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I nod slowly, uncertain where she’s going with this. Five a.m., every morning, like clockwork.” I shake my head, laughing, overwhelmed by sudden joy.Īcross the table my mother regards me coolly.Īfter a pause she says, “You know Basil’s an early bird. It’s the jet lag, I say, wiping my nose on my sleeve. As I confide in my mother my eyes prickle and a tightness gathers in my throat. I have no idea why or how it happened, just that this is how it is with Frank. That sometimes, without apparent effort, suffering and horror can be sloughed off the human psyche like water shaken from a dog. I don’t want to jinx it.įrank seems proof of something I’d not thought possible: that joy can be born of trauma. I decide to tell my mother a secret - a private cherished conviction I haven’t shared with anyone, not even Rob, out of superstition.
Fancy toothpicks driver#
His absurdly boundless enthusiasm delights his brothers and father, but to me, the person who was both the driver and vehicle in the car wreck of his birth, Frank seems a genuine boy wonder. His first word was More! Spoken in reference to garlic mashed potatoes, it sums up his approach to life. He roared into nursery, then big school without so much as a wave or a kiss. Later he gave up the breast, then his bottle, his nappies, followed by his crib and stroller with an insouciant shrug. He’s a bespectacled leftie with barely there dimples and a smile that swallows his head. Three years and two surgeries later Frank and I have both recovered. Necks craning, shoulders shifting under smooth white coats as they jotted down notes and looked on with interest, guessing at the outcome. I will never forget how calm and studious they were, like a flock of intelligent and curious birds. For most of an hour we sat there watching the residents watch the consultant doing things we could not see to our son. Rob sat to my left, gripping my trembling hand. They blocked the view of the limp bluish creature on the table to whom an obstetrician was affixing a doll-sized mask attached to a tiny plastic air pump. The last bit involved a vacuum and scalpel, forceps and a wailing alarm that summoned a crowd of trainee doctors who piled into the birth room like a somber Broadway chorus line. It’s been difficult since Frankie’s birth. The Bloody Mary is humming in my veins making me loquacious. Ultimately, I think we might make a good team, I say to my mother, who raises an eyebrow. It’s amazing how this minor adjustment in our division of labor, him doing one meal a day, waking me gently with coffee in bed, has made a tangible difference in our marriage. Rob has started getting up with the boys in the mornings and making breakfast. Irrespective of the reason, I say, things are getting better - easier somehow. Mum laughs and agrees that yes, it’s probably the latter. I talk to my mother about how much easier Frankie seems than his older brothers did as toddlers, then find myself wondering aloud if this is in fact a self-involved misperception? Perhaps as “experienced” parents we’re like zoo animals - hostages who’ve grown so accustomed to the routines and rhythms of captivity we no longer remember the pleasures of the wild. “Hullo, poo-poo head Mummy!” Solomon says, then they take turns poking out their tongues at the screen. I would move to New York, I tell my mother once we have sat down, just for the salad.Īfter we eat, I show Mum a video Rob has just sent me of the boys getting ready for school. There are eight different kinds of salad. The buffet is a royal wedding feast: platters of prawns the size of baby fists avocados stuffed with crab oysters on the half shell a quail inside a chicken inside a duck inside a turkey, carved by a man in a puffy white hat. We go out for a fancy brunch at a private members’ club where we sit in tufted leather chairs and order eighteen-dollar Bloody Marys chilled with fat balls of ice and garnished with six different kinds of pickled vegetables on toothpicks. Mum says she spent her youth thinking she was old. I hold up a T-shirt that says, I spent my thin years thinking I was fat. After breakfast that first day in New York, my mother and I walk the High Line then weave through Chelsea Market, poking into shops and galleries.