As Right as Rain

A cool breeze rustled the leaves in a way that promised of a break from the heat. Overhead, a sky of bright blue was littered with fat grey and white clouds. The woman hoped for a drenching rain so she wouldn’t have to lug the watering can across the yard. She could practically hear the garden crying out for water.

It just felt so far away and her legs were so heavy.

“What do you think, Little Legs, do you want to water the garden?”

He pretended not to hear his mother as he continued to splash and dump water onto his head from the water table. For those who aren’t familiar, a water table is a brightly colored, plastic receptacle that holds water and is set up on legs just high enough for a toddler to reach in and quickly make a soaking wet mess. It also happened to be his parents’ latest attempt to amuse and distract their incredibly active child. So far it was working brilliantly.

“Little Legs?” his mother repeated herself giving him the benefit of the doubt.

Surely, it was too early for him to ignore her. How could he have learned the ways of the world at such a tender age and with the last few months of that tender age being spent in quarantine? Could this be from the cheeky influence of Thomas the Train? His mother made a note to monitor cartoon time more closely in the future.

The boy took a cupful of the grimy water and flung it at his mother, splashing her face and chest. Of course, he was not ignoring her, he was simply too busy to answer. He laughed and returned to his work filling up the cup and dumping it on his head.

From an evolutionary standpoint, they were not that far from monkeys. The boy’s mother could easily see the dripping wet boy in front of her as a naughty animal throwing a banana peel or a handful of poop in response to something he didn’t like. However, she still wished that he would use words as she wiped the water from her glasses.

Life was about to change for her monkey boy. His baby monkey brother was due to make his appearance in less than a week’s time. Soon the boy would have to share everything, including his parents, toys and time, with a noisy creature who would quickly double and triple in size and ability.

Little Legs would transition from being an only child to a brother, from one to one of a pair, all while he was still sleeping early on Sunday morning. The initial part of becoming a brother had required nothing from him, aside from a little patience and grace for his slow moving mother; it was the days and months and years to follow that would take work as the two boys evolved from being siblings to brothers to best friends, with any luck.

Snow in June

As the woman stared blankly into the refrigerator, she stood with a slight hunch, a droop like a bouquet of old flowers. The cold air did not revive her, it merely preserved her current wilted state from progressing any further. She was nine months pregnant and barefoot in the kitchen.

“How did this happen?” she wondered, already knowing the obvious answer.

A Tupperware container with a mass of green stared back at the woman; three-day old broccoli, she remembered from earlier in the week. Not wanting to play the food poisoning pros vs. cons game, she continued to consider other dinner combinations.

Frozen pizza and bagged salad would be easy but problematic for the lack of a bagged salad, pasta was always a hit but not very nutritious unless she added a can of peas. She mentally checked through the usual meal options and their level of popularity as the remaining cold air flowed out and around the woman.

Meanwhile, the original source of her exhaustion rode a train around the kitchen island, propelling himself forward with kicks and a realistic choo-choo sound. Every few rounds, he redirected the train at his mother’s legs which got him the attention that he needed to continue with his well-worn route.

She suddenly realized with an instant dread that the kitchen was strangely silent. The train noises stopped. No choo-choo, no plastic wheels against the ground or the sound of the train ramming into the cabinets or her inconveniently located appendages.

“Little Legs?” the woman asked as she turned around fearing what she may see.

The tall, wooden cabinet doors were open behind her and the ground was coated with a fine white powder. In the air, the powder floated down and around Little Legs as he shook an open box of baking soda to a beat only heard by his ears. For a second, he appeared as an other-worldly creature in the midst of a freakish, summertime snowstorm. His long eyelashes were tipped in the same white that covered his arms and hair, the kitchen floor and lower cabinet shelves.

He smiled and laughed, showing a pink mouth and tongue breaking from the white, as he continued to make it snow, bigger and bigger, over his head and out to the sides. As his mother approached, he frantically shook the box harder and higher, aware that his special snowstorm was about to be involuntarily terminated.

His mother kneeled and wrapped her arms around the little space creature to not only prevent his escape but also to limit the spread of the baking soda dusting. She laughed in disbelief at the mess as she removed the box from his hand, prying it from his clamped fingers.

Through a flood of fat protest tears, the boy took in the beauty of the kitchen. It was covered in white, clean and crisp aside from the footprints of his meddling mother.

With a final yowl, he turned off the tears and seemed to take a babbled vow to make it snow again.

The summer was far from over.

What moves inside

There is a creature that temporarily lives within me who demands peanut butter and popsicles.

His brother likes to sing his own version of Row, Row, Row Your Boat while sitting in my lap and playing with Matchbox cars. He uses his unborn brother as a pillow and leans against him or rests his elbow on top of the ever-growing bump when he turns around to make sure I am paying attention. I feel the baby’s arms and legs move, finally big enough to test Little Legs in the beginning of the lifelong push and pull that is unique to siblings.

They are so close to each other, literally separated only by a few layers of tissue and skin when we sit like this, and yet they are still worlds away from one another. One floats in a blissful state, still gathering bits of stardust in his creation while the other waits on the outside, learning about worms and constantly outgrowing his shoes.

Change is hard for everyone. I am still trying to adjust to single spacing between sentences in a fight against my well-trained thumb that automatically hits the space bar twice. However, for children, change seems to be easier. Change is simply part of life as they constantly discover new things and experiences, like teeth where previously there was only a smooth line of gums and the sudden ability to crunch into a carrot when oatmeal and puree were the only options on the menu just a few months ago.

How will my sweet Little Legs deal with the introduction of a baby into the house that he currently rules? How will I find the time and energy to be present for my boys, my husband, myself? I ponder over the uncertainty of the future just as I did before Little Legs was born. And then I remember when my first stardust baby arrived how the questions disappeared and were replaced by instinct on how and what to do next.

Somehow there was enough love, time and energy for everything, but just barely.