If a grandfather, father, or anyone else ever put up a tire swing, rope swing, or any kind of swing for you, stop reading this right now and go write them or call them to thank them.
Trust me. They did not have an easy time of it.
But the look on your face was worth it.
My baby is seven today. SEVEN. When you were six, I could still think, I have babies. The baby is gone now. I look at you now, and remember what you were like as a baby, a toddler, a preschooler.
But he is seven now, and seven is no longer baby.
This has been a good year. You started Kindergarten this time last year:
and now you are in First grade. What a difference a year makes!
You are still in the Magnet class and it is fun to see you with your friends. You started riding the bus last year and you still like the bus. Daddy drops you off in the mornings, though, because it means that we get a little more time together before you go off to school and he heads to work. I get you from the bus stop in the afternoons, and you are usually a little grumpy with me. I guess you are tired and hot (it is still August and buses don’t have AC). You did great in Kindergarten, really progressing with your reading now. You still read with Tiller and Daddy before bed, but you also read chapter books after you go to bed, and we are worrying you don’t get enough sleep because of it. You are currently reading, “The Guardians of Ga’Hoole” with Daddy and Tiller, and on your own, you are reading “The Magician’s Nephew.” Just last night, you argued with me about whether you can read “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” first, and then go back and read book one (Magician’s Nephew), or whether you are supposed to read One first. I say you can do it either way. Not you. You like order and in an orderly world, you read One first, then move on to Two. Hopefully, some day you can forgive me for making you read Two first.
You and Tiller got razors for Christmas and you ride them around in the garage for an hour at a time. You don’t get sick and you don’t fall and get hurt. (Knock on wood.) Speaking of, we haven’t had any ER visits or really any sickness in a year. You and Tiller both missed a week of school last year because you had a puke once then have a fever for a week virus. But they weren’t bad and it just made you snuggly.
You don’t have too much time for snuggling this year, but occasionally, you will slow down and cuddle on the couch in your pjs with me or daddy. I realize now that they are dwindling that those moments will be fewer and further between. I try to cherish those moments.
You lost some teeth this year! The first two you lost at school and they just sent them home in a plastic baggie with your name written on them in sharpie. I felt a little gypped. But then your tooth got loose when Cousin Luci and Uncle Wade were visiting and you wanted me to pull it, and we made Daddy and Wade squirm while we stood in the kitchen, wiggling the tooth back and forth, wiping the blood with a paper towel and finally making it crack! and come out. You are not scared of the tooth fairy like Aunt Lisa was when we were little.
This was the year you ate all the chocolate out of the Advent Calendar. I know one day it will be funny, but right now it is still too soon. And the year you cut a chunk right out of the front of your hair. And the year that you got a mohawk. Three times.
I am amazed at all of the things you did this year. You played t-ball last fall and this past spring. You are a natural – always raring to go play, and really pretty good. Watching you out on the field, doing celebratory dances when you make a play, is like pure joy for me. I try to be modest, but i just about burst with pride at how you excel. You are about to start soccer this fall, again, and I hope you like it as much.
You learned how to ride a bike this year, and how to swim. You could swim before, but suddenly, you were going underwater and swimming the length of the pool and you even had your first year on Swim Team this summer. (Go Stingrays!) The competitive Mom in me had to wrestle with not pushing you, and letting you do things your way, even though I knew there were pointers I could give you that would help you improve. You finally listened a little bit and really improved your time, and then you spent the rest of the summer asking me to give you “some more pointers.” It was pretty cute, and I liked that you asked me, because usually, you want to do everything yourself, and don’t want anyone to tell you how to do it.
You also learned to go off the diving board! I can’t even tell you how terrified i was when you and Tiller and Daddy came home saying you both knew how to go off the diving board. And sure enough, we would go to the pool and you and your friends would jump off the diving board, over and over for hours on end. And then we would go home and you would say you didn’t feel good, but i knew it was just that you were completely waterlogged.
You have reached the point where you can sit and watch a whole baseball game (in person or on tv) and I am very much looking forward to watching some football with you this fall. You have learned the rules and can have a great conversation about it, and I never realized how satisfying it could be to have those discussions with you.
