He used to call it Meshul Milk, but finally he mastered "special", even if he doesn't know what it means. My special boy was looking for a way to delay naptime.
"Mommy, I still hungry. I want that." He pointed to 3 places at once.
"Do you want a banana?"
"No 'nana. I want Cheerios."
"You want Cheerios?" I showed him the box.
"No, no want Cheerios. I want that!"
"You want...."
This continued for a few minutes before I gave up and began putting away clean dishes while he tried to make up his mind about what food would taste the best and take the longest to eat. As I opened cabinets and clinked the dishes together, transporting them across the kitchen, Jackson finally concluded that what he wanted was Special Milk.
"Big special milk or --"
"Big special milk!" Jackson was delighted suddenly at the prospect of getting to drink as much Milk Chocolate Carnation Instant Breakfast as his tummy would allow.
Special milk is special not just because it is chocolatey milk but because of the presentation we give to it. Jackson loves to do Big Boy things (other than using the potty), so having a drink from a glass instead of a plastic cup is a joy all its own. And having a straw with a drink, besides being a safety measure for toes and carpeting, is a bonus that puts a sparkle in the little dear's eye.
As I held the straw dispenser out to him, Jackson proclaimed his desire for a "Green straw!" --and proceeded to grasp a blue one with his left hand and a green one with his right. Of course, what he really wanted was a blue straw, since he loves to hoard all things blue.
With some encouragement to put the blue straw away because, after all, he said he wanted a green one; thus he was left with only the green straw in his left hand. Recognizing his error, he tossed the wrong-colored sipper onto the floor. Perhaps he hoped that I would not notice and think that he hadn't received a straw at all, though more likely here merely wanted to demonstrate that green straws are not worthy of consideration.
This was time for a lesson.
"No, I want a green straw!"
"You had a green straw; you just threw it on the floor. Now pick it up and drink your special milk." Germs aren't a worry in our family so much as wastefulness. I felt no worry about him sipping the drink with this rejected item so long as it was that day and not another when time enough had elapsed for microbes to grow and spread. The time for this straw was now or never.
Of course, as any 27-month-old presented with a logical argument against his poor little brain, he promptly burst into tears, bawling at me that I would not give him the blue one, angry at himself for saying the wrong color.
"Jackson, you said you wanted green, you chose green, and you threw it onto the floor. That's the one you are going to drink, or you get no straw. It's your choice. But I'm not giving you another straw."
Clinking more dishes and glasses and silverware into their proper storage places, I tried to pretend that I was unaffected by his anguish. Jackson's incoherent sobs occasionally cleared sufficiently for me to hear, "No srawr! No geen srawr! Wahunhunhunhunh!"
"Jackson, I told you that I will not tolerate this kind of rudeness. You can have the straw you chose or no straw."
"No srawr! No green srawr! Wahhhunhunh!"
"Okay, then, I'll drink your special milk," I declared as I retrieved the discredited straw from the floor and inserted it into the glass. "Mmm, this is yummy! Do you want some?"
"Wahhhunhunh! No straw!" He followed me as I went to sit at his play table, staring as I settled the glass with the chocolatey beverage.
Taking another sip, I glanced at Jackson and watched his little face contort with envy. He wanted special milk, but he wasn't ready to surrender.
"Would you like some? Come sit. Now put your blankey down and use two hands. Drink slowly, very slowly," I said as I governed the angle of the glass being tipped toward his mouth over our carpeted flooring. With only a little dismay, I noted the smear of Milk Chocolate Carnation Instant Breakfast that followed the straw's evacuation to the table.
His little hands soon tired of the weight of the tasty burden, and I was entrusted to return the drink to the table. Jackson's mental gears were nigh visible as he glanced at the rejected green straw and then back at the glass. Quickly and without a word, he replaced it and began rapidly sipping down the yummy goodness.
After a brief minute or two, he surfaced for air, the glass nearly drained of its contents.
"Are you all done special milk?"
One last slurp, and he was done. I didn't bother to dredge up the straw debate with him: we both knew how it ended.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Monday, March 22, 2010
Reverie
When my sister and I were in elementary school, we got to spend a good deal of time home alone together. She's 18 months, 9 days, and 17 hours older than me (taking Daylight Savings Time into account), so we generally found things to do together and were fairly close in size. One of our best games was Procrastination.
