aag

During a week free from the influence of a bossy older sister, my little ones quickly filled the power vacuum with their own rules, more equitable because of the closeness of their ages. She returned with the iron fist of the despot, upsetting the fragile balance they’d worked out and prompting revolution-like outbursts of rage from all three as they renegotiated the laws of their tiny kingdom.

The near-coup with its resultant screaming, chasing through the house and destruction of every intricately wrought Barbie scene left me wrung out. By the end of the week I was ready to load them into the minivan and drive off into the countryside in search of any band of Travellers willing to take charge of the brats.

At the top of my list for potential gypsyhood was my son, who reacted with even more indignation than his sister to the return of the tyrant. During the week in question he lost several hard-won toilet training milestones, leaving the house damp and smelling of little boy pee. He shrieked “NO!” so many times that the skin on my face began to slough off. He licked the couch without ceasing. By the time Sunday afternoon arrived I was, in the words of toddlers everywhere, ALL DONE.

The ex had plans which included the older two but not the boy. Briefly I considered locking him in the cat carrier and donning earplugs taking him to the park, but I had too many errands to engage in any such nonsense. I prayed that he’d tone down the shrieking enough that no one would be tempted to inform the police about a murder in progress.

But as we drove from recycling center to gas station to store something amazing happened. He began speaking to me in a calm voice. He commented on passing cars and clouds. He marveled at the backhoe sitting motionless in a field. He complained — but quietly! Reasonably! — about the amount of time it took to arrive at the grocery store.

And when our errands were through he made the difficult choice between pancakes and tacos for dinner without any undue hysterics. “We’ll sit on the same side,” I told the waitress, hoping to head off the inevitable breaks for freedom by blocking his exit with my body. Instead of attempting to wiggle away he sat sedately in the booth and colored, consulting with me periodically about color choices and the shapes of certain difficult letters.

When our food arrived he (very reasonably) asked me to cut up his pancakes, then accepted bites of the tomatoes in my salad. He did not yell. He did not demand a different dinner. He did not lick anything, at least not anything that wasn’t meant to be licked. He was so good that I let him choose a tiny sundae for dessert. He cooed over it appreciatively and then offered up a bite for me to try first.

Throughout the coloring, the pancake-ing and the ice cream sharing he scooted closer to me so that finally we sat thigh-to-thigh with my arm around his muscular little shoulders. He’s always been like this, wedging his body as close as possible to mine with no regard for anyone’s comfort but his own. But at that moment I didn’t care. He was calm and happy and had all the attention his little heart could possibly have wanted. He was with his mommy. Nothing else mattered. And when he looked over at me with the request for one more bowl of ice cream, the naked adoration shining from his eyes made the shame for too often being such a dreadful mommy ever so much harder to bear.

I imagine freshly minted souls lined up in some shaded nothingness, uncomplainingly waiting to be called into infants’ bodies seconds before birth. My son’s could have gone to some other child entirely if his mother had not chosen to carry him. If circumstances were different he might have stayed with her. Or — and this is the part that makes me weep with unforgivable guilt — perhaps he should have been adopted by a family with no other children, a family who could have made every day one of pancakes, ice cream sundaes and undivided attention.

But instead he came to me, unplanned and almost entirely unexpected. And I fail almost every single day at being worthy of his love.