Done Adulting Vol. 1 Ch. 77 (Patreon)

“Hey! What’d we miss,” Lauren asked when she, Becky and Daniel approached the table. Daniel was walking behind them, strategically positioned to run if need be.

“What did you guys miss? Buhahaha! You and your questions,” Donna said like the goody two-shoes she was, completely inexperienced at carrying a perfectly good lie through to its conclusion. Mel and Amanda stared daggers at her. Mel discreetly pinched her legs and mouthed ‘shut up’ when Donna turned toward her.

“Not much, just eating junk food,” Amanda answered smoothly.

“Jamie’s asleep? Awww. He’s just so adorable,” Lauren said.

“Well, it was his regular morning nap time, and he ate some little ice cream and got drowsy.”

“Why did you change his clothes,” Becky asked, kneeling down to the stroller to admire her sleeping little boy.

“He leaked. Even got some on his shirt,” Amanda answered.

“Daniel Allen,” Lauren scolded, “You were supposed to check him!”

“Sixteen more months of this,” Daniel muttered. No one heard.

“Did you guys find anything,” Mel asked.

“No. Same stuff as always. Think our potpourri from last year’s got a few months left in it. How long has Jamie been asleep?”

“About a half hour.”

“Do you think he’s hungry? Should we wake him and get some lunch?”

“Sure,” Amanda shrugged. Please-don’t-be-drunk-please-don’t-be-drunk-please-don’t-be-drunk,she prayed silently.

“Jamie … Jamie …” Rebecca sang as she shook his shoulder. “Hey, kiddo. Sorry to wake you, but we thought you might be ready for some lunch.”

Jamie groggily opened his eyes. “Hi, Mom.”

“O, just a sleepyhead today. Did Uncle Danny wear you out?”

“I guess so,” he yawned as he sat up and stretched his arms.

“What did you guys do?”

“Saw the dogs. Cruised some chicks. Had a beer.” Mel pinched Donna as a preventive measure, and Amanda and Daniel both held their breath.

Becky tut-tutted at Daniel. “Your sense of humor is wearing off on him.”

“Well,” he said, “We’re guys. Guys gotta do guy things sometimes, right?”

“If you say so. C’mon, Jamie,” Becky said as she put him on her hip. “Hmmm. You smell like … musty peppermint.”

“I’ve smelled like worse.”

“Like I’ve forgotten. Why don’t you guys stay here and protect the table, and Amanda and Mel and me will bring something back,” Rebecca said.

Becky carried him on her hip back toward the food section with Amanda and Mel in tow. They were feeling confident they’d gotten away with it. So was Jamie, and he wanted to get a more definitive verdict on the subject.

“Hey, Mom? Are littles allowed to have alcohol?”

“No, sweetie. It’s bad for you.”

“It’s bad for everybody.”

“Well, if you need something to take the edge off, just come find me.”

“Why?”

“Because this is so much better than a beer, isn’t it?” She shifted him to her shoulder, kissed him on the cheek, patted his butt, and circled the small of his back with her fingernails. He had to admit, it did take the edge off and then some.

After lunch, they abandoned their table and headed back toward the lake. With tents blocking every view, Jamie felt disoriented even though he’d been to the park so many times before. It was as though everything were squeezed into the corridor of the tents, and only on the other side of them did it look like the park he knew. A book fair was occupying the field he played tag in. They headed toward the hill overlooking the lake.

On the way they passed the booths for the local politicians and candidates running for office. Jamie was intrigued. From Becky’s hip he asked one of the people at a booth which one of them was running for office. A blonde in a red pantsuit smiled at him condescendingly. “She couldn’t be here in person today. Would you like a sticker?”

“Nope. I like it when politicians show up,” Jamie said. He’d heard enough politicians pay lip service to their constituents in his lifetime.

“Little has a point,” Daniel said. The woman was already fake-smiling at someone else.

“What are politics like here,” Jamie asked.

“What are they like where you’re from?”

“You vote for the candidate you want to see in office, and if you’re smart, you’re already prepared to be disappointed if they win.”

“Meh. Same here.”

The tents around the lake were larger canvas affairs and much more spaced out. “What’s this section,” Jamie asked.

“This is the re-enactor section,” Amanda explained. “This was my favorite section when I was a kid.”

“Because you were a nerd,” Mel chimed in.

“Melissa! You’re gonna teach him to say mean things,” Donna protested. Jamie ran through a list of all the means things he decided not to say back. So did Mel.

“What are they re-enacting?”

“Just various times in Itali history.” They walked to where a blacksmith was making … well, not so much making as demonstrating how to hit hot iron with a hammer. It didn’t seem to be becoming anything.

