Yesterday was a snow-day. The day before, Ian was bombastically and ballistically ill. We basked in the wonder of Netflix and watched the first season of MacGyver.
Ian filled his tool-belt with a plastic knife, compass, three pirate eye-patches, and a treasure map. I made a book of matches for lighting fuses. He drew a map consisting of a line with a single dot, labeled ‘BOM’.
Science fiction is important in our home to me. Kelly likes Star Trek and will tolerate Star Wars, but she draws the line at string theory or Firefly. I need an outlet. So, when Ian started talking about ‘estimallations’ (i.e., constellations) and planets on the way to school, naturally the discussion turned toward the terraforming of Mars.
‘How would you change Mars so that people could live there?’
‘Well, first I would buy a water park.’
‘A water park? Like Aquatica? Why?’
‘Because we’d need a big bucket.’
‘Ah.’
‘And I would carry the sea to Mars in the big bucket,’ said my son, who does not possess doctorates in Chemistry, Biology, or Long Division.
‘How would you get the bucket to Mars?’
‘Lots and lots of people. Oh! And I would use the bucket to carry oxygen, too.’
‘Why oxygen?’
‘Because we need to breathe. But the oxygen would just float out of the bucket. Oh! We could put a lid on the bucket.’
‘That’s a good idea! Shouldn’t we use a rocket to carry the bucket?’
‘Well, the rocket would probably shake the lid off. But we could put a lock on the lid. And put the big bucket inside a bigger bucket with another lid. And lock that.’
And as my son transformed a world within the idle moments before school, his backward letters didn’t seem so concerning.
Because we can’t afford a hybrid or flash water heater, I decided to do our part for the environment by replacing our incandescent Christmas lights with LEDs. I was also out of replacement bulbs, and we’re running low on band-aids.
Returning from dinner last night, Kelly wondered aloud why the blue bulbs seemed brighter than the others. ‘Mommy?’ Ian asked as he climbed toward the front door.
‘Yes?’
‘Maybe it’s because your face?’
The Responsible Parent within me—who dreads the moment his son meets a teacher without a sense of humor—shuddered. The Daddy within me fell to his knees with laughter while simultaneously standing with pride, subsequently spraining his duodenum.
His hands are clutched in his hair, fingers clawing for pain they can’t grasp. He twirls them at the back of his head when he’s tired, but now they’re frantic and futile, at a loss for something, anything, to comfort.
He curls next to me under the covers and starts to cry, his head cradled in the crook of my elbow. He hovers between whimper and wail, shuddering with pain but more with frustration. I try to stroke his forehead. He shoves my hand away while burrowing further into my side.
He collects his strength and whispers into his chest, ‘Is this how it is? For you?’
When I rush through the door, to the stairs, to the bed, hissing through my teeth, and Mommy cautions him to leave Daddy alone. And I’m whimpering, naked, on my knees on the bathroom floor, and a small, warm hand rests on my back. Stays. Waits.
‘Yeah, kiddo.’ He cries, for want of a different answer.
I reach for his book and read, Houdini the hamster gnawing through a water pipe in the kitchen and reveling in the feel of his teeth clashing against the metal. One page, two, and the shudders fade. His breath is warm and even on my arm as he retreats into sleep.
We used to call him ‘Houdini’. The mewling baby with one arm raised above his head in triumph, freed after minutes of struggling against Daddy’s straight-jacket swaddle. I fumbled in the dark, feeling the tightly wrapped bundle for signs of escape. Felt the arm, waving, and caught it. Re-wrapped my package, safe and warm and snug. My burrito.
Solutions have long since failed to be so simple, so cleverly held with crisp folds and tucks. This, I cannot swaddle. This, I cannot soothe. This, I cannot.
My fingers fall numb as I start to feel the cooling glaze of drool oozing from his mouth.
Ian took tap and ballet lessons from a friend this summer. He wouldn’t let us watch the rehearsals, but had no qualms about performing in front of a gymnasium full of over-stimulated parents.
The title of the song is meant to be ironic. I dare anyone to disagree.
Ian drew this picture in the car last night, coming home from dinner. He explained his idea—in exhaustive detail—on the way to the restaurant.
Be sure to click through and hover to read the notes. He was very specific in his design.
From The Memory of Old Jack, by Wendell Berry:
‘…When they stop the children are instantly scrambling over the tailgate.
Hannah gets out. “Listen! I want you both to mind now, and be good.”
“We will,” Margaret says.
“Mattie, did you hear me?”
“Yes.”
Her warnings to Mattie always leave her with the impression that she has just spoken to a squirrel. She will take care of him when he needs it, which he will.’
Grandma Georgina had foolishly taken four Wonka-Vite pills, which—at the rate of one year per second—made her eighty years younger. Unfortunately she was seventy-eight at the time. As Charlie worryingly did the math, Willy Wonka assured the boy that he’s developed a cure for such an eventuality: Vita-Wonk. Mr. Wonka explained that, to counter the youthful effects of Wonka-Vite, he scoured the earth for the world’s oldest living thing.
And before I read the next sentence, I turned to Ian, nestled in the crook of my arm, and asked, ‘What do you think it was? What’s the world’s oldest living thing?’
He squinted and thought for only a moment. ‘A tree?’
I’d asked the question assuming that he’d been following the book, following the words. ‘Tree’ is an easy one, and apparently my assumption had been correct. Except, for some reason, I asked, ‘Why?’
‘Because they keep growing.’
We’d talked, ever so briefly, about plants during a walk on Saturday. How they keep growing. Ian made the point that some plants can’t grow [upward], so they use other things to grow, like telephone poles.
And in those few seconds, Ian had reasoned that because plants keep growing, and because trees are the biggest plants, they must be the world’s oldest living thing.
I didn’t speak, didn’t know how to respond. I felt like Creb, in awe when he realizes that Ayla can count higher than ten. There I was, banging rocks together to hear the pretty noise, while Ian was using them to build a house.
I felt wonderfully surpassed. Laughing and coughing, waving the cloud of dust from my face as I watch my son race into the distance and pause, waiting for me to follow.
