Recently, some afternoon when I was wrapped up writing or some evening when I was roasting asparagus for the four hundredth time (hint: it’s easy) my baby turned into a real live boy. The kind of boy who screeches when he’s mad and says what his brother tells him to say and giggles when he thinks he’s making a joke. The kind of a boy who wrestles and dances and fights over toys and walks up to you solemnly, to proclaim, “Poop.”
The dynamic has shifted. I have two boys now. Brothers. Brothers who are very different from each other.
“Stop doing that,” I say. Or yell. Or bellow. Fifteen thousand times a day.
“Don’t stand on the couch!”
“Stop fighting!”
“Don’t knock him down!”
“LET GO OF YOUR BROTHER!!”
And each time I yell, I let go, just a little. Not much. The line eases ever-so-gently out of my hands. They take the slack and tumble forward to surprise me with a brief game. Tag across the house. Running in the same direction and screaming.
They align—two little fireballs—hurtling toward me and getting along.
Then they change trajectories so fast I end up sputtering and furious and wondering why they can’t just get along and then—sometimes—it’s just funny. I’m living it, this sitcom life, this familiar yet unfamiliar path. I’m the mom, I’m a mom, I’m a mother and this is nuts.
“WHY DO YOU HAVE TO HIT HIM ALL THE TIME,” I screamed last week, losing my temper, my fists balled up at my sides.
My son looked up at me and told me, calmly, that he didn’t like his baby brother.
I sat down hard and started crying. And crying. And crying. So he turned to the baby toddler (who was taking advantage of my mental state by rifling through his brother’s NO BABIES ALLOWED toys) and said, “I mean I looooooove my brother, see? I’m kissing him! And hugging him!”
Moose screeched in response, babbling out some sort of baby-talk obscenity-laden tirade along the lines of “LEAVE ME ALONE.”
And I sniffled and shook my head and and laughed and ached.
This may or may not be related:
