language: the end of an era

“Hey, baby boy, whatcha doing?”

“Me not baby.”

“Oh, that’s right. You’re bo.”

“Me BIIIIIIIIIG!”

It doesn’t so much tear at my heart that he doesn’t want to be called a baby anymore, but, forever and ever, like almost half of Isaac’s life, before all the other words he can say now started popping out of his mouth like fake snakes from a can, “Big” has been “Bo.”

It has even taken on the status of family language – you know, those weird distortions that are only understandable to an intimate group of people. Mike and I had begun routinely saying things to each other like in serving pizza - “I want the bo piece.” Or in throwing away a poopy diaper - “Bo poop!”

It’s the end of an era. It’s the end of bo.

If you don’t hear from me after this for about a week, it’s because we’re headed to Vancouver (although, I think I’m bringing my laptop so we’ll see.). Isaac asked me where we were going on our trip. And then on receiving the answer he tried out his favorite new construction replying with, “Me like Van-oo-er.”

Usually the efforts to be a big boy and the parrot repetition that has grown exponentially in the last months are amusing and endearing – e.g. exhibit A above, and e.g., below:

Isaac and Mike are in the bedroom getting Mr Iz dressed.

“Can you take off that shirt yourself?”

“Hawd!”

“You almost got it.”

“Hawd!”

“Keep going… You did it! You’re a regular Houdini.”

“Oo-dini?”

“Yeah, he was a guy who could get out of lots of shirts,” says Mike.


But there are times when it just isn’t cool:

We are driving in the car with the radio on NPR, as usual, when the news comes on to report, as usual, a suicide bombing. “The Taliban took credit for the incident,” the news anchor says. “Tal-bon!” my two-year-old calls from the back seat. Mike and I exchange a glance before I quickly punch the button for the bad 80s compilation CD. Somehow, I’d rather end up hearing “Me like Jesse’s Girl!” more than some other possibilities.

It’s the end of an era. It’s the end of oblivion.

controlling the environment

We live in a world where meteorologists apologize for weather that does not comply with expectations or weekend agendas.

Whenever possible, if our environment doesn’t suit us, we change it. We play sports under domes - the rain delay only a fond memory, killed off is its spontaneous song and dance put on by soaking wet idiots in the nosebleed section. We burn holes in the ozone with big, climate-controlled SUVs. We cut down trees that block our view and build dams to divert water from where we want to live. We hose the shit out of what should be desert until it snaps to at our heels, growing a lackluster shade of green.

Luckily for me, as a renter, I get to enjoy old-fashioned helplessness when it comes to my surrounding environment. Once upon a time we lived as renters in a condo complex where we were actively disregarded and left uninformed. We never quite knew what we’d wake up to – chainsaws in the live oaks, power washing on our patio. Finally, when the condo association entered our patio to rip out a young acacia tree that had happily started up on its own outside my kitchen window, all bets were off.

We had friends around the corner having some work done on their house and the craftsman just happened to leave his sledgehammer there for the night. Mike smashed up one of the squares of cement on our patio to make way for a 3’ x 3’ water garden. While the sledge hammering was in progress, a neighbor passed by. “What are you doing?” he asked Mike. “Gardening,” said my husband, resting the sledgehammer on his shoulder and wiping his forehead. We carried the crooked pieces of concrete to the dumpster after dark.

But even when we are gentle in our campaigns to mold our environment to our liking, things can get ugly. This summer, my garden was the site of The Great Aphid Festival. Aphids moved in with their tiny little aphid suitcases, greeting long lost cousins with relish, hosting aphid raves, where they would swing from vines, trees, flowering buds, make out on the underside of leaves, and generally go wild. (I think I might have spotted teeny-tiny little glow sticks, but it could have just been the slant of the sun.)

And where there are aphids, there are ants – big bully bouncer ants standing at the doors of the biggest raves with their arms crossed over their tee shirts that read “Security” across the back. Some of you may know about this symbiotic relationship – the aphid generates a substance called “honeydew” that the ants dig. Apparently, if you’re an ant, this stuff is so way yummy that you actually protect aphid eggs to ensure their buddies and future generations will stick around. And it goes on from there…

Like a good organic gardener, I went out and bought ladybugs to spread around that would hopefully dine on the partying aphids. I decided to put them in the garden while Isaac wasn’t around still concerned as I was about creating the kind of scene I witnessed when Isaac was around a year old… (I need a “Wayne’s World” flashback sequence sound here.)

We were with friends at a local organic farm for an Earth Day celebration that included food, entertainment, a train for the kids to ride on, and a woman dressed as a giant ladybug who was supposed to take the kids out into the field to release real live bugs.

