The first time they put that squalling, squirmy, screeching little baby in your arms and you have counted his fingers and toes and marveled over how beautiful someone who looks a lot like Winston Churchill can be you begin to realize how a mother bear can rip someone's arm off if she thinks her baby might be in danger. You swear by all that is holy that you will protect this child forever no matter the threat.
And then you turn around and he's standing there towering over you and his muscles are like tree limbs and you think "Okay, my protecting days are over." Except you pray morning and night for angels to surround him and protect him where you can't. You don't have to tell him. And then you turn around again and he is the one protecting you. The Circle of Life, I guess.
Call me a hypocrite because I wouldn't even let my boys play with guns when they were little, but as long as Jake decided to be a cop and have guns, why not call him if there is a snake (okay, a LONG pipe cleaner*) in the laundry room? Or, like once when we first moved to Tulsa and I came home from church to find the front door open (is there a pattern here?**) I called Jake instead of the Tulsa cops. No sense being embarrassed by the whole "Oops, I think I forgot to close the door" thing in front of the cops in case I had just forgotten to close the door. Which apparently I did.
And whenever I sell something on Craig's List and someone is going to come to my house to pick it up, I get Jake to come over wearing his shirt that says POLICE on it and wearing his gun. Just in case.
I don't think he will remember this, but Jake actually started protecting me, in a way, when he was only ten. I had just started working at the furniture store and, well, you know how sometimes there is someone who just gets on your nerves, not matter what they do and every time you are around them they do something dumb and you want to strangle them? I was that someone for one of the managers at the store.
It seems like no matter what I did it was not right for this guy. I was new and I admit to a few--ok, maybe a lot--of mistakes. But he seemed to delight in calling me on them in front of people. It was like he watched me, waiting for me to screw up. And I obliged him. I tried not to bring it home, but you know how that works. I may have mentioned it a couple of times. Or cried in the bathroom where nobody was supposed to hear.
We only had one car at the time and Dennis and the boys came to pick me up from work. I was going to take a small table to a customer on the way home, so this manager carried it out to the car. I thanked him and introduced him to Dennis, Josh and Jake. It was summer, the car windows were open, and after the manager loaded the table into the back of the car, but before he got all the way to the front door, Jake turned to me, his ten-year-old voice carrying through the parking lot, and said "Is that the man who's mean to you, Mom?"
When I got to work the next day it was as if I was the long lost daughter of the founders. This manager was never nicer to me, we actually became good friends and I stayed at that job for nine years.
Thanks, Jake, for protecting me even then. I'll be calling you if I see anything suspicious in the laundry room. Or if anybody is mean to me.
*See Reptile Dysfunction--July 28
**See It Was A Dark and Stormy Night August 22
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