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Watching Lucy
by Beverly Beckham
Minute-to-minute vigilance is required to keep a 4-year-old safe
What you forget when your children are up and grown, full-fledged adults who brush their teeth and buckle their seat belts without your telling them, is that they were not born this way. That you taught them these things. And that the teaching took time — at least 20 years.
Because it wasn’t one gentle reminder “Don’t forget to brush your teeth, sweetheart.” It was, “Did you brush your teeth?” “
"I did, Mom.”
“Did you use toothpaste?”
“What for? I don’t need toothpaste.”
“I don’t want eggs for breakfast. Why can’t I have a Pop-Tart?”
“This bathing suit is not too skimpy.”
“I’m not wearing braces and you can’t make me.”
“What do you mean I have to be home at 11?”
Kids grow up, leave home, and bippity-boppity-boo, all you can remember are the good times. The smell of them after a bath. The feel of them on your lap as you read them a story. The look in their eyes as they hand you a bouquet of dandelions.
It’s selective memory and it sits at the top of your brain like the thickest and sweetest of creams. “It’s only the good times I remember, ” the song goes. And it is the truest of songs.
I miss my babies, I have thought so often over the years. I wish they were young again. I wish I could do it all over.
My daughter and her husband left my 4-year-old granddaughter with me for a long weekend last week. It was their tenth wedding anniversary. They flew to Chicago for four days.
“Have a great time,” I said when they deposited Lucy, her suitcase, and her teddy bear, Boris, at my door. I couldn’t wait for them to leave. I couldn’t wait to have Lucy all to myself. “And don’t worry!” I told them. “She’ll be fine.”
She was fine. And they didn’t worry.
But I did.
I had forgotten the minute-to-minute vigilance that’s required to keep a 4-year-old safe. I had forgotten that you can’t read a book, take a shower, talk on the phone, or take your eyes off her.
What if she misses her mother and decides to open a door and go looking for her? What if she lets go of my hand in a parking lot? What if she falls down the steps?
I doubled-locked all the doors. I gripped her hand every time we went anywhere. I stuck to her like a shadow up and down the back steps and the porch steps and the 13 big steps leading to upstairs.
For four days I played with her. And watched Mary Poppins. And took her to the zoo and to her swimming lesson, buckling her in her car seat, driving super-cautiously and listening to Signing Time.
I made her pancakes and bacon every morning and turkey sandwiches at noon and pasta at night. “Yes, please.” “No, thank you,” we practiced again and again. I gave her baths and washed her hair and helped her on and off the potty and made sure she remembered to brush her teeth.
My husband tried to help out. He said, “Let’s go outside, Lucy,” and she’d race to the door, eager to play with the big blue ball, eager to be with her cousins Adam and Charlotte and her Aunt Julie, who stopped by to play, too. But not without me. Lucy insisted that wherever she was, no matter where she was, Mimi had to be, too.
My children used to do the same thing. “Where are you going, Mommy? Can I come? Why can’t I come? Listen to me. Watch me. Play with me.”
I look back and am warmed by these words. So much love. So much attention. So valued is a parent.
But stretched thin, too.
This is what I remembered when Lucy was here. How hard it is to raise a child — rewarding, yes, and fun and exciting. The best of times. But how demanding it is, too, and unending and exhausting. You flop into bed at the end of a day, too tired to brush your own teeth, and though sleep comes quickly — pass out is more exact — it is always interrupted by a child’s cough or cries or footsteps or the click of a door.
“Mimi!” Lucy shouted every morning when she woke up.
“Mom!” she shouts now, home again, in her mother’s tender and unceasing care.
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