hush little baby

A few weeks ago, Kain told me he wanted me to start singing to him at night. Specifically, he wanted me to sing "Hush Little Baby". Small enough request, right? It just irked me, singing this song. I couldn't really figure out why, except....

-- I just don't like the song. I've never liked it. Who is this Momma that's gonna buy a baby a cart and bull? A diamond ring? That turns brass??? Where do they get this stuff? What's the message here, "Hush little baby, I'm gonna buy you stuff"?

But that wasn't all of it. I had to do some digging, and I think I know why. It doesn't reveal a pretty side of me, necessarily, but I'm not pretty all over. :)

--He's not a baby. Don't get me wrong, I've gotten really very attached to this child, but there's just something kind of odd-feeling about singing a lullaby to a very large, very un-baby-like 7 year old. Not only is he not a baby, I didn't even *know* him as a baby. I met Kain for the first time when he was three years old, and even then it was just for one summer. I only rarely even saw a baby picture. If my 10 year old wanted me to sing her to sleep tonight, other than being amused, it wouldn't phase me much because I can close my eyes and she's a plump sweet-smelling 9 month old laying on my shoulder and playing with my hair. I have no physical memory of Kain as a baby, and that makes it feel kind of weird.

--He's not my baby. It's a rather specific *type* of lullaby, isn't it? "Momma's gonna do this, Momma's gonna do that." The reason he wants me to sing it to him in the first place is because he says his Momma sang it to him. I am a stand-in. He knows it and I know it. He was embarrassed when he asked me to sing this song. Kain, who is usually seemingly oblivious to what others think and feel, knew he sounded a bit babyish and silly asking me to sing him this song. He was admitting vulnerability. He misses his mother. And even though I am not her, he wants me to pretend. He wants me to pretend so that he can pretend. He wants to close his eyes and have me sing and rub his head and pretend that I am his mother and his world is sane and right again, that he has parents that don't party their lives away but instead take care of him and want him enough to do whatever they have to do to provide what he needs.

--And I guess, deep down, it bothers me a little to indulge this good memory of his mother. I need to villianize her, because I can't understand a world where parents mistreat their children any better than Kain can. Other than occasional awkward phone conversations, I don't know Kain's mother, and I don't want to know her. I have a lot of anger towards both of these parents, these people that have abandoned their child and put us in this gut-wrenching position of falling in love with this boy and trying to do what we can for him while his parents continue to toy all of our lives and with his undying devotion to them both. I don't want him to love her because she doesn't deserve it, and because continuing to love and want her will just cause him more pain. I know it's not right to expect him not to love his own mother. I know this in my head, but that's still how I feel. And I have a picture of her I want to keep, a picture of a woman who neglected her children so much that they have been taken away from her not once but several times, who let things so terrifying happen to her child that a year and a half later he is *still* waking up with nightmares, a woman that after doing all of these things will call me and tell me how she really has her life straightened out this time and expects me to actually swallow that without gagging. I don't want a picture in my head of her singing Kain to sleep, of her doing something sweet and maternal.

I don't want to sing this song. And yet...he has asked. This is what he needs. He needs his mother to sing him to sleep. Of all we have done for him, this is the one thing I can't provide, his mother to sing him to sleep. But I can pretend, for him. I will sit on his bed, push his thick blond hair across his head, and sing about mockingbirds and dogs named Rover...and at the end, promise him that he is, indeed, still the sweetest baby in town.