Monday - Lost Stories
Nov. 20th, 2006 05:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ninanevermoreToday on my drive into work, I was thinking about Papak, a little boy I babysat on Friday nights when I was a teenager. He was 3 years old the last time I saw him, when I made him a promise that I didn't keep. I promised him that he would see me again.
Papak's parents were Denise and Azar. Azar was Iranian born, a slight, dapper man with a neatly trimmed mustache. Denise was a tall, big-boned, blue-eyed blond woman from the Nebraska. They made an unlikely-looking couple. Though raised as a protestant Christian, Denise converted to Islam when she married Azar. I babysat their son on Friday nights when they attended mosque. Usually, they went out to eat after the service, so I was at their home until late at night each week.
Papak was what my mother called "a handful." Denise didn't trust other babysitters with him because things either got broken or he tended to get hurt with them. He was not a child you could send off to play and not expect anything to happen. He was bright and inquisitive and creative - a very dangerous combination in a small child. These children are the hardest to babysit. When you look after a kid like that, you actually have to watch them. You can't talk on the phone or watch TV or read and trust them to stay out of trouble, because such children find trouble as soon as you take your eyes off of them.
That final Friday night, I showed up at the usual hour and prepared to give Papak his dinner. Instead of crying because his parents were leaving, he stood on a dining room chair, hugged them each goodbye, then pointed to the door and told them, "Go!"
"You must spoil him when we're not here," Azar laughed.
Denise didn't laugh, though. She got a strange, sad look on her face instead. She kissed her son one last time and left without saying much of anything. I felt flattered. I was too young, at 16, to realize that anything was amiss, and that a 3 year old ordering his parents to leave rather than stay with him was out of the ordinary. I just thought he really liked me.
His father was partially right. Papak adored me in part because I allowed him do things his mother and father didn't, like standing on the coffee table and jumping up and down on the couch. The way I saw it, my job was to keep obvious disasters from happening. If they sat on their couch one day when I wasn't there and it collapsed to floor after being jumped on one-too-many times by a small boy, it wasn't my problem so long as the house appeared to be in order when they got home that night. If and when their couch did fall apart, I planned to play dumb.
Papak's favorite game was "shark," and we played it almost every week. His bed became a boat, and his toy-strewn floor became a shark-infested ocean. We would go out sailing, and without fail the sharks surrounded our small boat. The waters were rough, and I would fall overboard.
"Help! Help!" I cried, "Pull me back into the boat before the sharks eat me!"
Papak reached down and help me onto the bed. Sometimes, several sharks were hanging off of my legs even after I was back on board, and he would help me get them off and throw them back in the ocean where they belonged. When he fell out of the boat a few minutes later, I always returned the favors.
After we got back to shore and docked the boat, it was his bedtime. Only after he was asleep could I do the loafing around that babysitters look forward to, so I was very strict on the enforcement of his curfew. I dressed him in his pajamas, made sure he's gone to the bathroom, brushed his teeth and had his drink of water, and then tell him a story.
Early in our relationship, I read him storybooks, but we both tired of those after awhile. I started making up stories for him, and he listened wide-eyed while I spun them. I've forgotten most of the details of these tales, but I remember their gist. They all started off with a little boy and his dog going for a walk in the woods. When they reached a certain clearing among the trees, the boy found that he turned into a knight and his big woolly dog had turned into a magnificent horse (that just so happened to be the same color as his dog). The boy/knight would get on his horse's back, and they rode off to have adventures that changed every week.
There were princesses to rescue and evil wizards to deal with. There were spooky ghosts and spells that had to be broken. There was also a blue and silver-colored dragon with magic scales who was very kind and offered sage advice when it was needed. Sometimes, the only way to ransom the princess or conquer the enemy was to obtain one of the blue and silver dragon's valuable scales (they had real silver in them). This was okay, because the dragon shed them all the time and he was perfectly willing to give them to people he liked. The dragon liked the boy a lot, because he was noble and good, and he always let him have as many dragon scales as he needed to save the day.
