The Boy Mom

Today is Sunday, day 2 of my "All about boys" weekend. Dave is out of town, Kate's away at college, so it was just me and my 15-year-old son. And his pal. And ACDC.

It started with the first swim meet of the season yesterday morning. I did my best, though I still earn a solid C -minus in the sports mom department. For starters, I wore the first thing available: the t-shirt I slept in, a pale green number commemorating the 2000 production of A Midsummer Night's Dream the Musical, (about which I am very sentimental, since I designed and built over 100 costumes for it). Having learned from last season that being a swim parent involves at least 4 hours of sitting on a cruel metal bleacher seat, I went prepared. I grabbed the plastic circa 1974 stadium cushion my parents recently returned to me, adorned with my own high school mascot. Oh, and I took some knitting. And some reading.

As I sat among the screaming sea of Mustang spirit red and blue, I realized what an odd bird I was. Even the color of the hat I was knitting was wrong, a parent pointed out. Was I imagining that I was getting squinted glares for my folded copy of the New York Times? No matter. My son was thrilled that I was there for the entire day, even if I did accidentally cheer several times for another boy who looks remarkably like my child (it's so hard to tell when they take off their glasses).

The rest of the weekend went (forgive the pun) swimmingly. Some of the high points:

• Jack's group lunch / movie date with friends while I avoided housework off at home
• Swim team party at local arcade while I made a feeble attempt at that housework
• Hosting a sleepover with Jack's friend Connor, which required nothing more than inflating a guest bed and cooking a frozen pizza
• Breakfast at Krispy Creme
• Trip to hardware store, rolling eyes when boys laughed at word "hard" and horsed around in the trash can aisle as they modeled makeshift Star Wars costumes they made with the merchandise
• Buying mulch and chrysanthemums at the hardware store, creating an allergic reaction in Connor
• Taking the boys to Blockbuster once the minivan was properly aired out
• Watching the boys eat burritos larger than the average newborn infant (okay, I had one too)

I'd say it's been a pretty great weekend so far.

Where the boys are: it's a little noisy, sugary and greasy, but it's nice.