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Mama, where is...?

by Christine Louise Hohlbaum    

“Honey, have you seen the car keys?” he queried innocently. Simultaneously nursing our eight week old daughter, I managed to unearth them from a pile of catalogues in the kitchen. To this day I am cursing myself for having been so efficient. Everything changed at that moment.

My daughter started smiling, learned to clap, took her first steps, and became a talkative and curious toddler. The moment she could build sentences, she turned to me and asked, “Where’s Rabbit?” She and her favorite stuffed animal were inseparable for her first three years of her life. Again, I was reeled into the role of Chief. At the time I was grateful to have found Rabbit so quickly and thereby to have prevented a major meltdown. Later, I again grew to regret my ability to find things.

My daughter is four now and is quite capable of dressing herself, brushing her teeth, and retrieving a glass of water when thirst calls. But she still asks me where her favorite bracelet is, where that particular pair of shoes are, or where she might find the sweatshirt that she swore was hanging on the hook where it always hangs (not that she is the one who hangs it up every time she enters the front door!).

Recently, even my two-year-old son has gotten in on the act. He learned to talk much earlier than his sister. He has been building sentences for months already. Lately, he has taken to asking me “why,” a question form that usually comes much, much later. Much to my dismay, however, his favorite question is “Where’s Papa?” The moment his father leaves the house for work in the morning until he comes home at night, I am pelted with the same question over and over again. “Where’s Papa? Mama, where’s Papa? Papa? Papa? PAPA?” I have begun to make a game out of his questioning.

“Where’s Papa?” squeaks his little voice.

“At work, honey,” I say patiently the first ten times he asks. We color, listen to music, play with his cars and trucks. He is distracted for ten minutes.

Then comes, “Where’s Papa?”

“At the zoo, honey,” I reply, not without a tinge of malice. I learned not to play this game while my four-year-old is around. She picks up a very different meaning.

“At the zoo? The zoo? Can we go to the zoo, too?” she whines. I actually found myself driving to the zoo an hour one-way through Friday afternoon traffic because I had allowed myself to take it too far. Indeed, Papa was not at the zoo, but no matter. They were! How happy I made them that day!


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Christine Louise Hohlbaum, author of Diary of a Mother: Parenting Stories and Other Stuff, is an American living near Munich, Germany with her husband and two children. Visit her web site at: http://www.diaryofamother.com mail to: chohlbaum@smith.alum http://www.diaryofamother.com/