Work = Play

My job for the summer is playing. It’s not all I’m doing. I’m getting some quality reading in, I’m learning how to do yoga and swing dance, I’m studying for some tests and I’m getting applications ready for life beyond Burundi. But I’m getting paid to play.

My clients are talkative, tiring, and typically less than four feet tall. They ask lots of questions and have high standards for me. One minute I have to be a lion and chase them around the yard, the next they want to wrap me up in a parachute. They stage little competitions, and due to my long-lost finesse with the hula hoops and jump ropes, they win every time – and I’m pretty sure they planned it that way. They make me eat chocolate and cheerios as fast as I can; I even have to stick out my tongue at the end to prove they are gone. At my objection to an activity comes a confused look of disappointment. These are tyrants.

Their names are Bailey, Jamie, Nick, Julianne, Emma, Annie, Delia and Giovanni. Sometimes they bring friends along and I have even more bosses for the day. They have the best quality of a leader; they don’t make you do anything you don’t want to do, but they really know how to make you want to do what they want. For example, the painting episode. I decided to paint with Bailey and Jamie on the first day I sat for them. They globbed paint all over the plates and paper, created indecipherable pictures, then proceeded to move the paint from the paintbrush to their fingers to their legs and arms. Mess made, we went to clean up and I figured we’d wait a while until painting again. How naïve of me.

The next day, about 15 minutes after I got there, the girls ask when we’re going to paint today. Hmmm, later, I reply. Go get your sticker books and we’ll do that for a while. Sure that enough distractions would hold me over until their mother came home, we stickered – “Is is later now?” – and Little Bear’ed - “Is it later now?” – and snacked - “Now??” – and I realized I wasn’t getting out of it. My ruse wasn’t enough for girls who wanted to paint. Plus they held the trump card: the declaration “You said we could,” strengthened by raised eyebrows and a sad little pout.

I have been sitting on babies for a long time now, and it’s changed a good bit over the years. For one thing, there’s beginning to be less of an age difference between me and the mom than the kids. I can feel it in a lot of ways. Yesterday afternoon, as I was watching Nick and Julianne play Freddie the Fish on the computer and my eyelids started getting heavy, Julianne timidly asked if I was tired. She seemed perplexed by it – it was the middle of the day, after all – and I wondered if that ever happened to her sprightly nine year old body. It struck me that this might be the main difference between us now. I still like to play dress-up and hide in treehouses and not clean up too. I love to run and catch and jump and fall. They just don’t get tired. And this would help explain how when I got home, I wanted to plop on the couch and fall asleep at 9:30. Like a grown-up.

When did that happen?