My Mother hardly ever wore lipstick. On my first day of Day Care she smeared on my favorite shade of Estee Lauder crimson—a gift from Dad, no doubt—and kissed a sticky note. “When you feel sad, just take this out and know that I love you and miss you so much,” she said, putting the note in my pocket, and hugging me tight. I didn’t want her to go, she didn’t really want to leave me, but she had to.
Mom and Dad worked out of the office in our house, and since I was the youngest, not yet old enough to go to school, Mom was my only playmate until three-thirty in the afternoon. After a few weeks without my siblings to play with, I made up a new game. I dragged my mother away from her paper work, out into the yard, and instructed her on the rules of my new game.
“I stand over here with the ball. When I throw it, you go get it and bring it back to me,” I told her. Hence the title, “run and go fetch it.” After a few days and a few rounds of our new game, she enrolled me at Day Care over in town. Although I know she loved me very much, I had become too much to handle while she tried to get her paper work done every day.
Armed with my lipstick-kissed note, I faced a new crowd. At daycare there were lots of other kids to play with, and although Mom wasn’t there I had fun—until nap time. In the darkened classroom, laying on the red and blue vinyl mat, the other children squirming and settling into quiet slumbers around me, I took my tissue out and pressed my lips to the dark outline of my Mother’s kiss.
Soon we had a routine. After Dad woke the other kids and got them off to school, he’d wake Mom up. Everyday Mom would come in and sing a song to wake me. Smiling she would sing in her sweet voice:
“Little bird with a yellow bill
Hopped up on my window sill
Cocked his tiny head and said
You
Are
a Sleepyhead.
Flapped his wings and away he flew
Singing ‘You’ll be late for Day Care School!’”
One morning as we were combing our hair and brushing our teeth, we heard a chirp echo in the small tiled bathroom. Pulling back the shower curtain we found a tiny baby tree frog hopping around the bathtub. We decided to take him to day care for show and tell. Mom scooped him into a mason jar and screwed on the lid.
At day care school, after everyone had had a chance to press their little faces up against the glass to see the small green frog as my mother held the jar, we put on our coats and trotted single-file down the sidewalk. We freed the tiny frog in the neighbor’s tree-filled yard and turned to go back inside.
While we had been liberating the frog my mother had gotten into the car and was driving away. I saw the red taillights of the white Chevrolet as it turned the corner and disappeared. I felt in the pocket of my coat of my jacket for my note and wondered when she’d be back.
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