"Enter Joey" or "Survival of the Fittest"

It’s Lilly's Hitchcock moment. Joey had come home from the hospital maybe a month before. He hadn’t come very far actually—the local hospital is right across the street, visible from every window in front of our house. The ambulances come and go. Every once in a while someone slips out of the psych ward and gets pinned down on the grass. Nurses hang on the corner dragging on cigarettes and gossiping. And every once in a while a baby emerges from the birthing center. So we walked home with him to the Blue House. Lilly, who had just turned 2, tugged her mother’s suitcase-on-wheels. Nell, my wife, carried the precious one, our second. I walked a crooked line, not because we were up all night. But because watching my wife give birth turns me into a wound baseball of tension and love, like I’m on qualudes and speed all at once.
In spite of my plan to balance the gender stereotyping, I’m already calling him “Little Man.” Two days into it and my heart is way past breaking.
So there we are one Saturday morning, a few weeks later. Nell has slipped out for a blessed bit of freedom. I’m alone with the kids, still wondering how the word had become plural. Pretty smooth this parenting thing. Joey, wrapped burrito-like, dozes on the couch. I’m cleaning the kitchen, aiming mostly to keep the health department at bay. Lilly is afoot somewhere else. The dining room window seat maybe? Sweet silence…very sweet…oh-oh, too sweet. Lilly is in the dining room right?
This is what nervous systems are for, right? They cut through the fog of frontal cortex activity and get right to the heart of things: survival. I don’t walk to the play room, I simply arrive there. And I see Lilly poised above Joey on the couch, one arm raised in striking position. It couldn’t have been more frightening if it were all seen in silhouette: our cute little assassin moving in for the kill. There isn’t time to think, really. That’s the blessing of parenting—all those years spent kicking around in your head and doodling in your journal become one big indulgence, burned away by the sandblaster that is children. There’s only time to react. So I do what parents do best: I yell. Loudly. Loudly enough to shatter the windows.