Although he is two, he is singular

The record will show that it’s been over a week since Gideon turned two.  It is testament to his energy, his rambunctiousness, his two-ness, that it’s taken me all this time to post a birthday tribute.

Gideon is a gregarious, charming, single-minded and thoroughly adorable boy.  When he is happy his giggles rise up like popcorn, and when he is insistent his decibel level is shocking, as in, “How can someone so small make so much noise?”  (He gets that last quality from his mother, poor fellow.)  When he is merely emphatic, he raises his voice slightly, purses his lips, and distorts his vowels: “I want some yoooooguuuuuuurt with hööööNEEEEEEY”.  An emphatic request tends to get results, once the laughter has died down.

He has a most unusual vocabulary, and some of his words defy orthography.  Blueberries are ba-loo-ba-lazies.  Strawberries are sa-babies.  It takes a finely trained linguist to distinguish between squirrel and challah, at least when Gidi says them.

He loves motorized vehicles, particularly dump trucks and garbage trucks.  He loves to go out for stroller walks to follow the trucks around.  He particularly loves to eat, and one of his favorite foods is chicken, as you will see below.

He is sweet and affectionate and sometimes when he is in my arms, he will grab the back of my neck, pull my face close, and give me a hundred kisses.  His first words upon waking up reflect his twin passions.  He either says, “Garbage truck!” or “Where’s Akiva?”

Here are some pictures I snapped on his birthday, as well as some I snapped the next day, when we celebrated with more family at a local park.

(Crossposted to wonderboys.wordpress.com.)

Tut, tut. It looks like rain.

We’ve had something like monsoon season here lately.  I was lucky to miss two weeks of it while we were in Michigan, but today we have a reprise.  Akiva is going to day camp only on Mondays and Wednesdays this month, so I’ve got both boys at home today.  They were already driving each other wild by 9:30 a.m., so I decided that, rain be damned, we were going out to the woods.

Dressed in their rain gear, they look completely adorable.  And getting out of the house and into nature always improves things.  We listened to the sounds of the rain and the birds, broke open pine cones to smell their aroma, jumped in puddles, and left trail markers à la Hansel & Gretel.

After getting completely soaked, we came home, changed into dry clothes, and made hot chocolate.  Other activities of the day included greeting the trash collector with applause (he took a bow and beeped the horn for the kids, it was awesome!), reading Blueberries for Sal, and making whole wheat pretzels.

(Cross-posted at wonderboys.wordpress.com.)

The dignity of work

My friend Julie introduced me to the above phrase.  I see it in Bill as he daily grows into his job.  He takes the work seriously, puts all his sincerity into doing it well, and is beginning to make progress.  He recently made a sale (of one of his own pieces) that is going to help us enormously with the kindergarten tuition.  Every day he works the possibilities and learns more about plying his trade.

I thought again of the dignity of work this morning as Gideon and I were garbage truck groupies.  There is nothing Gideon loves more than the garbage truck.  Tuesdays are practically festival days here as Gidi watches out the window (in bad weather) or waits vigil outside.  Today I managed to get my baking done early and the weather was glorious, so we grabbed the stroller and went out to find and follow the garbage truck.

The gentlemen working trash duty caught on quickly and smiled and waved at us.  At one point we pretended to race.  I thought about how I had briefly wanted to be a trash collector when I was a kid (in those days we said garbageman), and how my parents dismissed the idea outright, allergic even to the thought.  My parents’ point was that the job would be messy, stinky, and unpleasant.  Long hours, rough conditions, hard labor; the kind of job one gets when one can’t do anything else.  (I liked the idea of wind in my hair being an everyday occurrence.  Still do.)

There is dignity in this work.  Our society would be much diminished in the absence of people who help get rid of the stuff we don’t want.  Plus, trash collectors make a steady living and are everywhere admired by two-year-old boys and others.

Flow it, show it, long as G-d can grow it

Akiva has a new look.  I never thought he’d do this.  I can easily divide the world into two types of people: those who think I should be glad (or, heaven forbid, that it was my idea) and the few people who get me and know I sighed just a tiny bit as I let my boy make his own choice.

Here’s my grown-up boy.  Age 5.

In case you’re wondering, those splotches on his face are not some dread disease, but rather evidence of the mud puddle in which he and Gideon were playing when I snapped this picture.

While we’re on the topic of hair, herewith a sneak preview of Gideon with a goatee, courtesy of the same mud puddle.

Clarinet update

After Tuesday’s events, Akiva didn’t touch — or even mention — his clarinet.  Then, Friday morning, he decided to try again.  Sadly I wasn’t home when he started getting a sound out of the thing.  Bill said the grin was transcendent.  He’s been playing a lot since and is discovering new sounds all the time!  He loves it, and so do I!

