Chapter 6: Noah

It felt strange not getting ready for the office the next morning. But after a night of watching video after video of advice on how to raise a kid on YouTube, and not much sleep to speak of, it was probably a good thing. 

One of the main ideas expressed in almost all the videos was nutrition. A growing child had to eat healthy, home-cooked meals. So I woke up this morning having read countless instructions online on how to prepare a wholesome breakfast but ended up spending hours in the kitchen getting nowhere.

I actually went beyond nowhere—I overdid everything! 

The toast was too black, the oatmeal too mushy, the bacon burned, and the eggs too rubbery and crusty. My mistakes filled the steel trash can in the kitchen, and I was getting more and more frustrated by the minute. 

I checked the time. It was a few minutes to six in the morning and I wasn’t making any headway. I used my shirt sleeve to wipe the beads of sweat off my forehead and dropped my hands to my hips, clearing my itchy throat as I glared at the smoke hanging all around me. 

How do other parents do it? I wondered. I’d been planning to surprise Chris with breakfast in bed ever since I got up at four. The excitement had been almost overwhelming—but all I felt now was a shattering disappointment. 

I opened the windows and deeply inhaled the morning air spilling in from outside. Fresh air never failed to calm me whenever my temper got the better of me. Even now, I could feel the angry currents roiling under my skin slowing and pacifying, as if the dark smoke leaving the kitchen was vacating me as well. 

I padded back to the counter and looked around at the disaster I had created. Without a doubt, I looked like a mess as well, with my disheveled hair and brown apron—which used to be white. I chuckled to myself when I realized I couldn’t even see the writing, “The best cook in the world,” underneath all the stains anymore. Fitting, since I was clearly the worst at cooking, but still, I was hardly the type of person who gave up after a few failures.

I had just started cleaning up to give the breakfast-in-bed plan another try, but a heavy rock dropped into my belly the moment I heard little footsteps approaching. Fast. 

I froze, still holding the burnt toast—evidence of my utter inadequacy as a father—between my fingers. I was about to throw it away, but now I felt like a thief who’d been caught in the act when Chris came bounding down the stairs and into the kitchen. He stopped in his tracks when his eyes shot to my guilty face, then to the sheets of black bread in my hands, and back to me again.

His eyes widened at the same time his mouth fell open as he took in the rest of the aftermath of a culinary catastrophe around me.

“What did you do?” Chris exclaimed, a mixture of amusement and disbelief evident in his voice.

I felt a sheepish grin forming as a cloud of smoke swirled past me on its way out the open window. “Oh, I was just trying to make us a nice breakfast, but it seems I might have overdone things a bit.” I chuckled.

Chris eyed the toast in my hands with a mock-serious expression. “Is your toaster broken, too? Granny always called it charcoal delight!” He giggled.

I laughed at the joke, feeling my shoulders getting lighter as I finished closing the distance to the bin and threw the toast away with all the other failures. “Well, I’m not as brave as her to taste it and find out.” 

I sighed, put my hands on my hips, and stared at the mess in the kitchen with uncertainty. I didn’t even really know where to begin.

“No more fancy cooking ‘spiriments mister,” Chris said, swinging his finger at me scoldingly, but the wide smile with a missing tooth on the side had me holding back a burst of laughter. “Stick to cereal.”

“Yes, sir,” I saluted, but couldn’t hold back anymore and laughed. “Cereal it is.”

“Come, Daddy,” he said, and even though it was innocently normal for him to say it, my entire body had a very abnormal reaction to the word. My chest froze and shrunk, warmed and expanded, all at the same time. “I’ll help you clean the kitchen.”

Since I’d given Silvia the day off, I had no choice but to clean up after my own mess. Chris’s definition of help turned out to be him sitting on his favorite barstool at the island and giving me orders while he played with his Batman action figure. It was adorable as hell. 

Not to mention there was something about doing such a menial task with him there, keeping me company, that was uplifting, and made it go much faster and easier than I’d expected.

After the breakfast battlefield was cleared, and the kitchen was back to its neat and sparkling self, Chris applauded enthusiastically. “Good job! You’re like the superhero on TV, Mister Clean!”

I’d never even heard of anyone like that, but I smiled proudly and made a show of bowing. As I straightened up, Chris was already making his way to the fridge.

“I’ll get the milk. You get the cereal,” he said, his voice commanding again, and I felt my smile stretching even wider.

How exactly did this disaster of a morning turn into so fun? I found myself wondering as we ate Fruit Loops together at the dining table.

I tried not to laugh as I listened intently to Chris’s story—told around spoonfuls of cereal in his mouth and with milk dripping down his chin—about the two action figures I’d gotten him a week ago when we’d gone out shopping. He was going on about how Spiderman and Batman had been fighting yesterday, but today they were friends again because he had a very serious talk to them about fighting last night.

“Wow,” I gasped, feigning surprise, “you’re amazing if you got them to stop being angry at each other so quickly. What did you say to them?”

His smile was angelic, but something in his big blue eyes glinted with mischief. “I told them that Daddy will buy me a Superman soon, and they became very happy.”

I stared at my son in awe. “Why, aren’t you the little businessman already?” I laughed and ruffled his hair. “Next time we go out, we’ll get you Superman as well. But do you know what will make Batman and Spiderman even happier?”

“What—what? Tell me!” Chris exclaimed, his eyes alive with excitement as he sat forward, swiping the empty cereal bowl aside.

“I’ll go get it, but you will have to promise me that you’ll wait here with your eyes closed.”

“Okay,” he said, already closing his eyes and covering them with his palms.

I ran up to my room and fetched the bag from the shop I visited yesterday before driving home. It was still on top of my dresser where I’d left it last night. When I returned, Chris’s fingers were a little more splayed out.

“No peeking.” I laughed as I pulled out the comics I’d gotten him. “Okay, now open your eyes.”

The instant he pulled his hands away and saw what I was holding out to him, his big blue eyes became even bigger. “Superheroes!” he yelled and grabbed the magazines from me.

I’d gotten him a trilogy for kids of the comic superheroes fighting crime and saving the world together. It had come highly recommended by the shopkeeper. He’d also talked me into buying Chris an iPad and a Nintendo Switch, but I was keeping that as a surprise for another time.

Before we settled in to fill the rest of our relaxing day with a superhero movie marathon, Chris had us build a blanket fort first. After that, I popped a bag of popcorn into the microwave and dumped it into a bowl for us to share.

Chris kept chatting and explaining things about the movie the whole time, which made following the storylines difficult, but the smile on my face didn’t fade an inch, not once. Those were the best three movies I’d ever watched.

The next morning, I called Silvia to tell her that I needed her to come in today after all. Yesterday I had promised her today off since I’d been planning to spend another day with Chris. However, numerous calls from clients wanting to see me in person forced me to put another fun day with my son on hold.

She grumbled her assent but reminded me that looking after a child wasn’t in her job description. She told me that the child needed to go to kindergarten or something—as if I hadn’t heard her the first hundred times. Sadly, I don’t think she realized that daycare wasn’t an option I could risk at the moment, not without exposing myself to yet another media circus.