Three mothers and their babies

At the doctor’s office this morning, young mother struggling to keep her two and a half year old quiet and calm and within arm’s reach as she’s going over some paperwork with the receptionist.  The little boy’s two and a half, full of cheerful energy, talkative and inquisitive.  Not misbehaving, just testing.  The kind of precocious kid who wants to know everything, see everything, have things explained to him, and explain what he’s doing and what he’s discovered.  You can tell he wears his mother out at the same time he fills her with pride.  She’s aware that everyone in the waiting room is trying not to laugh at her frazzled efforts to rein him in.

“And he’s sick,” she says to the room, with a nervous laugh.  “You should see him when he’s himself.”

“You’d have to shoot me,” someone says.  It’s a woman in her sixties in a chair on the far side of the waiting room.   She’s emphatic.  “You’d have to shoot me.”

People around her chuckle.  They know she means what she’s about to say, which is, “I could not go through that again.”

The young mother smiles, apologetically.  She can’t help feeling criticized even though the older woman is actually offering a compliment and some encouragement.

“I did it twice.  I don’t know how I got through it.  You’d have to shoot me.  I couldn’t do it again.”

The little boy is standing still, looking at the older woman curiously.  The older woman says to him, “My little boy isn’t little anymore.  He’s twenty-nine.”  She adds for the grown-ups’ benefits.  “Thank God.”

“Mine is eighteen,” the receptionist says.  “He’s graduating from high school tonight.”

“My daughter’s thirty-two,” says the older woman.

“I watched him sleep this morning,” the receptionist says.  “Can you believe that?  I watched him sleep and I thought how can that big man lying there be my baby?  But he is.  He’s my baby.”

“Wait until you see him in his cap and gown,” the older mother says.

“He’s still my baby.”  She rolls her chair away from the counter and reaches for a piece of paper coming out of the printer.  She hands the paper to the young mother who gives it to her little boy.  “Here you go.”

“What’s this?” he asks, holding it in both hands and frowning at it as if he can read it but isn’t quite sure he likes what he’s reading.

“It’s paperwork.  You need to keep it for me.  It’s your job.”

“My job?”  He sounds thrilled to have a job.  “My job?”

“Yes, your job.”

The little boy nods and takes his mother’s hand and starts to lead her towards the door.  He’s ready to go to work.

The older mother says to the receptionist again, “Wait until you see him in his cap and gown.  Worse!  Wait until you see him on his wedding day.  I tell you, I cried!  When we did the mother and son dance?”

“I got our song all picked out,” the receptionist says.  “I won’t ever tell him that.”

“My son picked ours out.  He knew the right song too.  He told me he’d picked it out when he was a kid.  He knew I loved it because I used to play it over and over when they were both little.  When he led me out onto the dance floor and the DJ put on that song?  He was crying and I was crying.”

The young mother and the little boy are about to go.

“Say goodbye,” she tells him.

“Goodbye,” he says, “I have to go to my job.”

They leave.

“You’d have to shoot me,” the older woman says.  “You’d have to shoot me.”

Comments

[minstrel hussain boy]

i sometimes find myself waxing all nostalgic for the days when my guys were little. there are a lot of amazing things to watch. when a child is learning to talk, they are not only learning a language, they are learning the concept of language. it's a fun, and interesting time.

then, i'll be shopping for groceries, or some other pursuit which they would always hijack (not so much with behavior, but with endless questions) and i'll realize how convenient it is for me now that they are grown.

put me firmly in the "just shoot me" camp please.

[muddy]

The one good thing about them being little is that you can pick them up and move them, and then they stay there. My son at 3, told to stay in his room until he could be civilized, after a half hour calls out the door crack, "Can I come out now?" I ask if he is ready to be civilized. Long introspective pause, then: "No." Thank you for your honesty dear, get back in.

Now that really *was* civilized. The honesty, so refreshing! What adult would answer so? Then again, what adult would go in there in the first place.

No shooting needed here, if my health could take it I'd be fostering this second.

[Cathie from Canada]

Beautiful.
Today I went through the experience of hearing that my children were about to be arrested at the G20 protests, 2000 miles away from us. In the end, the police let them go, but it was a close call. I didn't know whether to be proud, or hysterical, or both.