We played Procrastination a lot. I think one of the reasons we were so talented at the game was that we had the television as the focus of our home. It made it really easy for us to vegetate. Seriously, our family friend who lived down the alley from us had nicknamed us the Tater Sisters and even dedicated a teen horror novel to us as such: To Vanessa and Jessica S***, the Tater Sisters. (Vanessa was Spud, and I was French Fry.) There are all kinds of great photos of us in various stages of melted-human posture, watching TV in our bathing suits and Dad's motorcycle helmets.
Since both our parents worked full time, we were tasked with doing a great percentage of the household chores. In a spirit of familial responsibility and pride, we did these chores at the last possible time, as quickly and poorly as possible.
Vacuuming sometimes was merely a matter of leaving beater-bar tracks on the carpet. Washing dishes was an exception to the "poorly" concept, however, particularly after (as my sister later claimed when relating the story to me) I apparently left too much soap on the dishes in the rinsing process and gave the whole family diarrhea. We put off scrubbing the bathtub and the bathroom floor as long as possible because, frankly, it was disgusting work.
However the chore that was the most fun of all was doing the laundry. Oh, sure, you think sorting is a pain, but we didn't do much of that. Putting it into the washer and dryer wasn't all that bad because we just used the maximum settings for everything. Folding, on the other hand, was a real chore. But with a certain amount of imagination, and excessive efforts of delay tactics, folding laundry could be awesomely fun.
When we washed the sheets, we couldn't help but notice just how much our stuffed animals and dolls seemed to feel left out of the process. So Vanessa and I would load up every puppet, animal, and doll we had onto a sheet. This was an all-important part of the folding process because, um, it was. We'd each take two corners of the sheet, then, and shake it up and down until all of its load had been ejected. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
I know what you're thinking: Ew, you did that with dirty sheets? No worries there, folks: we only played the doll-tossing game with the clean sheets, usually over the vacuumed carpet.
Clothing was generally less interesting to fold. You can only try on your mom's bra and your dad's underwear and socks so many times before the fun sort of drains away. Instead, we took advantage of the large play arena afforded us in our folding station: Mom and Dad's bed. This king size monstrosity could hold a LOT of clothing, which conveniently could be shaped into various mounds and islands. Being a few feet above the ground, the bed also served well for demonstrations of gravity. Vanessa and I were expert gravity testers.
How gravity is tested: the thing you have to remember when testing gravity is that you need at least two people. Luckily we had that requirement met. One player is absurdly affected by gravity and continually falls (slowly) off the edge of the bed. The other player is tasked with rescuing the faller. For added dramatic effect, wails requesting help or fear of what might lie on whatever alternate reality the floor was assigned to be could be assimilated into the game. This was a seriously dangerous line of work, however, but our injuries were seldom anything worthy of reporting.
Most adults don't seem to enjoy doing the laundry. I think maybe it's because now that we've grown up, we've forgotten how much fun folding laundry can be. Clearly we're doing it wrong.
We played Procrastination a lot. I think one of the reasons we were so talented at the game was that we had the television as the focus of our home. It made it really easy for us to vegetate. Seriously, our family friend who lived down the alley from us had nicknamed us the Tater Sisters and even dedicated a teen horror novel to us as such: To Vanessa and Jessica S***, the Tater Sisters. (Vanessa was Spud, and I was French Fry.) There are all kinds of great photos of us in various stages of melted-human posture, watching TV in our bathing suits and Dad's motorcycle helmets.
Since both our parents worked full time, we were tasked with doing a great percentage of the household chores. In a spirit of familial responsibility and pride, we did these chores at the last possible time, as quickly and poorly as possible.
Vacuuming sometimes was merely a matter of leaving beater-bar tracks on the carpet. Washing dishes was an exception to the "poorly" concept, however, particularly after (as my sister later claimed when relating the story to me) I apparently left too much soap on the dishes in the rinsing process and gave the whole family diarrhea. We put off scrubbing the bathtub and the bathroom floor as long as possible because, frankly, it was disgusting work.
