How Much Longer Til the Lioness Returns? 
(Photo from Wordpress.com)

 FRASIER:

It is an odd thing, dating after many years in a family relationship. Dating a widow with small children adds a challenge. These little kids have but one parent to whom they have quite rightfully clung tightly.  I will not profess to understand that, but I will say my own dad died when I was under ten. I have a few pieces of luggage packed with those experiences.

Dating a widow with young children by definition means interacting with said children. There's no ex with the kids every other weekend. It’s a challenge not to be taken lightly.  Children do not need folks blowing in and out of their lives with little regard for them.

It is not talked about much between Elsa and me, but it is understood.

So Friday I headed for pizza with said little ones after which a kid’s movie was watched.  There was apparently a grilling of mom as to what this all meant in advance of my arrival.  I had mentioned it being a nice day and asked if there was any function that could be done outside to satisfy my inner 13 year-old.  (I get called this by Elsa on occasion, usually after uttering something that, had I working filters on my thought, says she, would not have left my mouth.)

So Elsa left the kids in my charge to play basketball while she gathered pizza and a movie.  A nice, short test, as it were.

It started out amusing enough.  The kids were briefed as to my not having played basketball much.  The level of detail offered to me on how to play the game amused.  I was given instructions on dribbling, on not being able to carry the ball, and so on.  I asked for the time, the adage goes, and they told me how to build a watch.  It was cute.

A few minutes into the game, the daughter passes the basketball to her older brother, hitting him square in the face.

Tears.

I try passing the ball to the daughter by putting my hand over her brother and gently letting go of the ball into her open arms.  She misses it, and it hits her squarely in the face.

Tears.  And a look of shock.

I joke with the boy about making up the rules as he goes along. This is standard banter between my much older sons when playing anything.  It wounds the lad, having him believe I think he’s a cheater, and he cries.  I speak gently and soothing.  Ultimately he shoots from long range, it goes in, and he starts laughing through the tears.  I am not really sure how I managed to get the redirect to succeed there, but I am glad it did.  I was flailing but simply mindful to maintain a gentle voice.

Success is fleeting, as in the next possession I somehow hit the girl in the face with my hand causing, yep, you guessed it, tears.

In the midst of all this, the ball also rolls into the street in front of a UPS truck that locks up its brakes to let me get it.  I come back to the girl telling me the boy has a bloody nose.  I tend to this only after delivering a little sermonette on never running out into the street after a ball. 

That one would have been tough to explain to Elsa.  Smiling and going, "You fucked up, you trusted me" from Animal House would not have been well received.

Somewhere in this I see Elsa turn onto the street, I think it too soon to be back with pizza.  I hear her mention to her kids the DVDs were left behind and asking them to go into the house to gather them while she idles in the street.

It gives me a chance to observe a little.  This is the life of the single mom with two kids.  They come in and out of the house.  They find the cases.  One case is missing the DVD.  She gently instructs where to look for the DVD.  They go into the house, coming back empty handed.

I smile and say something about this being pretty much her daily routine.  I then ask if she would like me to go in and assist, which I do.  I find the DVD atop a pile of debris by the TV and bring it back out.  Her daughter insists on giving it to her.  She drives off.  I return to basketball and bloodying her children.  She gets pizza.

Four sets of tears, a ball in front of a UPS truck, and ministering to a bloody nose, all in the time it takes to pick up a couple DVDs and some pizza.

But when she showed up, they were smiling and no worse for wear.  Still, I had to confess to the lioness the comedy of errors that was the basketball game.

Cubs talk.

ELSA:

I’m running about an hour or sixteen behind schedule, as usual, and trying to let go of all the things I have to let go of in a day. Pots and dishes welded in an egg and peanut butter sculpture in the sink? Let it go. Floor crusty with dried cat food in which the obese cat has rolled and skidded in a vain attempt to find her own mouth? Let it go. Children look like extras wandering in from the set of “O Brother, Where Art Thou”? Let it go.  We had managed to clean the one room where I’m going to force us all to sit, whether we like it or not. And I still have to pick up pizza and DVDs.  So when I get Frasier’s text that he wants to play outside when he gets here, I figure – why not? It’ll give me just enough time to get food and entertainment.

The two little widgets, of course, are thrilled. They sit me down before he comes to interrogate me.

“So, how are things going between you and Frasier?” my son asks, in a credible imitation of my father. “Are you still dating, or is he your boyfriend now? Do the chances look good?”

“What do you guess, Mom,” my daughter interrupts. “Are you going to marry him?”

“It’s too soon to know anything like that.”

“But I didn’t ask you if you knew. I asked you what you guess. You can guess yes or you can guess no. What do you guess?”

“I can’t guess honey.”

“Anybody can guess, Mom. Guess!” she commands. Her voice gets more exasperated, more loud, more completely frustrated with my evasions and indecision and my general ineptitude at providing her with another father, which she’s been asking for for ages, along with a slough of American Girl dolls and a shitload of expensive American Girl doll accessories.

I can’t describe completely the vast tornado of desire that my dating Frasier has unleashed in my two beloved widgets.  He drives up and they swing their compass points from me to him with such violence I’m afraid they’re going to pop their own springs. I duck out to get the pizza and DVDs. I’m frightened to leave him alone with them. I’m frightened that I’ll come back and find him pinned to the ground like Gulliver. I’m frightened that my 8-going-on-40-year-old daughter will somehow find a preacher and a shotgun…

It takes longer than you’d think to pick out a DVD that satisfy the baroque and exacting demands of the widgets. “It must be funny and not meaningful,” they have decided. Frasier hasn’t discussed Pokemon ever, so before going that route, they need to get a full inventory of which he’s seen and which is his favorite. (Because, of course, he must have a favorite Pokemon movie. Who doesn’t?) They base the whole decision on entertaining Frasier.  They don’t want to bore him. They don’t want to depress him with an overload of meaning. They have no idea…

On my return, after a false start, I find the kids happily engaged in some basketball-type activity. Frasier (standing, I note with relief) starts laughing, with what I now recognize is the nervous laugh. He begins a long confession of blows, blood, near death by UPS man – and it takes me a moment to realize that this has been as nerve-racking for him as it was for me, but for entirely different reasons. I know what he doesn’t know: my sensitive son is very literal and easily brought to tears. My daughter is playing basketball, a game she usually disdains, because she’s always getting smacked and crying. Both are working very hard to help Frasier, to connect with him, to teach him this game called basketball and create a little world for the three of them. For them, though, the stakes are way, way too high. Which Frasier and I know, but are helpless to curb.

I look at the kids, and know that the bloody nose, the smacks to the face, the injured pride – these are things that they themselves know that they’ll recover from. They’re after bigger game, they’ll take the small stuff on the chin, as it were. It leaves me breathless. It makes me want to cry. But really, the only thing to do is to eat pizza, one bite at a time.