Wish fulfillment

Last August, when the doctor came into my little partitioned off section of the ER and told me that I had pulmonary emboli, one of the many things I panicked about was that I would die before I got to hear The Boychen say he loves me. I’m still not keen on dying any time soon, but as of today I would have one fewer thing to panic about.

It also happens to be my birthday, and can I just say: best. present. ever.

A boy crush

What do you call it when small boys start looking up to father figures, start seeking the approval of men? Is it hero-worship? Role-modeling? A boy-crush? I see it at hockey practice, Small Boy looking to his trainers for a well done, a high five. He is especially attached to M (who is my favorite trainer as well) and I see Small Boy glancing over at him as he goes through the drills, looking for his approval. M does an excellent job of singling out each kid at least for a moment, calling each by name, issuing a bravo, a tap on the butt with his stick, a personal correction to a shoulder here, an ankle there. He teaches them seriously – they are learning real skills – then suddenly he’s got one tossed over his shoulder and the other kids are chasing after him. The kids all love him.

They’re good with the kids, these patient men, even D, the gruff head of the program who I initially didn’t much care for. He pats the kids on their helmets and gives them fist bumps after an hour being being stern with them, of calling out: “Hoi, Gillas! Was ha’ni sait!?”* “Hallo, das geht nicht beim Bambinis.”** “Pfudli am Wand! Pfudli am Wand, Augen zu mir!” *** Even he will suddenly smile a surprisingly warm smile at one of the littlest ones tripping over his own stick. These trainers either actually are genuinely fond of each of these children – and at a full Saturday practice there are almost fifty of them – or they have perfected the illusion. 

And in return the kids work hard for them. The Small Boy works hard for them, works especially hard for M, listens to him, seeks his approval. M is the first in a long line of men who will mean, in fits and starts and cold hours on the ice, more to my son than I do.

I understand now, why at the first training of the season D thanked us parents “fuer ihre Vertrauen” – for your trust. For trusting them with our children. When I see the way Small Boy glows under M’s praise, I understand that I really have handed my son over to them for the hour.

What’s the word for it, this first hunt for approval? Hero-worship? Role-modeling? Boy-crush? Whatever the word, my boy’s got it. I am grateful.

* Hey, kids! What did I say?
** Hello. That won’t fly in the Bambinis (the official youth hockey team you have to be selected for. Anybody under 8 can go to the hockey school, but you have to be picked to be a Bambini)
*** Butts up against the boards! Butts up against the boards and eyes on me!

Prepare to shed a tear

The Small Boy gave me this picture yesterday – he drew it on R’s computer and R printed it out for him. When the Small Boy gave it to me he said: “When I’m really really old, so old that I have to die, and then I’m dead, you can look at this to think of me.”

Of apples and autumn

It’s a rough draft. It came out of a free-write and still feels like prose wearing poetry’s shoes. But it’s my response to the Poem-a-Day prompt #5: a growth poem.

Of Apples and Autumn and Small Boys in Love With Horses

I choke on the calendar like an apple
I tried to get down in one bite when

even the horse knows to break it
open, crush it to a juicy softness

before swallowing. We have brought
her orchards of apples autumn after

autumn. You used to roll them under
the fence, and when you press now

your fingers together and reach out
over the fence, apple balanced in your

outstretched palm like an offering,
I realize that you have grown tall.

I try to count autumns, the apples
that have crossed this fence line.

The horse lips it from your palm,
bites it open with a crack, drools

saliva and apple juice. You pat her muzzle,
she sniffs around for another apple.

Finding none, she bends her neck to the grass.
You walk up the road towards home.

