uTopianTurtleTop

DIARY OF THE 2-YEAR-OLD

SUNDAY: MARRIAGE IN THE YOUNGER SET 

Dinner time, eating veggie burgers with the 2-year-old, listening to the Weavers, while his mom is at work.

"Daddoo, what is this song about?"

"The Weavers are saying they don't want to get married."  (Song:  "I Never Will Marry.")

Silence.

"Your mommoo and I are married to each other.  It means we love each other and promise to take care of each other for the rest of our lives."

"I was married once to Dzunukwa and I was married to Watchman, a long time ago, and Mommoo was talking to Watchman, and you were alking to Dzunukwa, and Mommoo was talking to Dzunukwa, and you were talking to Watchman.  And then I wasn't married and then I was married again."

(His mom is into NW Native art.  The 2-year-old has been crazy about totem poles since long before he could talk, and for at least a year we've been reading the art books to him, at his demand.  We haven't yet told him that Dzunukwa, the Wild Woman of the Woods, eats children who go astray.  Withholding information, are we, we are.  Dzunukwa has been his great imaginary friend, but sometimes she is naughty and he has to put her in time-outs. Watchman, who often sits atop totem poles, keeping watch, is his friend too, but he gets involved in fewer scrapes.)

Still eating dinner.  Phone call from my friend Jake, who is also the 2-year-old's friend.

"Hi Jake."

"Is that Jake?  Can I talk to him?"

OK.  Turn on the speaker phone.

"Hi!  The Weavers don't want to get married."



MONDAY: THE BIRTH OF REASON

After dinner:  The 2-year-old is arranging his Mardi Gras beads into trapezoidal shapes on the floor, arranging and re-arranging and re-arranging, calling the shapes “castles.”  He gets frustrated, wanting the shapes different, and recruits me.  I arrange and re-arrange and re-arrange, momentarily satisfying his aesthetic vision, until his vision swiftly moves on.  He gets frustrated, I get frustrated.  “Fix the necklace.  Fix it!  Fix it!”

“You can fix it, sweetheart.”

“No!  I’m not a big man like you!  You didn’t fix it when you were a little boy!”



TUESDAY: LIMITS OF THE POWER OF “NO”

Picnicking at Victor Steinbrueck Park yesterday afternoon, just north of Pike Place Market downtown, overlooking Elliott Bay and the Sound, with the drunks and the tourists and everybody, and the 2 totem poles -- the main attraction for the 2-year-old -- and seagulls and sparrows hopping around, looking for dropped or discarded human food. I’m talking to my parents on the cell phone and watching the 2-year-old wander 10 or 15 feet away. Another 10 feet past him a sparrow accidentally hops into a seagull’s beak. Score for the seagull! The gull shakes the sparrow dead and proceeds to eat the whole thing, feet, beak, and all, over the next few minutes, slowly tearing it apart and swallowing it.

The 2-year-old runs to me while the initial tussle is still happening -- alarmed. “What is the seagull doing?”

“A little bird hopped into its mouth by accident, and it’s eating the little bird.”

“Didn’t the little bird say ‘No’?”