Mum-Mum: “You guys! Why do I have to tell you the same thing over and over? How come every morning you make noise and I have to come in and tell you to be quiet because Sam is still sleeping? Why can’t you remember and just do it?”

Nate: “Because we just can’t! We’re widdle boys, Mum-Mum!”

A recent Saturday night. Late.

Jill and I are sleeping soundly at opposite ends of the TV Room sectional. I wake up in the flickering darkness and through squinted eye, see Liam between us, nestled back into the deep bend in the middle of the couch, sucking his thumb and staring balefully at the television. He regards me briefly over his small fist, then turns back to the TV. I begin to say something to him, I think.

A cushion… then darkness.

Later, I vaguely remember a sleepy Jill rousting me and herding us upstairs to our real beds. Liam walks ahead of me, and with furrowed brow, I follow his leopard-spotted blanket up the steps. “I’m going to lie down with Liam until he falls asleep,” Jill says.

I may have nodded, but no one really knows.

At the breakfast table the next morning, I suddenly recall my encounter with Liam the night before.

“Liam, were you watching TV last night while we were sleeping?”

“Yep.”

“What were you watching?”

“I watched a movie.”

“What movie?”

“I don’t know. But some guy was sawing somebody else’s foot off, and some other guy was encouraging him.”

I look at Jill, and Jill looks at me. She blinks rapidly.

“And then he was shooting a gun.” Liam continues. “And then he called him the adult word that starts with an ‘F’.”

He points at Jill, ”You know it, Mum-mum, say it!”

“My god. I think our five-year-old was watching ’Saw’.” 

I ask him why he was up in the middle of the night in the first place; how did he come to be watching an R-rated splatterfest, complete with shrieking violence, bloody hacksaws, and profanity-laden amateur limb removal?

He looks up calmly from his blueberry waffle.

“Because I was having a bad dream.”

Nate wanders into the room, dragging a toy broom and a plastic workbench leg.

Nate: “Dada, what if I said ‘Three Popcorn Leg’? And then… and then you said ‘Three Popcorn Leg!’”

Dada: “I don’t know…”

Nate, turning and leaving: “Three Popcorn Leg.”

Dada: “…how to answer that, man.”

Saturday. In the car. Liam pointing.

“That tire-swing gives me an idea. We should cut other stranger’s kid’s swings down, and stop them from having fun.”

Dada: “What were you doing?”

Liam: “We were fighting Sam!”

Dada: “Do you think I want you fighting Sam?”

Liam: “I wasn’t the one fighting him. I was the one blocking him so Nate could get him.”

“Hey Dada?”

“Yeah, buddy.” I answer automatically, typing without looking up.

“I love you.”

I stop typing. Smiling now, I turn to him. “I love you too, Nate.”

After a slight pause, he holds up his finger. “But did you see my booger?”

In our house, the start of the school year also means the start of the plague-of-the-month club. And, as the boys are taught to do in preschool, they share! With everyone! After a week of preschool, Liam came home and collapsed onto the couch with his blanket and half-mast eyes. Bean’s eyes are his tell when he’s sick, puffy with smoky half-moons underneath.

“I’m so sleepy, Mum-Mum.”

He drifted off and awoke an hour later in a sobbing rage, furious at the fever that had snuck up on him. I dosed him with Tylenol and wrestled his fiery little body into bed, rubbing his ears until he gave in to sleep again. He was out of school the next day. Although the high fever from the night before was gone, he off-handedly complained that his cheek hurt. I immediately made an appointment with the doctor because I know that that little comment…the one I used to ignore and not act on?…that means I have about 12 hours to get amoxicillin into him before he has a full-on sinus and ear infection. The doctor confirmed as much and faxed in a prescription to the Giant Eagle pharmacy.

For not feeling well, Liam was being unusually agreeable to being poked and prodded and driven all over town. We waited at the Giant Eagle pharmacy. Waited and waited…and, waited.

“Well, sometimes the faxes take a while to come in.”

“But, it would have been 30 minutes ago that he faxed it…”

“Maybe you should call and have them talk to us.”

Liam and I made our way to the front of the store so that my phone could get a signal and parked ourselves next to a giant pyramid of cases of bottled water. The front office was nice the first time I called. Sure! We’ll call that right in for you! Thanks! I’m at Giant Eagle on 40! OK! No problem! Thanks! No, thank you! 15 minutes later, nothin’. Back to the plastic water mountain. Now, the front office was irritated with me.

“Ma’am, I called it in 10 minutes ago and spoke with Elvin.”

“Lady, they do not have the prescription and there is no one named Elvin!”

“Well, I called it in to Giant on route 40 and…”

In lieu of screaming into my phone in the middle of the grocery store, I hissed through my gritted teeth at the doctor’s receptionist.

“I’m at GIANT EAGLE…not, GIANT!”

Liam licked the plastic around a case of water, daring me to do anything about it.

“Oh! Well that would be the problem, wouldn’t it!”

“That would be one of the problems.”

So, after an hour of faxing and calling our amoxicillin prescription in to the wrong pharmacy, she finally got it right. We wander back to the pharmacy and waited in line. Again.

Liam kept his shit together fairly well, especially given how long we’d had to wait and that he was sick. He leaned into me, hugging an arm around my thigh for support. I combed my fingers through his thick, glossy hair, marveling that mine used to be that exact color before it got darker…and lighter with all the gray. He popped his thumb into his mouth, got quiet, and began studying the faces around us.

I immediately went on high alert because, while Liam would never say anything intentionally mean spirited or hurtful to a stranger, he sometimes loudly questions things he doesn’t understand or makes loud comments about a person’s appearance. I’ve explained that that can hurt someone’s feelings, even though he wouldn’t mean to and that it would be better to save those kinds of questions until we’re alone.

I followed his gaze, trying to guess what he might be thinking and desperately seeking some sort of distraction. Just as I was about to start up a quiet game of ‘I spy,’ I saw his eyes settle on two men about ten feet from us. They were middle-aged and stylish. They stood hip to designer hip at the counter, one man rubbing the other’s back in comfort, as he seemed to be feeling under the weather. Just then, Liam’s thumb was pushed out of his mouth by an urgent question. His face tilted up to mine in concern and I braced, thinking more about how I would apologize to the men, rather than how I would answer his question.

With a nod to the gay couple in front of us my little master of the obvious, minus volume control said, “Mum-Mum! Why hasn’t that man’s hair come in yet?”

Well done, Liam! Not the observation I was expecting, yet still mortifying!