Kiss it!

I share an office with a pretty great guy whose kids are much older than Elijah and Luca. We were speaking the other day about when the constant panic of being a dad wanes. I told him I expected it to happen when Luca gets married, because then he’ll officially be someone else’s problem. Hopefully when he's 15. But my office mate assured me that his parenting sphincter loosened (maybe not his exact words) when his kids stopped falling down all the time.

Yeah, I thought. Maybe it’s his disproportionate head size. Maybe it’s his proximity to pointy things. Maybe it’s the fact that he’s a klutz. But Luca’s body is in a constant state of healing. As of this writing, he has a split lip, a scratch on his face and around thirty bruises.

There are advantages to being a klutzy almost two year old. He gets lots of kisses from his mother. At least thrice a day Luca will smash into something, like Elijah’s fist, start screaming and then find himself in the loving arms of his mother. She’ll soothe him by asking, “Shall I kiss it?”

To which he always says, “Yesh.”

Lately Luca has been skipping a few steps to save time. He’ll reach out a hurt appendage and say, “Kiss it!” Usually, this appendage is covered in Beefaroni. Or slugs. And he’ll hold it out, dripping and say, “Kiss it!”

“Do I have to?”

“Yesh!”

I can’t say no, so I try to kiss his Beefaroni finger or eyeball with as little actual contact as possible. It’s all the more difficult because I’m beginning to suspect the Beefaroni appendages aren’t actually hurt and he just wants to see if he can get me to do it.

Just know, Elijah came into the room and asked what I was doing. I said, “I am writing a story about Luca.”

“Why?”

“So I can remember the funny stuff you guys do.”

“Will you read it to me?”

So I just read it to Elijah and he simply said, “Hmmm,” and walked away.

Everybody is a critic.