Overheard on the near west side

James, to Peter, as Peter was holding him wrapped up in a towel after his bath: "May I zip about?" I received this with so much enthusiasm the first time that it has already become a catchphrase with both boys.

James also now habitually runs naked from the bathroom after washing up and declares, "Here comes a fresh, clean guy!"

Henry, who has embraced science, to James: "How many atoms do you think are in a grain of salt?"
James: "Twelve."

Henry is also very interested in considering what objects of various sizes might look like to a flea. "This boot would be like a house to a flea!" "This house would be like a skyscraper to a flea!" "A skyscraper would be like a million hundred mountains to a flea!" Peter also enjoys this line of speculation, and he and Henry discuss with interest how many fleas, standing one on top of another, would be as tall as the tire on the neighbor's pick-up truck, and whether a flea's height, properly measured, should include its legs, and how it might feel to be the flea at the bottom of the stack.

Next time, how about you take them out for ice cream?

I was sort of desperate all weekend for solitude and costume drama, so after dinner tonight, Peter took the boys for a walk--in Rose Hill Cemetery--while I enjoyed, modestly, half an hour of B-list BBC. As soon as they returned, Peter slung Henry over his shoulders and carried him into the bathroom for a sorely needed hair-washing. James came and joined me on the bed.

"Mommy, what is in that black thing in the cemetery?" he said.

"What black thing?"

"Henry said it has bodies in it. Why do people's bodies get buried when they die? I don't want to get buried."

"Oh, well, sweetie--"

"Am I going to die, Mommy? I hate dying, you know."

"Oh, darling, yes, everybody dies. But it probably won't be for a very, very, very long time."

"Will Daddy die? But I like Daddy!"

"Yes, Daddy will die."

"Will you die, Mommy? Will Henry die?"

"Yes, sweetie, all people die, everyone of us will die one day. We hope it will be when we are all very, very old."

"But I don't want to get buried. I don't want to go in a hole."

Here I tried to propose some distinction between body and spirit--the inner James--in a fashion too piffling even to attempt to transcribe.

"But I love my body!"

"I love your body too!" I said, and gave up trying to do anything more in this conversation than doggy-paddle.

"I hate dying!"

"Dying is sad, but, somehow, somehow it really is all right. It's just what is."

"But you know, Mommy, workers sometimes go under the ground to dig pipes. So maybe I like to go in a hole, like a worker." James can be persuaded these days to do almost anything, if only you can make him believe it's a worker-like thing to do.

The only possible end to this shattering conversation was a shameless love-fest, which duly ensued. Ten minutes later, both boys and I were playing a game that involved their riding in the air on my knees, demanding to know if they could eat butts, eyeballs, and poopoo for breakfast, to which I replied in a voice like Geraldine McEwan that the only acceptable options were eggs, oatmeal, and yogurt, on "gurt" sending them flying into the air. Hilarity abounded. Five minutes after that, James found his before-bed snack of plain yogurt one too many for him, and I had to stop him as he was trying to subdue the gobbet that was dribbling down his pajama front by smearing it onto the floor.

In the past three days, I have seen a Facebook meme in which Steve Jobs's success in business is attributed to his remembering often that he would die and have also read in a book about depression that the Dalai Lama is so kind because he has meditated on death every day since he was eight. My experience is that is perfectly possible to think often and poignantly about death and dying--I do and have for decades now--to much less remarkable effect.