Sunday with friends
We went to a child’s birthday party on Sunday. Lyuba and Pasha are among our closest friends, so even though little Tim, at 4, is a bit younger than my children, our family presence at his celebration was a given.
The rest of the guests had kids right around Tim’s age. My two girls were the oldest by a margin, although we discovered at some point a presence of a 14-year-old boy, who looked barely 10, glued to his mobile phone and indifferent to the proceedings. Becky rejected the idea of making acquaintances, preferring instead to insinuate herself into adult conversations. Kimmy, as she often does, found things to occupy herself with, first on her own and later entertaining two-year-old Ben, Anya’s and Ari’s son, with whom she has a mutual adoration thing going.
A dozen little kids, running around, fighting over toys, screaming and throwing stuff, and basically behaving in the only way little kids know, gave me a headache to rival those I get from loud restaurant parties. Several glasses of wine helped very little, so a number of musically-inclined adults sequestered ourselves inside the house for a bit of guitar-aided singing and idle banter, while the little kids continued running amok in the garden. Somewhat unsurprisingly, Becky and Kimmy chose the adult company, and Ben, of course, followed Kimmy wherever she went.
A thought struck me: I am now so used to having comparatively grown children, mostly self-sufficient and no longer requiring to be constantly looked after, that I’m growing positively allergic to being exposed to little kids in large quantities.
Although, truth be told, when Kimmy has a bunch of her friends over at our house, as happened the other day, – and certainly when Becky has her friends for a sleep-over – I tend to lock myself in my study and even ask for my meals to be delivered there. So, this allergy has got to be not so much age-related, as it is quantity-based…
Anyway, my health soon improved, and we spent the rest of the day catching up with friends on a leisurely walk around St John’s Wood and at dinner. A great day, on balance!
My kids are so much older now that I have recently been able to let them have friends over in limited numbers when I’m not home. (I wouldn’t let them have a party or anything…)
But that’s because they’re 1) 16 & 19, and 2) I’ve met their friends, they are good kids, computer geeks one and all, and completely unlikely to suggest illicit activities. Except maybe overclocking the CPU or pirating software and, well, the neighbors aren’t going to call the cops for that.
It is strange to be around really little kids now, I feel very much like a curmudgeon because I have *no* tolerance.
I like the fact that I can have a conversation with my kids much more than I liked cooing and fussing over them when they were little. Of course, at 8 and almost 14, I still have ways to go…