I really didn’t know what to expect other than knowing that girls laugh a LOT. As well as being imbued with the ability to talk incessantly about anything and everything. They were still awake at 1:00 am and I could hear them laughing and running up and down the stairs. I heard the bathroom door close every time one of them had exceeded their intake limit of pop. They came with bags of chips and other snacks, their reinforcements for a night of hilarity. The sugar and caffeine from the pop and general childish inanity that goes with being with friends had them fueled for a long night of merriment. No shenanigans were to be had just crazy fun with their BFFs.
Jess had spent many a night at their homes but there always seemed to be a reluctance either for Jess to invite them here, or perhaps on the part of the parents to let them stay. Jess has three older brothers and for some parents whose job it is to protect their children, this house full of older male siblings seemed like a gamble they weren’t ready to take with their daughters. Being a social worker who has worked with high risk families, with pregnant teens or parenting teens I could well understand their underlying fears. I think though that having three girls come over en mass somewhat lessened their fears to the point of manageability.
I was watching the news last night and there was an Amber alert out for a three- year- old boy, still a baby in my eyes, that some young mother had let get in a car and go with someone she knew only by Chris. The mother stated that Chris was only going to do some errands but after three hours elapsed with no sign of her very young son she called the police. Now that my friends is one mother who was either higher than a kite, was jonesing, and/or had lost her ability to think logically and reason things out, thereby losing the protective factors necessary to keep her son safe. Or perhaps someone who never really understood what it was to be loved, cherished by her own parents and thereby didn’t know how to protect her son from predators. Either way her young son was finally located in Rochester, NY and they were reunited. She may be charged with something like neglect or endangering the welfare of a minor for allowing her baby to go unescorted with a man she barely knew. I think maybe that isn’t enough to shelter this baby from harm but what other options are there, short from taking him from his mother, not always the best option either.
Shield, defend, guard, watch over, these are all things we as parents are charged with as well as to love, adore, raise, educate, and see our children as jewels in our crown of life. We are almost like sentries or sentinels who patrol the periphery of their lives to keep them safe from all harm. There are times when we can’t keep them safe, we can’t wrap them in bubble wrap, they have to live their lives too and sometimes they get hurt physically, emotionally, and sometimes mentally. We as parents do the best we can using what we know from our own parents, our own upbringing or from things we have learned during our own journey through this thing we call life.
The gender things comes into play here. We tend to think about our girls as fragile and delicate as flowers and we want to keep them safe far longer than our sons. I love that one cartoon character that was created by a T-shirt company in Florida, David and Goliath. It is a bit controversial in some circles but for me it embodies the way I wish my girlie saw boys till she was at least thirty.
I do have to mention that my girl is no shrinking violet, her brothers run from her because she is as rough and tough as them, if not more so. At her last basketball game she had a foul or two; at the last hockey game she played in she was in the penalty box three times. She plays defense and she protects her house like a bastard. (My favorite saying). In lacrosse if the ball goes in the corner she comes out with it nine times out of ten. My girl takes no guff and to me that is a good thing. My sisters say to me all the time “you plant corn, you get corn” as a metaphor for my life. I had five brothers, one was a year younger and one a year older. They were tough and I was tougher, I never let them make me cry if we fought. My feet were always firmly planted on the ground and I wouldn’t budge an inch, if I didn’t want too. I love my favorite daughter as much as I do my three sons and like Bruno Mars sings “I would catch a grenade for you” that is what you do for someone you love with all your heart, unconditionally, forever and ever.
This morning I will go down and cook the girls, and the boys, breakfast and then Jess is off to a basketball practice and two hockey games today and the boys to wrestling practice. GO REGALS!!! GO FALCONS!! I love being a lacrosse, hockey, wrestling, and now a basketball mom.
PS i just did a fb chat with my friend 2 let her know i blogged. she said she saw it and would read it later but first she had to get her kids to stop killing each other LOL. i replied i know what u mean i have days like that daily bahahahaha
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