gift

things you might need if you know a twelve year old boy:
http://www.adoptashark.com/
http://www.superherosupplies.com/
http://www.howtomakevampireteeth.com/

you haven't met my doppelganger, have you? says the original supernatural nephew and i tell him maybe i have. the nephew turned twelve two days ago and we have been talking back and forth on the phone about a boy i know, another twelve year old, who is not at all happy with the way things are going all around him. he is a boy i met a few weeks back at school when he was being suspended for a variety of offenses, some of which involved saying very ugly things to quite a few people. his first words to me were leave me alone!

i spend my days with high school kids. squirrels, yes, but older squirrels. fourteen, fifteen. even a nineteen year old or two. i do not come across so many twelve year old boys in my day. i don't know what to do for such strange creatures, so i go to the source. i call the nephew. and if you know him, you already know what the conversations are like. if you don't, you probably ought to be sure you're sitting down before you read on. the original supernatural nephew is exactly that. he is not in any way regular. and that is what makes him worth knowing.

he listens to what i have to say, to my worries. he takes the call seriously. he is, after all, the only expert on twelve year old boys i know. he makes suggestions, rolls them over out loud, searching for the best ones. this is a good one. this one might be too babyish. this one will work with any twelve year old boy who feels angry or frustrated. it turns out he and the boy at my school share a love of sharks and vampires and he has plenty of suggestions about how to help the kid understand we have the same goals using what he loves as an ice breaker. and this is what i expect. i have known him for twelve years, after all. he is a smart kid to begin with and i know his capacity for kindness is endless. this is no surprise.

but the next time we talk, he asks about the boy. it turns out things have improved and i say so. but the nephew is smart enough to know the struggles of a twelve year old boy are endless and there will be good times and then more bad times and that when you are twelve, it takes work for the good times to win out. he offers more suggestions, asks about decisions adults have made on the child's behalf. he knows the world is larger than just his own choices.

on his birthday i call the nephew to wish him well and to tell him his gift, difficult to wrangle, will arrive a few days later. he listens patiently, then asks about the boy. and they are alike here, too. they are both acutely aware of the suffering of others and both want very much to fix any little bit of that they can. they are dogged in their pursuit of making things right and fair. the nephew knows what he has. not just the good parents and safe home and the piles of books and abundance of toys. he knows that he has an impressive mind and a committed heart and he knows those things together require a different sort of responsibility. he knows some people will not know to work as hard as he will to make the world better and this may sometimes frustrate him but it will not change his course because he is always looking around him and he is always thinking about what is out there.

so today when he calls to tell me he got his present we chat about it a little and he asks about the boy. i don't see the boy very often but i know things are less awful for him and i know things are still changing so that is what i say. the nephew offers things. his own things. actual objects that are his that he thinks might be of comfort to this child he does not know at all. because he knows enough about how this boy feels to want the child to have things that helped when he felt the way twelve year old boys sometimes do.

and i am so glad i called to ask his advice. not just because it has been helpful. not just because it shows me that he is thoughtful and self-aware, qualities rare among twelve year old boys. i am glad because it is a wonderful gift to hear his mind work on a problem, weigh options, offer suggestions. it is a gift to hear him think.

letter to my favorite fifth grader preparing for the first day of school

                       every two or three years i reread mark twain's great saga from start to finish finding 
                       it as fresh as when i first read it. with the spirits of huck and jim pushing me i have 
                       been up and down the mississippi many times. though i travelled on big boats 
                       rather than intimately by raft i like to believe i've caught glimpses of them. it's certain 
                       they're still there behind some island or up some creek.

                                                                              -thomas hart benton

in just a few days you will begin your first day in fifth grade and i don't know how you're feeling about it, but i hope you're excited. i know fourth grade was sort of frustrating for you. maybe you felt restless and a little bit like what you wanted wasn't quite what everyone else wanted. and i got to thinking about my own fourth grade year and i suppose i know a little bit how you feel.

my grandma claimed she met him.

i hated fourth grade. not all of it. not the part where we learned the whole history of the state of missouri and went on a field trip to the state capitol building which was, and still is, full of paintings by thomas hart benton. they are huge murals covering whole walls and they can make you cry, they're so pretty and sad and full of life and suffering. and i loved all the books i read, but mostly i read them alone. all by myself, sneaky and secret-like. because my school just didn't seem all that interested in the whole learning thing. or reading. you can ask your mom. she didn't like things too much that year, either.

i would sit there in my fourth grade class, staring out the window or drawing in my notebook or secretly reading a book resting on my knees while our teacher would drone on about subtraction. in fourth grade! not fancy subtraction with fractions or decimals or negative numbers. just regular old subtraction that i learned way back in first grade. so i felt like it would be okay to occupy myself with other things. this did not suit my teacher at all. things got really frustrating when my teacher accused me of doing something i hadn't done and then took me outside into the hall while another teacher watched our class. she brought with us into the hall a wooden paddle and she paddled me with it. i didn't cry because i was just too sad to cry. i felt like that moment was confirmation i would never fit in there, would never figure out how to be the right sort of student for sitting in a desk in that room.

you can probably guess that your nanny had a fit when she found out a teacher paddled me at school. i don't think those school people were quite prepared for someone like your nanny, who is mostly kind and gentle but will get a little wild when her children get hit with a board. and although my teacher never did anything like that again, she never really taught me much and she certainly didn't make me feel welcome there in school. and i'm wondering if maybe fourth grade is just a tough year for some folks. maybe kids like you and like me are frustrated in fourth grade because we're already ready for something new, something different. fourth grade sure can feel like a straitjacket for some people. 

that brings me to fifth grade. i walked in the first day pretty nervous. we had just moved to town and i didn't know anyone. fifth grade was completely different. we had four teachers. four! and we went from room to room for our classes the way high school kids do. each room was full of wonderful things to explore- globes, maps, models and charts. i could not imagine even for a second needing to stare out the window or sneak a book into my lap. there was so much to see and so much to do and teachers seemed to want us all to see and do so much cool stuff.

let me tell you, fifth grade teachers are different. because they teach a single subject and they're really good at it, they have fun teaching. they will answer all sorts of interesting questions and if you ask a question your teacher doesn't know the answer to, she will say, "wow! that's a really awesome question but i'm not really sure how to answer it." and then she'll suggest you all go home and try to figure out the answer yourselves and report back the next day. probably she'll show up the next day with some sort of demonstration that answers your question, just in case nobody in your class could find out. you never know. but fifth grade teachers are joyous specialists. they love learning just as much as you do and they want everyone to love learning, too.

in history we made pemmican and in math we dove right into wild fractions with mixed numbers. and my science teacher brought in a cow's heart when we were studying the circulatory system. i looked at a drawing of a human heart in my science book and was amazed that the cow's heart was so similar. because we are both mammals. we have so much about us that's the same, although cows have way cooler digestive systems. fifth grade is when you really start seeing how things are connected and the whole world starts to make more sense. and it was awesome enough then that i can remember it thirty three years later. thirty three years!

the thing that surprised me most was how much we read in english class. out loud. silently. sometimes we wrote our own stories. i tended to write about misunderstood little girls who would one day be appreciated for the very things people hated about them at the moment (especially thier uncanny ability to be right most of the time). and i was surprised that many of the stories we read from real books in fifth grade were about just that. frustrated people, many of them the same age as the girls in my stories, the same age as me. the same age you are right this very minute. and they all had to struggle, had to go through some version of fourth grade or something even more awful, through something that made them doubt themselves and feel hopeless. but then each and every one of them found a way to speak up, step up, change things.

expect a lot from fifth grade. expect a lot from your teachers. it is their job and their passion to give you everything they have and good teachers will know that. you have already realized that you love to learn new things and so you need to expect a lot from your own self, as well. everything you've done in school so far has been preparation for this year. fifth grade is the year of great exploration so wear sturdy shoes and keep your eyes peeled. go out and take on the world! i will be right here waiting to hear all about it.

