Recently Sean and I were at our neighborhood pool making the most of a late summer afternoon.  Sean is still not a confident swimmer.  Swimming is just one of those things that he is going to have to come to terms with at his own pace.  I have come to accept that.  I have learned and backed off.  The most I do now is  encourage him to experiment more, to be more adventurous.  To this he firmly says, “No danks!”  No. Way. And we leave it at that.

After we had been at the pool for awhile, another family showed up with a little boy who is a full year younger than Sean, but a better swimmer.  He has a beefier build.  He’s more boisterous and aggressive; he’s one of those little guys who love to rough house and punch and karate kick and that kind of thing.  That’s all well and good, but it’s not our style.  Sean and his daddy rough house, but our policy is that you don’t put your hands on other people.

The other boy wanted to play with Sean, and at first Sean was interested, but it wasn’t long before he grew weary of being punched.  A couple of times I saw Sean stiff arm him and say “Stop it!” but I figured it was a good opportunity for Sean to work it out for himself so I stayed out of it.  Although honestly?  I really wanted to go over and kick some four-year-old butt.  I’m not proud of that, but it’s true.

At one point, I looked over at Sean and we locked eyes.  I could see he was looking for a rescue.  “Dude! Come here for a minute,” I called.  It gave him a dignified out and he came over to splash around with me on the steps of the big pool. For 38 seconds.

Then the little guy followed.  He did cannon balls within inches of Sean.  He shoved Sean off the steps.  He continued to try to agitate him.  Sean tried to politely ignore him to no avail. Finally he resorted to going underwater to get some peace.  At this point, the little boy grabs Sean around the waist and holds him under water. Right in front of me.

Big. Mistake.

Sean thrashes and panics.

I look over at the mother and she is reading a magazine and talking on her phone. She is oblivious.

At that moment, the ire of every mother bear that ever existed rose in my chest and filled my throat.  It’s a feeling that I can’t really describe. I wasn’t mad so much as stirred by something primal. And frankly, that kind of scared me.

I bent over and pulled the boy off of Sean, and as I am setting him on the edge of the pool, I whisper a warning in his ear — but the voice that rumbles out of my throat is not mine but Darth Vader’s.  “Keep. Your. Hands. Off. My. Boy.”

“Or I will hurt you.” No, I didn’t say that part, but I was surely thinking it.

I give him a look that makes it clear that I mean business.  He stares back at me with eyes as big as pancakes.  I narrow my eyes like Clint Eastwood to punctuate my point. He gets up and wanders over to his mother.

And I wish I could say that was that. But that was not that.

He continued to come back and pester us.  So we called it a day and went home.

So then, no tidy moral of the story other than don’t mess with my kid and no happy ending other than I am not writing this from jail.

Before I could put the car in park, he was unbuckling his seat belt. We were at Sonic where he is allowed to climb into the front seat with me and eat his burger.   If it’s nice, I open the sunroof and it’s our own version of a picnic.  We’ve been picnicking at Sonic since he was two and it’s kind of our thing that we do together, a time when we talk.

Going to Sonic with Sean is special for me because I went there every Tuesday for lunch when I was pregnant.  I hosted a small Bible study at my house with four older ladies.  Afterward we’d all pile into one car and go to Sonic and have lunch.  They would fuss over me and give me advice.  It was like having four moms which I really needed at the time since my own mother was three states away.  Even at my advanced maternal age, I needed and craved mothering.

Later, when Sean was two and started a mother’s day out program, we’d go to Sonic after I picked him up.  With just the two of us in the car, I’d discreetly reach over and turn on my little voice recorder while he chattered away.  When I go back and listen to those conversations and hear that sweet baby voice it turns me into a big gloppy mess.

As we sat in the car waiting for our burgers, we watched the car hops whiz by on roller skates.  I looked at him standing up on the passenger’s side, peering out the front window.  Tall and skinny, his head almost touches the roof. But in my mind’s eye, I saw a little boy with long blond curly hair who couldn’t see over the dashboard.

I asked Sean if he remembered the time he spilled the blue coconut slush in my car.  He said he did.

“Do you remember that I yelled at you?” I asked, wincing and hoping he didn’t.

“Yeah.  I remember,” he stated as a matter of fact with no trace of lingering ill will.  “I bumped it over on the seat.”

“Well, I know I’ve said it before, but I’m really sorry.  I wish I hadn’t yelled at you.”

“That’s okay,” he said. “You’re getting to be a better mom and I’m getting better at being more careful.”

“Well, just the same, I’m sorry,” I said again, not so much because he needed to hear it but because I needed to say it.  Not a day goes by that I don’t think how I’d like to do it all over again, start over right from the day I found out I was pregnant.  I’d do it better this time. I wouldn’t yell.

After our picnic, I took him to Target to let him pick out a toy for no particular reason other than he’s been a really good and helpful boy lately.  We’ve done some stringent expense cutting at our house since before Christmas and he has not once complained.

When we arrived in the toy department, a bin of rubber snakes caught his eye.  For twenty minutes or more, he went through the entire nest of snakes, examining each one like a jeweler with a loop, looking for the most perfect and flawless of rubber snakes.

‘Which one do you like best?” he asks holding up a baby blue cobra and a lime green rattler.

“I like the green one,” I say.

“Oh,” he says flatly.  He looks from snake to snake and I can see on his face that he can’t make a decision. He wants them both.  But he doesn’t ask.

