The Lover and the Joker
I am home after completing my last final. I’m a little grumpy that most of my friends are out celebrating, enjoying a beer at an outdoor table of a French Quarter bar on this balmy December day, while I have to be home caring for a demanding toddler and a sick, feverish infant (teething/recurring ear infection/immunizations – the trifecta of baby misery). The Professor has 650 exam questions to grade in two days, as he reminds me and has done so daily for several weeks leading up to finals (PSA – even professors who love teaching hate grading things – The More You Know!), and so child care falls to me this afternoon so he can work on that. I wanted to celebrate the successful end of a really long and difficult semester, and instead I have to return home to the daily grind. I am an unwilling mother this afternoon.
I am sitting on the couch next to Jack while he plays with his trains. He shows me the RR crossing sign that comes with Thomas the Tank Engine – a yellow circle with two Rs in it. Ever on the lookout for teachable moments, I say (read this with weary resignation, subtext: Another Damn Day of Playing Trains): “R, Jack. That’s an R.” “R” says Jack, only not with the baby sound, the English pronunciation “Aw,” but with the actual rolled, sharp, American R. He still pronounces train and truck and hungry as twain and twuck and hungwy, but here is a glimpse to when he will lose that baby lisp. Anyway, I praise him for saying it right, really enunciating that R – “Wow Jack! Great job! R! Very good! Rrrrrr!” and I see something occur to him. He gives me a side eye glance, and then demands “What a pirate says?” and then he laughs. Jack’s first joke.
We play together on the couch – Liam learning to sit, Jack practicing how to share by giving his baby brother every choking hazard in the room. (I praise him for sharing his toys, and try to surreptitiously remove them from Liam’s grip before he can get the lead-paint covered tiny train wheels into his mouth, but Jack keeps catching me and saying – No! You share! Here you go baby! Nice Jack! Share Mama!) Then I ask Jack “Do you know what time it is?” and he says “Nigh nigh!” and I say yup, and he puts his trains back in their basket, collects his bear, and crawls willingly into bed. I put Liam in his bouncy seat before going to tuck Jack in. “Nigh Nigh mama,” he says, “see you soon.”
I come out, and Liam is sitting in his chair, being loud. I walk past and he is grumping at me, feeling poorly I can tell. I pick him up and he tucks his head into my shoulder. He buries his left hand in my hair, gripping the roots at the back of my neck, and tucks his right thumb in his mouth. Then he grabs my lower lip and rubs his fingers along my chin. In this way does Liam like to hold me – as if I am one of those stuffed loveys, a head on a blanket. He wraps his arm around my neck and holds me close, smelling my skin, content to be near me. And we sit like that for a while.
What a chore they are, these boys of mine. What a joy.