the somethingth of july

photos and video generously supplied by the baby sister. 

 it would be easiest to blame the parents because they are the ones who handed us our first explosives and the small crumbling bits of burning wand for lighting them. i do not recall when i was not allowed to set fire to wads of gunpowder wrapped in bright paper although i am sure there must have been such a time. maybe, because i am the oldest, when i was two or so. maybe three. but the middle child was born breathing brimstone and her own child is steeped in it, too. it is his birthright to throw fire into the sky.

so it is only fair that when we figure out we can make it out to the homeland for a few days, we call the child to tell him first. the sweetie asks the child about his fourth of july plans and the child goes over them halfheartedly, insisting it can't really be much without us there. now, what he means is without the sweetie. because the sweetie will strap a rocket to a styrofoam plane. he will light a whole box of ladyfingers at once. he will run out into that delicious smoke to light fuse after fuse after fuse. i hear the sweetie ask if the child thinks he could put off the fourth for a few days so we could join him. there is a scream from the other end of the phone. the sweetie has to hold the phone away from his ear and i can hear the screaming from across the room. the child will postpone the fourth of july.

i miss a call from the child while we are in maine. the message says he is hoping to do facetime on the phones so we can go with him to choose fireworks. instead, he sends a picture of himself with some sort of monstrous paper-wrapped cardboard tube. so we will know he's getting the right stuff.  his mother says he has started a countdown, how many days until we will be where he is. how many days until the sky goes sparkly.

when the smaller child hears we're coming, he puts his own spin on things. this is the child who speaks to the dog endlessly on the phone. dog language. child language. but his take on the visit is that the dog will be arriving on his own. by subway. to visit him. when he talks to me on the phone, a rarity since i am not the dog and therefore not who he really wants to talk to, he tells me he is waiting. he tells me about all the toys in his basement he is ready to share with the dog. he tells me, with great pride, about his yard, about all the grass there for the dog to pee on. he tells the dog. he tells me. he tells me to tell the dog.

my own mother starts her phone conversation asking me what her son in law will be wanting to eat. this is important. she will make anything he puts on the list. and because he lives a quasi-gluten-free lifestyle, he starts with bread pudding. because my own dear mother makes better bread pudding than anyone around. he says pineapple upside down cake. he says carrot cake. this is not just because he does not have these things at home. my mother's versions of them have ruined people for eating lesser attempts. not just my lesser attempts. the attempts of real cooks. he asks for meatloaf. my mother does not even pretend to feign interest in what i might like to eat. they will all be happy enough to see me but this is because i bring what they really want. the sweetie. the dog. the general wildness.

and so on a very hot evening some time well after the fourth, we eat a good meal where there is meat loaf on a platter and creamed peas with new potatoes in a bowl and where there is a gluten-free (and unsurprisingly delicious) pineapple upside down cake. and then we stand on the middle sister's deck, wrapped in bug spray and oppressive air, waiting. the sweetie straps the rocket to the styrofoam plane. he leans his tall self out over the corner of the deck. the middle sister lights the fuse. the smaller nephew says the single word fly. and it does. the plane slips smoothly out of the sweetie's hand trailing sparks and glides out over the yard. it hesitates just a second.  it shoots up, arcs over and turns into a shower of stars.

telephone

the original supernatural nephew is on the phone and he is none too pleased with us. it is the newer nephew's birthday and the whole family is together, halfway across the country, eating cake and being wild. but the original supernatural nephew detaches himself from the wildness and talks to the sweetie in a soft but accusing tone. i know it was you, he says, a fourth grade teacher trying to get a child to confess to scribbling on a bathroom wall. i know it was you pretending to be guthrie when i was little. the sweetie feigns confusion, says he doesn't know where the child would get such a ridiculous idea, doesn't know why he thinks we would be dishonest with him. parents dread eventual discussions about santa and the easter bunny. grandparents worry about the time a child feels too old to cuddle up on a lap. aunts and uncles, generally speaking, fear nothing. we have nothing, laughs the uncle, to hide.

but the child is not deterred. he has overheard his grandmother, my own treacherous mother, telling someone about the newer nephew's most recent conversation with guthrie, about how guthrie told the kid we were planning to get him a robot. the child's grandmother, in a rare but spectacular lapse of judgment, discusses how she thinks these conversations go, how she thinks the child and dog understand each other. and the child overhears. it is one thing to overhear the ugly truth and suffer. it is entirely another to overhear wicked speculation. the child thinks the sweetie and i pretended to be guthrie all those times when he'd call to visit. how could we? we barely speak the dog's language.

this story his grandmother has concocted, i tell him when it is my turn to suffer his calm but persistent accusations, is completely untrue. he tells me i better stop being coy about the whole thing, says he knows, says his grandmother told him everything. i tell him exactly what the sweetie told him, that his grandmother is a lunatic and clearly a lying one at that. i point out that she has never once talked to guthrie on any sort of phone and she wouldn't understand a thing he said even if she did. i end, like the sweetie, with the thing that always gets a scientific mind like the one driving this child. your grandmother, i tell him, has absolutely no evidence to support her claim. she has no proof.

he wants to know why she would say such things if they're not true. i come closer than i expect to accusing my own mother of being a drunk or possibly a meth head. it is her own fault and i am unapologetic about it. i consider a variety of scenarios and dismiss "pure evil" and "monstrously cruel", finally settling for "uninformed and confused". i do not tell the child that all grandmothers, especially in his family, are prone to telling the sort of tall tales that would make twain tip his hat in deference. i do not tell him his grandmother is lucky i cannot reach through the phone and shake her. i do consider explaining that not everyone really understands his supernatural abilities and sometimes folks are jealous or scared or just plain confused when they hear how a boy is talking to a dog on the phone and how the dog talks back and the two can understand each other just fine because that's simply how they are. but he is ten and this is an awkward enough time for a child that age without pointing out another thing that sets him apart.

i can hear in his voice that he's unsure, that he wants to believe what i'm telling him but he also wants to believe in the flawlessness of his grandmother. i decide to be honest with him, to come clean so he can have both. he knows it wasn't always guthrie on the other end of the line when he called. he knows. what hurts him is thinking we lied to him for meanness, thinking that we pretended to be someone we were not. i explain that sometimes, when guthrie was small and max was still around, guthrie would get too excited on the phone, too distracted and overwhelmed. those times, i explain to him, max would get on the phone and pretend to be guthrie because max was always a talker.

guthrie is curled up on my lap, eyes mostly closed, pretending to sleep. he hears everything, even what is on the other end of the line so far away. he is a dog and this is how dogs are. i do not know how he told the smaller child about the robot. i doubt dogs even have a word for robot. why would they? but he said something and the child understood it and now there is a robot. and the original nephew knows enough about superpowers, his own and those of the small child, to know sometimes there's no explaining something with just words.

robot

the smaller supernatural nephew calls to talk to guthrie. these conversations are elaborate, filled with squeals and raspy breathing and small howls. the child translates what the dog says for his parents. he knows they don't know a thing about dog language. this is his third language and he slides around in it easily, hears it like it is his own.

initially, the conversation is about how the dog will visit the child and how they will go to a restaurant. i do not know how often the child has seen lady and the tramp or whether he has seen it at all, but his fascination with dogs eating in restaurants, especially restaurants serving pasta, is keen. he and the dog chat back and forth and then there's a gasp and a pause and his voice, small on the far end of the line, yells up to his parents about how the dog says the sweetie and i are getting the child a robot for his birthday. that dog is pretty smart, i tell you. i hadn't even realized we were going to get the kid a robot but dogs rarely lie and this one never does and he very clearly says we're getting a robot for the child.

so i have begun searching the interweb for robots. real ones. nonplastic ones. metal ones with sparks shooting out from behind eyes or smoke billowing from mouths. i know right off a real live vintage 1950s robot is a no no. those things are out of our price range but are also tipped with rust and razor edged. they are talcum spewing fire hazards. but reproductions of the very same beasts are brand new with smooth edges and they still have sparks shooting from their eyes. glorious. and every one of them has this big, fat warning sign right next to the ordering button: caution. collector's item only! not for small children!

