The Q-View

Every Wednesday is Dom Day. At least for a semester.

Once again this morning I picked up a three-year-old in Manayunk and drove him to daycare on the campus of Montgomery County Community College to help out my son and his girlfriend, as she completes her nursing coursework, and he goes to work.

Wednesdays this fall have meant getting up at 5:30 to trek to Philly by 7:30 so we can arrive at Blue Bell by 9.

From the moment he arises, Dom is at warp speed: racing to his toy chest, running around the living room, creating Spiderman scenarios that last an intense thirty seconds, before moving on to zombies, or his motorcycle, or whatever is fresh in his evolving mind.

Thank goodness I only had to dress him for daycare once.

That was a battle partially fueled by Halloween goodies the night before: my will against his iPad (it was really embarrassing watching him effortlessly and rapidly navigate to the sites he wanted. He is ten times faster than I am. Digital Natives are soooo smug.) After eight one-more-time warnings, the device was iNapped and put out of reach. Dom threw a pseudo-tantrum, but I was unmoved. I did raise teenagers, you know.

I enjoyed a disproportionate amount of pleasure from outwitting a three-year-old. Even if  I did bribe him with some M&M’s.

Bribery is nothing new. My motivator every week is to have a new Matchbox or some other vehicle in my Pilot. When Dom asks the inevitable, “What did you bring me this week?” I tell him we’ll have to get in the car to see. And off we go!

Last week it was a John Deere front-end loader. Today it was two army vehicles: a jeep and a truck.

“I love these,” Dom said to me this morning from the car seat. “Thanks, pop-pop Q.”

The pleasure is actually all mine. Matchbox was my first love. Followed closely by Tonka. Shopping for his gifts never fails to bring up the memories of my play-in-the-dirt-with-trucks childhood era.  It is a tough decision each week.

Dom was talkative this morning. Sometimes he’ll just watch out the window or amuse himself with some characters from his internal universe. There are some constants in our travels.  We’ve been working on right and left: “Which way am I turning, Dom?” He also always asks for a pretzel rod from the stash I keep in the car, and every week he wants to know why they put salt on the pretzels. That is a good question. He is attentive to Waze, my GPS app. He asks about the arrows (more right and left lessons), and, when we stop, I have to detach the phone from its mount so he can see my MPH is “0”. When we get to Montco, Dom calls out the speed “mounts”.

Today, he pointed out a church he heard bells coming from, asked me about a quarry we passed, wondered about Thanksgiving, and expressed his concern that the house doesn’t have a chimney for Santa. He told me about doing battle with “cockaroaches”, asked about the stars on his army vehicles, and learned about the wires on telephone poles when we drove past some PECO trucks doing repairs.

When we get to daycare, we also have to pause at the monitor displaying weather data. Every week we discuss the temperature display. “”Thirty. Seven,” I say pointing at the numbers. Then it’s off to his room to see his teachers and his friends. Dom is a model citizen when he crosses the threshold, and I am an afterthought.

And exhausted.