If I didn’t have a child with diabetes, what would I be writing about?
I suppose I’d go back to writing essays on parenting and family life like I used to. Dead pets; the crises of lost toys; my 4-year-old’s pride in his penis; maybe my wife’s germ phobia and her lifelong dedication to the war against terror (aka ball pits).
I guess I’d be writing about my daughter Maeve, who is sad today.
I like True Blood - the HBO show about vampires and other supernatural, uh, things.
In a recent episode, a Maenad (a Greek mythological orgy-loving creature in the form of an attractive woman named Maryann) felt it would be nice to cut someone’s heart out of their chest, throw it on a cutting board, slice it up, add it to a sizzling frying pan and bake a heart pot pie to be gobbled up by her entranced zombie followers.
That’s how my heart was feeling this morning when Maeve told us with quivering chin that she has no friends.
Her one and only good friend found some new friends this year and Maeve is feeling left out.
"I try to play with them," she said, snorting and hyperventilating and rubbing her wet eyes.
"But it’s like they don’t even hear me. Like I’m not even there."
It is this image that destroys me.
Susanne and I looked at each other, hoping that one of us had something good to say to make her feel better, but 30 seconds went by with silence. She had a point. She should be sad.
"What about (insert girls name here)? She seems nice," Susanne asked.
"And what about (insert girls name here)? I said. Isn’t she your friend?"
Maeve shrugged her shoulders.
Susanne asked about a boy she was friends with last year.
"What about him?"
"If there was a competition for weirdest boy in the world, about 50 boys in my school would win," Maeve deadpanned.
"OK, this is what you do, Maeve," I said, jokingly.
"Tomorrow, in the middle of the playground at recess, shout as loud as you can, ‘I AM MAEVE! WHO WANTS TO BE MY FRIEND!!!’"
Maeve tilted her head and shot me a deathly look.
"Yeah," she responded poopy-faced.
"Only crickets and ants would answer."
