"It's a smooth as a thousand midnights," you said about something recently, though what you were describing hasn't lodged itself in my mind as much as your characterization of it has.
Also, this morning, when I asked you if you were in the air next to your dad before you were born, as you have claimed to have been in the air next to me, you said "No, I was a shooting star, with a face."
You told me you didn't want snuggles, but wanted to lie in your bed and listen to Harry Potter. So I climbed into my bed, and did word puzzles while Harry Potter played.
I heard rustling.
I peeked and found you looking at a book.
"What book is that?" I asked. "Are you looking at the cover of Harry Potter while you listen to the story?"
"No," you said. "It's this one." You showed me the cover. It was a paperback of Annie Van Sinderen, a ghost story I published ten years ago or so.
"Oh, that's my book," I said, surprised. "Why are you looking at that one?"
"I don't know," you said. "I want to cuddle it."
"Why?"
"Well you see, Mama, if I cuddle a book written by someone I love, then it's like I'm cuddling them."
I came over to your bed. I gave you a kiss. We tucked the book under your pillow, and I gave you Manatee to hold because he is soft, and then I lay down next to you until you fell asleep.
You are growing, my Succotash. You have just begun your official year of PreK at Harborlight, which will be your third in the same classroom, with Miss Sue and your friends and Monty the rabbit. I realized just after you and your Dad left this morning that I forgot to pack your nap blanket. I wonder how it will go?
Last night was a watershed moment. We've introducing the idea of you sleeping in your own bed at last. We set up the trundle bed, which I used to sleep in when I was very small, and on which all my sleepover friends crashed throughout my entire childhood. It's been a bit bumpy, with you missing our snuggles and claiming you just needed a break. I promised you that you would get all the snuggles that you needed at bedtime and in the morning, but that you would sleep better without snoring grownups.
Well guess what? Last night you drifted off to sleep in my arms in your bed while I read to you from the Great Illustrated Classics version of Moby Dick. You had a bunny nightlight, glowing red, and a little sticky dinosaur thing that you won as a prize for being so good at the dentist, whom you have named "Mr. Squishy," watching over you. You had Manatee and Henry the Dog (gifted to you when we checked in to our hotel in London at the beginning of the summer), and Chompy (crocodile won with Cora at the fair on Martha's Vineyard last month) and the as yet unnamed red dragon given to you by Claire when we went to play in castle ruins in Wales. I love that you love stuffies. I pulled up the comforter, tucked it around your shoulders, watched you for a few more minutes (I do that, you don't know it, but I do), and then you slept. All night. No wakeups, no crying out. You slept alone in your bed for the entire night for the very first time.
The first time we tried this, about a year or so ago, I missed you terribly. I don't know if I would have parented this way in the absence of a global pandemic in your babyhood, but for a long time I felt constitutionally incapable of having you sleep in another bed, away from my arms, where I couldn't immediately smell your hair and feel your breathing. Fortunately you and I were aligned in this respect.
I can tell that you are ready for more independence now. And I am ready too. I am so proud of you.
Another thing - yesterday was the last day the pool was open for the season, and I sat shivering in a bathing suit while I oversaw your play in the baby pool during All Out. A small mob of other kids were there, splashing, whining, shouting, snatching, ignoring their parents when summoned for lunch. You were so absorbed in practicing holding your breath, floating on your stomach with your goggles on, looking around, doing projects of your own devising, that all the chaos rolled right by you. You are a self-determined little person. You keep your own counsel. I admire that about you. Not a follower or member of the mob, is Succotash.
But a growing little boy all the same. You are still four, but only for another month.
Yesterday at the yacht club pool you climbed up onto the diving board without any floaties on and jumped in! I was treading water waiting for you down below, and the moment you disappeared under the water was, not gonna lie, terrifying. ("No really for real for real, I'm not lying, for real" as you sometimes say). But up you paddled, breaking the surface with a huge grin, and half swum, half climbed onto me as we paddled our way to the side of the deep end.
"Mama, did I make a big splash?" you asked. Yes, my Succotash, the biggest! Your first real cannonball. You really are a big kid. How did that happen?
Then you held the side and "monkey walked" all the way around the edge of the pool back to the stairs. You spent the rest of the afternoon climbing out of the pool and jumping back in, climbing out and jumping back in, until you were so exhausted that you almost fell asleep in the car on the way home.
"I need more relaxing time!" you wailed when we pulled up at the house. But we made it home, and you played in the shower while I warmed up leftovers for burritos, and we had a nice dinner with Grandpa before going upstairs to finish The Muppet Movie.
"Sparkling muscatel," you quote to me. "One of the finest wines of Idaho."
