no longer have the energy or the resources to do anything about this mess. Besides, why put your money into something that five boys are going to destroy?
The basement floods on a regular basis, the roof has a series of suspicious peaks and valleys, the chimney is crumbling, and the paint is peeling. If you touch a window, a pane of glass is likely to fall out; duct tape is the repair tool of choice. When we arrive on the weekends, the mice look at us like “What the hell are you doing here?” and slowly saunter off under the furniture with exasperated expressions. Having had the entire place to themselves all week, they see no need to vacate for our sakes. I think “unbelievable rodent activity” is how the Orkin man described it. The house is in such disrepair it has a white-trash quality. We even boast the requisite broken-down vehicles. The only difference is that instead of old beat-up Chevys and Fords, we have broken-down Land Rovers and Porsches, complete with cinder-block pedestals.
Our yard is filled with more plastic fantastic than a Toys “Я” Us. We have every garage sale item Little Tikes ever made. You know the ones: the turtle sandbox, the log cabin playhouse, the slide, the orange and yellow car; they’re all there, acting as a neon welcome sign to passing children. There are armies of bikes in every size and state of disrepair. All varieties of sporting equipment litter the lawn. As a testament to the overabundance of balls in my life, every possible type litters the yard. I do not recall which one of the boys became a bocce enthusiast, or what prompted us to install a tetherball pole, or the last time anyone played horseshoes, but should you want to engage in any of those games, or countless others, come on down. The entire scene looks like the French Quarter the day after Mardi Gras. Then there are the dangerous boy toys—the motorcycle, the go-cart, and—the ne plus ultra of all bone-breaking yard activities—the trampoline. These items tend to cause mothers with weaker constitutions to reverse out of the driveway as soon as they pull in, their children still safely strapped in their car seats. On some days, I swear I can catch a glimpse of the personal-injury lawyers hiding in the bushes.
My boys have made friends with a family of home-schooled kids down the road. They live on an old working farm and they heat their farmhouse by burning logs in a woodstove and piling hay bales against the outer walls for insulation. Their water comes from a well on their property that often gets contaminated and becomes undrinkable when some random bit of wildlife gets in and drowns. Those kids are not allowed to play on our trampoline or ride the go-cart, because their mother thinks they are too dangerous. Meanwhile, on their property is a dilapidated barn with huge holes in the upper floor. If you were to fall through, you would drop straight down two stories to land on a row of hogs or a couple of dead pigeons and a pile of boards studded with rusty nails. If the barn doesn’t do you in, you are sure to be zapped by one of the electrified wires hidden in the tall grass, or be butted by an angry goat. Despite being fed all the organic grains in the world, kids are still going to be goofy; her youngest once fastened a bungee cord to a tree branch in their yard, then proceeded to jump out of the tree with the other end in his mouth, managing to rip out half his teeth in the process. I guess we all have our own idea of what is dangerous.
The farm kids don’t have television and though they do have a computer, it is for educational purposes only. They aren’t allowed to play any of the popular online games, which their parents think are too violent. They are polite children, perhaps a bit socially awkward, but it’s hilarious to overhear them playing a game of chase with my kids.
“When I catch you, I’m going to slit your throat and hang you up upside down by your feet until all your blood drains out! Then I’m going to skin you and butcher you and put you in the freezer until winter!”
You certainly don’t learn that kind of talk from World of Warcraft.
AS YOU CAN IMAGINE, OUR PLACE IN THE COUNTRY IS A CHILD PARADISE, to the likes of which apartment living cannot compare. City children love it here. So much, apparently, that on one Thursday afternoon I started receiving messages from various parents thanking me for inviting their kids up for the weekend. What? After the third mother (and fourth child) left a thank-you on our answering machine, I decided I had better investigate. I collared Peik and Truman, the only two old enough for unassisted sleepovers.
“Have you two been inviting friends for the weekend without asking me first?”
“Dude,” Peik said, turning on Truman, “it’s my week to have friends, not yours.”
“According to whom?” I wanted to know.
