Play date Friday

For a long time, Jin had been saying she wanted to invite her friends over, to have them come to our house and play. She wanted S, O and G from her class, and she said they had all agreed to come.
She especially wanted to play with S. "That's not something you can decide between yourselves," I told her. "Does S's mum often pick her up from school?" Jin said yes, so the next day I went to school for pickup. When the children poured out, I followed S with my eyes and watched her run into her mum's arms. I hurried over, said hello, told her the girls wanted a play date, and we swapped numbers. Jin has nothing on during the week, I said, so we could fit around S's schedule.
The play date was set for Friday the following week. In the end I chased down O's mum for her number too, and after talking it through with the mums, we agreed I would collect the girls on Friday afternoon.

On Friday afternoon, their teacher watched four chattering five-year-olds with some worry, then called the two liveliest aside and asked them, please, please, to keep their listening ears on.
With Hyun's help, I got the four of them home safely, like a bunch of excited puppies. The moment we arrived, they scattered in every direction, running, exploring, playing without a break. There were bubbles on the trampoline. There was a scooter ride and a scraped knee. There were snacks on a mat in the garden and chalk drawings on the driveway. G, who had been to our house a few times,threaded beads to make a suncatcher with her initial on it, then hung it from a branch we had stuck into the garden.

Watching the four of them play, sometimes apart and sometimes together, was sweet. It was fun, too, to see how different their personalities were.
After two hours, the mums started arriving one by one. The girls still had so much to say and didn't want to part, so just getting out the door took fifteen minutes.
Jin told me she was very happy. That night, she slept very deeply.