Matching Red Noses

2006 ~ My grandson is three, and this is my second time to have him for an extended period at night. Brooke and Matt are in San Francisco, returning around 11:00.

We spend the afternoon and evening at my house doing all the things we love to do together: cooking, eating, and reading the books I read to his father and his Uncle Jon when they were his age. I taught Satchel to make scrambled eggs, which is now his specialty.

Getting him into his blue dragon pajamas, I tell him it’s time to go home.

“NOOOO! I want to stay here!”

Easter 2006

“C’mon. I’m supposed to have you home and in bed in an hour.” Satch throws himself on the floor, kicking and screaming, apparently possessed. I’m taken by surprise as he’s such an even-keeled little guy. I scoop him up and head downstairs. Now a writhing demon and trying to escape from my arms, he nearly throws us both down the staircase.

When we get to the bottom he hurls himself to the floor, completely out of control.
“Satchel, get up and stop it.”
His screaming escalates. I give fair warning. “If you don’t stop, I’m going to smack your bottom.” What I really wanted to do was take a fire hose and blast him, but I didn’t have one handy.

“Okay, I warned you.” I lift him up by his skinny little arm and give him a swat on the butt. He’s so shocked, he stops his caterwaul. He then proceeds into a meltdown of uncontrollable tears, sobbing and shaking, well beyond the point of being able to get ahold of himself.

After some minutes of this, I bargain with him: “Look, if I take you to Busha’s (his other grandmother) will you quit crying?” He nods between convulsive gasps. Of course I don’t have her number and only vaguely know where she lives. He assures me he can find her house. We circle her neighborhood three times while he hiccoughs through sobs in his rear car seat.

He poses, “Mmmm. Turn here.” Then, “Mmm, turn here.” He has no idea how to get there either. I realize this when he wants me to cross the highway to Boyes Boulevard. Why am I trusting the directions of a three-year-old? As I drive past my friend Rhonda’s house, I think maybe a third person can snap him out of this. Thank god she’s home.

Satch and Oma, Sep 2006

We pick figs and pears and slice them up on her back porch. Then she brings out a box of magic toys and Satchel and I put on matching red noses. She takes our picture, noting we look quite a lot alike. He’s calmed down, though he is still not quite himself.

It’s well past sunset by the time I deliver him to his house, but as I try to put him to bed, the tears and wracking sobs return. For the next hour and a half, I sit on the front porch steps in the dark, rocking him back and forth trying to comfort him, his sobs continuing through his drift toward sleep.

When Matt and Brooke return, I relay how the evening went. I silently hand him over, they tuck him in his crib, and I’m out of there, as exhausted as he is.

Matt calls the next day, not happy with me. “We don’t spank him you know.”
“I’ve noticed.”
“Did you spank us when we were kids?”
“Apparently not enough,” I respond.
“You did too, you spanked us with the wooden spoon!”

“I did not, I chased you with the wooden spoon—but you both were too fast. I never spanked you, not once, and Aunt Liz was the first one to spank Jon, an event he’s still not recovered from. I, however, did smack his bottom a couple of times after that.”

“Look Matt, I want to honor how you raise your child. But I’m telling you, if he ever pulls that with me again, you’re coming to get him, I don’t care where you are. And by the by, just what do you suggest I should have done?”
“Well, we put him in his bedroom and hold the door knob so he can’t get out.”
“Yeah right, that would be unsafe to do in any room in my house, and would go over real big at my office.”

I didn’t see Satchel for a couple of weeks. Supposedly he was still miffed, but I’m pretty sure kids don’t hang onto things that long. The small kids, anyway. When he returns, we go to the park and I push him in the swing.

He asks tentatively, “Oma, can we go to your house?”
“Forget it. Last time we were at my house you got upset and I got in trouble. We’re staying right here on neutral ground.”
Looking up with the same brown eyes his father had when he was little, my grandson says in a soft voice, “Then maybe can we go next week?”
“We can go next week on one condition. When I ask you to do something, you don’t throw a hissy fit when you don’t get your way. Deal?”
“Deal!” he promises. We shake on it.

Postscript, five years later, 2011 ~ “Oma, I remember when you spanked me.”
“Good, and as far as I can tell it worked out great.”
“It hurt you know.”
“Oh for godsakes, it was one well-placed swat. And I wasn’t being mean, I was trying to snap you out of a meltdown. The only thing I hurt was your pride, and I think you’ve recovered by now.”

the boy, age 9

Postscript, six years later, 2012 ~ Satchel now has a four-year-old sister. Marching irately through my front door he says, “Oma, you’ve got to do something about Temple. She gets away with everything; she hits me, she’s completely out of control, and all they do is give her time-outs and she doesn’t even care!”
“Why me?”
“Because you’re the only one in the family who can do anything about her!”

Granddaughter, nearly five

“So what do you have in mind?” I ask, knowing exactly where this is heading.
“Well, could you spank her?”
“Oh, sure. I smacked your bottom once and your parents didn’t talk to me for a month. I’m not laying a hand on that child. Sorry, you’re on your own on this one, Chickadee.”

© 2006, 2011, 2012. Catherine Sevenau.
All rights reserved.