Yesterday morning, Lucy took a long bath. Yesterday afternoon after she woke from her nap, I decided to use the block oil my friend Liz made me (a honey-scented mixture of beeswax and mineral oil (and nothing else), in a tiny Ball jar with handwritten brown paper labels) and give all our cutting boards a good moisturizing. I have been trying to find things I can do while Lucy is awake that we will both enjoy—-which in this case meant something that helps me feel like I am accomplishing something, while also leaving space for her to be involved.
She was very much involved. I put an old towel on the floor, opened Liz’s jar, and brought down all the cutting boards from their shelf. “Mehmeh!” Lucy said, enthusiastically (Creme, German for cream). She loves cream, and rarely gets to dig all her fingers into it and keep the large gobs that result. Some of the gobs went on the cutting boards, and many went on her face. Some went in her mouth. The beeswax paste has a high enough melting temperature that the gobs melted very slowly on her cheeks, and occasionally I stole them back. When she lost interest, the hair around her face hung in greasy strands and she had two matching chunks of beeswax in her eyelashes, one on the left and one on the right, which did not seem to bother her at all.
I still had two boards left, so I kept an eye on her as she wandered around the edge of the counter and into the kitchen, but kept working. I could not see her, but I could just see over the top of the counter, and watched her hand come up and grasp the handle of the sea-blue ceramic mug that had the cold remains of the Earl Grey I’d drunk during her nap. “No!” I said. “Lucy, set that down. It will spill.”
She was already turning, holding the mug with great care. But she’s two. Some spilled as she turned. “Set it down!” But she was too fascinated by the pattern the splashes made on the floor. I watched, my hands full of beeswax, as she upended the whole cup onto the floor. Before I had time to get my scolding into full swing, she took a step forward. Her foot shot out from under her and the rest of her body followed, torpedoing her to the floor. She lay in the puddle of tea on her back in the posture of a bobsled contestant, unharmed but rigid with shock, and then began howling.
I picked her up and held her. The black tea dripped from her back while I tried and failed to stop shaking with laughter.