Still a Yittle Boy

“Will I have to get rid of my stuffed animals soon?” Clayton asks as I lean over him at bedtime.

Under the covers, his animals create a topography of hills and valleys; brown glass eyes peer up at me. Two years ago, Clayton slept in a narrow strip of bed, perilously close to the edge, until Don and I installed a “stuffed animal shelf” above his bed. Now it only the beloved bear squad that gets to sleep in bed every night, with the half a dozen others that get rotated in. Sometimes, however, the animals on the shelf take matters into their own paws and dive onto the bed even when it’s not their turn. They like it better, Clayton says.

We are at the cusp of something. In bed, Clayton’s body is impossibly long; his feet are as big as mine. And yet I am reminded of when Clayton was two and well-meaning friends would look at him and say, “You’re such a big boy now, Clayton!”

“No, I’m yittle!” he would protest. “I’m a yittle boy!”

When I dropped off a book at the library the other day, a poster caught my eye: “Stuffed Animal Sleepover at the Library.”  Cool, I thought, immediately hooked. I bet my kids would love to sleep over at the library with a stuffed animal.

But I was wrong. The event was exactly what was advertised: the sleepover was for stuffed animals alone. Also, it was over; pictures of stuffed animals reading books and playing hide-and-go-seek were in a binder by the check-out.

That night, when I told Clayton about it, his eyes grew bright. I watched as he surveyed his host of stuffed animals. Who would like a library sleepover the most?

“We’ll do it next year,” I told him.

But as I kissed him good-night, my heart clenched. Next year. Was it possible? Would Clayton still want to take a stuffed animal to a sleepover next year?

I recently read Wonder by R.J. Palacio. The book is touching on so many levels, but what I liked best about it was that it didn’t shy away from the details of little boyhood. The main characters are all in fifth grade. They change classes and use lockers. They have crushes and “go out” with girls. And yet, August’s mom still lies down next to him at bedtime, and when he’s upset, he covers himself in a mountain of stuffed animals and waits for her to find him.

For me, so much of the poignancy of the book comes from how fragile and fleeting that boyhood seems. In Wonder, August’s coming of age is inseparable from his transition from the protective bubble of home school to the harsher realities of middle school. One wonders, for instance, if he begins to relinquish his attachment to his favorite stuffed animal simply because he is getting older, or because, now in school, he has internalized the judgement of his peers.  

Clayton, too, is not immune to these concerns. Although he still plays with Calico Critters with enthusiasm— “I feel so happy when I play with them!” he told me last week— he will not claim them when others are around. Privately, however, he is unabashed in his loves: fairies and leprechauns, stuffed animals and Sofia the First. In our home, at least, he still gets to be a “yittle” boy.

I think of the Dar William’s song, When I Was A Boy, which resonated with me so much when I first heard it in the early nineties. The female character in the song balks at gender’s dictates and mourns her lost childhood, when she rode her bike topless and climbed anything she could. Now, it is the verse in which her male friend talks about his boyhood that brings tears to my eyes:

When I was a girl, my mom and I, we always talked

And I picked flowers everywhere that I walked

And I could always cry, now even when I'm alone I seldom do

And I have lost some kindness

But I was a girl, too.

Maybe it is the triumph of our times that skinned knees and climbing trees are no longer the markers of just boyhood. It is hard to imagine a girl today being judged harshly for playing sports or getting dirty. And yet the consequences of gender nonconformity are so much stricter for boys than for girls. Perhaps that is why the more feminine aspects of Clayton’s boyhood seem so imperiled by the passing of time. After all, Dee Dee and Sylvia will outgrow Sofia the First and Calico Critters, too. But somehow that certainty doesn’t wring my heart the way it does with Clayton.

When Don grows impatient with Clayton’s tears and sensitivity, and says he has got to toughen up, I want to take Clayton in my arms. It is far too easy to imagine a time when Clayton’s tears won’t come so easily, when his Calico Critters will move to a box in the attic, when I will no longer begin my afternoon workouts to the theme song from Sofia the First: “I was a girl in the village doing all right...”

So when Clayton asks if he’ll have to get rid of his stuffed animals soon, I am emphatic. I tell him no and never. I remind him I still have Cuddly Wuddly, that Uncle Stefan still has Mommy Monkey. But I know what he is getting at; I sense it, too. One day the dinosaur comforter that I pull around him every night will be gone, the bear squad regulated to the shelf above his bed. I can feel that time coming, and there is so little I can do.

I kiss Clayton good-night again and arrange his stuffed animals around him in the bed. This is all that I can do: cherish Clayton, treasure this time. You never know, maybe one of those bears will get to go on the stuffed animal sleepover next year. Still, when I turn off the light, my heart is so full, it hurts.