See how he grows

We have started hockey again this year, and after the gap of the off-season I see huge changes in my Small Boy, leaps of maturity that I did not notice in the small steps leading us from day to day. But this start into a new hockey season brings me messages of change: in his attitude above all he is a new boy. He is confident. He is eager, even volunteering that in addition to the standard Saturday afternoon practice he would like to go to the optional Thursday session as well. He hits the ice and doesn’t look back – unlike last year there are no requests for rests, no coming off the ice to sit on the bench, no sitting on the ice refusing to try. There are no tears; on the contrary, every time he looks up there is a smile on his face. I am even allowed this year to leave the players’ bench and go to the restaurant, which is out of the line of sight of the practice rink, for a coffee; and I find that now that I can do this I do not want to. It is too fun watching the surprise appearance of this new Small Boy. For reasons I no longer recall, shortly after the Boychen was born I started calling him the Butterfly King; but it is my Small Boy this winter who is spreading his wings.

Because I need a bit of a boost

I have been having a series of days in which the joys of motherhood have remained quite stubbornly on the other side of the fence. It has been exhausting. A trial. Dare I say, unrewarding? Days with very little in the way of short-term payoff. I need to remind myself that if the cliche “It’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon” applies to any endeavor, it applies to parenting. This isn’t about today. It’s about the long, long road I need to walk these boys down, the slow growth into manhood. These boys will be men one day, and let’s be honest: though they very clearly have their own little spirits, will be their own men, they will also enter adulthood with a bag full of gifts they got from me. So because it’s been rough, I’m patting myself on the back today.

This Time The Mother Writes a Poem For Herself

I am golden glitter and Elmer’s glue
and big blue stars on construction paper.
I am thick magic markers on the blank page.
I am beads and bangles, scissors and glue
and autumn-leaves-and pipe-cleaner bouquets.
I am popsicle stick castles and bobbing for apples
and popcorn garnish for the tree.
I am the walk in the park and the bread for the ducks
and the acorn that started to sprout.
I am the stick boat in the creek and the sand in the box
and the lemonade stand on the side of the road.
I am all of the childhood days you will likely forget
but the smell of Elmer’s glue will make you smile
and you will always be partial to blue stars
and you will know how an acorn turns into a tree.
And I will know that I am this,
that I am this and this and this.

Mortar and pestle

Last night Small Boy and Boychen were taking turns smashing crackers in my mortar and pestle – I was not cooking anything that required the mortar and pestle but they wanted to use it, so I put some crackers in for them – when Small Boy asked me which was the mortar and which was the pestle. In twenty years of using a mortar and pestle, it never occurred to me to wonder this, though somehow I knew, when I thought about it for a second, that the bowl is the mortar and the stick is the pestle. But I have never actively considered it: it has always simply been my “mortar and pestle” and I use it to make pesto and crush walnuts and grind up a masala.

But of course the Small Boy would ask: there are two words, and there are two things, and he wants to know which noun belongs to which object. He wants to know these things. And so he makes me slow down and look actively at the objects around me and name them. With precision. Which is what I am supposed to do as a poet; yet it takes a four-and-a-half year old to make me look down at my moss-green mortar and pestle set that came across the ocean with me, really look down at it, and make sure that I have a clear picture in my head of which is the mortar, and which is the pestle.

* * *

In other news, Small Boy has crafted his first couplet:
Fly away
bird of prey
He got meter and rhyme in one fell swoop.

Postcards from a changing season

Ten days ago we were having a glorious Indian summer, a last hurrah. Summer is surely gone now, it’s leaving goodbye notes everywhere.

This morning I went to tip water out of Small Boy’s wheelbarrow and a thin layer of ice slipped off.

We had our first hot chocolates of the season; I love steamed milk.

At the zoo Boychen’s hands were red and cold

We bought Small Boy’s snow suit today

Hockey camp starts on Saturday

Raspberries

Also from several weeks ago…

A walk in the woods

We live next to the woods. Some of it is privately owned and occasionally harvested; some of it is a nature preserve with a pond, a brook, and ducks. There is a fox, there are herons. The boys treat it as their private paradise and go into the woods almost every day; it is my mother-in-law’s favorite thing to do with them. This afternoon we went on a mushroom expedition, or, as the Boychen said “memli looga” (Schwemmli luega, Swiss for looking at mushrooms). There was also dancing and tree climbing.