The Form My Son Filled Out

Drew at the Counter

He came at ten, like Pam said. I heard the education wing door and I knew his walk before I saw him, a man’s walk now but still my boy’s underneath it.

Cody came running in first, because Cody was three and did not understand that anything had changed, and he saw me and hollered “Grandma!” and ran into my legs, and I put my hand on his head. Brianne came in behind, carrying Ella on her hip, and she stopped in the doorway like she had walked into a wall.

Drew came to the sign-in counter. I was behind it. I had a baby on my own hip, little Beau, because that is where a baby lives when you are working, and I had a clipboard in my free hand that I was logging the morning bottles on.

“Mom,” Drew said.

“Drew,” I said. “Good morning. Are you here to enroll?”

He looked at me and he looked at the counter and he looked at Beau on my hip, another woman’s child that I was holding as easy as breathing, the very thing he had told me I was too old to do.

“I, uh.” He cleared his throat. “Yeah. We need two spots. The place in Jasper closed and we’re in a bad spot, and the church was the only, I mean everybody said to call here.”

“We’ve got room,” I said. “One infant opening and one in the twos. You’re in luck, we had a family move to Terre Haute.”

I slid the clipboard across the counter to him. Two enrollment forms, the paper kind, Sonshine Room across the top in the churchy blue, a ballpoint pen on a beaded chain so it does not walk off.

“You’ll want to fill these out,” I said. “Both sides. Emergency contacts, the allergy section, the pickup authorization. Same as everybody.”

I watched my son’s face. I am going to tell you what it did, because the woman who asked me to write this down wanted that part most, and it is the part I turn over at night.