Twue Wuv
posted in Arizona, Friends, OmegaDotter, Parenting, Socializing |We have returned. We had a lovely time visiting with GrannyJ and OmegaBro and family. We swam, we walked, we visited, I worked (multiple days, bah, but it was mostly my own stupid fault), we hung out, we got lots and lots of sun, and OmegaDotter now is no longer scared of bugs but is busy collecting them (courtesy of OmegaBro and Niece and Nephew). I got lots of dark nights (yay!) and some stars (yay!) and lots of clear electric blue skies, ponderosa pines, and monsoon storms.
But I will discuss those things in more detail later. Maybe.
The most important thing, though, was that I managed to locate and contact One And Only True Love’s family in secret and managed to get the dotter up to Small Mountain University Town for a visit with him without her knowing what was going on.
I lied my head off to do this. I told her I had looked them up in the phone book and couldn’t find them. I told her the surprise I was working on didn’t work out. When I said we were going up to SMUT, with a stop at Slide Rock State Park, and she asked if we could please, please, puh-leeze find a way to meet up with OAOTL, I shook my head with a sad smile and reminded her that I couldn’t get their information and didn’t remember where they lived.
Hah-hah!
So we did Slide Rock, then motored on up the hill to SMUT, and she fell asleep–worn out from playing, and I had to drive out one of my favorite roads hoping I could time her rise from her nap to coincide with us getting back into the right neighborhood at the right time.
Which I did. (Picture OmegaMom with a smirky, triumphant grin right now.)
At which point–she was awake and excited to be back in SMUT–I said, “Hmmm. Now I think I can remember where he lived–wasn’t their house down this way?” and turned off the road onto another, and then another, and she started recognizing things and got excited. I pulled the car to a stop across the street from their house–which had been painted so I couldn’t recognize it when I went scouting–and she said, with great excitement, “That’s it! That’s his house!”
I said, doubtfully, “Hmm. I’m not sure, love, it doesn’t look the same to me. But maybe we could knock on the door and see if they know where he lives now.” We went across the street, up the deck stairs, to the door, and before I could even ring the doorbell OmegaDotter was trying to open the screen door, and OAOTL’s mom was there, and OAOTL was barging out saying, “OMEGADOTTER!“
At which point, OmegaDotter became quite suddenly still and stiff and shy, which she has been doing lately.
Um.
Now this I had not expected. I had expected her to swarm all over him like a crazed monkey. I had expected her to stand with her hands clasped at her waist with a particularly goofy grin that she has when she’s over-the-moon happy. I did not expect awkward silence.
At this point, I was terrified that everything was Going To Go Wrong. But she pulled my head down and whispered into my ear to ask if this was my surprise, and said, quietly shocked, “You lied! Oh, you bad mommy!”
So she and OAOTL sat, awkwardly, on different spots on the sofa while OAOTL’s mom and I made small talk.
OAOTL produced the most lovely, sweet drawing with “I LOVE YOU OMEGADOTTER!” written on it, and huge hearts, and two pictures of two kids holding hands, one in a boat. OMG. It was simply not the sort of thing you’d expect from a seven-year-old boy. (OAOTL’s mom tells me that all of his “girlfriends” have looked just like her, and his latest had said something like “OmegaDotter, OmegaDotter, OmegaDotter! I am so tired of you talking about OmegaDotter!” shortly before she stopped being his friend…)
The kids, however, were still not smiling or touching or anything at this point. It was…just plain awkward.
Luckily, we had made arrangements to take them off swimming at the swanky new aquatic center. By the time we got there, the awkwardness had evaporated: the dotter and OAOTL were chattering their heads off, and once we were in the pool area, she and OAOTL sprinted off to the waiting line to go down the immense water slide. We hung out there for an hour, and then headed off for pizza at the cheap Chuck E. Cheez clone, and then back to OAOTL’s house for trampoline jumping and playing, and then it was time to go…
Both kids swarmed into OAOTL’s bedroom, scampered up onto his bunk bed, and started bouncing onto and off of each other and shouting “NO!” and “Can’t I spend the night?!” and “When can she come back?!”
OmegaDotter later told me I was the very best mom ever, and it was the greatest surprise ever.
Here are the kids towards the beginning of the visit, just beginning to warm up again:
And here they are when trying to avoid her going back to GrannyJ’s:
I now have address, phone number, and email address safely sent–via email–to all three of my email addresses, so there is no way we can lose them now.