now, how small is a small child? this one on the other end of the phone line will be three. he is big enough to know not to swallow a tiny loose part. he is big enough to know to find an adult if the sparking eyes should catch the drapes on fire. and if the thing should stomp itself right out a window, he would know to run downstairs to rescue it rather than to follow it out from the upper floor. but he does talk to a small dog on the phone. and they do talk an awful lot about pasta.

still, a boy cannot survive childhood without either a robot or a dog. this boy's dog is halfway across the country so i suppose he needs a robot nearby. and so far i've found at least one robot for children over four. you have to remember he is supernatural. three is how old he is on the outside. his alter ego is three. i'm sure that on the inside, the real part of him with the telepathy and the flying powers, he's at least four. maybe even five.

sojourn

the original supernatural nephew is planning to visit us. his mother calls to warn us, to prepare us, to let us know there's nothing more she can do. we have been waiting. since he was very small we have been waiting for him to be old enough to visit on his own. we didn't know him so well his first few years because of the great distance between him in missouri and us in brooklyn but we suspected he was our kind of people. we knew for sure the day of our own wedding, the sweetie's and mine. we wanted the child to be our ring bearer and we wanted him in overalls. his mother, not known for giving in when she's not inclined to, warned us of his unpredictability and impishness. she told us we better not put our real rings on any pillow we planned to give to her child. she shook her finger and narrowed her eyes. we tied the sweetie's giant gold band onto the pillow with my grandma's first ring from my grandpa and we handed it over to the grinning child.

a brother, two sisters and a friend pranced down the dirt-covered cement aisle between picnic tables in suspenders and newsboy hats and summer dresses. the child marched solemnly behind them to a banjo and a couple guitars. we stood behind him, watching him carry the pillow like a piece of glass. and when he tossed the pillow high in the air and watched it come sailing back down onto the dirty cement, we knew. one of us.

and he is ten now, able to start making some of his own decisions, able to negotiate with a clear idea what he wants and what others want. he has overcome every obstacle to this trip his parents have been able to toss out to him. he has come up with this:

1. his parents will drive out to our house in arkville and will drop him off. if things go smoothly, they'll keep the car running in the driveway and won't even get out of it. he will leap from the back seat of the car with his suitcase (an old fashioned plaid number, even if it isn't really) in his hand and will wave furiously at them and will disappear into the cool of the house where there will be lemonade and cantaloupe or maybe cookies and milk to revive him after his long trip.

2. his parents will spend the next three days elsewhere. the child is not concerned with this part. it is not his business as long as his parents are coming back in three days but not before. i am working on finding charming inns and vacation cottages in the northeast where his parents can while away their nonexistence in comfort. his parents will return after the three day period to visit a few days more with us.

3. during his parents' exile, the child will go fishing. we will take him out on the boat because he is skinny enough to displace only about as much water as the live well we sometimes carry with us. we will sit, the three of us, with poles and line that will get tangled at least once. he will want to row. he will want to pull up the anchor. he will love that some of our bass have fiery red eyes.

4. we will go hiking. he remembers going hiking with us a few years ago at kelly hollow. there was more moss than you can shake a stick at. and you can shake a stick at a pretty fair amount of moss. there were trilliums in bloom and the snowmelt had fattened up all the waterways and waterfalls. there are few things more lush than a catskills forest in spring. if it is warm enough to swim, we will take him on a hike we've been saving. three waterfalls. one swimming hole. endless blackberries.

5. he wants to go camping, although his mother says he won't even sleep on the floor in his house. we have a hiking tent and a backyard tent. we will be ready for any version of camping he wants, including putting a sheet over the bunkbeds and lighting the insides with flashlights. we are not above importing crickets and fireflies into the bedroom campsite if that is necessary.

if the carnival happens to be in town we will go. we will eat deep fried vegetables and funnel cakes and the child and the sweetie will ride rides until they think they might throw up. if there is banjo music at the farm market we will listen to it while we buy cheese. but mostly in the evenings we will sit on the porch with glasses of iced tea or lemonade, with a book or two to read until it gets too dark. we will sip our drinks and listen to the next door goats and watch the sun move so slowly we will consider that it may never even get to be completely dark. and when it does start getting dark, when the pinks and oranges are gone from the sky and all that's left is every shade of blue ever seen, we'll look for bats. i know this child. i know what is in him and i know his voice will get all whispery when he sees a bat and he will point to where it was and we, the sweetie and i, will be whispering, too, about a bat we've seen or about how there just aren't enough bats out yet but the fireflies are mighty fine. we will all whisper, not because of the bats or the fireflies or the goats, but because whispering draws everything just a little closer to you.

museum

i am explaining the finer points of the monkfish to the original supernatural nephew, how it lurks along the bottom of the ocean using a small bit of itself, maybe the end of a dorsal fin, as a fishing rod to lure in tasty prey. he is pleased with this, i can tell, even from half a country away. some of them grow to be five feet long, i tell him. and though the monkfish is a hideous beast capable, i am sure, of producing a shudder even in its own kind, the sweetie and i have been aware of the child's lack of monkfish for quite some time and have finally decided to remedy that situation.

the child agrees that this is good. ugliness isn't a thing to him. his whole world is a science project, and exploration. we will hear later from family how with each gift from us he unpeeled the wrapping and exclaimed, “they sure do have my number!” now, i will certainly have a talk with him at some point down the road, outlining the dangers of spending free afternoons at the senior center playing cards and smoking cigars with near fossils, learning to say things like 23 skidoo. i am only slightly worried that his words, when he says them, tend to spin more toward what i heard my own grandpas say than toward what you’d expect from a ten year old boy. i suppose being able to converse with centenarians may come in handy some day. those were some of our best explorers, some of our wildest scientists, after all.

it is true, though, that he needs a monkfish. not a fishtank monkfish swimming around the bottom of a glass bowl, trying to get flake fish food to snap at its lure. that's the sort of gift you give a child when you want to piss off his parents, the sort of gift you give a child when you're trying to teach him about the circle of life with the flush of a toilet. it's an awful idea and it is not what has happened here. but here’s how what happened with the non-living monkfish came about. the sweetie and i stroll on over to a holiday market in our neighborhood. we are looking at old microscope slides. you know, antenna of moth, bark of tree, petal of violet, each with a loop at the end to make it a pendant necklace. we have just chosen a slide with a bit of fern on it for the child’s aunt (a microscope hound from back in the day) and i am chatting with the woman who made it when the sweetie’s eyes fall on the monkfish, lying quietly on a green velvet cushion inside a small glass box every bit as elegant as the one sleeping beauty spent her hundred years in. all that beauty encased in glass, waiting for just the right moment. you know how it is. the stuff of fairytales. we know right then exactly where it belongs. few choices in life are so clearly marked for us and we are grateful for this one.

so the child is pleased and tells me his plan. last week he found two crystals and now that he has a monkfish as well, a grandpa who knows him suggests he start a museum. something about the way he says it and something in how it crawls down the phone line brings the word into my head written in quill pen, flourishes all around the m at either end of the word. there is dust caked on the word and calliope music playing all around it. there is a bit of a singe mark near where the vowels cluster together. it is as old as a word can get, full of all the things the child intends to put in it. i cannot wait to see his museum and i tell him so, tell him i promise to keep my eyes peeled for specimens. i can hear him nod through the phone. i’ll do it, he says with conviction. i really am going to start a museum.

visit

he has been talking about visiting for a while, telling anyone who will listen that he will be traveling to brooklyn. he has been whispering it into phones, giggling about it with other children, telling strangers when the opportunity arises. i am foolish enough to think he wants to see me, to see the giant uncle. he tells us on the phone he can't wait and i believe him.

