Susiej

After spending the summer jumping off a wooden dock we took the birthday boy to the city pool, where there were diving boards, chlorine, and cement sidewalks.

He asked if he could jump off the diving boards. I didn’t know. Could he swim to the ladder? So hard to know, as the lake obscures so many of the boundaries that he swims around.

“Sure,” I said, gingerly, keeping my watchful gaze over his body, while scanning the distance from the diving board to the ladder.

He Jumped, and easily swam to the ladder.

Shot from my htc Google phone.

Beaming from his success, he looked back at me and said, “Can I go off the high dive?”

“Sure,” I said.

He marched up the ladder. Took a break, and looked down, and carefully, climbed back down the ladder backwards.

“Mom, you were wrong. I can’t do that.

And Happy Birthday.

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Diamonds, rubies and jewels are tough to come by at the lake, so when my birthday came last week, the boys had few gifts on-hand. One of the boys knew exactly what I wanted, and he slipped quietly out the door, and collected what was available. In the spirit of Charlotte Zolotow’s, Mr. Rabbit and the Lovely Present, he visited the lake garden and brought me cucumbers, beans, zucchini, peppers, a cherry tomato, some blueberries

and some flowers, just for good measure.

He handed me the bundle, still covered with dirt, and said, “Happy Birthday,” and took off back to the dock to play.

I was very grateful.

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Last fall, we felt lucky if they scored one goal during a game. The coach told them if they practiced and worked on their drills, they’d be in the championship game by spring. We appreciated the coach’s optimism.

Today, as we pulled into the parking lot of the spring soccer tournament for our third game of the weekend, there was a mass exodus of cars pulling out. We were one of the final two teams to play the championship game. We felt like royalty being able to park so close to the fields — away from the overflow parking.

Memorial Golf tickets, given to brothers, were traded for a chance to “cheer their brother on.”

It’s been a wild weekend for the birthday boy. A formal goodbye from his elementary school on Friday, a wild birthday party afterwards, and this killer soccer tournament that was played between thunderstorms that left the field in huge puddles that splashed as they chased and moved the ball across the field.We were pinching ourselves that we were even really here.

They did not win today’s championship game. But, as their coach said — it’s all about learning. “This team definitely showed some improvement this year.”

The boys, just happy to be part of the championship, didn’t have room in their hearts for sorrow over the final score. Loosing provides such a great opportunity for kids; especially when they have so much fun not winning a game.

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He interrupted my writing time – that time I try to carve out in the early morning hours before the light creates shadows and reveals to me what the world really does look like, rather than what appears in my imagination. It was his right to do this; it’s his birthday.

So I told him the story about that day, when, at about this time, his brothers were eating the blueberry pancakes his father had made for them, and how our neighbor came over to baby-sit while we went to the hospital. “You would arrive in about two more hours, and then my mom was on her way over to relieve the neighbor and wait with your brothers. Your brother, the one who is now in 8th grade, missed morning kindergarten that day.”

“Why?”

“Because his parents were busy.”

The day before there was snow all over the ground, just like today, and there were ice bumps in random spots all over the streets.

“So, that would have been Tuesday?”

“Yes, and I almost fell holding the bikes up for your brothers while they tried to ride them through the ice and snow.” (Why didn’t they use sleds?”)

And then we made snicker doodles, and ate them and waited for you to come.

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“So, Mom, I’m wondering what we’ll have for my birthday dinner?”

Thinking to myself: Get real. After the time and work involved in getting your present, hiding your present, catering this and that for the school end of year parties, planning your party… there is NO SPECIAL DINNER!!!

In my calmest voice possible I say, “Well sweetie. There will be pizza at your birthday party. Remember?’

“Well, that’s not actually on my birthday. That’s the day before.”

“Hmmm,” I say biting my tongue.

“I think you should make fried chicken; you know, your Mom’s recipe. Then, for a side dish, ravioli with cheese.”

I am flattered he likes the recipe. Despite the frazzleness of these last days of school, I am amazed that he thinks that’s all I’m really thinking about is how to make his birthday dinner spectacular.

Still, we’ll probably order pizza tonight. There is no time today, on this last day of school, for frying chickens. We need quiet, unrushed, unhurried time, to sit and enjoy the space we occupy together with, and feel a bit free and bored. When he was 4, I was a much more naive Mom, and I would have fried the chicken; and be frazzled. Now, that he’s 11, I am much more experienced and perhaps a bit lazy. Lazy can be a good thing if it keeps you sane.

He’s already mastered no-bake cookies. A better gift, I see as I’m writing this, is to teach him my Mom’s recipe (actually my Mom’s technique, but the secret spices are those I added from an evil stepmother my Dad married after my parents divorced. She was so evil, she once stole my pillow.) and fry it with him. I’ll clear a day, and space in my kitchen to spend time with him to teach him this master recipe. Now that is the ideal birthday present for a witty boy, who just turned 11.

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A few days after the 7-year-old hosted his friends to a rip-roaring birthday party that included ball-pit fun, and gambling away tokens at the slot machines, I presented him with his Thank You cards.

“You never told me this!  You should have warned me before I invited everyone.”

Clutching his colored pencil like a bear trying to scratch his way through the forest, he reluctantly scrawls out the words, “Thank you for the Bakugan.” The words sprawl out in an uneven script covering the text and photo on the front of the cards.

Here’s my interpretation of the scowl of his face:

“I can’t BELIEVE she has the audacity to make me write something that has nothing to do with school or homework.”

As he begins to write the next card, he stops and says, “Wait a minute. These cards already say ‘thank you.’  I only have to write Camp Set.”

So, that’s exactly what he did.

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