The Gods' Plaything

I swear that everything I am about to write is the absolute truth. Today my sewer line backed up again. We have little roots invading the line and this seems to happen every three years or so. But this time was just a week after the hot water heater cracked, pouring most of its contents onto the basement floor, carpet, and everything I had stored down there. There has been a lot of rug doctoring in my house of late.

I also threw my back out about a month ago (I know--what's next, locusts?). When I lamented to my friend Jamie that I can't vacuum the house with my back out, she told me I should teach my boys to do it. Apparently her son has vacuumed since he was five! So two weeks ago today I taught Luke to dust and Teo to vacuum. Then last week I taught the other boy the other skill. So this week, once we had our after-school snack and I was headed down into the basement to clean up the god-awful mess I made in the basement when I snaked out the sewer line, I told the boys it was time to dust and vacuum. Teo didn't find it quite as rewarding this time around, though, and not a lot was getting accomplished on his end when Luke was rather quickly done dusting. So I suggested they work together on the vacuuming, which I'm afraid turned into Luke vacuuming. Sigh. Not ideal, but I'm wet-vacuuming sludge out of the rug in the basement with a bad back, so I cut myself some slack. So then, and here's where the magic started, Luke walks by the door to the basement with the vacuum and says, "You know, mom, since you're teaching me how to do all this stuff to take care of a house, someday I'll know how to do it for my own house." So I say to him, "That's what I was thinking, bud," and get this, he says to me, "Thank you." My 9-year-old thanked me for making him vacuum the house. It turned out later only two rooms and "a little of the bathroom" (the bathroom only IS a little!?) actually were vacuumed, but I'm including this detail only to increase my story's believability factor, because really, who's going to complain? Besides, my bedroom was one of the two rooms.

Then, I confess, I let them fry their brains with video games while I continued to deal with the sludge. But we all took a break to eat dinner, which consisted of a spinach pizza (frozen but yummy) and broccoli that I had blanched Wednesday night. Now the fact that the broccoli was cold was extremely suspicious to the boys, and Luke, who is not a big fan of broccoli in any of its guises, was especially displeased. But I had told them they couldn't have a piece of their Halloween candy for dessert if they didn't eat the broccoli. And I gave him some ranch dressing to dip into.

"Do I have to eat the leaves?" he asked. (He's a stalk boy). "Yes." I answered. "Pretend you're a giant eating a tree."

"Hmmm," he said, "It does look like a tree. Can it be a cactus?"

"It's a cactus," I said, demonstrating with some of my own broccoli. "The thorns are sharp, but luckily, my giant skin is tough enough so it isn't too painful."

He devoured the broccoli. He told me it actually tasted better when he imagined it as cactus. He pretended his glass of water was a lake and his plate was something too but I can't remember what. The child asked me for MORE broccoli.

After dinner I went down to do one last pass with the wet-vac after having wiped all the sludge off the walls and woodwork (yes, it was a horror show). Luke came down and sat on the couch in the basement and told me, "I decided I don't want to have any candy now. Besides, I had that Baby Ruth bar after school." I was blown away. It was a MINIATURE Baby Ruth bar. More broccoli please, no candy, and by the way--thanks for letting me vacuum? Where did this child come from?

Maybe I've just read The Lightning Thief too many times, but I have to admit, I feel like one of those feckless mortals who is the object of some petty feud between gods. Clearly I have seriously offended the plumbing god, and I am being harshly punished for my transgressions. But could it be that the parenting goddess has a beef with him, so she's looking out for me? Maybe Zeus will have to step in eventually. I just hope I don't get turned into a spider or flower or something before it's all over. Meanwhile, I kind of can't wait to see what Luke does next. Any guesses? Maybe a pedicure? My brown shoes do need to be shined...

A Epic Artist

I found this folded up piece of notebook paper lying in the kitchen, just one of a million little pieces of paper that materialize around the house each week. I unfolded it and looked at an interesting, colorful picture entitled "Beach Love" on the front, but then happened to turn it over and glance at the back, too, where Luke, who is obviously working on his signature tag (using his initials, LAA), had written "I will be a epic artist someday".

This is so sweet and scary to me both at the same time. Luke at nine years old is fascinated by graffiti art. Giovanna got him a book called Guerrilla Art for his birthday, and although it is clearly intended for an adult reader, he pores over it. He watched the DVD that came with it, and when it was over told me, "One of the artists told me that when the police catch you, you just go to jail for, like, one night." I made sure to emphasize that one night comes with a price tag especially steep on the income of most graffiti artists. He has begun to keep track of the locations of his favorite pieces of graffiti in our area, and recently had a conversation with me in which he expressed his contempt for those who simply tag, telling me that's not art.

So why am I scared? It's hard to ignore that this year of his life marks halfway to legal adult, halfway to college freshman, halfway through the job I'm supposed to be doing preparing him for a happy, productive, independent life. Hopefully a life that doesn't involve him living in my basement for fifteen years after I spend 300 grand sending him to art school. When it came to choosing a major, I was the most practical person I knew. Yes, I had dreams of being a writer and living in a little attic apartment under the eaves; but I was raised by people who would have laughed at those dreams, who knew that dreams don't pay the mortgage or put food on the table. And in times like these, aren't I lucky I was? But Luke doesn't just have a mom who majored in education, he also has one who majored in film. Would it be such a bad thing to get an art degree and an art education degree, both? Not that getting hired to teach art is a very easy thing to do, but I think being male could work in his favor, and I like to think he'd stand head and shoulders above the crowd for other reasons all his own, too.

The other thing that worries me is that I feel like I should be doing things to enrich this passion and talent of his that I'm not doing. The truth is, my visual-spatial intelligence is my weakest area. Those questions on the SAT that ask you to mentally rotate a three-dimensional object in space were always my undoing. When we had Luke tested, I told the neuro-psychologist I expected that to be Luke's weakest area, too, and he surprised me with the info that no, it was Luke's strongest intelligence, and that he's actually in the genius range in that. I guess all my neurons that are dedicated to perfect spelling wandered away in his brain and started tinkering with perspective. What I should be doing instead of writing this blog post is researching art lessons in the area.

But here's the other thing...the kid loves to draw, but he's not Picasso. I love a lot of his drawings because I'm his mom, but they look pretty much like any other 9-year-old's drawings. Maybe the genius ability is dormant, waiting to be introduced to a CAD program or mechanical engineering?

Every year at his annual physical, the pediatrician asks him what he wants to be when he grows up. For a few years, Luke would tell the doctor he wanted to be a rock star. This year he said "long-haired hippie." Is "epic artist" a dream like those, that I shouldn't be taking too seriously; one that will be replaced in a year or two by something else perhaps even more embarrassing than "long-haired hippie" as a career aspiration? Somehow I don't think so. So I'm going to start researching art lessons in our area.