Every day begins, ready or not, because of Nicolaus. I love my life but still, I’m never ready. Kevin and I are both slow waker-uppers. Graham inherited slow waking up from us, and even the dog will wait until 9:00 or 9:30 before she wants to go out.
Last week Nicolaus burst into the room and asked if he could please talk to me about a few things without me interrupting him or getting mad. It was a little before 8:00. Respectable but a little painful because I stay up too late.
But he was so earnest and polite that I didn’t want to shoo him off. I sat up and looked for my glasses so he’d know I was listening, and once I had them on I could see that his eyes were wet but he wasn’t crying.
Alright, kiddo. Good morning. Go.
We get these talks every once in awhile. I’m pretty sure we got them when he was only six months old; we just couldn’t understand what he was saying. But we knew even then that he was expressing concerns about our parenting.
These serious talks aren’t the only complaints we hear of course. Throughout each day we are reminded of our many shortcomings, just as often as he is reminded that his parents are doing their flawed human best and he ought to cut us some slack. But these “Can I talk to you about something?” talks are different, less heated, more respectful. He isn’t griping. He is requesting something. And it sounds like he’s asking for petty things but if you listen and look at his face you can usually see that he’s trying to articulate something bigger about what he needs that we aren’t giving him.
The requests this time were:
1. That I try to already be up before he wakes up
2. That meal times be spaced more evenly because breakfast and lunch are close together and then dinner is miles away if you draw it all out on a line.
3. A snack area in the kitchen set up in easy reach of children.
“Okay,” I told him, “Yes. We can work on all of that.”
He was ready for an argument and when he didn’t get one, he started with his well-formed supporting points anyway. After awhile I stopped him because now it was turning into griping. “Sweetie.” I told him, “I agree with you. I think what you’re asking for is a little more control over your hunger, right?”
“See? You always do this! You always interrupt me and you never listen!”
“Nicolaus. Do you hear me agreeing with you? I hear you. You want me to be up in the mornings, I’m guessing because lately you wake up hungry and if I’m awake you can eat that much sooner, right?”
“YES.”
“And you want maybe a snack time in between lunch and dinner?”
“YES. Or we can push lunch closer to dinner.”
“Alright, that makes sense. We will do that.”
“But we NEED a snack area! We need one. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”
“You are so right.”
He was quiet for a minute. Finally: “I thought you were going to be mad at me for griping.”
“You weren’t griping. You were being really nice actually, and everything you asked for makes a lot of sense.”
He laid back on my bed and stared at the ceiling.
“You okay?”
“Yeah. I’m just thinking.”
I still don’t know what to do with a Nicolaus who doesn’t narrate all of his thoughts in real time. Had I disappointed him? Was I missing some bigger point? Am I ruining his childhood in some way I can’t even see?
“What ya thinking about?”
“I was just thinking… okay. If someone time traveled into the future and killed their great great great great great great great great grandson, you know what would happen? Nothing! It’s just absolutely no big deal! Isn’t that funny? Because people always worry about what happens if you go in the past and kill your ancestors because then you know, like you wouldn’t exist to go back and on and on. Right? But if you go forward then you already existed and that’s why they are alive. And if you kill them, then that isn’t very NICE but it doesn’t do the whole…” he made back and forth loops in the air with his fingers “That whole thing! Hahaha especially since they can’t kill you or they will make themselves not exist.”
“You want to get up and have some breakfast?”
“Yes!” And he bounced out of my bed and thumped his noisy way down the hall, still talking all over the place about time travel. And that’s how we started our day.