Just about a month ago, i let you drive the JetSki (with me right behind you) at the Lake. I had the kill switch, but I pulled over in a huge cove, far away from the shore or docks, and I let you sit in front of me, and taught you a little about how to drive it. Then I said, do you want to try? And you were excited. I was prepared for you to hit the gas too hard even though I warned you not to, so I wouldn’t get thrown off, but I don’t think you were prepared for it, and it scared you. You didn’t want to try and drive anymore, and I think it was a good lesson. Riding with you kids is one of my favorite things to do. We drive around to some usual spots, usually in the morning, before there are many folks out on the lake and you are learning your way around. You know the usual spots: Bulldog, Aerie, The Warm Water, Rooty Creek, Crooked Creek, and Goat Island. I ask where you want to go and you almost always want to go to Goat Island. It’s kind of “our place.” At the end of our rides, I always head back towards the house, and I make you tell me how to get there. When we get back near the cove, I ask if you want to do some circles, and you always say yes, and then I ride us in circles until we’re a little dizzy and you are just on the very verge of being scared. Each time, we go a little harder and faster. And this summer, we started taking you and Tiller out on the tube (nice and slow). The first time, we went out, and you were the guinea pig (except you kept calling it being the Hamster) and Foley rode as spotter. After that, I started teaching you and Tiller to be spotters for each other, and that has worked well. Maybe next year we’ll try skis.
You talk back a bit now, and you fight with us, and you probably are a little too addicted to video games. You definitely have your own ideas about how you want to do things, and you and I get into some arguments, but I am so very proud of the smart, funny, laughing, passionate boy you are. I love your eagerness, and your gap-toothed smile, and the way you drag your feet when you walk up the hill from the bus stop. I know you can’t stay my baby forever, that I have to work hard to make you a wonderful young man, to teach you respect and pride and the value of an education and courtesy, but I understand now why Mom and Dad still say I’ll always be their first baby.
You will always be my first baby. The baby with the skin that tans easily and the big brown eyes that just make me melt and the thick, wavy brown hair that always reminds me so much of my own, and of my Dad’s, and of the inexplicable ways that we are all three so similar, just a little line of stitches marching down the hem of time. Pop, Daddy, Me, You.
You. My baby. Always.
You in the last year.
And you this morning, on your seventh birthday.
The proverbial Needle In a Haystack. The diamond in a very messy and large rough. My diamond. We found it.
I was picking veggies from the garden, and I came up to the carport and Todd and the kids were grinning like jackasses eating briars.
“Mama?” Todd said. “Remember when you said you would take the kids to Chuck E. Cheese if they found something for you?”
I knew right away what it was they had found, but I played dumb for effect. For the kiddos. I had promised them, in those first days after losing the diamond, when we were turning the house upside down, and going through the dirt in the vacuum cleaner, that if they found my diamond, I would take them to Chuck E. Cheese’s.
“Did you find something?”
They made me close my eyes and hold out my hand. I did. They told me i could open. I did.
There was my engagement ring, diamond still missing, in the palm of my hand.
Wait. What? Where’s my diamond?!
Rollie walked over and put a gem in my hand.
I looked at Todd. “Where did you find it?” I said, amazed at how small it looked in my hand.
He had been moving the new mattress his parents gave us into Rollie’s room to replace Rollie’s old mattress. He lifted the old mattress up and found a piece of paper and my diamond. It is so small, it is a miracle that he saw it. I remembered, then, that one of the places that I remembered my ring hanging up on things was in Rollie’s room when I changed his sheets. It must have come off then.
What are the odds of getting a new mattress a month after losing your diamond and then finding the diamond under the old mattress? Was it God? Maybe. I waver between thinking there are no coincidences and thinking that life is all a series of hits and misses without any rhyme or reason. This definitely made me swing back to the side of fate and destiny and higher power. At least for a moment; For a moment, things seemed clear and magical at the same time.
“That’s it, isn’t it?” Todd said.
“Yeah, I think so.” Diamonds look different when they aren’t in the setting. In all honesty, it kind of looked fake.
“It kind of looks fake, though, doesn’t it?” Todd said.
“Yeah, kind of.”
But I set it in the prongs of my ring and it fit perfectly.
We went inside and the kids celebrated “their” find. I put my arms around my husband and hugged him and remembered how wonderful it is that he asked me to marry him. I have not ever, not once, ever regretted saying, “Yes.” It is the most important “Yes” i ever uttered. Then, we all ate dinner together.
And that’s how, after seven years of parental avoidance, yet another wall came down, another line crossed, and I finally had to break down and take the kids to Fuck E. Cheese’s.
