A Joyful Noise

My mother remarked that when her grown children came back to visit she felt like a cat with kittens. Mom, I know the feeling. We have a house full. Three of our kids, Elizabeth, Ben, and Dan are here. Their spouses, significant others (whatever..) are not with them, but they have the four boys. Diego is fourteen and the youngest, Quincy is two. Pablo is eleven and Silvio is six. They have not been together as a group for a year. This week has been deemed the week that Quincy will be toilet trained and his mother, Elizabeth, has put all seven males here on notice that they WILL be models on the responsible use of a penis. They are to model peeing on bushes and trees and toilets. Quincy will not be wearing diapers. He watched a video on the topic of wonderful underpants while the rest of us ate a lovely dinner of tuna steaks.

They arrived for lunch.( the kids, not the tuna steaks.) Later we spent a lot of time in the pool. It's lovely to see these little boys all swimming together, happily clumped together to dive off the edge or play with the pool toys. Even Diego, the oldest is not too cool to be above playing with the little kids. Silvio, the six year old must have told me five times how happy he is to be here. "Grandma, this is my most wonderfulest day!" He doesn't have opportunities to swim where he lives.

Just wait until tomorrow. We'll go and find the herd of cows, see if there are still any blackberries to be picked, do some art in my studio, paint the incredible dump truck that really dumps that Grandpa Andy made for grandsons of a certain age, swim many times during the day. We'll check the traps we set tonight for armadilloes and raccoons. We'll walk out to the pond and maybe decide to take one of the boats out. Maybe we'll fish. I hope one or two of the boys will help me in the vegetable garden. And at night I want to take all of these boys out to look for fireflies, spider eyes and alligator eyes in the pond.

As we were getting ready for dinner I heard one grandson relentlessly tooting a recorder. Another one was dabbling at the piano. A DVD about trucks was playing in the background. The adults were loudly discussing current American politics. Pots and pans were clanging as the dinner was coming to fruition.

Such a joyful noise!