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!
Part of the school day routine is that when it's over, you ask the Boy how his day was and he'll reply (in a thoroughly bored tone) Guuuud. And then you ask him what he did or what he learned and he'll tell you that he doesn't remember. Which is when Daddy usually says, "Then what the heck are we sending you to school for?" which usually prompts a giggle.
Sometimes if you get the conversation going right, you can mine that little brain and you come up with diamonds. Schooling miraculously becomes apparent. And then there's the conversation the Boy had with Mamma:
Boy: Did you know that the Earth is a rock? We live on a rock?
Mamma: It is? Then how do all the grass and trees grow?
Boy (full of grade one attitude): The rock's on the inside. And it's not a circle, either or you'd drive right off it.
Mamma: What is it?
Boy (still full of grade one attitude): Don't you know your shapes? It's a spear. Not un sphere, because that's francais and we're talking english.
Mamma: A spear? Like a spear you chuck?
Boy (puzzled): Like an egg?
Mamma (now also puzzled): What? An egg?
Boy: You said chucky egg.
I figure that somewhere up in heaven, Lou Costello has his TV set permanently tuned in to watch my family.
The Boy's weekly exercise is to read his two french books and then when he's done, to write a sentence in his "cahier". It can be a sentence straight from story or the child can be more imaginative and write down a thought that was suggested by the story.
So it's a late afternoon and the Boy and I and the sister-cats are home alone having finished the pitiful little supper that we usually have when Mamma's at work and Daddy cooking (if'n you call peanut butter sandwiches "cooking"). The Boy finishes reading his story called "Ma Petite Soeur" which is about all the things a big sister does with her little sister. Je mange avec ma petite souer. Je lit avec ma petite souer. Je joue avec ma petite souer. Like that. He finishes and I start a little discussion hopefully to prompt some thoughts about the sentence he'll write. I say that since he's an only child he does all those things with mommy and daddy. Hoping maybe Daddy gets a plug in the sentence? Maybe. So, I ask. What does he think he wants to write as his sentence?
Boy: Ma petite souer est un chat!
Yesterday, I saw my shadow.
Unfortunately, this didn't mean that we were going to get an extra 6 weeks of summer, it only afforded me another view of my protruding front porch of a stomach. Getting old sucks, by the way.
After my half-round (which didn't go well) I picked the Boy up from his after school program. We pulled into the driveway and there was lots of stuff to take into the house. And the Boy left his window down. So in all I made two trips to fish stuff out of the car. The Boy watched me from the front door of the house. When he started talking, I had a pretty good idea where the conversation was going to end up.
Boy: Daddy, you have a really strong bum.
Me: Yeah? I do?
Boy: Yes. When you sat down in the car I saw it go way down and when you got out I saw the car go up again.
The Boy is becoming more aware of golf and the different Tours. Today he advised me that he'd have to come home from school early because he saw on TV that coverage of the Canadian Open starts at one o'clock. I had to be the one to break it to him.
This past weekend he was listening to the results of the Deutsche Bank Open. The commentator said that the winner was Olin Browne.
Boy: His name is Olin Browne but he should be named Holin One.
For his few weeks of swimming lessons, Mamma bought the Boy a brand-new Roots bathing suit for the summer. The bathing suit was around for only a little while before it suddenly and mysteriously went missing. Days passed. Weeks. A month. Mamma was baffled as to where that swim suit could have gone. Weekly she asked if anyone had run across it. She described over and over what she was doing leading up to the discovery that it was gone. I described the last time I'd seen it: putting it into the washing machine. She confirmed having taken it out and then doing .... what? What was it? Where was that suit?
Over the labour day weekend, the Boy decided he wanted me to inflate this wading pool I'd bought from Canadian Tire several years ago. He (meaning I) would get it all set up and invite his friend over. So I got the pool out and got it blown up, and then the little inflatable basketball net, then the other smaller deeper pool. He got it all.
I was in the storage room where we keep all the suitcases, my drums, the freezer, the tools and assorted junk when the boy picked up my drumsticks and started banging on the drums.
Boy: Look Daddy, I can play on these.
As I'm rummaging through the shelf I note that whatever he's hitting now has muffled the sound of the drums. I turn and look, and he's tapping on the Roots bathing suit which is sitting there on top of the floor tom.
Me: Oh. My. Goodness. Go take those and show them to Mommy.
The Boy rushes upstairs with trunks in hand.
Boy: Mamma! Look what Baby Bird found!
Mamma: Oh my goodness! Where did you find them?
Boy: On Dadda's drum!
Mamma: I looked everywhere for those!
Boy: Not on the drum.
It finally happened. The tooth that has been so loose finally came out. I was frantic to keep him from always wiggling that tooth, because once it was out, that was forever the end of that beautiful little smile. Baby teeth smiles, especially his baby teeth smile, are very cute and beautiful. I was desperate for it to last for as long as it could.
But like the song says, nothing beautiful lasts, and there he was one day out on the swing at Poppa and Granny's house, I was nowhere in sight (playing golf) and there he was, wiggling it again, pulling on that tooth again - when to the Boy's great surprise and excitement, it painlessly and bloodlessly came out in his fingers.
When I came home, he craned his little neck back as far as he could and grinned his biggest grin so that I could see the new hole in that beautiful little smile.
You could see that the new tooth, the grown-up tooth, the tooth he'd have as an adult, was already coming in.
But despite that new tooth, he's still just a little Boy. So we wrapped that small little tooth in some tissue and put it under his bed at night and the next morning the Tooth Fairy had left two dollars.
