The Egg Game

When my son Caleb was a little boy, he loved to play the Egg Game. I’m not sure which one of us invented it – most likely it was one of those games that evolved over time, with input from both of us, until it took its final form. All I know is that, as is usual with many young children, once we had played it a few nights in a row, it became cemented into place as part of Caleb’s bedtime routine.

The Egg Game involved me being a mother animal hatching an egg and Caleb being a baby animal emerging from the egg into the world. The animals didn’t have to be ones that actually come out of eggs in real life, and Caleb delighted in picking a different animal each time we played, the more nonsensical the better: An elephant! A lion! My job was to lie on the bed with him curled beside me and make grunting noises as if I was trying to push out an egg. His job was to then wriggle and wriggle until he broke free of the egg, jumped off the bed, and went careening around his bedroom. I always felt faintly embarrassed by the game – I didn’t like having to grunt. But Caleb insisted on that detail.

I got sick of the Egg Game pretty soon after we started playing it, and regretted my part in its creation, but Caleb loved it and begged me to play it every night. I was often exhausted from taking care of him and his sister all day, and just wanted to read him a story, give him a kiss, and say goodnight. But I always gave in and played the game one more time. At least I got to lie down for a while.

Of course, the day came when Caleb stopped asking to play the Egg Game. Did he learn more about how animals are born and decide that the game was stupid or babyish? Did he stop wanting to snuggle with me? Or did he just lose interest, as children do, when other games came along? I was surprised to find myself feeling a bit wistful.

I still wonder why Caleb loved the Egg Game so much. Maybe he was uncomfortable with the idea of having been inside me and didn’t like to think about the process of coming out of me. Maybe he liked imagining a world in which he got to choose how his birth happened, a world in which he got to make the rules. Maybe being in charge of his own birth story gave Caleb a feeling of mastery in a world that often confounded him and made him miserable when he was very young. Or maybe it was much simpler – maybe he was just fascinated with eggs and charmed by the idea of emerging from one.

My favorite idea is that the Egg Game was Caleb’s way of telling me, “Thanks for giving birth to me, Mom, but now I’m in charge of my life! Watch me fly!”