So, the key phrase here is “out in the fields.” You, see, the giant ladybug didn’t really go out into the fields, but rather stood on the edge of the field. Four- and five-year-olds swam at her feet as more and more real ladybugs crawled out of her bag, onto the ground and the people there for the spectacle. It was a tickly, joyous atmosphere until, lo and behold, the train came around again and everyone who could stepped out of the way.

You’ve probably guessed what came next – Yup. Sobbing preschoolers fretting at the wheels of the mini-train, beside themselves, crying, “You’re killing them! You’re killing them!”

(Return from flashback.)

Not wanting any unforeseen massacre to jar Isaac, I went it alone – just me and the bugs.

Everything was smooth, I thought. I went out into the garden a couple hours later to check on them and found them here and there, though their numbers seemed a little thin. Then I noticed an ant who seemed to have hold of one of the ladybug’s legs. Odd. Then I noticed several ants who, if I didn’t know any better, seemed to be ganging up on a ladybug, like, kind of, attacking it. By the evening, I could only find a couple of my spotted friends hunkered down in the crook of a calla lily leaf.

A little research confirmed my fears. Ants actually protect aphids from predators, organizing to fight them off. (“You’re killing them! You’re killing them!”)

I guess we aren’t the only ones that manipulate our surroundings to suit us better.

I have stopped killing bugs since Isaac was born, fixated as I am on teaching him to respect all life. I have even stopped hurling snails into the street, which if you know me at all, is huge. (Isaac likes to transport them in his bulldozer to the shabby patch of vegetation in the island of our street, from where, he believes, they “go home to mama.”) But these freaking ants are testing me – invading our pantry, swarming whenever I water – carrying their eggs frantically to higher ground, coming in with garden bouquets to jog across the coffee table, and – for godssake – killing my ladybugs?? while the aphids party hard.

And after the domes can help us no more, and the dams kill off the river life, and the SUVs kill off the ozone layer, you thought it was going to be the cockroach that survived.

party games

So, Isaac went to a real live kid party the other weekend. With games and cake and favor bags.

Alright, I confess: This is actually his second. Mike took him to one while I was out of town this spring, but that one doesn’t count, since I wasn’t there. This time I got a chance to have a complete panic attack in the middle of it while talking to a couple I don’t know very well about where they got their daughter’s little backpack – you know, world changing stuff – and suddenly needed to leave immediately as I realized, the energy level rising, the backpack talk coming into focus, a four-year-old racing a dump truck by my feet at mach speed, that I was the adult at a kid party.

So, as I was saying, I went to a real live kid party the other weekend.

The first game was pin the balloon on the fire truck (?) Isaac did not participate.

The second game was throw the water balloon at the drawing of the house on fire. Isaac was slow to participate, but managed to get to throw one balloon before the other kids trashed the rest of the bucket. (“Where more?”)

The third and final game was the fire truck piñata. Isaac held back until all the other children had two turns each. Then, without warning, he swooped in on the action claiming his turn and hammering on this piñata like a star student of anger management class (And then, mama wouldn’t let me have ice cream. (Wham!) And then, daddy told me to come inside. (Whack!)) He so far outstripped the feeble attempts of the other children that parents started turning to look at Mike and I, while I slunk backwards through the crowd pretending to be interested in a toy helicopter.

And then came the logical conclusion to all this whacking…Welcome to California: where the blonde-haired, blue-eyed kid smacks the hell out the piñata and runs back to his mama with pride gleaming in his eye and an organic fruit leather clutched in his sweaty little fist.

can’t argue with that

I’ve always felt that logic was way overrated.

You’d think, then, that living with a two-year-old would be easier for me than it is. We aren’t anywhere near logic, being some four years away from the “age of reason” as they tend to call it. Isaac is safely immersed in imagination – his own. We don’t watch TV; he’s never seen anything produced by Disney.

So what do I do when Logic shows up with its pesky tentacles reaching, getting all up in Imagination’s face and has the nerve to wrangle with Safety, that prim little witch with a permanent scowl?

**********

Isaac is dropping pebbles from the yard from as high as he can reach. “Rain! Rain, Mama! Come down! Weeeeeee!” Handful after handful spatter the driveway in a musical twinkle, the energy with which they are thrown growing.

“Isaac, you have to be careful with those. You can’t throw those. You shouldn’t land them on your head. They could hurt you or they could get in your eye, or they could get in Mama’s eye.”

He frowns. “Mama, not rocks. Rain. RAIN. Get WET, not hurt.”

