Don't Put the Baby in the Toy Box

The baby was a whole fortnight overdue.  It was decided that an induction was necessary and so Miles and Rachel dropped two year old Jack off at his grandparents the night before Rachel was due to go into the Royal Prince Alfred and get on with it.

Dorry thought Jack was surprisingly amenable to being dropped off.  He had never stayed the night before.  Maybe he too was finding all the waiting a bit much.  Certainly for the rest of the family it was  trying.  Impossible to plan anything, endless well wishers asking if anything had happened yet.  “I know I should be grateful that people care.” Said Rachel.

Up until this point Jack had answered all questions about the pregnancy in the family with a firm “Not yet”.

“So you’ll have a baby brother soon.”

“Yes, but not yet”

And last Wednesday when Dorry had taken him to Bondi Junction shopping centre he had lodged himself in his stroller and refused to walk or run or do any of his usual things.  Even the pleasure of standing independently on the escalator did not tempt him out.  He preferred to sail down in situ like a sad monarch.

But the night before the birth he’d perked up.  Maybe the educational picture books had done the trick because he was happy.  He breastfed his Dolly and patted his Wood Hen.

“What will you do when the baby cries?” anyone could ask and he would perform on cue,

“I’ll say there, there. It’s all right” and he made little patting movements.  He seemed to have moved from ominous ambivalence to cloying sweetness at the idea of having a little brother in no time at all.

One of the issues relating to the birth of the new baby was that Dorry was wanted at the birth.  She’s been there last time.  This time, however, it meant leaving Jack in the hands of his loving but gruff grandfather who didn’t believe in delicate ways of handling the terrible twos time.  He preferred battles of will to the more pussyfooting strategies of distraction and bribery. Despite this Jack loved his grandfather.  Nevertheless Dorry and his parents quailed a little at the thought of a prolonged stretch of babysitting by Graham.

Perhaps that was why Dorry was called to the hospital quite late.  The baby was already flailing his way out of the womb when she got there. One arm and the head were emerging amidst a cacophony of midwifely encouragement and maternal grunts.  It was a much easier birth than Jack’s had been.  The baby was quite big with long legs still a bit bandy from being squashed inside.

 “Would you like to see the placenta?”  the midwife asked afterwards and it seemed polite to say yes, and there it was, a fine thing in its way, thought Dorry. 

For some reason she could not understand, watching a birth filled Dorry with a strange sadness.  It had been like this with Jack.  Perhaps it was just that the mysterious incoming baby had a flavour of the other world which for the most part she took no heed of, not being religious.  The door that had opened to let the baby in and then closed behind him would open and close for her and every other being under the sun.  For a moment it all seemed so futile.

 Dorry held the little thing for a bit before leaving, promising to bring Jack in when the parents had had a bit of a rest.

Graham and Jack seemed on blessedly good terms when Dorry got home, though when she asked of it had all been OK, Graham answered “More or less” and looked very tired.  However all three of them were excited at going back to the hospital.  Dorry ran ahead to make sure the baby was in its cot and not its mother’s arms when Jacob went in, as this had been advised by her midwife sister in England.

Jacob wasn’t at all interested in his mother though.  He went straight over to the cot and looked in, transfixed.  Cooing voices encouraged him to be pleased with his brother.  His father picked up the baby, now named Evan.

“Better than a kitten” Dorry proffered helpfully.

Jack looked at the baby thoughtfully and then asked his father,

“Do you know him?”

To Dorry it seemed a weird but very good question.

The first time Jack and Evan came to their grandparents’ house after the birth was a bit of an emergency.  Rachel had needed to be taken to Casualty with a minor infection and Miles had catapulted in with both children, the precious baby now being handed around like a bag of sugar.

“Take him while I get the car stuff”  Miles was frantic to get back to the hospital and see what was happening with Rachel.  Jack was however in total command of the situation.  He went half way up the stairs, looked over the banisters and fixed his dark gaze on his grandmother who was cradling the baby with awe and delight, all her melancholy now dispersed.

“Don’t” he said “put the special baby in the toy box”

He went on haranguing her about baby care but she hardly heard him.  The little gargoyle face with its twisting grimaces, the legs now covered for some reason in flaking skin, had got her under its spell.

In the days that followed Dorry watched Jack walk taller, with longer strides.  The attitude he assumed to little Evan was  for the most part lofty and indifferent but Dorry knew she only had put on a  wicked grin and slowly raise the wooden lid of the toybox and Jack would scramble into defensive mode,

“No, no Grandma, don’t.  Don’t put him in the toy box!”