At the end of each story, the knight felt homesick, so he rode his horse back into the forest. When he got to the right place, he would dismount and they would walk through the magic clearing. Before he knew it, he was a little boy again and the horse was once again his dog. They went home and his mother would fuss at him, because she had been calling for him for half an hour.
"Where were you?" she would ask.
"Just playing," the boy would say, because he knew that if her told her the truth she would never believe him. Mothers are just like that. And then it was time for the boy's dinner. The end.
That last night, Papak asked for another story and I told him no, that it was too late and he needed to go to sleep. He began to cry, which he had never done this before. I asked him why.
"Because when I wake up, you won't be here anymore," he told me.
"I come see you every week," I reminded him, "I'll come back next Friday, the same as I always do. I promise. I'll tell you another story then."
He finally accepted this and closed his eyes.
I never saw him again after that night.
The following week, Denise left Azar. The neighbors told us that she had two black eyes the day she packed up her bags and her son and got on a plane to return to her parent's home in Nebraska. They said that they had seen her with bruises before, but never as bad as this. She filed for divorce from out of state.
It turned out that Papak didn't want me there instead of his parents because I let him jump on the furniture or because I was good at navigating his bed-boat through the sharks. It wasn't even because I told good stories. He wanted me there because I represented fun and stability, two things in short supply with his parents around.
All I had left to remember him by were the stories I made up for him that still filled my head. It never occurred to me I might forget them. Yet as the years passed, the tales faded from my memories and now only the gossamer outlines of them remain. I spun them from thin air for that one little boy, and no ears besides his ever heard them. I know he doesn't remember them any more, either. He was too young when he heard them, and probably far too sleepy.
Nevertheless, I like to think that as a grown man, wherever he is, he still might like adventure stories about knights and dragons, and about damsels who need heroes to save them from angry tyrants, but he just can't put his finger on why this is. If he does, then my stories aren't lost forever after all. Maybe they still exist in the back of his mind, waiting for me to come back and tell him yet another one before he falls asleep.
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ # ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
Papak's parents were Denise and Azar. Azar was Iranian born, a slight, dapper man with a neatly trimmed mustache. Denise was a tall, big-boned, blue-eyed blond woman from the Nebraska. They made an unlikely-looking couple. Though raised as a protestant Christian, Denise converted to Islam when she married Azar. I babysat their son on Friday nights when they attended mosque. Usually, they went out to eat after the service, so I was at their home until late at night each week.
Papak was what my mother called "a handful." Denise didn't trust other babysitters with him because things either got broken or he tended to get hurt with them. He was not a child you could send off to play and not expect anything to happen. He was bright and inquisitive and creative - a very dangerous combination in a small child. These children are the hardest to babysit. When you look after a kid like that, you actually have to watch them. You can't talk on the phone or watch TV or read and trust them to stay out of trouble, because such children find trouble as soon as you take your eyes off of them.
That final Friday night, I showed up at the usual hour and prepared to give Papak his dinner. Instead of crying because his parents were leaving, he stood on a dining room chair, hugged them each goodbye, then pointed to the door and told them, "Go!"
"You must spoil him when we're not here," Azar laughed.
Denise didn't laugh, though. She got a strange, sad look on her face instead. She kissed her son one last time and left without saying much of anything. I felt flattered. I was too young, at 16, to realize that anything was amiss, and that a 3 year old ordering his parents to leave rather than stay with him was out of the ordinary. I just thought he really liked me.
His father was partially right. Papak adored me in part because I allowed him do things his mother and father didn't, like standing on the coffee table and jumping up and down on the couch. The way I saw it, my job was to keep obvious disasters from happening. If they sat on their couch one day when I wasn't there and it collapsed to floor after being jumped on one-too-many times by a small boy, it wasn't my problem so long as the house appeared to be in order when they got home that night. If and when their couch did fall apart, I planned to play dumb.
