I am returning home from a three week business trip. I open the door. I enter the apartment, and the first thing I see is my fifteen-month-old child playing on the corridor floor. From the threshold I catch his glance, oblique, non-committal, as if saying, “Who else has come here ?!”
— Son, look! It’s dad!!! Dad is back, run and say hello to him! — Mom is trying to break the ice with which the child responds to my long absence.
It wasn’t there. The child defiantly turns his back on me and goes into the nursery.
— Son, where are you? Do you want to say hello to me?
Instead of an answer — a concentrated sniff.
I involuntarily remembered how he met me from work before this damned business trip: he flew towards me at full speed, stomping so that more than one chandelier should have fallen off from the neighbors below, ran up, grabbed my knee, hugged me, while continuously jumping and singing the usual evening serenade «PA-PA-PA-PA-PA-PA-PA-PA-PA!!!!» in raised tones.
I’m trying to turn the tide by taking him in my arms. Where is it!
— Ma! — the child said firmly, and immediately added, — Ma-Ma-Ma!!! in case I misunderstood it. There was a distinct metallic note in his voice, although he did not scream. It became clear that if the child is not given to the mother immediately, then the scandal cannot be avoided.
We sit down to have dinner, I talk about how the business trip, the flight went. Mom makes a few more careful attempts to convince the child to forgive dad. Everything is in vain. The child sits on his rug, leafing through a book, periodically showing something diligently to his mother; I dont exist.
I have high hopes for going to bed, because for a whole month before the trip, only I did it, since the child was weaned from breastfeeding. At the end of that month, in the child’s brain, the dream was inherently associated with me. When the baby began to want to sleep, he came up to me, puffed out his chest and said “ON!”, Which meant that he had to be taken ON the arms and rocked until he fell asleep.
Here comes the time of long-awaited sleep. Everything is as usual. I carry the child to the bedroom, we wave to mom on the go, we both say to her “Bye!” I enter and close the door behind me.
It feels like I accidentally touched the alarm spring in the child. And I already forgot how powerfully and selflessly he can yell. The child is in a stupor. What I don’t do, the scream only gets louder. Neither exhortations, nor motion sickness, nor toys act on him. Scream becomes the meaning of his life.
Mom rescues. Her nerves were enough for exactly two minutes of a heartbreaking cry, more than a mother’s heart could not withstand.
At the sight of the mother, the cry subsides, only crying remains, and reproaches to the mother: how could she leave the child with someone else’s bad uncle.
I retreat in disgrace. Yes, today is definitely not my day.
…
Well, I wanted everything to be fair, but since nothing works, I will have to move on to forbidden tricks. I was well prepared for the morning exit of the child.
The thing is that the child has recently been raving about building cranes. Every crane in our neighborhood has long been counted, labeled and catalogued. Each has its own name, all their habits have long been studied: this one shakes his head in the morning, this is in the late afternoon. When I take my child to kindergarten in the morning, he continually makes a loud cry of “KRA-A-A!”, As a rule, before the crane comes into view.
…
I’m sitting in the living room. From the active spanking of bare little feet on the tiles, I guess that the traditional morning bath ceremony is over.
— Baby, go to dad! Look who’s visiting us! — I shout to him in the corridor. A skeptical face appears in the doorway, although curiosity has overcome all other feelings in him.
And suddenly:
— CRAAAA!!! the child screams and runs towards me. Yes, a one and a half meter “domesticated” crane really flaunts behind my back, which is only twenty times smaller than its wild street counterpart, while repeating it exactly. I’ve been collecting it all morning, trying to figure out the system of weights and cables along the way. Yes, and before that he suffered until he found the right “kra”.
The child runs to the tap, wraps his arms around it, then turns around to me, smiles and says:
«Bye-bye!»
It seems I have finally earned forgiveness