What will Timmy remember me for?
When I’m dead, I hope Timmy remembers me for having let him lick the beaters, before he remembers my yelling at him for wrenching his brother’s arm behind the highchair.
Timmy’s temperament and anarchistic independence mean that I’m loudly and urgently yelling “Stop!” and “No!” on a regular basis. He likes to play with dangerous things. He likes to play with breakable things. He likes to play with expensive things. And most of all, he likes to play with things that are all of the above.
This means I yell at Timmy a lot. Certainly a lot more than I let him lick whipped cream off the beaters.
My vocal protests are so ingrained in his activities of choice, half the time he does it for me. He’ll turn the dials on the oven and adjust its clock, then turn around and yell, “No!”
He’ll begin pulling items out of drawers, before pausing to stand still in the midst of the mess and yell, “Stop! Stop! Stop! Stop!”
I let him have a cream-covered beater to lick, today. He smiled. I let him have the other one. He was delighted.
Watching him made me wonder…when I’m dead, what will Timmy remember most, about me?
Probably not this.
27 May 2014
With any luck you won’t be dead for a good long while, the yelling of the toddler years will have been supplanted by the 1000+1 other experiences, and more than anything, he will remember that you loved him and his brother…even when he broke expensive, dangerous things.