You have taken to claiming that you passed your swim test. I'm not sure if this is a literal thing that happened at day camp, or a reference to a plot point in "Jabari Jumps," about a boy who decides he is ready to jump off the diving board.
This is your last week at Devereaux day camp, which I think has been largely a success. Next week, another set of half days of the Peewee program at Gatchells Playground, and then we have a week of Appleton Farm Camp. And then friends some to stay, and then it's back to school. Change is in the air. But summer isn't over yet.
"What do you call a three humped camel? PREGNANT!"
"Why did the teddy bear not eat his dessert? Because he was already stuffed!"
"Wanna hear a squirrel joke? I forgot to bury a nut for winter and now I'm DEAD! It's funny because the squirrel is dead."
"Mama, can I be a writer too when I grow up? And at the end of every day, when I'm finished writing, I can come over to your house and tell you what book I wrote."
You said this to me as we walked from the Red Menace to your Pee Wee group at Gatchell's Playground this morning, where you are doing a week of day camp run by Parks and Rec. Today is tie dye day. You have grumbled after your first two days of playground camp, but it's only a half day long, and you get indulgent grandparent time after.
It's been a busy start to the summer for us. After you finished Montessori in mid-June, we took you on your first ever trip overseas, to England for ten days.
We landed in London and stayed at a fancy place near Buckingham Palace, wherein you promptly developed norovirus and we spent a miserable 36 hours surfing on rivers of barf. "I hate England," you said, and we really couldn't blame you. We traded off lying with you in the room while you drifted in and out of sleep and watched Garfield on your travel tablet, while I had a couple of meetings and at one point your dad went to a museum. But! Our inauspicious beginning was soon shaken off.
First, we passed through Paddington Station and obtained a real Paddington Bear on our way to the train to take us to Hereford, just outside of Wales, where my high school friend lives with her family. We stayed at the Green Dragon Inn, which we think was very grand one hundred years ago, and which now is cooled by a lazy oscillating fan and open windows facing the street across from a karaoke bar. We roamed the streets and you enjoyed shouting "pigeons!" and chasing them with abandon and glee. The next day we met up with my friend and her two children for a day that was nothing short of magical. You and Edward both enjoy dressing up. Edward was 11, Imogen 9, and the three of you ran riot in the ruins of a castle in Wales, surrounded by a real moat choked with weeds and lily pads. We explored towers and threw pebbles down sinkholes and climbed crumbling staircases, and then we all stopped for a picnic. We obtained a costume of chainmail (the first in several costume elements acquired on our travels). Then we drove to a hedge maze. You and Imogen disappeared instantly, and I couldn't find you! I stopped by the observation platform to ask another mother if she might be able to see a small boy dressed in chain mail, as I was worried you would be scared being separated from me. HA. Instead you an Imogen solved the maze faster than the rest of us! I was pretty blown away. And THEN we took you to an arcade for the first time, where you discovered some kind of water gun zombie shooting game with your dad, and the pleasures of earning tickets, and Edward and Imogen even consented to ride the tiny spinning teacups with you. That night we adjourned home for pizza and the grownups talked while you introduced Imogen to Peter and Wendy. It was a truly marvelous day.
We also had fun in Lincoln, looking at churches and castles, and then we went on to Nottingham for the full Robin Hood experience. Nottingham castle was torn apart during the Reformation and rebuilt as a ducal estate, but that didn't stop them from having a wonderful Robin Hood exhibit, with interactive archery and stick fighting games, actors hypothesizing about the historical antecedents for the Robin Hood stories, and also a playground nestled in a shady glade. We obtained a Lincoln green Robin Hood tunic and matching hat with a real feather. And we visited Ye Old Trip to Jerusalem public house, which supposedly was a 12th century waystation for knights about to leave for the Crusades. We checked out several Robin Hood statues, chased pigeons in the market square, and read Robin Hood stories on a walking tour. We also stayed in a strange Gothic revival guesthouse on the University of Nottingham campus, also cooled by oscillating fans, with our own dining room downstairs for breakfast. We explored the woods behind the house, and pretended it was Sherwood forest. We didn't find Robin's last arrow, but we looked pretty hard.
From Nottingham we went on to York (actually, I think we went on to Lincoln, and then York), where we walked castle walls, added a quiver to your Robin Hood costume, explored a mock Victorian streetscape, rode a carousel - your first time on a horse that moves! It was a big moment - and most importantly, went on a time machine (your words) back to the Viking era. This was at the Jorvik Viking Center, where we rode a Jurassic Park like tour ride through highly detailed, uncanny-valley-dwelling Viking animatronics. It was actually better than I expected, and I suspect this might prove to be one of your core memories (that and the zombie water guns, of course). By the time we reached York you had moved from "I love England" to "I'm going to live in England when I'm a teenager!" You and I played in a park while your dad visited another church, and then met us in a funny cafe inside a gatehouse on an ancient bridge. We stayed in a sprawling hotel by the train station, with a pool in the basement where you and I played with Muppet Babies.
