Here’s a new ‘less than perfect’ category for me - the ‘less than perfect’ neighbor!
This summer a single mom with three boys moved in next door. I was thrilled! She seemed really nice and very cool…very earthy, which I generally like (though I am the less than perfect earth-mother too, as will become obvious…)
My three year old #1 Son was very excited with his new neighbors and has asked to go play with them almost every day since they arrived.
Anyway…so, single mom is a very busy woman. I can respect that. We finally set a date to have a ‘movie night’ with our boys. I volunteer to make enough pizza for everyone, since I usually make pizza once a week anyway.
Comes movie night, and I find out that she’s made other plans and she and the kids are going to stay with her mother in another part of the city that night. But they’ll be around for a ‘little while’ she says. Also, she has a friend coming who also has a little boy.
Oh-kay. I was a little disappointed that we won’t going to get some relaxed getting-to-know-you time, but determined to make the best of it for my son’s sake. The whole family was supposed to come over and top their pizzas at my place, but at the last minute the mom decides to just send her boys and a bag of toppings.
So I let the boys (and my son) put on whatever toppings they like. One son covered half a pizza with a solid layer of sausage! The other put generous amounts of everything. Mine is an everything kind of kid to. I carefully made and set aside a little pizza for the baby, who I gathered is lactose intolerant, with the vegan cheese substitute my neighbor sent over.
Then, while my son went next door to play, I babysat the pizzas. Finally, I bring them over. By this point, it’s obvious that movie night is not going to happen, but I’m hoping to smooth over any disappointment with my delicious homemade pizzas.
Then I find out that the neighbor, her friend, and all the kids…don’t eat meat. Well, sometimes poultry. Never pig.
No religious or ethical reasons, just nutritional reasons. Something about genetics and knowing the best diet for their ethnic heritage is vegetable based.
Ok, so I guess I’m imperfect at tolerance too. But watching those little boys sorrowfully pick off the sausage that they had put on the pizzas was just about the saddest thing I’ve ever seen. (And watching that sausage go in the garbage was pretty sad for me too!) When I was a kid, if someone else was feeding you, you ate what they served unless it was literally going to make you sick, or you had a moral reason not to. My mom objected to soda pop as a beverage too, but she would never have approved of pouring it out if that’s what we were served.
Bleah.
So, anyway. I didn’t even think to ask if there was anything I shouldn’t allow the boys to put on the pizza. The oldest is 7 and I just figured he would know. Apparently they do eat fake meat (though never sausage) and his mom thought he might have been confused by that. My guess is that the kids probably have no qualms eating meat and other forbidden foods when they are at friends houses or at school.
Bleah again. And to top it all off - no movie, heartbroken three year old (who had been looking forward to movie night all week) and the mom, who I’ve been trying to get to know better, spent most of the evening on the phone. Which, above and beyond the awkwardness over the pizza, leaves me disinclined to try very hard in the future.
But my kid loves her kids. What’s a less-than-perfect neighbor to do?
I’ve been on the computer all morning, there’s a bill payment problem I have to figure out, and we’re short on groceries so lunch will have to be leftovers and I have no idea what to do about dinner. The baby is ripping apart a library book and the house is a mess. The sink is full of dishes from last night’s dinner that I meant to do early this morning!
And less than perfect.