Beantown, Part Three

VII. The babes of summer

Tuesday dawned much fairer than Monday, and we wound up making it a low-key, toddler-oriented day in Arlington with Jenn and Toby. Jenn and several friends have talked romantically in the past about raising our kids together on a commune somewhere in rural New York State--we imagine a free-ranging outdoor life for the kids and figure we have enough experts in different fields among the adults to give them a well-rounded education. Every now and then, when New Jersey malls and traffic are getting us down, Tom and I will start planning for the commune again.

But six days actually living with the friends in question made it seem even more attractive. As we'd also found in the Poconos with Harrison's family, it's wonderful to have intelligent, sympathetic adult friends of your own around while you're doing all the labor-intensive, ultimately-rewarding-but-also-often-quite-humdrum stuff that it takes to care for a young child day-to-day. There's something immensely cheering about not being isolated in one's own apartment with a little person who, however much her conversational ability may be increasing, essentially maxes out at a running commentary on directly observable phenomena in the immediate surroundings--and who can't put on her own socks, get her own cup of water, or even pee without one's intensive assistance. (In the middle of the previous sentence, for example, I was called to Edith's bedroom because she'd wiggled out from under her covers and wanted them back on top of her, something she can't manage yet.) But doing all the childcare in the company of good friends made me ready to buy the commune lands tomorrow.

Children on the commune would be expected to start contributing to the community's well-being at an early age. Toby and Edith spent a good 15-20 minutes this morning making us pancakes. Actually, I was amazed that they stumbled on an activity that kept them both absorbed, and stationary, for that long.

After pancakes we spent the morning on a playground near Jenn and Gregg's home.



Then we went home and, gasp, actually had an afternoon nap. All of five of us, I believe. Tom was deeply invested in the napping, so he continued to labor away at that end of things in the late afternoon while Jenn and I took the kids to the neighborhood reservoir, complete with grassy banks and an extensive playground. Toby is a little waterbug already, and it was great to see him wade right in. Edith was surprisingly less interested in the water than usual but was true to form in running for the baby swings.




In the evening, when Gregg had gotten home from work, he and Tom settled in for an evening of tending toddlers in front of The Chappelle Show, while Jenn and I headed out with Rebecca and a fourth friend, Emily, for a women's night out. After touring the condo on which Emily had just closed, we headed to one of my favorite restaurants in my former neighborhood, the one at which the assembled company had held my bridal shower, and where we now indulged in all the fancy drinks on the menu. Okay, not all of them. But enough to make me get a sense for what I may have missed out on way back in college.

The possibility of an adult night out with old friends, as if we had no kids or mortgages or other serious responsibilities, made me wistful to live near a larger critical mass of friends again.

And that was that. Wednesday was a long driving day, eight hours total due to an accident on I-95 that made us take a detour right at the start, plus a toddler-length stop at the same exit in western Connecticut as on the way up. None of which prevented our having to resort to the surreal-naming-nonsense game again for the last hour or two. If fate wanted to throw us for a 180 by making a second child as different from Edith as possible, he or she would be a happy traveler, often lulled by the motion of the car, content to ride in wheeled vehicles without protest for upwards of ten minutes at a time. I've heard there are some kids out there like that.

On the conversational side of things, some moments from the past few weeks...

Rebecca to Edith, as she inspected a fixture on the sidewalk: What's that?
E: Fire hydrant.
R: Right! What comes out of a fire hydrant?
E: Fire.

***

At some point during the trip Edith switched from asking, "Mommy milkie?" in a wheedling tone to stating categorically, "I want my milk!" The change in possessive pronoun felt not insignificant.

***

She also settled on a new grammatical construction for statements of negative desire: "I want not want..." means "I do not want..." We haven't seen a similar pattern with any other verbs.

***

Edith continued to prove the value of a wide-ranging literary, cinematic, and musical background to supply appropriate expressions in time of need, as in the following two incidents. Points given, as always, to those who identify the sources.

I. On our first morning in the Poconos, Conrad returned from the grocery store with, among other things, two bottles and one box of wine. The other adults ribbed him a bit, asking whether we really could drink so much in a four-night stay. As we laughed that we'd try our best, Edith piped up, "It will be my first party, father!"

II. On a dogwalk this evening, after Edith had been scooped up and forced to ride in Mama's arms on account of refusing to take the rocks out of her mouth, she started saying to the sky, "No...no..."
G: No what?
E: Nobody understands me.

***

The three of us were navigating our way through Boston's ancient cowpath street pattern from Brighton back to Arlington. In the driver's seat, Tom was looking ahead to determine which lane to get in to be properly positioned at the next five-way irregular intersection and so almost ran through the most immediate intersection.

"Red light!" I screamed. "Jesus!"

Tom slammed on the brakes, we screeched to a halt, and it was silent.

After a beat Edith asked, "What Mommy say?"

Embarrassed, I didn't answer.

"What Mommy say?" she repeated. "What Mommy say?"

"I said, 'Red light!'" I finally told her.

"Mommy say 'Red light!'?"

"Yes, Mommy said, 'Red light!"

"Mommy was a little scared," Tom told her.

"Mommy little bit scared?" she repeated. "Mommy say 'Red light!'?"

"Yes," I confirmed. "I wanted Daddy to stop the car."

"Mommy little bit scared? Mommy want Daddy to stop the tar? Mommy say 'Red light!'?" asked the little prosecuting attorney. We told her yes, we stood by our story.

A minute of silence passed as we crossed the river into Cambridge. Then from the depths of the backseat, "Mommy say 'Jesus.'"

As we tried to stay composed, Tom told Edith that I had been saying a prayer, because I was a little bit scared, but that it was a very short prayer. I agreed that I had hadn't had time to say the whole thing.

"Say 'Amen,' Mommy," instructed Edith. "God is good, God is great, thank him for our food. Amen."

We heard about Mommy being little bit scared and wanting Daddy to stop the tar for the next couple of days. But no more about Jesus.