**********

Isaac is playing train. He asks me to be the car behind him. We choo-choo around the front yard until he approaches the end of our walkway and announces,

“Go in weet.”

“We can’t go in the street, Iz. We don’t go in the street, you know that.”

“Me TRAIN. Train go in weet!”

Sometimes I get scared that it’ll be my kid with the pillow case tied around his neck jumping from the roof, invincible.

the signs were all there...

Halloween 2005.
(see entry below regarding vocational directions)

Isaac’s career paths – part III

Here we go again. More possible vocational directions for Isaac.

- Deep sea explorer. (The daily mantra: “Mama, Mama, me sea lion. Me go down deep. Wawa right dere! Me have f’ippers. Splash!!!”)

- Songwriter. (Commonly heard at our house: “Brannew song. Um, ‘Starwish.’ Come see? (starts to sing) Starwish, starwish, starwish. La la la. Starwish. All done. Otay. Brannew song: ‘Wain.’ (sings) Wain. Wain. Dome down. Turn aroun’. Rain.” etc.)

- choreographer for “So You Think You Can Dance.” (“Mama, jump up n down? Watch.” “That’s great, Isaac.” “Mama?” “You want Mama to jump up and down?” “Yeah.” (I jump.) “No. Like dis.” (repeats his jump) “I think I did do it like that, Isaac.” “Mama, dant?” “You don’t like the way I jump, but you want me to dance?” (takes off into a dance not unlike Elaine on that “Seinfeld” episode) “Mama do?” (I attempt to mimic him) “No! Like dis.” “I give up, Isaac.” “Like dis.” (dances in circles, down the hall and throws himself on the floor of his room).

- Finally, I’d like to replace my previous suggested occupation of underwater cave dweller. I wasn’t really tuning in to my son’s tendencies when I said that. But now, after observing him repeat each morning, “Mama, the sun is out!” like some kind of accusation while crossing his arms over his eyes and retreating like he’s been actually struck by a fireball, I’d like to enter the option of vampire for my son’s future job.

save the children

from this world of quick fixes and dubious charity.

I’m in the vitamin store hunting down powdered colostrum for Isaac, which we’ve given him as an immune booster ever since the only two ear infections he got (within two months of each other) and seems to be working.

The saleswoman bustling around in a would-be efficient manner accosts me with the week’s sales flyer – a glossy thing printed, I’m sure, in the millions. I reject it. She’s confused, momentarily thrown off balance, until she recovers and says to me, like she’ll say to the next 250 customers that walk through the door, “Let me know if I can help with anything.”

I then proceed to stand waiting at the check out counter while she flits like a garden bug around her shelves of sealed white caps.

Ultimately, she does see me and propels herself toward the cash register. I’ve take vague notice of the green circles taped to the counter denoting “Vitamin Angels” when she asks if I’d like to donate a dollar to their cause. “Not today,” I tell her.

“Well,” she counters, “one dollar will save the eyesight of four children in developing countries. Something you might want to keep in mind for the future.” She reaches for a bag for my palm-sized, self-contained purchase.

“I don’t need a bag, thanks,” I hurry to get in. Then, mumbling into my inexplicably long receipt, add, “One fewer bag can save the world unknown amounts of fossil fuel. Something you might want to keep in mind for the future.”

metaphors

I have always lived between worlds.

I am bi-coastal, defending east when I'm west, west when I'm east. I know my way around various lines of underground transportation, but I won't look twice if your house smells of cleansing sage and you ask all the guests to leave their Ugg boots on the porch.

I spent three years hosting poetry slams shouting encouragement at the crowd, the largest chunk of which was under 20 and overflowing with angst, and then would be invited to read for a Jeffers' Tor House benefit, where the white-haired attendees would sip wine and no one begged to get in for a buck cuz it was all they had, man.

When I taught in Hungary, I learned all the polite-isms to nod at my colleagues, but would spend all my free time with my students (learning cooler stuff).

So it doesn't surprise me that I'm here again, in a borderland.

As a poet, I avoid cliche - oh, let's just say it - like the plague. The glue of poetry is fresh, rich metaphor. But as someone who writes for newspaper (we'll just stay clear of those needling little titles like "reporter"), I am asked to embrace cliche with - indeed - open arms. Newspapers are built on the idea of cliche. New metaphors are frowned upon, edited. You need look no further than the headlines.

My life as a mother falls right smack in the middle of the scale where metaphor and cliche are concerned. I want to find new metaphors for what I'm doing, what I'm burdened by and blessed with, but the easy ones, the old, tired comparisons are so easy to walk into, their little siren voices calling, calling...

