I had the amazing gift of Margot last week.  Jess brilliantly came up with Moncure Camp for Margot and prepared her for months about what it was going to be like to be away from Mom, Dad and Aidan.  Margot understood that GPops, Granny and Arlo would be the camp counselors and that Moncure is a little different from Arlington, VA and her busy life there.

Jess, Dan and Aidan brought Margot down on a Saturday and we got to have our typical family fun in the pond, big dinner, visit to The Plant and loads of chaos, catching up and sweet, sweet connection with this family.

Margot knew that her parents and little brother would be leaving and she would be staying in the very tall bed at Granny’s that requires a catapult to get into.  GPops would be up the hill if she needed anything and Arlo of course was right down the hall. 

My fear was that when her parents left and it was bedtime, she would freak out and we would be up all night talking this out.  Zafer and Arlo would need a midnight pickup for years until they were used to being without their parents.  I envisioned sleepless nights for a week.

Well, not the fearless Margot. 

She told me that she would need a midnight snack.  The girl is a great salesperson.  As if that were a normal thing at her house.  I of course, was ready to do anything to make the first night go smoothly.   “What entails a midnight snack, Margot?”  “Well, a banana, an apple, cookies of course and maybe some crackers.”  The idea is that a plate of food is by her bed for when she happens to wake up and then she has a snack. There were definitely cookie crumbs in her bed all week.

Coming up!

I told Margot that my Granny Ruby would give me warm milk at night if I couldn’t sleep.  She thought that was a good idea.  So, warm milk became a ritual every night and we would go over the day and get ready for bedtime.  It was a calming beautiful thing for both of us.

The song “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for” by U2 came on the pandora station and Margot and I started belting it out together.  That somehow helped our night and became our song of the week.  It’s in a popular kids movie and that girl can sing!

Jess always has Margot’s gorgeous hair looking pretty perfect…in braids or something to keep it out of her face.  Not having a lot of experience braiding and kind of forgetting that showers are important, we might have gone a few days with just jumping in the pond and I looked at Margot at one point and thought, wow, she reminds me of Pippi Longstocking.  My childhood hero.  We did a facetime with Jess, who upon seeing Margot was a little horrified at her lack of showering and hair care.  I started to work on regular baths at that point.

The week entailed lots of dress up, jewelry store, puzzles, playing hotel (which we really did due to needs at our AIRBNB, Arlo teaching the carbon cycle, picking produce at Little Pond farm, ballet class, Pippi Longstocking movies, meeting new friends, swimming in the pond, screen printing at Hempsmith, adventures with GPops and Arlo, watching movies with Carrie, learning about business at The Plant and helping, dinner with the Lilly Den crew, navigating country life and putting on our glow in the dark angel wings at night and running around the woods.

I drove Margot back to Arlington which is no small feat…7 hours of traffic and car charging.  The girl handled it like a champ and when I was getting frustrated, she talked me out of it. 

She mentioned McDonalds and I said, “Margot, Granny doesn’t do McDonalds, we look for a lovely, fancy restaurant to have lunch”.  Well, needing to charge the car and not having any food, we ended up walking through waste high grass to get to a Wendy’s fast food restaurant.  I was a little defeated and apologized to Margot for the lunch.  She looked around positively and said “Granny, this is pretty fancy”.  Love that girl. 

Can’t wait for next year.