but when i open the door and he steps inside he does not see me standing right there in front of him. he does not see the uncle who is, to him, as tall as any tree. he sees only the low brown dog and the dog sees him. they run down the long hall toward each other and swirl into a cloud of barking and childshriek and scrunched up rugs. the newer supernatural nephew says the dog's name about seven hundred times and the dog, absolutely beside himself with so much attention at such a completely reachable level, leaps and barks and is beyond overjoyed.

now, i know the child has been trying out sidekicks. this has been going on a while. i know he is looking for the sort of things all supernatural folk look for- bravery, loyalty, cuddliness. and surely it is not difficult to find two of those characteristics in the same person. good folks tend to be good all around. but it is near to impossible to find all three anywhere at all unless you're looking at a dog.

over the course of the week the dog follows the child around and the child follows the dog. they are close enough in size and similar enough in squirminess and energy that they do not seem to tire of each other. they like the same soft, fluffy toys, the same throwable things. their tiny bodies make the same unimaginably heavy clomping sounds on the wide wood stairs up to the bedrooms. they stand at the railing on the second floor and stare down onto the tops of the people who usually loom over them. they like the second floor heat register, flat and heavy iron, lifting their hair and tickling their bellies with warm air from time to time. and if the child could curl up with his tail over his nose at bedtime, he would.

i am not sure the supernatural nephew has chosen a new sidekick. there is the great distance between where he is and where the small dog is. there is the planning and the meetings and potential costumes and all that. but after his second full day back at home the supernatural child calls and asks to speak to the dog. his older cousin used to call and talk to both dogs when there were two and he was younger. whispers and barks and giggles and growls. i have never been able to understand the conversations, two wobbly languages, the same with each child. but i hear the same tone, the quiet closeness between small child and small animal, all that distance between their real selves gone.

ten

this is something i suppose we've been expecting for a while. i mean, really, this is something we've seen coming on down the road since he was born. but it's one of those things like waiting for your child to hit puberty. some part of you secretly hopes the whole thing will never happen, but you know it will so the rest of you wishes you could just squeeze shut your eyes and hope that when you open them the child will be 23 or so. but transformation does not wait for us to be ready and so now we are seeing it firsthand.

the original supernatural nephew is ten. and ten is a milestone for everyone. however, it is far more important, far more dangerous and significant, if you are supernatural. this is the year any previously unknown powers settle in, make themselves known. for you the ability to see through walls might be pretty entertaining but for a ten year old boy it can be a little uncomfortable. and who wouldn't like having the ability to heal with just a touch? but you slap something like that on a ten year old and you've got an accidental infestation of reanimated mice or earthworms or mosquitoes. tell him to take out the trash and a chicken breast leaps from the bag, flapping the wing still attached to it. upsetting. potentially very messy.

for many children in the original supernatural's shoes, this is the year they become entirely human, give up the supernatural lifestyle. school gets harder. relationships get more complex. parents, who have never been particularly understandable before, become completely incomprehensible. and you would think that the ability to fly might be helpful somehow in managing these things but it is not. you would think being able to communicate with animals would help. but no. dogs know some math, certainly, but they're notoriously awful at long division and anything after that requiring such skills is beyond them. besides this, they do not seem to care. and while birds understand the scientific method just fine, their ability to explain it is extremely limited. i mean, it's a set of six steps easily represented in a flow chart but they just get so caught up in if-then statements they are worthless. squawking and flapping and screaming, "analyze the results. is the hypothesis true or false?" over and over. there is no help for a supernatural ten year old.

and all this sounds awful. why would any supernatural folks ever make it to adulthood with this misery? but ten is a magnificent year for those who can stand all the shifting. ten is the year of identity. we weren't thinking about it, really. we are so far away here in brooklyn. his parents have been busy with the beginning of school. the local aunt and uncle are still settling into a new home with their own supernatural child. and the grandparents didn't say a word. not a word. but they knew. i will try to explain.

the patriarch of the family, grandfather to both supernaturals, is a garage sale/flea market fiend. the original supernatural nephew, unable to escape this trait any more than he can escape the ability to fly, goes with his grandpa when he can and surveys piles of musty, rusted, broken things, looking for what is beautiful. there is no one in his family who doesn't love a flea market. this, too, is a special power. these two stand together, nearly sixty years apart, but with the same sharp eyes and chatty charm. you can't get something for nothing but these two come close more often than the rest of us.

and while the grandpa is looking at something, a watch, a pipe, some sort of sword, the child's eyes fall on something that catches his heart. i know what his face looks like, eyes wide and soft, mouth open a bit until he realizes it and snaps it shut. his head whips around to his grandpa. maybe he holds the briefcase up for his grandpa to see. maybe he just points at it, still so smitten he cant' pick it up. and the grandpa knows right away. he pretends he doesn't, tells the child no ten year old needs such a thing. then he waits. the supernatural nephew makes it very clear that he might die without this briefcase, that he has his own money. he will take the thing to school instead of his backpack. the grandpa waits. unlike the rest of us he has not forgotten the child will be ten soon. he has not forgotten this is the year of identity. the way the child expresses need for the old briefcase is what he's looking for. the child holds the briefcase to his chest, looks up at his grandpa, smiles. the woman selling things wasn't expecting this particular item to go home with a large eyed, serious ten year old boy and she smiles, too. the child's grandpa sighs and nods. the supernatural child slides coins over to the woman and takes what is now his.

i call him a few days later to ask him about the briefcase but we get distracted in our conversation (the rock postcard i sent him arrived with pieces broken off and he is furious with the irresponsibility of postal employees. we make plans for a possible thanksgiving in the catskills.) and i forget to ask. he does not mention it. i think it is because he knows. we have never spoken about it but he is, even as a ten year old, supernatural. he has to know. we have been sending him things over the years, strange musical instruments, ancient helmets and shields, survival backpacks, things he might need for his future life. there is no way to predict how he will rescue, how he will protect, what he will do. there is only knowing that's what's out there for him.

what is best about this is we don't know where that briefcase belongs. will it be part of his mild mannered alter ego or will it be part of his heroic self? all we can tell right now is what he told his local aunt while running a hand over the worn leather outside of the case with a flourish. "you can't," he said, opening the case to reveal a luxurious blue silken pocketed interior, "judge a book by its cover."

telephone call

this is supposed to be a story about how the original supernatural nephew took a metal detector to his grandmother and laughed while she beeped like a mine field, but i am selfish and i want it to be about how a nine year old child loves me enough he is smacked in the head by that love while riding in a car, smacked hard enough he has to call and say something to make himself feel better. and i know that i am only part of the deal, that the sweetie, who is tall enough to turn himself into a human amusement park ride, who can send explosives screaming toward a pile of children without getting into trouble, who does all the really good gift shopping in our house, is probably at least 65% of our combined value as an aunt/uncle team. this is fine. i like to think my 35% value is based entirely on the child's connection to strangeness. i suspect i am right. this is also fine.

the phone rings and i hear the sweetie walking around inside the house, talking to the original supernatural nephew. i am sitting on the front porch, watching the day finish up, waiting for the bats. there is discussion of some sort of dog, a new one, who might help ease some of the emptiness sprawling around in the child after a recent dog death. there is talk of the fourth of july and then the sweetie brings me the phone. the nephew tells me he's calling because he wants to answer some questions for my blog, questions about a grandmother of his and a metal detector. but he is like an old man and this is not why he is on the other end of the line. my sister tells me later he said he just wanted to check in.

he hurries through the answers to the metal detecting questions the way children recite the pledge of allegiance and then begins to tell me about the fireworks. he says when things were just starting, he was thinking maybe this would be just like christmas. he was pretty sure it would be like that, where we showed up unexpectedly while people were opening presents. he says he kept thinking it over and over but then we didn't leap out from behind anything and things just weren't the way he'd hoped. it wasn't the same. he says this several times. he mentions how nobody- NOBODY- launched a styrofoam plane on a rocket.he says it was a good fourth. he says he sure does miss us. i tell him we miss him right back.

