Unexpected Gifts

Who knew there were so many shades of test-tube slime?  (Who knew there was test-tube slime?)

When our nephews, nine-year-old-twins, were visiting last week, I played more than usual.  We went to the dollar store and returned with treasures.  Test-tube slime in a rainbow of colors was a highlight.  I found myself as fascinated as the boys were by the liquid-like substance that felt wet to the touch and flowed off my hand but was spongy and stayed whole.  We also bought fireworks that came in small tablets which, when lit with a match, sprouted a black snake or a glow worm.  The smell was one I remembered from the Diwali celebrations of my childhood in India, as was the delight in the creature that suddenly appeared.  “It looks like it’s growing straight out of the ground!” one of the boys observed. 

One evening, when we were throwing small fireworks on to the driveway where they made a loud sound, I looked up at the house from the bottom  of the drive.  The garage door was closed.   The lights in the house were on.  Inside, the dinner dishes sat in the sink and on the counter.  I was outside because the twins had invited me to play with them.  I watched them from the bottom of the driveway as they divided up the fireworks equally, throwing them down and picking up the paper trail so that they did not litter. 

Our house felt different with children here, more like some houses I pass on my walks, with kids’ bikes leaning against porches or chalk drawings covering the driveways.  Much as I love my life with my partner, with its room for art and writing and travel and movies, and am passionate about my teaching career, I was glad to be a part of that other world for a little while, to be on the driveway in the evening not to weed the garden or to bring in the trash can, but to play, to laugh, and to know the dinner dishes could wait.

 

They experimented with mixing all the shades of slime.  The result looks like an opal, the twins' birthstone.