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.

Spring break, near west side style

At the beach

Laying an egg

Sick in bed

You have been warned

"Mommy! It turns out that James doesn't like ballet," says Henry, as we are heading into the back yard to feed the dogs.

I am sure I have misunderstood. "He doesn't like what?"

"Really?" I consider whether Peter might have interrupted a You Tube viewing session devoted to best-of monster truck rally montages and firefighters leaping out of trucks to rescue kittens from the flames to show the boys a clip from Giselle. "Really?"

"Yes. And he said that if a ballet-er comes to our yard, he will fight her."

Being themselves

It was warm enough in the sun to go sockless, but the sidewalks were unbelievably slick this morning on the way to the school, and it was mostly black ice, the trickster. Our first venture out only saw us across the street, scrabbling not to lose ground on the 3 degree grade of the curb cut, before I decided to come back home for my brilliant Ice Trekkers. I was then able to hold the boys' hands, stalwart as an oak, while they boot-skated, as James likes to say.

James's feet slipped out from under him. "That's OK," he said. "'I love to slip!' said the guard." Probably a quarter of James's conversation these days is delivered in this form, as dialogue attributed to one of his alter egos, most often a dog or a guard or a worker.

Henry slipped. "STOOpid ice!"

"Aw, the ice isn't stupid," I said."The ice is just being ice. It's enacting its icy nature."

Henry liked this idea. "Maybe the ice is protecting itself from its enemies."

I felt so happy. Maybe it was just the birds chirping, and the sun, and the fact that I was asleep last night before 9, but I enjoyed so thoroughly this perfectly--perfectly--characteristic exchange. I try not to make too much of the differences between Henry and James; I don't want either one to feel that he is the "X" one, while his brother is "Y". I don't want the way I see them to be fixed in my own mind, either. But I am certainly struck by this difference in the workings of their imaginations: James is forever trying on different characters--this morning, when he put on a pair of drab green pants (with puppies on them, but whatever), he threw his fist up in front of his face and grimaced fiercely, saying "I an army guy!"--while Henry is never anyone but Henry, making connections, drawing conclusions, speculating constantly on the mysteries of the world outside himself.

Equally typical were their reactions to slipping. James, making a virtue of necessity, is an inveterate spotter of silver linings. Henry, on the other hand, is a big one for cursing the darkness. I worry: Will James stick up for himself when he needs to? Will he be too devoted to peace to engage in necessary fights? Will Henry be able to forgive his own and others' mistakes? Will I ever be able to just hear his rage without reacting to it, making it worse? But sometimes, like this morning, it doesn't seem necessary to worry. It's just pure pleasure, watching them unfold.

Date night

Henry, after dinner, as we are nibbling dates: "Hey, I know, Mommy! On the weekend, James and I can go over to grandma's so you and Daddy can spend some time with each and you can play Chutes and Ladders..." (rising in a great crescendo of excitement) "...together!"

snow day morning

We are frozen in again today by the polar vortex. Outside is wondrously beautiful--intensest cerulean sky, glittery snow, still fresh on its second day because yesterday was too cold for traffic--but it is 5 below, and it hurts to breathe out there, so we are starting to feel a little confined. As I often do, I am wondering how Caroline Ingalls did it.

However, cabin fever, like any other, spikes and ebbs, and we've just had a good spell. I came into the living room to find Henry explaining the universe to James, who was enthralled.

"This is our planet," Henry said. "We are flying in outer space."

James: "Oh, wow, wow, wow! A castle!"Henry: "And knights!"