listening to him has always been fascinating but conversations with him now, at nine, are unlike anything else i know. his voice is heavier than it was. he is shedding the child sound of it. it has the cadence of his great, great grandmother, hillbilly with a prettiness to it that makes him sound wise, trustworthy. his vocabulary rivals those of most adults i know and he can put words all together in a row the way a smart poet wants to but doesn't very often. i don't know if he knows this and i'm not sure whether i should mention it to him so for now i will hold off.

but i can feel how far away his voice is, how much he is in missouri and how much i am here. i see a lightning bug flashing its way up the yard from the street and concentrate on it, think about all the lightning bugs from my own childhood flickering around not a mile from where he is right now. i think about the june bug i saw yesterday, the first i've seen this far north, how it was velvety and brilliant and how he has probably seen a million this month alone. i think of those crazy seventeen year locusts and how, even when he was very small, we had entire phone conversations dedicated to their sound and the skeletons they left behind and the strangeness of living underground so many years only to come up and sing just that short time.

and i miss him all the time, the supernatural nephew. but it is now, when the summer bugs are flashing and singing and shining, when my own homeland and his smells like dry grass and fresh peaches and creek water, that i feel it punch me in the chest, slap me on the side of the head. but what makes it bearable is that he feels that same punch, i guess, that same slap. and he has sense enough to call and tell me so.

the adventures of one nephew and nine questions

a few months ago i received a mysterious text message from the middle sister. something about a metal detector and our grandmother. when i looked at it a second time i figured maybe it wasn't from her at all. the original supernatural nephew has a grandmother or two. the story in the text message seemed like it would fit one of those grandmothers in particular. the one who is also my own mother. the story suggested the sender had taken a metal detector to a grandmother and had struck gold. or titanium. a whole pile of it. not a limb unscanned. i imagined my own mom sitting in a chair with the child plotting her surface on parchment with giant Xs where the metal detector beeped. imagine a gingerbread cookie covered with so many Xs you can't see the gingerbread anymore. the next message said, "it's me" and then his name in case i hadn't figured it out.

this is important. the fact that he texted me is important. he already knows a good story when he's in one. and so i did what any good aunt who sporadically writes about her nephews would do. i sent off an email right away with nine very good questions for the child to answer. questions that would help me write down his adventure from where he stood. and i emailed them on over to where the text originated. his mom. now there are things called long shots and things called risky ventures but emailing your sister with questions for your nephew usually isn't squished over into either of those categories. but i have a sister who does not listen to phone messages. primarily this is because she cannot retrieve them because she did not listen any of the ones that came before and somehow- SOMEHOW- her phone message retrieval system is clogged. fragments of voices, many of them mine, scattered all over the inside of her phone, clumping together and garbling up all that technology. this is also true of the landline she keeps in her house. this phone has a number i have not successfully used to connect to a live human voice in more than two years. there may be squirrels living in her phone for all i know.

and you're thinking, well, this is why you emailed, then. but you don't even know. i have spent years laboring under the assumption my sister lives in such a rustic community she only has access to dial up interweb. it turns out that although this is what she thinks, it is not at all true. and it is not that the computer(s) at her home are still powered by tiny gerbils on spinning wheels. no. her husband is technologically savvy (i am overstating this but i love him and know him to be computer literate so you will ignore what may be a stretching of some truth) and i am sure she owns a computer that would make mine feel self-conscious enough to wear a padded laptop case. but my sister's constant battles with user-friendly technology (as reported by reliable sources) extend even to her ability to print out a set of nine questions in a timely fashion.

so the questions were sent out again, with a menacing threat. i do not recall specifically the nature of the threat, but if it did not include a promise to leak confidential information about said sister's wild youth to her only child, it should have. and then, the day before i intended to send a third set of questions and then make good on any threats i'd promised, i got wind of tragedy at the sister household. her vehicle had been broken into and ransacked. her husband's vehicle, sitting innocently beside hers, was also attacked. now, some of you might be asking what on earth those two cars were doing sitting out there in the driveway at night. good cars. one new. one newish. cars that deserved better. you might ask why they would be sitting out there in the middle of the world all exposed like that when a few feet away a three car garage sat waiting. and i would say to you that's a mighty fine question. i'd give you my sister's email so you could ask her but you'd end up waiting years for an answer. you're welcome to call and leave her a message....

now, my sister, just like me, is at a place in her own life where she can choose to spend her money as she pleases and it pleases her to carry a nice bag. and so the car sitting unprotected in the driveway held, probably right up there in the front seat although maybe it was in a back seat, her handbag. a bag that set her back more than my 1970 chevy impala four door hardtop set back my parents in 1984. more than manhattan rent on a studio apartment. and even though the idiot crook didn't have enough sense to know it was the bag he should have kept he knew enough to take it for what might be inside and then toss it after he got the credit cards. so the purse sailed out of his car and onto a dusty roadside, carrying safe inside itself a wallet of equally stunning lineage, a set of keys to the car it was stolen from and, of course, the nine questions for the original supernatural nephew.

now we will never know what happened to the supernatural nephew and his mysterious metallic grandmother. alas, alas.

the end. probably not....

phone

the newer supernatural nephew's sidekick was crying the other day and word on the street is this had to do with me. me and the sweetie. now, i'm not saying folks are saying it's our fault. i'm just saying we were involved. if i had to think about where to lay some blame for the tears of this small child, i'd be looking square in the direction of that supernatural child himself. i'm not saying he did something mean. i'm just saying this whole mess started with him.

it all started with a phone call. actually, somehow it probably started quite a few years ago with a phone call to the original supernatural nephew. you see, small children, especially those with unusualnesses to them, love talking on the phone. especially long distance. the problem is they tend to find it difficult to have long conversations with adults on the phone because of the way adults communicate. always asking ridiculous questions. how's the weather out there? did you have fun on your birthday? and each supernatural child develops his or her own coping mechanism which allows for long distance communication while avoiding all but a few of the time-wasting pleasantries of adult conversation. let me show you how the orignal supernatural nephew managed it.

him: hello.
me: hi! how are you? what have you been up to? is it still cold there?
him: it's not too cold. ummmm.... mayipleasetalktomaxandguthrieplease?
me: sure.
him:...
max and guthrie: bark bark bark bark bark bark
him: giggles
what followed every time was a completely relaxed and normal conversation between a small boy and two dogs over the phone. at the end he would tell them both he loved them, then would say bye. to them. not necessarily to me.

i do not know whether the original nephew mentioned this to the newer one. i do not know for sure that he explained to the smaller child about the necessity of some small conversation with adults as a way to gain access to better conversation elsewhere. but the small child knows. and he has begun to manage this his own way.

when he talks to me on the phone his answers are short and quick. i'm eating ice cream. i played the drums. the sweetie sometimes gets slightly more information. things about going outside, seeing birds. they end with iloveyoubye. and this is because, although he really does love us, we do not have appropriate communication skills. we are exhausting to deal with in real time. in the real world. the idea of us, however, is wonderful. the idea of us is worth spending some time on.

let me explain. this child and his sidekick spend at least some part of most weekdays at the home of a woman i have known as "aunt rita" for nearly three quarters of my own life. if you walk one house down from where the nephew's mother and aunt and i grew up, turn right and walk down a few houses you would be able to see them there on the left, playing their strange small-child games.

this is where the idea of us trumps us entirely. the two boys occupy long stretches of time by making long distance phone calls on objects others might not be able to identify as working phones. this is one of the benefits of being supernatural. you can do that. now, i don't know how they account for every second of their phone calling time. i don't know the names of everyone they visit. but i do know they visit me and i know they visit the sweetie.

i have it from extremely reliable sources (you would be hard-pressed to find two better truth tellers than this child's mother and rita) that these two boys planned an entire road trip (or maybe an ll-conceived flight) from the very interior of the country all the way out to the crispy edge in brooklyn. this trip was organized completely via imaginary phone conversations with us. sure. occasionally he has mentioned visiting in real conversations and so have we. but the planning? the inclusion of his sidekick in all travel plans? there are phone conversations he had with a me whose words he got to chose. reports have surfaced of an angry conversation he had with me one day where it seems he had something terribly important to tell the sweetie and i didn't have the good sense to get off the phone and hand it over to the rightful owner. and this is the part that gets me. his phone conversations with the imaginary friend versions of us are accurate. he knows us. he knows us well enough to talk to us whether we are there or not.

