Steam Brain, Dream Brain

125 Weeks

"Clickety clack, clickety clack..."

"Mommy. (Turning back from the third page to the first page for the third time.) Start here."

"Buggy, let's get through the whole story first."

"Mommy. Go back. Go back again."

Ren's desire and capacity to memorize has actually frightened us. We are terrified. We can't keep up. A friend gave Ren a new book about trains and five days later, I shut the book, turn out the light and Ren asks me to sing him "the Steam Train, Dream Train" song. I'm thinking perhaps this actually exists. The book is a New York Times best seller, catchy rhymes. Then I recall months ago we made up a Goodnight Moon song because, yeah, what two year old doesn't compose music to their favorite memorized books? Doesn't everyone do that? I haven't memorized beyond the title. I'm not paying attention to the words any more. I'm reading them for the thirtieth time while I think about groceries, bills, bettering my time management skills, my shrunken boobs, work, sleep, plays, old Frasier episodes, work, new mascara, work, jelly jars, and karate.

"Mommy. Sing it."

I start making up a tune and repeat "steam train... dream train..." and commit to it like some kind of weird lullaby mantra or acting exercise circa 1978. He laughs and says, "No, no, no, Mommy," and with another chuckle and patronizing tone says, "Mommy, let me teach you. I'll teach you."

Ren proceeds to recite the first three pages of this book—at least 20 lines of rhyming verse—to a tune he's making up on the spot. I start choking on inadequacies that have been trapped in my spine since high school, bad hair color auditions in Los Angeles, the time I put "bilingual" on the back of my headshot because I thought ordering extra cheese in Spanish was the equivalent.

Ren is already humoring me. He's already pitying my pathetic attempts to entertain him with rusty skills and take-my-wife jokes. I don't have much more than that to offer...

I'm good at cleaning puke off a variety of things before they stain.

And I can cross my eyes one at a time. That's pretty rare.