spynotes ::
  February 13, 2007
Robert Coover doesn't know me

Scene: Harriet's kitchen. AJ, The Girl Next Door and Harriet are making Valentine's cupcakes. Harriet is quietly spreading pink frosting on each cupcake while AJ and TGND talk and sprinkle on enough white jimmies and red heart-shaped sprinkles to send a normal human into a diabetic coma.

TGND: You know what? I saw my mom when she was a kid.

AJ: You mean you saw a video of your mom.

TGND: No, it was a picture. And she was wearing a green T-shirt and she was so cool, she looked just like a babysitter.

AJ: Wow!

- - - - -

Because everyone knows that babysitters are the arbiters of cool. I know I was. Yeah.

A while back, Catherine Newman wrote in her former blog at parentcenter, Bringing up Ben and Birdy, about how she and her husband always thought of themselves as the cool parents but secretly knew there was no way they would ever be as cool as a babysitter. They were parents. How cool could they be?

Nothing makes you feel older than your babysitter.

Mr. Spy and I think of ourselves as cool parents, but I'm pretty sure nobody else thinks of us this way, especially our children and our babysitter, who wears ensembles carefully assembled from Abercromie and Fitch and vintage shops. Pretty much anything in my closet is vintage -- who has time or money to spare for shopping? She has a boyfriend and she runs track. I have a husband and I run AJ wherever he wants to go. Pretty soon she's going to have a car. I have a fifteen-year-old minivan tiled in old Cheerio's. So, you see? I really can�t compete.

Then again, our babysitter doesn�t have a six and an almost six-year-old making her cupcakes in her kitchen on a snowy day. Score one in my column for the pink frosting. Nor will AJ be making her a Valentine that he can hardly keep a secret. Maybe that�s why we decided to spend Valentine�s day together as a family. Because it�s snowy and windy and cold and sometimes some pink and red hearts are just the thing we need to bring us all together and cheer us up out of our February gloom.

Still, I couldn�t help but notice that AJ doesn�t like me to walk him into school anymore. We stroll up the sidewalk and then he stops, his hand raised between us, just out of sight of the glass front doors of his school. �That�s okay, Mommy. You can just go now.� We say goodbye and I kiss him on top of his head. I stay put and he begins to run up the stairs of his school. Then he stops and turns around and comes running back. �I forgot to give you a kiss.� I squat down in the snow and he plants a big noisy kiss on my right cheek. I give him another hug and he runs toward the door, pausing for a moment on the stairs to wave at me before skipping inside.

Nope, definitely not cool. But I'm okay with that.

5 people said it like they meant it

 
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