Re-entry is always hard; re-entry when you already miss your Dad like a limb and think your Mom’s cooking and hospitality puts the world’s top B&Bs to shame is even harder.
Luckily, I have my husband and children to welcome me back to the homestead (for at least a week and half). I mean, who cares if the baby boy awakens mid-car ride from a nap to find you’ve returned from your week away and freaks out like Mothra herself is attempting to extricate him from his car seat? (And the subsequent pushing away and frantic cries for “Daaaad?” Brush it off, champ, brush it off.)
Because your older children always say and do such amazingly charming things, especially when they’re playing an invented game called Baby Birds and you overhear this gem between the 5 and 3 year-olds:
“No, this is wine, Baby Bird- and wine is for Mamas. Now get back in your nest.”
CAN YOU FEEL THE WARM N’ FUZZIES/FUTURE THERAPY BILLS.
A few hours later, I decided to give my self-esteem a makeover by playing dress-up/clean out the closet with my daughters, and Susannah was stoked to pick out a dress, some shoes, and more bangles than, well, The Bangles. As she proudly checked herself out in the mirror, I mentally (and quietly) asked myself who the drunken Mama Bird was now?
“I’m an old woman!”
….What?
“I’m an old woman,” she exclaimed. “Look how I’m dressed!”
As I was about to not-so gently remind her that I wore that exact ensemble on my last birthday- my 34th birthday– Nora ran into the room, stopped, and stared Zu down.
“You’re an old woman?”
“Yes,” she said.
“An old woman superhero?”
“YES,” Susannah answered like there was any other kind of old woman to be, especially when clad in a purple sheath dress and yellow ballet flats.
Laugh it up, jokers.
Whatever, you guys. I’m more than a little confused, borderline insulted, a tiny bit flattered, and inexcusably jet-lagged. I’ll just take my old-outfitted self, my bottle of wine (after 7pm), and curl up in this pillow fort nest like the frumpy Mama Bird that I am.
Which doesn’t sound half bad, insofar as empty threats go. In fact, forward my mail here. You can’t miss me…
…I’m the one with fuzzy wings and gigantic talons.
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