OR MAGO UPDATE 15
Something I forgot to write last entry [and then a lot more new writing] –
At Eastertime he visited my mom with all his cousins. They were playing in the backyard and some of the older cousins (5 to 8 years older, and he’s just 2) found a pillbug, which they invited him to examine – it was rolled up in a ball to defend itself. I put it in his little hand,and as he looked down at it, it unrolled on its back and wiggled its many little legs. His eyes quickly grew wide, he trembled and yelped in horror and in a spasm threw the (poor) thing onto the ground, which very much amused his cousins, and shortly he began to cry but then laughed with his cousins, and I tried to comfort him but this apparently wasn’t necessary – he very excitedly babbled I don’t remember exactly but something like –
“And and I held the pillbug, and and it opened up and and and I got scared and and I threw it and and..” –
– which only amused his cousins further, and they had in short order retrieved the pillbug and one of them was holding it – and this I remember – Mago looked down at her hand, and reaching out said –
“..and I want to scare the pillbug.”
Which final utterance of his long excited blathering put his cousins in hysterics.
It feels like a blink when he was just a very tiny baby and I remember his first cry in this world as if it just happened – he is growing fast and scarcely just a baby any more (which I very much miss though there are great recompenses for it), and his explosion of vocabulary and speaking of the past half year or so has these past few months shown exponential bounds upon bounds of expansion.
Tia has commented that he makes connections with imaginary characters – as when she makes a Sponge Bob Square Pants tupperware or a stuffed animal talk to him – as if they are real people; giggling and laughing and talking at them and making requests directly to them, which I guess unsettles her. I think it’s how a kids imagination works – there’s very little if no separation between reality and fantasy, as demonstrated by his comments about a purple kangaroo. I think it’s fantastic in every sense of the word. (But it’s probably also a testament to how well Tia plays pretend, and that is a sincere compliment.)
The reality of his imaginations to him has to make nightmares terribly potent – one night last week I went to him as he cried, and he pointed to the floor near his bed and said “There was a scratchy monster.” To me this seems like it would somehow describe both how it looks and what it does. Frankly, that sounds just like some of the demons in a life-after-death experience I’ve read and believe, and that’s horrific. But they aren’t around this lad – there’s no way they can be. All the same, I personally think kids are closer to the other world and see or remember light and dark forces which adults forget or don’t notice.
Also last week I took him on a walk in his stroller (which I’ve used not nearly enough) to a magical place he has frequented as a baby – two fairly large painted clay deer lawn decorations around the corner and down the hill, set back on a woody slope of someon’s side yard, and large enough to be “life size” if Mago were an adult, and he can sit on them and pet them. He loves these. In sunny months he asks to go visit them. One is an adult and the other is a baby deer. He sat on the baby deer and talked about them.
(pointing to the other deer) “Is she a mama?”
“Yep.”
“Is he a baby?”
“Yep.”
“Is he gonna be a momma?”
“No, he’ll grow up to be a daddy.”
“Is he gonna be a momma?”
“He’ll be like a momma. But he’ll grow up to be a daddy.”
He played with the baby deer’s head, making a rising tone as he moved his hand up and out from it’s head, signifying the growth of an imaginary antler – “Zzgwwwwwwooop!”
“And, he’s gonna grow up with me.”
It’s hard to describe the effect this had on me. Unexpectedly rending. No, we won’t be in this neighborhood your entire youth, and he won’t really grow, but yes, he – the imagination of him – is part of you that will grow with you.
This Tuesday morning I went to him in the morning when he woke up, and sat on his bed as he told me about a monkey and a gorrilla climbing. He seemed to be looking at the wall as if it/they were right there. I thought I saw something creep just next to him on the blanket, and I went to turn on the light. I came back and IT was now a short distance from him on his pillow – God’s testament to the generations of His perfect sense of Horror. A breed to be even less fond of. “They are generally not found west of the Rocky Mountains”. However, they are more rarely found in the Rocky Mountains, especially creeping out of the recesses of dark, decrepit basements. Vengeance. The spider must know that look which means his death – because after I moved Mago to a chair I gutted and dismantled his bed and Tia and I moved all the furniture away from the walls – and the spider was nowhere. Under the wall and carpet riddled with the dust on which his victims feed. We sprayed the instructed four inches of spider poision along all the walls, and Mago slept in our room that night – which meant he leveraged even more than his usual great arsenal of subtle and not-so-subtle distractions to avoid going to sleep, and we all lost sleep that night. The following night (last night) back in his room he was beside himself with sleepless delirium after first going to bed and then needing to go potty (which he is learning), and he went potty, and later he cried that he needed to go potty, sat on his toilet, then cried because he couldn’t or didn’t actually need to go potty – this over and over again and all of it testing (and breaking) the limits of our patience. Putting a diaper back on him after this was a wrestling match, he enraged, and in the dark of his room I put his pants back on too hastily, I was so sad to learn this morning – when after he woke Tia found him in his bed with both legs shoved inside one pajama pant leg, bound together tight and very uncomfortably. I had abandoned him to this and thought his hotly enraged protest only the result of sleeplessness! I felt absolutely terrible when I learned this. I told him I had to tell him something, and reenacted the whole thing, asking him if he remembered and telling him I’m so sorry, I made a mistake, and I won’t do that again, okay? “Okay” he answered.