Turning Point

Today's blog is less about you, my Succotash, than it is about the world immediately around you.

Once there was a day, many years ago, when everything changed. On that day, described in another blog at another time by an earlier version of your mother, your dad gave a job talk at Harvard Business School at the exact same moment that my first book went to auction. Is it shook out, the auction was a smashing success, but the job talk was not. The following year was a hard one - I was on the road promoting the book they had paid for, but your dad was on the road being a management consultant and feeling like everything he had worked so hard for was coming to nothing. (It wasn't true. In fact, the things he learned at that otherwise terrible job went on to inform his work in significant ways. But even so. It was a hard chunk of time.)

Well, this week we have another one of those days. On Wednesday, we will learn if you get into the snazzy private school we are hoping you will get into, at the exact same time your father will be giving a job talk at Johns Hopkins. We also, at some point in the coming days, might field a second offer on our New York City apartment. I hope some day you will forgive us for selling that beautiful little prewar box with the working fireplace and the soon to be illegal gas stove, where you spent the first five months of your life, and then one year when you were two. I guess overall that is a smallish percentage of your overall life, and if you retain any memories of it at all, they will be hazy, and probably having to do with an elevator that still had an elevator operator. It will last as a story you tell about yourself, after hearing us tell it to you, and seeing the pictures.

Otherwise, you continue to grow. We're still trying to wean, and it's tough going, but we have discussed that even though it will be sad when we stop nursing, that it will mean that you are really a big kid, and that is something to celebrate. I've dangled the prospect of a balance bike as part of this coming celebration, something only big kids can do. Balance bikes aren't for babies.

I think you are using pretend to work through your feelings about no longer being a baby. After warm water when we are getting ready for bed you will sometimes pretend to be a little baby, curl up in a ball and ask me to carry you like a baby. I pretend to rock you, and sing Rockabye Baby, and shower you with kisses. Sometimes you even say "I am just a baby! I can't walk! I need a diaper!" and then we put your underpants on, and you tell me that you "kept growing, and growing, and growing, and now I'm a big kid!" I like that you are using stories and pretend to work it out. I've whispered to you that sometimes everyone wishes they were still a baby, even grownups. As my mother fades and fails far away, I sometimes wish I could be a baby still, too. Last night I even dreamt about her, as she was, giving me instructions about something. I wonder if the day will come when you dream the same thing about me.

New Year

You are upstairs with your dad watching the Disney Robin Hood movie, "the foxes one, not the people one, the people one is for older kids." We have been on a quest for movies with knights in them for you, and tried A Knight's Tale ("I think this one is for older kids") and The Princess Bride a couple of times ("too scary!"). Last night we did Ivanhoe, which as far as we can tell was a success, though in was a bit surreal having a forbidden exotic Jewess love subplot lying in wait in an 11th century English knight movie, with Robin Hood and King Richard and a ton of arrows and some really solid swordfighting scenes, to say nothing of jousting.

"There's too much talking, I want to see the joust!" you said. Reasonable. You also had to wear you knight costume, which consists of hauberk, cape, sash, helmet, sword, and shield made from an Amazon box. Also your "knight pants," which are sweatpants Ama found somewhere that for whatever reason have a shield on them.

You have been a little under the weather this week, though we can't figure out what's up. You are COVID negative, but have no appetite and are very tried, but insist that you feel okay. Tonight something hit you the wrong way and I unlocked a motherhood level by having you spit up at the dining table at Maddie's into my cupped hands, which I quickly secreted away in a paper towel. Fortunately we had an extra shirt.

"Look at it this way," your dad said as we wheeled you home in your red carriage. "That's not the first time someone has barfed at that table at Maddie's."

True.

Earlier this afternoon we made a snowman together, which was charming and idyllic. Your talking has gotten so much better that at Christmastime Ginger and Brian exclaimed over how much progress you must be making in speech therapy, but you haven't actually begun speech therapy. Nor will you, at this rate, given that they have no placement available for you. They keep wanting us to do interminable intakes and meetings and so far you have received zero services of any kind, despite it having been three months. All of which underscores my suspicion that early intervention is largely a scam designed to bilk insurance companies, and any advances can be explained away by growing. But I am a curmudgeon, Succotash. You know this already.

What else? We had Will and Irina and Clara come for Christmas, and it was largely a success. Clara, who is almost six, enjoyed setting up treasure hunts for you, which was adorable to see as we hunted around the house for a driedel shaped box filled with chocolates which she had hidden in some folds of the Christmas tree skirt. She had a slightly rough time Christmas morning, under the impression that you had received more presents than she did. Oh, well. I can't control if kindly neighbors wish to give you presents. So it goes.

We have started going to Old North on Sundays, which you like because of the music, and because of the lemonade and snacks afterwards.

Some terms of art: "yogurt milk" for the little yogurts you now enjoy drinking, "sticky drink" for apple cider. We are trying to wean, and when I say "we" I mean "me," because you are still very committed to nursing. "I love nursing," you will say with a wistful sigh. We've made some progress stopping nursing at night, but honestly, you're closing in on 3 1/2 and I don't want to scar you for life by carrying on so long you remember it.

Clara was also a reluctant weaner who nursed well into her third year. I tried to introduce this as a point of common interest for you two to discuss. "Yeah," she said, nodding. "I'm still kind of obsessed with my mom's breasts." So, maybe it's too late? Oh well. You do excitedly cry "Boobs! I want to nurse on them!" when I get undressed for the shower. Guessing the ship has sailed.

After Christmas we went to Houston to see my parents, and it was a really lovely visit. I got some nice footage of you handing Nana Christmas presents, and playing piano with Grandpa, and pretending to conduct Grandpa like in An American in Paris. You are largely unaware of this, but in the past week or two my mom has suffered a severe setback, in part because of her and Dad finally getting COVID, and maybe because of Paxlovid interfering with all her Alzheimer's meds. I've been very on edge for a couple of weeks, under pressure at work (three book contracts, not enough feedback, and not being paid on time), and under pressure to help my mother, for whom I can do nothing meaningful beyond traveling to see her, prattling to her on the telephone about you, and sending her a walker from Amazon. Between that and weaning, I haven't been the mother I want to be to you. For that I am sorry. I'm trying to do better. It's hard going, midlife. I'm glad it's a good long time before you are there.

Tomorrow you and I are going to Shore Country Day for a shadow visit. We applied for you before we bailed on New York after the cluster that was the beginning of the school year at Flatiron. We'll find out soon enough if you get in. Initially we'd planned for you to do another year at Harborlight, but now it seems that while you are growing socially by leaps and bounds, you aren't actually learning anything. You know, like letters, or numbers. You can't tell the difference between yellow and green. I guess we could be working harder on that stuff at home, but I think I assumed that you were, you know... going to school? 

Anyhoo. We'll see what happens. Presumably by the time you read this, should that time ever come, you will have sorted out that yellow and green are different. Or maybe they aren't different, and you have no truck with arbitrary and culturally-determined distinctions? You already reject the artificial choices that all the parenting books say we should offer to give you a sense of agency and authority. "Do you want your horserider shirt with the hood, or a bowtie shirt?" I'll ask you. "No shirt!" you will say with an impish grin, a grin that tells me that you know you have to wear a shirt, but the choice I've just offered is meaningless. I know it is, my smart boy. I know it is.