"Finish your breakfast already! Finish up so you can get up so you can make your snack bag so you can get to school on time so you can learn something so you can get a job so you can get out of my house!"
Matthew: I moved the Hanukkah candles, Mom, because they were in the wrong spots.
Me: Oh, that's because Noah put them in the menorah.
Him: Yeah, and he doesn't know where to put them.
Me: He knew to use three candles, though. That's pretty smart for a baby, huh?
Him: Yeah. Maybe he'll be Jewish when he grows up.
Me: What do you mean, "maybe he'll be Jewish"? Of course, he'll be Jewish. So will you.
Him: Nuh-uh!
Me: Of course you will. I'm Jewish, so you're Jewish.
Him: But Dad's Christian!
Me: Right. So you'll be both. Because you come from both of us. You're both now, aren't you?
Him: Yeah, but Dad says that when I grow up I get to choose which I want to be.
Me: Well, yeah, you could choose to be one or the other. Or you could choose to stay both.
Him: Hmm. Cool.
Me: You can choose to be whatever you want to be when you grow up, Matthew. Who knows? You might choose to be Buddhist.
Him: And celebrate Kwanzaa?
Me: Um, no.
Him: Why not?
Me: You can choose to be a lot of things, Matt, but I don't think African American is one of them.
Cleaning your house while your kids are still growing is like shoveling the walk before it stops snowing.
--Phyllis Diller
A few minutes ago, Aaron came giddily skipping into my office as I sat at my desk.
"It's a purple day, Mom! Mom! It's a purple day!"
You know how moods sometimes evoke color in one's mind? When I was a kid, I often thought that days of the week and months of the year did the same thing. Monday felt green to me. Tuesday was blue, or maybe lavender. And I'm not sure how it started, but one day, maybe jokingly, Aaron asked me what color Sunday was, and I answered him, in all seriousness and honesty, that I believed Sunday to be kind of yellow. Or maybe sometimes orange.
Since then Aaron and I often like to discuss--to debate even--the colors of the days. Is Friday purple, or is it pink?. I always engage him when he starts talking this way, because it's something he and I share, and it seems to really give him pleasure that this is something about the way he sees the world that his mom actually gets.
So when he danced in here a few minutes ago so delighted and singing about how it's a purple day, I responded with genuine interest, "It is?"
"Yes," he pronounced, pointing to the window. "Look!"
Aaron is my autistic son who sometimes does and says some very un-autistic things. Coming to get me to show me a beautiful sunset is one of those things. We both ran to the back door and looked out at the dusky lavender sky. We shared a moment reveling not only in the sky's beauty, but in our own cleverness.
"Wow, Aaron. Look at that. It really is a purple day, isn't it?"
"It is," he answered, so very puffed up and proud. Of what he shared. With me.
My husband Charlie is the seventh of nine kids. One of my favorite stories he tells is how his mother would bathe them, with as many as five in the tub at one time, assembly-line style: Scrubbing then rinsing this one, moving him to the back of the line, then scrubbing and rinsing the next one. I imagine there was very little elbow room in the bathtub of Charlie's youth, and that there was certainly no space for Mr. Bubble.
Because Charlie has inherited his mother's Ford Motor Company move-em-along sensibility, and because when I bathe the kids it tends to take all evening (and as Charlie will tell you, it usually involves me reading People as they drown each other and flood the bathroom), Charlie is Chief-Number-One-Child-Washer around here. Every other night or so, he loads the three boys into the tub, and scrub-scrub-scrub-rinse-rinse-rinse-dry-dry-dry, they're ready for bed.
Except last night. Last night, Charlie's knee was hurting him, and the boys were particularly grimy, so I took it upon myself to do things my way. First I let Aaron wash himself on his own with my supervision and detailed instruction (without which direction Aaron would be going to school each day with one clean spot on the top of his head and another in the middle of his chest and that's it). Then I informed Matthew that when his movie was over he was to go upstairs and take a shower. And finally, I filled the tub with bubbles and put Noah in all by himself. I washed him down, I rinsed him off, and then I let him hang out.
For twenty minutes.
And can I tell you? I have never ever seen that kid have more fun.
It's like it never occurred to my poor deprived baby that bathtubs aren't actually slippery liquid chambers of torture where bad children go before bed. All I gave him was bubbles, a plastic cup, some room to move around, and some time to spend in there, and blammo! Disneyland in our very own home!
Of course, he screamed bloody murder when it was time to get out, and I eventually had to bribe him, but there's a lesson to be learned here, I think, and it's this: If you deprive your kids of the most basic kind of childhood fun for long enough, you'll be totally entertained by them when you finally, finally, for once let them have some!
And who knows? Maybe I'll even wash them again someday.
***Yesterday evening after dinner***
Charlie: What are you reading now?
Me: An eighteen year old autistic boy in West Virginia disappeared a few days ago. They've been looking for him for three days. Today they finally found him.
Charlie: How did that happen?
Me: He was hiking with his family and wandered off. They've been looking for him. I've been waiting for some news. God, his family must be so relieved.
Charlie: How did they finally find him?
Me: I don't know. Listen: "Hundreds of volunteers and trained professionals had been combing the woods, calling for him to come to them for candy bars, ice cream and other food."
Charlie: So did he just walk up to them?
Me: I don't think so.
Matthew: I don't get it. If he's eighteen, doesn't he know not to wander off?
Me: Well, he's autistic, Matthew. Do you know what "autistic" means?
Matthew: No.
Me: It means he has a disability. Um, it means he's different than other people . . .
Charlie: He doesn't necessarily understand things the way you and I do.
Me: And maybe he has trouble paying attention and following directions.
Matthew: Ohhhhhhh. You mean like Aaron.
Me: Yes. Like Aaron.
Matthew: Ah.
. . . that the Yankees lost game 4 of the ALDS and were eliminated in the first round of the playoffs for the third consecutive season . . . AND . . .
. . . that I went out partying with Britney Spears afterward to drown my sorrows. Man, but that girl can drink. Did you know that she keeps actual coconuts in her trailer with which to make fresh pina coladas? And with which to stuff her bra ('cause those puppies are never the same after childbirth).
Needless to say, I woke up exhausted. And depressed. And I'm not sure, but maybe even a little bit hungover.
Noah: (delivering warm baby snuggles) I yuv you, Mom.
Me: (relishing every breath of his candy apple head) Oh. I love you too, sweetie.
Him: You a gol. You a gol, Mom.
Me: I'm a what?
Him: You a gol.
Me: I'm a girl?
Him: Yeah.
Me: I am a girl. And what are you, Noah?
Him: ***
Me: Are you a boy?
Him: No. I'm a god.
