essential kids

Anything could happen on a Monday.  And in my line of work, it already has, even before the day has dawned.  Actions or questions on Saturday were deferred to Sunday, which, of course, deferred everything it had to Monday.  So, before I could log in this Monday morning, I knew the day had been two days in the making, two days of building and deferring.

And then it was, there interposed a backhoe. 

In one fell swoop, it cut a line and severed every internet connection on my street.  The wave of imminent new work files and customers hung frozen on my screen.  I texted my supervisor.  He texted back, snow day.

So now I’m looking around at a day I didn’t expect.  I wander to the front of the house and look out the window, wondering what I want the day to be.  At other houses with broken internet connections, doors open and children run crazy like a few adults I know when the governor lifted lockdown restrictions.  A mom or two appear in front windows.  Relieved and anxious.  Just because they got a reprieve from playing home-teacher today doesn’t mean they can count on another backhoe tomorrow.

Toby pulls at my pants leg and points to the porch.  

I don’t know what I’m expecting, but it certainly isn’t the new next-door neighbors’ kids.  I open the door.

“Tabby?”

“Of course,” she says impatiently behind her baby blue mask.  She is quite the precocious eight-year-old, impatient to grow up, impatient for those already grown-up to get on the same page with her.

She is accompanied by Sir Francis, her two-year-old brother.  Cupping his chubby chin is a blue mask that goes perfectly with the blue elephants on his pull-ups.  In his other hand is a fistful of dirt. 

“Today’s the first day of second grade,” Tabby says.

Then it hits me.  “And your internet is down.”

“Yep,” she says, pleased to have me on the same page.

“Does this mean you get the rest of the day off.”

She shrugs, like she really doesn’t know.  Weeks ago, she was expecting second grade in a room with other second-graders.  That morphed into a home-school with Alice and Dan (a.k.a. Mom and Dad) and a laptop.  Now this.

“The baby-sitter didn’t show up.”

“Baby-sitter?  Where are your parents?”

“Dan and Alice?” she says.  “They’re essential workers, I guess.”

“Do they know the baby-sitter didn’t show?”

The tough-talking kid looks suddenly a little less tough.  Her eyes redden.  Sir Francis lifts his mask to lick the dirt in his hand.

“This is perfect,” I say, injecting as much enthusiasm as I can into my words without losing credibility.  “My internet is down too.  I don’t know what I’m going to do, but whatever it is, I’m going to do it with you…and the kid eating our neighborhood one handful at a time.”

Tabby laughs, pulling back from the edge of something.

“Should we call your parents and tell them?”

“I don’t have a phone,” she says.  Which means, she doesn’t know their number.  “Do you want to play volley ball?”

“Sure,” I say.  “That’s a great idea.  Except, we don’t have a net.”

“We have a fence.”  There’s that impatient tone again.

“Okay.  A fence will work.  What about a ball?”

“Francis has a ball,” she says excitedly and runs next door.  Toby and I walk the dirt aficionado outside to the fence between our yards.

The sides are inevitable.  Tabby versus me, with Toby and Sir Francis working both sides as cat and toddler. 

The ball is actually an oversize metallic balloon nearing the end of its buoyancy.  Tabby hits the balloon/ball hard.  The balloon/ball jumps high without going very far.  It kind of doubles-back, then gently drifts toward my side of the fence.  The real game, we discover, is one of patience, waiting for the balloon/ball to come back down, wondering, while we wait and watch, on which side it will drop.

Tabby decides to make things more interesting by placing thumb tacks on the squared tops of the picket fence. 

It’s a good idea, but the balloon/ball doesn’t fall with enough force to pop itself on the tacks.

The kid frowns.

I frown when I notice Toby pressing his nose into Sir Francis’ red elephants.  “Wait a minute,” I say, turning ahead to the page Tabby is no doubt already on.  “Weren’t those elephants blue?”

“Yep.  Red means he needs to be changed.”

“Oh.” 

“And I’m not going to do it,” she says. 

Work or no work, this is every bit a Monday.

“And that was the last pull-up,” she says with a grin.

I dislodge the cat from the wet elephant in the yard and invite everyone back over to the house where I set up an impromptu changing table on the porch. 

“Okay, Francis, just take off the wet pull-ups and put them in the bag.”

“Seriously?” Tabby asks without lifting a helping finger.

All kinds of words come to mind I can’t use until I’m on my own page in my own time.  I go to the kitchen and return with a roll of paper towels.  “Don’t ask and don’t talk me out of it,” I preempt the girl.  “Sometimes the unexpected asks us to get creative.” 

Creative, today, looks like a whole roll of paper towels and enough duct tape to secure Sir Frances to the side of a rocket.  I have to say, though, I’m feeling rather proud of myself.  Tabby is all grins. 

“That looks….”  She thinks about it, frowning hard to understand what she is looking at.  “It looks big.”

Big is the perfect word. 

