Guess Who Came to Dinner?

By Nancy

The weather is beginning to warm up a touch, and the terrorists have taken to spending as much time as they can con anyone out of, in the yard. The yard looks as though it belongs to a well–equipped day care. Jumping horses, swings, slides, and two of any wheeled toy imaginable, two dogs, and a brother, any small Head Start would be proud to call it their own. Stashed for future reference are two-wheeled bikes, a trampoline, a vintage John Deere tractor of the pedal variety, and a climbing fort that grampa has been planning since he himself was only a tad bit older than the terrorists. What child could resist that? Everything their small hearts could possibly desire to play with.

The two of them spent the morning out in the sunshine last Saturday. Their cheeks were glowing, their eyes shining, and their noses running by lunch time, but they had fun! When I called them in, the youngest stripped out of his coat and dumped it in front of the door, stringing boots and mittens behind him in his mad headlong dash to be the first one to the lunch table. We don’t quite have hand washing down, but I think that is something little boys can’t seem to conquer until they become doctors, or lawyers, or taste testers, or fathers in their own right. In a much more placid fashion, the oldest carefully walked through the door holding his hands in front of him. With a slight gleam in his eye, he asked if I wanted to meet his new friend, Rocky. Nestled in his little pair of hands was a very undistinguished brown rock of the Yellowstone river variety, weighing perhaps half a pound or more. It certainly more than filled those two hands, and it looked quite content lying there. The sun shone on the brown skin, and little streaks of mineral glinted in the sunlight. Rocky was one of the quietest of friends, certainly much more silent than the children I had met pouring out of the doors at head start,.

I gravely acknowledged his presence, with a terse nod and a clipped “Mr. Rocky,” not being overly fond of rocks in my house. In my experience, little boys, large rocks and the inside of houses are not a comfortable mix. Rocky was whisked in the door because, “Rocky is cold and wants to get warm.” The boys had a lively lunch that day, but since Mr. Rocky was cold, he spent most of his time in front of the fireplace. No sooner was lunch finished, than Rocky was whirling up the stairs, looking for a blankey because he really was tired and wanted to take a nap. When the boys descended the stairs after taking a luxuriously long nap, Mr. Rocky had made himself quite comfortable with Cristian. He now lived in a small pink back pack, presumably leftover from some of Bobby’s dolly days, but the perfect size to keep Cristian company without tipping him over backwards with the weight.

Over the next several days we saw a lot of Mr. Rocky, as he wanted to come to the table, with Cristain and even climb inside his plate and help him eat. I remember one meal where I had to be very firm with both Rocky and Cristian, as I finally explained that Rocky really couldn’t get into his plate, in fact he couldn’t even sit on the table with him. It was a simple indisputable fact, in my mind at least, that Mr. Rocky had no mouth and so he just couldn’t eat anything any way. I think it was grampa who explained that since Mr. Rocky had no mouth to eat with, nor even a stomach to hold the food he ate, he would not, under any circumstances sit at the table with the rest of us. The idea caught on and Cristian realized all on his own that Mr. Rocky didn’t have any arms or legs or shoulders or….

Mr. Rocky became one of the best educated rocks around, over the next week, sneaking into Christian’s school backpack and traveling to Head Start more than once. Quite a feat when you consider how handicapped he must have felt being without arms, legs, or even eyes. He was quite talented. One night, he conned Cristian out of his bedtime snack, 2 chocolate chip cookies. When I went in for our routine bedtime song and hugs, Rocky was in bed in his pink backpack beside Cristian’s bed, and so were the two cookies Cristain had been given with his glass of milk. The crumbs lingering in the bottom of the backpack indicated that this was not the first time it had happened.

One afternoon last week, about the time I came down with the flu, I became aware of the fact that Mr. Rocky hadn’t been seen around the house for a while. I made a chance remark on that fact to Cristian and evasively he changed the subject. Later I became a bit more aggressive in my questioning and asked him directly where Mr. Rocky was. He replied that he didn’t know, and when I asked why he replied that he had dropped Mr. Rocky on his head. That was the end of the subject, as well it should be. Mr. Rocky had served his purpose and been a loyal and silent friend for as long as Cristian needed him to be. Then he left, at least I think he did. Come to think about it, there is a round brown rock lying quietly in the sunshine on our driveway. It just sits there basking in the sun like most rocks, but in the late afternoon when I arrive home from work there is a peaceful kind of chuckle in the general vicinity of an eight or nine ounce brown rock with some rather distinctive quartz streaks. Could be, who knows!