At the Carwash

I was walking through the frigid courtyard to our apartment building, and my legs were frozen from my toes all the way up past my knees. I'd left the house at 7:45 that morning and driven an hour and a half to Syracuse, where we'd played a two and a half hour rehearsal in an unheated auditorium, went straight to an orchestra meeting, and then played another two and a half hour rehearsal. The sun went down as we drove back, and by the time I parked in front of our building it was completely dark and completely cold. My shoes had been soaked all day, and I could feel the damp squish of my socks as I padded up the walk.

The foyer might have contained a blazing hearth. I stopped for a moment and leaned against the downstairs mailboxes, soaking in the warmth and quiet. J and James would be upstairs waiting for me. I slipped off the wet shoes on the doormat outside, and I hear James exclaim "Daddy!" inside when I turned my key in the latch. I heard him pitter-pattering up to the door as I pushed it open, and he grinned at me.

"Daddy! Daddy!"

I swung my trumpets off my back and grinned at him.

"What were you going to tell Daddy?"

"Daddy, COOKIE! Cookie! Cookie, cookie, cookie! Cookie, Daddy!"

I looked on the kitchen table, and there was a tray of gooey looking chocolate chip cookies set out to cool.

"Daddy, shh-shh! Shoes, shh-shh!"

"Shh-shh" doesn't mean silence. Shh-shh means car wash, which has found an even deeper level of fixation for James recently. He has loved walking down the hill by our apartment and gazing at the cars and trucks that pass through the Royal Car Wash for as long as we've lived at our apartment, and we even took him through once in the PT Cruiser. But last Friday he found his new favorite book in the world, Curious George and the Car Wash.

It is (as you may have guessed) the story of how Curious George visits a car wash with the man in the yellow hat. George then builds his own car wash with help from his friend Allie to wash his toy cars. We have read Curious George Car Wash so many times in the last week that we've started setting a timer between readings--we refuse to do it more than once every half hour. It is is the first thing that James asks for when he gets up, and the last thing he wants to do before he goes to bed. About halfway through the week we also discovered the corresponding Curious George TV episode, and it is a guaranteed 12 minutes of absolute still silence. (James' most recent haircut was done with the assistance of the Car Wash episode.)

Everyone in the house knows the book by heart. We've developed a read-aloud script where we leave out words that he can fill in without looking at the book, and he brings his entourage of toy cars (green, yellow, and red) along with George and sometimes Steven for each reading. And every time we go outside, he points to the car wash and begs to visit again.

So tonight, when I got back in and James asked to go see the car wash, I took him. I slipped my freezing wet shoes back on, pulled on his boots, coat, and hat, and drove down to the car wash. We pulled into the parking lot, and I switched him from his car seat to the front passenger seat. I paid the automated machine, and we drove through the initial spish-spish of the rinse, the flap-flap cloth, the blub-blub soap suds, the scrub-scrub scrubbers, and the spish-spish of the final rinse. (James helped me make all these sounds while transfixed in rapt wonder.) We drove out of the wash, and as soon as I put the car in park his eyes welled up with tears and he begged,

"Daddy, Daddy, do adain, do adain!"

"No, James, it's time for us to go home and have some supper."

"No, do adain!" he wailed, shaking his head.

He was still crying when I carried him back up the stairs, but when he saw what was on the table we were treated to the following chorus for the next half hour:

"Daddy, cookie! Cookie, Daddy. I want cookie. Cookie. I want that. Cookie, Daddy!"

(and repeat)

We read Curious George and the Car Wash twice before bed, and he asked to drive our car back down the hill to get washed again about twenty more times.

And that's why Julie and I are both tired at the end of the day.

At least we have some cookies.