Yesterday, I started peeling potatoes for dinner when an eager helper came on the scene.
Ellie: Mom, can I help?
Me: Sure, (trying to come up with a job less dangerous than dulling my Good Grips peeler), I suggested she could hand me potatoes or, she could place the potatoes in the bowl once peeled.
Ellie: It doesn’t matter. I’ll do either.
So, after much thought, she was anointed potato hander-offer, I knew the years of playing hot potato were finally about to pay off and we were both happy she was finally putting to use some of her skills.
Helper # 2 snoops around the mashing station.
Hanna: Mom, can I have a job?
Me: Yes, Ellie is going to hand me peeled potatoes, you can set them in the bowl.
Long pause.
Hanna sulking: I wanted to hand you the potatoes.
As if she knew the jobs before arriving on scene and had already decided the passing of potatoes was a far better option than bowl placement despite being several potato sack lengths away when the initial discussion got underway, she scowled.
She argued profusely as if one assignment was a garbage, nothing, made-up job and the other was CEO of the potato factory. In reality, they both sucked.
Something amazing was happening. I’ll admit, it’s happened before to my utter amusement and it was about to happen again. I could pit them against each other and get them to do whatever menial task I wanted.
Okay, Hanna, you can move the baby’s running shoes from the outdoor mat to just in front of the bbq.
Ellie: I wanted to do that!
She raced to complete her task.
I wondered if I should add a timing element but that just seemed cruel.
Ellie, you can count the steps with striations leftover from winter weather and report back to me.
She took off like a shot.
Next, one of you can check the status of the rhubarb patch, the other can tell me if any spiders have made their way back into the plastic, toy garden house.
Hanna: I’m going to play soccer.
And like that, poof. It was gone.
Moments like these don’t happen every day. I’m not professing to be a parenting expert nor am I suggesting for a second that what I was doing was ethical or even legal. I’m simply telling you some days are longer than others and when I occasionally catch a wave, I choose to ride it.
