epiphany

Noon, the kitchen lights off.  He sits in the dim blue air chewing orange slices, talking about his new bicycle helmet, thumping his palms on the table and bounce-kicking in the garish plastic booster he’s too old for but still enjoys. He’s backlit, the box window tracing his shape in a gentle blue that nestles in his curls. Rattling off lines from bedtime books, his round eyes look to mine for approval. At two and a half he’s shed the last signs of the toddler — he is all boy. He asks for more chocolate milk, shoulders in their rugby shirt squared to face me, neck lifted, anticipating. Yesterday’s hike shows in the sun splashed across his cheeks. He’s no copy of me: chestnut hair is lighter than mine, not as tangled; forehead wider, bolder; eyes Egyptian-pinched. But as he holds his cup with head tilted, awaiting my answer, it occurs to me, watching this little person as I finish the dishes in the sink: if I had the power to custom-craft a child, I would make him exactly like this. Curious, rambunctious, sincere. A bit ruddy, a bit tender. And absolutely perfect.

it’s not easy

In the middle of naptime he screams. One knee is twisted between two crib rails; pain and entrapment drive him to panic. Must’ve been playing instead of sleeping.

As my wife disentangles him, she gets a whiff of another stealth activity. Corroborating evidence surrounds him: smear across his chest, clawmarks on his sheet, makeup applied to the face of his stuffed cow. What arrived in his diaper is now everywhere.

I am summoned. Together we adults impress upon our child the seriousness of this infraction. Do not play with poopy. Do not even touch it. We strip him of his clothes, make a pile of blankets, sheets and Mr. Cow.

snow rebellion

Fluffy, quiet, all afternoon the flakes fell gently. He’d wanted to walk among them, to breathe in the world’s white transfiguration. By the time I organized myself, however, he’d already moved on.

“I want to play trains,” he intoned.

“Come on, it’s snow!” I coaxed. “Let’s get your boots on. We’ll have a great time.”

Cornered, his eyes sunk, lower lip retracted. “I want to play trains.”

through his eyes

I wish I could see life through my son’s eyes.

In his infancy we placed him on a colorful playmat with overhead toys. I shoved my face inside to feel what it was like.

I’ve positioned my head at his level in the carseat to figure out how much he sees as we drive (more than I expected). I’ve checked the view of a ceiling fan from the floor below (a steady circular motion, not the swoop-swoop-swooping oval from adult height). I’ve crouched to look straight up into the lighted mobile above his swing (brighter, more colorful than apparent from anywhere but the seat).

I’ve even used the excuse of “retrieving my son” to crawl through the multi-storied jungle gym at Chick-Fil-A (hey, they didn’t have those things when I grew up).

face-off

“Read to me?” he asked, patting the couch.

“Sure!” I plunked down and took the book from his lap.

“No!” He ripped the book from my hands. “I read it!”

By this he meant he wanted to hold the book and turn the pages himself while I read aloud. I understood this, even welcomed it. Good for him, taking steps toward independent reading.

Still, that didn’t justify the ferocity of his retrieval, and I shot him a look for it: brow raised, chin lowered, glaring over the rim of my glasses — a look that said, “Well!”

… and there he was, shooting a look right back: brow raised, chin lowered, glaring out of the tops of his eye sockets — a look that said, “That’ll show you!”

My wife, witness to this expressional face-off, burst out laughing. So did I. And so did he.

That particular expression is a regular in my repertoire, but I never knew what it looked like from the outside until my son aimed it back at me.

jumping Jesus

Things got a little weird when we unpacked our nativity scene.

Two and a half years old, our oldest showed little response as we unwrapped Mary and Joseph. But when baby Jesus emerged his whole face brightened: “Baby Jesus. Baby Jesus!” He snatched the figurine and cradled it in both palms, scrutinizing. So this was the Jesus person he’d heard so much about. I wondered what he was thinking, wondered how this image of an infant Christ was reshaping earlier impressions.

Within minutes he stood by the couch, raising and lowering the figurine in quick jerks. “Baby Jesus jumping. Baby Jesus jumping on the couch!” Our nativity had transformed into an action figure playset.

the second greatest story ever told

My older son came along to pick up a Papa John’s pizza. On the drive home it occurred to me that a two-year-old might not understand the nature of this little transaction, so I spelled it out for him in simple terms.

“Again?” he asked.

“You want to hear it again?” I asked. “Alright.” As I repeated the pizza-ordering process he echoed each line, enthusiasm mounting until we reached the climax.

“Again?” he asked.

By the time we were home he could voice the entire thing with me fluently:

This is how it works: when you get hungry you say, “Hmm, I think I want a pizza.” So you call the store and say, “Please make me a pizza.” And the store makes you a pizza with bread, tomatoes and cheese — that’s a pizza! Then you drive to the store and say, “Where’s my pizza?” They say, “Here it is!” So you give them money, and they give you the pizza. Then you drive home and you eat it!

What about this story delighted him so much? I suspect it was the first lengthy how-to narrative he’d ever heard. It spelled out a process from start to finish, and he could visualize each step easily because he experienced it with me.

How astounding it must be, hearing words paint the first full story in your mind.

unspoken rules

He was so curious about our 3D Tic-Tac-Toe set, I figured why not. How complicated is tic-tac-toe?

