A rainy day spent with a book
WE AWAKEN TOthe sound of rain on the roof, the rainy season’s last sloppy kiss.
“Let’s go to the beach,” the little girl says.
“It’s raining,” I say.
It’s never easy being a contemplative man in a city full of ingenues. Even the simplest subject requires long periods of discussion. Imagine explaining daylight saving time to Jessica Simpson and you’ll have just a small idea of what my weekends are like.
“Let’s go to CityWalk,” someone else says.
“It’s raining,” I say.
Yes, it’s raining on a Saturday morning, perhaps the last decent shower for at least six months. The April rain falls on the new tomato plants and the lawn seed. It falls on the skylight in the kitchen and on the car my wife just washed -- with the baby’s expert help, of course.
It falls on the foothills, turning them pool-table green. And it falls across our little suburb on the busiest morning of the week. All across town, Little League coaches stuff their knobby heads deeper into their pillows and curse themselves back to sleep.
In the kitchen, the little girl makes Ovaltine in a plastic glass she got free from the zoo. The baby stumbles around and whacks things with a wooden ruler. He’s a hitter by nature, as are many men. When he picks up a stick, his natural inclination is to make others suffer.
“Look at the way he swings,” I tell his mother.
“He’ll nick the new woodwork,” she warns.
“We can get more woodwork,” I say.
“No, we can’t,” she says.
I pick the baby up. Bony kid. Bag of sticks. I can still encircle his thigh with my thumb and forefinger. For a power hitter, his legs are shockingly thin. Splendid splinters.
“We should get him a bat,” his big brother says.
“He’s 15 months old,” his mother notes.
“We should get him two,” I say.
In a lot of the better suburbs, the baby would already have his own SUV. So a $4 plastic bat doesn’t seem like such an awful investment. Besides, we like to start our ballplayers young out here, before they become distracted by such senseless diversions as schoolwork and women. At 15 months, a baby boy is a blank slate, unpoisoned by the sight of major league swings.
Thwack. The baby hits a box with his wooden ruler. Thwack, he hits my knee.
His butt is all diaper, but his swing is pure gold. During our very first batting practice, the baby also discovers that if he breathes in sharply, his little nostrils seal shut.
“Some ballplayers take years to learn that,” I tell the little girl.
“Really?”
“Yep.”
“Dad, can we go to the beach now?” she asks.
“No,” I say.
Thwack. The baby is now hitting everything in the house except his mother.
“We need to get him a bat,” I say.
“We should get him a book,” his mother insists.
“He already has a book,” I say.
“He needs another,” she notes.
Boy, does he ever. We have now read the same book 2,000 times. It is a simple little book -- shorter than a wedding vow (but with a far happier ending). The baby is crazy for it. One Sunday, we read it 40 times.
“Yeah, Dad, get him a book,” the little girl says.
So, on a perfect rainy morning, we head off for the bookstore, where we find 100 people who have never combed their hair. They move like ghouls between the stacks of books. No one looks at one other. It’s like singles night at the cemetery.
“Quiet,” I tell the baby when he squeals with glee.
“Beufffff!” yells the baby.
One customer is on his cellphone. In a perfect world, using a cellphone in a crowded store would cause the same sort of shame as publicly passing gas. Not for this guy. Half the store hears him make dinner reservations for four.
Back home, we settle in with our new books. The April rain rattles in the gutters. In the kitchen, onions simmer.
In the bedroom, I read a line from the new book to the baby.
“Lucas the Lizard was little and brown, and lived at the zoo in the heart of the town ... “
The baby is unimpressed. Why didn’t the author use a more active tense? Where’s the love interest?
He picks up another book and points to the dog on the cover.
“Beufffff,” he says.
“That’s a dog, you dope,” I say.
“Beufffff,” he says.
“Yeah, beufffff,” I say.
We pick up his old book, the one we’ve already read 2,000 times, the one I hear in my sleep. To him, some books are classics. With every reading, another nuance is discovered. Another secret to a life well lived.
“My daddy and I have the greatest of times,” I read aloud, “we color in books, we read nursery rhymes ... “
Satisfied, the baby falls back on my pillow, his knobby head next to mine.
Now, this is literature, he thinks to himself. Read me more.
Chris Erskine can be reached at chris.erskine@latimes.com.