Then it was back on the train to London, where we had dinner with your dad's cousin Eren and his wife, and you and I went to bed early. We ticked off so many things from your "L is for London" book, including riding on a real double decker bus. Then a very long plane ride home where we were bumped to the snazzier class and you were given a free sack with sunglasses inside.
Now we are settling back into summer in Marblehead, having survived a first week of Devereaux day camp, our July 4 party, and a long visit from Kett and Peter, where you and Peter mostly played together wonderfully but also drove each other slightly nuts. Such are friendships. It's exciting, watching you build these relationships on your own, really for the first time. We have finally reached the point of "you guys go play while we cook," and "hey guys! Dinner's ready!" During our party you and Peter and James up the street all dressed in 18th Century pirate regalia and ran riot with Nerf guns, including periodic bellowing raids delivered from the back porch.
We haven't taken you sailing yet, as I've been on a varnishing tear and we've had to pull out the rotting plywood in the cuddy. But soon. I have a dissertation to write and you have day camp to attend. Today is tie dye day and I'm curious to see what you come home with, arms painted in stripes. You are growing, and changing, and a wonderful traveler.
"Mama, can we go to Paris next?" you asked. Yes, my Succotash. We can.
Last Friday we picked you up from school and went on a road trip. You were excited to drive on the freeway, since we never get to go fast. Lately you've been thinking a lot about Spiderman, and so you are full of ideas for ways that the Red Menace (our name for our Toyota RAV 4, because we are hilarious) can morph into a superhero car, either by spouting wings, or driving straight up walls, etc. etc. We were on our way to Exeter, New Hampshire for the Exeter Lit fest, a small potatoes thing that my publicist put me up for, and which I normally would have done just myself in the afternoon without bothering to stay. But instead I got us a snazzy room in the Exeter Inn. It had a suite, and it had the biggest jetted bathtub you had ever seen. After we had dinner in the restaurant, you played in the tub for something like three hours. It was epic.
The next day was trickier. You are generally a good traveler, but the weather didn't help - it's been cold and rainy for months now, as global warming has taken what used to be snow and turned it into dispiriting frigid rain. We went to an event at the library for kids as part of the lit fest, and your dad and I were joking that instead of the two children's authors just... you know... reading stories, they gave presentations on where their ideas come from, and how you get a children's book made. With Powerpoint. It was like being at a McKinsey deck presentation. "Now if you'll turn to page two in your packets, you will see that...." No, it wasn't that bad, but we did bail early and go find a playground. And then we found another playground. We romped through damp snow as a cold drizzle poured down gently upon us.
We had checked out of the inn already, so even when you started to lose it at the taqueria and were desperate for a nap there was nowhere to take you. You and your dad dropped me off at the town hall for my panel and then drove around while you snoozed.
My panel - "New England in literature" - was tiresome and boring. Partway through, while the author to my right ranted about how too many new people are streaming into Maine, I saw you and your dad sneak in the door. You left almost immediately. It turns out you left because you were so upset that I didn't come down off the dais and run over and immediately give you a hug. Which, of course, is what I wanted to do. I would always rather hug you than sit on some dumb panel about New England literature. You were so upset, though, that you were still made at me even after the panel was over and we were together again.
We dropped you at your grandparents apartment and then went to a fundraiser for Montserrat, where your Godlessfather Brian is the newly installed president. We had fun, chatting with people, we bought a cool photo at the auction, we had snacks, all was right with the world, and then we went and picked you up.
I don't know exactly when I had the sinking realization that we had made a fatal error, but I believe it was on the drive from your grandparents back to our house.
I realized that I had not seen Baby Faff since bedtime the night before.
I didn't pack Baby Faff. You are too little to remember to check for things, for the most part, and so you hadn't packed Baby Faff either. Your dad had checked the whole suite, but not *in the bed.* Baby Faff tends to get pushed down under the covers. My heart sank. We got home and I immediately hid in the bathroom to call the inn. Have you found Baby Faff? No answer. I left a message. Then I sent an email. Please please please, help, we forgot Baby Faff! I looked at you, happily romping around upstairs, and realized I had to tell you that we had left Baby Faff. The trick is, Baby Faff is pretty small. He's easy to overlook. Some stuffies are large, they contain multitudes. Baby Faff is a small secondhand beanbag with a little tail and a charmingly lopsided face. With terror I realized that Baby Faff might never come home.
