The Cost of Milk When All Are Babes

At the luncheon for my nephew’s baptism, there came a moment of contention among the seven siblings. A tone was all it took for bottled hurts to come uncorked, for one to defend another, a defusing grip on someone’s arm to be too hard. We all had started it in our own ways. I looked around the room, still and quiet in my duty as the eldest, studying their adult faces as the volume and the barbing rose to sway the mosaic shade hanging in the dining room above the lemon bars, the blondies, the sweating milk pitcher. Maybe in that moment my self was too feeble to project upon their family features, maybe some hot crumb, lodged in my brain back in my days of acid, had been knocked loose and found purchase, but I saw them new. In the pricking blush of childhood. What authority I’d earned by time, my silence and forgiving-speed, I might’ve spent on a stern yelp, a red-faced little speech, had I not been seeing toddlers, drool and chubby wrists and all. What’s really wrong? What scary feeling are you feeling? I went to my knees and played dumb dog. I whimpered and spun, rose to sniff close at their ears until I got a shiver, a smile, a pat on the head. I licked my tallest brother on his stubble. I stole a brownie from the platter with my teeth and swallowed it in two quick chomps. Laughter, and soon we all were crawling on the rug, baying, hymning, crying with new cause. The fight was but forgotten when Mother came in through the door holding grandboy’s spotless hand. Get up! she said. My Gosh … You’re acting like a bunch of children.

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Kim Allman lives in the Pacific Northwest.