Mawwied?

“Are you mawwied?” The question came out of the blue from the back seat of my SUV, where two five-year-olds and a toddler were en route to Chuck E. Cheese’s while their parents enjoyed some time for Christmas shopping. Being, at the time, unmarried, I told the questioner, a waifish girl, “No, I’m not married.”

“Oh,” she stated. “You’re a mom, just not mawwied.”

“Well, do I have any kids?” I asked her.

She thought. “No,” she said, “but you’re still a mom, just not mawwied.” She said it with complete confidence and authority. Clearly, a “mom” to Paige was any adult female, whether or not she was encumbered with children, diaper bags, minivan, and husband.

“Well,” I countered, “maybe I’m just a kid. A big kid.”

Now the other five-year-old piped up. “Yep, that’s it---she’s a kid.” She sounded relieved, as if it hadn’t sounded quite right that I was a mom, not mawwied, but she hadn’t known what else to suggest.

But Paige scoffed at this idea. “Not a kid! You’re a mom.” Which might have settled it, had Autumn bought into her reasoning. Clearly she did not.

“She can’t be a mom. She’s a kid, like us, only big.”

And hereupon began the Argument of My Status. I watched in the mirror as the two girls crossed their arms and dug in for what looked to be a long legal battle.

“Kid,” stated Autumn with a shake of her head for emphasis.

“No, a mom, just not mawwied,” Paige explained patiently. She, at least, was willing to work with Autumn until the latter admitted Paige was right.

“Kid.” More firmly now.

Here Paige abandoned all pretense of trying to reason. “Mom, not mawwied.”

“Kid.”

“Mom, not mawwied.”

Their voices rose.

“KID.”

“Mom, not MAWWIED.”

“Kid.”

This might have gone on all the way to Chuck E. Cheese’s, but another thought abruptly occurred to Paige. “Hey, maybe her husband died.” The pathos of this idea appealed to Autumn. “Yeah, and her kids, too,” she said. There was a moment of silence in the back seat, as if they were honoring the memory of my dear departed family. But they could not mourn for long. One announced an appropriate ending for this sad chain of events in my life:

“And then SHE died!”

And they both dissolved into hysterical laughter.

Until the toddler said quietly, “Mawwied?”