Last night, as we were lying in their room and they were definitely not going to sleep–yet–the boys were asking me questions. All the questions. About school, zombies, our family. They like to ask about what happened prior to when they came along–calling it “Before Us”–and it goes something like this:
“Remember when it was just you and Daddy?”
“And then it was me?”
“And then it was just three of you because it wasn’t me yet?”
“And then Will came and there were four?”
“Yes,” I’ll say. “And then we were complete.”
Last night, Little Brother finished the story: “I like complete.”
I do too. I like it so much that I want to gather all the pieces of our story and make them symmetrical, matching, and done. I want to wrap it all up in a bow (or a tidy blog post) and have the ending all but written based on the parts before. I’m good at epilogues.
The annoying part is that our story is yet to be completely written, at least in chapters we can see, because we’re not the ones writing it. For example, last night as I traced my hand along The Kid’s lengthening leg trying to get him to nod off, I had a sudden image of sweaty armpits and puberty and it made me nearly hyperventilate. No, we still have story left, lots of it, God willing.
But there are themes we can count on, elements that tend to reappear and repeat.
The Husband just returned from a twelve-day trip to America, and it reminded me of his triplet of sojourns to Australia before we moved here, fact-finding and work missions. Those were the days when TK was five and LB was two. There were fewer questions about zombies, but everything else felt more difficult: unproductive toilet training, shorter winter days with longer darkness, fewer walking-distance friends to share it with. I would jump at every bump in the night.
This time, it’s summer and both boys have full school days, plus some: sport and school readiness on off days for LB, tennis on weekends for TK, swimming lessons for both. More ways to communicate beyond crying (for all of us). Friends nearby whose pools and company provide refuge. A house built like a fortress that allows us all to fall headfirst into the depths of sleep, along with earplugs to supplement.
It was easier, is what I’m saying. Not just because our surroundings have changed, but also because we have more experience–with life, with our story, with each other. We’re more of a team. We’re more us.
LB is more him, which means an innate awareness of his role as comedian of the family, his jokes–mispronounced words, toilet humour, pratfalls on the couch–accompanied by sideways glances to make sure we’re watching his perpetual show. TK as the older, more serious brother, the budding engineer who examines and questions everything, who gets a gleam in his eye when I tell him about how his teacher praised his coding skills.
There is more repetition in the responses of those around us as they continue to know us: laughter at LB’s antics, looks of empathy paired with “Are you okay?” as they see me navigating TK’s typical beginning-of-the-year anxiety and clinging to me, an anxiety I know all too well from my own childhood story. There are the studying looks his teachers give him giving way to enjoyment of his individuality, of his curiosity and kindness and gentleness.
Deja vu all over again.
And there is the familiar return of TH, the taxi delivering him safely to our driveway as the boys run out to greet him and I breathe a sigh of relief both because the workload has now lessened but also because you never truly know the ending of the story until it’s over, and ours is not. We’re complete once again, the four of us, our story continuing, incomplete as its pages keep being written yet complete in the hands of the one doing the writing.