At the next booth, a woman was selling homemade soap and candles and jars of honey. The next was selling various supposedly homemade knickknacks.

At the next, a man was shearing sheep while his wife spun wool. “Hmm,” Mel said, “Smells like hot sheep.”

Offended, Jamie shot back, “I did not!”

“Sheep,” Mel said. “Sheep. With a ‘P.’”

“O. Sorry,” he blushed. “What are they supposed to be,” he nodded red-faced toward a group of people in uniforms.

“War re-enactors. From the War of the Islands,” Amanda answered.

“Nerd,” Mel whispered.

“How come no one ever re-enacts peasants trying to make it through the winter,” Jamie asked. He’d always thought war re-enactors were just a bunch of guys who liked playing dress up and maybe enjoyed history, but there wasn’t much educational about watching two dozen people rush at each other across a football field and pretend to die. “Who even won?”

“No one.” That sounded about right to Jamie.

“Want to go watch the music,” Lauren asked. Everyone agreed.

They walked past the lake and back in the direction of the entrance they’d come in at. The hill the park sat on sloped down there toward a drainage canal that fed into the lake. In front of the canal was a stage, and in front of that an open grassy area serving as a dance floor, and in front of that running most of the way to the top of the hill were picnic tables full of people.

Jamie sometimes went to events like this back home. Summer concert series in the park where local bands played covers, fairs, festivals. Always up front there were one or two couples actually dancing and groups of teen and pre-teen girls in a circle sort of dancing. Jamie’s favorite to watch were two other types of dancers.

The first were the very young kids dancing alone under the watchful eye of their parents and aunts and uncles and all the adults and older kids and teens who made up their village, jerking and turning and clapping and stepping to a whole other rhythm and not in the least embarrassed by it. For them, dancing was something you did because your body just wanted to and it was fun. They were years away from when dancing became something you were supposed to be good at and embarrassed to do if you weren’t. He loved watching kids that age at the concerts in the park; it made him nostalgic for a part of his life he never had, but it was still a feeling of sweetness.

The second were the young parents who rushed on to the grass and stooped down, taking their child’s hands and dancing with nearly as much abandon as the children. Mom and dad were always smiling, and the kids were always laughing and sweating in the fading heat, and their love looked so complete, so innocent, so fulfilling and joyful it made Jamie long for something like it, or at least the memory of it.

“Who wants to dance,” Amanda asked. Mel and Donna were in.

“I’ll stay here,” Jamie said. “I don’t dance.”

“Of course you do,” Amanda said plainly, taking him by the wrist and leading him down to the grass. She knelt and took his shoes off and her own and then pulled him near the center of the stage. The three bigs formed a haphazard triangle with him in the middle. Bewildered and embarrassed, he moved his feet a little and stayed more or less in the same spot. He wasn’t having any fun. He wanted to go back and sit on the grass and watch. He was comfortable watching. He liked watching.

“You can do better than that,” Amanda shouted over the music. “Do it with me!” She slowed down and did what looked to Jamie like a modified chicken dance. He chuckled and watched. “Ya gotta!” He tried to wave her off but followed her lead. He started doing what she did, only slower and less coordinated and out of sync.

“My turn!” Donna stooped down and took his hand, and suddenly Jamie was spinning around and whipped out to the end of her arm’s length and then spun back in again. She took his other hand and swung her hips to the left, bringing Jamie to his right, and then to her right, bringing Jamie to her left. She pulled him close and pushed him away and pulled him close again. He was sweating and dizzy and out of breath and no longer caring if he was good at this or who was watching or how many. It was just fun, and whether there was any resemblance between the rhythm of the band and the rhythm of his body didn’t matter.

Mel bent down and picked him and up, keeping one arm around his waist and another outstretched with his hand in hers. She danced like rock ‘n’ roll had just been invented, part swing and part blues with her hips gyrating and her lead arm going up and down with Jamie’s feet clear off the ground. She set him back down, twirled him in a circle and grabbed his hands, spinning until his feet left the ground and he couldn’t distinguish the stage from the crowd in the blur.

Finally the song ended, all four of them out of breath and sweating and giggling. Rebecca broke into their circle and picked Jamie up so his legs were wrapped around her waist and his arms were around her neck, and as the band changed to a slow tune she laid his head against her shoulder and swayed one hip and the other and the first again as she slowly made a circle.

“Mama’s handsome boy,” she whispered, rocking slowly back and forth with the music playing slow and Jamie held tight against her.

So this is what it’s like to dance with your mom, Jamie sighed. It was even better than he had always imagined it.