We ate dinner, me and my 5 sons (yes tonight, I have an extra son, “Blessing” is over) and decided that after cleaning up we would go to the park. But then the oldest 3 (including the extra one) preferred to make their own plans as going to the park with Ima is extremely uncool. (I didn’t get that memo, how was I supposed to know?) Prince HockeyFan decided he wanted to ride his scooter and go see some friends, so it was just me and the ChatterBox who walked together to the local park.
It was a glorious summer evening, hardly a soul about in the park. I parked myself on a bench while he ran around blowing bubbles and then trying to catch them. Sitting on that bench I felt really tranquil and temporarily at peace. Ha!
I heard them before I saw them. Three big kids thundering up the pathway kicking up dust with their size 10 sneakers. Oh. MY kids. Plus one. Except for scootering kid. I guess getting to the park under their own steam was the idea, it was not uncool to “bump” into me and the little brother at the park. It’s the getting to the park that’s not cool to do with a parent. Gotcha.
They were in search of water. One of them has a remote control submarine that actually worked in the bathtub. They wanted to see if it worked in “real” conditions. In this park there is a serious of small piddly little streams, with slight “waterfalls” over them. Think what Barbie’s boat would sail in and then you can imagine the streams. We followed the streams and the submarine until we got to a bigger secluded pool. Perfect for submarine diving. Then Scooter kid showed up. 5 of my boys running around after a 3 inch remote controlled sub in the summer evening. Delightful.
The boys were having a blast until one of them said “Ima, what’s that smell”? I picked up my head and inhaled the pungent air. I looked around, and saw a guy sitting on the far bank smoking. Except it wasn’t tobacco. One of the kids asked me if that was marijuana. How the heck did he know to ask that, and how did he expect that I would know??!! Anyone who has lived in Montreal and visited the tam tam festival and breathed the fragrant air on the mountain in the summer knows. So I was confident in my answer that yes the guy was smoking marijuana and we should move. They were so funny – they tried hard not to breathe in until we were well away from the guy!!
I was initially a little ticked that we had come for a casual evening out and my kids had to be faced with a pot smoker, but then I told myself to chill out (or maybe the fumes got to me 😉 ). He was harmless, the smoke was harmless and there was plenty of space for all of us to “play” in the park. We didn’t make a big deal out of it, the kids learned a lesson to live and let live, and found another pool of water to go deep sea diving in.
The big 4 boys are all sat in front of a Hogan’s Heroes marathon, and the little one is waiting for me to scrub a days worth of dirt off of him in the bath. How do little boys get so darned filthy so quickly? But the best part of this evening – no homework and no school night bedtime. It’s so lovely that we are all so relaxed.
In the Pink 
Ah yes… Poutine and Marijuana. Smells of Montreal.
Monsey must smell like choulent and kishke!