My son wraps himself in a ribbon and asks me to tie it.

"Present!" he then tells me. "Open!"

"What could be inside?" I wonder as I untie the bow.

"Me!" he squeals and leaps into my arms.

As required of any toddler game, it is repeated over and over again. And each time, I receive my gift with equal parts joy and discovery.

What's a poet to do?

open letter to the Uber-Mom

Listen, we need to talk. Things are hard enough around here. You think I want to listen to how after searching and searching, you finally located the sippy cups made of some magical material that doesn’t leech toxins into your kid’s system? Hurray. Hurrah.

Now, look, the human race will go on not because of you and your greeny, green, green, lala, overachiever, making the rest of us look bad ways, but thanks to those of us who continue to give our toddlers the bot-bots they are madly attached to – the ones they chewed the (toxic) nipple half off of, putting them at risk of not just leeching but swallowing bits of the (toxic) plastic. We’re talking the difference between garlic powder and whole fucking cloves. I’ve seen the fish with legs on your hybrid, sweetheart, so I know you’ll follow along when I explain that that (toxic) plastic will assist in our genetic evolution after all the farm land has been turned into subdivisions and vineyards and we are forced to wash down our asphalt lunch with a (fruity yet earthy, wood-like flavored) Pinot Noir. Our kids with (toxic) plastic running through their veins will survive the shit out of your pussy-footed little organic baby doll.

And could you PLEASE not ALWAYS be so freakin’ excited to see your kid – the whole crouching down, sneaking quietly up to the door of the preschool grinning like a ninny to peer in on little pooka-pooka, then sweeping button-button up like you’ve been separated for weeks? Okay, so maybe I should slow the car down just a tad more as I throw open the door and honk for Isaac, but you really push things too far.


PS - Check it out - I'm the featured reader on mamazine.com today. (They may regret that after this entry...)

just listen to yourself

In grad school once, (language analysis course), we were tasked with transcribing speech of some kind or another. A conversation. To hear what we really say and how we really say it or don’t or say it again and again or say it over each other or “um” our way through it or in general, talk. It was pretty durn fascinating.

So lately, I’ve been wondering what it would sound like if you could really hear the conversations that go on in our house these days. Absent a recording device, I’ve tried to recreate one as faithfully as possible. Let’s check in with reading time. Children’s literature is fascinating, sends you places you’ve never been before…

“’N’ dat?”

“And that looks to me like a donkey dancing with a chicken.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know why a donkey would dance with a chicken, frankly. Couldn’t tell ya.”

“Why?”

“Why couldn’t I tell you?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, because I just don’t know. Seems a bit odd, don’t you think? Maybe the chicken is a really good dancer.”

“Dood dan-er?”

“Maybe.”

“Why?”

“Maybe he took dance lessons.”

“Dant le-uns?”

“Yeah, like maybe it was always his dream to be a dancer and he took lessons and now he’s stuck dancing with this donkey who has four left feet.”

“Wo feet?”

“Yeah, donkeys have four feet. See?”

“Why?”

“Why not?”

“Don-e feet?”

“Yup, the donkey has feet. Four. One, two, three, four.”

“Right dere?”

“Yup, right there.”

“Why?”

“Wanna count them with me?”

“Un. Ooh. Wee. … Un. Ooh!!!” (raises both arms in triumph)

“Yay… One, two, three, four. Four comes after three. Wanna try?”

“Don-e dant?”

“Yeah, the donkey dances.”

“Why?”

“Should we turn the page?”

“Why, Mama? Why?”

“Why should we turn the page or why does the donkey dance?”

“Um, dat, dat don-e…Um, um, dat don-e… dat don-e dant?”

“Uh-huh.”

(Giggles) “Dat don-e dant!” (Giggles.)

“That’s kind of a silly donkey, huh?”

“Why?”

dolls and ‘dozers

When Isaac was an infant, I went through a phase in which I was determined to supply him with the perfect baby doll. It would be there for him when he got home, despite whatever kind of genderization of toys he experienced out in that larger world of small boxes and segregated clothing sections. It would be there when he wanted to nurture his nurturing nature. It would be not too big, not too small, not too hard but not a simple stuffed cushion. It would be something other than the blue-eyed blonde-headed doll that he is, reflecting difference where possible, since reinforcement of his mirrored reflection was not hard to find elsewhere. It would be a friend, a teacher, a companion, going everywhere with him, speaking for him when necessary, loving him back.

