“Ren’s in your bed,” Mare tells me. I am standing at the stove chopping garlic and vegetables. “She’s watching television.”
“Well, wait,” I say. Dinner is almost ready. And the last thing I watched in there was Colbert, and I know the remote is missing so … good lord would it be South Park?”
”She’s sick and it’s okay to watch a little TV when you’re sick,” Mare tells me.
A constellation of options: 1) Take issue with the casual lemme-give-you-some-advice tone? 2) Remind her that I am the Queen Tsarina of Television around here and we don’t turn it on without my permission? 3) Point out that Ren is so totally not sick and just wants to watch TV in my bed? 4) Haul up the stairs to find out whether Ren is learning a fabulous game of Kick the Baby on Comedy Central?
“Mare I don’t know that what she’s watching is appropriate,” I say.
“Momma, I got the stool from the bathroom, stood up and changed the channel. It’s Phineas and Ferb! She’s fine.”
Still really thinking about that tone.
“You’re right,” I finally say. “I underestimated you. I’m sorry. Please set the table.”
I hand Mare silverware. Her father is late and I decide to sit with her, and serve us both on the nice dinnerware. She notices, and sits tall at the table, across from me.
“Shoulders back,” I tell her, “elbows off the table. Napkin in your lap.” She gulps milk, and I let it go because she is hungry and then she says,
“Is gulping rude?”
“Yes,” I smile. “But you’re hungry. Take some swigs and then we’ll go back to polite.” But she stops, wipes her mouth with her napkin, carefully raises her fork. She has a mouthful and is trying to eat it delicately.
“Good work, kid,” I say. “It’s hard. Especially when you’re hungry.” She takes a few more bites and I struggle not to correct, to praise twice as much as I criticize.
“Can I read that book, Momma?” she asks me.
“Which one?”
“The Battered Bad-word of Bastogne?”
I laugh. The book is on my reading stack at the end of the table, a gift from Cute Husband. My Granddad is quoted in it.
“The Battered Bastards of Bastogne — yes, you may look at it after dinner. Let me know if you want to talk about it.”
“I do! Can I say the word?”
“Bastard? — Sure.”
“BASTARD.”
“Good. But don’t say it at school, okay? Kids aren’t supposed to use words like that.”
“Why is it a bad word?”
“It’s insulting. Originally it meant that you did not know who your father was. Now it just means ‘bad word.’”
“Why’s it bad?”
“Because people like having things to get worked up about and that’s one of them. Don’t use it at school.”
“Great-Grandad was a bastard?”
“Oh, God no. He was a very good man. Bastard in that context was a word of pride. A bad word they took on themselves to show how fierce they were.”
“Oh. Did he know who his father was?”
“Yes. And even so, baby, today it just isn’t the same about not-knowing. There are all kinds of families and lots of people don’t know who their biological parents might have been and it doesn’t matter. No one cares.”
A long pause. Blue eyes over a bowl of pasta. “Thanks for always telling me the truth.”
“Oh,” I say, startled. “Well, you’re welcome. But you should know — I don’t always tell you the truth. I come as close as I can, but I also protect you. It’s a fine line, and I do the best I can with it.”
“What don’t you tell me the truth about?”
“Oh, nothing,” I say innocently. We laugh. “–Anything I decide you’re not ready for. Anything I decide is none of your business. But I do try to tell you the truth as much as possible. I want you to trust me.”
“I do trust you.”
“I’m so glad.” Phineas and Ferb wafts from the bed room. Rain is spatting down on the skylights, and I am comforted by the sound of the sump pump kicking in. “I want you to know I will always work hard to listen to you,” I say. “As you get older, learn more about the world, you will start to disagree with your father and me about things. That’s what we expect, it’s normal.”
“You mean when I am a teenager?”
“Yes,” I laugh. ”That’s exactly what I mean. It is normal for parents and children to have a hard time communicating in those years. I want you to know that I will do my very best to listen and to be truthful with you always.” She nods.
“And you know, you don’t have to tell me everything. Everyone must have a private life, and you are entitled to one, too. But I am listening and I am here and I always want to hear what you have to say.”
She nods.
I did not realize how early this work starts, how soon it would be over, that she would stop being my adoring baby and become a complex person who would think for herself. I feel like Indiana Jones, running for the door, the boulder behind me. Struggling to get everything I can through before it closes.
“And Mare?” I say as we stand to clear our plates. “It will be my job, when you are a teenager, to do what I think is best for you, even if it makes you angry. And it will be my job not to let you hurt me with your words, so that I can make good decisions for you, even when it’s not what you want. But I will let you in on a secret –I will care. And if you say terrible things to me, it will hurt, even though I won’t let you see it.”
“Okay,” she says.
A sound on the stairs. Renny. In her Dorothy dress. She has been wearing it for about six days now. Most times, I manage to get fresh tights on her.
“I’m so hungry!” she says. So much for sick. She won’t eat pasta. Doesn’t want cereal. I chuck her a cucumber, which she chomps on the couch with her Daddy, who is finally home.
Mare takes Battered Bastards up to bed but doesn’t get two sentences into it before she’s bored to tears and switches to her latest unicorn book.
And then she is asleep, all three of them are, breathing softly in the darkness of their room.
