TRIPP
“I’m gonna get you!”
Brody’s kid squeals and giggles as she chases Drumstick around the coffee table, waving a wand in the air with a long piece of ribbon attached at the end of it.
The cat may as well be a kid at an amusement park, hopped up on one too many of those giant pixie sticks and let loose. I’ve had him since he was two months old, and I don’t think in his six years with me, he’s ever once meowed the way that he is while heshould berunning for his life from the crazed seven-year-old chasing him around the room.
He almost sounds like he’s laughing right along with her.
“Alright, one of you is gonna puke if you don’t stop,” I laugh as Katie rounds the table again and Drumstick dives underneath it, bolting in the direction of the kitchen instead. “I’m not cleaning it up if you do.”
The wand is abandoned on the living room floor just before Katie flies at me like a bullet, diving onto the couch cushion next to me. I look at the mess we’ve made of the living room while she studies me; emptied plates, a stack of freshly-painted papers, ahealthy handful of candy wrappers, and a barely-touched glass of water litter the top of the coffee table.
“Next time we go to the beach, can I ride on your motorcycle?” She asks me, bouncing in place on the cushion, and I turn to her with a considering look.
“If your parents say it’s cool,” I nod. “I have a helmet in the garage that you can use.”
‘Get out of here,’ I told them. ‘Kids love me, we’ll be fine,’ I told them.
My eyes move to the clock resting on the mantel, next to a freshly-refilled scent diffuser. Brody and his girlfriend have only been gone for an hour and a half. It’s another half an hour before I’m able to get Katie situated in front of a pad of paper with some crayons and colored pencils, outlining what looks to be a dolphin while I work to clean up some of the garbage littered around my brother’s previously-immaculate living room.
When I finally make it back to her, Katie’s dolphin is almost entirely colored in with a blue-grey pencil, and it’s now joined by a parrot flying overhead.
“Hey, that looks pretty good,” I tell her with a ruffle of her hair as I settle onto the floor next to her.
“I’m gonna be a draw-er when I’m a grown-up,” she says confidently, reaching for a neon orange crayon.
“Oh yeah?” Pulling a piece of paper and a few colored pencils of my own toward myself, I add, “Gonna come down to Florida and work with your Uncle T-Mo?”
I listen as she walks me through what sounds a lot like a life plan, starting from the moment she’s a grown-up – which she thinks is sixteen – until she’s an ‘old lady’ – which she thinks is somewhere around her mom’s age.
She’s a little younger than I was when I decided that art was my thing, but she sounds just like I did when I finally figured it out.
The only difference between us is that her parents buy her art supplies and hang her new pieces in pride of place on the front of the refrigerator, and I had to hide mine underneath my mattress with the comic books that I also wasn’t supposed to have.
It’s nice to see a kid’s creativity being nurtured. It’s nice to sit next to a kid and laugh, and make messes, and to see her experience what being a kid issupposedto be like.
I never got to do this kind of thing with Edie’s kids. Things were too tense, they were too young. Everything was always toosomething. Clare was barely starting school when I left and Colby was still going back and forth to his mom’s house every weekend, so I never really had the chance to bond with them the way that I would have liked to.
I’m grateful for the chance I’m getting with Brody’s kid.
When my brother finally texts a few hours later that they’re on their way home, I drop my phone onto the couch and ruffle my fingers through Katie’s hair.
“You were supposed to be in bed at least an hour ago,” I tell her. I carefully hoist her into my arms, ignoring the searing pain in my side while I carry her like an airplane with her arms stuck out straight ahead of her. “We’re gonna speed run it.”
She’s a squealing, giggling ball of sugar-fueled excitement as I ‘fly’ her through the house and up the stairs, holding her in front of the bathroom sink while she reaches for her rinse cup to fill it with water.
“Toothbrush! Toothpaste! Scrub ‘em quick!” I shout, barely holding in my own laughter.
Drumstick rushes up the stairs, the bell on his collar jingling as he follows closely behind us out of the bathroom. Making less-than-impressive airplane noises as we cruise through the house and into Katie’s bedroom, I toss her onto the mattress with a simulated crashing sound and I point toward her dresser.
“You have two minutes to put on your jammies and get into bed,” I tell her in my best TV game show announcer voice. “Can you beat the clock?”
“Yuh-huh!” She shouts affirmatively, offering me two very enthusiastic thumbs up.
“Alright, get it done, and if they come in here, you’ve been asleep since eight thirty,” I tell her with a high five and a kiss to the top of her head. “Sleep tight, monster.”
With my niece tucked in and a hand pressing into my sore ribs, I manage to make it down the stairs and onto the couch to flick on a movie for myself only a few minutes before the front door opens.
