friend I spoke to each day. A boy whose name happened to line up next to mine in the alphabet, as did his chair in our teacher's similarly ordered classroom.

To be able to continue the conversation at home, after school, is a strange magic not dissimilar to running into your first-grade teacher at the supermarket and feeling as if your world had been turned inside out. The first time it happens it's disorienting.

Some of that disorientation was happening as I ran through the script I'd practiced.

Hello, I am … , may I speak to … ?

Silence.

The boy's mother wasn't impressed. Her voice, quick and sharp, told me all I needed to know about my mistake. And she wasn't going to let her son talk to any girl so forward as to call a boy at the age of eight.

More than three decades later, I have to wonder if David Sedaris' witty and scathing review of an elementary school nativity play wherein he writes: “6-year-old Shannon Burke just barely manages to pass herself off as a virgin,” could have been inspired by a similar experience.

Honestly, though, I hadn't thought of that moment until this one, in which my daughter was chirping away into the handset asking a boy questions I didn't get a chance to ask.

“What are you doing?”

My stomach tightened even more as she charged my way with the phone.

“Ok, I'm going to get my mom and you put your mom on the phone, too.”

I stretch a tight smile across my face, holding the phone and waiting for a stranger's voice to come on the line.

This is awkward.

Hello? Her smile is stretched, too. I can hear it.

“Hi,” I inject a small laugh into my voice for effect. “I think our kids are interested in setting up a play date.”

Without much fanfare we set a date and exchange information. And within a few days a boy from school is playing in the backyard with our daughter, collecting specimens of rare weeds and putting them in an old umbrella for some convoluted purpose.

A broken bumper shoot is a typical centrifuge for whatever pseudoscience my daughter has devised.

Together they battle a rising wind and a meddling brother until the boy's mother comes to collect him a couple of hours later.

By all accounts it was a success. Plans are made to play some more another day.

He climbs into the car, she bounds into the house.

The phone is ringing.

“I'll get it,” she hollers.

I open my mouth to holler back, but stop mid objection. It's probably for her, anyway.