What Gets Outgrown

Posted September 24, 2007

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^{Ever wonder what Catherine sounds like? Listen to her read this blog entry.}

We're trying to figure out what still fits. Despite the fact that Ben's main summer project appeared to be eating his own weight in saturated fat -- fried clams, dishes of ice cream, buttered rye toast, rhubarb custard pie -- he is skinnier than ever. All his pants are sliding off him. Which is just as well, because any that actually stay up on his hips end up being about a foot too short. Plus, he won't wear pants that involve zippers or snaps: when nature calls, who has time to respond by fumbling with metallic closures? Especially when nature's actually calling back, in a panic, because you forgot to return its call of an hour ago? Why not get a head start on the elastic-waisted comfort of the retired years?

Still, to humor me, Ben's trying on a pair of jeans. They're long and slim, with flared bottoms, and while he's pulling them up, I say, "Uh oh! I think I'm going to have to bite you in those jeans." Ben zips, snaps, cranes around to admire his own booty, and says: "Oh my God! I'm going to have to bite myself!"

Maybe it's the return of the gummy smile, like a tender memento of babyhood, or maybe it's the absence-makes-the-heart-grow-fonder start of the school year, but I'm just totally nuts about that Ben. He woke me this morning, warm and cheerful in the early sunlight, by wondering aloud about bottoms. "Ava told me something funny," he said. "She said that the word for your booty -- the part that's not your booty crack -- was 'cheeks.' " He puffed out his own, then exhaled, laughing. "I guess it is kind of like a booty!" Birdy was awake now too, and when I told them the other word for it, they fell into such a prolonged and helpless fit of mirth that you couldn't help wondering if all the antidepressant prescriptions in the world could be replaced by a recorded utterance of the word "buttocks."

These children! Could these be the same children who, a mere week ago, were overly saturated in the briny solution of siblinghood? After too many sweaty, red-cheeked weeks of summer companionship, they were shaking the very last crumbs from the Barrel of Arguments. Take the bathroom at Osaka, our Japanese restaurant. If you had to live at Osaka, I mean had to, okay? Not, like, you could stay or could leave? Had to. Would you take a bath in the sink? Or in the toilet? Like, if you had to take a bath? With the ensuing rage and the tears, you'd think they were on Oprah, airing their polygamous grievances. I turned around in the car. "Hey, you guys? Since we're not actually going to end up living at Osaka, or ever bathing in the bathroom there, maybe we could agree to disagree about this, right?" Ben was choked up and stubborn, but dignified. "I'm just saying," he repeated slowly, "it could turn out to be the kind of thing where the sink is actually germier than the toilet."

"Like a dog's mouth," he added, and Birdy clasped her face between her palms and screamed.

This was around the same time that I whispered to Michael one evening, "Was he always this annoying?" I like it well enough for a person to strut past me, using his lips to simulate something like the sound of a rubber hose banging against a gong and then yelling the graphic if baffling "Penis party at midnight!" But only two or three times, if you know what I'm saying. By mid-August, I actually worried that Ben was turning into a kind of show-offy, gross-talking big kid -- totally appropriate for a kid his age, perhaps, but hard to be around. That sounds terrible, and I keep deleting it, even as I write. But I wondered if maybe, at a certain point, the love affair simmers down a bit, the honeymoon's over, that kind of thing. Maybe, I thought, you still love your kids just as much, but more deeply, somehow, without that flushed delirium of newness. It's been almost eight years, after all. Maybe that's about how long it takes.

But I was wrong. The passion is back, and sure, the sound track is all flatulence and kazoo, but it's as strong as ever. Is parenting a little bit like marriage, with the ebbing and flowing, the moving apart and coming together? I didn't know it would be like this. Or maybe I just forgot.

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What Gets Outgrown

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by Catherine Newman

Catherine Newman cooks for the family

Dalai Mama Dishes

Catherine Newman cooks for the family

What Gets Outgrown

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