The phone starts ringing right around 4:00 every Friday afternoon.

“Hello, this is F., is Nathan there?”

“Hey Mrs. Edwards, it’s B. Is Ryan home?”

I love that my boys have friends, good friends who are good kids with parents we like. And I understand the desire to spend as much non-school time with those friends as possible.

But I swear sometimes it feels like we have a sign on our door that says “send us your kids”.  F.’s Mom is divorced and a teacher.  The only time she can get anything done is on the weekends, and when she has things to do like shopping for clothes or getting her hair done, she hates to drag F. along. So, she has him call and innocently ask what Nathan is doing, when what she really wants to ask is can she drop him off at our house?

B.’s parents both work, and they have a summer house Up North.  This weekend they are going up to open the house, but there’s no guarantee that any of the other kids whose parents have homes up there will be around. So rather than subject B. to hours of sheer boredom, they call us. But at least they come right out and ask if he can spend the night with us because they are going out of town.

Chris commutes an hour each way to work and often has to work at home late into the night. So for him, weekend nights are his time to connect with the kids. Like me, he hates to say no to our kids’ friends’ parents because we may need to call in some favors some day, but he also hates not having his house and his kids to himself.

And thus the conflict I feel, because on the one hand I understand Chris’ desire to have those few precious hours with the boys, but on the other hand, I know how desperately important friendships are. I want to have the house that the kids want to come to because they know they’ll be welcome.

Which is why I have such a hard time saying No to the sleepover requests, to the last-minute “Can F. walk home with Nathan next Thursday? the kids have a half day but I have to stay a full day” phone call. I mean, if I really had something else going on, I would say no, but as long as I’m going to be here?

Send me your kids. I’ll take good care of them.