and now we are back to the sidekick and his tears. the supernatural child reported to his mother that the sidekick had been crying during the day. when asked what happened his response was simple. he didn't get to speak to me or the sweetie on the phone that day. and here's where i start to suspect the supernatural child had a hand in the crying. i am pretty sure this magical phone that connects these two little missouri boys to brooklyn regularly is under the care and control of the supernatural nephew. and i am sure that his sidekick, having read the rules and regulations in the sidekick manual he got his first day on the job, knows he can't just haul off and use that special phone without checking first. and i am imagining a conversation where the sidekick mentions he needs to talk to the sweetie about something. or to me. maybe to check about what sort of jacket to bring for a visit in late spring or early summer. maybe a question about shoes for hiking. and there's the nephew shaking his head saying, "not right now. we have too many things to do. besides, i've got all that taken care of." he is not trying to make the child sad. he is simply focused on their misson. and the sidekick, knowing someday he will move on and be something other than a sidekick, someone with his own phone line to brooklyn, slumps in one of those tiny chairs or maybe just flattens himself out on the floor and waits for the tears.

flying boots

i am getting ready for a visit from the new supernatural nephew. this is not because he has called me and mentioned such a trip nor is it because he mentioned this trip to me while i was visiting in december. it is because his accomplice, his sidekick, a quiet boy he shares a babysitter with, packed up his bag the other day and when asked where he was going answered confidently that he was on his way to see the sweetie and me. now, this accomplice has never met me, never met the sweetie. he does not know us even a little, but he is willing to pack himself a bag and fly off to what i am sure he calls "the big city" on the word of his pal, the nephew. he has been told many things. some of them are probably even a little bit true. the city is, after all, very big and full of almost all things.

the nephew will get around to telling us he's coming, i'm sure. he will call early in the morning or sometime late at night when he thinks everyone else has gone to bed. his parents go to bed with the chickens, but there is a new member of the household, the youngest uncle, just starting college and living in a new country. he will not be asleep. the supernatural nephew thinks he knows plenty but he does not know the ways of boys who are in college and one of the things he will learn is that they are nocturnal animals. his uncle will hear the whispering but because he knows things the supernatural child does not know, he will let it pass. he will not tell the parents nor will he confront the child about late night phone calls. there is much the child does not yet know about his own instruction in supernaturalness, but his uncle is well aware. why do you think he is living there in that house, across the hall from the small child? protection. instruction. you didn't really think he came halfway across the world for school.

the uncle will pretend to be asleep and the child will call and will whisper to me about the trip, about how he and his hapless sidekick will be flying. and i will snarl about how they shouldn't fly alone, how they shouldn't fly in the dark or in bad weather and he will laugh softly, but for a long time. he has already built a little basket for carrying the sidekick (who does not yet know how to fly) and all their important things. a backpack for each. musical instruments. chocolate. there will be more arguing. the sweetie will turn over in his sleep and will ask who is calling. when i tell him, he will grab the phone from my hand and will ask in his not yet awake voice how much bacon the kid likes with breakfast. guthrie will kick in his sleep and the child on the other end of the line a thousand miles away will laugh again and promise a whole bunch of love to us all and will say, "see you tomorrow morning!" he will want lots of bacon.

and there will be nothing that can be done about that. he will arrive with his accomplice and we will be glad. he will fly through the latest, darkest, coldest part of the night on purpose because he is learning new things and he likes the challenge of putting them all together. i do not particularly like this sort of thing, but i do remember a time when i did, when i put myself in places i shouldn't have because i wanted to see if i could figure out what to do. now, that doesn't mean he isn't going to hear about it from me. a child his age flying off into the middle of the night without really letting anyone know anything specific is not the sort of child you want to take responsibility for, not even temporarily and for a few days. but we will.

and when he comes down out of the sky and taps on the kitchen window (he will land on the fire escape just for the drama of it. he will never be satisfied with doing things the way others do them when there are more unusual options.) we will raise the window and the screen and will put a thick towel down on top of the radiator in front of the sill because if we don't, he will, in all his little boy excitement, scorch himself. you see, for all his knowledge of the world, he does not know radiators. the houses he spends his time in, his own, his cousin's, his grandparents', his babysitter's, all were built during my lifetime and do not have such unusual things. he will land in brooklyn with a shivering and sleepy child in a basket and he will have much to learn.

i can guarantee he will arrive around 5am and the sweetie, staggering and still asleep, will put a fire under a skillet and will start the bacon. i will get out the eggs and put on water for tea. the supernatural child will take the butter tray from the fridge and will set it on the radiator to warm for the toast. everyone will have a glass of milk with a little vanilla in it. there will be eating and hugging and laughing, but there is a reason the child will visit. he has something in mind. when i was visiting him in december i made what will on this day of his arrival seem like the very reckless decision to show him my flying boots, let him use them enough that he could tell he wanted to know more. and he is happy to see the sweetie. he is happy to see the small dog curled up on the couch with his back feet twitching over his nose through a dream. he is happy to see me. but what he wants is a flying lesson. he has come to see the boots.

growth chart

we stayed the four days of our surprise christmas visit in the home of the original supernatural nephew. he is nine and we have watched him grow up in intervals- measured in months and years. he leaps forward six months at a time on skinny legs like the ones that carried me through my own rickety small years. his interior life is a mystery, but it is clear his mind is constantly packed with the suffering in the world around him. he is what some might call a worrier, but not the anxious, helpless sort. he thinks about the awfulness in the world, big and small, and then begins to roll things over in his mind, looking for places to claw his way in and fix something. this is part of what it means to some to be supernatural. he has a constant urge to rescue, to save, to take on burdens never meant for such small shoulders.

i see this fresh when he and i wait in the car for his mother- my sister- to get snow melt from the store. we are on this errand because of his sharply focused concern for his renegade grandfather. this particular grandfather, father to the child's mother, our baby sister and to me, is prone to fits of lawnmowing at noon on the hottest day of the year without water. his snow shoveling techniques require similar levels of danger and excess. the supernatural child has been mulling over the possibilities of grandfather + icy driveway + recently discussed eye problems in said grandfather + nine year old's inability to lift a crumpled grandfather after fall on ice. the other side of this equation always contains at least one grandfather unconscious and possibly freezing to death on the driveway. and so the snow melt and barely concealed threats to the grandfather from his daughters about what will happen if he attempts his own driveway maintenance.

but when the child and i sit outside in the car waiting for his mother he expresses concern over a friend who might be in court soon. his classroom had a mock trial recently and he was, by all available accounts, a spectacular lawyer. by the time his mother returns to the car, he has convinced himself he could be a real lawyer, rescue this innocent victim of circumstances. he says as much to his mother and this is when i see what it takes to raise a child with the shadow of the supernatural hovering over him. she does not mince words.

