The Last Firsts

Today on the boat, while I was at home alone (at last) after four days solo with the Short Drunk People at my mom's house, the GFYO made me an official "older mom."

He lost his first tooth out at sea. Blood spilt all over the fiberglass and now his smile is marked and different. Underneath the funny words he still uses and his love of sippy cups and his blanky and kisses all the time from me, a grown up boy pokes through. There's no stopping it: the tooth, like everything with kids really, forces its way up and gone. My grasp on his littleness is flimsy now at best.

Last night, I stayed up with my nephews. They are 17 and 15 and talk and look like men. They are smart and funny and sweet and polite and I changed their diapers and kissed their booboos long before I was a mother myself. They don't remember me snuggling them or tucking them in or lifting them from sweaty sleep, but I do. Last night, I played them my music and they played me theirs and we both took notes to remind us what we liked. We ate warmed-up enchiladas off of one plate with three forks, like pals.

The GFYO stands in my nephews' shadows, awed and desperate. He farts on them for fun, and like troopers and dudes, they high five his every bit of boyness.  I think they see themselves in him sometimes, just as I do: little tiny boys become these big men, these big nearly grown men I love but cannot cuddle, adore but cannot pinch, wish to hold and keep and cradle forever but who now stand so many inches above me. How did we get here so fast?

The GFYO lost his first tooth, and it's the last time this first will happen for me. As my friend Kimba said, this is last of so many other firsts: first day of school, first stitches, first girlfriend. These firsts end with him. 

Soon enough, he too will tower over me. Soon enough, if I'm lucky, he will share one plate with me, late at night, telling secrets. Soon enough, he will be not be my toothless GFYO.

Things You Can Count On: In Real Life Version

So after I rolled out the red carpet, which was disappointingly mostly just crimson crepe paper, I went to a neighbor's house for a mimosa a holiday brunch. I was late and not even fashionably so, what with all the Major Preparations for the Great Arrival of Carolyn...Online and her Georgian posse. All our friends gathered there were already all a flutter about it.

"What if this is what they do," they said, "like for a living!? What if they've 'met' lots of other naive fools friends on the interwebs and this is just the beginning! I mean, their Robbing Road Trip could start right here at Picket's house?"

While I appreciated the concern and the mimosas brunch, I laughed away all the paranoid non-believers: if anything, Carolyn would actually be Carl and 72 and I was pretty sure me and the Kid could handle that. Plus, I had costumes for all the Pickets, even me and the Kid, so if the vibe seemed weird, THEY WOULD NEVER BE ABLE TO FIND US once we split for safety.

So costumes adorned, Red Carpet unfurled, I awaited Carolyn's "we're close" message by emptying the car of sandy beach bags and soggy towels. I was lugging the loads up the back stairs when I heard Bridget (fuzzy halo and boa) squeal "they're here," gasped a bit (what about my surprise, the whole American Gothic pose we would take?!?!), wondered if the Kid still had the pimp hat on or Rory the beard or if the GFYO had zipped his zipper and adjusted his helicopter-esque beany, dropped the bags in the doorway, turned the corner into the kitchen and before I could fluff my feather headband, there right in front of me, right there in my house: it was not a Southern Belle in some version of a summer prom dress, it was not a pack of gypsies come to rob us blind, it was not anything but exactly what I knew it would be.

With my right arm still wrapped around her, I reached out my left, as if I could scoop Tempel (!) and Parker (!) and Scott (!) up at the same time in one giant swoop of a hug. (Who knew I was such a hugger?) I am not totally sure what happened next, but Bridget gave a tour, the GFYO gave up a high-five, and Parker and Rory and Tempel jumped on the trampoline. Then we went to the beach, which with five kids, a cooler, and some (stolen) beach chairs is never an easy feat, but it was as if we had done it a hundred times already: taking turns barking orders -- you go over there! watch the cars! carry this! keep going! look out! -- until we camped out on our spots in the sand and let the sun and the crab catching and the beers take over.

It was like... old times.

The rest, I will keep to myself (mostly to protect the innocent -- and the guilty) except for:

Things You Can Count On; Meeting In Real Life

DAY 1

1) Both your children will forget their use of speech -- and then remember it. Neither will make you especially proud.
2) Your friend Carolyn will wink at you and grimace for you and you will shrug together.
3) Neither of you will have use for speech when it comes to needing a cold beer: an eyebrow raise will do.
4) Your husbands will go bar-hopping while you get chick chatty with Dana's Brain and For Myself.
5) You will welcome your man-folk home. And probably (promptly?) scare them away.

DAY 2
1) Neither of you will have use for speech: only coffee and Advil.
2) You will take turns soothing a child with a splinter. You will not speak of your strategy beforehand: you will just act. You know what to do even though this kid is "officially" new to you.
3) Even these children are like old friends; nothing about them surprises -- delights? Yes. Never surprises.
4) Eventually, on a small boat, all your children will act like puppies brought home from the pound, like siblings: they will tackle and tickle and tease each other with abandon.
5) You will both feel proud and happy and relieved.
6) You will decide on two things simultaneously: book the babysitter, order the Bloody Mary.

DAY 2/Evening:
1) You will bring an extra fleece for your Southern friend. She will not believe that "you actually did that" but the coat fits her perfectly.
2) You four will share food. Tell stories. Deep ones. Funny ones. Ones from college.
3) The college stories will surprise you: wait? wha? haven't we all known each other longer than this?
4) Reality will come to you in tiny bursts just like that, a fleeting thought to remind you -- YOU HAVE NEVER MET BEFORE.
5) Eff that, you will say.
6) Let's get another drink or drive around so we're sure the kids are all asleep. You will laugh and laugh, at the same time, at the same things. It's like old times.