Take Care

            Last night Sylvia told me that she wants her leg to break, and that she keeps trying to make it happen. When she is hanging upside down at recess, for example, she tries to let go of the bar, only to find it is impossible to do.
“Why do you want to break a leg?” I asked, although I was pretty sure I already knew.
“So you will care about me,” she said matter-of-factly.
“But we do—” I started to protest.
“Oh, I know you care about about me,” she cut me off. “But you know. Really care.”

Sylvia’s right again; I do know. Sylvia wants our undivided attention, our un-distracted sympathy. I remember how I daydreamed about getting really sick when the kids were little. Part of it was I wanted nothing more than a reason to stay in bed all day; I was exhausted to the core. But it was more than that. After taking care of others day in and day out, my number one fantasy was for someone— anyone— to take care of me.
When the twins were infants and I felt conflicted about giving up my job, I started looking for ways to expand my world beyond the confines of home and family. Volunteer work seemed an obvious answer, and what simpler way to make a contribution than to finally give in to the Red Cross’ pleas for platelet donations?
Unlike giving blood, donating platelets often takes upwards of two hours. You lie in a chair with needles in both arms, making it impossible to hold, or do, anything at all. It came as no surprise to me, even then, that that was exactly the kind of meaningful “work” I wanted to do.
           I said as much to a technician once, as she adjusted my television screen. I told her that I had three little kids at home, so it was nice to do nothing for a change.
          “That’s just sad,” she said emphatically, shaking her head. “You have to come in here just to get a break?”
I laughed out loud, pleased by her compassion. But I also knew it was more than that. Sure, it was nice to lie back and watch a movie in the middle of the afternoon. But even nicer was the care they took. When I was cold, they brought me heated blankets and tucked them carefully around my legs. When I was thirsty, they held a cup for me, and when my lips began to tingle because of the falling calcium in my blood, they brought me Tums and fed me pretzels one by one.
Was it sad, I wonder? Once, when my blood pressure dropped too low, there was a flurry of activity around my chair. Concerned faces hovered over me, and I began to cry.
“That’s good,” one of the technicians said matter-of-factly. “Crying will help too.”
           Did they think I was crying because I was frightened by the dizziness? No, I cried out of weakness and out of gratitude, and the pure relief of being taken care of.

          It seems a very human need to me, this longing for care. Perhaps in communities in which people are less isolated than in ours, it is easier to come by. If my mom lived downstairs, for example, and I was sick or tired, she’d make me a cup of tea and tell me to go lie down.
          Instead, we struggle on, alone. It does not surprise me that in our busy, isolating world, so many of us are willing to pay handsomely for such care. We can pay for someone to massage our backs, paint our toes, blow dry our hair. But the true care, the kind of love-in-action that Sylvia craves, that kind of care is harder to come by.
           A few years ago, when a good friend turned forty, she told me she had decided to give herself forty days of self-care.  A walk, a bath, a latte, flowers... Every day she would do something nice for herself. At the time, Clayton was four and the girls were two, and while I liked the idea, I couldn’t bring myself to add one more obligation to the daily to-do list. But this year, I remembered what she’d said. Forty-four days of self care? Could I manage it now?
          I told the kids about it.
         “What did you do today?” Clayton wanted to know.
          I told him I’d bought myself a cup of coffee. My husband, overhearing, laughed.
         “I do that all the time anyway,” he said.

          I didn’t make it to forty-four, or even forty. I stopped counting after day six. The demands of work and family asserted themselves; my resolved slackened. But today, bone-weary at only seven thirty, I let myself take a bath instead of cleaning the bathroom. There’s a desk of clutter to be cleared up downstairs, not to mention the never-ending laundry, but instead I made myself listen to my mother’s voice inside my head.
        “Why don’t you go lie down?” she said.
So I did.
         Perhaps one day I’ll make it to forty-four, after all.
     

I Want to Be Amazing!

  When Sylvia was a toddler and caught her reflection in a mirror, a dark window, even the curvature of a spoon, she used to say, “Dee Dee in der! Dee Dee in der!” Was she too young to understand that it was her own image that she saw? Or was “Dee Dee” a generic name for any little Witsell girl, the way toddlers will call all four-legged animals “dog?” Maybe she and her twin were just so linked in her psyche that when she saw herself, she saw her sister.

Six years later, Sylvia has never stopped loving her own reflection. She often goes to our room to study herself in the full-length mirror there.

“Clayton and Dee Dee think I’m vain when I look in the mirror,” she explained to me seriously a few weeks ago. “But I’m not. I’m just excited.”

