“Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!”
The cries came from one of two young girls who were perched on the back of an enormous inflated killer whale.
“Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!” the girl called, as the vessel jostled and bobbed in the crowded pool.
It was “Raft Night” at a Bethesda swimming club, and you could scarcely see the surface of the water for all the made-in-Shenzhen inner tubes, rubber rings, blow-up sharks, suntan beds and pirate ships. There was even a puffy red lobster designed to wear a child the way a child at a seafood restaurant might wear a lobster bib.
The joyful cacophony was deafening, but through it all came the sound of orca girl, not with whale song but with constant yelling: “Mommyyyyyy!”
Where was Mommy? She appeared to be deep in conversation with a friend. Did she know that her child seemed to be in some distress? It was one of those moments when, as a fellow parent, you try to do what seems right.
“Excuse me,” I said, interrupting the women’s conversation. “I’m not sure you noticed, but your daughter seems very anxious to get your attention.”
The woman glanced at her daughter in the pool, rolled her eyes and shot me a tired grin.
“Oh no!” I laughed. “Rats. Sorry!”
Ah, it was too late. Due to my meddling, mother and child had made eye contact, and now Mommy was on the hook. She went to the edge of the pool and leaned over. The girl, with what I swear was the glitter of triumph in her eyes, instantly said: “Can Briony come for a sleepover and can we get ice cream at the snack bar?”
“We’ll see,” said the mother. “Maybe.” She began to walk away.
“Maybe!” the girl said to Briony, who was riding the whale with her. “But Mommy? Mommy!”
Mommy turned around again. “Yes?”
“If we don’t have a sleepover can we still get ice cream?”
Mommy sighed. “Yes.”
“Yay!” the girls cried, and went back to whatever it is children do when they are experiencing Raft Night.
“I am so sorry,” I said again when the mother returned to the edge of the pool. “It’s hard to tell, sometimes.”
It was fine; she understood.
In family life, is it not uncommon to observe what many mothers humorously call “selective auditory dysfunction,” a condition in which certain words or syllables ? or whole paragraphs ?simply pass by unacknowledged because it suits the listener.
“Didn’t you hear me?” a frustrated relation may say.
“No, were you calling?” comes the innocent reply. And sometimes it is innocent! Honestly!
Other times, as with the mother at the pool, the listener has intentionally made herself deaf so as to throw the caller back on her own resources. (Orca girl, it turns out, liked to summon her mother to deliver trivial and self-serving requests a little too often. Mommy had been trying to break this pattern when Mrs. Nosy butted in.)
Raft Night was nearing its end — parents were grabbing towels, pointing at the clock and shouting things to their bobbing offspring — when the siren started up again. “Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!”
From a distance, Mommy and I caught each other’s eye and grinned. Nope, we didn’t hear anything.
Meghan Cox Gurdon’s column appears on Sunday and Thursday. She can be contacted at [email protected].