A minute passes.

“You need to pick one; we can’t get both,” I say sounding like a bonafide grown up.

“I just can’t decide,” he says and sighs heavily to convey that the decision is causing him a great deal of angst and pain.

Even though it’s only a $3 snake, to give in and let him have both would be a mistake. It would be a violation of our family’s new financial philosophy.  And I had already clearly stated that he could only have one.  I had to stick to it. And I hated that.

“Well, if you don’t mind,” I said, “I think I’ll buy the green one for myself.  I’ve been wanting a rubber snake.”

“Really?” he asks, bewildered.

“Yup. Always wanted one.”

I grab the green rattler from him.

“I didn’t know that,” he says narrowing his eyes in disbelief, waiting for the punch line.

We lock eyes. He searches my face to see if I’m yanking his chain. He cracks a little half smile, not quite sure about his wacko mother.

“Let’s go pay for these,” I say.

He reaches for my hand and we turn and head towards the front of the store towards the cashiers, each clutching our very own rubber snake.

“I’m not good at coloring!” he sighs.  A gust of exasperation escapes his lower lip making his copper hair fly straight up off his forehead.  For a second, I get lost in his face and forget that he is frustrated and about to cry.

“I’m never going to be a good colorer!” His eyes become shiny with tears.

I  look at his paper. It looks pretty much like everything else I’ve seen him color lately, which to me, is artistic perfection.

I look back at him, not sure what really is needed here. I consider my responses:

Tough love:  “Snap out of it dude – you’re five. You color just fine.”

Encouragement:  “Sean, persistence is the key to life. You just keep trying and someday, in 44 years, you’ll be able to color as well as me!”

Validation:  “I love it! I think it’s fantastic!”

Commiseration: “Yup. You stink at coloring.”

Advice: “Have you tried holding your crayon properly?”

I say nothing and wait for more information.

“Everyone else at school colors better than me.”

He puts his forehead down on the counter. Silence hangs between us for a full minute.

I decide to go with a multi-pronged approach.

“Yup! You stink at coloring!” I say.

He pops his head up off the counter and stares at me with big eyes.

“Really?” he asks in disbelief.

“No.”

“Dude, you’re only five. You’ll get better and better at coloring the more you do it, and some day, if you’re lucky? You’ll be as good as me!”

This makes him roll his eyes. His mother is so lame.

“Besides! I love it!” I enthuse. I do. I love his artistic expressions, the way he draws people with no necks and big crooked smiles.

And then, because I couldn’t stop myself:   “Have you tried holding your crayon properly?”

On the few occasions when Sean and I have gone to McDonald’s for lunch, I can’t help but to notice the tables of young moms happily chatting and visiting while their children are off playing.

Everyone at the table is leaning in and engaged in a lively conversation. While their children are off playing.  How do they do it? How?

I have been invited to a handful of these kinds of play dates in my short tenure as a mother, and I have to be honest with you — I do not enjoy it. I find it to be very stressful.

In order to be a play date pro, you have to be able to carry on a conversation and remain oblivious to the fact that small children may or may not be setting the place on fire.

You know who would do great at play dates?  Those guys in the pits on Wall Street, the “yellers”. Those guys would be fabulous, because to me that is the equivalent of a play date – a maelstrom of noise and activity and incomplete conversations and littering.

I was told that after I became a mother, I would learn to filter out the noise.  Still waiting.

And it’s not really the noise so much, it’s that I’m fully aware that where two or more children are gathered, one of them will dream up something ridiculous to try. And at least one grown up should be paying attention.  And if I’m involved in an in-depth conversation about Capri pants, I can’t know if/when some kid decides to see how far a soda straw will go in someone’s ear.

So what usually happens at the play date is I try in earnest to focus on and participate in the conversation with the other moms.  I do.  But out of the corner of my eye or ear, I’m painfully aware that my child, or someone’s child, is running with scissors. Towards a busy street.  With an open prescription bottle. And some matches. And that I should probably try to stop them as opposed to listening to a fascinating story about the Capri pants that are on sale at Target.

And the urge to turn around and find out what is sending a signal to my momtennae is unbearable.  So I end up cutting the conversation off awkwardly and abruptly to tend to unattended children.

Of course, when you are in the habit of turning on your heel and running away in the middle of an adult conversation, you don’t get a lot of invitations.

Awhile back our church had a food drive of some sort and there were rows of filled grocery sacks lined up in the lobby.  As we walked past,  Sean noticed  that one of the sacks had a big bag of marshmallows on top.  “Oh Mom!” he exclaimed, “Do you think we could get some marshmallows some day?”  I told him I thought we might be able to swing that.

* * *

For his recent birthday,  he said he wanted a headset that had a mouthpiece so he could be an air traffic controller.  No problem.  I dug out an old telephone headset from the obsolete electronics box, wrapped it up and called it a birthday.  And he was thrilled.  Since then, many an airplane has been safely landed in my den.

* * *

And this! This is what he said he wants for Christmas. It just so happens that his teacher at school has one.

A trip to the teacher store this morning and $3.99 and my Christmas shopping is done.  Oh I’ll get him something else too — what kind of mom do you think I am?   I’ll probably spring for a nice orange or maybe even a new pair of underwear.

* * *

These days when I can make his every wish come true are golden, especially given that I can grant any wish for for $5 or less.  When his desires move beyond a bag of marshmallow or a roll of scotch tape, I could be in trouble.