• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Home
  • About
  • Hire a Moxie-Writer
  • Speaking
  • Contact
  • NEWSLETTER
  • Books
  • Single Moms with Moxie podcast

Moxie-Dude

Life updates gone wrong. Or right. I'm undecided.

  • #KitchenFails
  • Writing
  • Teenagers
  • Hamster Ramblings
  • Aging and its niceties
  • Shared Thoughts
You are here: Home / Kids / Slaying Dragons – An activity the whole family can enjoy.

Slaying Dragons – An activity the whole family can enjoy.

July 21, 2012 by Mona Andrei Leave a Comment

Most people have no idea that my girls and I saved the world once

The other morning while on my way to work I drove by a mother with her two young daughters. They were waiting at a bus stop. But not just any bus stop. The SAME bus stop that my girls and I used to wait at a really, REALLY long time ago. In fact, anyone who’s over the age of 14 will understand when I say, “another lifetime ago”.

Stuck in traffic, which lately seems to take up about eleven tenths of my life, I got to watch as this young mother entertained her kids with a string. Mesmerized by their mother’s Cat’s Cradle skills, the young girls fell for the distraction. Then the bus came, they climbed aboard and left me to continue my merry way in a fighting-traffic kind of way.

Since I have my black belt in multi-tasking, I was also able to visit a time down memory lane when I myself was a young mother of (only) two . . .

(Wherein the present cuts to a memory from that other lifetime I mentioned.)

It was a Saturday. I remember this because I was home and scrubbing the bathroom floor. (Did I mention that I lead a really fulfilling life back then?)

I was just about to get to the laundry and dusting when an argument broke out between my daughters. Something about crossing an imaginary line in their shared bedroom.

This could only mean one thing: my daughters were suffering from mom-we-need-your-attention syndrome.

I may not be the quickest of learners but one thing that did manage to sink in quite early in my life is that there are never enough days in a weekend. With that in mind, I decided to toss the dust rag and focus on my girls.

This day that I’m remembering goes back 20 years. Melissa was 6. Stephanie was 3. I was 27 and fully emerged in my career as a working, single mother.

Life was hard.

Despite this, I have quite a few good memories from those days.

Like our Friday night picnics on the living room floor. Milk in our wine glasses and the clichéd red and white checkered tablecloth was an end-of-week ritual we enjoyed for years.

Saturdays were a day for catching up on housework but on this particular Saturday my girls’ arguing was having an incredible effect on my 6th sense. (My 6th sense being the incredibly astute sense of guilt I had developed since giving birth.)

“Get dressed, girls, we’re going out,” I told them.

“I have nothing to wear,” I remember Melissa saying. Of course she was right since I hadn’t gotten to the laundry yet.

“Here,” I said as I pulled out matching white dresses with little, coloured bows from their closet. “You can both wear this.”

“What’s the occasion?” Melissa asked.

“It’s a surprise,” I answered as I went through my own closet looking for something as equally festive to wear. (Or at least nicer than my sweat pants and T-shirt.)

Of course I had no clue what that surprise was going to be but the new purpose in our day had already distracted them from their fighting. And somehow I just knew that the Saturday cleaning would wait for our return.

That’s the thing about housework. It’s reliable. No matter how much you ignore, neglect or abandon it, you can always count on it to scream for attention in its silent, passive aggressive way.

Despite this, I knew that getting my girls out of the house was the right thing to do. As the three of us walked down the street to the bus stop – yes, THAT bus stop – I remember their shiny faces, so proud as they walked on either side of me in their identical dresses. They had no clue where we were going and to be honest, neither did I. But it didn’t matter. Delighted in our directionless pursuit, we were feeling better about the day already.

During those first few minutes on the bus my girls were quiet; taking in the variety of people on the seats around us. An old, Italian woman dressed in her mourning best; black from head to toe. Three teenage girls, giggling at something only they could find funny from the back seats. A man in his early 20s, wearing a suit. (I remember this because I ended up writing a story about them – “Strangers on a Bus”. And since this is pre computer days, I have no idea where that story ended up. Probably in a box somewhere, underneath 20 years of city dump.)

Naturally, it didn’t take long for the distraction of other people on the bus to lose its power.

“Where are we going?” Stephanie asked.

I knew that I had exactly three seconds to answer if I wanted to appear that I indeed had a plan up my sleeve.

“To slay dragons,” I whispered loud enough for only the two of them.

Their eyes told me that they understood. We were on a secret mission. Their smiles told me they were up for the adventure.

Of course I had no clue where this adventure would take place. Being a novice dragon slayer (but with lots of practice in make-belief), I had no idea where we could go to save the world from imaginary dragons.

It wasn’t until the bus arrived at the Lionel Groulx metro station that the idea for a location hit me. Saint Joseph’s Oratory! The large, castle-like sanctuary would make a great setting for our adventure.

And it did. It took all afternoon for us to save the world with our pretend swords in hand.

By the time we got home, the imaginary line in my girls’ room had disappeared completely, making way for a place to practice their dragon slaying techniques. You know, in case we needed to save the world again.

Share with your followersShare on facebook
Facebook
Share on twitter
Twitter
Share on email
Email
Share on stumbleupon
Stumbleupon
Share on buffer
Buffer
Share on diggit
Diggit
Share on pinterest
Pinterest
Share on reddit
Reddit
Share on tumblr
Tumblr

Filed Under: Kids, Non-travelling Adventures, Random, Solutions to world problems, Technology (sort of), Travelling Adventures, Writing Tagged With: dragons, single mom, single parenting

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

A book for single mothers? BOOYAH!

Buzz

“Mona’s ability to mix humor with insight is truly admirable.”
Holly Monteith, Cynren Press






Subscribe!

Enter your email address:
Loading

Recent Posts

  • Dear Single Moms: The ceiling may not have the answers, but I do!
  • Sorry, I can’t come to the phone right now. My self-doubt is acting up.
  • The Sisterhood of Single Moms: Because Keeping our Sanity Takes a Village (and a lot of wine)
  • 10 Reasons Why Single Moms Are Superheroes (And Don’t Even Know It!)
  • The truth about why we feel crappy and 4 steps to feeling less crappy

Recent Comments

  • Diane on Dear Single Moms: The ceiling may not have the answers, but I do!
  • Diane on Sorry, I can’t come to the phone right now. My self-doubt is acting up.
  • Diane on The Sisterhood of Single Moms: Because Keeping our Sanity Takes a Village (and a lot of wine)
  • Susan McCorkindale on The truth about why we feel crappy and 4 steps to feeling less crappy
  • Diane on The truth about why we feel crappy and 4 steps to feeling less crappy

Archives

  • March 2023
  • February 2023
  • January 2023
  • December 2022
  • November 2022
  • October 2022
  • September 2022
  • July 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • December 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • June 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • March 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011
  • July 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011
  • April 2011
  • July 2010
  • May 2010

Categories

  • #KitchenFails
  • Aging and its niceties
  • Boyfriend stories
  • Dating
  • Friday Funny
  • Guest post
  • Hamster Ramblings
  • Kids
  • Memory Lane
  • mom adventures
  • Non-travelling Adventures
  • Out & about – because Montreal is contagious
  • Out & About in Montreal
  • Pretending to be a grown-up
  • Raising teenagers
  • Random
  • Shared Thoughts
  • Single moms
  • Solutions to world problems
  • Sponsored Post
  • Technology (sort of)
  • That effin hamster
  • Travelling Adventures
  • Uncategorized
  • Weekly Wrap-up
  • Wordless Wednesday
  • Writing

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org

© 2023 · Moxie-Dude · webmaster