Eyes in the Back of My Head

Yesterday as he left for work, someone in our household who will remain nameless backed over the wheels of our tiny neighbor's red Radio Flyer tricycle, and let me tell you, it ain't flyin' anymore. No one on either side of our shared driveway was too bothered by this incident; the sound of a small, usually plastic vehicle being pushed along the concrete behind a larger, usually metal one is all too familiar for those of us around here with driver's licenses. There are no fewer than eight child-sized wheeled contraptions belonging to the three children occupying our adjacent homes, and since we have a total of three garage stalls and six adult-sized vehicles between us, you can imagine the square footage problem we have. Combine that with sheer laziness at the end of a long day, and it starts to look pretty redneck in these parts.

Being a good fellow, the anonymous perpetrator of the hit-and-run made an emergency trip to Fleet Farm last night to pick up a replacement tricycle. He assembled it in our kitchen as we shared the three or so glasses of wine that remained in the bottle I'd opened to celebrate/inspire my new internet enterprise. Everything came together pretty smoothly, but when all was said and done, there was one itty-bitty red hubcap (do tricycles have hubcaps?) left over. This, like so many other random items, took up temporary residence on our butcher block table, where the kids discovered it this morning.

They had just finished breakfast (prior to which they had argued, as they do with the rising of the sun each and every day, over who was to eat from the green bowl) and were puttering about the kitchen with their sticky milk hands as I stood at the sink doing dishes, when Child #1 said, "Look, Mommy! I have a red toe!"

I turned my head over my shoulder just enough to see that he was shuffling along with the hubcap (we're just going to keep calling it that) over his biggest piggie. "Ha ha," I responded, fighting my morning Mommy monotone, "you sure do!" Then I turned back to the dishes.

Not ten seconds later, a slightly younger, higher-pitched voice said, "Look, Mommy!" And before she could go on and without my turning around, I said, "You have a red toe, too!"

There was a momentary silence as I rinsed the pot I had in my hand, and then big brother said, a hint of wonder in his voice, "How can you see without looking at us, Mommy?"

I couldn't do anything but laugh at his comment, of course, given that he seemed completely awed by his (and every) mother's secret weapon: her eyes-in-the-back-of-her-head intuition, born of inane repetition, subconscious sensory awareness, and just plain magic. So struck was I by what he'd said that I have no idea how I responded, but I'm sure my retort wasn't nearly as perceptive as his question.

The real answer, when I think about it, is that I can't see without looking, and in truth, I spend precious little time looking--really looking--at my kids each day.