Well friends, it finally happened: this past weekend my mother officially asked me when exactly we were applying to Oxford and if there were any way she could help expedite the process or help us pack.
I was mistaken in thinking that such an exclamation could have come after a mere few hours of babysitting. It turns out that it takes four days straight of minding interesting children before beloved grandparents throw in the towel.
Jack and I went on a camping trip with our church this weekend, which is why the beloved grandparents were saddled with the children in the first place. Why didn’t we take them along, you ask? It isn’t really the kind of thing you take small children to, unless you want to double or even triple the pain of the experience. It was a Pioneer reenactment, which means that all the teenagers and adults we could muster gathered together in Northern Arizona, dressed up in ye olde Pioneer garb, loaded handcarts with all our gear, and then walked, and walked, and walked, and walked, aaaaannnnd waaaaalllked, thereby simulating at least in part the great trek our ancestors took across the plains.
It probably sounds a little strange, but it was great fun and all the teenagers got to learn a lot about their Pioneer heritage. This being said, never had I been more grateful that I was not a pioneer; after all I’d witnessed I doubted very much that my two interesting and curious children could have survived the experience. It’s hard enough keeping them alive in our apartment; I can’t even imagine the trouble they’d get into if the whole outdoors were open to them for months on end.
We were filthy, blistered, exhausted, and sunburned as we drove back down to the Valley of the Sun where we live. It was our greatest hope that the beloved grandparents would be able to keep the children one more day, giving us at least a little time to begin the recovery process, so as soon as we got back into cell phone range we called my mom to see how she and the girls were getting along. It turns out they had had a very interesting time of their own.
They’d started the fun the day after we left. My mother had been directing Sarah to water the trees in the backyard. The last one she told her to water was the tree by her window. Sarah didn’t understand what that meant, so my mother said, “the one by Jason’s fire escape.” Sarah knew exactly what she meant by that, since she had helped plant flowers in there just a few weeks before. Unfortunately, while planting flowers we’d noticed a small tree fighting for life in there as well; a small tree Sarah was very fond of.
This being the case it is not difficult to see how she got confused and so instead of watering the tree planted in the ground near the fire escape, she stuck the hose down in the fire escape instead. My mother knew the tree she had intended to be watered was very thirsty, so she let it run, and run, and run, and run. And run. Only after the water had flooded Jason’s bedroom from wall to wall, and the water level in the fire escape was half a foot over the tops of the flowers did Jason finally wake up and realize that something was amiss.
On Saturday afternoon, the day we came home, my mother had the obligation of attending two family events back to back. This gets tricky because it means that Evee would have to miss out on her afternoon nap, and Sarah her afternoon rest time (where we make her lie down and watch a movie for an hour since she doesn’t nap anymore, but should). The wonderful thing about interesting children is that the more tired they get the more hyper they become. My mother and brother had a most delightful time wrestling the two children and apologizing profusely to everyone around them. Sarah, I am told, even took it upon herself to go digging through a drawer full of guns. The owner of the house explained to my mother that the drawer had been full of guns for forty years and in that time Sarah is the only one to have ever, ever gone digging through it. She would. She is just that interesting. But, no harm, no foul, except for the two small heart attacks no doubt experienced by the homeowner and my mother.
You can imagine the kind of response I got then, when I called my mother as we were driving home. “So,” I asked tentatively, not knowing all that had transpired while I’d been away, “is there any chance of them staying another night? I’ve got a lesson and a talk to plan for church tomorrow, and we’re both in desperate need of a shower and a nap. But,” I added on to sound a little less pleading, “if you want us to come get them I suppose we could.” “You can get them right now,” she said firmly. I could tell she had had enough, and even though I knew none of the details, it wasn’t hard to guess why.
We drove the hour drive from our side of town to Mesa. It was a miracle we stayed awake for it, but it was not hard to keep our eyes open once we learned all the awful truth; less seasoned parents might not have been able to sleep for days.
We gathered the girl’s things together as they tore through the house like howler monkeys, and this is where my mother looked at us and asked quite politely how our Oxford application was coming and if we’d need any help packing. The next day she made a point of telling us she didn’t really mean it and that we weren’t actually allowed to move out of the country. I think if it does actually come to moving away we’ll just leave the kids with the beloved grandparents for a full week. They’d be dropping us off at the airport in no time.
