Eli's 13th Birthday

It's Monday and about to rain. Back to work: meetings with Matt, Vicki, Bonnie, Shannon, and others scattered over the day. Emails to send and to check. I have a small box of papers that I put aside to read "soon" and now I can't exactly remember what's in the box. 

It was the weekend of Eli's birthday, and a joy.  The day before, I pulled him aside.  "Eli," I said with utmost gravitas, "I did not give you permission."  He was concerned, protesting, confused. "I did not give you permission to become a teenager." He was confirmed, amused, embarrassed.   

All Eli really wanted was to have Jackson and Drew, my S.O.'s kids, come up and have squirtgun wars AND an Allman  Brothers t-shirt, both to be opened at the party in the evening.  But to get there, we spend the day working.  All four boys helped me cut up wood with the bow saw, and all four helped me haul it to the street.  One log was so amazingly heavy that it took all five of us, working as hard as we could, to lift and move it.  But we did, feeling slightly superhuman.  

And then more work: Joe had his paper route to do, his first real job, and out of the blue Jacqueline suggested we help him finish it.  So we did!  We drove in the still-new Taurus to ground zero of his route, divvied up the papers, and set off with elaborate instructions (that Dad had a small fit about someone not bringing the printed instructions was so minor no one noticed and will not be mentioned here).  We set off on this lovely, lovely spring day to an orderly ramble through Buckingham, Westcott, Kensington, all those old English names and their young, trim American houses.  Saw a one-armed man building a wall with great purpose and calm; saw a woman scraping leaves off a roof.  It's an odd feeling to walk up to people's doors and stand around in their personal space.  It's a weird threshold of the public and private. I have to remind myself that I have a right to be there, and yet I feel I'm violating someone's privacy somehow.

But the real joy was how grateful Joe was for the help.  It took us about an hour or less all told. He was stunned and amazed, thankful and effusive about how much better that was. Furthermore, we all had fun.  It was a joy to wander the lovely neighborhood, and it was a joy to help Joe.

Such an easy day.  We sat around the table before the Deals arrived and told stories, old stories that we have told 1.7 million times before, about Eli when he was a baby, the one about pronouncing "sausage," the one about "no, my name if 'Fuffy'," stuff like that.  It was delightful. They are delightful.

The night before, we celebrated by watching Survivor, which I actually enjoyed, and The Bourne Supremacy, which I completely enjoyed.  

And so now I have two teenage boys in the house.  Good ones, too.