Bernadette Joolen: The Counting Lesson...
Copyright 2000 by Bernadette Joolen.
All rights reserved.
From my  novel, On Brigden Road...

SHE STANDS with her feet impossibly close, she stands with her back impossibly
straight, as only a girl of four can stand.  The toes of her brown leather buckleshoes—
already several times handed down—are neatly lined up, pointed straight out.  Her hair
hangs down her back like silk—like a sheaf of raw orange silk past the waist of her red
gingham dress.  Her pale thin freckled face is flushed.  He quietly sits, watching her.  He
watches with a tired smile—his morning coffee steaming still, his Saturday morning
Lawrence Star still rolled inside its green rubberband.  She is his third daughter, fourth
child.  He shyly reaches to tousle her hair as though she were someone else's child.  She
watches him with her bright flushed face and with her eager teasing eyes.  He leans
forward to quiz her again.  He is teaching his youngest daughter to count.

“HOW MANY children in the family now, Magdalena?”  
Only for this, her formal name.  
(Only for counting things like kin.)  

You simply use the things at hand to teach a growing eager child.  Children, oranges,
apples, small balls.  You simply use the things all around—the things that shape a child's
world.  He has done this with his older three.  He will do it now with the three to come.  
But when, he wonders, has this one grown?  When has this sweet girl grown so tall—and
when, her eyes grown so wise?

He watches her proudly answer now.  
There are six children in the family, she says.  
(It is a source of pride to him.)  

He marvels at her gaptoothed smile—her fresh flushed innocence.  His oldest two are
nine and ten, his youngest two are under three.  Enough, he thinks, to age a man.  But
here she is now—this one.  There is no time to question things, to wonder how a life
might be.  Life, he thinks, will be as it comes.  Will fall out as it always does.  With his
help, or without him.

SHE STANDS, eagerly waiting now.  
With each question he asks, she waits for more.  
He asks her to count to six again.  
She starts to count in Dutch for him.  
“Een, twee, dree, vier.”  
For a girl of four, her smile is coy.  

He knows that she can go on this way.  In Dutch she can count past a hundred now.  
But Lawrence is a new world.  She will have to readjust her ear—to capture the different
nuances here.  She will have to learn again, he thinks.  He realizes, They all will.

SOMETIMES the thought of it tires him.  Makes him hungry, want to do more.  They
are landed now in this small town.  Amsterdam seems light years away.  
Sometime he thinks, What I have done?  
Or—Whose life is this anyway?  
(Although the people of Lawrence are kind.)  

But he is feeling restless again.  Every night, he listens to the night train.  Just one long
whistle pulling in, just one long whistle pulling out—the whistle is a lonely sound.  In the
dark of the night it can make him cry.  In the dark of the night it can make him fear that
he will never find a home.  But with children you never have the time to stop and
consider these kinds of thing.  Fleeting thoughts and feelings are all you can have.  
Impulses, quick thinking are how you survive.  Life has an irresolute feel.  A vague
yearning, restless feel.  Until he remembers these simple things.  Till he kneels (as he is
doing now), close to the children he has grown.  Then, the answer he finds is clear.

He thinks, All you do is look at them.  He thinks, All you do is talk to them.  He thinks,
All you do is look in their eyes—look into your own children’s eyes.  And then, no matter
how tired you are.  And then, no matter how restless you are.  No matter how hungry,
how lonely you are.  No matter how scared or how much you cry.  Then the answer you
need is clear.  That wherever the children are is home.  Simply, that will be your home...
The girl brightly calls to him... Read more...
.