Having collected Mamma from the airport, we're on the highway, almost home. It's a clear, dark, starry night. The Boy is up way past his bed-time, riding in the back seat, gazing through the window up into space. There's another plane on approach to the airport, its landing lights blazing a horizontal line in the sky. The Boy spots it first.
Boy: It looks like a hot dog.
Mamma: The plane looks like a hot dog?
Boy: Yeah. With a glow-in-the-dark bun!
After a week of living with his Dad, the Boy misses his Mamma. I'm pretty sure it's because she gives better cuddles. Day 7 dawns and the Boy's feeling a bit owly. A bit sad. A bit mopey. But Mommy's coming home this evening. We'll be going out to pick her up at the airport. This will be the big event in a day that's filled with stuff. So I said to a Boy:
Me: Hey. You can't be sad today. We have a whole lot of happy things that are happening today.
Boy: What are they?
Me: Well, I can think of three. Can you think of anything?
Boy (sadly): No.
Me: Well, it's Saturday. What happens on Saturday?
Boy: We go to music class?
Me: Right. And who are we going to meet there?
Boy: Olivia?
Me: Right. So that's one thing.
(Olivia is his best friend who just this last year moved away and so no longer lives right next door.)
Me: And what else are we going to do today with Olivia.
Boy (glum): Go to a movie.
Me: Right and what's the third thing.
Boy: Have popcorn and spicy drink?
Me: Yes. Right. I hadn't thought of that one. So there are four things. What else?
Boy: Go to lunch with Olivia and Guy?
Me; Yes, that too. Five things.
(At this point I'm really starting to feel like I'm in a Monty Python skit...)
Me: What else? What's the big thing, the happiest thing for today?
Boy: I don't know.
Me: I'll give you a hint.
We're standing in the kitchen next to the refrigerator. On the fridge, held by one of those magnet thingies, is a collection of three holiday pictures from our trip to Florida. I point to the middle one which I took in a beach-side restaurant. The Boy and his Mom are having a hug and smiling at the camera.
I point to the picture. It's a give-away, pointing at his Mamma who's coming home tonight. The biggest, happiest thing.
Boy: We're going to a restaurant!
It's time for bed and I ask the Boy to go pick out the story he wants for bed time. I'm very surprised when I get in his room that he's picked out the Dick and Jane compendium that I got him for Christmas last year and that he wants to read it to me. I bought it because I wanted him to learn to read something in English to complement all the learning he's getting in French (I notice that when he's doing homework and writing out words that he spells in French, Ee for I, euh for E). He races through the first number of chapters, reading very well. I'm very impressed and proud.
Boy: "Look at Baby. Oh look. See Baby. Oh oh see." Hey! That's a French word. Aussi!
Mamma has left us for Newfoundland to help her mom pack up and move from the family home in Corner Brook to a new condominium in St. John's. I said to her half-jokingly as she left that the Boy and I would be having supper at Mike's on Monday, Subway on Tuesday, Pizza Delight on Wednesday....
As of last night we're still waiting for the jokingly part, because there we are, a Boy and I out to a restaurant for supper. We're both having burgers. He has the kid's version and I have the grown up version.
Boy: That's not a Wendy's Bacon Mushroom Melt.
Me: Of course it isn't.
Boy: Because I can see the lettuce.
Me: That, and we're at the Dairy Queen.
Boy: Oh. Yeah.
Yesterday was Sunday and it rained and it was cold. Sunday is supposed to be golfing day for the Boy and me but the last three or four in a row have all been the same: heavy rain. Cold.
Time is running out. The golf course closes after Halloween. That means there's exactly ONE Sunday left for us to play.
So instead we spent the day inside. The TV was on.
Battlestar Galactica came on at 7:00, but I think it was from watching a preview where the Boy got a good look at Tricia Helfer who plays the Cylon credited as "Number 6". She's completely gorgeous, if you'll allow me an understatement. There's a picture following the link under her name ... it's a somewhat risqué, PG-13, children must be accompanied by an adult, look if you dare picture. I'll wait.
Beautiful, blonde, plays a role that is sexy, smart and deadly, a body that men would go to war for. Former Victoria Secret model. Canadian.
