The Bedtime Stalling Tactic I've Made Peace With

My four-year-old is using my dad’s death as a bedtime stalling tactic. It trumps ‘I’m hungry’, ‘I’m thirsty’, ‘I’m not tired’, ‘My nightlight burnt out’, ‘My pj tag is chaffing my skin’—Every. Single. Time. She’s no dummy. As soon as “I miss Grandpa” tumbles from her pouted lips, she knows I’m as smearable as butter. I’m not going to just shoo her back into her dark bedroom with a stern look and a pat on the bum.  Those three magic words are met with a sympathetic nod, a hug, a rubbing of noses, a kiss on the forehead.  Missing her dead grandfather earns her a few extra minutes of mom lingering in her room at night, smoothing the bedsheet over her limbs and scratching the crook of her elbow. Asking WHY he had to die typically reaps two bonus lullabies. They’re practically dessert.

I know she’s manipulating me, but I’m putty in my grief, stretching to her whims and words in my mindful attempt to make death something she can always ask me about, to nurture the few memories she may still have of him, to keep him vibrant in her rapidly expanding mind.

She was newly three when he died. I have perhaps two memories from when I was three, from a trip we took as a family to the Czech Republic. Both of them are flimsy and unreliable. I’m not even convinced that they are free-standing or if they instead grew out of the sepia photographs from that trip like a potato that sprouts roots.

I know my dad is slipping through time for her. It’s been a year and a half, a third of her entire life. His presence is being replaced by compound words and playground etiquette and capital and lowercase and the names of her preschool classmates. He’s irrelevant to her until the sun sets and the bedroom curtains close.

Even when my dad was here, near the end, he mostly existed in the periphery, a prop that accompanied my mom on her babysitting visits, quiet, sullen, like a raincoat you might hang up at the door.  Sure, he played restaurant with my daughter, sitting on the couch while she piled plastic food on his lap, making sure he sampled each of his dishes. Sure, he nodded off as she built castles out of Magna-Tiles on the rug around his feet and then smiled bleary-eyed when she’d shake him awake. But, he wasn’t animated, teaching her how to grip a bat in the backyard or carrying her on his back like a balding pony. He didn’t have the energy to be alive with her, to spark those moments that create memory in a toddler’s brain. By that time, he wasn’t capable of investing in his own legacy.

A few weeks ago, she began using him not only at bedtime, but when cranky or in the midst of being scolded in attempt to soften my resolve. She’ll sob and retreat, only to find me later, tears streaming down smooth cheeks, claiming to be missing him. She knows that Grandpa’s absence is an acceptable reason to cry, as opposed to being denied cookie dough Pop-tarts for dinner. She knows that I will indulge her with sympathy, her own personal get-out-of-jail-free card. In his heyday, I realize my dad may have even been proud of her for this. It’s genius.

But, her ploys were growing tiresome and overused, causing me to wonder if her constant insistence on missing him was conditioning my own mourning, dulling the significance of his loss like the boy who cried wolf. I stopped humoring melancholic Grandpa claims after she’d lose at a game of Uno or smack her sister in reproach.

“Really?’ I’d ask in a level voice, attempting to disguise my cynicism. “What is it that you miss about him, specifically?”

Typically, that would shut it down.

Until yesterday afternoon in a store, after denying her request to buy LOL charm cotton-candy scented bath fizz for $12.99 that was chocked full of parabens and chemicals and just about epitomized everything that was wrong with America, she began to cry harder as we exited through the automatic doors.

With tears splashing her pink unicorn sandals, she gulped repeatedly and peered up at me with wet eyes. “Mommy, I miss Grandpa, but mostly I’m afraid of forgetting him. What if I really do forget Grandpa?”

I stopped cold, her hand still in mine as her little body swung back to face me. It was my turn to swallow, my tears now hitting the blacktop outside the entrance to Bed, Bath, and Beyond because I didn’t know how to form the words. I didn’t know how to tell her the truth: “Sweetie, you probably will. In fact, you probably already have.”

But, I didn’t say that. Instead, I blubbered, “You won’t, honey. Don’t worry. We’ll talk about him tonight. I’ll scratch your back and we’ll remember him together.”

It’s five minutes. Two extra songs. A stall tactic for sure, but I realize it won’t last.

A man’s legacy, just might.