This post was originally published on May 19, 2004. The twins are now in second grade, and Twinsday is no more. (It’s been replaced by Gaming Lunch With Sarah, of which I will write more later.)
There’s a new day in my week. It’s called Twinsday, and it’s taken the place of Thursdays. It started last year, when Sarah G. called me one week and asked if I’d like to go with her and the kids to the Farmer’s Market downtown. Sure, I told her, and off we went to Shockoe Bottom, one of my favorite parts of town, and close to where I originally wanted to live when I first started looking for apartments. I don’t live there because the Richmond definition of loft has almost nothing to do with the New York/New Jersey definition of loft. Hate to tell you this, Richmond, but a loft apartment does not mean that you stick the bedroom up on, like, a wooden rack with stairs and call it a loft (and charge extra for it).
Anyway. Twinsday. Once a week, most weeks, through the summer and on into much of the autumn, we went to the Farmer’s Market and bought fresh produce and looked at the ostrich eggs and the crafts and jewelry, and then we’d go do something else for an hour or two, maybe take a trip to Hollywood Cemetery or a drive to some tourist spot we wanted to see. Then we’d have lunch and head for home. We kept up the habit throughout the winter and spring, as there are many more places in Richmond than Shockoe to run errands and pass the morning, and we like hanging out together. Besides, lunches with two-year-olds are fun.
Slowly but surely, I’ve become a regular enough part of Max and Rebecca’s life that they’ve now started saying "Meryl car!" when they see a Jeep. Max gets greatly concerned if I visit with them and suddenly (to him, anyway) disappear. This afternoon, I met the G.’s at the T-ball field to babysit the kids while Larry coached his son’s team and Sarah went off to a meeting. Turned out that Larry wasn’t coaching after all, and Max thought I’d be heading back home with them in the van, even though I took pains to point out my Jeep to him and explain I’d be driving it and meeting them at home. Larry tells me he asked for me on the drive home, and Max was much relieved when he saw me pull up. Larry and I thought he was trying to tell us about Pooh Bear when I arrived. Turned out he was saying something that sounded very much like pooh, but was spelled differently, and involved his diaper. Oh. I thought he might have been saying that, but then, he does love Pooh very much. Anyway, I was out pitching to Nate while Jake did his homework and Larry finally figured out what his youngest son had been telling him. Poopy diaper, not Pooh Bear. Check.
I taught Nate to choke up on the bat and he started pounding the ball through the yard. Ha. Works every time. Then I got to help Jake with his spelling homework. Y’know, I remember having to use the word in a sentence, but not having to write a story using ten of the spelling words. I think I like my spelling homework better.
Last Thursday, Larry met us at the Farmer’s Market and we all went to lunch together. There was a Chinese restaurant "just down the street," he told us. I had Rebecca in one stroller, Larry took Max in the other, and Sarah got to just walk for a change. The restaurant was not exactly "just down the street." It was actually up the street, literally, as there is a bit of a hill at that part of East Main. Actually, it’s a lot of hill. And by the way, the temperature was in the mid-eighties, and it doesn’t matter if you’re wearing shorts while pushing a child in a stroller uphill. You still get hot and tired. So as we crossed block after block, with Larry saying, "I think it’s just one more block," I just pushed the stroller and panted silently up the hill, thankful that Rebecca weighs only a little more than Tig, grateful to the person who invented the wheel, and thinking that I didn’t have enough breath to talk with, anyway. When I spoke to Sarah about the walk a few days later, I found that I wasn’t the only one who was beginning to think that if Larry said, "It’s just one more block" one more time, he might not live to see the next one.
It’s interesting watching the kids when Daddy is around. Rebecca is Daddy’s Little Girl. The rest of the world pretty much ceases to exist. Max is still Mom’s Special Boy, but he’s clearly happy to see Daddy during the middle of the day, a special treat. And Aunt Meryl? Obviously, she’s there to push the strollers and clean up messes. She’s also great as another source of food for Rebecca. A couple of months ago, we had lunch in a Chinese restaurant (one that didn’t require a long walk uphill), and my plate of chicken and broccoli became Rebecca’s so fast that all I could do was marvel at how much that child can put away, and try to eat some of mine before she could grab it all. She eats nearly half my roast beef sandwiches, generally. At least, half of the meat part. She mostly ignores the bread. And, oh yes—she likes to shove huge pieces of food in her mouth, enough so that I try to get her to take smaller bites. Whereupon she looks me dead in the eye the next time she crams an adult-sized helping into her mouth. Oh, yeah. Larry’s gonna have a fun time when this one becomes a teenager.
It’s obvious that from Rebecca’s point of view, my main function on these trips is to supply her with my food. I think my main function to Max is simply to be there. Last week he clearly called me “Aunt Meryl†and I got that little rush of joy that you get when you realize that yes, the children are getting as attached to you as you are to them. Max gave me a hug goodbye tonight. Rebecca was practicing for her teen years, and playing her "Read my mind and mood" game. "Rebecca?" I asked. She kept walking. Yup. Larry’s gonna have a great time when this one is thirteen.
I’ll be starting a new job next week, mornings, half days. But not Thursdays. On Thursdays, I’ll be working from two to six. Thursday is Twinsday, and I’ve got places to go, people to push in strollers. And lunches to share.