Your Dad: "Charles, we need to go to bed earlier so you get enough sleep before school. What do you think should we do?"
You: "I think we should pile rocks around the bed so we can't get out of bed in the morning."
Dad: "That's not what I said. I said we need to go to bed earlier."
You: "What about bricks?"
Your other favorite game is one that you don't know your Dad and I call "Kramer vs. Kramer," after a famous film from when we were little kids starring Meryl Streep and Dustin Hoffman about a brutal custody battle. (I know. We're hilarious.)
In this game you and I snuggle, and your Dad pretends to steal you away. This is best played in the pool or in bed, somewhere where we can wrangle over you in safety. Your Dad says "Gimme that baby!" and then takes you into his arms and snuggles you.
And then he says "You want to go to your mama?" While I loudly protest that you are my baby, he can't have you, he has to give you back to me. And you say "Yes! I want to go to my mama!" And Daddy pretends to give you back to me, and I hold out my arms, but at the last minute he snatches you away and smothers you with snuggles and says "Nope! You're all mine! You're my baby, just for me!" And this goes on for awhile until finally he surrenders you to my arms and I sign with relief and say "I got my baby back hooray!"
And then you ask to play it again. You call this game "The game where Daddy tries to steal me." You love it because you are the center of attention and affection and we are shameless in our expressions of how much we love you. Usually we end with all three of us in one big hug, sometimes making a "Charles sandwich."
When I was little Nana and Granpa would pick me up and we would do "Everybody loves everybody!" where we would all do a big three way hug, and after we got our dog Muffin we would have to pick up Muffin (poor Muffin) so she could be in "everybody loves everybody" with us. An early iteration of the Charles sandwich. God help whatever poor creature winds up being your pet and brought into the Charles sandwich too.
Time was, when we took you out of the bath or shower we would wrap you up in a towel and say "I'm going to wrap you up like a Roman senator! I'm going to wrap you up like Seneca!" while rubbing you down with terry cloth, and you would giggle.
Lately, at least for the past few months, you prefer to step out of the shower and play "egg." This game requires both parents to be present (as you have sadly informed me on evenings when I've tried to play egg while your Dad was still downstairs). It entails covering you with a towel completely so that you are totally hidden and sitting in a ball. Then I have to loudly discover you are there.
"Lou!" I'll exclaim. "Look at this huge egg I just found!"
"What egg?" your Dad will say, often standing at the sink and brushing his teeth.
"This egg! I don't remember laying an egg. But I must have, because there's an egg right here. Do you think there is a chick inside?"
"I hope so," says your Dad. At the point the egg starts giggling.
"I had better sit on it and keep it warm," I say. I don't actually sit on the egg, but I do hug it and rub its back through the towel with my hands and sometimes shower kisses on its head. At this point, the egg with sometimes start to move.
"Lou!" I call. "The egg! It just moved!"
"It did??" Out pops one Charles foot.
"Yes, look! A little baby chick foot is sticking out!"
"A little baby chick!"
"Yes! Look, now there are two little baby chick feet!"
This will go on for some time as we excitedly discuss the imminent hatching of our new little baby chick, and then when you can't stand the suspense one more minute you will throw off the towel and say "Hatch!"
And then I will hug you and kiss you and exclaim over how happy I am that I have a brand new baby chick, and how much I love it. And you will pretend to be a chick who is just born and can't fly, and sometimes I will offer you pretend worms out of my hand, and you will pretend to eat them. And then gradually you will grow and try flapping your wings and eventually you will run naked around the bedroom and then, when it's time to put pajammies on, you will tell me "Now I'm back to being a human."
And then we all go to bed.
I think this game came about because we read a picture book that I remember loving as a child, called How Fletcher was Hatched. This book is not what I would call a "good" book. But it's about a big hound dog who thinks the way to make his favorite girl love him again is to pretend to be a baby chick, and so his good friends Otter and Beaver make a huge egg around him out of clay, and then the egg is discovered and Fletcher keeps very quiet while everyone wonders where it came from, until he hears Alexandra, his girl, crying because she misses Fletcher. And then he hatches! And I think it's also a way for you to process how you feel about not being a baby anymore. Because you are growing and changing every day, and very soon, you will be four years old. My very own most favorite baby chick.
"Who was it, who I love, who died?" you asked me.
"It was Nana," I said. "My mama."
You considered this and then said "Oh yes." You thought another minute, and added "But Poppop isn't going to die, right?"
"Well," I said. "He is. But not for a long time. Poppop is very healthy."
"What is Poppop going to die of?" you asked.
"I don't know," I said. "Nobody knows."
"When is Poppop going to die?"
"I don't know. Not for a long time. You don't have to worry about it right now."
This mollified you for a bit, but not entirely. Later, upstairs, we were getting ready for nap. You were in bed and I was readying to lie down and hold you.
"Does everyone die?" you asked.
"Yes," I said.
Then, the worst question of them all. Your face changed, and you said "Am I going to die?"
My eyelids started to burn and I said "Yes. I am too. But not for such a very long time."
You started to tear up. "I don't want to die," you said.
My heart shattered into a million billion pieces and I said "Nobody does, sweet pea."
Then I put my arms around you and we cried softly together. "I'm sorry I had to be the one the tell you. It's a hard truth."
"It's okay, Mama," you said.
"You don't have to worry about it right now. We get to be together for a very, very, very long time." I can't bear to tell you that sometimes, it's not fair, when we die. Sometimes grownups die when their children are young. Sometimes children die too. It is not our birthright, my mother told me she realized when she had cancer, to live a long and happy life. But you are still only three. I still want to protect you from the beauty, miraculousness, and yet brutal unfairness of existence.
This morning, driving to school, you asked me, "Where did you put Nana when she died?"
"She's in a pretty garden right by where I went to church when I was growing up," I told you. "There's a fish pond and pretty flowers." I didn't tell you that I sobbed when Dad emptied the bag of ashes into the ground, and when the time came for me to leave, after all the receiving line and gentle smiles and hugs and thanks for coming were over, that I had a very hard time pulling my car away, looking over at this place where my mother both is, and is not.
"Where do we go, when we die?" you wanted to know.
Sometimes I wonder where you were, before you were born. Were you floating around in some nether haze, waiting to be formed? It it possible I ever lived in a world without you in it?
"No one knows," I said.
"But that place where people go when they die, what is it called?" you clarified.
"A cemetery," I said.
"Yes," you said. You looked out the window.
"Do you have any other questions?" I asked, looking at your face in the rear view mirror. You had some chocolate on your mouth, because I gave you chocolate pretzels as a special treat for breakfast today, because you have been reluctant to go to school. I worry that you are lonely there. I'm already planning to apply to other places for the year after next, when you are almost five.
You didn't answer.
"Would you like me to put the story back on?" I asked.
"Yes," you said. We are listening to Moby Dick. I turned the story back on, where we learn that Quequeeg is a Polynesian prince, and I think of you, my Ishmael, not yet four years old, as you stare down the barrel of the biggest questions of them all.