So the Boy (still barely six years old) sees her on TV asks me:
Boy: Why didn't you marry a girl like her?
Now, there are a lot of incorrect ways to answer this question.
Like, "Beautiful, blonde and killer body, yeah, why didn't I marry a girl like her?" or "Because I married your mother instead" both would probably rank right up there near the top. I stifled a laugh and told him "Well, if I did, you wouldn't be here." I don't know whether he understood what I meant, but he seemed satisfied with it.
(Hope his mommy is too.)
Later in the evening we're watching the the E! Hollywood True Story about William Shatner, on Space. Inevitably, they run a commercial for Battlestar Galactica. In keeping with the style of the Galactica's opening, the commercial is frenetic and frantic half-second cuts between all the different kinds of action, fighting Cylons, space battles, love interests, characters being chased through the rain, characters being chased through the ship, characters chased through space. Included in this montage were a couple of shots of not-my-wife Number Six, showing her from the back, nude from the waist up. The commercial ends.
Boy: It's about kissing and naked and shooting.
What the heck is going on this year?
In years past, the Boy was lucky enough to enjoy two or three birthday parties per birthday. He'd have one on the day and, often as not, we'd be off visiting someone somewhere in August and they'd have a birthday party for him as well. One year I think he had three. Maybe it was the year he turned three. Three for three. Yeah, that sounds about right.
So this year he's six.
And no birthday party.
He had a cake and presents and balloons and streamers and celebrated on the day with his Mommy and Daddy, but no friends. No party.
There was always going to be a party; we were just waiting for a weekend when there wasn't something going on.
So it's October, almost two whole months late, and still no party.
The Boy has been making plans though, and one day some weeks ago showed me a coloured scrap of paper where he had (to the best of his ability) written down the names of the boys and girls he wanted to invite to his party.
So that's done. Another week passes. And still no party.
Last week Mommy and I finally got our scrapers in gear and organized the fete. We booked the room and put down a deposit on the day and got the customized invitations. Like anywhere else, the place required a minimum of ten kids at the party (at $15 per kid). Mamma and the Boy started going through the names of friends and classmates. After listening to them for a while I interrupted, asking him:
Me: Didn't you already write down who you wanted to come on a piece of purple paper?
Boy: A purse of people paper?
A lot of what I write here comes from stuff the Boy says when he and I are driving in my car. I think of them as the Back Seat Conversations.
So we're driving home from his after-school place and suddenly he tells me:
Boy: Daddy, my bad dreams are getting scarier.
Me: Oh no, how come?
Boy: You want to know why?
Me: Yes, why?
Boy: Because it's getting closer to Halloween.
When just a baby in utero, Mamma was convinced the child was a girl. She even had the name picked out: Mary Rose. The baby's namesake was planted in the backyard.
When to her great surprise the doctor proclaimed, "It's a Boy!", what Mamma thought was, "Oh no. Hockey."
The doorbell rang the other night around supper time. It was the next door neighbour come to ask if we had any plans that night. It was just me and the Boy; Mamma was working. The neighbour had two tickets to the local major junior hockey game and other plans. The Boy indicated that he'd like to go. The game started at seven o'clock but would end somewhere around ten - way past the Boy's bed-time. I wasn't sure how he'd like it, but agreed that we'd go until he got tired but then come home.
We arrived in time and bought popcorn and Minute Maid orange spicy drink. We sat almost directly behind the visitors net, just eight rows up and the home team players came out of a tunnel just about ten seats to our right. The home team won by a shutout scoring a goal in each of the three periods; the one in the middle stanza came right in front of us. In the third period, the camera guy who during play was down where the players had streamed past, turned around and got a beautiful picture of the Boy which appeared on the giant screen on the score clock for all (including the Boy) to see.
After each period I asked if he was feeling tired, if he wanted to go home.
No way.
The night was a great success.
A couple of days later, the tickets are sitting on the step and I point them out to the Boy wondering if maybe he'd like to put them somewhere as a souvenir of a great night out.
Me: Do you want to keep the tickets?
Boy: Yes! We can use them to see another game!