“Maybe we can put something big over it.  Like pants.” 

Tabby runs next door again and returns with a pair of her brother’s pants, which are clearly not designed to accommodate a whole roll of Bounty. 

“Maybe,” I am forced to reconsider, “really big pants.  You dad wears really big pants, doesn’t he?”

Tabby nods.  “Really big,” she reads from my page.  She runs to fetch a pair from her house.

But Daddy-Dan’s pants swallow the toddler. 

“I got it,” Tabby says and exits our changing-table drama yet again.  She is gone long enough for Sir Francis to turn his towels from star-white to pee-yellow. 

“How?” I ask the kid.  “You just did that.  Are you holding back?” 

When Tabby returns with her next great idea, she finds me in my elbow-length kitchen gloves and a pair of scissors.  “That’s not how Alice does it,” she says.

“Oh, really.”  I’m ready to forget just how old the smart-mouth kid is.  “Well, when you piss your pants at my house, this is how we do it.”

“You said a bad word.”

“Not as bad as the word I’m thinking.  Hand me those bleach wipes and I’ll rewrap him.”

“You can’t use that.”

“A few minutes ago, you didn’t know how to help.  Now you’re an expert?”

I agree to finish up with a water-dampened paper towel and leave the bleach for another time.  When I finish, the boy’s waist-line is slightly greater than before.  “What did you bring for him?” I ask.

What Tabby brought from her house defies explanation until she puts her brother into it.  “Baby Yoda,” she says.  “Alice bought it.”

“A baby Yoda costume?  Is this for Halloween?”

“No.”

I don’t ask her to elaborate.  “Let’s get the cloak part over his shoulder before he pees again.”

“Can we dress Toby?” she asks.

There are some things you do at your own peril.  But I tell the girl she can do it herself, if she wants.  She runs next-door and returns with a mermaid costume designed for a small dog. 

“I didn’t know you had a dog.”

“We don’t.” 

Whatever.  “That’s a lot of sequins to ask a cat to wear.  Maybe we could put just the tail on him.”  And so that is what she does, fastening a Velcro skirt line around Toby’s waist and draping the green tail behind him.  The crazy thing is, he lets her do it.   

“I want to be a dinosaur,” Tabby says. 

“Sure.  Why not?”

“You too,” she says.  “We all have to be something.”  She runs next door and returns with a cute triceratops head with pink blush and eye shadow.  “Here’s yours.”

Mine is a baseball hat with a donkey’s bottom jutting prominently on the front bill.  On the back of the hat is what I take to be the front-half of the Democratic mascot.  I turn the hat backwards and undo Dan and Alice’s little joke.

“That’s funny,” says the girl who has not yet grown into her parents’ politics.

“Trust me.  You have no idea how funny.”

All this, because Sir Francis pissed his blue elephants red.

Tabby leans forward to bump her dino-head with her brother’s Yoda head.  She has all but forgotten the stress of being left-behind by her parents, when we hear a car pull into their driveway.

“Hey, Dan,” I call out and carry Baby Yoda outside.  Dan puffs up with real geniality.  He is charmed to see the triceratops who should be inside acting like a second-grader.  He sees nothing wrong with Sir Francis’s bulging waistline and the dirt smeared over his face mask.  He is smiling like a guy who has no idea he should know his children’s baby-sitter didn’t show up and have been at the mercy of the neighbor he moved next to just a few weeks ago.

“Hey there, Loch,” he says grandly as he strides to the fence.  What a beautiful day.”  He leans forward to brace himself on the fence.  What follows is a line of expletives not likely to be taught in any of his daughter’s online classes for the foreseeable future.  He raises his paws and removes a thumb tack from each one.

“It works,” Tabby shouts like any scientist who is initially scoffed at as mad.

“You did this, sweetheart?”  The tears in Dan’s eyes are almost moving.

“It was for the balloon.”

He looks at me and says, “I think I’m in a lot of pain.”

I tell him, “You look like you’re in a lot of pain.”

“I’ll help you, Dan,” Tabby announces like the essential daughter she would like to be and takes her father into the house.

“Hey,” I call after my neighbor.  “You forgot one.”  Even as I lead Baby Yoda to the back door of his house, I see a small pee spot forming on his cloak.  “How are you doing that?” I ask the kid who I have not seen take one sip of anything in the past two hours.  Dan appears at the door long enough for me to make the drop-off. 

Toby and I return to the porch.  I am exhausted.  I slouch in one of the rockers and consider the eight-year-old neighbor raising herself and one young sibling in the company of parents who treat every day like Halloween.  I don’t get it. 

Toby decides to help take my mind of things by hopping into my lap and kneading my groin with nails as distinctive as a fistful of tacks.  When his instinct-impulses are satisfied, he turns himself and his mertail around and around until they can both settle down.  And then he does what cats do that get them off the hook for even the worst of grievances.   And purrs us both to sleep.

Halloween in September.