Sometimes when I’m feeling exasperated with my kids and I’m having a Betty Draper Francis kind of day, I worry that this is what they’ll remember.

“Mama is a holiday ruiner!” they’ll remember. Because this is true. I always seem to forget that my mostly good kids are, in fact, kids. On holidays too. I expect a lot from them because they are so good. It’s tough, that.

I mean, I certainly let them do kid-like things like play beanboozled with their cousins where they each take an unmarked jelly bean and they go head-to-head. One will taste good, and one will taste like something horrifying, like, barf or rotten eggs or canned dog food or baby wipes or moldy cheese. I cannot even how. 

But, again, I expect things from them, like I expect them to put their shoes on and brush their hair and then what starts with a simple “All I want from you is to please put your shoes on the 40th times I ask so we can get out the door and give your daddy a nice Father’s Day!” ends in me throwing in the towel all “THESE KIDS NEVER LISTEN TO ME AND WHY AREN’T THEIR LUNCHBOXES IN THE KITCHEN?!!?”

(Lunch boxes are my personal version of wire hangers.)

But then ridiculous nights like tonight happen and I just know

THIS IS WHAT THEY’LL REMEMBER.

We took the kids to the opening of a neighborhood sub sandwich store, opened by the amazing people who did the amazing music at Emily’s Bat Mitzvah. You know, the ones who got my brother-in-law up on stage dancing to Thrift Shop. In a fur coat. Anyway, we went to support them…and because there were stars from The Next Step making an appearance, and we have some big fans around here and I know this because I always see it on the DVR.

So, we got there. And Isabella danced and danced and danced and danced.

And then the sky turned an interesting shade of blacker-than-black and opened up and dumped buckets of rain on us. Isabella kept on dancing, even though the nearby sewers started exploding and I was terrified for the poor overflowing eaves. She stood outside with all of the other superfans getting wetter and wetter and wetter — she was getting a soaking autograph, no matter what.

So, even though my too-long bangs were starting to sheepdoggedly curl in strange places and my jeans were completely stuck to my person and I’m really not a fan of being wet in general and I worried for poor Josh’s cast, we stayed.

And got wet.

Really wet.

We laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed when we got home and took turns hiding under blankets and taking boiling hot showers to get warm and dry.

“Thank you Mama.”

“For what, my love?”

“For getting so wet for me,” she said, “This was a VERY good day.”