The Visitor and the Lincolnshire Lamb

Before you, your family lived out many ordinary days (as you have and you will) where time stands still for just a moment like a photograph and the past and future meets on the present plane.

This is the story of one such ordinary day.

We’re home from school and sitting outside to feel the sunshine and watch the dog, our beloved Bronn, bark at the squirrels. My husband is umpiring baseball games in the evenings all week; the wet weather has finally subsided, for now. We go inside to start the up-and-down, back-and-forth, round-and-round dance of dinnertime.

For three weeks, we’ve been trying to get the baby to sit down while he eats. Instead, he wants to eat while climbing over the high chair back or the high chair tray. He wants to eat while pushing the chairs the length of the kitchen. He’s hopeful that everything is a game, including mealtimes; I hate to be the one to break it to him, but that’s my job as his parent.

Before I make dinner, the baby paces up and down the cabinets shrieking while I attempt to wash the dishes. I almost get them all done. That’s more than good enough.

The daffodils lean wilting in my springtime vases. The high chair is in the middle of the kitchen. The recycling is full and the dog is out of heartworm medication.

The chairs look like robots playing freeze tag, they’re all so out of place from the baby’s maneuvers.

I’ve been making burritos this week. Today, a spicy black bean, yesterday was milder with corn. For a couple days now, allergies are dulling my senses so a little spice drains my sinuses. (The baby makes his little, “Heh-heh,” chuckle each time I blow my nose).

He eats some of the rice and corn from yesterday but mostly fruit. Each time I set down a mandarin orange slice in front of him, he flicks it then rolls it over with his forefinger as if checking to see if it is still alive, like maybe I’m feeding him snails or something. After a respectable amount of sitting still, he starts molding the banana chunks together like clay — a new game!

I take him down from the high chair.

Bronn cleans up the high chair seat, the floor, and the baby’s face. I notice something on the dog’s head — quinoa? A tick? I make a note that it’s time for flea remedies and ant traps again.

The baby fusses at my knees, but I’m still digging at Bronn’s head. It’s maybe a growth. He has a vet appointment tomorrow anyway; he’s young, he’ll live, but it still seems too early for him to get warty.

Dinner’s over and the baby just wants to be held. I’ve been trying to wean him, and I think he knows it…

…because suddenly, after over a year of constant movement, he just stops.

He thumps his head on my chest and curls up, warm against my skin, fine hair sticky from the mild heat (just like mine). And he sinks.

I think he’s feverish at first and check his temperature with a kiss…. He’s fine. He’s just resting? I didn’t know he could do that.

The house is quiet and bright. The clock’s arms stand at ten past six. The blocks lie tumbled across the floor: red, purple, chartreuse, green, royal blue, orange, and turquoise. The baby’s white fuzzy zip-up sweater lies twisted on the braided rug; it’s the jacket that makes him look and feel like a little lamb.

I find myself aware of the woman in my future, the old crone woman who watches over the young me still back here, in this time. It’s as if she arrives in the room just to say, “Yes, sit down.”

And I carry him to the couch and I cry.

The dog whines at me and I nudge him with my heel. He settles his head on my foot with a sigh. He still wants to be the baby. Perhaps when the babies are not babies, he can be the baby again, old as he may be by then. And much more warty.

We live in a small brick house with just enough room and never enough room at the same time. Certainly not enough closet space. There’s always the noise of planes flying over from the nearby airport. The laundry’s shudders and whirrings fill the whole house on Saturday.

I sit, weepy, seeing it all through the crone’s eyes.

There’s the old rocker by the red desk, a grandfather’s heirloom antlers on the wall, and fresh white laundry piled on the nursery bed. Coats and scarves dangle their tassels, sprawled all over the living room in a state of confusion as to when they’ll be packed away. (I’m hoping soon).

The $40 kitchen table is a tough old bird with two stiff, yet functioning, wings; she’s taken the brunt of food spills, piled bills, scratches, and stains. The stove and the dryer are neighbors separated by half a wall (where we keep the spices).

The woman of the future remembers this house. She remembers the way the dog and baby look out the window together down the plain street.

She remembers this as one of the last days I’ll nurse this baby to sleep. His one-year-old shots were yesterday. His hair is now long enough to curl in the humidity.

Everything’s budding outside just two days after a late snow, and the old woman knows that in an hour the rain sets in again.

She says to me, “Remember that spring day in England when you held that little lamb? Remember how it felt? It was like this, somehow.”

She’s exactly right. I’m thankful for her sharp memory; she lives on memories. She knows I currently live on coffee and tiny smiles.

We both think about that day in England, near the end of an adventure when our days abroad were rapidly dwindling….

Now, it’s another spring 10 years later and I’m holding another little lamb…and these early days, the baby days, are dwindling, too.

I tell her I bought him a little lamb figure for his birthday; the poor thing’s right ear is clean off already. Never discovered how.

I want to ask her questions, but I also know she won’t tell. She’s traveled a long way to give me a lesson in presence. Besides, we’re both too tired for questions, each in her own way.

“You already know what to do about today; you’ve been doing it most of your life.”

She’s gone before I realize my tears are hers — and they’re a bittersweet gift in the awareness of Time to clear my mind. I know I’ll see her again; in fact, I see her all the time because she’s often thinking of me.

And, now, the baby snores softly in his sleep, the little lamb. The sunlight dims, the dog burrows beneath his blanket, and there it is — a subtle rushing and a new rain rinses my world.

And I start to do what I already know to do about days like this, that feel like they’re slipping away — what I’ve been doing most of my life.

I write it down.