I do have some video, but there are two problems with it: the file type is incompatible with wordpress, and I can’t figure out how to rotate it so he’s vertical.  I posted it for a couple of facebook friends, and if you want to be added to the list of people who can see it on my page, let me know.  It’s about 10 seconds long.  No biggie if you don’t care to see it…

Gaudeamus ligature

Over the past week or so, I have been making arrangements through freecycle to get Akiva a clarinet.  I got word yesterday that an instrument was available, and coordinated with the giver to pick it up this afternoon while Akiva was at a birthday party.  The woman kindly advised me of what ancillary items would be needed and miraculously I was able to fit in an errand to the music store this morning to get reeds, a beginner mouthpiece, and ligature.  (The last is that thingy that holds the reed to the mouthpiece.  I didn’t know either.)

Total expense: under $15.

When I dropped Akiva off at the party, I told him I would come back for him after I made a freecycle pickup.  He wanted to know whether it was for him and me to share or just for me.  I told him that it was to be his alone, and something he would have to take care of very seriously.  Although I had hoped to keep it as a surprise, he wanted to know right away what it was, once it was clear that it was for him.

The smile: priceless.

I believe there was even a fist pump.  He asked if it could be his forever, and when I told him yes, the smile got even bigger.  You should’ve seen the smile.

After the party, I took the boys and the instrument home.  The party bag was instantly forgotten, and Akiva asked if he could be the one to carry the clarinet into the house.  (Permission granted.  I had a ton of other stuff to carry, including said party bag.)

Not a moment too soon, I got the instrument assembled and gave it a squeak.  I handed it off to the boy who had been fantasizing for two years about being Glenn Dickson.  He blew.  Nothing happened.  He burst into tears.  “Ima, nothing happens.  And the reed tastes bad.  Give it back.  I don’t like it.”

My precious baby dissolved in full-hearted weeping in my arms.  This may be the first time (but surely not the last) that something he really wanted to do didn’t come easily for him.  I just held him and held him, and told him that if he really wants to learn the clarinet, he will learn it.

Oh the perfectionism.  Wonder where he got that.

Sunnyside up

I have been pondering optimism and, in particular, why some people have it and some don’t.  I have never been very optimistic — more of an Eeyore, as certain of my readers have already heard me say more than a few times.  Even when things have been going well in my life, I’ve never been a particularly sunny character.  It’s not that I’m always as much of a drag as I have been lately (thank G-d for my sense of humor!) but more that I have a tendency, even in good times, to notice the flaws.  Even the tiny ones.  They don’t necessarily ruin it for me, but I can’t not notice them.

Is this tendency hard-wired, or is it a habit?  I’ve always fallen back on the notion that it must be hard-wired, because I always eventually revert to it, despite any efforts I might make to cultivate a half-full glass.  My mother has the same tendency to notice flaws, and it’s something we’ve fought about for years — especially when the tiny flaws she can’t abide are mine.  Knowing that I grew up under that kind of influence makes me think that even if it is a habit, it’s a habit of 41 years’ making, which can’t be easy to undo.

And yet.  I have a colleague with whom I performed several years ago, a person of enormous gifts who was also enormously troubled.  He was angry, dark, and profoundly cynical both times we worked together.  I saw him again recently when he was in town for an event at the theatre we worked at, and was struck by how changed he is.  He’s gotten sober, gotten engaged, gotten happy.  When I looked in his eyes, I saw something I never expected to see there: peace.  I emailed him about it and we had a brief exchange about the changes in his life and attitude.  He admitted that it’s hard to keep a positive attitude, but that it’s worth the effort.  From anyone else I’d dismiss such a platitude, but from him it demands attention.

He wrote to me that the important thing was to keep trying, that aiming at the target was a habit I could cultivate.  He specified (knowing me well, perhaps) to forget the bulls-eye and aim only for the target.

I like to think that I really want to be more sunny and optimistic — if not for myself, then for my poor kids, who are suffering so much in this ordeal on account of my inability to keep it together.  And yet, I keep wondering, while I’m aiming at the target, “What do I do with the way I really feel?”

Major moral dilemma

Thanks to my poor organizational skills and a monster nap from Gideon yesterday, I didn’t manage to get to the grocery during the day, so I sent Bill to attend to it after hours.  My husband is a big fan of ice cream (aren’t we all?) and never likes to leave our freezer without the stuff.  Last night, Bill brought this home:

Now, I myself am a particularly big fan of the flavor combination of chocolate and peanut butter.  However, I am (how shall I say?) not much enamored of the Red Sox, preferring pinstripes to red on most occasions.

What to do?

Ah, that’s better.

My amazing birthday, now with photos

As usual, my expectations were pointless.  The day I was vaguely dreading turned out to be spectacular.  I wrote a few weeks ago about being rich with friends.  This birthday was a wonderful reminder of just how rich I am.  (The family ain’t bad either.)

En famille, we had agreed this year not to exchange material presents in deference both to our circumstances and to our recent decision about the school.  (Bill did tell me what he would have gotten me: the new Colson Whitehead novel.  Library alert!)  There were abundant presents, though, in other ways.  My first birthday present was the chance to spend some uninterrupted time with Akiva in the morning while Bill and Gideon slept in.  We watched musical theatre clips on youtube (he thinks I sing better than Bernadette Peters!) and played a board game before heading to the kitchen to make breakfast.