Papak's favorite game was "shark," and we played it almost every week. His bed became a boat, and his toy-strewn floor became a shark-infested ocean. We would go out sailing, and without fail the sharks surrounded our small boat. The waters were rough, and I would fall overboard.
"Help! Help!" I cried, "Pull me back into the boat before the sharks eat me!"
Papak reached down and help me onto the bed. Sometimes, several sharks were hanging off of my legs even after I was back on board, and he would help me get them off and throw them back in the ocean where they belonged. When he fell out of the boat a few minutes later, I always returned the favors.
After we got back to shore and docked the boat, it was his bedtime. Only after he was asleep could I do the loafing around that babysitters look forward to, so I was very strict on the enforcement of his curfew. I dressed him in his pajamas, made sure he's gone to the bathroom, brushed his teeth and had his drink of water, and then tell him a story.
Early in our relationship, I read him storybooks, but we both tired of those after awhile. I started making up stories for him, and he listened wide-eyed while I spun them. I've forgotten most of the details of these tales, but I remember their gist. They all started off with a little boy and his dog going for a walk in the woods. When they reached a certain clearing among the trees, the boy found that he turned into a knight and his big woolly dog had turned into a magnificent horse (that just so happened to be the same color as his dog). The boy/knight would get on his horse's back, and they rode off to have adventures that changed every week.
There were princesses to rescue and evil wizards to deal with. There were spooky ghosts and spells that had to be broken. There was also a blue and silver-colored dragon with magic scales who was very kind and offered sage advice when it was needed. Sometimes, the only way to ransom the princess or conquer the enemy was to obtain one of the blue and silver dragon's valuable scales (they had real silver in them). This was okay, because the dragon shed them all the time and he was perfectly willing to give them to people he liked. The dragon liked the boy a lot, because he was noble and good, and he always let him have as many dragon scales as he needed to save the day.
At the end of each story, the knight felt homesick, so he rode his horse back into the forest. When he got to the right place, he would dismount and they would walk through the magic clearing. Before he knew it, he was a little boy again and the horse was once again his dog. They went home and his mother would fuss at him, because she had been calling for him for half an hour.
"Where were you?" she would ask.
"Just playing," the boy would say, because he knew that if her told her the truth she would never believe him. Mothers are just like that. And then it was time for the boy's dinner. The end.
That last night, Papak asked for another story and I told him no, that it was too late and he needed to go to sleep. He began to cry, which he had never done this before. I asked him why.
"Because when I wake up, you won't be here anymore," he told me.
"I come see you every week," I reminded him, "I'll come back next Friday, the same as I always do. I promise. I'll tell you another story then."
He finally accepted this and closed his eyes.
I never saw him again after that night.
The following week, Denise left Azar. The neighbors told us that she had two black eyes the day she packed up her bags and her son and got on a plane to return to her parent's home in Nebraska. They said that they had seen her with bruises before, but never as bad as this. She filed for divorce from out of state.
It turned out that Papak didn't want me there instead of his parents because I let him jump on the furniture or because I was good at navigating his bed-boat through the sharks. It wasn't even because I told good stories. He wanted me there because I represented fun and stability, two things in short supply with his parents around.
All I had left to remember him by were the stories I made up for him that still filled my head. It never occurred to me I might forget them. Yet as the years passed, the tales faded from my memories and now only the gossamer outlines of them remain. I spun them from thin air for that one little boy, and no ears besides his ever heard them. I know he doesn't remember them any more, either. He was too young when he heard them, and probably far too sleepy.
Nevertheless, I like to think that as a grown man, wherever he is, he still might like adventure stories about knights and dragons, and about damsels who need heroes to save them from angry tyrants, but he just can't put his finger on why this is. If he does, then my stories aren't lost forever after all. Maybe they still exist in the back of his mind, waiting for me to come back and tell him yet another one before he falls asleep.
