April 6, 2009 The Entertainer
The moment the curtains open, the bystanders can see he
is fully into his role as entertainer. He's not looking at them - oh no - all
they see is the glint of the whites of his eyes, as he stares off to the far
right... but there's the hint of a smile that belies his apparent disinterest.
He is in fact, very much interested in his audience, but he is so fully aware
of his popularity, and so confident of having their undivided attention, that
he won't spoil the fun by looking at them just yet.
He lowers his eyelids, allowing his downturned lashes
to linger... building the suspense. Now he stares at the ceiling. Now his
eyeballs are turned to the left. A smile dimples the corners of his mouth....
At last he looks straight at the audience and laughs
heartily.
Step aside, Laurel and Hardy and the Three Stooges! In
the next act the entertainer runs around on jerky legs, getting into all sorts
of trouble. Others join him, and around and around they run, bonking into each
other and generally creating havoc.
It's a long show, and eventually one in the audience
picks up a book. That will not do - the entertainer will not suffer to have his
show stolen by a book! His grinning face suddenly appears in the distance, to
the right of the pages. Laughing, he moves out of sight again, then peeks
around the edges of the book... again and again. Who can resist grinning back
at that merry face with the Macdonald arches on its brow?
He sees a balloon and chases after it, doing the goose
step all the way, jerking his leg to kick it and usually missing. Finally he
grabs the balloon and makes great jumping motions, holding it tightly in his
hands. Now he's crouching for an extra big jump... and he's up! All but his
feet, anyways - they stay glued to the floor.
Music plays, and the entertainer turns around and
around. His eyeballs move ahead of his feet... There are the whites of his eyes
and that goofy grin again! Before long he stops spinning and staggers across
the stage, crashing against the couch. Grinning, he gets up, and lurches toward
the chair.
The entertainer knows his time is almost up and he
pulls out all the stops. He staggers from chair to chair, chortling along with
the crowd. Now he stands in a little corner to play peek-a-boo, slapping first
his cheeks, and now his head, and shouting, "da - da - DA!"
He loses himself in the curtains, groping to find his
way to the far side of them so he can pop out and surprise the crowd. It takes
him longer than one would expect, and when his face appears at last, he blinks
with surprise as he finds himself right back where he started. Recollecting
himself almost immediately, he salvages the situation by slapping his cheeks
one more time - "da - da - DA!" The expression on his face brings
down the house.
The curtains close; the show is over. It isn't what the
entertainer would have chosen, but the timing isn't up to him.
He puts a thumb in his mouth. Oh, so cozy! Mommy sings
a bedtime prayer, and lays him in his crib, tucking the blankets under his
chin.
"Can't we play awhile longer, mommy?" his
eyes implore.
He pops his thumb out, and tries out the effect of a
few more grins, and even a chortling "ho ho ho!"
Mommy laughs, but just pats him affectionately on the
head and says "good-night". Poor little entertainer. He has a wee cry
in the darkness, but the next moment consoles himself with his thumb and goes
to sleep.
Jim’s Favorite Things
Life is straightforward to our three-year-old son.
Everything pertains to transportation, from the dinky cars that are his
favorite toys, to his hands that traverse endless imaginary roads. In Jim's
mind, all lines are roads - the top of the chair rail, the metal on the side of
the chairs at church, the grout between the tiles, the seams of the quilt on
our bed. One day he asked why I was wearing my "car skirt" again. No,
there were no cars on it. It was a plaid skirt; in Jim’s eyes its intersecting
lines were clearly meant for dinky cars.
So guess what Jims got for his last birthday? Cars.
Ditto for Christmas. Gift giving, too, is straightforward for this three-year-old.
We drudged up some cars M played with in his youth, and he was just as happy as
if they'd come brand new from Toys R Us.
That, by the way, is a store our kids didn't know
existed until Anna learned to read... then she pointed it out to the younger
ones as we pulled into a Toys R Us parking lot... on our way to the adjacent
Value Village.
Actually, Value Village itself scarcely rates as a
likely source for new and fun things for kids around here... Apparently even
Jim knows this, since he usually asks when he sees A or J have gotten something
new, "Where did you get that? From a garage sale or the dentist?"
In a new low, yesterday he even wanted to know if the
food on the table was from a garage sale!
When it comes to cars he doesn't even ask where they're
from - as long as they have wheels, he's happy. Or even if they don't have
wheels! After all, most of the tires have wound up in a pile in my cutlery
drawer, or in the garbage, or have otherwise been removed from the reach of the
pac-man baby. And what's left on the cars - the little axle thingy - scarcely
qualifies, I should think. Though technically that axle thingy might be the
actual wheel for all I know...
My dear M, a walking encyclopedia on cars, will gladly
enlighten me about it someday (no doubt when he reads this post).
Yes, Jims comes by his interest in cars honestly, as
they say. Still, I am amazed at how much mileage he has gotten out of those
cars! Hours and hours of play... And yes, even miles, I'm sure, of driving back
and forth across the coffee table! (Which, incidentally, now needs
refinishing.)
This has been great for homeschooling so far. However,
sometimes I'm a little concerned about the fact that he is so content with his
cars that he does not show much interest in other things. What does this bode
for the future? Indeed, he confided to me the other day that he likes nothing
else - only cars.
"...Oh, and grills." he added.
Grills? As in on a BBQ? Nah, he means the other kind -
you know, the kind in skirts.
Oh dear.
Love the Brotherhood
Jims is very thankful for church. Every day at
breakfast he thanks God that we can go to church. This morning the older
children felt it incumbent upon them to point out that we weren't going to
church today. Just as I was reminding them that we can always be thankful for
the privilege of going to church, Jimmy cut in, "But my cawrs are going to
chuwch today!"
Yes, Jim's cars are church-going folks. The Opa and Oma
van, the Auntie Sharon car, and all the others (named for Mommy and Daddy and
Jordan and Ryan and Jesse and other folks special to Jims), go to church pretty
much on a daily basis. When I sit at the piano to play some hymns, it signals
the time for the assembling of his cars together.
So precious. I can see him in my mind's eye now -
sweetly begging for "some mo' chuwch music, mommy!"
"Behold, how pleasant and how good
That we, one Lord confessing,
Together dwell in brotherhood,
Our unity expressing!"
It's sweet, but sometimes short lived. There's a little
"strong-willed warrior" who loves to race around on tip-toe, intent
on destruction. Sometimes he scatters the car congregation with one sweep of
his arm. Sometimes, too, that sweet Gem who begged for mo' chuwch music
retaliates by giving the little warrior a shove that sends him sprawling.
Sometimes the worship service dissolves into a chorus of wailing. Sometimes the
pianist is compelled to bring the hymn to an early demise, and races into the
fray, wildly hollering, "Jim-Jo-Wills-Boys! Stop!!"
But James is clever. It's rare now that he even
attempts to play cars while William is up and about. When he hears me bringing The Warrior down from his morning nap, he nonchalantly packs up his cars and
stashes them away until the next naptime. The unity in brotherhood is just so
much pleasanter when the other brother is in bed.
