August Flash #1 - "Finishing Touch"

Later than advertised, but I hope worth the wait! :)

We can make him younger, they said. It’s what we do. 

That’s what I wanted. Sick of his teenage sense of superiority. His aloofness. His separation. 

“I just want to be left alone,” Keiran says, when I ask the questions a mother is supposed to ask. How’s school? Have you been thinking about college? Are you getting enough sleep? 

My son hides in his room, he hides on the Internet with strangers he trusts more than his own mother. My friends make similar complaints, but when they talk with damp-eyed sentimentality about how their kids were ten, fifteen years ago, I realize that I didn’t have the same experience. 

When I look back, when I am completely honest with myself, the three-year-old version of Keiran was hardly perfect. 

I remember taking him to StoryTime at the public library, watching the other youngsters with their parents. He sits on my lap, calmly listening, my little Buddha. The other parents can’t help noticing while their kids scramble and shriek. 

He’s good as gold. He never makes a fuss. He’s so independent. 

I thought I was lucky – the little boy who eats his vegetables. The little boy who doesn’t pitch a fit at bedtime.   He didn’t care for pacifiers or comfort objects. No blankie, no favorite stuffy. He seemed…self-contained in a way that no small child ever is. 

Whenever my mother watched him, she would shake her head and say, “He’s so easy. You’re supposed to get the kid you deserve. So how on earth did you end up with a boy like Keiran?”

Because as a little girl, I was wild. I was the center of attention. I sucked up all the love and rage and focus in the room. 

So I told them: I don’t just want younger. I want different. 

A step too far? An unnatural act, even for these quacks? 

They smiled. They said, Of course. They said, Most of our clients like to tinker with the final product. 

They can’t change them physically (beyond regressing their age of course). So no blond hair instead of brown, no extra height so they’re not the shortest in their pre-K class. No adding adorable dimples. 

But personality? Sure. Here’s the brochure. Take a look, take your pick. 

‘Finishing Touch’, the cover announces. As if changing someone’s personality is next to nothing. 

Don’t get me wrong; I still want Keiran to be Keiran. If I wanted a different kid altogether, I could adopt. But nobody’s perfect. Yeah, he could stand to be tinkered with. A little finessing. 

I got busy with the brochure, reassured by the old-fashioned quality of checking boxes with my pen. It felt like I was filling in one of those personality quizzes in Cosmopolitan magazine. But it wasn’t my personality, it was my son’s. I was marking out room for improvement. 

I handed the brochure back, keenly aware of how long it had taken me to complete the exercise. How much ink I’d put on the paper. Too much?

They don’t even blink. Perfect. Perfect choices. Like a wine waiter approving of a customer choosing a sauvignon blanc to go with their fishy entrée. 

The procedure is done at home. They don’t use a clinic or hospital. Keiran isn’t sick, they say. He just needs an adjustment. 

His bedroom, his toys, will be the same as before. I have informed my parents, who may well think I’ve lost my mind. I have told my friends, who are certain of it. But they don’t know what I missed out on. They don’t understand what I need. 

I wait downstairs, sitting at the kitchen table and drinking too much coffee. And when they’re done, they bring me through to the living room to see him. 

Asleep on the couch, the sight of my three-year-old son doesn’t shock me. He looks just as he did twelve years ago. I even chose the outfit; white T-shirt and blue denim overalls. 

I sit beside him, and at first, I’m afraid to touch him. Because when he wakes up, what if he’s just the same as the first time? What then? 

They smile. They’ve seen all this before, with other clients, other rebooted families. 

Go on, they say. 

I stroke his hair. I watch his little chest rise and fall. And I’m abruptly, completely filled with such love for him that I don’t care if he’s the same as he was before. He’ll be perfect either way; what was I thinking, trying to “fix” him? 

I kiss his cheek. His perfectly smooth, cool cheek. His eyelids flutter open and I gaze at his beautiful blue eyes. 

“Hi, handsome.” I smile. “You had such a good nap!”

He smiles back; he never was cranky when he woke up, something else that made my mother declare him “easy”. 

I wait for him to slide off the couch, wander over to the corner of the living room where his toybox lives (they rescued it from the attic, cleaned off the cobwebs) and play with his Fisher-Price farm. He’ll open the barn door and listen for the ‘moo’. He’ll open and close that door until the cows come home or until I beg him to stop. This is the boy who plays by himself. This is the boy who will jump in the swimming pool and not care whether I see him do it or not. 

No. Something different. Keiran crawls onto my lap, rests his head against my chest, sticks his thumb in his mouth. And he mumbles something. 

I stare at them, and they just grin back at me. They wave at my little boy, leave the room. They know it’s done. 

I kiss the top of Keiran’s head. “What’s that, honey?”

“Mungry,” he says around his thumb.

I pat his belly. “Mommy get you a snack?”

He nods. “Uhhuh.”

I stand up, and my little boy’s arms are around my neck. He holds on to me, and he starts babbling. About everything and nothing, about nonsense, about scattered three-year-old dreams. 

I feel his weight against my hip. I'm perfectly conscious of the burden. 

I imagine the pleasure of him needing me, of him clinging to me, demanding my eyes and ears on him. I imagine this exhausting and exasperating me. I imagine complaining to my mother, venting to my friends. 

And I smile. 

THE END