Wowwwww what a long day. So much socializing. So much frenzied child energy.
My 11 year old son is with me this week for spring break – if you don’t already know this about me, I have my son for holidays and summer, his dad has him for the school year and it’s been this way for the past 4 years – and we took a day trip to San Diego to see our old friends because that’s where I raised him until he was 5.
Back then me and two other moms, Lindsay and Jessie, had a little crew of our four boys, all the same age, and we did everything together: beach, park, preschool, etc. I lost touch with them when I moved in 2016, but hit them up a few days ago to see if they wanted to have a little reunion. They both said yes so we did what we used to do every Wednesday and hit the Ocean Beach farmer’s market and Pizza Port afterwards. The boys were a little shy at first, but they reluctantly started talking and pretty soon it was as if no time had passed.
2013 // yesterday. We’ve added a few since then.
In fact, they were like a pack of wild dogs. You know how kids get, their adrenaline starts pumping and they, like, go nuts. There was so much screaming and wrestling and joking and chaos. So while me and the other moms caught up on life, the kids ran wild at the pizza place. We talked about everything: what we’ve been doing, work, relationships, my sobriety, why we waited so long to get together after all these years.
We parted ways around 8, but my kids were still fired up and the walk back to the car was um, disorderly. Maximum silliness to the point of not listening, bordering on obnoxious. I start to get anxious. I ask them to calm down. They didn’t calm down. They’re running around the sidewalks, shouting at each other, pushing. I feel my chest get tight. I take a deep breath. I bark at them to pull it together, all the while trying so desperately to remind myself they are just kids having fun – no matter how irksome they may be. I try to ignore them.
I still have to yell at them in the car a few times and threaten to withhold all fun in their lives, but I didn’t lose my cool. It was hard, but I bet you if I had even one drink I would have been reduced to tears and swearing (okay, I did swear, but only like twice).
Kids are a whole other type of crazy and not drinking makes it a lot easier to deal with them in a constructive, healthy, loving way.