Small world?

Emma’s got a new boyfriend!

Actually, an exclamation point isn’t necessary. Emma is a friendly, warm, pretty and… curvaceous girl. Boyfriends, or boyfriend wannabes, have never been in short supply.

They’ve been going out for three or four weeks now. Declan’s been over for dinner once, and in and out of the house enough that I’ve decided I quite like the boy. (Such an improvement over the last one. It’s reassuring to see your kids learn as they go!)

Yesterday, Declan’s mother, having decided it was time to Meet the GF’s Mother, dropped him off. I see him cross the street, followed by a woman a little younger than me… and I recognize her. Vaguely. From somewhere.

In the dusty reaches of my memory, something stirs, and I can tell by the look on her face, it’s happening to her, too.

“You’re… someone’s mother,” I say. Because I am Astute and Insightful. “I mean, I know you’re his mother, but…” Because that’s her category in my mind. Somebody’s mother.

She catches the vagrant memory before I do.

“You do daycare!” Which she’d known all along. Ha! We are both Astute and Insightful. “You looked after my son!”

“Declan?” I turn to BF. “Declan and Niamh?” (Niamh is his younger sister.) And suddenly I see it. He is indeed. Those same eyes. “Ha! You’re Declan!”

(Thankfully for Emma’s peace of mind, I have never seen Declan’s wee naked butt… or anything else. He came to me as an after-school kid; he’d have been six or seven at the time. Emma was three.)

Declan’s eyes are darting between the two of us. He’s not sure whether to be alarmed or reassured by this radical development.

“Wow. Emma’s sure changed,” mother observes, and I chortle. From curly-headed, bounding moppet to beautiful young woman. Yes, she sure has.

And the mothers talk about change, and reminisce, and wonder at life, how quickly it happens, life passages, growth and challenge and gratitude. About kids and husbands and…

Declan wanders into the house, reassured, calling out to Emma. “Hey, Em. Guess what?”