Making New Friends

We have a new friend on Bleeker Street- his (?) name is Crayfishy. Joe found him Saturday morning while he was laying down some new grass seed and doing some other outside chores that the extended winter Chicago loves to torture us with had kept him from. I'd been out shopping with the boys to give him some time to work without little hands getting in the way. When I returned home Joe ran to the car and tapped on my window while I was still trying to pull into the garage. Assuming it was an emergency I rolled it down only to have an old McDonalds cup with a PO'ed crayfish inside shoved into my face.

This stinker was tiny but had a huge Napoleon complex. He was not happy to be captured and I know that behind those beady eyes he was plotting ways to chop off our fingers or at least pinch a couple of tears out of us. The boys were ecstatic and as creepy as the crustacean was I was pretty fascinated too. Of course no one had the guts to touch the angry French monarch but we quickly devised a plan on how to get our new little friend back to his home. 

So we put on our boots and headed out to the the path by our house where the swamp that Crayfishy (as he was so creatively named) must have traveled from. It was a short walk, maybe ten minutes from our front door but the boys went through all five stages of grief on the way there just contemplating releasing their new friend into the wild. 

Denial 

"Mommy it's ok, we can take Crayfishy home, I'll miss him but he should be in nature."

Anger 

"Mommy, why do we have to take him back? I love him, he loves me. This is not fair!"

 Bargaining

"Mommy, we could take Crayfishy home for just a little while longer. We could look up what he eats on the internet."

Depression

"MOMMY NO!!! (sob, sob) He is my friend! I will miss him SO much!"

Acceptance 

"Mommy, that was so much fun. I'm glad he's home now. Maybe he'll visit us again soon."

We've been talking about Crayfishy for the past three days. Johnny woke up in the middle of the night last night, crawled into my bed and asked if I thought his friend was still okay. It may have just been a ploy to get out of bed but as we talked it made me think- it took less than half an hour for those little guys to turn an ugly, ill tempered creature into a best friend.  

As always my boys taught me a lesson they didn't even know they were teaching. If they could transform a creature from the swamp of English Meadows into a friend - then maybe I should work on being a better friend to those around me. Maybe the people that seem crusty, grumpy or just different than us are the ones that need a new or better friend the most. Maybe there are people out there that I've never considered or have neglected that could end up being just the kind of friend three little boys fell in love with one Saturday morning, here on Bleeker Street.