didaink

Farewell, Sweet Prince

“How many more days until everyone dies, Mama?” he asked me at bedtime.  I was about to sing him a lullaby. In a futile attempt to buy time, I lied. 

“Sorry, Señor, I don't have my hearing aid on. How’s about Somewhere Over The Rainbow tonight?” 

“Mama! How many more days until we all die?”

Earlier that day we had discovered Rocky, my son’s dwarf hamster, permanently asleep in his cage, nestled motionless beneath alfalfa seeds, peanut shells and paper curls. 

“I don’t know, my Señor,” bowing my head.

While Rocky lay cold and painfully still, his cousin Cody in the cage next door seemed completely oblivious to his absence. Cody kept to his same morning grooming routine. He continued his scheduled workout, taking water breaks here and there, then running over to the bars that fenced him in to poke his nose through the metal barriers -- an aroma of freedom taunting his whiskers from our family room. But, then he’d snap back into focus and jump right back onto his green neon Ferris wheel, like he was the first hamster to ever ride one at the World’s Fair. Cody had always been more into his body then Rocky, self-absorbed by his own reflection in the shiny plastic tunnels that circle inside his rectangular world.

“These are very good questions you’re asking, Señor…”

Rocky was the quiet sort, bookish and thoughtful, preferring to spend his free time in the warmth of his cozy mini igloo, likely reciting Shakespeare or Keats under the arched rooftop – next door, his egalitarian cousin perpetually running back to that meaningless circus wheel.

“I just wish I knew their answers.”

“Mama, I need to know! How many more minutes until our bodies stop working??”

I had rehearsed this moment in my mind many times and yet my response fell totally flat, deserted, nothing like those mock conversations I’d worked on in my "mother-imagination."

“Honey, that’s not something you need to worry about, okay?”

I kept thinking about Rocky laying in that giant shoebox, all alone, his favorite treat, a shelled peanut, placed between his tiny claws in the cardboard mausoleum my son had designed for him.  Out of respect, I was hoping that Cody might have been, at the very least, holding a candlelight vigil outside his domed plastic tower.

“Just tell me!” my son pleaded.

I went totally blank. Tears began to fill my eyes and my nasal cavity was clogging up. 

When I was hospitalized last summer I replayed the scene from Terms of Endearment over and over inside my throbbing head, the one where Debra Winger is near death and has prepared a goodbye speech for each of her boys from her hospital bed. That is how I pictured this kind of poignant moment with my own son. Who in the hell was I kidding?  I could never be that stoic or brave, our moment would be clobbered by unabashed crying and gooey mucous hanging from my nostrils.

“Okay, okay!  Let me think… there are 60 minutes in an hour, so 60 x 24 hours x 365 days, times maybe 100 years is…is…“

If I had just worked harder at math in grade school instead of watching so many romantic movies, all those stupid, frivolous Fred Estaire/Gene Kelly musicals, then I might have been able to calculate the precise number of minutes, hours, and days in a long, happy life.  My realistic, five-year old son needed tangible data and I kept dancing around the numbers, flubbing the steps to explain it to him the way he needed to hear it.

“80 hundred billion minutes?” he shouts.

“Yes!  That’s it, Señor! 80 hundred BILLION,” kissing his forehead, praying that he was finished.

“So, that’s a long time, right, Mama?”

“Oh my goodness, Señor! That is an incredibly long time… that’s like, forever,” pulling myself together a bit, “and even when our bodies stop working, like Rocky’s body did today, we live on inside each other’s hearts.  That’s what love is all about, my Señor.”

His eyes were closing, a big yawn making an “O” in front of my best conjured-up, all-knowing expression.

Then he opens them wide again and in a normal, confident voice, he asks one last question before falling asleep to his favorite lullaby.

“Can I have a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup in my lunch tomorrow?”

I’d like to think Rocky heard him. He always did appreciate the value of a good nut.

 

 

 

"Earth to Steve Martin... Breaker, Breaker... Rodger me."

