It was the wee hours of the morning, sunlight barely making it around the corner of the house and into the bedroom window through the cracks in the curtain. A little voice whispers “I love you Mama” as a little body climbs in next to me under the warm covers. A little finger pokes my nose and giggles. I cover my head with my arm then she pokes my armpit which results in a convulsive shift of the arm and jolts me awake. She giggles again.
“You want breakfast huh?” I ask, knowing all too well the answer and that my trip into dream land, my escape from reality, is over.
“Yes, breakfast, and chocolate milk.”
I peel back the covers and she jumps out ahead of me, running for the kitchen with more gusto and energy than I could ever muster this early. “Come on Mama!” she calls.
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“Mama look at me!” she proudly announces, the smile in her voice just as loud as the one on her face.
I turn form my desk and find her standing in the center of the room dressed in a pink tutu, green slippers, purple tank-top and a purple and pink feather boa wrapped around her neck. She holds out her arms and twirls, jumps, jumps again, and then drops to the floor in the same regal curtsey as Barbie did in the last ‘little girl’ movie we had watched together. “Aren’t I beautiful?” she asks.
“Yes, very beautiful, but weren’t you supposed to be cleaning your room?” I smile, but raise one eyebrow.
“I didn’t wanna. I wanted to dance first. I’m beautiful”
“Yes, you’re beautiful. Now go clean your room.”
She walked out of the room, smiling and doing twirls and little leaps the whole way back to her bedroom, which of course was not going to get clean today.
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I handed her her diner plate and told her to sit at the table. “I’ll sit next to you, right Mama?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said, “save me a seat.”
“Hey what about me?” her Daddy asked, “I want to sit next to Mama too.”
“No, just me,” she protested, but after thinking for a moment she added “but you can sit next to me on the other side.”
“Ok, I guess that will have to do,” her father sighed in mock resignation. She smiled.
A few minutes later she claimed she was done. “Eat the rest of your supper,” I urged. She had eaten all of her green beans, half of her chicken, and none of her mashed potatoes. “You haven’t even touched your potatoes.”
“Potatoes are yucky!” she made an awful face, like someone who had just sucked a nice plump lemon dry. “Can I have pudding instead?” She was serious.
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“Pick out a book, put on your Pull-up, and I’ll be in, in a few minutes.”
She picked out her book, than announced she forgot to brush her teeth so she went to do that. She finished brushing her teeth and put her Pull-up on, than she needed a drink. She got a drink of water, climbed into bed and then realized she forgot to kiss the baby kitties goodnight. She went into the living room, kissed the baby kitties goodnight and then crawled back in bed. An hour had passed. “Come on Mama, I’m ready!” she hollered.
I went in and sat next to her on the bed. I read her the story and she interrupted me every so often to point out particular items in the picture. It was a funny story and she giggled, which made me giggle, her laughter was contagious that way. I tucked the blankets in around her and put the book back on the book rack – at least something in her room would be picked up.
“Hugs!” she said, holding out her arms. I gave her a hug, she quoted the book and giggled again, I giggled too.
“Goodnight Sam.”
“Goodnight Mama.”
I turned off the light and started to close the door. “I love you Mama,” she whispered.
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I want to be five again…..
The ending comes as a surprise to me, not the right kind of surprise. That didn't seem to be where this was leading.
ReplyDeleteYou portray her life but give no hint that you'd like to trade the maternal role, the adult role, for the child's. Maybe this is me being dense, but the idea of being five again has no traction at all in my mind. So I look back to the description of what it's like to be five as you give it, and I still can't see the charm, though the linked-vignette portrait of childnhood and this child is charming.
I think I took too much out. My original inclued this in the ending:
ReplyDelete"She can wake up early full of energy and can still stomach having chocolate milk for breakfast. She doesn’t care what she wears – she is always beautiful. Playing and having fun is much more important than having a clean room. She hates mashed potatoes and loves pudding, and has the metabolism that allows her to replace one with the other and still be skinny. She still idolizes her mother. She doesn’t hold herself to a strict schedule with doomsday deadlines, she simply goes where her whims take her. She finds humor in the littlest things and it sticks with her.
I want to be five again....."
Does it make more sense now? I guess this was a case where I was asking a little too much of the reader at the end. I can see that now.
I still think those six words skew the piece in a direction the reader didn't expect and doesn't want to go. The mother's interior life is a whole new topic; we would have been perfectly happy to believe that that life begins and ends with adoration of her little girl. That she would like to be her daughter's age with what it implies about turning away from adult complexities...I can't go there at all.
ReplyDeleteBut I like the stuff you dropped earlier--why did you drop it?