MY TESS

I have to sneak in while she's napping to steal "snuzzle"
and put it through a wash cycle.

What do you do when you are two years old and your Gummy has a deadline: seven songs before a Wednesday recording session?

First, you repeatedly hand your GumGum one pistachio at a time. One. At. A. Time. Batting your big brown eyes as you pull her fingers off the neck of the guitar. (Tessa loves ‘stachio’s. She’s TWO years old. Shouldn’t she just want applesauce or something?)

Next, you repeatedly remind Gummy that you want to watch Mickey. Repeatedly.

“No Tess, Mickey is not on right now. He’s having a nap. Don’t you think you should take a nap, too?”

I remind my Tess that I can make her a bottle of nice warm milk. She only gets to have a bottle and sleep in a crib at Gummy’s house. At home, she is being forced to grow up! 

She’s thinks about it for a minute, but decides instead to hand me another pistachio.

Meanwhile I am still stuck on the first line of verse two in the song I am supposed to be writing.

I plunk away, repeating the same lines over and over and over, the way I do when I’m trying to create. 

I realize, at some point, that I have been able to focus for at least three minutes and I’m wondering where Tess is. I’m thinking she must have found the bin of Little Ponies in the locker room drawer. I settle into the couch, shifting the ukulele and banjo so I can sit back with my guitar.

I have my eyes closed, looking behind my eyelids for some sort of mystical words to appear, when I feel the tickle of something like a feather against my arm.

 I open my eyes to this:

It's tough for a writer to get much done when Tess is here.

This vintage Native American head dress sits on the head of a wooden St Francis statue near our back entry. I can’t remember why it ended up there. Things are generally strange around here. That carved replica of St Francis, with a sweet little bird in his hand, is just about as tall as Tess.

St. Francis prepares for the war path.

I lift myself off the couch and grab my phone/computer/recording device/camera and preserve this moment. I give in and we decide to read a miniature copy of The Flopsy Bunnies from the teeny tiny Peter Rabbit book set by my chair.

The elusive songs did not come to me while tending Tess. I should not have expected them to come. They can come at midnight, when Tessy is home in her little bed with her green blankie and her snuzzle. My Tess will only be two for a breath. By the time I exhale she will be skipping off to school in the shoes she tied herself. And then we will blink and we will be sending her off to high school and BAM, she’s no longer at all interested in warm milk or her snuzzle blankie or Mickey Mouse.

She may, however, still be a fan of pistachios.

I’ll have to remember that. I will remember to keep a stash of them forever and ever and ever, with the whisper of hope that it may bring her around now and then.

When you're two, everything gets a "Ta Da!"