Susiej

The wooden trains have been buried in their storage tub since that sick day when he built an un-Christmas train last year.  I made a good-faith effort to pull out the train and placed the tracks under the real Christmas tree this year; but the train was not embraced. In fact, it was simply ignored.  I even slid the already-decorated Christmas tree right across the floor to allow more “building” room for the track.  (Not one ornament was lost in the move.) Space, apparently, was not the problem. He had a change of heart.  Just like little Jackie Paper, one day he just found other things to occupy his time, besides trains.

When we opened the book to Puff, and sang the song about the little boy who left his childhood friend behind, I never thought we were reading a story about us.

So I asked him, “You’re really done with this train, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” he answered, without looking up from his latest Bionicle creation.

“Well, then, maybe we should pack it up , and find some other little boy who’d like to play with this train.”

“No, Mom,” he said. “Let me tell you how it’s gonna be.  When I’m all grown up, and I’m a Grandpa, you’re going to keep the train around, built all around your house so that you can remember me.”

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Years ago, when I was pregnant with my first child, there was an email circulating, listing 10 reasons on how to tell if you’re ready to have kids. One of them was to throw broken glass all over the floor, and walk barefoot over the pieces. The experience was to prepare you for the pain you will encounter when you step on your kid’s legos. No amount of prep work can prepare you for that kind of pain.

My boys promise me that if I buy them plastic bins, they will sort each piece by color, and put them there every night.  (Yeah, right.)  Until then,

We spread them out on one big blanket. When they’re done, we just roll up the blanket and put them in a basket.

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Once his big brothers have left for school, leaving the kitchen in a scattered mess of opened cereal boxes, bowls of half-eaten cereal in soggy milk, sticky messes of milk spots all over the table, he pulls out his instruments and begins his morning work, creating worlds that are home to only his favorite colors.

Thankful for half-day kindergarten.

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Her presence was a constant in my childhood. Hers was the big wide chest I snuggled on as an infant, the shoulder I cried on, the large lap I sat on with scraped knees and bee stings, and the sounding board against the bullies at school. She was my shield when my parents were too harsh.

She understood that childhood served one purpose; to eat all the sugary-home-made jam you could fit on a single piece of buttered toast.  Christmas was for popcorn balls, and yet she shooed every child in her kitchen out when the hot syrup was just about to be poured on the marble slab on the days she made hard-tack candy, for fear that someone would get burned.

When the men’s work pants, shirts, or the sisters’ summer dresses became too worn for patches; she used her seam ripper to take off every single button, to save them in a tin. For what? For the odd button that bounced off a blouse?  She had oodles of buttons – beyond the limit of what she could actually ever use.

As I run my fingers through these tins, the discs slip between my fingers like satin against my skin — can you hear that sound of applause they make as they clink against each other? I wonder now if maybe Grandma had stepped out of her waste-not-want not mode with these buttons. Perhaps she saved them because she simply loved them; not because they were useful. These buttons glisten like massive jewels, and that would have been a luxury that was passed over by this depression-era girl that grew up working out in the onion fields. Her single indulgence. But, she never told me that.

She died while I was pregnant with my first son, in 1995. One morning, after pulling an all-nighter with my colicky baby, I learned that the young family that had moved into her farmhouse had a little girl; and Grandma, apparently, was looking after her. The girl’s favorite lost doll would suddenly appear the next morning in plain site – stuff like that.

I was crushed over this news. Grandma should have been there with me, to help me calm this baby. It was hard enough sharing her with my cousins and grand cousins — but now a complete stranger? It took some effort on my part, in those early days, to not associate every cry my son made with her absence in my life.

Although, she never did like to leave her house…

Since then, only one or two times, (this marks the third), have I ever let my mind drift to the reality that my little boys do not know about the taste of her jam, the feel of her lap, the comfort of her shoulder, the smell of her powder, and those eyes, so deep with compassion and love that just one look made you want to grow up and do only those things that would make her proud.

That loss is more than I can comfortably bear. I can search high and low in every toy catalogue, and never scratch the surface to come close to bringing what she could have brought into their lives. If maybe they knew her, then missing her would be more fun. We could easily say, “Remember that time when Grandma …”

So, I make these button dolls out of her buttons. I use pipe cleaners to twist the doll into shape, and then add the buttons, twisting the ends of the pipe cleaner at the end to hold the buttons in place. The flat ones make nice hats. Simply my way of leaving a little bit of Grandma around the house for the boys to see.

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The first child up in the morning, (this varies by day) pulls the blanket off his bed, and drags it through the hallway and down the stairs to sit on the hottest spot in the house — the hot register. This black grate sits at the bottom of the stairs, just inside the front door. The blanket on top ensures no heat will escape, and all that warm toasty air will stay wrapped around legs, feet, and a chest that is not quite ready to take on the world.

The second child up makes his way, with his blanket, to the second hottest spot in the house — the hot register in the dining room, just off to the left from the front door. The third child is stuck with the living room, which billows heat with the least force of the three. The fourth child couldn’t care less. He’s just worried that everyone else is going to make him late for school — and he yells at them to hurry up and eat their breakfasts.

But they are eating their breakfasts. They’ve managed somehow, without losing their spot, to pour a bowl of cereal and milk, grab a spoon, and run back to their spot where they are eating, concealing their bowl under the blanket so that I won’t know; because I’d tell them to go sit at the table.

I discover this has happened after they’ve left for school, and I find the bowl with my foot, the spoon clinking against the pottery, as I walk by to pick up the blankets. I say nothing later, because I know how it feels to be drawn to that heat. I did the same thing when I was a girl. It’s almost irresistible.

I have been known, on particularly rushed mornings, to turn off the heat, just to get them to move. Sometimes, it’s the only way. Then, later, around 10, wondering why it’s so cold in here. Once, I mistakenly turned back on the A/C, and found myself with an unfamiliar air of chilliness.

In the afternoons they will do homework in these respective spots, and by the looks of the inside of the registers, lots of Lego’s and Bionicles have been built here too. It also looks as if some chess games have been won and lost on these spots.

On snow days, they congregate together on the hottest register with every blanket, stuffed animal and sheet they can find and build one huge billowy fort. There are lots of screams about territory during these turf battles.

Once the weather warms up (let’s hope in just a few weeks), these registers, these thrones, will recede into the walls of the corners where they sit, and they will go unnoticed until that first frost comes in the fall.

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The package arrived just as we were leaving to go back to school after his afternoon lunch break. There was no time to sit down with the box and open it, and bless his heart; he didn’t even ask if he could.

He simply said, “Can I tear off the packing label and bring it to school for show and tell?”

“Of course,” I said.

He had to sit at school for another three hours and wait, knowing the package was waiting for him at home.

Toa Mata Nui is quite large, and he has a special place in our home, along with the box — up high.

This is his favorite stance — he places him parallel to the box.

In these trying days, it’s nice to be able to do something that means so much.

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