 

“Mama, don’t put dessert in my lunch today,” my son barked from the breakfast table this morning.  However, I didn’t hear the “don’t” part and instead asked him what kind of dessert he wanted in his lunch.

“Mama! I said DON’T put a dessert! Hello??  Earth to Mama...”

When your five-year old quotes you to yourself using the euphemism you came up with for “Duh” you know it’s time to step up your game. 

“Well, EX-cu-ooh-oohze meeee!” my hands waving back and forth, the way I remembered it.

However, because your son is five and has never heard of Steve Martin or his stand up routine from 1974, this may not be the right response to your child while he looks at you like you are the world's unfunniest mother. 

“Listen, Steve Martin was and still is a very funny guy, a wild and KAH-razy guy, who even knows how to play the banjo and…. All right, forget it, but someday you will come to appreciate Mr. Steve Martin!”

“Uh, okay, Mama… so, anyway, NO dessert.”

“Señor Belinki, are you a wild and KAH-razy guy today? Why don’t you want dessert?”

“Because!”

“Yes… because?”

“The teachers say I don’t have enough time!”

“Huh? Okay… but, how come you don't listen to me when I say there’s not enough time for dessert?”

“Because you’re NOT my teacher, you’re my Mama… Hello??”

I am now carefully plotting my next comeback line, busily thinking up new euphemisms for Smartass.

So far, all I’ve got is, “Hello?? Earth to Steve Martin...” Rodger THAT, my Señor.

 

 

Asking your kids about Osama bin Laden via The Incredible Hulk

Last week I read Peter Hartlaub's piece, Telling your kids that Osama bin Laden is dead, on SFGate.com. Peter is a well-known San Francisco journalist who also writes "The Poop" -- a parenting blog for SFGate, the online affiliate to The San Francisco Chronicle.  

In his blog post, Peter asked some interesting questions about how to feed the news President Obama gave us about killing Osama bin Laden to your (young) children, “Do you get proactive and have an Osama bin Laden is dead discussion?” he asked. “Do you undergo a news blackout in your house? Or do you sit back and wait to see if they ask?” 

One approach Peter didn’t mention was this, “Do you ask your child what they would do if they had to stop a bad guy or a bully who wants to hurt other people?” Most young children already know the “bad guy vs. good guy” plot very well from everything they’re fed in our culture of fairy tales, countless Disney movies, and massive amounts of consumer branding.  

And even though I liked Peter’s approach about being honest and answering your children’s questions without telling them the gory details about Osama bin Laden and his death, I digress... I would much rather discuss the birth of the new robins in our backyard. Cowardice maybe, but my children are four and seven and in their world baby robins hatching out of tiny sky-blue eggs right above their heads (the robin’s nest is tucked under our roof atop a drainage pipe) is still a “headliner.” Literally.

Last week, however, I did raise some serious questions to my younger child, my son, who is always quick to tell me exactly what he would do in any situation. He also recently revealed in his preschool "All About Me" book his secret wish: a gun for his fifth birthday. Mmm hmmm.

I decided to use The Incredible Hulk movie with Edward Norton as a segway into the topic, probably not the best use of analogy, but something I knew was still fresh in his mind from an episode that played out in our house just a few hours before President Obama came on television to announce that bin Laden was dead.

We were about to sit down to a “family” movie when I went to get something from another room and left my husband in charge of putting on Fantasia. When I came back into the living room, I found them all watching The Incredible Hulk on cable. Uh… Okay. How it went from Walt Disney’s Special Edition of Fantasia to The Incredible Hulk is still not quite clear to me. The explanation my husband gave was, “It’s The Hulk,” which sounded a lot like, “Everybody loves The Hulk, Honey... Duh.”

“Come on, Mama, it’s The Hulk,” my son reiterated. Even my Disney on Ice daughter forgot all about Fantasia and the dance of the sugar plum mushrooms she loves so much, “I'm not scared, Mom. It’s just pretend.”

After a few very long stink-eye glares, my husband eventually switched back to the DVD player and Fantasia played for the next hour, much to my son’s chagrin. But, he also loves Mickey Mouse so he settled down pretty quick… funny how an animated mouse from the 1930’s and a giant green monster-man, dodging grenades, can balance each other out.