"you are not a lawyer," she says flatly. she has had to talk him down from other things. "i know," he counters, "but i think..." she does not let him think long. it is not that she thinks he can't someday be a lawyer. it's that she has to convince him he can't be one by next month. because he thinks he can. "have you finished high school? have you finished college? then there's law school. and the bar. that's a really complicated test. have you passed the missouri bar?" he concedes that he has not, but is surprisingly undaunted by her suggestion that he's not going to be a lawyer in time for this case. he answers everything with "not yet". he is not deterred. not a bit. his mother ends the discussion by telling him the discussion is finished, that they have said all that needs to be said on the subject. his mother is not one to be taken lightly. he is quiet a while. "i still think i could do it," he says quietly, more to himself than anyone else. and although i know about the years yet ahead of school, of college, law school, the bar, i am not at all sure i would be able to say anything to dissuade him.

the night before we return to new york he says he has a gift for me. i am half asleep in the bedroom downstairs. the sweetie is brushing his teeth. the child has been down to tell us goodnight and goodbye because we will leave early, before he is awake. i know he has gone back upstairs but i hear voices outside the door and the sweetie opens the door to let the child in. he walks quietly to the side of the bed. he is rumpled and he holds something white in his hand. he has made something for me. i take it, hug him, then watch him walk out the door quietly. what he has given me was once a sheet of typing paper. he has folded it in half and stapled it along two edges to form a pocket. there is a paper clip across the open edge standing in for a clasp. on the front he has drawn two knitting needles in soft pencil. for keeping my knitting supplies.

in his whole life he has seen me on maybe twenty occasions. i live halfway across the country in a place he has visited two or three times. but because he is of the supernatural sort he knows differently than others. i know when we drive back to new york there will be a post office full of packages waiting for us, christmas presents from the family we snuck up on. but here is this paper pocket i have laid out on the table, spread with all my knitting things- scissors, stitch markers, yarn, needles. the supernatural children these days tend to drag along a sackful of loosely developed skills. some haphazard flying. a little bit of mind reading. maybe a lazily developed communication with a few animals, most of them domesticated anyway. dilettantes. dabblers. but this child has focused his abilities. he studies. he learns those he loves like some folks learn poetry. and even though he's still a small child, can't possibly know just yet what it is he wants to save us all from, it's clear he knows how to begin.

enchanted

the newer supernatural nephew has been in town and i have to say that although he's trying to be subtle about his supernaturality, folks seem to notice. i mean, i know evildoers are always on the lookout for a supernatural in its vulnerable larval stage, but things got a little bit out of hand.

on saturday, we took the child and his family to the round barn farm market near the house. we got plenty of cheese and stopped by to watch an accordion and fiddle duo. in fact, the supernatural was dancing to the music when an arch enemy of unknown origin spotted him from afar and stomped straight toward the child, entourage in tow. now, his entourage may or may not have included his mother (she was vague about this) and a sister of nearly the same age, twoish (although the adult insisted rather oddly at one point the two children she was shepherding were strangers only minutes ago). now, you may have read a milder version of this story written by the supernatural's mother. she's trying to downplay the dangers in the world. if that's what you read, you may want to sit down and even possibly bolt on that hat you're wearing, because you've been sheltered. protected. your eyes won't just be opened. you're gonna feel like your eyelids were taken off in a tornado. but i digress...

so the supernatural is grooving to the mellow sounds of an accordion and fiddle when this nemesis, this archvillain, this spawn of unspeakable heinousness stormed up, scowl planted firmly on a face you wouldn't think would have room for it. he stopped, cowboy at high noon, and took the most grownup swing i've ever seen. the supernatural stood there like he was in church, just stood right at the end of that archvillain's hand, millimeters away, unflinching. because, as you know, he can control things. matter. time. can stretch them a bit with powers still new, the paint still drying on them. and he stretched things just a bit, the space between them, let the archvillain's swing slide past him and hang there in the air, fist still clenched, motionless. until the motherwoman said in an otherworldly voice, "now, that's not the way to play with a baby." a baby? how about that's not the way to play. period. with anyone. ever.

and as she was saying those useless few words the nemeis child kicked up a shower of gravel at the supernatural. still, he just smiled, one ear keeping the music of that accordion and that fiddle all swirling around in him, the other listening to the skittering of gravel on the ground. he could tell by the sound. enchanted gravel. he knew. and any good supernatural knows enchanted gravel can't be used against a true child of good. especially not by an archvillain. and he just smiled at that devilish child, pitying him, quite likely. this completely enraged the miserable child who reached down to grab a handful of the gravel. he tossed it with all his might, flanked by his mysterious adult and child companions who seemed completely unaware of the inappropriateness of his behavior. but he didn't know, as many spawn of unspeakable heinousness don't. the enchanted gravel flew from his hand and dropped harmlessly on the ground between the supernatural and his new enemy. and the angry child's fists clenched. but the supernatural and his companions simply turned and walked away.

now, you shouldn't worry that the dear supernatural nephew's life is all thwarting evildoers. certainly life will hold plenty of that for him, but he is young enough that a great deal of his training appears to be recreation to him.

after a long day of keeping the world relatively safe from the likes of the gravel boy of the catskills, the newer supernatural nephew enjoys lounging in the spa with his faithful sidekick guthrie. they soak their aching muscles and play a relaxing game or two of fishball.

although the child thinks he's just playing with a vintage coney island roller coaster wind up toy, he's actually learning how to prevent the next taking of pelham 123. he's controlling the cars with his hands for now, but after a few sessions, he'll be able to maneuver full size subway cars just by thinking about them. aren't you glad he's one of the good guys?

this looks like an innocent male bonding type hike through the beautiful springtime catskills. what's really happening here is that the supernatural, accompanied by his brave assistants, is searching for enchanted chipmunks. perhaps you know but then maybe you don't that any supernatural hoping to be accepted into any of the leagues of good is required to do a great deal of community service work to show dedication to a cause and willingness to humble oneself for the greater good. our own supernatural has been learning a great deal about enchanting, both good and bad, and has recently mastered the skill of freeing small mammals enchanted by wickedness. this may seem pretty easy to you. find an enchanted chipmunk. work whatever magic. free said chipmunk. well, it's not that easy. it just isn't. i'm not really at liberty to say more.

s'mores

i should have seen it coming. the original supernatural nephew did, of course, because he is, well, supernatural. he has spent the last seven years in the middle of a huge pile of adoration. the only grandchild to one grandparent set, the only nephew to two sets of aunts and uncles. and then there's the supernatural part. that adds on a bit. so life has been all gravy until this year. when the new supernatural nephew made his debut the original didn't fret. the new child had nearly strangled himself in utero. he was born looking like a spider monkey or some sort of aquatic alien. he slept most of the time. and who knew whether he had any powers or not. so the original just sat back and watched.

he was a doting big cousin. he knew had much to teach the new creature who mostly squirmed and squeaked. the adults certainly weren't supernatural so he knew he'd end up doing it all. he could mold the baby into his own sidekick. the new child adored him. but as the holidays approached he could feel it in the air. the baby's first christmas. he did not remember his own first chrismas and couldn't see what all he fuss was about, but still. christmas would be at the baby's house. fine. the new york aunt and uncle would be staying at the baby's house. fine. they could stay there a few days and... nope. all the days. all the days? whatever. it would be fine. it would be christmas.

christmas came and went and he was good. as far as he could tell, nobody knew this, of course, because they were all drooling over that baby. saying words that weren't real words. he knew real words, big words other kids his age had never met. and he used them for real, the way they were meant to be used. he was starting to get a sense of the baby's powers. the adults made faces at the new kid. the kind of faces he got in trouble for making on certain occasions. people actually picked up the child, sniffed his butt- yes, they really did- and were all sorts of joyous when the child pooped in his pants. the original supernatural pooped in a toilet like normal people. only animals and babies don't use toilets. gross.

but the original supernatural had a plan. he'd won a half pound chocolate bar at school nearly a year ago and had been saving it. he intended to have something to contribute. an event. he planned for an evening of telescope assisted stargazing at his house capped off by roasting s'mores over a campfire in his yard. all this was to take place with the brooklyn aunt and uncle the night after christmas. this, of course, means that he night after christmas started out as a tornado watch early in the morning and stayed blustery and cloudy right up until night, when it was painfully evident the stars and any nearby planets had abandoned the horrible night sky for something better. it was too windy for a bonfire. his aunt and uncle, not used to quite so many events in one day, were exhausted and figured the weather would encourage him to postpone. he was undaunted. he had a half pound chocolate bar.

