I was trying to fight it. Desperately attempting to suppress it. Making my best effort not to show it.
But it came through. I couldn’t help it as we wandered like a pack of baboons through the Kennedy Space Center. My dad. My wife and our 10-year-old. My brother and his wife. And their nearly 3-year-old son, Striker.
I just couldn’t help giving the “toddler stare of disbelief.”
We all do it. Some people are mean about it. Others curious. Then there are people like me who can’t seem to remember having kids at that age. We give off a look that seems to say, “Is that normal?”
It’s toddler denial complex — the belief that your child was never, ever that small, that energetic and that … well … kooky. That he or she came straight into the world refined, sipping tea, asking how the stock market was doing, able to stand perfectly still for more than 5 seconds and always saying, “Dear Papa, how may I make your life more enjoyable?”
This is what I was thinking as I stared at my brother. We were waiting for a bus to take us to see rocket launch pads. Sweat was tumbling off him in rivers. His child climbed and twisted and squirmed in his arms. He and his son were in a never-ending loop:
“Daddy? Is that our bus?”
“No, Striker, that’s not our bus.”
“Daddy? Is THAT our bus?”
“No, Striker, that’s not our bus.”
When I couldn’t resist anymore, I said, “So, he thinks that’s our bus, huh?”
My 10-year-old daughter just smiled and shrugged.
Toddlers are strange little people. I don’t want to seem mean. I’ve just forgotten it all. Or blissfully blocked it out. Maybe it’s been too long. Or maybe it amuses me because I don’t have to live it anymore.
I snickered in the bus as the boy rattled off “What’s that?” over and over again. His father would reply, “That’s a palm tree, Striker” or “That’s some broken junk.”
I marveled at the pee-pee dances. The need to go here and then there at lightning speed. How he had to open up a toy with multiple parts right outside the gift shop.
Does that make me a bad person? A bad uncle? I hope not. It just seems so foreign to me now. I stare and make strange faces and say things like, “So … has a trained physician looked him over real good?”
But truth is, I got a kick out of it. The nostalgia of it. Remembering how fun those days could be. The squirming kid who wanted to be carried. The curious questions. The need to play with a toy right then and there.
The Kennedy Center photographer took a picture of my daughter holding the hand of her pint-size cousin. She towered over him, and it hit home how much has changed. I would have pondered it more … if the boy hadn’t asked if our bus was pulling up yet.