I searched Ebay. I scoured the web for homemade dolls, artists’ work, something special. I compared 12 inches to 18 inches, debated jewelry the older dolls wore, wondered girl or boy. I found one site that sold extended families of anatomically correct cloth dolls of various ethnicities for a lot of money.

Finally, I dropped it. The obsession just faded away and as my infant became a toddler overcome by the sight of the garbage truck, I bought him likenesses of mechanical beasts and settled for taking pride in the fact that I also bought him pink clothes hangers and yellow socks that the other mothers of boys wouldn’t touch.

I’d nearly forgotten about my desire for Isaac to have a doll when he began, just recently, to wrap random objects in blankets and cradle them lovingly in his arms: playdoh, police cars, bits of his lunch. He’d shush me, tell me his baby was sleeping. So I asked him if he’d like to have a doll.

“Yeah,” he said. “Doll. Baby doll. My baby doll.”

As we already had plans to fill in his truck collection with a long-absent bulldozer, I thought we might as well pick up a doll on the same trip.

Something I essentially have never done – take my kid shopping for toys. In a break with his usual M.O., apparently aware of the uniqueness of the opportunity, Isaac actually readily agreed to sit in the front of the cart.

We found the doll aisle first. There wasn’t a big selection, but I’d left my craving for the ideal doll months ago, back at hormonal surge #346, so this would do.

A woman pushed a cart with her grandson in it past the shelf we were peering at. “I want one of those!” the probably four-year-old said pointing at a Cabbage Patch Kid. “Oh, I don’t think you do,” said his grandmother keeping her stride.

“Which doll do you like?” I asked Isaac. We looked. We held. We debated colors of hats and flexibility of limbs. We changed our mind. We changed our mind again. Iz decided on a small doll in a purple outfit whose eyes closed when you laid it down. It cost $4.99.

“Is this the dolly you want to take home and love and take care of?” I asked.

“Yeah,” said my son, and promptly threw it over his shoulder into the cart without looking back.

There wasn’t any better a selection in the bulldozer aisle. There was only one truck we could find that was officially a bulldozer, besides the remote control monster model I was determined to ignore completely. We discussed scoops and the possibility for indoor or outdoor ‘dozing. Finally, Isaac picked out a small but sturdy dozer with slow crawler tracks – the “real” thing.

Off we started for the check out, but at the end of the aisle there was something else, a packaged pair of friction-charged trucks – a front loader and a tow truck – his two biggest weaknesses. Soon, we’d made a deal for door #3 and the dozer was history.

He wouldn’t put the package in the cart. He insisted on holding it, staring down at it with genuine affection.

“Truck!” he’d squeal every few seconds. “Brannew truck!” he sighed, as he cradled it in crook of his arm.

missing

It was too good to be true. In bed before 8:30.

It was too good to be true.

“Mama?”

“Your son is awake,” I told Mike coldly.

“Whaa?”

“He's awake.”

And then I was walking. Sandals dove into at the last moment; hair in a ratty ponytail all day, now flapping in messy lumps on my head, coatless in a foggy chill; I was gone.

I headed up the street, aimless and determined, cursory nods to the men with their heads in the hood of a car. Furious.

Anger. They skipped that topic in Mommy n Me. It never appeared on the whiteboard signs outside the classrooms with their cheerily painted doors. “Good morning!!! Topic: parallel play. Art: stamps and markers. Glad your here!!!” I could just squash those women. Stuff them whole into cracks in the sidewalk, cracks in my veneer of coping. It wouldn't have to be those women. It could be anyone right now. Anyone. Just give me the smallest reason. The men working on their Buick don't know how easily they got off.

I turn up the hill toward “Watertower Mountain” as my friend's four-year-old calls it. There are stairs snaking steeply upwards in front of me. I have always avoided them like the plague before now; I take them. I haven't been this driven on a walk since I was in labor, but this is more desperate. Much more.

I leave our crummy neighborhood behind and surface in the one with the views, with its own name and fancy cars in wide driveways, where all the dogs get haircuts. The houses almost look inviting, their archways over carved wooden doors, their flowering vines climbing charming half-walls. I want to live somewhere other than my house. These will do.

There are more stairs. I take them too. My throat is burning and I'm out of breath.

I notice a plant stand out at the curb for trash, but I passed it by. This is not about nesting. This is about flight.

Finally, I'm out of places to climb. I circle around and, against my will, begin to descend.

The loop will likely take me 25 minutes. It has to be long enough. I won't face the possibility of returning to a house where my child is awake.