SkeeBall is still fun. The pizza is still disgusting.
It takes me twice as long to get anything done, sometimes, but I am thankful that I get to hang with these two every day while I work.
I can’t believe that school is back in session so early. I know that it makes a difference in the education of kids with crappy parents, but I feel like the good parents and the kids who still learn at home over the summer kind of get the shaft. It just seems like summer should be Memorial Day to Labor Day.
Rollie started first grade this year. FIRST GRADE. How do I have a first grader? I keep on thinking back to my first grade teacher, Miss Hamilton, at Northwestern Elementary in Crabapple. We only had one first grade. Rollie’s school has four first grade classes! I hope that his first grade experience is as rewarding as mine was. I remember my reading group, and the table at the back of the class where we would read together. I remember doing SRA cards, too. I remember music class with Mr. Martin and PE out on the field. I can still smell that old school.
We took Rollie to school the first day, because you have to send about three bags of supplies with the kids and they could never get it all on the bus and to school in one piece without some help. It was crowded, so Todd and Tiller dropped Rollie and I off out front and we went in together. He was so excited.
We didn’t make it to class before they started the pledge of Allegiance. Everyone, parents and kids, all stopped in the hall and put their hands over their hearts and recited the pledge. It was comforting, in the same way that saying the Lord’s Prayer is comforting to me. I kissed him goodbye at his desk and headed back out.
Next day, we put him on the bus. Now, there is one little boy down the street who is in 2nd grade this year. He never rides the bus in the morning. Instead, it’s just Rollie and his harem:
Yes, he has six girls at the bus stop with him. He is the only boy. Next year, with Tiller and her friend Josie down the street, the number will be eight girls to his one! Nice to have so many of them, so close in age, all on one street.
Good luck, little Man! I am very proud of you.
Love,
Mama
On his cheek. We had Brown Cow. Then, Rollie said his tooth was wiggly and he wanted me to pull it. We pretend to go get the pliers and pull his tooth. We threaten to tie a string around his tooth, tie the other to the doorknob, and then slam the door shut.
Then we do the delicate dance, the one that parents and children have done for thousands of years – Indeed, I am sure that some Kid in a cave had the same exact experience a millennia ago.
“Okay, Mom. Pull it.”
“You want me to pull it? Are you sure?”
“Yes. Just pull it.”
“Okay, tell me if it hurts, okay? Come over here into the light where I can see it.”
I wiggle the tooth with two fingers. I am scared to pull hard.
“Mom! I can do it. Stop! I don’t want you to pull it.”
“Okay, it’s bleeding a little, so take this paper towel. I don’t want you bleeding on my couch, you hear me?”
“I KNOW, Mama!”
I start unloading the dishwasher. Rollie comes back in.
“Mama, I think it is really loose. It is ready to come out. It is coming out now. Mama, pull it.”
“Okay, give me that paper towel.”
Todd and Uncle Wade come into the kitchen to watch with interest. We all stand under the light of the Kitchen. I fold over the paper towel and grip Rollie’s tooth between my two fingers, covered in paper towel to cut down on slippage. I tilt his head back so i can see his mouth in the light.
I wiggle the tooth, back and forth, front to back.
Rollie screams and bats my hands away.
He goes back into the den to watch Harry Potter. Todd and Wade follow him. I continue to do dishes.
I hear Todd say, “ugh.” Rollie comes back in. He just bares his teeth to me, then says, “See?” His tooth is bent forward perpendicular to his gums.
Ewww.
Then I think, that bitch is ready to come out.
I grab the paper towel again. I wiggle front and back. I wiggle side to side. Todd and Wade come in and are looking over my shoulder, and they are cringing as I wiggle, and grab again, and I ask Rollie if I’m hurting.
Nothing.
I think for a minute.
I twist the tooth.
A crack.
A small bloody tooth between my two fingers, white and red in the bright light of the kitchen. I lay it in my other palm, so small. My baby’s tooth – much different than the two that came home from school in plastic bags. My baby’s tooth.
“I lost my tooth! My tooth. Tiller! My tooth came out! The Tooth Fairy’s coming tonight!”
Truth be told? I have an iron stomach, and blood doesn’t bother me. But that little crack of my baby boy’s tooth coming out of the socket? I felt that one in my bones.
