A Big Day

In the middle of all the news this week, an event that probably seems small to the rest of the world, went unnoticed. This event, to those who experienced it, was extraordinary. I guess what with all the new president stuff, and news media stories about how nothing actually did change over night, but they were still waiting, there was not any room for a local story. A little human interest story.

On Wednesday, my doorbell rang. I have mentioned before that my doorbell rarely rings. It is either UPS (good!) or some overblown person running for the school board who wants to tell me how great they are (not good!), or folks who would like to include me and my family in the competition for the 144,000 most likely to get to the top spots in the afterlife (considerate!). It was none of the above. It was 2 little girls from across the street who wanted to know if Genea could come out to play.
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The little girl goes to school with Genea, and the other is her sister. They came by once before, months ago, when Genea was on a tear. I had to tell them no, she could not come out. Part of it though, was at the time I was really startled to find kids on my doorstep! Our learning curve here is skewed off in all kinds of wonky directions. Most moms, and definitely Super Mom, have planned this out in their minds years in advance. You know, like, when I have kids I am not going to let them cross the street alone until they are 9. My kid will only drink water and eat healthy bran flakes and twigs and never shall sugar cross her lips. Or, my kid won't wear make up until she is 14. Stuff like that. I never planned for kids in the first place, let alone what to do with them. Then, I went and jump started things by having 2 kids in 2 years but one was already 4. So I am learning, as these things come up, how I will handle the situations.

ANYway, so the little girl across the street is in the same class with Genea and they sit at the same table in class. She came by months ago to play and never came back. I remember being a kid and my sister and I had friends all over the block. We would cut through yards, get in all kinds of trouble and do all the things we were not supposed to when our Mom could see us. It is soooooo important for kids to have friends. I would be so thrilled, really, for each of my girls to have a good friend! So I hollered up the stairs to Genea that her friend was at the door and did she want to go out to play? Genea floated down the stairs to put all of her snow gear back on and off they went. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Seriously, Genea has never been in a social situation that I was not monitoring closely, or at school with professionals. There are a lot of really good reasons for this. A lot. We have only had her for a year and a half. Kids who are 5 have had 5 years to grow and develop and be age appropriate and be goofy 5 year olds with 5 years of experience. Genea has had 18 months. An automatic disadvantage. Especially when the first 6 of those were spent in a grief filled state of terror. But this has been a ''lights-on'' week for her. There are weeks at a stretch where she has difficulty with everything in her path, and there are weeks where she does just fine. We are in a just fine week. And so, I had a second to decide what I was going to do, and my decision was to let Genea go over to her friends house across the street. I ran back upstairs to a dark window and plastered my face to it. Every few minutes, I went back up to make sure nothing bad was going on outside the house. I don't know what, but the first few things that come to mind are an ambulance arriving, fire shooting into the sky, loud cracking sounds, those sorts of things. Supermom would have had these folks social security numbers with copies of the drivers licences of all adults in the house. She would have them on speed- dial, heck, she would probably have gone over there with Genea, left handouts on various disorders and brought Teena too, to supervise. But my instinct that day was that Genea needs to be normal and needs to experience normal and she was ready for it. And so I let her fly solo. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

Well, I let her fly solo to the extent that I was crawling out of my own skin and had to bite the bullet after a half hour and went to get her. She was fine. She did not want to go home, she said, but in the driveway she admitted she was ready to come back. They had just played like regular kids do and everything was fine. They have some unusual animals at this house, which reportedly scared Genea to the point that it was mentioned to me twice already by the adults. But otherwise, just fine. JUST FINE!!!!!

So, the next time the news comes on to announce that today is the first time 3 consecutive days have passed with an African American President in the White House, remember will ya', that the real news, is going unreported.

( no disrespect intended to the new President I just think most of us have figured out by now that he is the first African American President and other things can be reported on)(and I was watching Nightline and the dumbass reporter actually said, on Wednesday, that basically despite all the promises of change, it is still hard to alter your mortgage!)