eggs v. baskets

Oh, god, this essay.


Modern Love: Raising a Princess Single-Handedly, NYTimes 28 June 2009.

IT was about 6:30 on Thursday morning, and I was cooking breakfast in my pajamas. My daughter, Madeleine, 4, was helping by transferring eggs from the cardboard carton into the refrigerator egg box. It’s one of the things she does, like pressing the button on the elevator, and licking the cake spoon.

That morning we were both performing our duties with sleepy devotion. Then I put down my whisk and asked Madeleine to throw me an egg.

She peered up curiously from her work. "One of these eggs?"

I nodded.

"But it might break."

"Just throw it, Madeleine. I’ll catch it."

She looked at the egg in her small hand, and for reasons known only to her, she began to carefully inspect the shell.

What at first was a trifling culinary request — another egg for the mixture — quickly became something more significant: an unscripted moment of trust between a father and daughter. I wanted her to trust that if she threw something delicate, I would save it. Her mother had died a year earlier. It was sudden — an undiagnosed disorder, a suspected case of Marfan syndrome. Most people I know have never heard of it.

...

Besides learning how to fake New Year’s parties and sew buttons, I’ve learned about myself. The other day when I was brushing my cheeks with shaving cream, Madeleine came into my bathroom. Surprisingly, she was already dressed for school.

I’m rather a messy shaver. Afraid I might get shaving cream on her dress, I said: “Please keep me company, Madeleine. But don’t get too close.” Then I laughed, realizing that what I’d said characterizes the nature of my adult relationships.

...

The other morning I was frying bacon, drinking coffee and trying to scramble Madeleine’s eggs. In a single moment of craziness, the bacon turned black, which triggered the smoke alarm. The eggs began welding themselves to the pan; the garbage bag I was tying split open at the bottom, covering my slippers in three-day-old linguine and rice pudding.

As I fanned the smoke detector furiously with a towel, Madeleine rushed off the couch to see what was going on, tripped and spilled her orange juice on herself and the floor. From the corner of the kitchen, a little girl covered in juice looked up at her father and said, “We’re like clowns!”

I think it was Charlie Chaplin who said that close up, human life is tragic, but from a distance, it’s funny.

SO on that recent morning, when Madeleine was still clutching the egg that I had asked her to throw, I leaned across the counter toward her and softly said: “Just throw it, Madeleine. I promise it won’t break.”

“O.K., Dad.” And in one quick motion she flung a single perfect egg at her father.