Sure, he lost two bottom baby teeth already. He lost them both at school, though. Not here in my kitchen. So, this is kinda a first.
And my baby? Now he really looks like a little boy, with a gap-toothed smile and the inability to say his esses without sounding like Voldemort when he gets all snaky.
I was tucking Tiller in tonight and she called out to me. “Mama! Come close my closet door!”
I sighed, went back in, like every other night I tuck her in, and closed the closet door.
“Why do you want me to close the closet door?”
“It scares me.”
“Why does it scare you? You know there is nothing in your closet that will hurt you, baby.”
On second thought: Mentally picturing closet in Poltergeist, momentarily considering telling her, “well, there might be something in there,” thinking of my closet in Roswell, the one that I did not leave open at night until . . . ever.
“Okay, baby, it’s closed. But there’s nothing to worry about.”
“Will you close my books, too?”
Her bookshelf has doors, and three shelves. The top two shelves hold books. The bottom shelf is where we fold and store her PJs and nightgowns.
“Sure baby. You know there is nothing in there either, though.”
“I know, Mama. Just sometimes it looks like people are in the clothes.”
Creepy.
I told the kids to put on their bathing suits, get their goggles and towels, and get in the car. “we’re going down to meet your dad at a studio, going by Goodwill, then going straight to the pool,” I said. So, that’s how I found myself on 85South, all three of us singing along at the top of our lungs to Tokyo Police Club, and i looked back in the rear view and both kids already had their goggles on down over their eyes, riding down 85, and I smiled at the image of what we must look like to people in cars around us.
I overhear Rollie telling Tiller “Smell my finger.”
Having been friends with more boys than girls along the way, all sorts of alarms went off in my head, backed by a “Master of Puppets” soundtrack. (‘m looking at you. You know who you are. Coming out of your girlfriend’s house, when you went in to “see what was taking her so long” when we picked her up on the way to school, and then making me smell your finger? Some scars never go away.)
“Rollie,” I said. “Come here.”
Rollie rolls his eyes (remind me again why I’m not allowed to slap his face?) and comes to stand in front of me.
“Why did you ask Tiller to smell your finger?”
“I didn’t.” [You little liar.]
“Yes, you did. I just heard you. Why?”
“I don’t remember.”
[I’m staring at him and he is staring back at me, rebelliously unblinking and wide-eyed.]
“Why did you say it?”
“Oh, never mind!” He walks away.
“Get back here.” [Try to control voice so it is not a yell.] “I say when we are done. Why did you ask her to smell your finger?”
[Comes back and stares at me.]
“Why? We can stand here all day until you tell me.”
“Because it’s stinky.”
“Why is it stinky?”
“Because i wiped it on my bottom.”
What. The. Fuck.
Is this normal older brother behavior? Am I raising a psychopath?
He got sent to the bathroom to wash his hands and then to his room. I asked Tiller, “Has your brother made you smell his finger before?”
She thinks, eyes on the ceiling.
“No. But he did ask me to smell his bottom one time. I said ‘No.'”
“Good girl. We don’t smell other people’s bottoms.”
Parenting is sometimes completely absurd. It never occurred to me to teach my kids that we don’t smell other people’s bottoms. But it is a lesson they need to know. Sometimes you end up hearing yourself actually saying words like, “We don’t smell other people’s bottoms.” You think, “what the hell has become of me?”
Parenting is fucking hard.
I watched my children play in the sand while a storm came in, never quite reached us, but left us a rainbow that spanned the trees and the beach and gulf, all the way to the horizon.
I listened as my children discussed whether the pot of gold was in the forest or in the deep blue sea, and where did the leprechaun live?
I walked the beach at sunset and found the largest shell i have ever found in my whole life.
I sat in my beach chair, and thought about how many times I had sat on the Gulf in my life and thought about how small it made me feel.
I petted my dog’s velvet ears on the screened porch while having drinks with my husband and listening to music.
I had coffee with my sister while our kids played trains and chatted happily with each other.
I poured tequila at nine a.m.
I watched as the kids ignored the big ocean for the small tide pools and then rolled around in the mud. I didn’t worry a bit about the sand and the dirt.
I chased my nephew on the sand, and I clutched my hat to my head as the wind tried to take it from me.
I held hands with my little girl and walked on the docks. We dangled our feet over the edge, watching as sailboats came in, and we waved at the people and the dogs on board. We saw a crab on a pylon and we laughed at him.
