Afternoon bamboo
For the last few days I have been back on full-time father duty, taking care of the two-year-old while the younger boy logs a bronchitis-related hospital stay — Magda is there, too, seeing to his dairy needs. They went in to the hospital, the same ineffably ugly structure where Adam and Alek were born, on Friday night, and while the little one is improving day by day, he’s on a five-day course of antibiotics delivered via drip. So Adam and I will be sharing each other’s company for a few more days yet, which means that I am playing with Legos
I’m really enjoying all the together time, though Adam certainly knows how to push my buttons, and does. Some of my favorite details of the day include catching (or decoding) his little utterances and witnessing what may be the creation of memories. Adam’s reaction to no is measurable on the Richter scale, but later is okay with him. He did not react well this morning to the arrival of his baby sitter, Auntie Rada, who came to take him out on what is a crushingly gorgeous spring morning to slide down slides and swing on swings. He knew that going to the igrišče would disrupt the routine we’ve been in for the last few days, of heading off to visit mama and Ike once the morning gets ripe. As I suited him up for full playground domination I explained to him that today we’d go for our visit later, after lunch. He nodded in approval and then said, “afternoon bamboo”. And of course this made perfect sense to me.
The pathway between parking lot and hospital entrance runs past a dense grove of bamboo, and when Ike’s birth meant daily visits, Adam showed great interest in this giant grass and added the word to his lexicon. This was the same week he learned the word afternoon as well, and as we often went to the hospital later in the day, walking past the bamboo each time, these words formed a firm collocationary bond in his mind.
Around the steps to the hospital entrance there are beautiful Mediterranean plantings dominated by huge bushes of lavender and rosemary, already showing tiny purple flowers. I crush a few leaves for Adam to smell and teach him the names, and the next day as we walk past them he pauses, wrinkling his face and pecking the air until I figure out that he wants to smell the lavender again. He picks a dandelion to carry up to his mama’s hospital room.
I love to sit next to Adam’s bed during the moments leading up to his waking. It’s easy to time this, as his diurnal clock is so reliable. He tosses the covers off during the night and is often in some contorted shape, driving it to the hoop or ass sticking up, and he wakes up crankily, sitting up abruptly while still half asleep. When he realizes that he’s awoken to another day of Legos