He may have already worn away the fingerprints on my pinky for all the time he's spent rubbing it in an effort to fall asleep over the last umpteen nights, then again in an effort to fall back asleep when he climbs into bed with us in the middle of the night. I have nothing left to give. Once the fingerprints are smoothed out completely, there'll be no way left to identify me. The rest of me has vanished already.

neighbors - another chapter

When I 'd brought him roses from the garden for his birthday, it was the first time I’d seen him without his glasses on. His eyes were smaller than they usually appeared, kind, smiling, without the glare in the way.

I’d told him, “I don’t know anyone else who’s 89.”

“Me neither,” he’d said.

“Three sisters, all gone. A brother, gone. My mother died when I was just three years old. My father lived to 55.”

His drinking buddies were all gone too. And his big band radio station. Cats from the 30s and 40s with jazz tubes and fine blues. Now it’s just oxygen tubes. His wife put his 6 o’clock asthma treatment on the table in front of him.

“I’m not complaining. Wouldn’t do any good.”

Most of the few conversations we got to have took place outside, him leaning against his ‘73 pick up.

Never out of his blue mechanic’s coveralls, he told me about being drafted in 1941, basic training in Wyoming. Going to England from NY, a caravan of ships – everywhere you looked, ships, all of them scared to death of the U boats. 800 troops had just gone down.

He interrupts himself, points to our driveway. “I been meaning to ask you, what kind of car is that?”

Fought in France, Belgium, finally made it to Germany in 1945.

When his time was up, he said, “I decided it wasn’t that bad after all. I got to see places I would never have seen. I’d heard of them, but I’d never been there. So, I thought, let’s try it again.”

To the next tour of duty, Mr Johnson. May the music be as good as you hoped.

James Johnson (May 17, 1918 – July 30, 2007)

passing on knowledge

In a past entry, I discussed possible career paths my son might take based upon observances I’ve made of his personality and preferences. Here’s a quick review: So far we’ve had geologist, astronomer, underwater cave dweller, and American tourist abroad.

I’d like to add to those - sound engineer, Pig Latin interpreter, and, I’m afraid, teacher.

In terms of the first, I can only say that my son enjoys sound effects. He knows perfectly well the names for things like dog, fire truck, swing, drink. Yet, without fail, a dog is a “WOOF-WOOF!” a fire truck is a “WOOOO-WOOOO!” and a swing is a “wee-wah” (the sound it makes as it goes back and forth, pronounced with a sing-songy lilt). Drinking is denoted by a hand to the mouth and the sound “Zzzsssssooop!” The list continues.

Regarding number two, foreign languages are a specialty of Isaac’s. He speaks his native Isaac, some English, some sign language, and as far as I can see, is on his way to fluency in Pig Latin. He routinely drops the first consonant of any word as it is. He eats “‘nacks” and rolls his play-doh into “‘nakes” (also known as “Ssssssssss,” see explanation of “sound engineer” above). He also looks for birds in the “’wees” (drop ‘t’ replace ‘r’ with W sound) and never runs in the “‘weet” (see grammar rule for “‘wees”).

Okay, I know that you are supposed to drop the whole consonant cluster, but come on, he’s only a baby, he does his best. Once I teach him the addition of “ex-” and “-ay,” he’s in. Besides, he’s a fast learner (see explanation of “teacher” below).

All this is intriguing, but I can’t help wondering if Isaac’s true calling is teacher.

I swear I only told him once not to eat the green part of the strawberries. My son is not only a fast learner, he passes on his knowledge with generous enthusiasm. At every subsequent encounter with a strawberry it goes something like this:

“Mama, me no eat geen pawt.” (models)

“Daddy. Daddy. Daddy. DAD! No eat geen pawt!” (instructs)

“Okay, Isaac, I won’t eat the green part.”

“No eat geen pawt, Daddy.” (checks for comprehension)

Much of Isaac’s knowledge base seems to center around what not to ingest or how things are ingested. On some fateful day some months back, Mike asked Isaac where the food went after it left his stomach. “Um, knee!” Isaac pronounced, at which point, my dear husband made the unfortunate decision to confirm the theory.

At random moments during meals, Isaac can now be heard discussing the obvious trek his food takes through his body, from mouth to stomach to knee, with great sincerity. Watering out in the garden recently, he had more lessons to share with me.

“Mama, ‘wees no have knee. Have woot. Woot ZZZZsssooop up wawa.”

Hey, ya learn something new every day.

potty training

The year is 2025. “Harry Potter: The Musical” has just opened on Broadway, and Isaac, my 20-year-old son, rises from his seat in seventh row center as the curtain closes for intermission and wades through the crowd to the men’s room, where, miraculously, he makes use of the facilities all by himself.

