Making the Best of It

It seems a lot of heartache is flying all around me these days. I have friends who are going through some hard things, and my heart grows heavy just thinking about it.

But tonight my heart was light as I watched a bunch of 10-year-old boys swirl around a swimming pool singing nursery rhymes. The boys, around 20 of them, walked in unison in a quick pace to their pre-pubescent singing causing a boy-made whirpool that catapulted them around faster and faster.

On and on they walked and sang: "Old MacDonald had a farm. E-I-E-I-OOOOOO!" The lifeguard, not much older than the boys, asked them to keep it down. I wanted to shoosh the lifeguard. Their singing was giving me back my Norman Rockwell America; naivete, sweetness, joy.

It gladdened Kulani and me. Usually when we go swimming at the local recreation center, Cub and Boy Scout groups are crowding out the lap lanes where Kulani is trying to swim, not apologizing or caring if they bump into swimmers. Other young boys seem much too young to have their tongues hanging out while watching young girls in swim suits. (I could never even repeat the nastiest thing that was ever said to me by a 10- or 11-year-old boy at the Orem Rec. Center.)

Kulani said the boys were making the best of it; making do with what they had. Boys being boys.

I wanted to take them all home with me and raise them, feed them, and read them stories. For a split second, I even thought that maybe Kulani and I should try one more time for that boy.

But then I held fast to my Lehua, not quite four months old. No, girls are just as great with their own sweetness and light. Four children is plenty enough for me. Boys will be boys ... at someone else's house.