BABY-SITTING

PETIE

Finger-marked the grubby door folds,

Sleepily revealing this moment-wakened child,

Sweetly smelling flannelette and Ladybird blue.

He hugs the handle’s security and blinks towards the crude bulb,

The Dark - a hall behind him.

His feet pat the boards in their warmth and bareness.

His nose runs, a trickle reaching his lip -

So he sniffs with almost a sob.

“Mummy!” his voice rises on the brink of anguish.

But, he remembers I’m there and his face swaps expressions,

Ringing in a pool of smiles.

I open my arms, bending to his lovely level.

He charges - a battering ram,

His love knocking against my knees.

I swing him up.

“Hello little soldier. Hush now. We mustn’t wake Imogen.”

“IMMY!”

“Sh!....” I whisper with my finger to my face.

“SH!” he shouts, revelling in the gushiness he makes.

 

Happy to be a substitute mum

I thrive on his nearness and needing.

I caress and scold.

I yearn.

I mould and learn

A myriad untold feelings yet to come.

  

ANDREW

Finger-marked the grubby door folds,

Sleepily revealing this moment-wakened child,

Sweetly smelling fleeciness and Mothercare yellow. 

Guiltily he sidles along the wall,

Beginning his disarming act with a coy grin.

His cheeks are flushed.

His eyes dance -

His smile exposing proudly two,new teeth.

“Dink!”

“It’s time you were asleep young man!”

My tongue relents its sharpness as the charm begins to work.

I open my arms, bending to his lovely level.

He charges - a battering ram,

With his arms clinging and winding,

Snuggling and hugging close.

 

I treasure the instant and file it carefully away

In memory store marked, “For use in old age.”

The resemblance seems more than coincidental.

Andrew - You were not conceived in my womb,

But one Petie baby-sitting night,

Twelve years gone by

In my heart!

 

  

Author’s note:

As a child I was an incorrigible tom-boy and even as a teenager would not have been seen dead pushing out a neighbour’s baby in a pram. So it came as something of surprise, in my early twenties, when a friend twisted my arm to do a spot of baby sitting, to discover that I actually had a mothering instinct.

The moment was so moving to me that it remained etched upon my mind and gave rise to this poem, written several years later shortly after my son’s first birthday.

 

updated by @margaretgrant: 11/24/19 06:16:51PM