Carrie Link

DOUBLE DATE

"Mom, let's go to the park and play basketball and then let's go to Dairy Queen and get a milkshake."

It is a gorgeous spring evening and so I agree to his requests. He runs upstairs to change from his uniform into basketball clothes. We get the calculator which he will hold in his right hand and use as a scoreboard, and a big red and black (go, Blazers) basketball to hold in his left hand. We drive to his designated park even though three parks are within walking distance of our house. He finds a court, Flicka and I find a spot in the sun and we find a bench on which to watch/wait/clap/cheer and help sing at "halftime."

We have two quarters, there is no telling him that when you divide the game into two, you end up with halves and not quarters, there are always two quarters, never four. "Mom, we'll have an eight and a two," he shouts over at us on the bench as he takes a few warm-up shots.

"A real eight minutes," I say, zipping up my jacket all the way to my chin - there's a sudden breeze and I can already tell I'm going to get cold sitting here if his "eight" turns into a 20.

He dribbles, shoots, scores, calculates, coaches, plays the fight song and is the on-air commentator for the greater part of 20 minutes. "Let's not be in a hurry," he says, reading my mind. "When we're done let's swing on the red swing and then do the tittie-totters." I fight the urge to tell him nearly fourteen-year-old boys should not be saying tittie-totter, and instead, agree to not be in a hurry.

Meg Hutchinson's new song, "Hard to Change," has been running through my head for days (when Hannah Montana's "Best of Both Worlds" isn't), the lines, "I can barely hear you, over these machines, turn them all off, and tell me 'bout your dreams," loops through my brain and I look over at Rojo. He's forced me to turn off all the machines and just be with him, "not in a hurry."

"Mom, when we are done we will go to Dairy Queen and get a small vanilla milkshake with a long red spoon and we will not be in a hurry to drink it. We will sit there and we will not be in a hurry. We will just sit there. You will not be in a hurry. Don't forget. Don't forget to not be in a hurry."

Meg's lyrics cycle back around, "Want to hear the silence in my life, but I bought all these tools to save time, well if they save so much - then where's all mine?" What's the point of having high speed Internet, DVR, answering machines, cell phones, etc., if I don't' have time to watch an eight and a two basketball quarters, and sit beside my beautiful son in a plastic bench and watch him drinking a small vanilla milkshake with a long red spoon?

"Mom?" he looks up at me between bites, "we're having a double date."

And we did.