This summer has been a terrible time for posting; there was way to much yon and not nearly enough hither. And the hither that did come was far too hot and sticky to be spent in any way other than drowning out the sounds of my kids with the whir of my blender as it introduced ice to tequila in its peculiar and violent way.
For her part, The Mom has been absent, working the kind of hours that most people only work when their jobs come with expense accounts at places named "Happy Endings." The twins are aware of her absence and enjoy passing the time hypothesizing about her whereabouts. Most of the time they agree that she lives at the train station, although sometimes they'll just point to a random house and declare that to be where their mom now resides. Through careful questioning, I have ascertained that their mom lives in these new places because our house is too small and it smells like feet.
One day last week, when Victoria awoke early enough to spy The Mom as she walked out the door, Victoria turned to me and exclaimed, "Look, Daddy, look! It's Mama!" Then her little toddler hand twisted the knife in her mother's heart when she ran out on the front porch and bawled, "Mama, will you visit us again soon?"
That morning The Mom left a trail of deep red blood all the way from our house to hers.
So Friday, The Mom took us all to the shore. And by that I mean she sat down that morning at my computer and said, "Come get me when everyone is sunscreened and in the car. And don't forget coffee."
The shore was brilliant. As any long time reader of this site knows, I'm not adept at writing about actual good times with my kids, but a good time this was. For a whole day we attacked that beach, running and swimming and building and destroying. The sea was surprisingly choppy, and Kathryn stood out in it for hours as wave after wave battered her tiny frame. "That was nothing!" she'd roar out to sea after each one crested over her. "A big bottle of nothing!" Then she'd get pounded off her feet by the next wave and resurface ten feet away, sputtering and coughing up sea water, but that's just because she's seven and hasn't yet learned to stop talking while underwater.
As much as Kathryn couldn't be pulled away from the water, the twins couldn't be pulled from their mother. Not that I tried, mind you. And thus I was free to spend my time doing what I wanted. Like digging a big ol' hole in the sand and then finding a seven-year-old that fit into it perfectly.
We stayed on the beach for almost seven hours, until Kathryn could barely stand and the twins were seconds away from losing their minds with the fun of it all. It was Lila who finally called the whole thing to a halt by gently whimpering the word "home" and then adhering her face to my wife's shoulder using her patented mixture of tears and snot. So home we went, where for the rest of the Labor Day weekend, The Mom stayed put. Even if it smelled like feet.