Max sporting the impromptu haircut his grandma gave him.“Your son has the character of a pig.” The woman gave me a conspiratorial grin as she spoke the words, as if she expected me to join her in a laugh at the expense of my almost-4-year old son.
I was speaking with Isabelle, Max’s teacher from last year, and my second and only friend in Restigne besides Sabine. Why would this woman be gossiping about my son’s porcine personality with such a friendly smile on her face? A neon sign illuminated in my mind that read “Cultural Misunderstanding Alert”. Which is why I didn’t slap her or break down crying in the middle of the preschool classroom.
I was suddenly transported back thirty-something years to the day when, just months after moving from Idaho to Birmingham, another 2nd grade mother told my mom, “Your daughter Gretchen…she’s such a mess!” Mom cried for around three days, and then after that we didn’t leave the house without having every inch of our bodies scrubbed and sparkling. And then a year later we discovered that “a mess” is Southern-speak for “so cute”.
“This has got to be code for something else,” I thought as I nodded at her, dazed with cultural confusion. Then I went home and called Mags, who told me that “caractere d’un cochon” meant pig-headed. Ok so my son was stubborn. I could deal with that. I couldn’t deal with him snuffling around for truffles in the schoolyard and rolling in his own shit.
Max on his first day back to school, 2nd year of pre-school
So, as an introduction to Max after a writing pause that took up about one-eighth of his life: my son is pig-headed. He is also a wildman. He got kicked out of speech therapy after a mere four sessions because he can’t concentrate on anything for more than a couple of minutes at a time. Which I was thinking was pretty good. His focus used to last only a few seconds. That’s big progress, in my book!
Max is good at focusing, as long as the activity is exciting enough...
like taking pictures of the inside of his nose.
The speech therapist told us to bring him back in March, when she’s hoping he’ll be more mature. But, considering that his mother still has the sense of humor of a fourteen-year old boy and his father has an online gaming addiction even though he’s turning the big four-oh next year (ok, it’s just Scrabble, but still…we’re talking HOURS!), Max might have a bit of a genetic disadvantage in the “growing-up” domain.
Fearless Max leaping into the pool during our group vacation in August.
Max’s favorite word is “caca”, or if he’s feeling particularly eloquent “caca boudin” (poo-sausage). His second favorite word is “peepee”. He seems to feel that these three words comprise a well-rounded vocabulary, and doesn’t really say much else.
That is, unless he’s bugging his sister, who he can’t leave alone for more than ten seconds before he’s calling her. He must have her in his sight at all times, and if she is not paying attention to him he will do something to remedy the situation. Like take away the toy she’s playing with and run far away. Or hit her.
“Then all is well,” you might say. “He’s right on the mark developmentally.” And I would have to agree. Especially as far as Freud would define things. Twice now, Max has climbed into our bed in the morning and told Laurent, “You can leave now. I’m here.” When Laurent was in New York a couple of weeks ago, Max pointed at the mommy and daddy in a picture book and said, “Mommy and big boy.” “Not ‘daddy’?” I questioned him. “Not daddy. Big boy.” Gotcha.
Since we’re not raising our kids in the Christian tradition I was raised in, we’re having to come up with other ways to manipulate his behavior. In situations where my dad would say that I was making Jesus sad, I have substituted The Fireman (firemen being right up there at the top of Max's pyramid of respect, along with Papy and Spiderman). As in, “If you don’t put your seatbelt on, The Fireman is going to cry.” The Fireman also gets upset about littering, pooing in the yard, and throwing things. I hope this doesn’t create some kind of imbalance in my son…like some kind of strange Firefighter fetish or a paralyzing fear of heat-resistant helmets.
Max at the Restigne coiffeur.
The final story I will tell you is one that you will have to promise never to bring up in front of Max if you happen to run across him anytime after say…his thirteenth birthday. He got this weird skin problem called “molluscum contagiosum” a few months ago. It’s kind of like warts, but really contagious, so it had spread from two bumps on his tummy to twenty bumps covering his abdomen and around the other side on his lower back and butt. The dermatologist scooped them individually out with a little metal scooper, but an hour before that, to get them ready, we had to put a cream on each one, put a little square of Saran Wrap over it, and tape it down.
The problem is, one of the bumps was kind of far down in Max’s butt crack. We saved that one for last. And as I laid the plastic wrap down on it, and Laurent applied the tape, Max began to FREAK OUT. “I won’t be able to poo!” he screamed, and then insisted on sitting on the toilet until the moment we left for the doctor’s.
He was convinced we had sealed his poo-hole shut, and that thought made him extremely panicky. It was horribly funny and tragic at the same time. And not funny at all once the doctor got down there and placed a sharp instrument against that super-sensitive skin. But Max made it through in the end. It seemed to help when he found out that The Fireman thought he was very …very… very brave.
Max winning 3rd place in his class at his school's Field Day.
Posts
)
One of my all-time favorite books about Paris.
