watching
1. us watching them
The point of the baby monitor was to watch for the crinkling of Scout’s stripy pajamas in the grainy picture when she was a small bean in a barren crib and I felt constantly compelled to check for breathing. That way, I didn’t have to get up and walk anywhere to satisfy the anxiety, I could watch her sleeping in the crackle of dark on the other side of the apartment. Later, we found we could stretch the baby monitor signal down to the front stoop. The wavy line that demarcated the exact limit to how far I could go from my kids hung around the third step. I could have myself a beer on the top step from safely inside the bubble of motherhood.
S and J outgrew the monitor, or I did, and we hadn’t used it in years until moving into this house. We plugged it in partly to know what was going on at night when we were vegging on the couch on the first floor, and Scout and Japhy were in bed on the third. Also so we didn’t have to walk all the way up those stairs just to say “it’s past bedtime” in a defeated tone and threaten to withhold the next day’s lollies. We’d just press the “TALK” button and broadcast the voice of god. And so began a dialogue.
I was sagging into the couch after tucking them in when I heard Scout’s voice over the monitor one night. “Mayday, mayday,” she said—this was the same day they had purchased Paw Patrol 4K off Alexa without permission—“Mayday, mayday.”
I picked up the monitor, and saw her standing in front of the screen like a field reporter out in a hurricane, her face and torso framed by the bunk bed. “Come in, Mum, Japhy has painted his arms blue. I repeat, blue.”
At the top of two flights of creaky stairs, I found that he had, indeed, painted his arms blue with a small tube of watercolor pigment. He looked like one of those marbly people from Seaquest DSV, only with a human face. Why had he done it? Because he knows instinctively to rage, rage, at the dying of the light/my TV hour. Sometimes it’s us on the couch hearing happy sleep sighs cut through the strings and dickpics of Succession, sometimes it’s us pressing the TALK button and offering a terse, “I’d better not have to come up there.”
I’d really better not, it’s a long way up.
2. them watching us
The spying started at bedtime. I would be up in the blue room trying to help Japhy step into his nappy when I might see the camera move, or—the bigger tip-off—hear a sneaky voice say, “I’m spying on you.” What’s funny is Scout would be missing for a while—downstairs spying—before she gave the game away. I picture her holding the monitor, shudders of giggles going through her as she watched me doomscrolling or staring at the clock without affect as Japhy romped around the room without pants on. (I think we all tried to be kid detectives at some point before realizing everyone in our lives was very dull, and the mysteries not worth solving.) I imagine the same solitary look on my face as I saw on their faces as babies alone and bored in their crib at 3 a.m., their eyes glinting and finding nothing to return their gaze.
The power dynamic has shifted. Noodle Hubs and I were trying to sleep when we heard an announcement broadcast over the P.A. at 6 a.m. the other day: “Help! The remote won’t work!” It reached us from the kids’ bedroom, where the camera stood tuned to the empty bunk bed. We are now having conversations about how to operate the FireStick with our eldest via yelling from a supine position to the next room where a camera can catch the audio. We are now the watched.
The elf is back, regretfully, but the problem goes deeper than me forgetting to move the thing at 11 p.m. each night. Last year, I kept getting “suggestions” for the elf from Scout like “I hope he makes a mess again!” after the popcorn kernel debacle. This year, things have gotten out of hand. I creaked down the stairs near midnight last week to sit him up on my desk and do a quick rainbow on a piece of scrap paper directly with some tubes of paint. When we came downstairs the next morning, Scout and Japhy showed me all the painting the elf had done—multiple pieces!! There was a glass filled with water and a paintbrush the elf had been “using.” “Look what the elf did!” said Scout, literally jumping.
“Oh, boyyyyy,” I said, unsure what to do about my own, small Jurassic Park taking on a life of its own.
Japhy ran into the kitchen another time and yelled, “I saw the elf move!!! Come see!” I moved with haste to see that the elf had, indeed, magically migrated to the inside of the junk cupboard. Fast forward a few days to Noodle Hubs cradling the elf in a shoebox as he tells the kids, “I don’t know if the elf will be okay, we’ll have to see,” then writing a note that night for the kids to leave him heck alone.
This feels like a good enough metaphor for family life.
How it happened
the letter the elf left was apparently not clear enough for Scout, who immediately wrote a letter back:
a conversation with neither a beginning nor an end:
Scout: Please don’t remind me of the sad past.
Japhy: What’s the past?
Goodies
I don’t know about you, but I’m tapped out! I read forty-five Buzzfeed community listicles this week and no books. I’m excited for The Lost Daughter, though, and, if you’re hungry for that kind of thing, here is an older essay I wrote about mothers running away from their kids.
Thank you for reading KAFKA’S! <3 <3 <3