the luckier one

My problematic daughter had one of her issues again. We were peacefully eating spaghetti last weekend when she announced, out of the blue, that her classmate Taketoshi said she was lucky because her mother was around. I said, Why, where is Taketoshi's (or was it Matsunori?) mother?

In Japan, she said. Like Robelyn, whose mother is in Dubai.

I see, I said. I vaguely remember that Robelyn was the classmate who had really neat toys, and had pretty dresses. Taketoshi-or-Matsunori was one of those little boys who usually had the latest gadgets and knew all the anime characters on Saturday-morning tv.

So they think you're lucky because you're with your mother? I asked. I was checking back how many mornings I brought her to school this year and socialized with her classmates. They were quite few. I was also remembering all the times I forgot to buy her pad paper or a plastic globe, or forgot to pay for her class picture, and of course I had guilt attacks.

These thoughts occurred in a matter of seconds, because her next statement was this:

Yeah, but Melissa is luckier. Because you see, her mother doesn't work. Then she looked at me meaningfully.

I could have spent the next hour equating kids' luck, and explaining the advantages and disadvantages of a working mother, but I lost heart and attacked the pasta instead.

She's a long way from the four-year-old who wanted to send her yaya to the office in my place so I could stay home and take care of her, but the issues remain the same. It's one of those things that kids will not really understand, no matter how much their parents try to explain. The funny thing about life is that she will learn all about it... when she has kids herself.

So I nodded and said that like her, Taketoshi-or-Matsunori (I never did get that kid's name straight), Robelyn, and Melissa all have mothers who love them, and mothers have different ways of loving, so one kid is not luckier than another.

Being lucky, like being loved, is a matter of perspective. But try explaining that to a kid.