miyagi.sg | My Very Own Glob {Curiosa Felicitas}

Things that bring us hap­pi­ness these days tend to revolve around Kai. His name in Japan­ese means “The World”, so he’s our world after all.

What’s your fin­ger on?

***

Last week­end when we went to visit my par­ents at their home, my father looked a lit­tle worse for wear because of Parkinson’s. His stiff­ness and gait was more pro­nounced than it had ever been.

As it was a hot day, Kai was a lit­tle more than cranky when we arrived, and Naomi and I had wanted to let his grandpa hold him, if that was at all pos­si­ble, for a lit­tle while.

It was pos­si­ble, as grandpa was seated on a wide arm­chair, so he didn’t really have to carry Kai, who was all of 8kg last week, but just allow him to set­tle across his lap.

We were kind of wor­ried Kai would start wail­ing once we placed him there, and were at the ready to pick him up again if he did.

More than the oppo­site hap­pened. First, Kai smiled at his grandpa, and grandpa rec­i­p­ro­cated the best his facial mus­cles knew how.

Then Kai laughed. For a baby who’s only started how to chuckle a few days ear­lier, he let out a stream of chuck­les, com­plete with deep audi­ble intakes of breath in between.

Grandpa really, really smiled, and then as he cra­dled Kai in his arms, they both gur­gled and cooed non­sense to each other.

Kai’s start­ing to drool a lot these days, and he’s mak­ing a mess of grandpa’s hands and arms just as grandpa is doing the same to him­self because of Parkinson’s Disease.

It’s a slimy, icky, gummy, grinny, gur­gly bond­ing ses­sion between Kai and his grandpa, who sud­denly looks like he’s turned back a decade.

***

Yes­ter­day after­noon, as I was strug­gling to put words to a song and a skit, the baby mon­i­tor I had on the desk crack­led to life, its blue lights flick­er­ing and its speaker let­ting me lis­ten to Naomi’s mother pat­ting Kai and singing twin­kle twin­kle lit­tle star, which is the only song she sings to him.

But because she’s try­ing to put him to bed, she’s singing it lul­labye style, which is slower and softer and doesn’t have any hand actions because you are car­ry­ing the baby after all.

She sings and pats for a good five min­utes or so, and Kai doesn’t sound like he’s any­where near sleep­ing, and keeps gur­gling and coo­ing at Twin­kle Twin­kle Grandma, who is tir­ing quickly.

The pat­ting stops for a moment, and then starts again, so I think she’s put him down in his cot and then resumed pat­ting and singing.

Kai’s still gur­gling, and Grandma gets a lit­tle impa­tient and tells him in Man­darin and Tai­wanese to “quickly go to sleep”. She sings another few bars, and then says again “go to sleep, go to sleep”.

The pat­ting becomes erratic and the singing stops, but the ver­bal urg­ing picks up and Grandma says, “Come on Kai, go to sleep, go to sleep”, and starts to snort loudly and sharply in between say­ing “go to sleep”.

This snort­ing star­tles me for a few sec­onds before I realise she’s merely try­ing to mimic snor­ing in the hope that Kai picks up the cue, since he’s already missed the ver­bal and singing ones.

The snort­ing con­tin­ues for a few min­utes as I lis­ten in, try­ing to con­trol my laugh­ter. Then abrubtly, it stops, and I hear in Man­darin a very resigned, “OK, since you don’t want to sleep, so be it. Grandma wants to sleep”.

Within sec­onds, real snor­ing is heard — a lot more rhyth­mic than the imi­ta­tion ones, and in sev­eral more min­utes, Kai stops gur­gling. Some more rustling is heard, then all becomes quiet.