Kid Amnesiac

Every now and again, my mother stuns me by saying something like “You’re nicer than I am, you and your Bubbie both. It must have skipped a generation.” I think once she even told me that I am a better person. These types of comments embarrass me hugely and make me squirm, because I think my mom is pretty terrific and I have no idea how to respond without suggesting otherwise.

Now that I’m a mom and Simon is getting older, I’m starting to understand that my mother isn’t denigrating herself as much as she’s just making observations that please her. She could just as easily note that my voice isn’t as good as hers used to be,  that I’m far messier and more disorganized than she is, and that I’m comparatively awful in math. Possibly lazier as well. Thankfully, she doesn’t. Instead, she’s been very open about where she feels she can learn from me.

It’s quite romantic when you think about it. In fact, it was the Romantic poet William Wordsworth who famously wrote “The child is father of the Man.”

It’s with this in mind that I state flatly that Simon is more generous than I am. He’s always found sharing easier than I did as a child, and it’s starting to extend past that when we go shopping. Yesterday we went to Target to pick up birthday presents for two of his classmates that are having parties in the next two weeks. Caroline turns five on May 1. Her invitation says “no presents” but she’s one of Simon’s best friends so I decided to shop anyway and drop off the gift a day or so before her party. The other girl, L–, is having a party the next weekend. After we chose presents for both girls, Simon looked up at me and said, “What about N–?”

Without thinking, I looked at him and said, “Honey, N– isn’t having a party. We don’t need to get her a gift.” Without missing a beat, Simon looked up at me and argued his case. “But it’s still her birthday. I think we need to get her something, too. N– likes to play with kitchen toys. Let’s get her something like that.”

Honestly, he pleased and shamed me in equal measure. N–‘s parents are Sudanese refugees struggling to make ends meet until her father finishes a very marketable degree. Of course she’s not having a class party. It’s not part of their culture, and even if it were it would be a financial strain. But Simon doesn’t see birthday presents as something that correlates with parties, he really likes N–, and there was no way he was going to shop for two out of three friends.

Nor should I have considered it. So today or tomorrow I’m heading back to Target to buy N–‘s present. While I’m there, I’ll be picking up an outfit for Anyieth. The latter is the result of a earlier shopping trip when I picked up a few outfits for Agotich.  Simon approved all the choices (he had even pre-selected a few of them), but didn’t understand why I shopped for just the one girl. “Honey, Agotich needs the clothes and goes to school. Anyieth doesn’t go to school and can wear Agotich’s old things.” He fixed me with the same blank look I got during birthday-present-gate yesterday and laid down the law. “Anyieth would like something new, too. We have to get her at least one thing. I think she’d like that shirt with the kitten on it. You can get her that one I think.”

What I said was, “Simon, you have a generous heart. I will.” What I thought was, “Simon, you’re more generous than your mama.” It’s humbling, but I’ve decided to learn from him and run with it.

A post in which I reveal possibly a little too much about our family’s strangeness…

I’ve written previously about Baby Kitten, Simon’s regular bed-time alter-ego who also shows up sporadically throughout the day. You’d think that would be weird enough, right? I’ve also described Burt Handsome, alternately Sunderland’s star goalie and striker and Simon’s soccer-playing alter-ego.

Well, there’s a new assumed identity in town: Allow me to introduce you to Baby Hawk. This one is strange, and I totally take the blame for it.

Last year, a red-hailed hawk couple named Bobby and Violet made a nest on a ledge of a window on the 12th floor of NYU’s Bobst Library. That window happened to belong to president of NYU, and he agreed to position a webcam so interested parties could watch Bobby and Violet raise their young. What unfolded was an avian soap-opera: Violet had an injured leg, and her one egg appeared to not be fertile when it hadn’t hatched over a week past its due date.

The drama continued when Pip finally hatched, grew up, and fledged against a backdrop of Violet’s deteriorating condition. Pip fledged last June or July, and Violet died in the late fall after vets attempted to surgically repair her injured leg. These events were witnessed and followed by hundreds of thousands of people across the globe—including Vatican City—via The New York Times’s City Room Blog.This year Bobby is back with his new mate, Rosie. They build their nest on the same ledge, and their two baby hawks, or eyas, were born 10 and 8 days ago respectively.

Simon has been interested in babies of all sorts lately, so last week I pulled up the Hawk Cam and introduced him to Bobby, Rosie, and the baby “puff-balls”. He watched Rosie sit on the babies to keep them warm and protected and also saw her feed the eyas strips of dead rat, which launched a discussion of hawk predation.

Thus Baby Hawk was born. I’m supposed to sit on Baby Hawk, and Baby Hawk has as screech like you wouldn’t believe. Baby Hawk also opens his tiny mouth to accept bits of rat, mouse, squirrel, and pigeon. Last night, the weirdness reached its zenith when upon tucking him into bed, Baby Hawk made the following request:

“Is rabbit perhaps on the menu tonight?”

Swear to God. He really said “perhaps” and “on the menu” while asking for a dead cute animal. He’s going method on me. Thankfully, none of Simon’s peers are able to read this post to use knowledge of his weirdness against him, and most of my friends already know how weird I am!

I love five-year-olds. Part of what makes the age so much fun is that five is the beginning of middle childhood, that magical state I blogged about earlier when kids start acting like (mostly) rational agents and can do stuff. Simon’s ability to play basketball or soccer, learn a tennis swing, work on his catch-up-stroke (precursor to freestyle), sit through and describe a 90-minute soccer game with Matt (“Villa clears it! Poor Wolves…”), and discuss atmospheric layers and dwarf planets is all part and parcel with middle childhood. As is his starting to read and his continued interest in math and numbers.