“Mom,” Truman shot back, “Peik always has friends. It’s my turn.”
“Well, I don’t see how it’s going to work. I will ask your father when he gets home.” They both groaned, knowing this is what I usually say when I’m not going to give them what they want.
I have nothing against my boys having friends around. It’s well worth any extra work, because when either Peik or Truman has company they are far less likely to spend the weekend trying to kill each other. Guests keep them out of my hair. They are particularly appealing in the country, where I can simply lock the door and let them in only for meals or the occasional emergency bathroom break, which does not include peeing. “Pee in the grass like you always do,” I say through the screen of the locked door. Blake is usually around to make sure the boys don’t burn down the outbuildings while creating some kind of AID (airborne incendiary device), and the motorcycle and go-cart usually break down before anyone has a chance to get hurt.
The problem with having four extra boys for the weekend is mainly a logistical one. As crazy as it may sound, on the weekend in question I decided I actually wanted all four kids to come along. If I could figure out how to transport and host them, perhaps some grateful mother would be willing to take a boy or three off my hands for an extended period, sort of a parenting karma payoff. But I am obliged to take along my already existing children; there is just no way to legally drive all this extra miniature manhood, too. Back in my day, we would just pile in the back of the station wagon, but Ralph Nader has ruined all that good clean fun, and the law requires me to provide each of these children with an actual seat and safety belt.
“Peter, we’ve got a problem.” I turned to my husband to come up with a solution. It was Thursday night of a long week, so my synapses were not properly firing; there was no way I could solve this one. Peter’s plan was simple. We made sure Blake was up for a crazy weekend, rented a second car, split up the crowd, and headed for the country.
I was awakened on Saturday morning by the sound of a go-cart and a dirt bike outside my bedroom window. Ah, the dulcet tones of boyhood. The very next thing I heard was someone yelling that the refrigerator had been unplugged sometime during the week and all the food had gone bad. Cleaning the fridge was the first of many disgusting tasks that I would need to attend to over the weekend, but with Blake there I could face anything.
Our manny is the best of both worlds. He can be quite the outdoorsman, and is great for organizing things like campfires in the woods, or canoeing on the pond, but his gayness really comes in handy on the domestic side of things.
“We need to buy paper plates. Let’s just feed everyone on paper plates all weekend,” I said to him in an attempt to simplify things. Shopping, cooking, and cleaning up after three meals a day for nine boys and three adults was a daunting prospect.
“I looked at them, but I didn’t buy any,” he responded.
“I understand it will be hard for you,” I said. “But I don’t believe the boys have invited Martha Stewart, so we’ll just have to use the ones from Christmas.” Screw our carbon footprint. This was about survival.
We did, in fact, survive, though getting some of the boys to follow my plan of staying outside proved to be difficult. Some New York City kids have zero tolerance for the outdoors and are more comfortable experiencing it through a video screen. They love to watch baseball for four hours instead of strolling outside and picking up a bat and ball. If you can convince them to take a bike ride, they measure all distances in blocks.
“How many blocks to the covered bridge?”
“It’s half a mile. There are no blocks in the country.”
All in all, the kids were moderately well behaved—and no bones were broken, always a benchmark of success for me. The ultimate upside? For the next year, any time my boys ask to invite a friend I can say, “You just had friends up.” Meanwhile, I am still awaiting that invitation from another mom to take my kids away.
MUCH LIKE A BELOVED DOG, MY TORTOISE, FRANK, TRAVELS WITH US to the country on the weekends, and when the weather is nice he spends his time outdoors in his own picket-fenced pen. He is very quiet, wandering in and out of rooms and traveling back and forth from the city to the country without complaint. He eats what he is given and is about as housebroken as anyone else in the family. He is essentially the perfect child. Is he cuddly? Not really, but after scraping kids off my body all day I welcome an animal that knows how to keep his distance.
One day in the country, Peter decided he wanted to take some movies of Frank with a new high-definition camera. He put Frank in the yard and filmed him walking around in excruciating detail. I’m not sure, but I think