Very.

Forget strategy; forget even the concept of winning. As we played, my son gave me a step-by-step education on the numerous possibilities for invalidating a game.

It turns out board games require a host of principles we take for granted:

when ben was born

Just before my son was born, I wrote a memoir to the child we lost to miscarriage. It was a small way to capture thoughts, feelings and memories before they faded away.

In about a week we expect the birth of our next child, prompting my wife and I to revisit our first delivery. Since details about the two deliveries are bound to become muddled over time, it seemed appropriate to capture the first in words before the second oversweeps it.

I’ve posted the new piece as a page:

seedlings: when ben was born

what are we holding back?

Then we entered the stadium proper, and the amazement in his eyes made me consider just how much larger this place was than any other he’d seen. Seats swept in both directions so far they grayed with haze. In the tens of thousands, people shifted, churned, the moving sea of a landscape.

“All my life you knew this was happening,” his expression accused, his gaze struggling to take it all in, “and you never showed me?”

Two years one month old had seemed a strapping age for our son’s first baseball game — to us. To him it felt like betrayal. This is the boy who chokes on the bacon he shovels too quickly into his mouth. How dare we hold anything back?

I wonder what other experiences we’ve sheltered him from inadvertently. We try: no TV, regular excursions, playdates with other kids. But what have we missed that we don’t even realize? Parents almost need a checklist of experiences their children should be exposed to within the first two or three years.

Certainly, as a first-time parent of a boy only two years old, I’m no authority. But below is a first stab at creating an experience checklist.

true obedience

Jesus and Peter walked on water. The Israelites crossed the Red Sea on dry ground. Neil Armstrong planted his bootprints on the moon.

Next to those, the most astounding footsteps I know were just three or four in number, and they took place in my mother’s kitchen.

My son — compulsive, train-obsessed two-year-old boy — was crouched over the toy train track Grannie had set for him in a spare nook of kitchen floor. It was time to go. Knowing his propensity for emotional explosion, I’d issued a five-minute warning, then a two-minute warning … not that he had any such grasp of time, only to ready him for imminent disappointment.

Time was finally up. “Okay now, let’s go,” I said. “Come put on your shoes.”  Expecting the customary collapse and outburst, I was shifting position to lift him off the floor.

two

One is the loneliest number.

That’s my rule for dogs, which is mainly why we don’t have one: because we don’t want two.

Unlike cats, dogs are pack animals, immensely social. Given their druthers they’d never choose to be alone – yet we lock them in houses away from one another, their only exposure to other dogs at the end of a leash. Often they go hours without even human contact.

I think it’s hypocritical to treat a loved animal so contrary to its nature. At the very least, if you want a dog, have two so they can keep each other company.

As soon as my wife became pregnant I wanted to get a dog.  Actually I felt it was requisite. My friends bought a Great Dane puppy before the birth of their first child, precipitating the transition to parenthood even before their daughter arrived. Conflicts about responsibility, scheduling, even disciplinary methods arose, requiring them to discuss, adjust, cooperate. That dog was better than any pre-parenthood seminar in terms of real life preparation.

Then my own wife became pregnant, swelling with questions and nesting urges and anxieties … and there I was, steering us into pet stores.

tree falls unheard

7am: beneath the frosty sky I schlep out the trash. Dawn peeks above the treeline, drawing me to the end of the block where, down near the power lines, the snow, crusted over in ice, rounds in a perfect slope.

With the yawning sun my only witness, I squat like a duck and skid down on my shoes. Four times.

* * * * *

11pm: beneath the toasty covers I choke on realization. The day is ended, and I never brought my son out to that icy hill. He’d have loved it. But I’d been too busy with … what? Book editing, file cabinet assembling, cement board and bathtub buying. Real memorables there.

the joys of baby ownership

The call came at 12:21 am. Eight pounds, 21 inches, full head of brown hair, cute. I ran upstairs to tell my wife and we marveled, celebrated, praised God for the safe delivery of our friends’ first child.

Then a mischievous grin cracked across my face, spurred by a maliciously merry mental chortle. Ho ho ho. Supressing the sing-song in my voice, I shook my head, said to my wife, “They’re really in for it now,” and guffawed.

Immediately I felt guilty – delighting in the tumult about to capsize our friends? Callous! Yet it was a gleeful guilt; it danced a little jig. “Why do I find this so funny?” I asked.

bubbles

Yanking the under-sink cabinet against its childproof catch he asks, “Bubbles?” The bottles are in there. Straining the door, shoving his face into the dim crack, he can see them.

Bubbles was one of his first words, and for good reason: they are unlike anything else on earth. Glistening, transparent, nearly invisible – there, but almost not. Floating, nearly weightless. Spherical, purely mathematical, like a Platonic form. Swirling in light-caught color, and fleeting: their brief, magical existence commands attention until they vanish into nothingness.

I couldn’t tell you whose eyes they transfix more, his or mine. Bubbles are a phenomenon unto themselves, an element like fire, only touchable. Sometimes my son lets them fall onto his upturned face. I tried this myself, and yes, I could feel them, just barely, like a butterfly kiss of eyelashes against the cheek.

My adult mind yearns to know more. How thin are they, really?