A Weekend of Friends

October 15, 2017

The quiet of Sunday, and the quieter the better.  We headed to the Exchange to get some odds and ends for the girls and take them to lunch.  And then fill up the car and head on back home.  While Madison transcribed her notes from typical class notes to these really creative and colorful notes, Sydney pulled out her violin and spent some time with that and apparently I missed a few notes with her French Horn.  I'm just happy to have her playing some tunes in some way, means she's not on her phone or her IPad.

While she and I were dancing to some Maroon 5 song that I like but can only understand like three words of, we worked on making dinner.  My kid loves music, and right now she's totally into a Korean K-Pop band, "BTS". When she first talked about them I didn't realize they were a Korean band and was busy trying to understand the acronym, what was it... Bacon Tomato Sandwich?  Big Time Sailor?  Then she told me they were a Korean Band and I totally quit trying.  Instead, I just sit back and enjoy the giddy excitement that she has for these twenty something boys that are almost too pretty to be real.  I remember quite well when Madison started down her boy crazy - fan girl phase.  For her it was One Direction...then Teen Wolf and The Flash! And I can't forget Sean Mendez and some other actors that makes her giddy with delight every time their names come up.  Sydney doesn't like to admit it, but she has quite a few of the same likes: The Flash! For sure and they both love this Dylan O'Brien guy.

Much as we adults like to get together for these viewing parties to watch our favorite tv shows, the kids are no different.  Madison's friends want to watch something I have only just heard of and have to research before I say either way.  And Sydney's group wants to get together for Flash!  They are all planning for the best nights and the best places and what snacks they need to make or bring etc. etc.   It's quite cute, it's so 'normal' and oh so very different from what they've had the past few years, and quite frankly, different from what they were interested in the last few years.  We've never said no, cause they've never asked. I'm good with this kind of crazy stuff, and once I spend some time looking at what the crazy show is that Madison wants to get into, I'll probably tell her it's okay too.

This is what I won't do though.  As of yesterday, we have learned that Bradley has a real issue with not being allowed to get out of the car when we drop off his sisters or go to pick them up.  Our new modis of operandi now entails phone calls to make sure girls are ready and prepared to walk out the door.  Seems rude to the kids parents I know, but we aren't quite sure another method to allow for the girls to enjoy time with their friends and somehow avoid the incredible meltdown of tears and desperation that is coming from their brother right now.  I don't know that this will last for long, perhaps it's only something quirky for this weekend, I mean he is a quirky little boy after all.  But maybe he's developed a new response to events he can't control that makes us all pay.

And as we dropped off one girl and picked up another off and on a couple times this weekend; they were busy butterflies for sure, I realized something so incredibly sad and disconcerting.  I cannot see any time in the near future when I will be dropping Bradley at a friend's house for a play date without me or Eric.  I can't see a time when I get to chaperone him and a friend that has been dropped at our house for a movie night, or to watch their favorite show.  Maybe right now I can't see it because I know it would be "Peppa Pig," or something that perhaps is not appropriate for someone else's six or seven year old kid; for example, "Pitch Perfect."

It doesn't really matter right now, he's not ready for playing with friends because his friends, his peers are also not ready.  Or maybe it is just him.  But when you think about all his medical issues it seems improbable that someone is brave enough to take him on without one of his parents as part of the equation.  But mostly, I am trying to look ahead to when he's eighteen and wondering.  I just wonder, what kind of picture will have formed around him and his life.  I have always, always refused to look that far ahead, mostly because I have always had trouble trying to picture my kids at that age.  The idea of Madison being eighteen is actually right around the corner, but I really can't imagine it clearly.  My imagination is stilted in that way.  So when I try to think about what Bradley's life might be like when he's eighteen I really haven't a clue, cause I can't even conjure a picture of what he might look like.

All I want is to have these things to worry about when he is eighteen.  I want to have to consider how to encourage his social life to grow beyond his dad and I, possibly his sisters.  I want to be worried about whether or not he should be considering moving away from us at some point in the next ten years or if we need to be thinking about a way to give him some independence and privacy by doing some remodel on our house for him.  I want those worries.  I want to look back at myself today and sigh with a soft laugh as I remember these days and worries and I want to have them all behind us, and irrevelant.  Oh to only hope.

I want Bradley to have a band or a tv show that he's just as giddy about as his sisters...hopefully having moved past Peppa and onto someone or something that maybe other friends are excited about and want to have viewing parties with him.  I want to see him dance in my kitchen with me listening to some band he loves just because he loves them.  I know that Bradley is going to be much different from his sisters by virtue that he's a boy.  And I know that there are going to be lots of other ways that they will differ, I'm not unrealistic, but it would be lovely if he had more ways that he is just like them.  Ways that he gets to be a young boy that loves the same stuff as other young boys and gets to just be.  I want him to just be happy, healthy, and living a lovely life that makes others look at him and see he's all those things along with a friend, I want them to see a friend.  I want him to be a friend and have friends away from school, just like his sisters.

Lord, in ten and a half years ish, please let me laugh at my worries of today.  Please!  Amen.

Hope you had a great Sunday.  Let the drudge of a new week begin, and maybe a gentler drudge than usual, we all deserve that.