It is early. Saturday morning. Only Owen and I are downstairs. Surprisingly, we have had a fluid morning of getting dressed and shoed…unlike most other mornings, riddled with argument and bribery, that I’ve endured to get the clothes on the boy child. It simply isn’t natural for him quite yet. But today, as I sit on the sofa sipping my coffee, waiting for the house to come alive, he is approaching with coat in hand…something on the agenda it would seem. He convinces me to let him cross the alley and search our parked van for his “Karate Sticks”. “I’ll look both ways, Mom!”, he excitedly announces. We’ve worked up to this and the kids know they don’t walk out the front door without a parental heads up…not in this hood…not with the county probation office just down the alley and folks all stormin past the front of our house after a rough visit to the P.O. (I’ve overheard a lot of post P.O. visit phone converstaions…to some enabling family member or maybe a “used to being belittled significant other.” It’s not pretty.) So I watch him out the front window while he searches the van. He emerges back thru the front door moments later, clearly disappointed in the search results but holding a fresh, ice cold bottle of water from the floor of the van. “They weren’t there.” His face having told the story long before words got involved. I’m still fresh with the days beginnings and feeling my first cup of coffee doing its job, so I put my best foot forward. “Bummer. You want a drink of that nice, cold water?”
“No.”
“Well, I do. Can I have a sip?” Im trying to seem excited about what he did return from his cold, friutless trip out the front door possessing. I hold out my hand while he helpfully twists the cap off with his teeth, grasping the bottle in his two small hands. He’s a little bit proud of this trick. He holds the bottle out to me, eager for the exchange. I enjoy a refreshing sip of the ice cold water. He is pleased. Until he has enough time (really only a moment) to remember his original disappointment at the disappearance of the Karate Sticks. Earlier in his search around the home I heard him lament “Now how am I gonna learn KARATE!” Please note: his Karate Sticks consist of a lone drum stick and the long side of a rectangle mini chalk board frame…both found on the floor of the storage unit.) He chooses to take this disappointment out on me while I am cooling my insides with the icy liquid. His shoulders slump. His face turns down. “Now it has your germs on it.” He doesnt like watching me enjoy this sip of cool water while he remains so dissatisfied with recent events. I have no choice but to laugh. Im looking at his weather crusted, snot moistened, upper lip…despite the tissue we used not 15 minutes ago. I look at the brown dirt across the front of his fall jacket…the one I keep throwing on the perpetual laundry pile to be washed, but then it is needed again before I get the chance to wash it. I cant help myself.
Smiling with every ounce of my face I inform him, “It looks like you might have more germs than me right about now.”
Sensing his inability to get under my skin by alerting me to my “germiness” or motivate me to be more concerned about his cause, he turns to go wallow and interrogate siblings as to the whereabouts of his Karate Sticks. Just another loving and itty bit dysfunctional interaction with my 4 year old. Thank you Owen, for keeping me on my emotional toes.
I think maybe the obvious next step,might be to do a book where pepole share their collections,sort of like an updated version of the old Incredibly Strange Music books.If you do this,I would love to be included,even though I may be a little out of your age group.