Every year, my mom’s best friend, whom we call Aunt Kate, generously buys Christmas gifts for all my kids. The kids call her Great Kate – and she is – in so many ways! I think of her near daily as I’m pursuing to raise boyz – or at least safely escort them to adulthood –as she successfully raised two of her own. She had two boys and my mom had two girls. Growing up we would often get together to go swimming in their pool or have them down to the lake for weekend adventures. Life with her two boys were always adventures! Especially when Jamie tried to convince Tommy to ride his tricycle off the roof! Or when Tommy and I went swimming in the bathtub together! It wasn’t until later that I understood why we always stopped by Aunt Kate’s to show her our prom dresses or when we were older she joined us for fittings for our wedding dresses. But when I was a little girl, I always remember she always generously gave us the most wonderful girl gifts for Christmases through the years – monogrammed jewelry boxes that made music when you lifted the lids, pretty silver necklaces, jewelry from her exotic travels and the most memorable – beautiful bride dolls that looked liked us – each very thoughtful and special treasures that I still have today!
But having raised boys, Great Kate “gets it” and she applies her thoughtful art of gift giving to the task each Christmas. Somehow she’s always able to pick just the thing that each of our boyz is into that year – last year she gave Kiefer a floating soccer disc that had rubber bumpers on it and lights up when you kick it and it bounces into the baseboards and slides around the kitchen floor – he still plays with it near daily! And she gave Carter a geology rock kit full of geodes, a hammer, eye goggles, a microscope and tweezers where he could hammer the stones open and investigate their crystal centers. There’ve been lego kits, light up race cars, science experiments – you name it. Each a boy’s dream come true!
And this year raised the bar even higher with an electricity conduction kit that lights up for Kiefer, a lego kit with gears and an idea book for Griffin, a puzzle with winde up cars that ride the puzzle tracks for Fletcher. But the piece de resistance — a Nerf cross bow and arrow set for Carter!
This was like the little boy in “The Christmas Story” opening his Red Rider BB gun as Carter opened the box with his mouth wide open as Mom doesn’t allow Nerf guns in the house. But since it was from Great Kate, it was the exception.
For the remainder of Christmas day Nerf arrows were zinging past my head – the breeze blowing my hair up and near misses left and right. There were near misses of lamps and arrows landing in the fireplace. We all laughed and tolerated the torment hoping the newness would wear off soon. The day after Christmas their aim got better and I was being struck with the arrows while my back was turned. Again, we’d laugh it off. After all, it’s Christmas.
Soon, Fletcher became interested in the cross bow. Actually, more like obsessed. You see, his favorite thing in the whole wide world is his toy sword and sheath that hangs on his belt. He got it for his birthday last June and he still sleeps with it most nights and wears it on his waist belt most days. He’s obsessed with weaponry. He makes me fight him in the kitchen as he’ll dig out my turkey baster and my dough hook from my cooking utensil drawer and will place them in my hands saying “You’re Captain Hook, Mommy, and I’m Peter Pan.” Then I’ll join in and start speaking in my best pirate voice, “Arrrgggghhh! Have Ye Seen My nemesis Peter Pan?” And we’ll continue to sword fight in the kitchen – sometimes ending in the demise of Captain Hook. Yes, I’d say obsessed is putting it lightly. Then I made the mistake of introducing him to the world of Narnia and now he rotates through being Peter Pan or King Peter the Great from Narnia, and sometimes I get to be the White Witch and other times I get to be Lucy. (I much prefer Lucy.)
So a few days after Christmas, I wasn’t entirely surprised to hear a large crashing sound in our front hallway. I came running from the kitchen and before I got all the way there I heard a faint “I’m sorry, Mommy….” from the top of the staircase. My next observation was that our large brass chandelier that hangs in our entry way was swinging back and forth with great gusto and the loud crashing sound was the obvious demise of the wooden divided light window pane that had fallen from our second story entry window after being hit by a Nerf cross bow arrow and had crashed to the ground.
I’m not sure what gave him the idea to practice target shooting from the top of the stairs – it must be a boy thing. He’d already apologized and he obviously had not meant to cause such damage and I’m grateful to report that I actually didn’t over react this time. I just calmly walked to the top of the stairs and gently removed the cross bow from the four year old’s hands, then I picked up the stray arrows that were strewn about the front entry way and I walked them outside to the garage where I disposed of them properly. Sorry, Great Kate. He liked it a little too much.
Daddy-O went to work with his wood glue and clamps and had the window pane pieced back together and back in the window the next day.
Now I have to figure out how exactly to word all this in a proper thank you note for Great Kate. But she had boys… she’ll understand. In fact, I bet she’ll laugh her hearty laugh. After all, she “gets it.”