This morning I was still stirring in bed when the doorbell rang. Tom, it being his morning to wake up and deal with the heathens, was chastising Chompy, who had pooped in his overnight diaper.
I could almost hear Chompy’s shameless disregard for this silly notion called “potty training,” which we’ve been trying to accomplish since Memorial Day. I heard Tom repeatedly ask Chompy to stop moving, stop moving, stop moving, so as not to get poo everywhere.
On mornings like these we call him a bad baby, and he gleefully takes it to heart, pointing to himself and saying “bad baby,” and then pointing back at us: “You a bad baby.” He emphasizes the you with an unexpectedly deep vocal fry, as though being a bad baby was genetic and it was our fault he was this way.
By the time I heard Tom say, wearily, “Alright Didi, go downstairs,” it was 8:10AM, ten minutes before they had to leave for school. I heard Tom say, “Where’s Artie?” Then, “Artie? Where are you?”
“Artie?”
No response.
The doorbell. Apparently Artie had answered the door and left. I heard the front door open and Tom’s voice somehow amplify, despite now being outside. I suppose the neighborhood acts as a sort of echo chamber.
“Where do you think you’re going? Did you tell me you were leaving the house? Get back in here! Now!”
Then: “I don’t give a shit who rang the bell, you didn’t tell me anything and you need to go to school! Get inside NOW!”
If the entire neighborhood was wondering if someone was in trouble, Artie was in trouble.
The kid from across the street, C, who has become fast friends with Artie, had come and rang the doorbell to say hello before he left for school. Artie thought, “Well, of course we can fit in a little play because I have zero concept of time.”
From previous barefoot excursions, he knew to get his shoes first, which delayed him enough so that Tom saw him just as he was crossing the street. By then C had already left for school.
We constantly tell Artie to think a little. To use his brain, have common sense. A lot of times these things are shouted rather than calmly spoken, but the volume doesn’t really matter. When it comes to things he shouldn’t do, Artie becomes curiously deaf, an affliction we see in many other children, especially boys.
We look forward to the day when he “grows out of it”, but given all the teenaged boys I see in the street doing wheelies on giant e-bikes without helmets, that day seems as remote as Jupiter’s moons. But there’s also something enchanting about this willful ignorance. What use is common sense when you’re five? That’s what your parents are for.
How freely the neighbor C and some other kids, come and go from each other’s yards and play unsupervised reminds me of the way I grew up. I was slightly older than Artie, as most of these kids are, but just by a year or so when I started running around the neighborhood, and probably no more cautious.
My parents were strict about manners and grades, but once homework was done and the piano played, I remember huge swathes of free time spent outside, roller blading with Ben and Kelly from across the street and climbing trees with Blair from up the road, who was like a young horticulturalist. She taught me to eat crabapples, suck on lemon grass, and swing from willow trees, one time over a spiked fence that when the branch snapped and I landed right next to it, I shuddered that I could have been impaled.
Our parents had no idea where the hell we were, or what we were up to. I didn’t wear a watch, I just had an internal (common) sense of, “I think it’s about time to go home.” At least this is how I remember it. I still think about those kids and those days, more often now because it seems that something from another era is now happening again in Artie’s young life.
But because I’m alive with all my limbs intact, it’s hard for me, for Tom and I, to trust that Artie’s capable of doing the same and stay safe, especially given his track record of doing dumb stuff.
A few weeks ago, I thought he and C were just in our backyard, riding around on bikes and scooters when a neighbor came over and asked to talk to me.
C came to get me. “There’s a guy wants to talk to you.”
I went to meet him and both boys darted their eyes back and forth between us, wary.
“I just want you to know,” the neighbor said, “I saw your son climbing on the roof.”
My eyes widened and I immediately turned to glare at Artie.
“I have two boys too,” he said. They were a few years older than Artie and I often saw them zooming around in the street, doing wheelies on normal bikes. “I know how they can be but I really just want you to know because it is extremely dangerous to be on the roof and he needs to know that.”
I thanked him for letting me know, and in Chinese, asked Artie if he had a death wish.
All those questions you ask reflexively when you’re upset with your kid – “What on Earth were you thinking? What made you think that was a good idea? Do you want to live out the rest of your days in a wheelchair?” – are reflexive because our parents asked us the same thing at various points of our youth.
I remember saying sullenly, as Artie does now, “I don’t know.” And because it was true, “I wasn’t thinking anything.”
I was chasing a feeling. Climbing trees, rollerblading down hills with no protective gear whatsoever (I’ve owned exactly one helmet in my life and it was quickly too small), swinging from willows. Just like Artie, I was having a good time.
I guess we’re trying to find a balance. He’s still a little young to be romping around outside without intermittent vigilance, but before long, he’ll likely want to escape our attention altogether. Supervision will become overbearing. We’ll just have to trust him.
That’s what I want for Artie and Chompy – a childhood to be nostalgic for. Despite the predictable woes about tiger parenting and piano lessons that went on for way too long, I was supervised when it counted and free to roam the streets and climb trees the rest of the time. Eventually climbing trees was replaced by driving around, browsing both Blockbuster and this quaint neighborhood bookstore called Barnes and Nobles and playing way too much badminton. Nerdy shit, but freedom all the same. My parents trusted me to not be out drinking and doing drugs.1 They paid attention, but not too much.
When you’re young you don’t know what fleeting is. Now I’m pushing forty with two kids but I still know a good climbing tree when I see one. I point them out to Artie, who’s usually already spotted it and is taking off his shoes.
Some day, not too far from now he’ll be doing that with the neighborhood kids. And I want him to. I want him to feel the wind in his hair as I once did, knowing his brother, less agile, isn’t far behind, that his mom’s at home having a late afternoon nap before making dinner, and that his dad is finishing up work, readying to come downstairs and have a wine with his mom.
It’s a special era encapsulated by the many afterschool dusks of childhood, when everyone is exactly where they’re supposed to be, especially the kids, out of the house, being kids.
- “No duh,” says Tom. “It’s because you’re an uptight narc.” ↩︎
VERY HIGHBROW 