The Kid and I

Activity is mild during the Tuesday noon-hour inside the shopping center, and the kid is sleeping while I put words together in a small notepad. We're sitting in a sort of resting station, an identical one of many throughout the mall. The chair I occupy has puffy leather cushions, and is more or less uncomfortable, but he seems content in his stroller. The kid, my nephew, four months, has been out for a while, saving energy for whatever's coming his way. We're in the same boat, I guess, getting by day to day.

When I'm not caught up in conjuring sentences in black graphite lines, I watch people. A young woman ages drastically as she nears; this happens with several more women. A number of new mothers push strollers across the smooth tile. They wanted a baby, got one, and now they're stuck carting it around the mall so they don't get stir crazy. They don't want to make eye contact with a baby sitter with a pierced eyebrow.

The kid and I are waiting for things to happen. In the mean time, I sit and he sleeps. In his waking hours, we have conversations, 4-month-old to 230-month-old, and we speak maturely - none of that baby-talk nonsense. My job is to keep him amused. His is to return the favor.

A woman walks by, youthful and then less so, for a third time. The kid cries for a moment in his sleep, but who could blame him? He finds peace again, and I don't worry about it. I watch him, motionless in his portable bed. Though idle and immobile for this period of his life, he'll be moving around before long. Maybe the same could be said about me.

His mother returns from her shopping, and he head separate ways. I'm off to a cafe to get more words out, and he's off to eventually wake up and chew on his blanket. As for as little ones go, he's a pretty good one, and I try to play a parallel role as an uncle. We get by day to day, the kid and I.