Instant Rememberances: The One In Which Kyle Takes Charge Of The Situation

Today a coworker had to take his newborn baby to the hospital because his three year old boy tried to pick him up while his mother’s back was turned and dropped him.  The baby is fine, but it reminded me of a story, and I came to a realization this morning that I need to start writing these down.  As I remembered them.  Because whatever it was I was remembering this morning is already gone from my memory.  So here is the first of my “instant remembrance”  posts. 

When Jill was just a new born, she couldn’t have been more than two or three weeks old,  and Kyle was only two, I went out to help Dave set a septic tank.  Dave worked alone back then, he didn’t have any employees, and quite often I got roped into helping him when he just had to have two people.  The septic tank was cement, and he had the bottom set in the hole already, he just needed me to help him set the top.  There was a ridge around the top of the bottom where cement was poured and the bottom of the top (confused yet?)  fit into the ridge and the cement would “glue” it on.   So I left Kyle and Jill in the little white Toyota truck that we were driving way back then, and went over the hill of dirt Dave had dug and proceeded to hold the top half of the septic tank steady in the sling while Dave was in the backhoe trying to set it on the top of the bottom before the cement in the little ridge dried.  The wind was blowing and making the septic tank top sway enough that we were having trouble getting it set.  All the sudden Kyle came up over the hill yelling for me.  I stopped and went over to see what he needed, and he said, “The baby (Jill) is crying.”  I told him I would only be a few minutes, not to worry about it, just go back and talk to her and I would be right there.  It was probably another five or ten minutes, which seemed like an eternity to me now that I knew my baby was crying in the truck, but finally we got the top set and I hurried to the truck to take care of Jill.  When I got there, she was just lying there quietly and Kyle was reading a book.  I said, “Oh, look what a good big brother you are.  You made her stop crying.”  And Kyle said, “yeah, I fed her a pine nut.”  GASP  Sure enough, a few days later when I was changing her diaper, there were the pieces of a broken pine nut shell.  Minus the nut.