Four words have been running through my head, pretty much nonstop, for the past 36 hours. Depending on how the moment catches me, that little sentence can feel like a warm summer sun or an icepick to the vitals. Mostly the icepick, though.
The four words are "Daddy pick you up." That's how my two-year-old son, Michael, tells you he wants to be held. He says them in a staccato, cadence-calling tone, so you can almost hear the hyphens: "Daddy-pick-you-up." Never "Daddy-pick-me-up" -- always you. I guess he hasn't learned "me" yet.
This past Monday and Tuesday were my two days a month with my son. Since his mother moved with him to Florida, it's all the time I get. At any rate, Monday and Tuesday were my days this month, and I made the trek to Florida with my parents, who live and breathe for Michael, to see him.
We picked him up from his maternal grandfather, Bill. Bill and I have an interesting relationship. It has progressed over the last 15 months from white-hot hatred to subdued mutual loathing to grudging acceptance to, finally, a cautious sort of friendliness. I think he finally realized I wasn't going away, and I finally realized that he was actually a very conscientious grandparent. And we both realized that we each loved Michael more than anything else in the world. He actually acknowledges me as "Daddy" around Michael now, whereas for months he pointedly avoided the word.
At any rate, when Bill pulled up and Michael spotted me through the car window, as always, he started laughing and straining against his safety harness. Bill undid the child-seat restraints and got Michael out of the car, and Michael ran over to me with that funny jerky gait of his, held his arms out and said, "Daddy-pick-you-up."
I was impressed. Last month it was just "Daddy-up," and the month before just outstretched arms and an imploring look. Bill gave my parents and I the ritual Michael update, and we all stood around for the ritual exclamations about my little boy's brilliance. Then we packed Michael into the car and drove the two hours from Bill's hometown of The Villages, Florida, to my brother's place in Winter Park.
We stopped on the way to Adam's apartment to pick up a Fudgy the Whale birthday cake from a Carvel ice cream shop. Adam and Michael were both born in January, so we celebrate their birthdays together. I wish I could report that the Fudgy the Whale confection was out of deference to Michael's tender age, but in the interests of full disclosure I must admit that it was my 27-year-old brother, the managing editor of a national magazine, who requested this ridiculous item. We're looking into assisted-living communities.
My father, Michael and I waited in the car while my mother went in to retrieve the embarrassing dessert. A large truck rolled slowly through the parking lot, its proximity siren beeping a warning.
"Big truck coming," Michael remarked conversationally. "Beep-beep." The truck rolled on by. "Bye, truck," Michael said. My father and I burst out laughing. Michael looked at me like I was the world's biggest idiot. "I was only being polite," the look said.
My mother came back to the car with the cake. We dropped it off at my brother's apartment, and asked Michael what he wanted to do.
"Go park," he said. The kid is an absolute fiend for the park.
"What do you want to do there?" I asked.
"See choo-choo train." He's also a fiend for trains, and an Amtrack way station just happens to be located right next to his favorite park.
"We'll do our best, but I don't know if any trains are coming through today," I told him.
"Go park. Choo-choo train," he explained slowly, as if to a mentally deficient rhesus monkey. It was hard to argue with his logic; in ten months of going to that park, we had never failed to see at least one train.
We arrived at the park and Michael did laps around its border, muttering "choo-choo train," pausing to examine the train tracks, every so often putting his surveillance on hold to chase birds or watch the cars and trucks passing on the street (and providing a running tally, "Car, car, truck, car, blue car, big truck," as each passed). After these diversions tired him, he always went back to searching for trains. But the trains never came, and after about an hour I decided it was too cold and we packed it in.
No sooner did we get back to my brother's apartment than Michael said, "Choo-choo train." A second later, I heard the whistle of a locomotive in the distance. The kid has ears like a bat.
