MATILDA SQUIRTS HER MOTHER

I had lunch at Debbie’s yesterday. I wrote about meeting Debbie at the Sunny Side Up Cafe on June 7th. We have since become friends. She is an amazing mother and she just about has to be with the twins she has. If Abe were an animal he’d be a rhinoceros. That boy runs wherever he goes. I swear whatever he doesn’t run into he climbs on, and then falls. She has to keep a step ahead of him every minute he is awake. Matilda, on the other hand, is a fox. She watches everything her mother does and is determined that she could do everything too. Watching Matilda does not carry the same level of urgency that watching Abe does, a fact that Matilda has already discovered and knows how to put to good use. Once when Debbie was busy with Abe, Matilda pushed a kitchen chair to the sink and started doing the dishes. Water was everywhere but how could you do anything but smile when a child tries so hard to be helpful. And being helpful is her life’s work, if she finds anything out of place she will put it where it belongs immediately. Unfortunately she has her own ideas about where its’ place might be. Debbie found a potato in her underwear drawer and her husband found one of his golf balls in the fruit and vegetable bin of their fridge. Matilda finished her lunch first so she was allowed to get down while Abe had to stay in his highchair until he finished his orange. I was told that getting him to eat his fruit at lunch was a regular battle of wills. Matilda opened the back door, went out on their deck, and peered in at us through the kitchen window next to the breakfast table where we were still sitting. Debbie with her back to the window and bragged about how easy Matilda is to take care of while I watched the little cherub face smile at us. A moment later Matilda was next to the table again holding a small squirt/spray bottle, which her mother filled with water. As she handed the squirt bottle to her daughter Debbie said, “That’s an outside toy. Take it outside before you squirt anything.” Debbie returned to her seat and as she was handing Abe another orange wedge, she suddenly flinched forward as if she had been zapped in the back with a stun-gun. Her angelic daughter had done exactly as she was told. She did not squirt anything until she was outside. I’m guessing that the water in the bottle was pretty cold.