My wife Cynthia occasionally interviews our kids, jotting down their answers in
little journals. The questions are always like, What was your favorite part of our
trip? What was your favorite meal?
This started before our children were even saying much. When our first-born,
Maddy, was not even one, Cynthia wrote down her favorite food, milk, and recorded
her favorite song, which was “You Got the Belly, I Got the Rub,” a goofball number I
had invented on the fly during bath time. Apparently, my daughter didn’t mind that
it made less sense with every line: “You got the tummy, I got the rub. You got the
bathwater, I got the tub. You got the appetite, I got the grub.”
I had forgotten about the song, and can only quote the lyrics because Cynthia wrote
them down and read them aloud a few nights ago in a terrifically cute recital as we
celebrated Maddy’s tenth birthday. After some more saccharine lines, including “You
got the mama bear, I got the cub,” Cyn and I made a little show about, awwww, how
much we love-love-love each other and our whole wonderful family—smoochy,
smoochy—until the kids rolled their eyes and said what happens to be, currently,
their favorite word of disapproval, which they actually caw like a crow: “Awkward!
Awkward!”
The next morning, I woke up early to do some reading and then roused the kids for
breakfast. As usual, we were running late. As usual, there was a fight, over what I
can’t remember. A needed piece of clothing that was sitting in a pile of dirty laundry.
Whether or not the kids were to buy lunch at school or take sandwiches. The clock
ticked dangerously closer to 8:00 am, but somehow we got out the door, myself and
all three kids. Only two are in school, but the third likes to come for the walk.
On the sidewalk, Maddy, irritated at our general slowness, sprints ahead. Her
brother Ben asks if I will carry his backpack, and because it’s about the half the size
he is, I always say yes. He hands me the bag, then runs after his sister. The youngest
reaches for me and says, “uppy, uppy,” but I say no, explaining that he insisted on
coming, so he has to carry himself.
The temperature is just above freezing. I begin jogging so we don’t fall entirely
behind. Halfway down the block, I look around. The low slanting light of winter is
flooding the rooftops, an almost powdery kind of light, washing over us, washing
over the neighborhood, washing over the whole world, perfect and innocent and
beautiful. And I think this, right now, is what I don’t want to forget.
Hustling the youngest one along, we catch up to the other two at the corner where
the crossing guard is standing and the familiar faces of our fellow stragglers line up.
It’s always the same people who are running late and it’s always the same people
who have arrived just two minutes earlier and are returning childless from the
school entrance as we race past them. On the rare occasion they see me walking
back earlier, they check their watches and shake their heads, as if to say, “Look who
decided to get out of bed, Mister Early Riser.” But not today.
The crossing guard blows her whistle and throws her fluorescent-gloved hands in
the air to halt the cars that race down Commonwealth Avenue; if drivers get
impatient she gives them her death stare; if their cars roll even a little bit while
children are walking, she yells at them. A newspaper did a story on how much
crossing guards make, suggesting it was a cushy gig. But I don’t think this woman’s
overpaid.
We walk the last block, always passing the same two middle-school girls and lately a
band of seven or so boys a few years older than my own. I know one of the boys, he
wants to be a writer when he grows up, but he doesn’t seem comfortable saying hi
with his friends there.
I look at my son’s crazy red hair as I hand him his backpack and, think, not for the
first time, we’ve got to teach this kid to use a brush. My daughter’s already up the
steps, a wave goodbye flung in the air like nothing. The boy lets me give him a
squeeze and say, See you buddy.
I start to walk back with the littlest one saying “uppy” again. I say no again, and
think, well, yeah, it’s a minor thing but this routine is one of my favorite parts of
being a parent.
From The Weekly Standard
