While I've been wasting a good bit of energy worrying that all three of them prefer their father to me, they have long known that we are the ones who are guilty of having favorites. It's okay though, because, apparently, my number one is his number three and we each have the same number two so it all averages out and between the two of us, they each get the same amount of love. Or whatever it is we have to offer.
When my youngest, the child who is the perennial runner-up told me about the hierarchy of affection, I was startled and, naturally, went off on a rant of complete denial. "You just don't get it, do you?" I snapped. She seemed amused, and strangely content. Who cares if you're always the bridesmaid, never the bride. She'll take the glory of omniscience any day, the rush of scooping me on my own inner thoughts. "Frankly I can't stand any of you," I muttered. If she heard, she seemed unfazed.
Word has it that my eldest is my third seed. The one I favor least, even though she is the only one whose laundry I did in Dreft. The only one whose first words are locked in my memory, the only one whose baby calendar is completely filled in. She breathed, I wrote it down. She grinned, I took a picture. She spoke and I kept a transcript. I can't say it ever gets old, but the first person who actually grows inside your body and emerges to change you into a person who is capable of loving somebody else so much it hurts always occupies a special place in your soul. Maybe she thinks she's third because she simply had farther to fall. It's hard to keep up the whole Dreft thing. There are two other incomparable places in my soul, but the occupants wouldn't believe me if I told them about it, so why bother.
I suppose it's good news that they have the pecking order figured out. At least I can stop worrying about which one hates me most. Or what I could have done better, since, from what I can tell, the rankings have been in place for years and are pretty much immutable. Maybe I'll be really lucky and the kid with a solid (and apparently permanent) grasp on the number one spot can muster up enough affection for me to balance the other two out. I can move on to worrying about more important things, like how I'm going to adjust to living in Japan, where the one least likely to toss me to the wolves lives. I like rice and noodles, but I am not a big raw fish fan. And my big peasant Jewish feet are about three full sizes larger than any shoes they sell there. Will I be spending my golden years with cold feet?
It's been kind of nice having a visitor from France, somebody else's ungrateful and all knowing child. She's a teenager, but she keeps her nastiness in check when she's around me, doesn't even act ashamed when her friends come around. She says hello in the morning, thanks me for doing her laundry, and doesn't roll her eyes when we appear to have no croissants (or any bread products, for that matter) in the bread drawer. And when I was dozing in the car at midnight waiting for her school bus to arrive from a field trip to a baseball game in Milwaukee, she pretended not to notice. She was still on the bus when I opened my eyes and looked up to see if I could spot her through the dark windows. Almost immediately, she broke into a huge smile and gave me an enthusiastic wave. Wow, that's something I haven't experienced in a while.
We chatted in my broken French and her broken English the whole way home, and my annoyance at having to stay up so late to retrieve her melted away. The friendly greeting was heartwarming. We had no trouble finding things to chat about, and we discovered that "Bloomingdales" is "Bloomingdales" in any language. She said good night to me, even shouted bon soir to Manny, who was already farting and snoring peacefully on my bed.
She leaves in a week, and we will be back to observing the strange code of silent disdain that is normally the governing playbook for our household. She will never make it into the ranking system developed by my kids because she is the fruit of someone else's labor. She exists for some other oblivious mother to love unconditionally even though she herself might not see it that way. In the universal language spoken by offspring everywhere, I am sure she and her own brother have things figured out back in France, are somehow at peace with their parents' perceived preferences.
My daughter told me that when she visited France last summer, the mom not only did her laundry but ironed her underwear. And I am sure my daughter offered up a heartfelt merci beaucoup and did not slam a bedroom door for two weeks and never shot maman a single look of disdain. After all, I pretty much never iron anything, and I certainly never did her laundry in Dreft.
And expectations are just blissfully low when you're not a seeded player.
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