Love at Your Own Risk

Life Gets In The Way

I give the bedcover a hard jerk. It ripples like a wave that ingurgitates the mattress in its silky embrace. A glance around the room shows just about every nook and cranny to be spick and span.

Before I leave, my eyes linger on the photo sitting on the little bedside table. It's an old picture from when my husband and I were still dating, and we were at the beach. He looked like a model with gorgeous brown curls, leaning back to boast a chiselled chest and abs, pressing his hands on the ground beside him so that his biceps tensed and bulged. In the picture, I'm bending over him with my tongue stuck out and almost touching his body. Want to know something? Cygnus was never a model. The moment my husband graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, he became an astrophysicist. A really hot one.

I smile a little as I close the door behind me.

"Shane!" I call.

My smile takes twice as fast to abscond. Somehow, my six year old boy's in the kitchen, standing on a chair, hands wrapped around a jar of peanut butter. The door to the top shelf has been left egregiously ajar. Needless to say, his face is smeared with the gooey substance. He stares with big glassy eyes, shocked by the monster that is me. The jar releases from his hands and shatters on the floor as anticipated.

I shut my eyes and suck in a deep breath. And count to ten seconds.

"Didn't I tell you not to f...reaking stand on a chair? What if you fall!" I pat myself on the back for cramming the swear word back into my mouth in time.

I scoop my son up from the chair and glare at the mess on the floor. That will have to wait till I get back. Stepping over the accident site, I snatch the bag of herbs from the kitchen counter and flee the house.

"Get in the car," I say fiercely, and Shane toddles over to get in the back seat.

As we drive to the florist's, I look in the mirror and notice that Shane has evidences of the accident stuck to his hands and mouth. To my horror, he's licking his fingers, smiling like, well, like a devious seven year old.

"Oh my god - Shane!" Instantly horrified, I grab the tissue box and pass it behind. "Stop licking yourself! Are you an animal? Clean your fingers and mouth. Now."

If Cygnus were with us now, he'd be the cool dad as usual. I'd be told 'Shane's just a kid'. And then Shane would just continue loving him more than me.

When my son finishes, I pass him my iPad to distract him. He once unlocked the door while I was driving, and I shrieked as it flew open. Thankfully the road had been quiet, so he failed to become a murderer.

Miraculously, even though he's just six, he operates the iPad better than he can read. It's another side effect of Cygnus' pampering.

Podgy fingers start tapping the screen deliriously, and I peek at Shane periodically through the rear view mirror. Precocious and sensitive, he would feel awkward if he notices me looking at him.

I try not to be that irascible Asian father all the time. Instead of only pressing for fewer B's and more A's, I now allow Shane to pursue art classes.

Chinese love, while tough, is in no way inferior to that of Americans. We end up equipping our children with numerous skills for the callous world out there. And yet we are always the ones too afraid to let go.

__________

AM I seriously having him for a roommate? That was the first thing that flitted into my mind as I looked at that boy with disdain.

Twenty-six minutes and forty-two seconds. That's how long he Skyped with his mother for. On the first day of school. Yay! I got a mummy's boy for a roommate. Of course, he's Chinese. Eleven claps for the man above, please.