A few months after I married their dad, I took Gnat and Eddie to the Belmont library after school. Eddie was in kindergarten, learning to read, and Gnat was flexing her second-grade proficiency to help her brother.
The kids were about to be struck by life-changing news. Quietly, calmly, using my library voice, I said: Hey, I have something important to tell you.
They looked up from their book at once. This was rare, that I had something important to tell them. I said, You’re going to have a baby brother or sister. I’m pregnant!
Wow! said Gnat. Cool! said Eddie. Then I heard Eddie’s clear, boy-soprano voice rise above the soft human hum of the library as he added, But how did you get pregnant, Becky?
The library stilled, while every adult head swiveled towards us. It was a small library with surprisingly live acoustics, full of after-school kids with their adults in tow. I said, Let’s talk about it in the car, Eddie. OK, he said, ever accommodating.
In the car I bumbled through an explanation that culminated in Eddie saying, There’s one part I still don’t get. How does the penis know which should come out of it, pee or sperm?
You wouldn’t want to accidentally pee on the eggs when you’re trying to fertilize them.
One clever kid, that Eddie. My brain was disappointed in me and evaporated, just when I needed it most. So I delivered the lamest response in the book: Well, I don’t have one of those. Ask your father.
Did those words come out of my mouth? Ask your father, a line from a seventies sit-com? I normally pride myself on explaining complex concepts simply. Even made a decent living doing just that, in one way or another. Maybe it was an off day. Plus I’m lost without a whiteboard and markers. As I mentioned, we were in the car.
Eddie warmed to me, his new stepmom, slowly. Gnat, in contrast, quite literally jumped into my arms. When their dad told Gnat and Eddie that we were getting married, Eddie said, But Dad. Didn’t you tell us you love Maribeth?
Maribeth was the previous girlfriend. Not that long previous, as it turns out.
But he did have some budding diplomacy skills, that Eddie. The first day I met him he took me into the yard to pitch baseballs to him. He was serious about ball sports, especially baseball. Unfortunately his stepmom-to-be was Not The Athletic One, as you may have read in a previous story.
I stood all of ten feet away and managed to get approximately zero of twenty pitches anywhere near his waiting bat. He shrugged and said, with a reasonable facsimile of cheer, That’s OK, Becky.
It was his graciousness that moved me.
We went back inside. I wouldn’t be surprised if Maribeth had been a better pitcher. Raw deal, Eddie. Raw deal.
That night, as I tucked him into bed, Eddie said, Becky, how old are you? I said, Don’t you remember? I told you that last night, Eddie. He said, Oh, that’s right! You’re sixty-three!
I had told him I was thirty-six, but those two numbers are about the same to a four year old. As someone who’s now much closer to sixty-three than thirty-six, I can assure you, they are not the same.
Eddie was a good student, a spectacular student, really. So we treasured his (only?) two persistent ‘mistakes.’ One was his pronunciation of the word submarine. It was so cute when he said sumberine. Surprising how often sumberines used to come up in conversation.
The other was his use of ten hundred instead of one thousand. He came home from school one day and said a little sadly, I learned in school today that ten hundred is not really a number. I replied, Well that just can’t be correct. What comes after nine hundred ninety-nine, then? He considered for a moment, then nodded soberly. Ten hundred survived a few weeks longer.
A handful of years later, F and I were telling our three kids that I was going to take over the cooking of dinner. F had been responsible for dinner the past several months, because he’d been in a quiet period between jobs and I was working at MNC. Now he was going back to work.
Upon hearing that I was taking over the cooking, all three kids groaned.
It was Eddie who realized a split second later that the kids’ response might just hurt my feelings. He said, It’s OK, Becky. Dad’s cooking is too good. Yours is just right.
[That's Ed in 2016. Clearly he inherited his teeth from me, his stepmom. I mean, they're identical, right? Best guess for photo creds: Beau]
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