Eventually the others got up and we got everyone ready for the day.  Bill drove Akiva to school, while Gideon and I tidied up the breakfast dishes, folded laundry, and made cupcakes.  Then we went outside for our morning rounds: looking at trucks, playing in the park, and enjoying the sunshine.

Later, while he napped, I fielded a call from a friend from my reading group (which used to be my adult B’nai Mitzvah group, which used to be my Hebrew class).  She noticed the other night that I was feeling down and asked if she could bring me a birthday lunch.  It was such a lovely and moving offer, but I had to ask for a raincheck.

Because.

Another friend (see what I mean about being rich with friends?) had already made arrangements to schlep here from Woburn to share a birthday lunch with me.  As always, the company was sheer delight.

Gideon woke up in time for me to be able to take him to the Arboretum to see the lilacs.  He was mostly interested in the landscapers’ dump trucks, but still.

We saw a toad.

We went to pick up Akiva from his play date and got home in time for the boys to play outside in the backyard while I cleaned up the kitchen and made dinner.  (I am noticing a theme of cleaning the kitchen only to muck it up again.)

We had a nice dinner with a minimum of aerobic eating.  Bill came home just as we were finishing up and brought with him the most exquisite flowers.  He’s not much for words but he can do gesture when he has the means, motive, and opportunity.  The guys put candles in the cupcakes I’d made and sang the birthday song to me.  The cupcakes were damn good, even if I’m the one to say so.

After dinner, I changed into dressy clothes with no worries about whether I could nurse in them.  I put in contact lenses and even put on a little lipstick.  I got in the red car and drove to the New Rep, where I was a volunteer usher at their 25th anniversary gala.  I was mainly ornamental (most donors know their way around the theatre and don’t need help finding their seats) but the treat was that I got to see my friends from Sweeney Todd and Into the Woods perform some of my favorite numbers from those shows.  This came about thanks to (you guessed it!) a friend who works in the box office at the theatre.

Over the course of the day, I got no less than ten birthday phonecalls, from family and friends.  My family has a tradition of making “singing telegrams” and for the first time ever, I got one from my brother.  (I don’t think I’d ever heard my brother sing before!) I also heard from my friend Anita and some others with whom my life has become linked more recently.  Add in the messages from old connections resumed through Facebook and that’s quite a lot of friendship bling.

Oh, and my mother-in-law called three times to wish me a happy birthday and thank me for the visit this past weekend.  Clearly she is trying to make peace.  Good.

Mother’s Day musings

I remember one terrible Mother’s Day from my childhood, when we four kids didn’t do enough for our mother.  I had made a craft project in school but it didn’t somehow register.  My siblings may have done the same, but not enough.  We didn’t offer her breakfast in bed.  We didn’t make cards for her.  We didn’t make her the focus of the day.

Sometime in the middle of the afternoon, my elder sister came storming into my room in a panic.  “It’s Mother’s Day!  We’ve got to do something for Mom!”  We quickly dashed off a pillow from fabric scraps lying around and presented it to my mother, who burst into tears and said it was, “too little, too late.”

I will never forget that phrase as long as I live.

She cried and cried, wailing about all the things she did for us and how little appreciated she felt and how much it hurt.  I was confused and mortified.  I didn’t really understand what Mother’s Day was about, but it felt awful to know that my mom was having an emotion and it was my fault.  (Despite my school craft project, I was sure that it was my fault.)

Now that I am a mother, I get Mother’s Day.  And this year, I get why my mother was so upset.

Herewith an encapsulation of my Mother’s Day 2009:

• Lovely cards from both sons.
• Breakfast at the diner with my family and my visiting in-laws.
• Major misunderstanding and minor blow-up with said in-laws.
• Church job.
• A deep desire to go to Lilac Sunday, ignored by my husband, despite my having talked about it for at least three years running.
• Passive-aggressive determination that I would go alone.
• Tears, mine.  Prompting:
• An attempt to go to Lilac Sunday after all, thwarted by crowding from hell.  They ended up dropping me off there, and I found my own way home.
• Tears, mine, amid the lilacs.
• Amazing dinner prepared by my husband, followed by amazing peanut butter pie, prepared by my mother-in-law.  Both in celebration of Mother’s Day and my birthday coming on Tuesday.
• Kids tucked in.
• Tears, mine.

If you were reading closely for the moment where my husband said or wrote heartfelt words or thanks for everything I do to keep the family together, your attention was not rewarded because no such words were exchanged.  Not even after the tears.

There are some fathers who think that they shouldn’t do anything for their wives on Mother’s Day because their wives are not their mothers.  I am mad at all of those men right now.

I’ve realized that the task of Mother’s Day falls to the fathers.  They bear the responsibility for teaching the children to appreciate the many contributions of the mothers, by modeling it themselves.  Kids are too small and too self-centered to get it.  But dads should.

Then again, my kids did do something for me.  Maybe what I’m really saying is I wish there were a holiday called Wife’s Day.