I started to cry. "Charles," I said, "I have to tell you something. I made a mistake."
Your face took on a brave cast, but also started to crumple. "This is why, Mama, we have to be careful with things that we love."
"You're right," I said. "I'm so sorry." We held each other, sobbing. When your Dad arrived upstairs he was baffled to find us both weeping as though someone had died.
Of course, someone had died. Not Baby Faff, though I do "make his voice come," as you put it, and you will often discuss your day and your concerns more freely with Baby Faff than you will with just me. I was really sobbing for your babyhood. Baby Faff was with us in Puerto Rico when you turned three, our first trip after lockdown, when we all finally got COVID. He was with us in New York. He went with you and me to Houston. Baby Faff was a handmedown who arrived in a box of other giraffe stuffies from the Vermillion kids, but something about him - his smallness, his softness, who knows what - made him more special even than his Mama Faff and Daddy Faff. Maybe it's because Baby Faff is so clearly you, the object on which you can project your own worries and concerns. Recently, while watching the Toy Story where Andy is doing off to college and gives his special toys away, you informed me that Baby Faff would go to college with you.
You fell asleep and while you snored I frantically searched the internet for a simulacra of Baby Faff. I failed to identify his precise brand and make and model, or whatever the distinguishing characteristics of stuffies are. And anyway, you would have known the difference. There is only one Baby Faff. We slept that night with Manatee alone.
The next morning you and I got up early, leaving your dad to sleep, and we went to the family room to watch Spiderman. Then I sneaked to the kitchen to make coffee and call the inn again.
And - heavens be praised! THEY HAD FOUND BABY FAFF. He was safe and sound at the front desk. What time would I like to go pick him up?
Two hours round trip later, during which I listened to five chapters of a now-forgotten John P. Marquand novel, I returned, Baby Faff in hand. I think I was more relieved than you were, though you did ask Baby Faff if he had made friends with the other stuffies in the lost and found. Then we all had a nap together, exhausted by so many emotional highs and lows. When you feel asleep, Baby Faff was in your left hand.
Today there is a solar eclipse, and it is also your half birthday. You are four and one half years old. There is so little I can control for you. So little I can really safeguard, or make happen. But at least this one time, with one little well-loved baby giraffe beanbag stuffie came home for you. Some faith in the world restored.
Well, my sweet Succotash, I continue to worry about what to do to help you at school. Everyone at your Montessori means well, but I'm increasingly convinced that you need to be in a place with a smaller class size, and maybe with more structure. More than anything, I want you to be in a place where your uniqueness is celebrated. They couch everything in therapyspeak, about how you "continue to be supported" in this circumstance, and "continue to have opportunities for growth" in other places. I can't help but think you must sense that you're not fitting in to their schema. You seem happy and confident there, which I guess is good. I don't know. I think you are spending so much emotional energy trying to keep yourself together that you don't have any bandwidth left for learning. This is why you can memorize whole 150 page books verbatim, but can't reliably remember which color is yellow.
I'm signing you up for lacrosse, where an enthusiasm for sticks and for hopping up and down and for throwing really hard and even mowing some other kid down might actually get you praised instead of disciplined but in a way so mealymouthed everyone pretends it isn't discipline.
I love you so much. I see your openmouthed smile and I want to shower you with kisses, and I wish I could just explain it to you. I wish I could be like, look, I know so much of this stuff is boring. I know most people aren't that interesting to talk to. I'm not going to sit here and lie to you and pretend that everyone in your class is nice or worth knowing. That wasn't true in my class, it wasn't true for me. It's not even true for me now. But the fact of the matter is, you just have to cope. You can be angry. That's fine. But you can't hit people. You can need more space for yourself. But you can't get it by shoving. You have to use your brain, to secure your space. Your life will be more pleasant if you can find a way to make friends. Not with everybody. But with a few quality people. I wish I could just have a conversation with you about it. But you're only 4!
Soon we are getting you a neuropsych evaluation. I suspect it is going to tell us that you have ADHD. I don't know what that will mean in terms of school or parenting or whatever. But I have it in my head that what you really need is a boys school. One that looks at your energy and vivacity and mile-a-minute allusions and ideas and imagination and says, yes! Yes! You are a wonderful bright kid who just needs some extra guardrails to help you cope! Also, go play lacrosse! Run some kids down like a locomotive! Do it!
I'm frustrated that your speech therapy seems to be making no difference whatsoever. Increasingly I feel that therapy is a scam. I don't know. How the heck do they measure outcomes for this anyway?
