Accommodation for Children

Have been meaning for some time to write about my accommodation for children. You know, children are weak, and their frail flesh must be accounted for. You can't just have a baby and except it to get along and live. You must hold it and feed it and lug it around in a big fat car seat until your back is utterly destroyed and you have lost your own will to live. I am a pretty good mother, not amazing but not terrible either, and as such, I make real accommodations for the fleshly nature of my children.

So suppose you have a thousand errands to run, you are in and out of the car fifty times and at one stop, say when you're trying to sign off on your taxes so that you can partake of the big pile of money coming to all people everywhere who have children, or at least not pay quite so much as if you didn't have them all, and you have the children with you, and so, as you beat your way in the door and discover where your husband is sitting picking over piles of paper with a really charming man who understands how to count and stuff, and they, the children, are duly exclaimed over, because there are so many of them, and their names are said by everybody, you all then invited to sit down. You see their faces fall. You heart sinks as you realize it will not be a matter of just running in and out quickly, but that the nice man doing your taxes wants you to understand them too, sniff. What do you do? Well, you are prepared, as a pretty decent mother, to accommodate your children.

You plunk your purse down on the table.

You open it up, and you pull out your Accomodation for Children.

From thence you remove all they could possibly desire.

That's three poems (well, two of them are the same poem), a tiny special book

some very small squares of paper and some tiny colored pencils.

You smile generously and benevolently and distribute everything, gently admonishing the younger ones not to lose or drop the tiny colored pencils. You sit back, phone in hand, and thank God for his mercy and providence.

Voila!