There is nothing more life-affirming than sitting on a bench with the mommies, watching children play. For me it affirms that I have no children and that's the way I like my life. So, despite the fact that city parkettes are germ-infested, primary-colored pedophile magnets, there are times you just gotta get out of the house. Besides, I like going with my friends and their kids to the parkette because I like seeing my friends, and that's where they go. Plus, the kids have made it difficult for me to smoke in their parents' homes. As they get older, it's become increasingly complicated to drink heavily in front of them, too, because I've noticed that kids get to a point in life where they start to ask questions. ("How come Auntie Lisa didn't bring Uncle Tim last night? Who was that crying in the kitchen until really late? What does co-dependency mean? How come she's sleeping on the couch again with her coat on?" Blah blah blah.) The old me, the person I was before my friends had kids, would have said, Mind your goddamn business, okay? It's cute that you think heartbreak and disappointment are never going to happen to you. But they are my friends' little kids and I've come to realize that they just want what's best for me, too. Next time my friend's five-year-old, Zadie, asks me outright where Uncle Tim is, I'll tell her the truth:
"Uncle Tim went to boyfriend heaven, where forty-one-year-old men remain little boys forever, with their vodka tonics and their Blackberrys, and their snowboarding weekends and their twenty-six-year-old "friends" named Cathy. And they never get to play with the big girls who think it's important to be on time for things, to not lie, and to have plans for the future."
The most important thing to remember about your friends with kids is that they don't like people without kids to wax wise about parenting. Their children, however, are little sponges. They innately know you have a lot to offer. They're like how your friends used to be before they had kids.
Now way back, my friends and I all vowed that we weren't going to allow being parents to change us, to turn us into conservative, frazzled neurotics. I hope it doesn't sound smug to say that I seem to be the only one who took those vows seriously. You may think it's inappropriate to speak to children the way I do, but I've always been of the firm belief that we talk down to them way too much. Also, I like to remain unalloyed in their presence because children have the best bullshit detectors around.
For instance, when my six-year-old nephew once asked me why I never got mad at him for making messes when I baby-sit, I didn't candy-coat it.
"It's because I'm thinner than your mother," I said. "Thin people tend to be more relaxed when they're wallowing in filth. In anything, actually. Even dress pants from H&M."
But relationships are a two-way street. Children have to give a little, too, though they often need some coaxing.
A couple of weeks ago, my friend asked me to pick up her kid after school because her car was in the shop for a few days. I wasn't doing anything but trying to finish a novel, so I was feeling generous. Kerry was ten at the time, closer to my age than my other friends' kids, so I looked forward to our drives. I appreciated her particular brand of wisdom. She was almost Yoda-like in the way she parsed out guidance, without coming right out and telling me what to do all the time, like her mother, who knows nothing of the hell of dating because she's a lesbian.
"So, remember yesterday, Kerry, when I asked you if I should call Tim, and you said to do whatever I wanted to do? Did you mean that I should call Tim, or that I shouldn't?"
"I don't know," she said and shrugged, looking out the passenger window. "I mean if you want to you should, I guess."
"Well I know I want to, but I don't know if it's the right thing to do, or if he'll think by calling him that everything's okay, like I never even found those text messages from Cathy on his Blackberry, like that all never even happened, you know?"
She was quiet for a second and then she turned to me and said, in a child's clear voice, but one that was weighted down with real adult portent, "He's always playing games on that thing. It's supposed to be a phone or whatever."
There was my answer. How could I love a man who relies on electronic words to communicate his feelings?
One way for my friends' kids to get to know me a little better is for me to take them shopping. Now, kids don't carry a lot of money, but their mothers usually give you a little for snacks or lunch. (It's hardly enough to cover a bento box, but it'll get you some take-out.) If they're under eighteen and anything like I was, they probably think everything's free at the mall. You'll have to continually remind these sticky fingers that nothing in life is free.
"Look at your mom," I said, pushing my friend's three-and-a-half year old, Noah, through the mall. "She figured she was all set when she married a lawyer. Hello? Labor law pays shit, which is why she still has to work at that crap job. And why I'm the one taking you shopping today even though I have a novel to finish writing. Not that your mother thinks that's a real job. But let me tell you, it is a real job."
I like this kid. I have my fingers crossed for him. Like me, he's attracted to shiny, beautiful things and wants them for himself. One time, as we were checking out bras at Victoria's Secret (his choice), a giant, slutty teddy caught his eye. He grabbed it with both fists.
"Gimme that, Noah."
"No."
"Noah."
"Noah," he said back to me, grinning.
"Noah, your dad will have a coronary when I tell him about this. You think he's open-minded because he went to law school. But it's like his liberalism went the way of his moral core," I said firmly, but with love.
"Mine," he said.
It's tricky, isn't it? It's not for me to say if Noah's a burgeoning soft-porn aficionado, or gay. That's for his parents to worry about. It's for them to stay awake at night making bargains with God, tracing family trees for the kink this kid could have inherited. Me, I'd be cool if Noah was gay, thrilled even. But when you're shopping with your friends' kids, what happens at the mall, stays at the mall.
So, while my friends have embarked upon the land of parenting and surprises, the only thing that's changed about my world is that now their kids have to come to our parties. And I'm cool with that. But they have to bring their own juice.
"What's in there?" my friend's five-year-old once asked, pointing to my plastic cup. (Glass is breakable, their parents will continually remind you, like you don't know that. Like a hurled glass has never punctuated the end of a bad breakup.)
"Red wine juice," I said.
"What's red wine juice?" she asked.
"It's what makes me be nice to you," I said.
"Can I have a sip?"
"No. Your mommy brought you your own juice."
"Can mommy can have a sip?"
"No. Mommy can't," I said. "Mommy has to get up early because she lives for you now."
"What do you live for?" she asked.
I pointed to the cup.
She thought for a moment, then said, "You live to be nice to me?"
Smart kid.