It prompted some inspired discussion around the breakfast table.
Granny: I wonder what the Tooth Fairy does with all those teeth?
Boy: I don't know. Maybe she saves them and gives them to little babies who don't have any.
Circumstances being what they were, the Boy was traveling on his birthday. He and Mamma were off to spend a few days with Nanny M. They flew over and back using Mamma's Provincial Airline tickets that she'd won in a silent auction some months ago. How the word got to the cockpit, I'm not really sure but as they were cruising along, the pilot came on to say what the weather forecast was, thanks for flying with him and:
Pilot: We'd also like to send along birthday greetings to Mr. (The Boy's name) in seat 7F who's six years old today. Happy birthday!
Boy (eager for more presents): What is he sending me?
On the first Thursday of this month, the Boy's maternal grandfather collapsed in his home in Newfoundland. He was resuscitated 15 minutes later, but really, the only benefit of that was that most of the family was able to gather around him and keep vigil, waiting for the inevitable to happen. Mamma was on a flight within an hour and a half. The Boy was promised a swim in the community pool, so we fit that in before we flew out later that evening. We spent a late night traveling by air and taxi to get to Nanny and Gidi's house in Newfoundland. "Gidi", by the way, is Arabic for "grandfather". Gidi would call the Boy "a little king". I remember him saying once to the Boy when he was not yet a year old, "Remember, your roots go all the way back to the desert." So when I produce and edit home movies about him, I called them "Desert King Productions".
We get to the house and I get him into bed. We have a little talk about death and dying before I go to the hospital to wait with Mamma. We would have several talks about death and dying over the next couple of days, and I realized that while most adults talk in cookie-cutter platitudes, it takes a five-year old to really ask the fundamental and honest questions that explore your faith. Such as that first night:
Boy: Why do people have to die anyway?
Me: It's just the way we're made, I guess.
Boy: Do people's bodies go to heaven?
Me: Well, it's more like their spirit, their soul that goes to heaven.
Boy: Oh. Is that like your imagination?
And:
Boy: When people get to heaven, can they walk?
Me: Yes.
Boy: Can they talk?
Me: Yes.
Boy: When you go to heaven, are people glad to see you?
Me: Yes, they sure are.
Gidi didn't die that night. He hung on until the next morning. His wife, three daughters and two son-in-laws were with him at the end. Three of his five grandchildren were back at the house, Gidi's son and family coming all the way from the States being the only ones who hadn't yet made it to Newfoundland. As the group of us walked the three blocks from the hospital to the house, the sisters talked solemnly about how they would get the children together and as gently as possible, tell them that Gidi had died. When we got back to the house, the children were downstairs in the playroom drawing pictures and having a little art competition. So when we all showed up, the first order of business was to present and describe to us their respective pieces of art. As this began to wind down the Boy piped up quite cheerfully:
Boy: Is he dead yet?
And that was that. Mamma told him yes, and the children went back to playing.
The next day was Gidi's wake, and the family went to the funeral home to say a last goodbye. I think the Boy was a bit confused. He had been told that Gidi had died, but there he was in the casket; a half-open casket that showed only his upper body. At bed-time, he had some more questions.
Boy: Does Gidi have a new face in heaven?
Me: Yes, I suppose he does.
Boy: Does he have a new body?
Me: Yes.
Boy: Do they match?
It was an interrogative kind of day. Questions, questions, questions. Amusing and exasperating at the same time. Well, truthfully more and more exasperating as the day went on. Questions about just about everything you could imagine. And every answer deserved at least one or two (or more) follow-up questions.
We're driving in the car, going through Gros Morne National Park and after another slew of questions I finally burst out to the Boy:
Me: Holy cow, is there a question in the entire world that you haven't ask me today?
Boy: Is there?
Summer is finally in full gear!
... and the Boy and I are inside, down in the basement (where it's cooler), rediscovering the addiction that is Sony Playstation. Lately we've been into playing Hot Shots Golf 3 ... it's summer after all. The Boy is getting incrementally better but keeps asking me to win tournaments for him. I'm trying to let him find out how much better it feels to win things for yourself, but he keeps pressuring me to play a tournament. I compromise by playing in "Versus" mode, where you are set up against a computer player for match play. If you beat him (or her), you unlock the player and can use her (or him) the next time you play in a tournament. The players get progressively better. So the more players you win, the farther you can hit the ball and the better chance you have of winning a tournament.
So I recently won the player called "Toni", a sixty-ish looking Mafioso type in a black suit and red tie. He speaks with a weird accent that the Boy has a hard time understanding. For example, when Toni makes a birdie he declares, "One above the rest!", one of a few Toni phrases that the Boy has yet to interpret.
Yesterday we were setting up to play a tournament (I was there only to "caddy") and the Boy selects Toni as his player.
Toni (ominous grumble): You chose wisely.
Boy (turns to look at me): His name is "Wisely"?
Boy: Daddy, I want us to get a van.
Me: Why?
Boy: Because you can have a person in the back and another person in the back and two people in the front.
Me: But we have that now in our car.
Boy: No I want to get a van. They're more fun. And what if we have more people?
Me: Well, I don't have enough money for a van. And it wouldn't fit in the driveway with Mamma's car.
Boy: What about a jeep?
Me: Same thing. Too expensive, not enough room.
Boy: What about a car?
Me: I have a car. This one. I like my car.
Boy: But I want us to get a van.
Me: Well I told you. Daddy doesn't have enough money to buy a new van.
Boy: We could have a yard sale...?