So, last week, after contemplating Telling your kids that Osama bin Laden is dead, this is the discussion I had with my four and a half year-old:

“So, did you like The Incredible Hulk movie Papa let you watch yesterday?”

“Yeah, I love The Hulk.”

“So, was The Hulk the good guy or the bad guy?”

“It's The Hulk, Mama… he’s a superhero!”

“Then why were the soldiers trying to hurt him?”

“They were bad soldiers and they were ruining the city.”

“Oh… So, what would you do if a bad soldier was trying to hurt someone or ruin your city?”

“I’d just punch him in the nose.”

“What if that didn’t work and he kept trying to hurt people, innocent people who weren’t doing anything wrong. Then what would you do?” 

“I’d karate chop him.”

“But, what if that didn’t work and you really had to stop the bad guy, or even kill the bad guy, to stop him from hurting more people?”  

I didn’t want to use the word, but out it came... Up until that moment, I had said to my son that “kill” was an awful word and that I never wanted to hear him say it again after overhearing him use it on the playground while playing Star Wars.

Up until that moment, I had thought that avoiding violent words was the best thing to do when teaching my son about compassion and responsibility – the best way to handle complex lessons about the stinging reality of his future world, a globe spinning with mixed messages and very real guns and ammunition. Then all of a sudden I found myself asking him about killing someone, “the bad guy,” realizing that with that suggestion I was potentially raising a boy who might become one himself… After all, the night before he was embracing graphic military warfare, cheering on The Hulk and bullets and firebombs for ten high-definition minutes. I squeezed my hands shut and braced for what would come out of his mouth next.

“Mama… then I’d just call the police, and they would take him down to jail.”

It’s a Disney ending, but I am mercifully relieved to hear my son choose it over the alternative.

 

Funny things are everywhere...

“Mama, is today another school day?” My four year old asks me this morning, his chocolate puppy dog eyes a bit sad and worried… a look that could tug at any sympathetic girl’s heart to make her stop and take notice.

“Yes, my Señor… today is a school day,“ I say, commiserating.  

Then I stop cold. I stop my hurry to find my flip-flops and brush my teeth. I stop my need to put on any makeup or find a blouse that isn’t stained, and I just stand there, holding the edges of his soft round cheeks…  light velvety petals against my worn, callused hands. I let go and regret it, witnessing the clock on the stove turn to 7:19. 

I want to lift him up and hold him close to me again, the way I did when he was my baby boy whose one and only word was Mama.

I intentionally turn my back to the clock and watch him pick up his Star Wars alphabet book.

“Mama, where’s my light saber?” he asks, running into the other room. “Never mind, I found it!” 

And then I let my mind run off-leash to the fresh-cut grass outside our front window, watching him race across the lawn to fight a lineup of imaginary Darth Vaders.

I see myself standing on a familiar Dr. Sues street. I'm on the corner of “Here” and “There,” important people whizzing by me on their morning commute into a bustling city. I lift up my bullhorn and begin,

It’s only pre-school! Do you hear me? It can wait! while the crowd passes me by.

It’s not like he’s got an Algebra test today or that he’s studying for the GMATs!  He’s only four for goodness sakes!  Did you know that children in Finland don’t even start school until they are seven and they are out-scoring every nation in math and science?!

But now all the very important people who were in a hurry to get to There or Here stop and begin to look just like the Zeds waiting in line to cut the hair upon their heads.  Yet, not one Zed seems to care that my baby with a few hairs upon his head is no longer that tiny boy anymore… They are all too busy laughing, watching a big boy with tons of hair make goofy faces at me from behind a windowpane at the front door.

“Mama, are you ready yet? Get your flip-flops on!  I don’t want to be late for school today.”

 

I will freeze this moment and play it back to him some other day. When he’s fifteen and sitting in the principal’s office. Or maybe on a Tuesday night when he's got a load of homework due, but he'd rather stay up late to talk to a sympathetic girl who can’t get enough of him or his puppy-dog eyes.