so we got in the car, the uncle and i, bearing christmas peeps for the s'mores. he had graham crackers, marshmallows. he had the chocolate bar. he had a gas grill, metal skewers. he wanted to know what to do. so we set to work. he broke up the graham crackers into squares while i broke the chocolate. he put the chocolate squares on the graham crackers while i skewered a few peeps. we headed to the grill. we put the chocolate capped grahams on the top rack for slow and even chocolate melting. we each took a skewer and held our peeps to the flames. it felt the way andy and opie look when they're walking to the fishing hole. he wanted very much to use his own marshmallows for some of the s'mores and brought out the bag. mini marhsmallows, barely bigger than the skewers. but we speared the tiny things and they roasted up perfectly. pearls of flame.

we sat around the big dining room table- his dad, his mom who is also my sister, the original supernatural nephew himself, the sweetie and me. we ate s'mores and drank milk and talked about nothing in particular. if i've had better s'mores, i can't remember the time.

handshake

i always figured if i ever met johnny cash i would cry so hard i'd probably fall down. i grew up with that man's voice in my ears as early and as constant as anyone in my family. you get that way sometimes about things, where you know enough about someone, where you feel the prsence of someone in your life so intensely you feel like you know them and they are somehow yours, even if you've never met them. there's always a danger that someone like that, someone famous, will be less than what we think and we'll be disappointed, heartbroken. i felt like that when i saw jimmy smith at a show in syracuse years back. he was a complete jerk on stage and i felt like i knew why his baby done left him by the end of the show.

but there are some folks who are as wonderful as you imagine. i spent some time years back going to see old blues musicians with a friend who always went up to shake hands with and thank the band as they were packing up. at first i teased him about trying to get to meet famous folks but he was too serious about it to notice. he was genuinely grateful to see these old guys he had grown up with and was raised to say thank you when given a gift. when this same friend took me to see maceo parker at the haunt in ithaca, i was surprised when, after the show, a man in the parking lot reached for my hand and thanked me for stopping by. he was wearing the nicest suit i'd ever seen up close and he smelled of sweat and electricity. it took me several steps toward the car to realize maceo parker had thanked me. he thanked us all, stood out there in the parking lot in the dark shaking hands with everyone who came out of that place.

when i worked at a bookstore i met plenty of famous folks coming in to sign books or do little shows. sara weddington came to sign her book and when she asked my name i was unable to tell her. i didn't know. she looked like my high school home ec teacher. she called me honey. she patted my hand and signed my book. you hope everyone will be so gracious, but it's hard to know for sure.

so i was a little nervous about meeting the newest supernatural nephew for the first time. partly because he's a baby and babies are just weird. also because everyone in my family has been throwing around the word "perfect" a little too freely in conjunction with this particular child. it's suspicious. i have spent plenty of time around small children and frankly, they are far from perfect. they are tiny hurricanes, always spewing something and flailing and sending things flying. they are scary. he's a good baby, they kept saying. what on earth does that mean? good baby.

we arrive christmas eve at the house of the good baby. he is teething, we hear. i wait. i know what teething babies do. their heads spin around and the room is bathed in an ominous red glow as they howl at pitches that can shatter eyeballs and do damage to spinal nerves. but the room is not red and the sound that comes out of him is more like the sound of a small stream on a hillside. but he is teething, his parents say, feigning frustration at what appears to them to be cranky behavior. there is no evidence of this crankiness. cranky for a child just under one involves a face the color of a beet and wailing that sounds like strangulation. i look for the cranky. they hand me the child to hold. he has never seen me so i know he'll cry. he does not cry. he smiles. this is what he does. he smiles all the time. they had been telling me this for months and i just figured they had that hypnotic baby idiocy that happens to parents, grandparents and some aunts and uncles.

he does not cry ever. this is unsettling. we stayed in his house five days and i am absolutely certain we never heard more than a total of 73 seconds of anything that sounded like disgruntlement. in five days. he sleeps at night. he takes naps without a fuss. he eats whatever his parents feed him and eats all of it. he is not afraid of dogs or cats. he laughs a lot. and he loves any sort of interactive play. he's a good baby, his mother says, smiling. good? is she kidding? he's ridiculous. he's not even real. he really is all those things i said over the last few months- supernatural. he really can fly and email and use the phone. he can speak seventeen languages and can read twelve. it will wear off as he gets older. not the talent, but the fascination with it. with supernatural powers come difficult choices and overwhelming responsibilities. he will find perfection tedious in his teen years and will shrug it off without even noticing. but right now, today, he is unsettlingly perfect.

flying accessories for small supernaturals

special thanks to the models- pumpkin head and star wars drone lamp.

the new supernatural nephew called me up the other day. "boy, that snow sure is cold!" he gushed. thinking about the snow we'd been enjoying up in the catskills, i agreed. but the child lives in missouri and they've been having sixty degree days lately. i'm pretty sure he's not seen snow unless it was in the first weeks of his life, a time even he won't remember. but he continued chirping on about the snow, how cold it was, how his fingers got red from touching it. but i was having none of it. the original supernatural nephew had been much easier. this one is to all outward appearances a happy, cooing angel, but to those of us dealing with his "specialness" he's becoming quite the little imp. he will solemnly promise that he won't summon dragons from the center of the earth and then five minutes later there are dragons pouring out of every mole hole in the yard. so i knew he was up to something.

"where did you see snow?" i asked as levelly as i could. he stammered around a bit, tossed out the names of a few local towns, none of which were covered in snow, then fell silent. "i knew it!" i yelled into the phone. "you're not supposed to be flying by yourself!" i don't know why i say these things. it's not like he doesn't know. he could break his neck. he's not yet a year old and he has no finesse to his flying. he flies the way thirteen year olds drive. "where?" i demand again. he talks breathlessly about a trip to antarctica. "antaractica? what? you couldn't find colorado?" giggles on the other end. this child really is impossible. his words are apologetic but it is pretty clear that he is now in love with penguins. emperor penguins. those i know. but also something called adelie penguins. "they can do anything!" he whispers. i have lost this battle before it started. i can't really compete with penguins. he raves about the ocean. icebergs. snow. snow. snow. his only lament is how cold his little ears and fingers get when he flies.

this is why he called. he wants me to help him. he's discovering new skills every day and i suggest he try to get fire to come out of his ears. that would keep them warm. he giggles. everything is funny to this child. he already has a solution. he wants a hat and mittens. but not just any kind. fancy ones. fine i say. whatever. i'm in way over my head. he is learning from his older cousin about persistence. "they might be the difference between life and death!" he tries. dramatic. i suggest staying home in his crib like a good baby instead of flying off to antarctica with half-developed flying skills might also be the difference. more giggles.

he begins describing. the hat should be soft and light. it can't fall down over his eyes but should keep his ears warm. he wants some mechanism to keep the thing from falling off while he flies. "if it falls off in the ocean," he says, "it's gone for good. sharkfood." i try to ignore the image of sharkfood and listen about the hat. something to let the penguins know he's freindly. a tassel or pompom on top would be good. i am pretty sure i can do this. "and the mittens," he continues. "the mittens need to be entirely for flying. aerodynamic. no thumbs. i laugh to myself because thumbless mittens are what people get for babies. i don't tell him. he likes to think he's not a baby. "they need to be long like the gloves knights wore." and again with the loss issue. "a cord with some sort of fastener." i think to myself about the cords on mittens for babies, the kind that attach to a mitten, run through the sleeves of a coat and then attach to the other mitten. i don't mention this. no problem, i say. "but i don't want to look strange," he says. "can you make snap on thumbs i can put on when i land so i'll look normal and blend in? i don't want people knowing they're flying mittens." i think about it. his thumbs are pretty small. i could probably attach a button to a bit of i-cord. i tell him i'll try.

i figure he'll want something to match some ridiculous costume he's working up so i ask. some bright hideous color combination that will blind me as i knit. his name stitched across the front. "oh, no!" he says, "nothing like that. can you make it look like the ocean and the sky? i want to blend in a bit." i am pretty sure i know a yarn that will work and i say so. i'm expecting one of those amelie penguins to be waiting for me under the christmas tree. it better be cute and it better be compatible with dachshunds.