Wanderer

Shaolin shadowboxing,

“Hmm?”

and the Wu-Tang sword style.

“Whazz?”

If what you say is true, the Shaolin and the Wu-Tang could be dangerous.

“The hell?”

Do you think your Wu-Tang sword can defeat me?

That’s the kind of question that pulls you out of your sleep, especially when you haven’t the faintest idea who’s asking it. It was then that I rolled over to find the almost-two year old, my almost-two year old, sitting on the floor next to the bed holding my swiss army phone. He had pulled up the iPod and found his way to the Wu-Tang Clan’s 36 Chambers album, and hit play on track 1, “Bring Da Ruckus,” which opens with the dialogue sample above. He smiled up at me, overjoyed either by his own cleverness or by the fact that I was awake.

This was how I started that day.

We only just switched the little guy from his elevated cage of a crib to a toddler bed that he can easily climb in and out of. Actually, it had gotten to the point where climbing in and out of his crib was only a slightly greater challenge for him. We had this silly notion that when he woke up in the morning, he would enjoy being able to climb out of bed and play with his toys while we slept soundly. This vision has not yet manifested itself in our reality. Instead, he’s developed this pattern where he toddles downstairs to our room, walks his little self all the way around the bed to my side, and climbs in with me. He brings Cookie Monster too. He wiggles and talks and makes with all manner of the cuteness, which is nifty and all, but it brings the sleeping part of bed occupancy to an end. Apparently, he likes his parents better than his toys. Which is just goddamn inconvenient.

Protective helicopter parent that I am, I snatched the phone out of his little hands before The RZA began shouting for somebody to bring the mothafuckin ruckus. Not sure who he’s talking to, but he really wants them to get on with this ruckus bringing business.

The second night he was in the new bed, The Ash awoke to the sound of a repetitive clicking noise somewhere in the house. Just imagine that. Dark house, middle of the night. All is quiet save the hum of the baby monitor, and somewhere across the house, click.......click.........click. She followed it out of our bedroom, past eldest’s room, through the living and the dining where she found the little guy standing at the door that leads out to the garage, locking and unlocking the knob-lock. Had the deadbolt not been set, he’d have wandered into the garage where we would still be searching for him in all the accumulated debris.

I wonder what he thought about as he wandered through the house in the dark, unmonitored. I’m free! Free! I have vague memories of being little and wandering around the house at night. I remember doing that at my grandparent’s enormous house and feeling like I was really up to something dangerous, even though I never set foot outside. Freedom is relative, I guess. And the little guy just acquired a wee bit more.