Dinner Gifts

At dinner the other night, Husband was trying to maintain some of that Terribly Important Family DinnerTable Conversation while waiting for Kid 4 to eat his food.* Husband said, "I remember when Kid 1 was three years old. She said, Daddy, of I'm still awake when we get home, can I pick the fuzz out of my toes?"

Everyone laughed. Then everyone looked at him in expectation. So he went on. "I remember Kid 2's first word." Everyone, even the ones who weren't alive when Kid 2 spoke first, said, "WOW!" and then there were comments about how it was at the circus, no, the Indiana state fair, and how it was on her first birthday, and how she didn't say another thing until six months later, when she started singing songs and speaking in full sentences. But what about when she was three? "I'm not the grumpiest fairy!"**

Kid 3 wanted her turn. "Dad, what did I say when I was three?" He winked at her. "Have you ever X-rayed a chicken?"***

"What about me? What about me?" Kid 4, actually working a bite of baked potato, wouldn't be left out. Since he was most recently three years old, everyone had cute things to remind him of: "Do llamas Moo? Daddy, baby Jesus is naked! You smell like a cookie - a yucky cookie. A little bit or a lotta bit?"

Lest you think we have some sort of super-memory in our house, I have to tell you that we cheat a little - we write these kinds of things on the calendar in the kitchen.**** And then Husband, in his Good Daddy way, reminds all those people how important they are by telling them what he "remembers" about them. *****

I love that he gives them little gifts like that - a story from their "cute phase" beats out any number of cheesy little trinkets. (Now if I could only convince Kid 3 that's true...)

*This is a new favorite game: If he eats slowly enough, all after-dinner jobs will magically get finished around him and he won't have to do any. Good thing he's so cute...

** There is a long, sordid story here, but let's get the basics: She loved her dress-up fairy wings, and one day, in a fit of the crankies, while wearing her wings, her big sister said something about her being the grumpiest fairy ever. In the angriest toddler-voice, head steaming, breath huffing, she exhibited her ability to crescendo with the best of them, starting fairly softly, "I" pause "am" pause, and get louder "NOT" big old pause, and louder "the GRUMPiest" pause for breath, and holler "FAIRY!!!"

***Maybe you had to be there.

****In fact, the #1 requirement for a kitchen calendar is "white space."

***** I was not safe. "Once, your Mom was tired of listening to you tease each other, so she said, We're a happy family, whether you like it or not!"

Libraries

I've just been looking over Justine Larbalestier's post about libraries. She asks her readers for library stories and I immediately thought of one. One completely inappropriate to share with Justine and her fans. But, you know, okay to share with you.

My first real job was in the Batesville Public Library. I was in high school, and had no earthly idea how lucky I was to be offered a job I never applied for. In the 2 years I worked there, the building doubled in size and classiness. When I was a freshman, hot senior boys would lean over the desk to seek my guidance - you know, if someone wiser was unavailable. They often smelled very nice and occasionally offered me rides home after work*.

One Saturday afternoon in November I got a call at work. This was very rare. It was from my Dad. Even more rare, as he's always been a guy in favor of the Appropriate. Hanging out on the phone at work never fit into that category.

He was calling from Chicago. He and my mom had taken a trip there for a short getaway, and she ended up hospitalized at Northwestern University. He called at work because he'd just checked on my brothers, and wanted to be sure I was fine, not worried, all that.

I asked to speak to my mom.

Loud, loud pause.

My dad then told me what he had assumed I'd known: My mom was in a coma.**

Standing there in the center of the quiet, wood-paneled, windowed library, I had the first real intimations that I would lose my mother. Soon.

And somehow, I drew comfort from my surroundings. I felt hugged by those walls, those stacks, those chairs and tables I knew so well. I quickly ended the call, and by so doing, managed not to cry. I stood, hand on the phone, breathing in the familiar quiet, regaining composure to finish my day at work. After a few minutes, I made it back to pulling overdue check-out cards, filing, reshelving VHS cassettes.

The calm of the library surrounded me that afternoon, as it had before, as it would again, but in a different way. I felt like life would carry on. The world would continue to spin. I would survive whatever was heading my way.

A good library *** still gives me that feeling of comfort, of eternity.

*I took them, you betcha.

**I'm still not sure, these 20 years later, how I could possibly have known that if he hadn't told me, but that isn't the point. I think.

***No offense to my current, not-so-much library