The Kennedys

Terry and I took Wyatt to an Easter egg hunt at the library last Saturday. Wyatt had no idea what he was supose to be doing. If you think about it, Easter is really hard to explain to a kid. There's this bunny and he comes to hide your eggs and give you candy. Why? Well, because Jesus rose from the dead!! Maybe Jesus and the bunny are friends but for the life of me I can't understand his obsession with eggs. Anyway, moving on from that tangent...Wyatt saw all these kids running around so he just started running. In every direction. His brain told him "Look!! There are kids running. So run!! And scream. This is so much fun!!" Terry and I were yelling directions at him. "Look, there's a blue egg by your foot. Wyatt, stop. Look. Over here." So he would pick it up and try to open it then look up and THE KIDS ARE RUNNING!!! He ended up collecting 5 eggs and then a few big kids gave him some more. He was more interested in the running and continued on running even when almost everyone else left.

We met this couple with a son, James, only a few months older then Wyatt. They got along really well although I found James VERY hard to understand. We decided that he was either speaking a made up language or Chinese. James and Wyatt were following each other around, sharing these small bunny toys, and I swear talking to each other. Or rather Wyatt was trying to communate in English while James was speaking in Mandarin or Swahili, whatever. But they seemed to be having fun, none the less. The couple just moved to our small town from Brooklyn and are having a very hard time meeting people. You would think that since our town is so tiny everyone would know one another. And sometimes thats true, especially if you lived here for a long time. But as an outsider looking in I would find it intimidating trying to encroach on that inner circle. We are all people islands. I bet if everyone just took 5 minutes to get to know their neighbors a little better we could make a stronger community. Throw a block party instead of peering over fences, a bunch of BBQing islands. Block parties were so awesome but now its more important to have intangible Facebook friends then reality neighbor friends. Woah, another tangent, anyway....they live a few houses away and before leaving they invited us over at anytime. I should probably bake them something to welcome them to the neighborhood. Thats what someone pre-technology would do.

This scene is pretty classic and frequent in my world. I meet other parents all the time, at the Y, at the playground, at the supermarket, at the library. Sometimes you chat for a minute, maybe make tentative plans at a play date. Or a see you here next week promise. Evidently, Terry doesn't make it out of military-land very often and this was an ENTIRELY new experience for him. I am not exggerating when I say he couldn't wipe the smile off his face. He was so proud of himself, commenting how we were just like the Kennedy family. Making friends with new people, carefully responding and avoiding their questions, rolling around with our kid in the grass with matching Chucks on. And for what it is worth, he's kinda right. We are a family. It might not be the tradional sense of the word but families come in all shapes and sizes. I'm not going to get all mushy and sentimental (although I want too). Sometimes, even I get caught up in the details instead of holding on to the feeling behind the details. Next time someone asks me my marital status or Wyatt's Dad's involvement, I'm going to respond with "We're a family." Lets see what kind of reaction that gets.

This post wouldn't be complete without Another tangent: Terry, if we actually want to be the Kennedys, we have to have a bunch of more kids. Enough kids to play football on the beach. And I think thats a conversation best had over A LOT of drinks.