Oh, Moon

It was about a week or two ago. Langston and I were walking home on the curving path that cuts through the apartment buildings we live in. At the end of the path, right before the turn, the moon hung in the sky, a sharp glowing curve.

“Langston, look,” I called, pointing, “Do you see the moon?”

His eyes scanned up, not knowing where to look.

I tried another approach, “What shape is it?”

His eyes landed on the object of their search, “Crescent!” he bugled.

“Yeah.” “What do you see?”

“Moon.”

“Say the whole thing, please.” I murmured.

“I see…moon.”

We stood there together, giggling, as Langston occasionally burbled, “Moon.”

Later, as we traipsed upstairs, I went to the large windows in the living room. We found it hanging there, too.

The next morning was a weekday, and as Langston crawled up to whisper, “Hi-ii!” as a wake-up call, I turned and mumbled, “Hey, Langston. Remember yesterday, when we saw the moon?”

Langston quickly rolled off the bed and toddled away. I heard him in the other room, repeating, “Open curtains? Open curtains?”

For those of you who don’t know my son, this was a lovely thing. Many parents of two and a little more than half-year olds are able, when talking to their kids, to ask them about their day, what did you do, what do you want to be for Halloween, and so forth. Since my son’s being born with severe torticollis, many variables affected his delayed growth in various areas, from communicating to moving. Still, it doesn’t take more than a minute for anyone to be elated, saturated with appreciation and affection for my boy the moment his face brightens with his grin and the twinkle of his smiling eyes when they find the moon.

Old Friends

I remember speaking with Tom a few weeks after L. was born. “He’s got my sparkle,”I told Tom, wearily. “I gave my sparkle to him.”

“You’ve still got your sparkle,” Tom reassured me.

I miss having a friend who always knew just the right thing to say.

Music in the Morning

The garden this summer has really turned into an extraordinary surprise. I started with about six tiny terracotta pots. I planted three seeds in each, sunflower, cucumber or tomato. The seedlings emerged and became taller and taller, so I quickly separated these into plastic pots, and so on. Now, the entire balcony is framed: towering mammoth sunflower plants on one side, and these gorgeous monstrous cucumber plants that reach up to my shoulder. Little cucumbers are pushing out the profusion of blooms. Not having done any homework on the subject, I wonder if they'll actually grow large enough to pick and slice up for sandwiches and salads. Maybe not, maybe I was supposed to prevent some of them from appearing? I'll learn more for next summer's crop.

As I write this now, Langston's is singing "Las Mañanitas" across the room as he follows the pages to a brand new board book from an aunt which came along with Abuelita yesterday. It's pretty with basic, colorful abstract shapes.

Long mornings are my favorite thing. I've been baking a little bit lately first thing the morning, oatmeal cookies, buttermilk biscuits from scratch. So something simple and sweet is nibbled, as that emerald sunshine I've come to associate with our new home dapples the balcony. I slowly drink my coffee and grin at Langston, who also chews thoughtfully, laughing and bursting into song occasionally along with the music from the kitchen. This morning, Langston pushed his plate to the side of his placemat as I was lost in my book, and he began making up a little song of his own, tapping images on the mat with his finger, "Coralllll....brain coral, mushroom coral...shark."

The Emerald City

We've had such a batch of rainy, drizzly, misty days, that spring came on just saturating the landscape with this intense, intense green everywhere. The layers of landscape that overwhelmed me last fall are now equally stunning in other colors. Even on gray days, now, the curving farm-bordered road to work is entrenched in color. It's really like falling into a movie where an artist like Jeunet played around with the palette.

We have a tornado warning/watch, and it's silly to be nervous but here, in the eerie light that feels compressed by this thick, hot air, I'm looking up at the sky, peeking out of the window every few minutes like some loony shut-in. I've had dreams where tornadoes are - right there. Some days are like this, I guess, feeling squished between some pure, deep happiness and pulsing panic. There are times when I'm hugging Langston and it's sweet like nothing else in the world, and I think, I wish morbidly, that if some massive disaster were impending, that my son would just be there, his back curled inside my arm, his head nestled against me like I'm that solid structure you're supposed to find, away from windows.

Summer Songs

It looks at though this summer will be just as incredible as the last one. True, I won't be driving cross-country with my son to a new life adventure, but I anticipate that other adventures are in store for us both.

