N has been asking me to take care of it for six months now. If anything, she is a patient woman. As if by accident, we agreed it would happen on Sunday just after breakfast. I pulled on shoes and a warm jacket, as if I had not been inside for the past three months, as if I had not been inside since there were leaves on the trees.
The air was warmer than I thought it would be. Children were screaming on the playground, like monkeys dangling from vines. V's hands were in mittens, but she still held my hand as we made our way to the car. The directions were tucked in my pocket, and I had studied them once more at the kitchen table where everything was warm and quiet. N and V played in the snow, avoiding the patches of dog shit like landmines in a haphazard game of battleship.
I yanked off the seat cover easily enough, but the directions did not explain how to pull the tiny seatbelt through the bottom of the car seat and soon enough I was swearing and sweating, my words hanging in the air in tiny clouds as I took breaks and warmed my hands in my pockets. The whole thing had to come out, there was no way around it.
"Papa, look!" V said every time she spun, or twirled or did something funny.
A calm drifted over me. I would win against this seat. It never had a chance.
And then the straps began to unlock, the years of pulling into place did not keep from from unlodging any longer. Now free, I removed the old parts and converted it to booster seat mode. The directions flapped in a low wind and I flicked them to the floor, they were of no use to me now. Straps found new positions. I yanked, and pulled, making sure things were tight. And all at once V was climbing into the back seat to try it, to be a big girl, her snow pants wet, her muddy boots squeaking around. I stood up, with that quiet satisfaction parents enjoy in these odd moments, when their child outgrows something, when it become acutely clear that the world is spinning forwards and it does not stand still. They grow like weeds, if you look carefully. I feel foolish for not doing this sooner, when it was warm outside but some things happen when they need to, not when you want them to.
N catches my stare.
"What?" She asks, but she knows already.
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