Battle of the Buttwipe

Catherine and I celebrated Mother's Day far from our brood of boys, traveling to my cousin's just-right, great-to-see-the family wedding in Naples, Florida.  The timing of the nuptials gave my brother and I a rare opportunity, of late, to personally celebrate Mother's Day (a day early) with our saintly and lovely mother, treating her to high tea at the Naples Ritz.  While we enjoyed tea service with my mom, indulged on extravagant buffets (at the reception, I certainly needed two hands to lift my mammoth mound of food back to table #3), golfed (if one can call the 18-hole horror show I afflicted upon the Gold course at Tiburon, golf), and lazed pool side in the shade reading (OMG, it was the Sunday NY Times!) or stared at puffy little clouds in the sky (speaking of horror shows, likely one reason I was staring skyward, and under the category of "It seemed like a smashing good idea at the time!", there are a frightening number of older ladies sporting fake cans in the Sunshine State and, for that matter, at Houston International Airport) Pebe, beloved mother, grandmother and certainly the best mother-in-law a guy can hope to land, (a saint in her own right) held the line back at base.  On Mother's Day, the mama, mama, mama of my eye (click here to read an Ode to the Mother of my children) slept in astoundingly late, dozing in our dim den, sung in bed until 8:30.  Yes, 8:30 is as late as we've slept for, well, four spins of the sun, or so.

On Monday morning, we woke in our own bed with the boys laughing, hugging and whispering our did-you-miss-me's and our I-love-you's.  Five, together, again, we joyfully fell back into the familiar routines of breakfast preparations: strong coffee brewed for the Tall's (always step #1!); oj or milk poured for the Smalls; oatmeal simmered, cooled and topped with a kiss of honey; fruit cut, plated and consumed by tiny, hungry mouths.  Then, as the boys finished (mostly) breakfast and prepared for adventures at the park, I slipped off dolefully to the office.  I didn't want to, but I needed to get back at it.

To make up, in some small way, for a weekend of precious time lost with Kelly, Beckett, and Rhys, I kicked off work at 4:15.  Kelly was much, much too busy planting flowers and herbs in the galvanized steel containers on the back porch with Pebe (he is a Pebe's boy when she is in town) to look at me, much less to bother verbally declining my invitation to go for a bike ride, so I outfitted Rhys and Beckett with their little helmets and hit the bike path, hauling the double Burley bike trailer, heading for Cook Park - not anywhere near our house.

Hey, I needed a little, leg-strecher workout and a workout I did receive.  The weather dude, during the morning news, predicted a windy afternoon with "Red Flag Warning" for the Front Range.  The dumb a-hole was right, for a change (just kidding, kind of). I was fighting an enormous head-cross wind the entire 15 minute ride to the park.  During one mighty gust, while riding beside a thick hedge along the Cherry Creek trail, I looked back to see if some crazy river creature had jumped out of the bushes and grabbed the Burley in an attempt to gobble up the chitlings.  No creature of the creek - it was just the wind's invisible hand almost forcing me to a complete stop.

Back in first-class, a click further down the trail, the boys, enjoying the effortless ride and themselves, decided to start a blood-curdling game of "Scream".  The rules of "Scream" are as follows:
1) Player one screams as loud as humanly possible.
2) Player two, then, attempts to scream much louder.
3) All players simultaneously cackle and/or laugh their heads off for two seconds.
4) Repeat steps 1 to 3 until you think of something better to do or lose your voice.
Note: This game is often played at Case de Goodwillie with three or four players (sometimes I play along, too).

During round eight of one-on-one "Scream", as I huffed by an thin old lady walking toward me decked out in a red track suit and a giant sun visor that, along with her wrinkled, sagging jowl meat, made her look like a plucked pelican suffering from sun stoke, she looked at me, smiling meekly, and said, "Cute?".  At this point, I had been grinning broadly for a 1/2 mile listening to the cacophony at my six o-clock and just shrugged as a reply to her query and pushed on.

With the wind in our hair and sun shining on our faces, the boys and I had a sublime romp at the playground.  Beckett, trying to his last breath to keep up with his big bro and with his helmet still strapped on his impossibly large head, endlessly chased Rhys up ladders and down the big tunnel slide.  After ten minutes or so, Rhys ended up lapping the tiring Beck a few times on their circuit de fun.  After Rhys exploded out of the mouth of the slide, landing with a chuckle on his butt in the sand, he spun around, calling up to his trailing little brother, "You can do it Beckett!" Then he took off, head down, watching his own feet as he scampered off for another go-round.

Rhys is a month shy of his third birthday and a handful.  He gets yelled at, rightly, 50 times a day for some misdeed or another.  I always look for opportunities to positively reinforce him when he's flying right and true.  As we walk back toward the Burley, hand-in-hand, I genuinely complimented him for playing so well with Beckett and encouraging him to follow him down the slide.  Rhys was at his best that afternoon. What a great kid he is.

Well, we had a had a mondo tailwind and were sailing and bumping back to base at a mad pace.  As I hit the gas on a gentle downhill, the Burley pitched back and forth like I was towing a roiling gunny sack of rabid, rival raccoons - sounded that way, too.  It was rush hour on the bike path and I had numerous bikers approaching in the opposite direction, so I just had time to peek under my arm to figure out what the hell was going on.  It was clear Beckett and Rhys were engaged in close, shoulder-to-shoulder combat in an attempt to gain control of some prize possession I could not identify in that split second.  Screaming like a wild animal, Rhys was flailing his arm in a, mostly, failing attempt (he just didn't have a good angle of attack sitting side-by-side) to hit his brother in the face.  After giving apologetic smiles to gawking passerby, the traffic cleared and I turned for another look-see.  Beckett, screaming like a wild animal, as well, was fighting back, swaying laterally back in forth, in an attempt to land a butt with his dangerous dome.  I glanced back up to road, so as not to wreck, and heard a solid "thwack" of helmet to helmet contact.  Then, Rhys' screams of "No! No! No!" flipped to an ear shattering shriek.  Clearly, Beck had landed a billy goat quality butt upside Rhys' head, stopping Rhys' flurry of blows but the hotly contested tug-o-war raged on.

I looked back one more time, finally spotting the object of such prodigious worth my youngest were trying mightily to maim each other to secure it.  Annoyed,  I stopped and scolded, "You know you're fighting over a half-empty package of buttwipes, don't you?"  I set my bike down, reached under the Burley's cover and snatched the package of wipes that I had stowed earlier at their feet in case of a poopy situation.  Defeated, they both cried for another few minutes and, as they simmered on down, we all sung a few verses of "Old Mac Donald" and sped home, laughing together, again.