However the chore that was the most fun of all was doing the laundry. Oh, sure, you think sorting is a pain, but we didn't do much of that. Putting it into the washer and dryer wasn't all that bad because we just used the maximum settings for everything. Folding, on the other hand, was a real chore. But with a certain amount of imagination, and excessive efforts of delay tactics, folding laundry could be awesomely fun.
When we washed the sheets, we couldn't help but notice just how much our stuffed animals and dolls seemed to feel left out of the process. So Vanessa and I would load up every puppet, animal, and doll we had onto a sheet. This was an all-important part of the folding process because, um, it was. We'd each take two corners of the sheet, then, and shake it up and down until all of its load had been ejected. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
I know what you're thinking: Ew, you did that with dirty sheets? No worries there, folks: we only played the doll-tossing game with the clean sheets, usually over the vacuumed carpet.
Clothing was generally less interesting to fold. You can only try on your mom's bra and your dad's underwear and socks so many times before the fun sort of drains away. Instead, we took advantage of the large play arena afforded us in our folding station: Mom and Dad's bed. This king size monstrosity could hold a LOT of clothing, which conveniently could be shaped into various mounds and islands. Being a few feet above the ground, the bed also served well for demonstrations of gravity. Vanessa and I were expert gravity testers.
How gravity is tested: the thing you have to remember when testing gravity is that you need at least two people. Luckily we had that requirement met. One player is absurdly affected by gravity and continually falls (slowly) off the edge of the bed. The other player is tasked with rescuing the faller. For added dramatic effect, wails requesting help or fear of what might lie on whatever alternate reality the floor was assigned to be could be assimilated into the game. This was a seriously dangerous line of work, however, but our injuries were seldom anything worthy of reporting.
Most adults don't seem to enjoy doing the laundry. I think maybe it's because now that we've grown up, we've forgotten how much fun folding laundry can be. Clearly we're doing it wrong.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Becoming J.D. Salinger
It's nearly 2AM, and I can't sleep. I'm thinking about J.D. Salinger. He died earlier this year, but that's not really why he's on my mind.
I want to be more like him. Of course, part of me would love to be a writer, churning out novellas to sell to the unsuspecting public. But more than anything I want to be the kind of person who recognizes Jesus as the Fat Lady. To see that life is an imperfect thing but that despite its flaws it is a thing of beauty and joy.
I want to tell the world about how my elastic of my underwear melted to my thighs and separated from them to stay glued to my buttocks without it being something perverse. The world needs to see that ordinary things are lovely and deserving of attention. People need to know that failure is okay, that there are times we all have when we have no friggin' clue where to go next or what to say. We will all have moments in which we fail to predict another's behavior or to meet another's standards of propriety.
I want to be able to tell people that my heart melts when I see my son in his lion towel. I want to share my adoration of the man who collects aluminum cans to recycle for beer money. I want to demonstrate in words that I believe people smell wonderful without having to resort to perfumes, that they have beautiful hair no matter what color it is, that I love it when I visit a house that isn't pristine.
I want to be part of the Glass family. I want to be BooBoo in Down at the Dinghy, helping my emotional son resolve his issues in oblique ways. I want to be Buddy as he writes about the brother he wants to emulate, his unattainable idol. I want to be Franny who needs to be told that Jesus is the Fat Lady.
I want to show how much I love the way J.D. Salinger has helped me to see the beauty in the everyday. Without him I might never have fallen to pieces inside with joy at seeing the elderly black man with a walker in his brand new Batman t-shirt. I might never have appreciated the ramblings of my off-beat neighbors. I might never have understood that I do not have to agree with others to love them for who they are.
Part of me wants to know more about the man. Part of me really wants to do a quick web search to study up on the life of the man I know as J.D. Salinger. I might discover that he was a phony. I might learn that he never really believed there was anything special about a boy who didn't fit into boarding schools or a tiny, quiet, old man riding in a car. Perhaps I would learn that he changed his mind about it all and gave up on his belief in the intrinsic beauty of life. But it isn't what I want to believe, so I do not risk it, even though I might like what I would learn.
Salinger has helped me to recognize socks left by my husband as an allergy he has to putting them in the dirty laundry. He has helped me recognize the elegance of a quarter in the hands of my toddler. He has shown me that even a world with such a large number of phonies need not throw one into a state of despair. I can be happy with myself, with my life, however flawed. I can be happy with a world that finds me strange and disturbing because I do not fit the mold, because I do not conform.
