Social Awareness

 You have started to come up with ways to persuade us to do things.

This morning I told you that this afternoon after school we are going to have a playdate with Ryan.

You got all excited. "Will I get to go into the basement and play?" you said.

"Well," I told you. "I think today what's going to happen is Ryan and his brother AJ are going to come over to our house. You get to show them some of your toys."

"Oh!" you said. But then you put on a face of extreme concern. "But Ryan might be disappointed that we don't have any Nerf guns."

You, my crafty son, are very keen to be given a Nerf gun.

"I think it'll be okay," I assured you. "After all, he doesn't have as much vintage Fisher Price as you do."

"Oh yes!" you were relieved. "He likes Fisher Price. We like the same things, because we are best friends!"

I can't wait to see your next move in the great Nerf Gun Scheme of 2023.

I haven't met any sons today.

This is a new game you like to play. You will all of a sudden transform into someone else.

"I haven't met any sons today," you inform me. 

"You haven't?" I say.

"Yes. Do you have a son? I'm just a knight/pirate/space ranger/harpooner. I haven't met your son."

"Oh that's too bad," I say. "He's so cool. I think you'd really like him."

"Was he here just a minute ago?" you ask, all concerned.

"I thought so," I say. "I hope he comes back soon. He's so great. He's tall, and handsome, and funny, and a good friend, and his name is Charles."

Often the game will then continue with your alter ego evincing confusion about something Charles knows really well. "I don't know what a restaurant is, I'm just a knight," you explain. "I'm from the olden times."

"Oh I see," I say. "Well, a restaurant is a place where we go a a neighbor makes food for us. My son Charles really likes this restaurant."

Sometimes your alter ego will transform into another alter ego before Charles comes back.

"He's got your imagination and my ability to free-associate," your dad remarked to me the other night.

Other recent innovations:

"Behold!" you said, presenting me a book to read at bedtime with a flourish.

And the other night, when we were talking about a particular book we might want to read, you put on your best Fred Savage in The Princess Bride expression and said "Are you trying to trick me?"

And your dad cracked up and added "Is this a kissing book?"

We think it was your first conversational movie reference. If my son had been here, he would have loved it. 

Solutions

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?"

Kramer vs. Kramer

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. 

Egg

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. 

Big Questions

"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. 

Kawasaki Days

My most wonderful Succotash, I'm so sorry it's been so long since I've recorded the doings of your life here. The truth is, your mother has had her bandwidth reduced to near zero in the past few weeks. So, a quick summary of where we are in your life right now:

You are, at the moment, upstairs watching one of the apparently one zillion Toy Story spinoffs, in your "pajammmies" with your dad and Ama. Last night, for the record, watching Toy Story 3, your father and I were both in tears reflecting on how all children grow up and that one day you, too, will outgrow your toys and there was also an elderly dog and I really couldn't cope.

Last Tuesday Montessori called because you had a headache. We went home that night and took it easy. You developed a fever, then a rash, and then in the night you barfed up rivers of chocolate protein shake the likes of which I hadn't seen since the Great Scallop Mishap of 2021, when you were only one year old. We went to the doctor on Tuesday, when your eyes started to redden. The short version: we are monitoring you for Kawasaki disease, which is a rare systemic inflammation response that is very treatable, but if not caught in time can damage your heart. Your favorite friend Gabriel's mother Sarah is, thankfully, a pediatrician with privileges at Boston Children's, which also, thankfully, has the world's expert on Kawasaki. For a time it was looking like we were going to take you to the ER this morning. We are at the moment holding off and it looks like we'll be taking you tomorrow morning for outpatient evaluation instead. I am, as you can imagine, only pretending to hold it together. 

Other things: in May I had to go to Houston for two weeks because we moved my mother, Nana, into hospice care. She died on May 31, while I held her hand and told her stories about our trips to New York when I was a child and then read her the part of Eloise in Paris where Eloise and Nanny are calling everyone to tell them they are leaving for Paris France. Bon voyage and merci beaucoup. Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye.

This has affected you in indirect ways. It was hard for both of us to have me gone so long. Also you can tell that I am off. I was incredibly stressed out in the weeks leading up to my being gone, due both to Nana's failing health and also to my being under absurd pressure at work. (I actually read Nana the first pass page proofs of my Astor book for the first stage of my sitting with her on her deathbed, which I told myself Mom would appreciate, both because she would have enjoyed the book, and because Mom was as much a workaholic as I am. But it's still ridiculous that I had to do that. Maybe one day as an adult you will understand how indefensibly ridiculous that is.) While you didn't really ever develop much of a relationship with my Mom - a fact that by itself made me mourn what I had for so long imagined when I was trying to have you - you are nevertheless processing this otherwise vague loss. Your biggest loss up to this point was Milo, who you knew and loved, and who was there one moment and then gone the next. We see pictures of him and tell stories about him still, and you sometimes profess to miss him. I don't think you will miss Nana per se. But you have been affected by how it has affected me, and for that I am sorry. 

I can tell because at moments of high dudgeon lately you will say what I imagine is, to you, the worst thing imaginable. You will bellow "BAD GUYS," or more commonly "EVERYONE DIED." 

Unfortunately you have been in some dudgeons lately. You are now on a behavioral modification plan at school, because you continue to hit kids in your class. Your dad and I are really baffled by it all, as you have largely moved past that behavior at home, and at the playground. Sometimes you will even run around playing with new friends without my intervention. School has asked us to stop letting you pretend you are a pirate or a knight, which I find utterly heartbreaking. We are trying to think through what we should do. Is 20 kids too many in a classroom for you? Shore, where I really want you to go, only has ten kids in a class. It's telling that your dad's and my class backgrounds come so much to the fore when we are worrying about you at school. I worry "What if he doesn't get into the prep school I really want for him?" Your dad worries "What if he's a sociopath and he goes to prison?" I don't think that's very likely, fortunately. 

On the upside, you are tall, and handsome, and merry, and warm, and hopefully you don't have Kawasaki. You are getting more articulate, and have a really wonderful vocabulary. "Bewildered means confused, Mama," you explained to me as we read together one night.

And that is where we stand at the beginning of summer when you are three and a half years old.