I have a son who's a ... well ...(he can't read this anyway, so here goes). He's a cry baby. Brother push he, he cry. Cyan fine he toy, he cry. I look at he too cross, he cry. Well, Mr. Cry baby started school this semester, and you'd think all (or at least some of) the crying would cease. No way. He father wake he up in the morning, he cry. He father tell he brush he teeth, he cry. I too slow with the juice, he cry. Some mornings he cries all the way to school, and gets there snot-running, nasty face, and I have to stop and clean him up while I plead with the other space-cadet twin to pleeeeeaaaaasse stop running up and down in the halls, and get yuh behind in yuh classroom. All this while the big son grumbling at me about dropping he off late to school...again. Yuh getting a sense of my early morning horrors yet?
So I sat down with my coffee yesterday and figured some order, some small degree of sanity, would be possible during that 6-8.15am period if I could only get cry baby to stop crying. I thought hard, and then I remembered how his little face brightened up when he got to his classroom and received a smile and a good morning hug from a certain pinky-cute Angelica. So this morning I try a thing.
Sure enough, 6.40am he sees me ironing a long-sleeved shirt for him and can't imagine why I would want to send him to school in anything other than his short-sleeved dragon shirt (which he wore yesterday, mind you). So he tells me I'm a bad mommy and the wailing goes on and on. When he realizes his lil narrow behind is going to wear the shirt I'm ironing anyway, he stops and looks around for something else to cry for. Big brother (as usual) provides the something. Tells him something or other about being the last one to wake up, and up starts cry baby again. This time, before he could really get into it I say calmly, " I can't take your brother to school late anymore, so I'm not stopping to clean your face. And I know Angelica is not gonna want to hug any little boy with a nasty, snotty face."
It works. He stops. He looks at me with the horror of that bit of enlightenment gathering over his face, and says, "wwhat?" I repeat the bit of female truism for my impressionable, fortunate, 3-year-old male pupil, and watch him take it in fully. I watch with pride as he becomes one of the privileged. He now knows (way ahead of his other little nasty-faced male friends) why the little girls don't want to hug them sometimes.
But, alas, some habits are too tough to get rid of, even at the bendable age of 3. As we are heading out the door, big brother (accidentally, he claims) steps on the sensitive toes of the newly enlightened one, and once again reduces him to a cry-baby.
Oh, but wait before you write him off as yet another dumb male in the bud!
He runs back into the kitchen, rolls off lots of paper towels, and heads back towards the door, into the van, where he continues to lament and berate his clumsy big brother until he sees me turn into the parking lot of his school, when he promptly stops, wipes his face clean and perks up for Angelica's good morning hug.
[My letter to Roopnandan Singh about the opening paragraph of his Wild Maami is next]
