this woman’s work

Noah and I were talking about his earliest memories (he seems to start remembering things at around two — Erica, he remembers you coming over to play with him on your lunch hour and that we would talk and he’d make us doughnuts in his wooden kitchen!). He says he liked listening to us talk.

Then he remembers when I would take him to the place where I worked out and he’d stay in the childcare room. He would sit in this giant plastic soccer ball (really a toy chest) and listen to the kids playing. He says he liked to listen to the kids talk.

In preschool he would climb up into the loft and watch the other kids come in and say hello to the teacher and get settled. And later he would be the first one to arrive and the last one to leave the snack table because he liked to listen to the kids chat over their animal crackers and apple juice. More talking, more listening.

Now his favorite thing is listening to the grown-ups gossip.

“I like learning things,” he mused. “I like hearing about what people are doing and what’s going to happen to them.”

“But haven’t you noticed that we’re usually wrong?” I asked him. “We say, ‘Oh no, she better watch out…’ or ‘He’ll probably make a mint on that…’ and it turns out we don’t know what the heck we’re talking about.”

He reluctantly agreed that this was true but still sad it’s his favorite thing.

I wonder if he’ll end up doing something with this hobby. He could be a novelist or a therapist or a gossip columnist or spy. Who knows? But he sures likes to listen.