Tumbling over toys and tussling over bedtimes

They say that what goes around comes around.

Anyone driving in the vicinity of Mystic these days with their windows open will probably hear a lot of noise. Screaming. Laughing. Crying. Shouting. Giggling. Waterfights. Children screaming: “Hold me.” “Play with me.” “I’m hungry.” “I don’t like it.” “I want orange juice.” Grownups saying: “How do you ask?” Children responding: “Ple-e-e-ease.” And other such things. Oh, and if it’s after midnight, you might hear a loud howling and shriek of agony (more on that later), all of this coming from my house.

You see, my grandchildren are staying with us this month. Toys I didn’t know existed, and which are apparently irreplaceable, have lodged in crevices and corners that heretofore were not known, are hard to reach and retrieve, but which are, according to my grandsons, vital to the continuation of life as we know it.

I have been out of practice at raising 3- and 6-year-old boys — out of practice by about 30 years. So I tried out a technique suggested to me by one of my all-time favorite human beings, my brilliant colleague, a superb cardiologist and supermom, Dr. Meghana Rao-Brito. She said that, regarding getting her kids to bed, or to eat, or to take a bath, “You don’t negotiate with terrorists.” I tried that on my own grandson one evening as he was delaying bedtime by asking me to do something in my woodshop. I told him, “No, no, it’s bed time.” He put up a fuss. I said, “It’s time for bed, and I don’t negotiate with terrorists.” He reluctantly agreed. I felt pretty smart. It was like saying “Check” in a complex game of chess. Of course, the next night when I told him that, if he ate all his food, he would get a treat, he said, “I don’t negotiate with terrorists, Grandpa Jon.” Checkmate for my grandson.

Getting to the part about howling in the middle of the night: I’ve never been someone who could wear house slippers, since I leave them lying everywhere, only to trip over them later. Instead, I either wear

socks in the winter or, come summertime, I go barefoot. My wife, on the other hand, wears slippers as soon as she gets home. I always thought it was just a European thing, this funny slipper-wearing. Going barefoot is normally not a problem when it’s just my wife and me. I’ve even learned how to avoid stepping on broken glass by doing a dip-like exercise between counters should a glass break in our kitchen.

Having aged way past middle age, my prostate demands that, come the middle of the night, especially if I have had a drink of water before going to bed, I have to make my way to the bathroom. Remember what I said about toys finding their way to every corner? Well, somehow, toys, and especially small sharp toys like small metal F16 planes less than 1 inch long, or jagged Mattel Hotwheels, or piercing plastic Lego blocks happen to find themselves perfectly under my heal, to bear the full weight and pressure of my 220-pound, 6-foot-3-inch frame as I make my way to sleepy bathroom relief. How the toy ever got there in the first place, since the grandkids don’t go into Nonna’s bathroom, is a mystery for the ages. I apologize to my neighbors for the shrill howl coming from my bathroom window.

Right at this very moment, as I finish writing these 500+ words, my son is riling up his boys to a decibel frenzy of horseplay, just as I feel like it’s time for me to go to sleep. My son and my wife tell me, when I complain, that this is precisely what I did every evening before bedtime with my own children.

What goes around comes around.