I waited for hurricane waves to carry me in, and I scraped my knees on a thousand shells, and the ocean turned me upside down like I was in a washing machine. And I liked it and I laughed a true laugh and my raw, bruised knees felt good. It still feels good. I hope it doesn’t go away.
I stepped barefoot up a hundred iron spiral steps. I heard them clang and I heard the wind whistle through them. I got my bearings. I yearned to climb even farther and see how it all works. I saw beauty in the way things used to be made, and I saw that they could last.
I promised myself that I would try to convince Todd to let me paint the porch ceiling blue.
I wondered what it would be like to live 250 yards from the sea, in a time with no electricity, no gas, no artificial light, no corner grocery. I wondered what it would be like to live there and batten down the hatches. I wished I could have seen it then.
I gazed on an American flag flapping sharply in the wind, and I thought how very lucky I am.
I watched my husband stand alone in the ocean, staring out to sea. I thought to myself that he is the most wonderful person I have ever met, and that is the way it should be.
I pointed out pelicans flying in a perfect vee to my nephew and he pointed to them, too, and then looked at me to make sure I saw.
I saw my children and their cousin laugh and splash in the ocean, and I saw them put an arm around him when a big wave came, and I knew for a moment that I was doing something right.
I sat and waited until the last moment for the storm, a great wall of dark gray, to come ashore, and I got soaked, and I didn’t care. I danced under the awning with my husband and my children while it rained. And then we went right back out for more.
I sat on the beach with only my husband and we talked and laughed and listened to music in the sun.
I napped in the afternoon and woke to the voices of my family.
I felt sunbrushed and ate too much pizza.
I sat steps from the bay, and I watched her people gather, and I listened to their sweet southern voices. I sat next to my son and waited for the sun to set over the water. I listened to the pop of roman candles from the beach behind me, and I watched red and white fireworks pop up in the distance over the cape. I waved my flag and I watched a parade of lighted ships. I wondered what it would be like next year.
I heard the gasps of children and the sighs of grandmothers. I thought of the night many years ago now that I sat with my grandma, Alzheimer’s really starting to get her, and we watched fireworks, and a tear rolled down her cheek, and she whispered, “They’re beautiful,” and “I’ve never seen fireworks before.” And I knew she had seen them before, and that she just couldn’t remember it, but I was happy that she was experiencing them like a child for the first time, and I was happy to be holding her hand.
I thought, too, of sitting with friends and my children in a field in Chamblee last year, and knowing my Grandfather was not long for the world, and being overwhelmed at the sight of the fleeting bursts in the sky, and being moved to tears.
I listened to my children describe the sight and tears brimmed at the edges of my eyes.
“That one’s like a flower blossoming,” and “That one’s like Saturn,” he said, and “they perfectly lightly up the sky!” she exclaimed.
I held my son’s body on my chest, and rested my cheek next to his, and put my arms around him over his chest, and smiled when he reached up to clasp my arms with his hands. I felt him there past the brink of child and onto boyhood. I felt his weight get heavier and more substantial in the way that children do when they are bone-tired from good play and sun. I watched as he fell asleep and began to snore in the car on the way home, fireworks still lighting the sky over the bay.
I saw my sister relaxed and happy waiting for us, and it made my heart happy. I walked with my husband down the boardwalk. I stood, skirt snapping around my legs, and watched more fireworks, up and down the beach, and heard the raucous shouts of those shooting them off carried over to us across the sand. I laid down on the wind worn wood and we looked up at a million stars, and we watched a satellite traverse the sky above us.
I pondered the wonders man had made, and too, the horrors he had wrought.
I thought of the sadness and fear and anger I sensed from the people who make this place their home. And I cursed those who threatened them, and I cursed us all for the way we live. I lamented the fact that we have taken it all for granted until it might be too late.
I thought of a lifetime’s memories there – fishing and nets and swimming and sandcastles. The exhilaration of being away from my parents for the first time. Falling in love. Running on the beach. Watching the sunrise with my future husband, and bonfires and sweat lodges and drunken wrestling with friends. My sweet puppy, now an old dog, romping in the sand. I thought of the first time I ever saw my children play in the surf together.
I left it there yesterday, still pristine, still untouched, and I questioned if I would ever see it this way again in my lifetime, this place that captured my heart and soul.
I wondered if my children would remember it at all.
