Indispensable Mom
Sure there are days when I’m so desperate for my kids to grow up and move out that I envision calling the locksmith to change all the locks as soon as they leave for school. But more often than not, I feel sad watching them grow up. No one to need me anymore. No one to annoy (other than my husband.) No one to embarrass (other than myself.) No one to boss around (other than everyone else within a 5 mile radius.) Luckily, Annika proved to me the other day that there are still many things I have to teach my children. She wrote one-page (single-spaced) persuasive essay (do kids voluntarily write any other kind?) trying to convince me to run out and by her a bathing suit. Never mind the fact that we were rushing to pack and get ready for a camping weekend to a place we’d never been before and therefore had to get our trailer there before dark so we wouldn’t wind up parking all 32 feet of it on a bear’s ass. Never mind the fact that I still hadn’t finished homeschool duties. Never mind that I hadn’t even gotten the camping groceries. Never mind that I had 3 hours worth of stuff to do in 30 minutes. But when I eventually had time to read her futile words, I saw that she wrote about how she “really needed a bathing suit but NOT A HAMY DOWN!” She didn’t know how to spell hand-me-down. An extra bonus…neither did her 13 year-old brother! Yay! I’m not dispensable (yet)!