But the other side of five that I adore is when Simon vacillates away from being a rational, seemingly mature agent and goes deep into five-year-old flights of fancy.  We saw this last night when shortly after describing every person on Man City who touched a ball during a given run, Simon ran upstairs to grab his basketball trophies so he could present them to the winner of the car race he was acting out with Hot Wheels on the couch.

The only downside to this charming back-and-forth is that sometimes it can be hard to tell which Simon we’re dealing with. That’s how on Monday we can watch rational Simon choose to stay in the dentist’s chair for an extra 20-25 minutes to avoid having to make an additional trip and then find ourselves at Seneca Park a few hours later with an entirely different creature.

I thought we were there for soccer drills in the absence of his regular weekday practice (canceled for spring break), as did Matt. But whenever Simon failed to block a kick in his role as goalie, he moped and accused us of kicking too hard, too far away, and generally “ruining my fun”. He was being downright petulant, until finally Matt barked at him in frustration: “Simon, do you only want us to kick soft, slow balls straight at your feet?”

He said no, but something about the look in his eye suggested otherwise. So for the next 10 minutes or so, that’s exactly what we did. We made a great show of setting up crosses and taking corner kicks, but ultimately lightly tapped each one within a foot of Simon on either side.

He blocked every one, beaming with pleasure while he was at it. And that’s when it hit us: we were not with the coachable, determined Simon who wanted to develop his skills. We were with that other Simon, the one lost in a world of his imagining. In fact, this wasn’t Simon at all; this was Burt Handsome of Sunderland having the best goal-keeping game of his entire life. This was Simon engaging in some hero play-acting.

The rest of our day went much smoother, and both Simons went to bed happy and satisfied. The first one telling me I was his best friend of all and trying to add three-digit numbers in his head, and the other meowing as Baby Kitten and telling me that he’d be one-year-old on July 13.

What, you thought I might have something to say about a weekend that featured a Passover seder Saturday night and Easter lunch the next day? That perhaps I might want to ruminate on the deeper meaning of my step-mother sneaking up on my front porch to drop off an Easter basket at the same time my seder guests were looking to see if Elijah was going to stop by? Well, I could go on about all that.

But honestly, I’d rather discuss THIS:

See that nice little forehand swing? He volleyed many a pickleball to Grandma or Daddy using that little swing after lunch today. And take a gander at THIS:

Yup, he’s got a nice little backhand, too. Returned several volleys using that stroke. So how happy was he?

THIS happy. And that’s after two solid hours of playing with no break at all. Simon hit more balls today than I have in my entire life. I am, quite possibly, the world’s worst tennis player after three attempts at learning. The last one came in college, and let’s just say I took the class pass-fail and still had reason to sweat.

I guess I need to add tennis to the list of sports Simon is interested in and has a natural feel for. The acorn fell a few hundred miles from the tree on this score, and I couldn’t be happier at the stark contrast Simon is serving up (see what I did there?) between the two of us.

We’ve arrived at a rite of passage in our house that I can’t quite put a name on. I don’t know if we’re de-child-proofing or un-child-proofing, but either way the last remaining gates and latches that served as protective devices and/or obstacles have come down.

Simultaneously, and not coincidentally, my attic of baby and toddler clothes and equipment has also been vacated or soon will be. My crib and high chair left the house when Agotich arrived from Sudan. An exercise mat, diaper bag, and bath were given away when another friend had a baby. When Anyieth was born, I found a home for a large Jumperoo. But a ton of other things—a booster seat, stroller, port-a-crib, swing, changing pad, bed rail, table and chair set, and rocking horse—remained.

In part these things stuck around out of convenience: Hauling everything up to my attic was easier than finding a new home for it all. Another reason was sentimental attachment; it was hard to get rid of things attached to fleeting babyhood. And yet another reason was fear; I figured the second I got rid of all my baby stuff, I’d up and have another baby.

But time marched on, I didn’t have another baby, and the baby I did have needed more space to play and store his big kid stuff. Thus began the March great attic clean out, which is now mostly complete. That dominoed into the other areas.

• Did I really need the magnetic kitchen safety latches that make it a two-step process to open the area under my sink and that everyone but me has struggled with? Simon is old enough to understand not to sample the cleaning supplies, so no.
• Did I really need the last baby gate at the top of my stairs? Agotich doesn’t any more and Simon hasn’t for ages, so no again.
• What about the art easel I bought a few years back? Simon’s not artsy, so it’s at least getting moved out of my kitchen, if not out of my house.
• And speaking of kitchens, what about the play kitchen hogging up even more space in my already not-very-big kitchen. Well, Agotich loves it, but Simon lost interest a year ago and certainly doesn’t need encouragement to stand anymore (we got this in part to encourage walking). So once school ends in seven weeks and Agotich isn’t here on a regular basis, it’s gone, too.
• And the baby pool in our shed? The next time the DAV comes a-calling, it’s theirs. Simon can’t practice his backstroke in a baby pool.
• And the train table and Thomas set in the basement? They are super sweet, but Simon is much more interested in his motorized Japanese train set these days. So Thomas and his Tidmouth shed buddies are not long for this house, either.

It’s liberating really. There’s already a less cluttered feel to the house and more open space. More significantly, our house is starting to reflect three occupants who operate on much more even footing. Simon doesn’t need a whole category of special stuff anymore: just a kid-friendly or kid-sized version of the same card games, board games, and sports equipment everyone else uses.  These days we spend more money on activities than stuff, so it’s time for our house to stop looking like a day-care center or preschool.