Mommy, Tell Me a Story

"Mommy, tell me a story," I heard just as I turned from tucking Jacob in bed.

"Jacob, it's late," I answered. I was tired, and it was late, or it seemed late. "Not tonight honey." I blew him another kiss and continued toward his door.

"Tell me a story about when you were a little girl."

I stopped. Did I hear him correctly? Was he asking about me?

That doesn't happen. All too many times I have tried telling Jacob about different moments in my life growing up, to which he either doesn't pay attention, doesn't seem to care, or is totally lost in the concept that I was ever a child.

Usually when I do try to bring up something from my childhood, if Jacob is listening, he wants to know if Grandma was my mom and if Papa was my dad. But that is about all he knows or cares to know.

So this was different.

Typically our goodnights don't look like that. Usually it is lots of reminders and redirects, keeping Jacob on task, and finally once he is ready, it all comes together and he heads to bed. There's lots of jumping and bouncing. Usually Jacob is chasing his sister back and forth from room to room, and finally my husband and I divide and conquer, using one on one defense to wrestle each child to bed.

Many times as I tuck Jacob in bed, he is already looking at a book, humming his own little tune. I say goodnight and tell him I love him a few times, and many times there is little response as if he is unaware that I have even said a word.

And if he is talking, it's usually about baseball or some animal fact, or he may be trying to negotiate different terms for playing his Wii, attempting to convince me that it doesn't turn his brain to mush. Rarely is it anything too deep, and if it is, it is usually some new worry Jacob has formed. But never is it him taking an interest in me.

It was an opportunity I could not pass. I walked over to Jacob's bed, knelt beside him to where our faces were inches apart, and began to tell him about myself as a little girl in second grade.

Oh, he laughed when I told him my teacher had been very old and not very nice, and how we called her "Moldy Tower" because she was like a giant. Or at least a giant in my second grade mind.

I told him how I had loved playing in the corn table and doing the "Parade of Colors" song in Kindergarten. I told him how at recess in fourth grade, we would all line up staring at the house beside the school yard convinced it was haunted. I told him how there were no electronics, no cell phones, no computers, and no cartoons other than on Saturday mornings, to which he was mortified!

But the story he loved best was when I shared with him how at lunch in second grade the boy across from me desperate to get a butter sandwich for cleaning his plate, had scooped his broccoli into his empty milk carton to hide it, forgetting that at the end of the lunch period the teachers would walk around the room shaking each carton to make sure we had indeed drank all our milk. Sure enough, that boy had to drink his milk, which by then was a nasty broccoli soup!

While we laughed together, I felt really connected to my son.

Those moments are rare. Sure Jacob loves us, hugs us, snuggles us, and desires to be near us. He talks non-stop, so it's not that there is a lack of words. It's just sometimes those words seem like they are on the surface, never breaking into anything more than baseball and animals.

The other night, my husband desperate to connect with our son at dinner (and also as a ploy to keep him from playing electronics), devised a ten question quiz trying to engage Jacob beyond the typical conversations. It didn't work for much other than keeping Jacob from playing his Wii. Although Jacob did take it serious and requested another quiz the following night.

Last night as I was tucking Jacob in bed, he asked me, "Mommy, do you have any more stories to tell me about when you were a little girl?"

Maybe it was a new stall tactic from going to bed. I don't know. But I'd like to think Jacob really wanted to just be near me and connect. I really want to believe that he was interested and wanted to know about me.

So again, I tucked him in, and snuggled up ever so close and told him the story about how when I was a little girl on my birthday, I went to our annual town's Burning of the Greens celebration where everyone's discarded Christmas tree became a huge bonfire. And one little girl got to be the princess for the night, the one who was lucky enough to find the hidden peanut in her cupcake. And that year on my birthday, I was lucky enough to find a peanut.

"Mommy, do you wish every cupcake you ate had a peanut, so you could be a princess everyday?" Jacob asked me.

"No, Jacob, I'm happy just being a mommy," I told him.