I want to tell it to the world straight that I love everyone and everything. I may not always love your behaviors, but I love you, world. (No, I'm not drunk, though I should be tired. Probably was too much dark chocolate earlier that is keeping me awake.) Do you hear me, people? I love you and all your flaws. I love the way you are wrong and still fight to make people believe you are right. I love the way you pretend not to care what others think about you while silently hoping they will cherish you as a beautiful, cherished element of the world. I love the way you argue and hug and kiss. I love the way you laugh to be polite, even though you don't think the joke was that funny. I love the fact that you've read this much of what I had to say, just because you know I wanted you to read it.
I love you people so much my heart could burst. Thank you for existing. Thank you for giving these words a piece of your time, for letting them run through your mind for a while. Thank you for letting me in. For this, I love you even more.
Good night, and please, oh please, let me get some rest before the son wakes up.
I want to be more like him. Of course, part of me would love to be a writer, churning out novellas to sell to the unsuspecting public. But more than anything I want to be the kind of person who recognizes Jesus as the Fat Lady. To see that life is an imperfect thing but that despite its flaws it is a thing of beauty and joy.
I want to tell the world about how my elastic of my underwear melted to my thighs and separated from them to stay glued to my buttocks without it being something perverse. The world needs to see that ordinary things are lovely and deserving of attention. People need to know that failure is okay, that there are times we all have when we have no friggin' clue where to go next or what to say. We will all have moments in which we fail to predict another's behavior or to meet another's standards of propriety.
I want to be able to tell people that my heart melts when I see my son in his lion towel. I want to share my adoration of the man who collects aluminum cans to recycle for beer money. I want to demonstrate in words that I believe people smell wonderful without having to resort to perfumes, that they have beautiful hair no matter what color it is, that I love it when I visit a house that isn't pristine.
I want to be part of the Glass family. I want to be BooBoo in Down at the Dinghy, helping my emotional son resolve his issues in oblique ways. I want to be Buddy as he writes about the brother he wants to emulate, his unattainable idol. I want to be Franny who needs to be told that Jesus is the Fat Lady.
I want to show how much I love the way J.D. Salinger has helped me to see the beauty in the everyday. Without him I might never have fallen to pieces inside with joy at seeing the elderly black man with a walker in his brand new Batman t-shirt. I might never have appreciated the ramblings of my off-beat neighbors. I might never have understood that I do not have to agree with others to love them for who they are.
Part of me wants to know more about the man. Part of me really wants to do a quick web search to study up on the life of the man I know as J.D. Salinger. I might discover that he was a phony. I might learn that he never really believed there was anything special about a boy who didn't fit into boarding schools or a tiny, quiet, old man riding in a car. Perhaps I would learn that he changed his mind about it all and gave up on his belief in the intrinsic beauty of life. But it isn't what I want to believe, so I do not risk it, even though I might like what I would learn.
Salinger has helped me to recognize socks left by my husband as an allergy he has to putting them in the dirty laundry. He has helped me recognize the elegance of a quarter in the hands of my toddler. He has shown me that even a world with such a large number of phonies need not throw one into a state of despair. I can be happy with myself, with my life, however flawed. I can be happy with a world that finds me strange and disturbing because I do not fit the mold, because I do not conform.
I want to tell it to the world straight that I love everyone and everything. I may not always love your behaviors, but I love you, world. (No, I'm not drunk, though I should be tired. Probably was too much dark chocolate earlier that is keeping me awake.) Do you hear me, people? I love you and all your flaws. I love the way you are wrong and still fight to make people believe you are right. I love the way you pretend not to care what others think about you while silently hoping they will cherish you as a beautiful, cherished element of the world. I love the way you argue and hug and kiss. I love the way you laugh to be polite, even though you don't think the joke was that funny. I love the fact that you've read this much of what I had to say, just because you know I wanted you to read it.
I love you people so much my heart could burst. Thank you for existing. Thank you for giving these words a piece of your time, for letting them run through your mind for a while. Thank you for letting me in. For this, I love you even more.
Good night, and please, oh please, let me get some rest before the son wakes up.
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