Her words elated me. Because isn’t this what we all want for our daughters? For them to look in the mirror and feel good— excited, even— about what they see? That person she sees in the mirror? Sylvia’s in there! How cool is that?

Clayton’s sense of self-worth is much more complicated.

“I don’t want to be just nine-years-old,” he told me last Friday. “I want to be amazing.”

Clayton is writing a book. At six thousand words and counting, it’s a real, book-length book, easily as long as any Magic Tree House or Junie B. Jones. Typing a six-thousand word story, hunting and pecking each letter at a time— even that much is an accomplishment. But Clayton wants no qualifiers. He doesn’t want his book to be “pretty good for a nine-year-old.” He wants it to be J.K. Rowling amazing, Rick Riordan amazing.

Clayton dreams of publishing. He wants the five star icons by his title on amazon, “National Bestseller” on the front cover, “Based on the novel by Clayton Witsell” on the big screen. Every day he asks me, “Do you think I’ll really publish my book?”

With my own e-stack of rejection letters mounting, it is not an easy question.

“You can always self-publish,” I hedge. I tell him about The Martian and Still Alice, both best-sellers that were originally self-published.

He nods, not entirely convinced. Like me, he wants the validation of traditional publishing.

“I think I’ll still try to send it to real publishers first,” he says. “Do you think there’s a chance someone will publish it?”

Last weekend, I saw a friend I hadn’t seen in nine years. In the interim, she’s earned her Ph.D., gotten a coveted professorship in Australia, completed “a couple” of Half Ironman triathlons, and become a competitive tennis player. And what have I done, I wondered? No Ph.D., no publishing credits, certainly no Half Ironmans or tennis tournaments. Instead, I have three kids and an elliptical machine in the basement, where I squeeze in workouts before leaving the house for a job that offers minimal pay and only minutely more status.

I don’t want to be just forty-three years old, I can almost hear myself thinking. I want to be amazing!

Here, Clayton is the mirror I can hold up to myself. Because what was the first thing I thought when he said those words? Clayton, you are amazing! Of course I think it’s pretty awesome that he’s writing his first book at the age of nine (and, in my biased opinion, a pretty wonderful book at that), but that’s not why he’s amazing. Book or no book, published or not, he’d still be amazing.

At the bar where my friend and I are having a drink, the bartender searches for our tab. She can’t find my friend’s name in the computer, neither first nor last.

“Here it is!” she says finally. “It was under Doctor.” She arches her eyebrows playfully. “Aren’t you fancy?”

We all laugh good-naturedly, because my friend is anything but pretentious. But still I find myself wondering what it must be like to go through life like that, when even the person who rings up your tab knows something of your accomplishments.

It reminds me of an experience I had in graduate school, when, as a student volunteer, I had the opportunity to go to lunch with a visiting poet. I went through the meal in a state of nervous awe, determined not to say much lest I say something stupid, until finally it was over and we sat back, our empty dishes spread before us. That moment is still vivid in my mind, because just then the acclaimed poet reached into her empty water glass, snaking her fingers among the ice-cubes to reach the wedge of lemon at the bottom. It was exactly the kind of uncouth gesture I would have made had I not been on my best behavior for the poet, and it has stayed with me as a lesson on humanity: that even the most amazing people are human, are ordinary.

When it comes to my own life, though, I have been much more hesitant to accept that the inverse can also be true: that the ordinary can be amazing. Catching up with my friend, I worry that by her international, high-academia standards, my own life must seem boringly conventional. But when I admit this, she shakes her head emphatically. She tells me that, without children, she is constantly striving to find ways to truly make a difference in the lives of others. To her, the fact that I have children who bare their hearts to me is amazing.

Recently Clayton seems to have tempered his ambitions a little. He now says things like, “Do you think I can be as good as J.K. Rowling when I grow up?” Or, “Even books that not many people know about can be good, right?”

“Yes! Yes! Yes!” I say, to both of us.

Meanwhile I have found some of Sylvia’s school writing crumpled in her backpack:

It is hard not to smile at her unabashed self-love, unfiltered by any pretense of modesty. But, as in so many of the things my children say or do, I think there might be a lesson for me in all of this. For if his little sister teaches me about unconditional self-love, the question Clayton has raised is quite a bit more complicated: How do we strive to reach our dreams without our self-worth becoming impossibly tangled up with our successes... or the lack of them?

I think, for me, the answer is in both of my children. From Clayton, that the pursuit of our dreams is vitalizing and worthwhile, regardless of the outcome. From Sylvia, that it’s okay to love yourself for exactly who you are.