I try to keep that glorious day as my vision. But most days, it’s hard.

More lies. They just keep coming. My sister told me, “Oh, potty train in the summer – put them outside naked and then they see when they have to go.” As if that were the issue.

My kid knows exactly when he has to go. Sometimes even informs me while the act is in progress. And we have our good days – the days when I can get him excited about all those commercial cartoons printed on his underwear. On those days, we do well. Very well. It’s getting to that point that’s the biggie. Most of the time the battle cry is “DIE-boo! DIE-boo!” How we love our captors.

The other part of the lie about the summer being the best time to potty train is that since you have to be home to do it and the summer is filled with festivals and beach days and stuff that is much cooler than watching the dust bunnies burrow in the living room, it demands sacrifice. Isaac and I don’t care for sacrifice.

The potty seat has become part of our household décor. Tattooed with stickers, a symbol of both pride and horror, it stands by us, whether loved or forgotten, plastic blue and white receptacle that fills my days and that I, were it solely up to me, would have filled in return.

everything

It is not yet twilight.

My toddler finds the slim crescent
barely illuminated in the sky.

Words come with effort,
syllables tow their funny vowels
across his still-new tongue:
“Moon. Out.”

And with that, he leaps skyward
grasps something precious and invisible
in his little fist, lands flat-footed.

His fingers peel back and he presents me
his open palm. “Moon,” he tells me.

But before I can respond, he is snatching
the air above him again, cups his two hands
against his chest.

Beaming, he holds out his hands.
“Stars,” he says. And suddenly,

I have everything I could ever want.

Leaves!

fences and neighbors

I don't yet have a toddler who clutches a toy with his whole body screaming “Mine! Mine! Mine!” Maybe because he doesn't have a sibling (mother-in-law: “He's going to grow up ALL ALONE?” me: “ALL ALONE.”)

Still, Isaac understands ownership. He also understands who is part of his community and who is outside of it. The two concepts are related. He flatly refuses to share his cars with a random boy at the park, but when his friend Joshua whom we've been waiting for arrives, he readily hands them over. Or at the beach recently it was “Girls, too! Girls, too!” as I handed him his cheese stick, and so I third it, giving a piece to my friends' twins and to Isaac.

Ownership and our ideas of property have gone wacky these days. “Share!” we tell the kids. And on what model might they grasp that idea, I wonder? Just look at our “communities.” In a past era, fences meant freedom, used to demarcate land ownership. Only free men could own land. There's a jumbled, ironic feel to all of that, but let's move along. These days, fences aren't keeping anybody free. They are the border between us and them.

I'm interested in exploring fences and neighbors. I've had the idea to make it into a radio program for over a year now.

The last radio show I produced for public radio was on elementary school kids' views of libraries closing in their neighborhood. It aired a few days before Isaac was born. Since then, I've done a few interviews with touring writers, but nothing like the time-consuming endeavor of mobile interview, collection of ambient sound, selection of music, writing intro, transitional and closing texts, tunneling through editing programs in the dark of a studio for hours, slicing up and rearranging my victims' sentences and creating narrative. Perhaps oddly, I crave to go back to that work (or at the very least a life that would afford me such time).

I want to interview the person with the two-foot green chainlink number that has four, count them, Beware of Dog signs on it. Huh?

I want to talk to the person who lives behind a crumbling white picket fence leading to a Pepto-Bismol pink house decked out in peace signs.

I need to get into the mind of the person who constructed a concrete block barricade to their rose garden, leaving planter openings at even intervals along the top, only to see whatever lived in them at one time shrivel to brown sticks and now host a flock of empty beer cans.

Those are the old fences. But people are constantly constructing new fences and walls in my neighborhood too.

The McMansions and renovations all seem to call for a second (or third) floor for the view and towering fences. Wood, brick, iron, take your pick.

Some of the McMansions can be described as nothing short of fortresses. Thick adobe-colored walls squaring off cement patios in a dizzying progression that ride higher and higher lest the inner sanctuary be sullied by the outside eye. There is, of course, a Beware of Dog sign posted prominently on these chateaus of welcome, and – centered over my favorite one – a fat, gold crucifix nailed above the door. (We're Christian, goddammit! Stay back!) The only thing missing is the jagged pieces of bottles poking out along the top of the wall.

I would ask questions about whether they considered their fence decorative, functional, other. I'd talk to them about who knows their neighbors. And how far in each direction they can name them.

Recently, a friend who is looking for a place to rent lamented how he'll probably have to deal with neighbors. “You guys lucked out here,” he told me.