Some funny things you've said lately: You confuse "Empire" and "vampire," so you say "Empires suck blood from ladies' necks." Which is kind of true, in a way.
You're resisting learning the alphabet. I don't know what to do about that.
Essentially, you are stubborn. Like your parents. You want to do what you want to do, and nothing else. Just like your parents.
I'm worried your current school sees only your behavior, and not your potential. That's what it comes down to. I need to figure out how to get you somewhere that will see all your infinite, astonishing potential, and unleash it.
Needing a change of scene and craving friend time for both of us, I scooped you up and we flew to Houston for February break, just the two of us. I got you your very own suitcase, with a built in scooter, which was really genius. You loved it, quickly mastered steering, and could largely handle your belongings yourself. And when you were tired, as you sometimes were, you could ride and I could push you and my own suitcase with relative ease. It felt freeing. You are in that cusp moment, of still part baby in some respect - needing snuggles, still reaching for my breasts for a stealth grope or kiss out of strong somatic memory for when they were the source of all comfort, still liable to an occasional meltdown when too hungry or too tired. But then, who among us isn't? And you are also a great companion now.
I packed our schedule with playdates for you, and it was actually marvelous. We went to the zoo. We exhausted ourselves but refused to miss riding the train. We tried napping but it was too exciting staying at my aunt's house. We saw Grandpa play a piano recital. We played in a backyard fort. We hit playgrounds. We went to friends' houses. At one of them you ran around wreaking havoc with a water gun while I gave a phone interview to some magazine in Florida, and then we all ended up back in the pool. Then you and two friends dressed in full pirate regalia and ate buttered pasta while watching Muppet Treasure Island and I sat outside on an elegantly lit patio and spoke with adults. We even went to a color museum with Grandpa, playing with huge balloons, throwing confetti, dancing with headphones on, and wading through the biggest ball pit I have ever seen in my life.
I was exhausted by the time we made it home, but I'm so glad we went. We got sun, and fresh air, and wore shorts, and went swimming, and ate different food (that part was a little hard on your tummy, poor guy), and had so much practice just being with other people.
Maybe it's my disillusionment about not getting into Shore. I am furious at them, still, weeks later. You are testing at benchmarks ready for Kindergarten a full year early, Succotash, with the exception of knowing your letters. We're going to have you checked for dyslexia, as I've noticed that to you lower case p, b, d, and q all look the same. I'm sympathetic - they look the same to me too. Don't worry, we'll sort this out. But I have to tell you, I have never felt a rage as pure and unadulterated as the fury that gripped me when I felt that an institution was standing between you and the opportunities I want for you. I have no wish to be a snowplow parent. I love watching you push yourself. Take little risks. You're liking climbing more, you are testing your independence. I'm excited for you. I felt like you grew up, a bit, as we traveled. Your brain drinking in different experiences, different places, different people.
It's all left me thinking more seriously about Baltimore. A city. A real one. With art, and culture, different people, different food. If we moved there, you wouldn't have to miss your dad two days a week. They have schools there that seem to understand boys, and I'm increasingly convinced that your boyness is part of why you haven't been well understood by a school yet. We could keep Marblehead, still have our summers here, still have sailing and summer camp and nothing says you couldn't go to boarding school for high school if that's what you wanted. There is a community of writers there. Universities. A bigger world.
But it's a big change.
I don't know. We'll see.
You, last night: "Mama, you know where I was before I was born?"
Me: "Where?"
You: "I was air! See?" *points at picture of me in college* "There I am! I'm the air right next to you."
A new year! Yesterday we had a lazy day while you had a sniffle and your dad's arrival home was delayed by a huge snowstorm. We awoke from a long nap to discover the snow was finally here, and put on our snowsuits and went outside anyway even though it was getting dark. I pulled you on your sled around the garden, and then up and down the sidewalk, then we stopped to shovel and salt the sidewalk, and we decided we needed to go sledding, so I pulled you to the fort and we made snow angels and ran around and threw snowballs and played.
This morning your dad was finally home. "Daddy! You missed all the snow fun yesterday!" you said.
Lately, like your mother, you have been resisting getting out of bed before your due allotment of snuggles. You tend to wake up, ask for a chocolate milk, and then want to lie under the covers a little longer.
The other day you were snuggling with your dad, and he asked you if you were ready to get up.
"No," you said. "I still have some coziness to get out."
I love that idea. That you get so full of coziness, and nothing will relieve it but snuggles.
Tomorrow is your visit to Shore Country Day. I'm worried about how early in the morning we will have to get up, and am wondering about the ethical and parenting implications to using leftover Christmas Godiva chocolates as a bribe. We shall see.
