The announcement came that the zoo was closing for the day, so we moved for the exit. I told Kevin we’d stop for dinner on the way home and asked him if he needed to go to the bathroom before we got on the road. He didn’t think he needed to so we headed for the parking lot and in a matter of minutes we were on our way.
Once we were in the car, I felt free to talk openly to Kevin.
“So Kevin,” I started.
“So Carrie,” he replied in an almost perfect imitation of my voice…
“Wise guy. I didn’t know that you did impressions.”
“I don’t,” he said, “you sound like a little boy,” he laughed.
“Or you sound like a girl.” I said back.
“Ouch. Touche.” he said with a laugh.
“Really Kevin, we need to talk about things.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Do you want to keep doing the babying thing? It’s entirely your call.”
“What do you think?” He asked.
“I told you it’s your call. But, I’ll say this, whatever you decide, I think when we go to Cape Cod, you should go back to wearing undies, at least in public.”
He shrugged his shoulder and nodded his head in agreement. “Yeah, me too.”
He scrunched up his face a bit, I had noticed he did this when he was thinking, and he was quiet for a little while.
“Do you mind taking care of me…you know the diapers and all that?” he asked.
“What?…No, not at all. To be honest it’s been kind of fun.” I replied.
“It’s been kind of fun for me too,” he said.
“So what do you want to do? We could keep using the diapers or we could have you wear pull-ups, or we could bag the whole thing.”
He was quiet for a few moments and then I said, “You want to keep wearing the Pampers, don’t you?”
He had a couple of tears running down his face, and he nodded his head up and down.
“Okay, then. Pampers it is.”
“Thank you,” he said softly. “I really like the way you take care of me… I always wanted a big sister.”
I smiled over at him and said, “You’re the best baby brother I ever had.”
(I should point out that Mikey, my younger brother, is only four years younger than I am and I never thought of him as a “baby brother.” He was more of a playmate growing up, of course he did need night time protection until he was twelve but I never thought of him as being a baby because of it.)
After we were on the road for about an hour, I said, “We should think about getting dinner.”
“Yeah, I’m getting hungry.” Kevin said. We had been nibbling on the snack I bought all day, but we finished that up a few hours earlier and frankly, they weren’t all that satisfying.
“Take out my Iphone,” I told Kevin. “I got an app that tells us where there are restaurants with gluten free offerings nearby.”
“Cool, I didn’t know that was out there.” We found a place nearby that did gluten free Mexican food.
“Ever have it?” I asked.
“Nope. Want to give it a shot?”
“Only live once,” I said and we headed of the parkway for the restaurant.
