The Flying Pig

Bedtime at our house is 10 PM. Many times 10:30 and nights like tonight, 11:00. I know that's late. There have definitely been embarassing moments when I've purposely avoided sharing that fact during "mommy talk" on volunteer day at the school. One mom will start with, "Oh, what a horrible night, my kids would not go to sleep. It was nine o'clock before those stinkers finally collapsed." Another might chime in, "Oh, I know! And with daylight savings time they are hassling me so much cause they have to go to bed when it is still light outside. Well I am not giving up my precious hours of alone time." I usually nod, secretly wishing I had some of those "precious hours of alone time" they were talking about, but never outwardly admit our bedtime sins.

There is justification in our late hours, it is quite easily explained with, "my husband is a car salesman." If the kids are lucky, their dad walks in the door around 7:30 or 8:00, allowing only two hours of much needed "dad time". (For the kids and for me.) Sonny gets pulled in lots of directions when he gets home, making the evening come alive with superhero talk, computer games to conquer and imaginitive ways to throw bouncy balls at the kids just the right way to make them squeal in excitement. Tonight was one of those nights, busy, loud, and quick. Around 9:55 my responsible 7 year old told me I needed to "stop watching my show and put him to bed." (nice attempt at precious alone time. I'd already tried to move myself into a different room so no one would find me, but I was met with failure.)

At about this same moment our doorbell rang. A couple we are friends with came over to say "hi" so I sent the boys upstairs with pajama assignmets and teeth brushing orders and walked to our messy kitchen table for brief conversation. After awhile Asher and Beck worked their way back downstairs, loving the attention they were getting from strangers. Asher's little "wow, now I can really get attention!" light bulb must have gone off in his little head because he was instantly monopolizing the wife of our visiting duo. He tripped over his words telling story after story about Fluffy Fluffy mom, dad and baby (3 teddy bears), Thor, Captain America and Spiderwoman's crazy adventures of the day and Turtwig, Squirttle Wirrtle, and Ash ketchum- pausing only to allow our friend to try to repeat the name Squirrtle Wirrtle until she got it right. (A pretty impossible feat with our little four year old's pre-school sounding letter tones).

Around 11:00 a call from the stairs informed us "I should be going to bed at 9:30, not 11:00- your friends are staying way too late. Someone needs to put me to bed." Feeling like my dad had just ordered the party to stop and a little guilty that it was actually my son reprimanding my bad behavior, I excused myself and walked upstairs.

Grayson greeted me with a signature scowl and said, "It's a good thing I had this book to read." I apologized and while he climbed onto his already made bed, not wanting to climb "inside" because that would require him to have to make it again in the morning, he pulled his extra fuzzy WALL-E character blanket over his neon yellow Spongebob pajama'd self and told me about his book.

"It's about this pig who wants to fly- but nobody thinks he can do it, so his one friend is the only one who keeps telling him he can. I think the moral of the story is that if you have a dream, you should try and try to do it no matter what. Just keep trying." (He must be learning about story morals, because he'd asked me what the moral was to the Bee Movie earlier that day.)

"I think you're right. That is a great moral. So, if you had an impossible dream, like this flying pig, what would it be?" I asked him.

He thought for a moment, beginning first with a disclaimer, "Well, I don't know if this could be done until maybe the 22nd century (how'd he know there was a 22nd century?) but, I think I want to invent the first teleporter. See, if we had a teleporter it would help people in so many ways. I would never be late for school, we could jump from one country to another country in a second, you could be upstairs and then downstairs in a flash. Stuff like that."

"Wow, that would be amazing. Maybe we could find some inventing books at the library and read more about what it would take to do that." I wondered if I should point out that his impossible dream was really pretty much impossible. He's a smart kid, maybe I could explain how matter can't be broken up and re-put together in other places like that- but then I'm not a smart enough mom to really know what the heck I would mean by that."

He then asked me, "What's your impossible dream mom?" Hmmm. My impossible dream? I knew what it was at age 7, (to be an olympic gymnast-I got far, but no where near there.), I knew what it was at age 24, (to be a successful business owner, I started a yoga business, but found out it was harder than it looked and sold it. I support my husband with Hardman Car Co. but right now I don't think we could call that successful). Hmmm. Can you even have impossible dreams after the age of 30? I was actually a little surprised by the answer, I told him, "I want to write." Really? I do? This writing thing is new to me. I have only basic college English under my belt, know very little vocabulary words, and spend almost zero time practicing- but that is what I said.

So as my responsible 7 year old laid his head on his pillow, dreaming of teleporters and time machines, I thought about how I could be a writer. Remembering my neglected blog, (this is only the 3rd of the month) I excitedly went downstairs and grabbed my laptop. I know it is just a beginning, but I feel better when I at least try to write something. So at 12:14 AM, I am now going to say good night hoping this entry will get me a little closer to becoming a flying pig myself someday.