The Patience of a Two Year Old
The little one spent most of the afternoon playing with some old toy diggers, discards of my own boys. My friend and I sat in the shade of the tulip tree and chatted and I began a caddis fly bracelet with a lovely mix of beads I had recently bought and couldn't wait to get started on. My friend's phone rang, it was an important call. The little one watched her as she talked, then slowly came closer to me.
"How you doing?" he asked.
"I'm doing very well." I told him and showed him the couple of inches or so I had managed to stitch.
He smiled at me, "That's pretty."
He watched as I stitched a few more beads into place.
"That one next" He pointed delicately at a short orange bugle bead. I stitched it into place.
"That lellow one?"
"O.K."
"and this one next?" He held out to me a size 8 pink bead.
"That one's a bit too big to go next, can you find me a tiny little one?" He found a little bronze one and carefully placed it down in the tray for me to thread.
We carried on like this for the whole of my friend's phone conversation, about 15 minutes or more, finding sparkly red beads, orange shiny beads, yellow cubes. The whole time he was absorbed, watching me stitch, choosing beads, placing them for me to pick up with my needle, letting the beads run through his fingers. Not once did he show any signs of being rough or silly with the beads, they were in no danger of spilling into the grass and being lost. Finally he smiled up at me again, "That's pretty Doola*." and off he went again to play with the diggers.
I haven't finished the bracelet yet, I ran out of thread. But tomorrow I will sort it out and get it finished and add a photograph. Maybe I should call it "the patience of a two year old" but maybe not. Unless you know the story behind it you may not understand just what that means.
*Doola, this is the first time he has called me by my name, or by the closest approximation of it he can manage. I haven't been called Doola since I was nannying.
