Number four

Was patience the missing piece?  Just my luck, men were tested for courage and women for patience.  At best, patience was a swap.  The trade-off — a fleeting respite from the eternal wait.  Wait until you can afford it.  Wait your turn.  I’m sure this is how Cheezy, number four child, felt his entire life.

I remember stepping cautiously over Legos^®, Hot Wheels^®, Star Wars^® miniatures, and Cheezy.  There asleep in the doorway had lied my rumpled toddler, Baby Huey, from the get-go.  Strawberry blond curls, moistened from perspiration, stuck to his forehead.  He constantly wandered.  The night I moved him from the crib to the twin bed, I counted thirty-two times he got up.  And it had only been nine o’clock.  In the middle of the night, he’d sneak into my room, stand over me in the dark and breathe heavy.

As a single mom, I had once hastily purchased a new sofa, passing on regular oil changes and milk from living cows.  (We drank milk from powder during my thirteen years stent as a single mom and everyone hated it.  Especially when Cheezy mixed it; it had the consistency of mud.)  Mom’s avoid-the-appearance-of-dirt counsel had haunted me on my selection for the new couch.  “Never buy anything in a solid shade.  Fabrics of variegated tones hide a myriad of evils,” I heard.  “Don’t buy anything in blue,” the eerie advice continued.  “It fades faster than other colors.”  (Actually, she never used the phrase myriad of evils; the words she used would have been “many spots.”)  I found the perfect one — a blend of blues with red pinstripes.  Sometimes, no matter what Mom said, I had to tempt fate.

“I can’t wait for my kids to see this,” I’d exclaimed to the salesman, lack of patience running amuck.

“Here,” he said, stuffing arm covers into my purse.

Dashing through the door, I waved the samples excitedly overhead.  “Isn’t our new couch beautiful?”

The GAP, Hot Wheelz, and Coco jumped up and down.  All but Cheezy.  He stared at the arm covers of the new couch I’d pulled from my purse, turning his head every angle, reddish curls flopping from side to side.  “How do you blow it up?” he asked.

This recollection, and many others equally enjoyable moments, kept him alive during his teen years.  I mused if time had dimmed memories of my reading to him.  Had he worried the day might come when I’d actually hang him by his toenails? 

I stand here today, on his birthday, his orange curls gone, in awe of the always optimistic, inquisitive child he was, and in my mind’s eye, see the kind, giving man he has become.

I love you, Kolb.  Hope your day is wonderful.

Related posts:

1. Baby of the family
2. Second born
3. New car trauma
4. Top of the morning to you
5. Was it worth it?