The morning was not quite what I hoped. It did not turn into a sitcom domino of disasters, spills and snowballing delays. There was a stagnancy and lack of enthusiasm or direction. After not getting to bed until an hour and a half past his bedtime the previous night -- the lad too tired to even know how to cooperate through the wind down routine and calling his mother (and not ME) a "bully" at one heated point -- there is a familiar, odd perversion of the biological clock that ensures he gets up early whenever he goes to bed late. He was not particularly difficult, but that lingering sluggishness buried any momentum toward preparing for the day and getting ready for music class as quickly as possible.
I had been telling myself the night before that he was likely to wake early and that while it could be a long day with occasional crankiness, it was best to find some way to just 'roll with it' -- not exactly my strong suit. Nadine has work today and her own routine gets her out the door before we really need to get going. Gabe and I have an extra 10-15 minutes before we have to head to the LRT and we are booted, toqued and gloved with the promise that he has the pep to run up the hill. As we approached the station, our train pulled up at the platform and Gabriel started talking about the need to run to the train.
"You never run at the train," calmly telling something that I have had to say a few times to him.
"We can run, we can get it."
I have always padded our music class routines with the possibility of a missed train and was able to hold my ground and hope that he can pick up on my calm lack of urgency and get the lesson that he should not run to catch an approaching train. We chorused our exchange of "never" and "we can make it" a few times until the train pulled away. We had 12 minutes until the next train; enough time to return an overdue (roll with it, roll with it) Toopy and Binoo DVD to the library. That done, we returned to the platform to wait for the next train.
There was a mother and son waiting as well; the son slowly working through the last dregs of a can of jalapeño Pringles. Gabriel asked me while eyeing the chips if we had snacks and the mother, with a chronic rasp the belied a more hardscrabble life, told him, "Of course! Everyone has snacks!" In my case, snacks amounted to a chia-blackberry squeeze pack, some apple-cinnamon rice crackers and a Larabar, all of which I intended to dole it with a bit more discretion. I'm not sure if they satisfied his Pringle-whetted appetite.
The ride on the train is always a wonder for him. He kneels on his seat and looks out the window, over my shoulder at the sights that strobe by, percussive blurs of lampposts passing across the lenses of his glasses as he waits to see downtown. I let him know that the Peace Bridge is coming into view and he shifts to look east as we cross the Bow River into downtown.
We get off and make our way to the bus stop for the next leg of the journey. He enjoys taking the footsteps route across the Enmax grates in the sidewalk but he finds the individual trucks and and buses too noisy. Perhaps it is a matter of those noises standing out that much more without the cumulative din of weekday traffic as a base line. We put the package for the chia-blackberry snack-beverage-gel thing in the garbage and come to our stop.
While at the stop, he finds a discarded (3/4 full!!) beverage cup from Subway and starts emptying it out through the straw, trailing a brown version of urination Braille across the snow, while I ask him to stop before he soaks and stickifies himself if the lid finally gives way under the weight and pressure of his shaking and art making.
In the middle of this, I tell him that Anakin Skywalker grows up to be Darth Vader. He hasn't seen any of the movies yet, but he is getting a steady diet of whatever Star Wars books he can get and he tells me he likes Anakin because of his heroism in the primer reader equivalent of Episode II. My disdain for Jake Lloyd, Hayden Christensen and the prequel trilogy prompt me to give my warning about who Anakin really is, but in the end he is a big Darth fan anyway. He stares at me slack-jawed for a moment and I wonder if I have permanently cast myself or him as the spoiler of all stories. He is undaunted by the revelation and I smirk at his command of the Star Wars canon, recalling my own ability to devote so much mental real estate to hockey trivia when I was in elementary school.
I also taught him the phrase "catch air" during a particularly bumpy ride on the bus. He is puzzled by this and points out that his mouth was closed and I give the example of a kite catching air and y to make the distinction between catching air and catching your breath. With each bump that follows, he points out that he has indeed caught air again.
With those two lessons passed from father to son, we arrive at music class and I file my train-rushing lesson for later and later again.
After music, the day continues with a bus ride to pizza for lunch. The Saturday pizza tradition goes back to Gabe's bucket phase and it has been nice to see him grow into the routine and manage to eat half of his pizza. Lately, when we take the bus, he insists on taking position in the very back of the bus. The back row was a factor contributing to how much air we caught on the shuttle bus and with the 73, there is often a character of some sort who Gabriel has no timidity about. Today, it is a man with an air cast on his foot and a surreptitious can of beer that he keeps hidden in his nicotine stained hands rather than sipping from openly, his deference to authority heightened in front of the 4-year-old. He talks about how he broke his leg at work and how has myriad rods and screw in his leg and is going to be laid up for about 14 weeks. I wonder how much mature content Gabriel actually absorbs here in the backseat and I look ahead to rides he will have by himself. I'll be better served by deft interrogation than backseat prohibition when those days come. Perhaps I'll have to trade him today's character for whoever he ended up sitting with.
Lunch is uneventful as he zones out in front of a Paw Patrol marathon on the iPad while my lunch time cronies sort through the bishop's gaffe on LGTBQ rights a week earlier. Gabriel only raises his eyes from the inane puppies to greet one of the staff in the restaurant, who has seen him regularly since he was in the bucket phase. They have an indelible connection and when he sees her, he rises from his spot on the bench, strides over me and gives her a huge hug, feet off the bench and pressing as much warmth into her as he can.
On the LRT home, he finally catches up on the sleep he passed up on at 6:20 this morning and when I turn to tell him we are at our station he is out, face planted firmly into the back of the seat. Now in the hang of rolling with it, I read until we go all the way to the end of the line in Tuscany and commence the return trip back to the southeast. I watch him sleep calmly and with a stillness that makes me tune my senses for the confirmation of each light breath, something I have not done since he was just a few months old.
After about 45 minutes, he bolts out of his repose and looks around, all bewildered and bedheaded. We get off to make to catch the train home and the lad still finds himself out of sorts. We wait for the train to takes us back to the northwest and he needs to be held and comforted, such is his state. He is still tired and uncertain of where he is and how he ended up in this unfamiliar place under these circumstances. The nascent independence he asserts all too often and in such unexpected ways is gone and for this moment he his younger and vulnerable. I manage to roll with it and as he burrows into me, I let him know that he is getting heavy. It is a warning as much for me as him that those cuddling totes across long distances are getting harder and we are perhaps down to the last few.
And I tell myself once again, to roll with it. Somehow.
