Where It Begins
(two years, 10 months)
"But I have to fly my airplane there,
because that's the airport!" he insists,
aiming his fuselage at the place the runways of
his mother's thighs meet. The game
of jumping off her chair between her legs
has gone on long enough, she concludes, crossing them,
and tries to soothe the savage beast by singing:
"Old MacDonald had a farm,
E-I-E-I-O,
And on that farm he had a" "Mommy-mom!"
"With a" "wiggle-wiggle here, and a wiggle-wiggle there"...
How can you prevent
a crawler from wrestling across whatever comes next
and practicing pelvic thrusts? Or stop a toddler
from filling his pants and hoping it's a live one?
"What are little boys made of, made of,
What are little boys made of?
Snips and snails and puppy dog tails"--not once
has he tried to change the words of that one.
Like all the males of all the ladies who told me
they wouldn't buy guns, he has invented one.
"I want to come downstairs while you and Mommy
join each other." Almost does. Comes in, takes one
deep breath, and bursts out "What did Daddy do?"
"My dear interruptus, I would tell you, if you weren't
such a blabbermouth." But how can we worry about it?
He already knows, and once he had enough words
said: "Daddy sang 'Om' when I first peeked out."
It was dark rather than light, when it began,
and noisy rather than quiet, especially at the end,
when he got stuck: "Ouch!"
was what he was saying after he came out.
Asked if he could hear his mother's heart
he reminds us: "I could look back up and see it!"
A tough birth--part of his head is still pointed
in that direction--but one way or another,
sooner or later...He says when he grows up he'll marry
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
100 girls!--each with a fur gina--
all we can do is laugh in a way that doesn't
belittle him--so often it's in the rocking
of laughing that the swaying of loving starts.
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