This afternoon, my son and I planted sunflowers together. He helped to scoop the the dirt into the terracotta pots and pat it down with his chubby fingers. Later, as he began his nap, I planted some tomatoes and cucumbers - I can't wait to see how they turn out. I also sent away for a butterfly kit. It will be immensely exciting to see his response to their changes, especially when it is finally time for them to take flight!

I have so many books lined up to read, lighthouses to visit, beaches to explore. While Langston is too young to explore the White Mountains, there are many gorgeous wooded paths nearby which are certain to delight us both.

As I recently wrote elsewhere, Langston has started singing, belting out the surprising rhymes and lyrics to songs I hadn't even realized he'd memorized. I've tried to capture these moments on film, but it's rarely the same song twice that inspires him to warble (other than the usual nursery-songs, of course.) Just today, "Bron-Y-Aur Stomp" came on while we drove around town on errands. As the song was just beginning, Langston started groaning, Robert Plant-style, in anticipation of the song's start: "Awwww....awwww...."

That's my boy.

Letters and Love

Language is pouring out of my son every day. It started around the winter holidays, when, upon receiving a gift of bathtub letters, he began identifying letters everywhere. Now, every piece of visible text is subject to his joyful scrutiny. He pushes his little index finger on top of a letter and declares, “M,” “A,” and my favorite: “Doub-oo!”

With his newfound love of letters, which seems to intensify every day, a sharp interest in new words has taken hold. “Boots?” he asks, when I offer that we go for a walk outside. Boots, coat, hat, socks, shoes, shirt, pants. Yesterday, crackers and peaches were added to his growing vocabulary, and robe. That boy loves his nubby blue bathrobe.



Color words: “Boo.” “Puhp.” “Tee.” I had been worried, having babysat in the past for toddlers whose gibberish words, their parents claimed, were actual bits of communication. Worried, that I wouldn’t understand my own kid because, let’s face it, those kids were unintelligible. But here we are, and Langston’s running around, saying and doing things that make sense. “Help?” he asks adorably, holding his electric train car.

In his day care classroom, Langston’s lovely teachers recently hung a long strip with the alphabet on the wall. Langston is fascinated with this addition. “Whenever he doesn’t want to do what we’re doing, he wanders over and stands in front of it with a smile on his face.” One day this week, S. told me, “We’re starting to do calendar, to get our three-year-olds ready to move up to the preschool class. So we asked the kids, what sound does “February” start with? And all we hear is these two two-year olds in the back (Langston and another little boy) going 'ffffff-ffff...' ”

He brings over Runaway Bunny, Trucks, or Spiderman and His Friends, and before we even begin reading, it’s all about what letters are on the cover. Letters on a shirt, letters on a sign, letters on the spines of my own books, letters on the covers of tabloid magazines hanging within arm reach in the supermarket checkout line. Everywhere, everywhere, my boy loves letters. It’s really something.

Sweetness

First, we had a three day weekend. I was miserable for most of it, with headaches and a fear that my flu symptoms were related to the strep throat in my classroom last week. Last night, the Sunday night equivalent of the long weekend, I slept horribly, dreams rattled by my son’s dry cough, insomniac paranoid thoughts — for example: what if there isn’t enough oxygen in the apartment? Seriously, Amanda — and incessantly looping songs of the annoying pop variety.

I awoke, edgy but alert, about an hour before my intended snooze-a-thon. I showered, and went to the kitchen to make Langston’s breakfast. My phone rattled on the desk in the bedroom. Glancing at the caller ID, I saw a number which began with 411. Strange. Not a bill collector or blocked call, to be sure. Then I noticed that I had missed five calls while in the shower. Worst-case thoughts swept through my brain, and I quickly dialed voice mail. Two beautiful, beautiful messages described that there was no school today.

A few minutes ago, with a belly full of pancakes and delicious coffee, I danced with my son to Sam Cooke in front of his bedroom window. Dark blue curtains with golden stars and moons were drawn aside to frame snow falling, falling straight down.

Afterflakes

In the thick of a teeming snowfall
I saw my shadow on snow.
I turned and looked back up at the sky,
Where we still look to ask the why
Of everything below.

If I shed such a darkness,
If the reason was in me,
That shadow of mine should show in form
Against the shapeless shadow of storm,
How swarthy I must be.

I turned and looked back upward.
The whole sky was blue;
And the thick flakes floating at a pause
Were but frost knots on an airy gauze,
With the sun shining through.

Robert Frost