Mama’s Spare Hand Holds The Love

She was about two or three, a little Goldilocks with long, blond hair, and it was an occasion: She and her young mother were out on the town, at lunch at the Greenville Avenue Black-Eyed Pea on coupon day.

Mama, a pretty brunette, was locked in earnest table talk with another young woman, a sister, perhaps, or a friend. But little Goldie was ignoring them, completely fascinated by the hustle, bustle and drama all around her - dozens of strange grown-ups, eating, talking, laughing. For the little girl, cafe rush hour was a spectacular beyond anything MGM could do. Clearly, she never had seen any show like it.

She was swiveling around, trying to look at everything, rubbernecking over the shoulders of people at the next booth, turning back to watch the waitress cruise by with a tray of dishes. Now and then, she would get her feet under her in the restaurant highchair, trying to stand up for a better view of some fresh spectacle, some new excitement.

But she never was able to stand, not quite. That miracle of humankind, Mama’s Spare Hand, seemed to be living a life of its own, on guard. As its owner kept up a lively conversation across the table and ate with her right hand, Mama’s left hand hovered, never more than an inch from the back band of Goldie’s trousers. Every time the toddler tried to stand up, that hand darted in and gently set her back down, though Mama never seemed to miss a word of the chat across the table.

I was watching them and that alert sentinel when my wife, whose back was to them, said, “What are you looking at?”

“I think,” I said, “it’s some of that ‘quality time’ Roger Staubach gave as his reason for retiring from football. I’m watching Mama’s Spare Hand on the job.”

My wife looked and chuckled, “I’m still doing that. When one of the girls is with me and I brake at a stoplight, my right arm automatically goes out to hold the kids away from the dashboard. And they’re in their 30s. Makes ‘em furious.”

By now, Goldie and her highchair had been pulled close to Mama, and the little girl literally was under her mother’s wing, being held close by that spare hand while the other fed her. Then, as dessert arrived, she was swung up onto Mama’s lap and allowed to feed herself and, more or less, her mother, as she now entered the ladies’ conversational loop.

“That automatic hand probably kept the race from disappearing at the beginning,” I said. “Otherwise, all the blossoming babies would have fallen out of the trees.”

The older I get, the more I enjoy observing us humans, doing these little things we do so well - the survival skills and small inventions of our race, like Mama’s Spare Hand. They keep us alive and make us what we are. Yet most of us don’t give them a thought when we are younger and doing this stuff that lets our species get by, century after century.

Quality time includes just hanging around with the kids, talking to them, sharing the scene. A few months ago, I passed another young mama, holding her plump little tadpole up on the edge of a mall fountain to see the ducks swimming in the pool. Quality time, if I ever saw it.

The little girl didn’t have much hair yet, but what brown locks she had were tied up in a ponytail, sticking straight up from the top of her head, like an exclamation point. She was dressed for winter, wearing a tutu-like skirt and a white leotard over her diapers.

She was pointing and talking, all ooohs and gagas. Young mama was leaning close, holding her firmly upright, cooing in her ear, discussing ducks. The two of them were alone in their own private bubble, oblivious to the passing crowds, the clutter and clatter of holiday commerce.

A fringe benefit of age, I find, is coming to realize what an influence that quality time in the bubble with our parents has had on our later lives. And it’s not just as babies that we enjoyed its benefits. My dad and I had wonderful debates at the dinner table. I would make some flat-out teenager statement, and he would ask, “Why do you say that?” or, “Where did you see that?” or, “Sez who?” And away we would go, distressing my mom no end but having a fine old time.

Dad never went to college. Offered a four-year scholarship to Vanderbilt, he had to turn it down because at 14 he had become the man of his family. But those friendly fencing matches were the best training I ever had for my trade, better than anything offered by any journalism or philosophy department. And I thought we were just having fun, arguing.

Years later, I realized that though neither of us knew it, Dad was teaching me by questioning, the Socratic method. We both, I think, did know it was quality time. Appreciated then, it is treasured now.

xxxx