At our house, we have few direct neighbors. There is the church I've written about, the 80+ year-old Johnsons I've written about in passing, and screaming children behind us, though we've never seen them. That would be because on the sides and back of the house there is a six foot high wooden fence topped with another two feet of lattice.

There is also our pseudo neighbor on the other side. His house faces the street perpendicular and he has a big yard that touches ours in just one place really, so were it not for the baby raccoon, we may never have crossed paths without going out of our way to introduce ourselves, which, well, people don't often do and which, well, is part of my point in doing a story, and, well, aren't I always whining about community? I still don't get why he didn't see the raccoon across his empty yard over three days. I'm just gonna throw this out there, and it doesn't mean it explains anything, but, well, he drives a Hummer. Anyway.

Recently we visited both families on the east coast in one week-long trip – something we had sworn we would never do again.

The day after we got home was a beautiful sunny Sunday and we were out in the garden reminding ourselves what our yard looked like when I heard a knocking on the fence.

My eighty-year-old neighbor Mrs Johnson was standing on an upturned bucket, peering through the lattice over the six-foot high barricade. “I said to James, I said, 'That woman with the truck has come a few times already, I better go out and see if she has a key. If she has a key,' I said, 'everything's alright.'”

We had really intended to let them know we were going. Really. We just didn't see them outside and knocking on people's door these days...well, it's that direct thing...don't we all hesitate? (e.g. knocking on the fence).

Despite the fence knocking, what is obvious from this exchange is that Mrs Johnson comes from another generation, where maybe neighbors were important. Not to mention another culture (she is from Salzburg, Austria), where maybe neighbors were important.

For the first three months we lived here, Mr Johnson, also from another generation and another culture (he's from Mississippi) addressed me solely as "neighbor." "Hello, Neighbor!" he would call from beside his light blue Mazda pickup (purchased new, don't ya know, in February of 1973). In truth, he couldn't remember my name, but who cares? How cute is it to be called "Neighbor?"

After we straightened out with Mrs Johnson how long we were gone and that the roses had indeed been watered, the conversation turned to more meaningful matters.

Still straining to hang onto the fence with one hand, Mrs Johnson motioned with the other. “Give me a plate, honey, I made cream puffs.”

Neighbors rock.

back again

So, Mike's back is out again.

Grumpy, grumpy, grumpy. That's me I'm describing.

I failed to write about the last time this happened - a year ago...on VACATION. ("What do you MEAN you can't pick up the baby?? I'm on VACATION!" Watching Isaac waddle in the direction of the street, I felt not unlike Gene Wilder as Willie Wonka warning away the brats from the dangers of the chocoloate factory. "wait. stop. don't." he managed unmoving.)

Anyway, I did write about the time before that - almost three years ago...when I was PREGNANT. The entry is here.

what it means to have kids

Mike had started cooking dinner and I had completed reading a good eighth of an article on Kurt Vonnegut when Isaac pulled out his dollar store recorder.

Before Izzy came along, I held to the unfounded, untested, and ultimately false belief that when it's your own child you must not hear his noise at quite the same decibel level as when listening to the random brat in the supermarket hollering in his campaign for Fruit Loops. How young and foolish I was.

You may train yourself to eventually tune it out (I am not the authority on such training as I have yet to complete the course) or you may pretend not to hear, but your child shrieking or playing what might pass as a musical instrument is just as painful on the ear drums as any other kid doing same.

Toot-toooooooot, went my son. Emily Cat bounded toward the garage.

Toot- tooooooot-tooooot, he played on. And I applauded, trying not to lose my place as the wisdoms of Mr. Vonnegut were remembered and turned about by lesser writers.

“Done!” Isaac waved at me gleefully and ran to his room.

“Hurray,” I applauded absently. And then he was back.

“Oh, God,” I said aloud, “I've caused an encore.”

And for his next act... “Mama, dum!” He gestured me over. “Daddy, dum!”

The next thing I know we're dancing like maniacs. Mike is spinning; Isaac is flailing his arms; and I am playing the blasted instrument – somehow – I couldn't recreate for you the chain of events that led me there. Family psycho band.

It was soon after that that I changed our answering machine message from the one we'd had for the past two years: “You've reached Kitty, Mike, and Isaac. Please leave a message” to “We can't come to the phone right now; we're probably having a dance party.”

A friend was so thrown by the new recording, she didn't even recognize my voice. “Um, um, this used to be Kitty and Mike's number...” came her startled message on the machine.

Some people just have no idea what it means to have kids.