to give in to a song

My writing surroundings are drastically different than usual. I am sitting on a patio, the Indian Ocean to my right and a quiet Airbnb to my left, my son and husband are taking their afternoon nap. Not together, unfortunately my son does not sleep well in the presence of others, so there goes that romance of having him take a nap in our arms. It turns into a near-miss head butting battle if we attempt to co-sleep. I’d rather not have a fat lip and a crying baby so he happily sleeps on his own. 

I would equate the new parent thing to getting married. I was asked shortly after I got married what it felt like, I explained that I expected this beam to come down from heaven and it feel like brzzz now you are married, but instead it was just me and my hubster in cohabitation and figuring out that new jigsaw puzzle. 

I would say this case is similar. Without divulging too much, my experience has been figuring out life with a one year old. Thankfully prior to arriving I had worked through the Hollywood fantasy of locking eyes with my son and seeing that we were meant to be and he knew and I knew and we were instantly in love. Sure, there was something akin to that but it did not have the slow motion and string quartet with rainbows and birds behind it. It was different of course than meeting any other one year old because this one was mine.  And on some level we both knew that, I can’t explain that, but somewhere inside us we all knew that this was it. And now we are figuring out life as a family. 

Years ago, like half an eon or so, I babysat a kid on the regular. Not because I was a super fan of babysitting, some young people are just born to baby sit, I liked the money and the kid liked me so it was a fairly simple gig. He required a quick finger prick one day (this was way above my pay grade) but I knew it had to be done. I low-level poked him like 5 times before he grabbed the mechanism from my hand and rammed it into his finger himself. He locked eyes with me as he did it, he was 5  at the time, and angrily told me to “suck it up” with his eyes. It was awful torture for both of us. 

Even more torturous for me, and this leads to the reason he liked me so much, this kid ADORED Barney. I mean absolutely adored Barney. I thought he was too old for Barney and the amount that he loved Barney was the same amount that I detested Barney. He would suggest Barney and I would counter with a walk to the park. He would suggest Barney and I would say, let’s go jump on my trampoline. Barney? Let’s ride bikes! Barney? Let’s build a fort! Barney? How about a piggy back ride? Barney? Want to bake something? Barney? How about a craft? Barney? Literally anything else other than Barney!  

As I typed that I realized this kid may have duped me, he was intelligent and perhaps put these things together, demanding Barney all the time just to see what crazy antics we would get up to. 

So when the neighbourhood boy showed up to babysit, this kid would cry and wail for me. That felt neat, but I knew it was because I would move heaven and hell just to avoid the theme song that gets welded into your brain. 

Fast forward about 25 years and I’m riding in the back seat with my son for the first time in the winding freeways of Durban’s suburbs, and I hear through a closed mouth, the tune that I avoided like the plague. My son likes to sing with his mouth closed, I think he finds it calming. I sang it back to him, because I’m not a monster, and he smiled. After a week or so it had fallen out of our repertoire (read: I was trying to get him to latch on to ANYTHING else). After we had been together for a couple of weeks I was singing him a good night song, and not getting much of a response just sort of a blank stare. He was tired and looking for comfort and something familiar. He was laying on his back on our bed and I was propped up looking down into his big brown eyes:

I love you (his eyes widened)

You love me (his smile grew)

We’re a happy family (cue me trying not to cry)

With a great big hug (I squeeze him - n.b. this is present tense, not past, it’s part of our routine now)

And a kiss (we kiss, his is open mouthed at this point) from me to you,

Won’t you say you love me too.

He exclaimed yay and clapped his hands. 

You win this time Barney. 

And that’s what I would say parenting is for my very limited experience, making your kid smile doing something you may not want to do but knowing that it will fill their little bucket. In return your bucket gets filled because you get that little perfect moment to treasure forever. 

That’s all.