Jun 02 2009
Eye of the Beholder
Alas, my time with Jessica was short-lived. She had a t-ball game in Cloverdale on Saturday, so she had to be returned to her mother on Friday. Megan and I had a few errands to run, so we decided to take the kidlet along with us and return her last, the errands being in one direction and Erica’s store in the other.
Jessica and I waited in the car while Megan got money from the bank. A guy tried to sell us mangoes while we were waiting, but Megan’s allergic to them, so I had to pass. When she came back, she mentioned that she’d shown the teller her driver’s license for ID purposes, and noticed how good the picture was. She showed it to me, and I agreed, saying mine was pretty good, too. So we swapped and looked at them.
Jessica, marooned in the backseat in her baby booster seat, asked to look at them too. She examined both of them and then said, “Suzy, you looked a lot younger then,” handing it back to me. I looked at the picture (7 years old? More?) and wondered if that’s just the viewpoint of someone 40 years younger, or just the truth.
While my ego struggled to recover, we stopped in at Safeway. Megan and I got sandwiches, and asked Jessica what she wanted.
She wanted sushi. Eel sushi.
“Are you sure?” I asked. “Yes, yes!” she said, bouncing up and down. She also wanted a small envelope of cinnamon teddy grahams, because what tops off a meal of eel better?
I kind of wondered if she’d really eat it. She did, but it soon became apparent that sushi is not car friendly. We had to keep peeling a sticky rice morsel from the tray and passing it back to Jessica. The car immediately stank of sushi and everyone had sticky hands. It was pretty gross.
I’d like to share with you the pictures I took of Jessica, but my camera is being recalcitrant. It’s nearly 10 years old, and that’s about as old as I look by digital camera standards. I’m hoping it just needs a new battery.
I think I do, too.