“We can read for a bit, then turn up the amps. And play a game of footie. What do you think?”
Of all my parents’ visits to my elementary school back in Los Angeles, I remember one. An open house. The teacher gloated about how polite I was, what a good student. My father and mother beamed and I felt good and better when I was allowed to bolt out to the yard with my friends, to see them at night. It cast a new perspective on our school, Brentwood Elementary. We ran and ran and laughed and laughed until we had to go home.
My eldest daughter had her first open house in Buenos Aires. The whole elementary school – teachers, the principal and kids, parents, siblings, grandparents, aunts and uncles – arrived for a giant barbeque of hamburgers and choripanes and tables filled with empanadas and cakes and big tubs full of cold drinks.
The kids ran and ran and laughed and laughed. This was their turf and we were visitors. “I can go anywhere I want. This is my school,” my six-year-old told me on the way over, with her 18-month-old sister along for the party.
Other parents were given the same directive. [continue reading…]
“I’ve got a wish.”
My eldest daughter found a coin and I said that’s a lucky coin and she asked if she could make a wish and I said yes.
The six-year-old said she wished everything was magic.
“What do you mean?”
She told me that if everything was magic then we wouldn’t have to do anything. The broom would do the sweeping for us and the kitchen would do the cooking.
“With a snap of your fingers like this,” she said, snapping her fingers, “the computer could write stories for you and our toothbrushes could brush our teeth and the beds could make themselves and the toys could put themselves away.”
She paused for a moment and then said, “I’m going to throw my lucky coin in the fountain because then it will be even more lucky and then maybe the house could fly and we could go wherever we wanted with a snap of our fingers.”
I said, “Come on, let’s get down to the fountain.”
Yup, we need an air freshener. Now!
We went through a tollbooth on the way to the coast and a girl gave us a promotional granola bar and another gave us an air freshener for the car.
“It makes your driving experience a pleasure,” she said.
We thought we’d give it a try.
If you know anything about my car you would want to try anything to freshen it up. With three kids under seven, a four-ton dog and a cat, we don’t travel light or clean. We often have pack-ups for dinner on the road or, we must confess, drive-through McDonald’s. This has given our car a stench. If you look or sniff around you’ll find old French fries, cookies and empty and half-empty containers of apple juice and coffee cups. Much to our chagrin, the kids at times find and resume munching cookies a few trips old. It’s not that we don’t like clean cars. I love the smell of a freshly cleaned car. It’s the lack of time to actually clean it.
So this has given our car a rather overpowering odor.
“Phew wee,” we’ll say when we get in.
The kids have grown up with the odor so it isn’t too alarming except on hot days when the smells seem to heat up and saturate the interior like before this latest trip to the coast. It is my youngest daughter who spoke out first. She is 18 months old and is learning her words. A favorite is for describing the state of her soiled nappy. And it is this word that she spoke out as we lifted her into her car seat.
“Stinky!”
So as we drove away from the tollbooth my wife unwrapped the air freshener and placed it in the air ducts and turned up the fan to its highest and we took a deep breath.