Little Friends by Debbie Mascot
We had two friends come over last night. Katie and her sister came to play. We'd just sat down to dinner and there was a tiny knock on the door. Marc went and got it and from my angle, I couldn't see beyond Marc. But his head went down as if looking at a little person. Which he was. Katie.
"Ummmm... ummmm... can I... can I look at your cat?"
A few weeks ago, I invited Katie over to play with my cat. One of my cats, Jack, loves company isn't that shy, so they both had a good time. I was packing for our MN trip and so it was nice to have him occupied so that I didn't have to keep UNpacking my cat.
Anyway, now she wants to come over all the time and we mostly just say no and make something up. But last night Marc looked over at me like, "Well?" and so we said we'd come get her after dinner.
I went outside after dinner and Katie was in her backyard ON TOP her swing set watching my front door waiting for me to come get her. I walked to where their gate leads to the side and it's a low fence so I could see her dad. I then saw Karly, Katie's little sister and invited her to come along also. So I paraded through my front door with an almost-6-year-old and a 2-and-a-half-year-old. I thought Marc would freak and start moving all the valuables to a safe place, but he seemed okay with it.
Katie brought some things for Jack to play with. A stuffed animal, a bingo game, a book and I can't remember the fourth thing, but there were four things.
Kids say the funniest darn things. At one point when we were all four lined up on the sofa watching Scooby Doo, Katie's eyes wandered to a shelf that I have on the wall with lined up wooden dangly-legged animals. She then said, "Know what I was wondering?" Then a pause. "Well, know what I was THINKIN' about wondering?" Then Marc and I giggled to each other at the honesty in not really wondering something but just thinking about wondering about something. "What WAS I wondering?" she finally wondered to herself. Marc told her she was thinking about wondering what all those things were on the shelf and she was amazed that he knew. Their little eyes tell it all.
Then she said, "You ate dinner?"
"Yep. We sure did."
"What did you have, cuz I'm kinda hungry."
"Is it time for you to have dinner, Katie?"
"No. I had my dinner, but I'm still hungry so I want to know what you have."
Marc and I don't ever have snacking food. We are lucky if we really have any food at all and when we do, we really aren't in the habit of feeding the neighborhood children. So I said we didn't have anything. But she persisted. "What did you have for dinner? I could maybe have some of that." I told her there wasn't any left. Then I saw the cherry tomatoes that would most likely go bad if no one ate them in the next few days. And I remembered eating them off the vine as a kid so I offered a bowl of them as a snack.
"I don't like those. What else do you have?"
Karly ate one, though. And Katie tried one, but spit it out in the trash (I told her she could). Then Marc said something about Cheerios and I remembered kids like eating handfuls of dry Cheerios, so I opened the cabinet to show her and she exclaimed, "No. I want to see what's in the refrigerator."
I was frustrated and sad now. Why don't we have good kid foods? I suck at being a playmate. I had flashbacks to having kids come over to play when I was little and not having Ho-Hos and Twinkies and Kool-Ade like they had at their houses. I would have graham crackers and milk at my house, which they always liked, but it still wasn't Ho-Hos and Twinkies and Kool-Ade. Then the panic subsided and I resigned myself to open the refrigerator to show her just how pathetic being my friend really was and there they were...
It was like a loud beautiful song blared and light emanated brilliantly from the refrigerator.
Tiny containers of kid-sized applesauce with the pull off lids.
Marc's horrid flu where he could only have Jell-o and applesauce paid off, because I managed to keep my friends. They loved the applesauce. And they loved me.
Or so I thought. When we were done, we went back to the sofa to watch cartoons and Karly cried when I sat next to her and pushed me away so that I had to sit on the other sofa alone while she and her sister cuddled with Marc.
Having friends is really hard.