DAY 3/Departure:
1) You will pack luggage and five kids into a car to drive four hours to another state, another stop for her and her kids.
2) Torrential rains will fall upon your precious cargo and oddly, healthy food options McDonalds will be remarkably far and few between.
3) She will break up your kids squabbles with a skilled swipe of the arm to the back seat while you apologize to your husband for taking his only set of car keys with you on your trip.
4) She will say everything to you to make you feel better.
5) When you get to her destination -- such smart and savvy women you are -- your children will exchange addresses and hugs and toys, and you and she --Carolyn no longer online for you, but in real life with diet coke and french fries and spilled coffee and falling, fading pony tails -- you and she will unpack the car at the end of this part of the trip and say a kind of good bye and hug each other quickly.
6) You hate goodbyes. Both of you.
7) You will drive away, you and the Short Drunk People, and before you reach the UPS store to send the keys to your husband overnight, you will miss her. You will miss her kids. You will miss Scott. But you will miss her most of all and you will wish you could go back and get her and you will feel so incredibly, unbelievably happy for wifi and emails and for blogs and for airplanes and for cars and you will sigh and play classical music on the radio to lull your kids to sleep.

THEN
1) The first email will chime in ten minutes later.
2) Like old times. Thank GOD for old times.

T Minus 2

Last 4th of July, I dragged my lovely mother from party to party and from boat to beach for three days in a row. It was a non-stop living diorama of my life to try to prove that I did have a life here. The year before that, I freaked out that I had kids who could swim unattended and kayak from island to island. This year? 

This year will include a whole new kind of life-changing weekend.

Carolyn...Online is gonna be in my house. In. My. House. With her kids and her husband.

(I know, right?)

A few people have asked the question and the answer is: No, no, it won't be weird. Yeah, we've never spoken, like with our voices, but, dude, we have talked. The written word... 

Sometimes it's the fastest road to the best friend you've never met

Saluting the Master of Prank

My father became a bra*-burning feminist sometime in the very early 70s. He did this for very practical reasons: 1) it made sense in a strict constitutional and philosophical sense and 2) he had three daughters.  

My father never stopped opening doors ("ladies first") or standing any time a woman left a room or a table or arrived at either. And for every equal hire he made, for every way he supported Title 9 or defended his position to any chauvinist around, he could become completely incensed at a bra*-strap that dared peek out. A man has his limits, after all; a woman should, too.

My father turned 70 this weekend. His three daughters, neither of whom currently hold a paying job by the way and about whom he is undauntedly proud, met up in New York, hopped a few flights to South Carolina -- thanks to the generosity of a woman who will never be a step mother but is (at last) a friend -- and surprised that Old Man while wearing Mardi Gras masks in public. 

I know he was surprised for one reason and one only: he did not stand when we revealed ourselves at his table. He did not rise to greet us or to hold out our chairs: he just sat there.

This from a man who has pulled off more pranks than Ashton. Convincing a Canadian restaurant staff that he and a friend (both dressed like sheiks) were emirates from abroad? Their ridiculously fake Farsi sealed the deal on that one -- 4-star service all the way. Arriving at the airport to pick up a college freshman? In a Santa suit? My sister never lived that one down. Starting the Worm Defense Fund on the fly at a cocktail party when an obnoxious neighbor was incensed that "ALL the cats were killing ALL the birds"? That was a particularly good one. (I really disliked those neighbors.) 

But my father? He has never been punked. I am pretty sure it took him a solid sixty minutes to realize what was actually happening (his three daughters! his three sometimes distant daughters! all there in one place! for him!) but it took him much longer to get over his dismay at having been played.

My father lives on, seven decades in fact, and finally we three (plus one, his wife),  finally -- we got him. Someone had to. 

When he finally got his mojo back, we entertained him unknowingly: he furtively sat on his porch in the shade, listening, while we bobbed in the hot pool below him.  Our non-stop chatter, our love of bacon and egg sandwiches pool-side (delivered!), our dirty jokes, our easy curse words, our ability to be both wildly independent and yet so committed to our kids and to our husbands and to each other all at once -- what a view he had, what insight! We talked and talked and drank and talked, and somewhere along the way, I gotta believe he realized that his vision of the future for us (and maybe for lots of women like us) was right here, was this, was we three floating and happy and opinionated and making all our random, sometimes shifty, sometimes grand plans for the road ahead.

Well, minus the peeing in the bushes story, which um, you know, that's not very lady like. 

But we got him and we got him good.

All the best heiresses learn well from the master. Long live the master!

I'm Gonna Bribe You With Booze

I am going to BlogHer. 

Which is a conference of strangers who write on the internet. There will be events and talks and sponsors and booze. I am going for the latter.

I've been to SXSW four times, the "music business conference" which is really, the music biz Prom where the after-party begins the day you arrive. I kinda think this thing, this BlogHer? It's gonna be the same.

Me and CarolynOnline, who's latest awesome post links to JenW's hilarious one about the possibility of us going... well, it's happening. 

We've been talking about this big meet-up for a year. For a year. Which is a lot of talking. We made some huge plans but we ended up with this: 

Find  Ms Picket or CarolynOnline at BlogHer and we will buy you a drink. Preferably, a cheap beer. In a can.*

*This offer may be redeemed only once. You must hug either me or she. You must say "dude, thanks" at least once.