There was a lot last week. A lot. A lot of scheduled kid stuff and a lot of tense divorce stuff and a lot of trying to get settled in our place stuff. Somehow, by the grace of God and the insistence of my mother and just sheer exhaustion, I put it aside and just relaxed this weekend.
Yesterday, we joined the masses in grilling out with friends, but in a thrown-together, casual kind of way. Kids bathed happily in gravel and dust, adults had a beer and laughed about kids.
The kids ate first at their little picnic table, balancing sippy cups of milk and lemonade on their heads in between bites of over-sized burgers and pita chips and strawberries. But because we were at Lil E's buddy Sam's house and Lil E and Sam are who they are together, there was much goofery and three-year old hilarity/color commentary that involves potty stuff and penises. Sam calls Lil E "my buddy, my pal and my friend" and Lil E returns the affection by actually sharing his cars and jokes. They laugh and feed each other bites and spill stuff on each other's laps. It is the stuff of normal dinner time for the two of them.
To keep them from standing on the wobbly plastic table and keep on dipping those pita chips into mustard and ketchup, I told them we could play the rhyming game while they ate. It is highly complicated but goes something like, me saying a word and them throwing out rhymes.
Ahhhh, the old rhyming game, great diverter of tantrums, requests to spend time in the toy aisle of the grocery store and questions about whether my belly is getting bigger because of eating so much or because there is finally a baby in there. We play it a lot.
I started with Memorial Day words -- grill, bun, drink, chip.
Fill! Will! Hill! Sun! Won! Stink! Pink! Crink! Fink! Bwink! It quickly became a mouths-full preschooler rhyming frenzy.
Then, Lil E chimed in with variations on nature -- sky, red, bird.
Fie! Sigh! Ky! Cry! Die! HAHAHAHA! Die. Dead! HAHAHA! DEAD! DEAD BIRD! Fed! Bread! Bed! Gird! Fird! Pird! Followed by more apparently rhyming vocabulary only amusing and understandable to people not tall, heavy or old enough to ride roller coasters.
Then, Sam tossed out the animals -- dog, cow, cat.
Pog! Fog! Pow! Padow! Fow! Rat! Hat! Dat! Fat!
And then, as the finale, with the perfection that is small children and the universe and messy burgers with neighbors separated by just a fence and space taken up by screaming rhymes, Sam threw DUCK! up into the air.
And I saw it fly up in slow motion, saw Lil E reach up his hands with excitement and anticipation. I saw his mouth thrust open, all for the thrill and the love of the game. And then, like we all can see seconds in where it will land, he caught it, screaming out:
FUCK!
But really, because of all the spirit for the game, it came out more like:
FUUUUUUUCK!
And Sam, like a good teammate, a supportive buddy, pal and friend, he raised his hands alongside Lil E in sort of an unmet high-five.
YEAH!!!!
I nodded and said "Good one" to minimize and hope they didn't really recognize the score that was shouted out for all the grilling neighbors to hear. And they carried on as if nothing too special was actually said -- Kuck! Buck! Luck! Ruck!
And then it was back to sippy cups of milk on the head, mustard licked from fingers and ketchup smeared across noses. It was over and time to get back in the sandbox filled with gravel. Dinner was over. No biggie.
As they filled up old milk containers with pea gravel and made it rain down on their feet, I thought, "That's my boy right there. He's so wrapped up in rhyming, he doesn't even realize what a good cusser he's going to be."
That's the stuff of Memorial Day weekend, my friends. That's the makings of memories.
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is a single mama in the city, super-savvy editor, writer, video host and shameless shoe whore.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008 
