[Camp NaNo, Day 12] Children

There is a family down the street with six children. Or, at least, Gray and I count six from our window. We watch them wheel in circles in the street. The windows are closed, but I can hear their squealing from here. It is a noise we both have grown unaccustomed to.

Gray says that if he looked away, he would be unable to tell if they were squealing in joy or distress. Just like piglets, I say.

How uncharitable, he remarks.

And now you know why I don't want any, I say.

We continue watching, because the chores are done and the housemates are gone and there is nothing better to do, and it has been a long time since we last watched children play in the street. I ask Gray how long it has been, and he says it has been at least six years. I comment that time sure flies, and he agrees, though he comments also on the cliche.

Another child squeals. I look and deduce that it was from joy. At least it's better than silence, I say.

I tell Gray that even if I do not have children of my own, I would like to live in a neighborhood of children. I would be the strange old lady with a cat and two dogs and no family and a house full of books and paintings of people who are not related to me. I would be the old lady who bakes cookies on the weekends and makes tea with honey and too much sugar, who invites the children in the street to cookies and tea and stories of the sun on faraway seas, stories that only she knows are true.

Gray listens attentively. Only, I add, inevitably I will bake peanut butter cookies, and there will be a child who is allergic to peanut butter who will eat one of my peanut butter cookies, despite all warnings, and they will get hives all over and probably die. Or if not peanut butter, it will be chocolate, and if not chocolate, then it will be gluten or milk or soy, and if it is none of those, then there will be no children at all, since no one will bother coming to listen to my stories if the cookies are bland.

You don't trust in your stories? asks Gray.

Don't you remember the receptions back at campus? I ask Gray. People always come for the food, not the speaker.

That is a blanket statement, he says.

It is, I say, but I am no Rowling, regardless.

We return to watching the children. I wouldn't want to be Rowling, anyway, I say. Publicity's a bitch.

That I can agree with, he says.

And people are sick of wizards, I add. There is a car in the road and the children are racing to the driveway. Maybe it won't matter in the long run, I say.

How so? he asks.

Perhaps by the time I am old, there will no longer be allergies. Or perhaps I will never be old.

In more ways than one, he says.

Nah, in one way.

You think too much.