And Now We Are Almost Four. Or Forty.

Luke is a week away from his fourth birthday and has suddenly mutated into a 40-something middle management type. Well, a 40-something middle management type who still says "lellow" for yellow and does periodic frantic searches for his blankie.

I suppose he feels that someone has to organize things around here because I'm completely hopeless. I've been passing the time sitting like a lump on the sofa, either watching television, reading, or surfing the net. Yesterday afternoon, when Luke announced the next item on his schedule ("Daddy and I are going for a walk to the duck pond now") and I said I thought I'd come along, he looked at me searchingly and said, "Are you going to bring your computer?"

His poor father, who is being saintly about spending all his free time looking after the child and the house, is being micromanaged and bossed around beyond belief. By Monday morning, Luke has his father's evenings and weekends planned out completely.

Yesterday, as the two of them were coming in from playing a vigorous round of golf in the yard, I could hear Luke outlining the schedule of activities for the rest of the evening in piercing tones. "First, we will eat dinner and then! Then we will play golf again, but this time on the Wii! And then, then we will play upstairs in my room. But first! First we will eat dinner." He then repeated these statements several times, for those in the conference room who might be a little slow to take notes.

He's also very suddenly started to wax philosophical on certain subjects, most notably the subject of The World, which does not perhaps seem to fit in with the new middle management aspect of his personality -- but it does seem somehow in keeping with the periodic frantic searches for his blankie.

After a brief lull in the conversation on the way to the duck pond, he announced out of nowhere, "The whole world is like a giant maze! You have to find your way through it and into outer space!"

"So that's the purpose of life," I said. "So that's what all this is about."

He laughed and nodded.

"Your son is brilliant," I told his father. But I really meant my son. I'm loving this, I thought to myself. I love four. I could have conversations like this all day long.

But then, hours later, when he was falling asleep in his little bed and I was reading in my big one, he rolled over to look at me. "Mama?" he said. "The world's not going to be broken, is it? It's going to be here forever, to live on, isn't it?"

Wondering where this new line of questioning had come from, and worrying mainly about the affect it might have on his sleep, I hastened to end this train of thought. I assured him that the world was definitely not going to break and that it was going to be here for a long, long time.

"Forever?" he insisted.

"Um, yes, forever," I said, feeling like I was lying.

He sighed contentedly, twined his fingers more thoroughly in his blankie, rolled back over, and fell asleep. I put my book down, lay back on my pillow, and gazed at the ceiling, filled with dread.

It occurs to me now that I really need my own blankie. Apparently the ones with "pinkie holes" are the best.

Comments

[Monica]

oh Stephanie. I feel what you're feeling. My daughters are 17 now, and i remember having conversations like that with them. Feeling like you're lying to them, about the state of the world, about life. It turns out ok. They forget about those white lies, when they learn about how things really work.