Tidbits of family life

I love candy. I don’t have it very often, but I’m sometimes craving it, especially the chewy, jujube-y, sour kind. The other night at the store I stop by the cash register and decide to treat myself, choosing two small packets. M looks at me with just this slight irritation, offering: "Maybe just one?" But I smile and reply: "Don’t you argue over this with a pregnant woman!", which the cashier apparently finds hilarious. I share the first packet in the car with LP, then put the other one in my purse. Nearly two weeks later he asks me if he could eat the remaining packet. I tell him "but there’s no more candy! We’ve eaten it all the other day!" And he’s like, "no mommy, there’s another package left, it’s like little red raspberries, in your purse!" I assure him that it’s not the case, he insists about it once or twice, then focuses on something else. The truth is five days before I ate it all by myself while he was outside, and don’t have the nerve to tell him.

The other day the youngest of our neighbors comes inside our house to play, but I can see something’s up. "What’s wrong?," I ask. She talks about her sister and a third neighbor playing outside together, and I can tell she’d really like to go join them. But the third neighbor said she wouldn't be friends with her anymore if she brought LP because he’s "just a baby" and so she’s torn and confused, but she still wants to be nice and to be with my son, whom she adores. I tell her to go if she wants to, and she does. The hardest part is to keep LP inside, and explain to him that he shouldn’t go where he’s not wanted, that we’re better off without people who aren’t nice. He doesn’t understand pettiness yet, and I would do anything to keep him that pure for as long as possible. Why would someone not want to play with him? His heart is broken, and so his mine. Three minutes later the doorbell rings. All three girls are there. The third one says, vaguely concerned: "Why is he crying? Poor thing, his face is all red." I tell her, not angry, but still straight: "He was really sad because you didn’t want to play with him." She blushes. "It’s not that… It’s just that we had this game that was only for big girls and…" LP is not crying anymore. All is forgotten. Everyone is friends again. I could almost hear his heart leaping when he realized that they came to fetch him. They all leave together. I still don’t like the third little girl. I almost never say that about 7 year-old kids but I can totally tell how her parents are raising her to be an entitled, loud-mouthed, A-type brat, and even take pride into that. It's not the first time she does this to LP, and I can see right through her.