Liam was having an “off” weekend a few weeks ago. Yeah…”off”…we’ll just leave it at that. One of the few tactics that consistently works to redirect his energy when he’s freaking out is to ask him if he wants to help you with something. Doesn’t matter what it is. You could ask him if he wanted to help you amputate your leg with a rusty butter knife and he’d be jazzed to hold the wash rag in your mouth steady so you could bite down on it. He can be mid-screaming-fit with tears cascading down his chubby cheeks and if, in the few seconds of silence provided when he has to take a breath, you can quickly sputter, “Hey! Want to help me do laundry?”, he’ll turn on a dime, waterworks and yelling gone, and say in the most pleasant and earnest little voice, “Weem help Mum-Mum!! Weem is a *great* helper!” 

This particular weekend, I was getting ready to color my hair. I had planned to sneak away to the bathroom by myself for half an hour, but sacrificing the rest of the family’s quality of life wasn’t worth that, so I invited Liam along to “help.”

“Hey, Bean! Want to help me color my hair?”

I’m sure this sounded like a much more interesting endeavor to my three-year-old than it actually was and I could tell later that he was somewhat disappointed that I had decided to forego using the rainbow of broken nubs from his Crayola box and had, instead, opted for a bottle of goo in a very suburban shade of brown. Warm Medium Brown, actually. Man. Could there be three more neutral, boring words strung together EVER? They should have just called the shade, “Nice.” Well, it was Nice-N-Easy, so I guess they did in a way. This is getting more depressing the more I write!

Liam was extremely interested in the array of plastic gloves and bottles I removed from the “Nice” box. He looked at me and asked, “What color is Mum-Mum making her hair?” (I’m not sure when this third-person-speak of his will end, but I kind of like it right now. Might be awkward in the 5th grade if he still sounds like Tarzan.)

“Ummm…well, just brown, buddy. I’m actually trying to make the gray hair brown so it all matches.”

He looked at me, confused.

“Some of Mummy’s hair is gray. See?” I pointed to several colorless sprigs but could see that he wasn’t focusing on them. “Um…here,” I said pointing to a more prominent patch of gray at the top of my forehead. I put my finger on my forehead under the white patch .

“See there? What are those?”

Liam studied the area above my finger and sat back down, unimpressed.

“Wrinkles.” He said matter-of-factly.

You. Little. Shit.

Now. Here’s the thing. I don’t think he and I or he and ANYONE have ever had a conversation about wrinkles before. How the fuck did he know to say, ‘wrinkles’?? Are the lines and valleys on my face such that they embody the purest essence of wrinkliness and therefore transcend the normal flow of knowledge and learning, standing on their own as the epitome of “Wrinkle?” He knew without knowing that they were wrinkles. See? Depressing!

On the plus side, I now have at least two things in common with Gandalf, who is awesome. So, there’s that…