Baby Talk

It is 8:30 in the evening at our household, the Cuddle Hour. It's the time when Ben, loathe to go to sleep, will actually acquiesce to having a conversation with us, as long as we stay in the room by his bed. This is the time when he sets his charm on stun, the better to get his back rubbed or his leg massaged ("And the heel— don't forget the heel.") Sometimes we read books, but more often these days we just chat. On this particular night, he initiates the questions, which surprises and delights me. This delight, along with general sleepiness (on my part), renders me oblivious to the ambush about to come.

"Your sisters--what did you do with them?"

"Do with them?"

"You know, like, did you play games or what did you do with them?"

"Oh." I think. "Well, my older sisters, I didn't do too much with them. They mostly just tormented me, or endured me."

Ben's brow crinkles. It doesn't seem to be the answer he wants. "Rub my ankle," he commands gently. Then: "What about your younger sisters?"

"Oh, well, I did a LOT with them. In fact, they always asked for massages, just like you." That was true. My sister Michelle, with her migraines, and Allison, with her growing pain legs, gave me plenty of practice, years before I became an actual certified massage therapist. "And I played a bunch with them. We put on shows, and ran around, and I read to them..."

"Exactly!" his emphatic tone surprises me. Wasn't he about to fall asleep? "That's why I want to have a sister or brother. So I could do that. I would read to them and play with them... so can we?"

"W-w-what?" I am so taken aback by this shift that I can only sputter. This request has been tendered, and denied, so many times before I'm surprised it's coming up again. 

Ben presses onward, sensing opportunity. "If I had a brother or sister, then when I wake up in the morning, I won't have to be so alone." 

Aaaaaaghh. How long has he been saving that one up for? With one exquisitely aimed stab at the heart he has rendered me paralyzed, much like how a pepsis wasp stings a tarantula before laying an egg into its abdomen. "Oh Ben..."

He sits up. "Please? Please?" His plaintive request makes it sound so simple, as if I could simply type "Baby" into the Amazon search box and one would be sent, easily, two-day shipping, along with our Go Lean cereal and Clif Builder protein bars. I am not ambivalent at all about my desire to not have another child, but he has played it so well I almost hesitate.

I assume an air of light jocularity. "Don't you think I'm too old to take care of a little baby?" I ask. 

"No! You're just fifty! Fifty!" he shouts. "That's only halfway!"

"Yeah, but I'd be too tired to take care of another kid." 

"I'll take care of him! I swear!"

I gain foothold on the sturdier grounds of logistics. "Benj, you'll be in school all day, sweetie. How could you?"

"On the weekends! And at night! I'll put him to bed and read to him and take care of him..." He is becoming more animated, and adorable, the more he imagines the scenario. "All you'd have to do is cook us a delicious meal."

Ooh! A hit! A palpable hit! One must admire his wiliness. "Benj, I think if we had another kid, I would be much more yell-y. A LOT more yell-y. You wouldn't want that."

He looks at me earnestly. "That's okay. It wouldn't matter. I would protect him."

"Yeah, but, I don't want a kid to be frightened of me—" and then I realize the ingenuity, the utter genius, of the trap I have been advancing on. He has slowly drawn me in further and further, speculating about a theoretical child, and, by imagining scenarios and drawing parameters, has given it form, a dotted-line silhouette of an infant with an arrow pointed at it: Baby Goes Here. 

I try to go on the offensive: "Hey, you already have a dog."

Benj looks at me pityingly. "It's not the same."

Desperate, I fall back on an age-old tactic, muttering "Well, let's just see if you can take of yourself. You can barely get yourself ready in the mornings—"

He springs. "Okay, and if I do get myself ready, then...?"

I have to backpedal immediately, so blind to the precipice I hadn't seen until I was practically flinging myself into it.  "No. No, no, I... I don't want to lie to you. That doesn't matter. It's just... no." I have to go back to simple truths. "I know you would be a really really good big brother, Benj. I know that. You would."

There is nothing to push back against. My resigned tone tells him that it's over, for now. He hunkers down under his sheets and I give his forehead a kiss and beat a hasty retreat. I've escaped, but barely. Another round and who knows? I might have been wheeling in a bassinet. 

Nine Years

How could shame blight such a wondrous day? I should be posting the delicious baked treats my son will eat for his birthday celebration at school, a photo of me holding a plate of homemade Yodels, those chocolate-covered mini cake rolls. But no, there will be no such photo springing up on Facebook, only this old one of my face covered by the Alien of failure...

Spent last night trying to make those little treats, and maybe it was the spongy, ragged cake layer that refused to roll without disintegrating, or maybe it was the melancholy marshmallow filling that didn't freeze well in its threadbare carpet of devil's food cake and spent the night weeping, but when I tried to dip this forlorn mass into the melted chocolate this morning the cake and the filling each decided they were unfit for such a union and had better part company, leaving me with shapeless mounds of hardening chocolate covering only a gooey memory of cake.

No photo. A media shutdown; there will be no evidence of this disaster.

I shuffled upstairs and told Doug I was throwing in my chocolate-smeared towel and would do what he advised all along: I was going to (shudder) bring to school (wince) Store Bought Cupcakes.
Oh, the ignomy.

Moving on to brighter things:

He's nine! My boy will have spent eight and a half years with us, his lucky lucky parents. It's hard to believe it's been this long, but I'm not bemoaning the rush of time. I don't mind the years passing (well, for him, anyway) because it just keeps getting better, he gets better, and funnier, and more thoughtful. Yes, homework is now officially a Nightmare, and I know adolescence is just around the bend, but right now he's just the coolest kid to be around.

A couple of my favorite things he's said this year:

He was watching this video from Green Day— Boulevard of Broken Dreams ("I walk these empty streets, on the boulevard of broken dreams... I walk alone, I walk alone") —


—and he turned to me and said "He's not walking alone, he's got all those other guys with him!"

Third grade really ramps up the homework, and it's been, as I said, a Nightmare, with math facts, spelling words, extra projects, graph charts, Kumon, chapter books and word problems relentlessly nipping at poor Benj, not to mention two hovering parents who want to make sure he's doing everything he supposed to be doing. Doug was in the car driving him to school and trying to make him study his spelling words for a test later that week. Benj refused, Doug gently/strongly suggested that maybe he could just look over the words  and spell them aloud, Benj refused, Doug suggested gently/implacably again that he should reconsider, Benj will have none of it, pouting, squirming, shouting, Doug continues, Benj has had it, yells out, "I wish you and Baba would get a divorce and then I would live with Baba and you can roam the Earth alone!"

(A pretty biblical allusion for someone living in an Atheist/Buddhist household, don't you think? Of course, I like this story because I come off pretty well. Poor Doug didn't know that I had quizzed Benj on his words not 15 minutes prior to them driving off. And now he's got to roam the Earth alone, like Cain...)

Benj gently remonstrating Doug for getting frustrated with his mother: "You shouldn't get mad at her. You know, she's all alone now and Pop used to do all these things for her and now she has no one." How empathetic is that?

On the flip side, he was listening to Doug's mom spinning out of control on the car's speakerphone and he asked her, very simply, "Hey Mimi, why don't you let God take care of it?" "What'd he say?" the minister's wife asked. He repeated it. "Huh. Well, I better go," she said, and hung up.

From the mouths of babes.

Happy Birthday my amazing boy. May your years ahead be sweet ones, and better-shaped than my yodels.