Maternal Regret

I wish I were taking M and E to see the Spice Girls.

(I was going to subtitle this "A Post Without Irony," because the sentiment expressed herein is wholly in earnest, except that it is simply impossible to reference the Spice Girls without irony: of course the actual title of the post, while not inaccurate--I do regret it--leads you to expect something different, which places it in the neighborhood of irony, and Posh, I would argue, and M would agree, though S does not, thinking her absolutely frightening, is our current avatar of postmodern self-consciousness, itself a cheap relation of true literary irony. At any rate, M is fascinated by Posh, and, truly, how fun would it have been to see the Spice Girls with M and E? For my mom, no fun at all; for me, ultimately fun; and that is why my girls are so lucky to have both their grandmother and their mother.)

(Have gone back and forth between "were" and "was" in that non-parenthetical sentence. The subjunctive in English is just too much for me.)

(When we were in England when M was two, the Spice Girls were just hitting it big, though All Saints were giving them a run for their money. We were at a posh [ha! didn't even do that on purpose!] party where M ate all the hard-boiled quail eggs, and there was one other child, an eight-year-old girl, who preferred All Saints but had a solid grip on the Spice Girls, and that was the first time I got an inkling of what was happening. M, of course, was clueless, mainly just entranced with this glamorous big girl, doing Spice Girls routines at midnight when both were giddy with exhaustion, and who would have thought that today she would routinely email me news of Posh and her fashion doings?!)