wear the white shirt

Two days ago, I was wearing a white shirt. It’s a remarkable shirt in that you wouldn’t guess in a million years that it was made by a fancy designer, purchased in Beverly Hills. My mother bought it for me, because she’s awesome that way. It fits fabulously, as designer-yet-simple items can. It’s extra long, soft thick-yet-light-and-airy cotton sweatshirt material, with a deep v-neck and elbow-length sleeves. I wear it over a simple gray tank top, also purchased at the same store.

At the end of that day, I was hot. I took the shirt off while feeding Jonah dinner.

He asked me to put it back on. He was quite agitated about this. And when I finally complied, he visibly relaxed.

And smiled.

This morning, during breakfast, he informed me that he would like to see me wear the white shirt again.

“The one with the flowers?” I asked. Yesterday’s white shirt had had white ribbon flowers appliqued on it.

No. He said. No flowers.

I explained that the white shirt he was referring to was dirty and needed to be washed.

He indicated that this was a lame excuse, but that he’d let me get away with it. For now.

I was going to blog about my mere success in having pulled off two white shirts in two days without staining, but his interest in my wardrobe is so much more the story. My apologies that I cannot recall the conversations verbatim.

After I got out of the shower this afternoon (yes, sometimes I don’t get to get one until afternoon) Jonah, who had been hanging out with me in the bathroom during said shower, pointed to the two robes, both mine, hanging on the bathroom door. Mommy should wear the pink robe-obe, he said. Mommy should wear the CUTE white robe-obe, he said, revising. Then, Mommy should wear the pink robe-obe, he said again, deciding once and for all. So I wore the pink one.

When he woke up screaming in the middle of the night last night, I didn’t put on a robe.

I ran into his room. He was crying hysterically.

The sun-gu-lasses! He said. The sunglasses. The sunglasses.

Even thinking about it now, his panic, I want to cry.

I wish I could remember, again, exactly what he said, but all I can recall now is that he seemed worried he’d dropped them or lost them, and also how completely clear his language was, his inflection more adult than his waking voice.

(Last December, when we were all sleeping in the same room in a hotel in San Diego for my cousin’s wedding. Jonah was speaking by then, but his language was still somewhat muddy. In the middle of the night, I heard him call out in his sleep, in the clearest voice “Daddy!” — a word he’d not yet said in its entirety during waking hours.)

We have your sunglasses. They’re in the diaper bag. I promise. They’re in the diaper bag. Everything is okay.

He was not consoled.

Mommy put the sunglasses in the sky, he said. I put the sunglasses in the sky, he said. (His I/you use tends to be a little funky. He could have been telling me my line, or he could have meant himself.)

I held him, hugged him, promised him the sunglasses weren’t in the sky anymore. I wondered if his nightmare had somehow had to do with the sky getting dark. Eventually he asked for a book. I tried to turn the dimmer switch on to a low setting, to be able to read but to not signal wake-up time. The switch moved after we sat back down, causing the light to flicker. Jonah startled, looked at the light suspiciously. I got up again and turned the light on brighter.

We read a book, he had a bottle, he asked for songs. “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad” — he said. This one has been a favorite lately; now that I’m trained and back on bedtime duty these days, I’ve been getting to sing it too. I followed it up with “Don’t Fence Me In.”

And then, “Sing the first song,” he said.

“The first song?”

“Sing the first song.”

For forever, until the recent addition of railroad — which he has been requesting while still in the bathroom as his diaper and pajamas are being put on so we tend to start singing it before we’ve even gotten back into the nursery — the first song every night was “Angels Watching Over Me.”

So I sang it.

And I did some Ohms. I could hear the train whistle, as we can at our house even though the tracks are miles away, a trick of the geography of our area that the sound travels up from the Bay and echoes against the hills; so I Ohm-ed with the train.

And then I asked him if he wanted to lay down and he said, Yeah. I told him I’d be in the hallway. “Yup,” he said. I left the door open, thinking the nightlight in the hall might make him feel better. He wimpered.

“Do you want me to close the door?”

“Yup.”

I closed the door.

And he went back to sleep.