Packing for Noah

The event rolls around once each week. I begin to anticipate it, like a little kid, about 48 hours before it's scheduled. There's a spring in my step as I look forward to it, and a lilt in my voice. Life just got a little bit - nay, a whole lot - better.

We begin to pack to go see him about a day before, putting stuff on the kitchen table to bring to him.

A tennis ball. Lunch. My work stuff, although I rarely do any real work that day; maybe a phone call or two. New teaching tools, cleverly disguised as toys, like a "shape ball" that holds inside it different plastic shapes like a circle, a square, a hexagon, and about a dozen others.

Noah is asked to find the right fit in the plastic ball for each shape. On our most recent visit, he mastered the skill of holding the shape at just the right angle to insert through the opening.

He knows now how to spell his name. I bring a small plastic license plate that I purchased in Walmart with his name on it, but I forget the zip ties that would secure it to something, and I bring it home. Next visit.

I work with him on how to spell "Pa." He can repeat the spelling when I say it, but when I check a couple hours later, he's forgotten. We'll work on it.

He points to where the poster of the Blue Angels, soaring skyward, used to be on his bedroom door. It's no longer there hanging on the door, and a couple missing paint chips are in its place. Pa did it.

He'd like a new poster of the planes, he says. I say I'll work on it.

There are as many as three trips to the car to bring in the stuff when we babysit for Noah. I bet the stuff, all told, weighs several pounds.

We sometimes don't use the stuff that we bring in, but no worries. It's best to be prepared.

When he succeeded at putting the shape in the right hole, I shouted "Ta-daaaaaaaaaaaa!" He got it right away, and as he worked on the next shape, we waited expectantly for the big moment, and when he succeeded the room exploded with shouting and laughter , among Amma, and Pa, and Noah.

Before we left to go home, Noah and I hid in the bedroom closet. I go in first, he follows and closes the closet door behind us. It's dark in there, but only for a moment, because as I look down I can see the little hand reaching for the doorknob.

The door opens (his parents have had to put new childproof locks that replaced the simpler ones he figured out), and we tiptoe through the bedroom, speed picking up as we reach the hallway, and it's a sprint toward the living room as Amma, who is evidently not aware not aware of our approach, is blissfully relaxed until Noah hits the arm of the couch and says "Boo!" to Amma. She is startled, and shouts, and few moments later I run up and shoot "Boo!" again. Once again, she is frightened out of her wits.

A good day, by any definition.