Over the Phone

This past weekend I enjoyed a mandatory escape from home life in the form of choir tour. From Thursday afternoon to Saturday night, I spent time getting reacquainted with my Adult Self – you know, carrying on conversations that do not include the word “potty,” climbing into bed past midnight due to a post-concert celebration rather than a post-bedtime bottle, wearing clothes that don’t have patches of dried snot on them, and singing Bach as opposed to Barney…oh, also giving three fantastic concerts with some of the most fabulous people that I know. The part of my identity that I label “Choir Member” is completely integral to my functioning as a sane human being in every other aspect of my life, so tour is not only super-duper fun, but necessary.

            I love giving my family a chance to miss me, I love having a chance to miss them, and most of all I love being hundreds of miles away and therefore conveniently unable to assist in All Matters Parenting.  Dave and I have some of our most hilariously unproductive conversations while I’m on choir tour and he’s home with E and C.  During one phone call this past weekend, I said “hey, how are you all today?” and his response was something like, “oh, we’re Ellen what are you doing over there?”  [Silence for one second and Ellen’s voice in background: “I had a li’l ackis-dent.”]  Dave: “Ellen, I just asked you one second ago if you had to go and you said no.”  [E in background: “I guess I DID have to go.  The floor is wet.”]  Then we said goodbye.

            Dave’s Over the Phone or In the Next Room parenting is one of my favorite auditory experiences.  He is famously unfaze-able in nearly any situation, which is a fantastic quality to have as both a doctor and a dad, and makes for some hilarious fly-on-the-wall listening moments for me.  With the same mature, composed tone that I imagine he uses to say something like “your MRI is normal so let’s just go ahead and start an aspirin regimen,” he says things like “when you don’t cooperate, you are not allowed to watch your poop go down,” and “if you continue screaming and running around naked instead of putting on your pajamas, I’ll have to take away all your Thomas trains.”  The visual in my mind in these moments is probably way more hysterical than the actual scene that’s unfolding...probably due in no small part to the fact that if I’m listening to it, I’m NOT the one dealing with it.  

            Good job, dear.  And thanks for letting me laugh at these moments which are way more fun for me than for you.