Skeletons In My Closet

I really enjoy spending time with my friend, Sandy. She has two boys, both older than my boys, who just happen to be setting the gold standard for how young men should turn out in today's society. They're just neat kids. I don't get to see Sandy often, but when I do, I turn a sharp eye and willing ear to her practical parenting because...well...she's just a neat parent. One who inspires great hope in me that I will survive this fascinating journey through boyhood, and one who thankfully provides necessary tips and tidbits on how I can win a few points along the way.

The fascinating thing is that Sandy is the consummate girly girl, yet she has this knack, this bizarre instinct, this finely honed and well researched skill base for how to be an Ultimate Boy Mom. Her house is amazing. She has a flair for fluffing a cozy nest, yet it also resembles the Museum of Natural History. There are bowls of fresh lemons, and porcelain tea cups, and lace doilies, but there are also heavy wooden library shelves housing volumes and volumes of field guides, and old mason and apothecary jars filled with specimens and fossils and bones. Bones! It is impossible to describe that without making her sound like the Adams Family, but the woman has created a haven that is alluring, and educational, and inviting. One of my boys visited her some time ago and was particularly taken by a particular skull. So much so that he asked her if he could keep it. Mortified. That's what I was. Purely mortified. (He was much younger then. I've since whipped him into shape. Ha!)

Once in a blue moon, Sandy and I meet up at the Starbucks to share stories and offer encouragement. (I sit all starry eyed, making mental notes of every syllable she utters and silently pledging to do more cool things for my boys.) On our last visit she passed along a few treasures that her boys had outgrown, and imparted to me a very special gift. She found a skull, much like the one a certain offspring had once admired, and she took it home and boiled it for me. She boiled me some bones. If you are a Boy Mom reading this, you know just how tender that gesture was. It's a sisterhood is what it is. Those of us banding together, tempering our girlie-ness and harnessing that inner ability to find, touch, and boil things that are sure to impress young boys. Or, as is the case with me, those of us copying whatever Sandy does.

Needless to say, when I arrived home and presented the ziplock baggie, my son melted. His face lit up, and for those precious moments, he looked at me like I was as cool as Sandy. It was awesome. He has since found a mouse head in the flower bed and asked if I will boil it for him. Presumably, in the same pot in which I cook dinner. Oh, this boy thing. I'm so glad I have my trusty mentor to give me pointers.

Okay, Sandy. I've got bones in my closet. I'm making headway, and it's all good.