Pocket Dispatch from a Playdate
The apartment was remarkably small for an American family: One mother, Amanda, divorced, and her three children. They lived in a narrow hallway that connected two bedrooms, one bathroom, and a combined kitchen and living space. It was packed with objects but not untidy. The mother worked long hours and had some help with from a nanny named Lorene, but otherwise maintained wellbeing of the home herself.
The apartment ended in a living room with a single, large window and glass door letting out onto a private footpath circling the building. A high wall with patches of ivy was all that separated the residential complex from the dense business district surrounding it.
The youngest child, Michael, was in a soccer league with my own son, Silas, and they bonded after several sessions of running and screaming. Lorene and I made shallow, polite conversation while waiting for the boys outside the gymnasium where they played.
Eventually the boys asked for a play date enough times that Lorene collected my contact information and gave it to Amanda, who invited Silas for a play date. When the invitation came, it was back to me and Lorene to coordinate and supervise, as Amanda would be out working.
On the day of the playdate, Lorene invited us to play inside because it was raining. I drove our car to be punctual, even though a bus route connected our apartments and Silas and I preferred to ride it.
Lorene and Michael met us in the lobby and we padded behind them down the carpeted hall to their unit. I said something about the exposed timber beams, then complimented the apartment when we entered even though it was very normal. I was comforted that Amanda appeared to share our values about living in small, urban spaces. Though one can never be sure whether it’s a common value for relating or a temporary condition the other hopes to overcome.
Michael quickly overcame his shyness, an inhibition Silas doesn’t suffer, and both boys set to boisterous play. Lorene and I quickly exhausted all available topics of conversation and settled into the soft living room furniture near the boys. We then stayed like this for an unusual length of time, watching the boys, saying little to each other, the muscles in my face growing stiff and sore from polite smiling.
After an hour or so of this, Amanda arrived home. She seemed flustered but energetic as she greeted me, made small talk, then reviewed some household business with Lorene. She then disappeared into the bedroom, changed, and reappeared for more of the same.
Amanda and I also had little in common. Raising children in small apartments near the center of a major city is a lifestyle full of sacrifice and struggle, and those who choose it without the help of extreme wealth often have lots to talk about. Not so in this case.
She left as unceremoniously as she had arrived, and soon after we left, too.