You Just Wait

I get a kick out of my son. He hates it when I do that — when I giggle at him as he behaves like a kid behaves. It’s a hoot and a joy watching this boy evolve and expand and blossom into the person he is. I love that element of surprise. What’s next?

I know, I know. “The fun has just begun,” you seasoned parents say.

“You just wait.”

I don’t think I’m going to wait. I’m going to enjoy what’s happening right now. Seems to work better that way. If I enjoy now, and the things he does that happen in it, well, I’m sure the future will take care of itself. Adventure? Most likely. Misery? Only if I let it be misery. Not that there won’t be times when I think misery is upon me, but I have control over whether or not I’m going to let the teabag of misery steep until the tea is barely drinkable.

I sat in my green recliner and watched the boy as he got ready for school. He’s not ready to inhabit his own bedroom upstairs — at night — far, far away from the presence of Mom, who serves as a stable force in the face of the apparitions that threaten to materialize out of the darkness or jump out of closets or hide around corners or peer from behind chests of drawers.

I remember when I was a kid, lying on my bed before fading off to sleep, deliberately making sure my arm was not hanging down the side of the bed, lest a witch reach out from the dust-bunny nether regions underneath and grab it. I don’t think I’d pondered what would happen after the claw grabbed my arm. It was just the idea of it. I knew there was no witch. But unconsciously I’d rather have tied my arm to the bedpost than have something to be scared about. It was the fear of fear, more than it was the avoidance of evil witches. And so it is with Benjamin. One day, he’ll stake his claim to his own private space. He’ll up and say, “Mom, I’m going to sleep upstairs.” Maybe not every night, at first. But it will happen just as naturally as so many things happen in his life, without the need for extreme parental policing of the growing-up process.

So, as I sat in my recliner, I watched as he pulled a shirt out of the chest of drawers I’ve stashed in a convenient corner of the dining room — an alternative to the laundry basket that was the centerpiece for an array of clothes randomly piled around it. I advised him for the umpteenth time to close the drawers. He stuffed his shirts (now you know where the term “stuffed shirt” comes from) back into the drawer and closed it. I snickered.

“Stoooop!” he ordered.

“I just think you’re cute.”

He carried his clothes into the living room, which was in full view of the chair where I was sitting in the corner of my dining room.

“Go away!” He wanted to change his clothes, and he didn’t want me to watch and laugh.

“OK. I’ll pretend I’m not here.” I laughed at my own joke and the absurdity of it.

“Stoooop!”

I got up and left him to his task, still snorting at the idea of pretending I wasn’t there.

“Stop that!”

I have days when the chaos and randomness gets on my nerves. But I really like the days when I see the whimsy of it. In the cache of memories I’ll have as I look back on these times, I’ll find the day when wet clothes of neighbor kids spun in the dryer after the water balloon experiment. The boys hopped around my house wearing long underwear, chosen from an array I threw in a pile for their choosing. The long john pants on short John kept falling down. We all giggled at the lacy V collar with the little flower at the point — Jake’s outfit. Queen Kelly reigned over her royal realm as the hem of my chenille bathrobe dragged along the floor beneath her.

I’ll remember how I sent the kids home when I caught them graffiti-ing the sidewalk with the spray paint I’d foolishly placed in the pile of junk I’d arranged by the curb for the city clean-up. I thank my lucky stars they had just gotten started. (What is it with kids and paint, anyway?)

I’ll remember the day I drove to Walmart to pick the kids up after they’d walked there to buy Pokemon cards. They raced to the car dragging with them a child’s basketball hoop, a dirty, matted stuffed dog about the size of your garden variety farm pet, and a container of sidewalk chalk (what a wonderful alternative to paint!), all carefully chosen from yards along the way (for the city-wide pickup), temporarily stored in front of the Hy-Vee grocery store.

I’ll remember looking around the crafts section at Walmart for a nose. Yes, a nose. For the dog they’d picked up from someone’s yard. I was going to wash the poor critter, but it needed a nose, to prevent the stuffing in the head from coming out of the hole where the original schnozz used to be. Unfortunately, Walmart did not have a nose.

I’ll remember picking up a baby bed mattress from a curbside junk pile to serve as a cheap alternative to a trampoline, thus preserving what’s left of the bed that Benjamin will one day sleep in again.

And the memories just keep on comin’.

The fun of the now is what makes them great memories. Re-runs, played on the TV screens of the mind. Artworks, rendered on the canvas of the heart. The feelings of them, preserved from the past and played forward into the future, ever available in the now. Shaping the sculpture of life, carving out perfection.

Meanwhile, I’m putting the spray paint cans where they can’t be reached. I’m not convinced the kids are ready yet to say, “I think I’m going to leave these cans alone.” In this case, I’ll wait.