A Date In the Calendar of Life

We playfully call this institution a "date," for lack of a better term:  one-on-one time, out in the Great Big World, between any one parent and any one child.  It's not the most apt term, for obvious reasons; and yet there's something that dating and an exclusive outing of a parent and a child have in common:  a certain quality of rapport that you simply can't get when there are more ingredients in the mix.  Each child thrives on that individualized attention.  Ian actually asks for "dates," and describes in great detail the things he would like to do if he could get one parent to take him out to the exclusion of all siblings.  Yet Ian is, unsurprisingly, the most uncomfortable with the term; today, he was about to use it, and he said, "We really need to find a new word for it."  The terminology might be imperfect, but the reality of me-and-only-me-and-just-Daddy/Mommy is something he very obviously loves.

Today was a de facto Special Day for this one-on-one time.  For me, it was Ian-and-Daddy in the morning and early afternoon and Madeleine-Daniel-and-Daddy later in the day.  My on-on-two time with Daniel and Madeleine ensured that Ian had the same exclusive attention with Amy in the evening that he had with me earlier on.  But interestingly, quality of life with just two is often nearly as good as quality of life with just one; if you take one ingredient out of the recipe, somehow the baking soda stops frothing and the yeast doesn't look like it's going to explode.  Of course, nobody thrives in singularity mode more than Daniel; adults tell me about just how delightful they now realize that Daniel is, now that they've spent time with him without his siblings.  But Daniel-and-Madeleine-without-Ian can make for some pretty impressive transformations of personality as well.  If Eurasia ceased to exist, in Orwell's model, surely Oceania and Eastasia would be the closest of allies, and the same goes for any of the other three-paired-down-to-two scenarios.

Ian's quality time kicked in when Amy decided to take her own car to church, along with whoever happened to be ready to go with her, which in this case meant Madeleine and Daniel.  Ian wasn't ready for church; he was concerned that a couple of his pets were taciturn, and he went online to figure out how to recharge them, went to the pantry for the right edible concoction and left the house relieved by the sense that his pets were now revived.  This plus a wardrobe problem he discovered en route to church, made us return home and rule out all chances of catching up with Amy and the other two in time for much of any church all that distance away.  So we went to Manchester, and I dragged Ian into a New Experience, for which he was wholly unprepared.  There's a Romanian (Orthodox) mission parish in Manchester, and I felt we had a unique opportunity to go listen, for the first time, to an Orthodox service in a language that sounded vaguely like Italian.

When we got to the church, the young priest was delivering the sermon, clearly with great warmth, in a language that made me wish I remembered my five years of Latin a little better.  After the service, the priest very kindly urged us to stay for "just a little bite" at the meal following the service, in spite of my (truthful) protests that I was supposed to meet Amy and the kids in Massachusetts.  After they sang something that sounded nearly identical to the "Pater Noster," the Lord's prayer in Latin, and Father Daniel blessed the food, I tried to humor this very outgoing, endearing little congregration, as they urged us to take food, by getting a plate and asking Ian if he wanted a piece of watermelon, ceremonially putting it on a small paper plate, and quietly backing away from the serving table.

By now Ian was classically flabbergasted with me:  Square-Peg-in-a-Round-Hole-Daddy had dragged him very late in the service to a rented/borrowed tiny side-chapel of an old protestant church where we stuck out like some very colorful thumbs, if not sore ones, as complete strangers who spoke no Romanian, and now nearly the entire congregation was focused on what they could give us to eat.  It was one of those adolescence-comes-three-years-early moments for Ian, and for me it was near-proof that Daddy comes alive again in each generation, and the perpetually embarrassed son becomes reconstituted anew in the even-younger generation to follow.

Meanwhile, our Romanian coreligionists were having none of this piece-of-watermelon business.  One lady said she would make us a plate, and before I could say anything, she was loading powerful helpings of every dish on the table onto a single paper plate for us, along with an entire plate of cakes and other sweets in great quantities.  Then she said, "Wait - I'll get  you a banana!" which she did, along with the grapes she had already picked out for us, and she put the entire travelling banquet into one great paper shopping bag, turned on its side, for ease of transport of this massive treat.

Ian, embarrassed as he was, was properly impressed by the overflowing generosity and goodwill of this parish.  I was also impressed by the apparent dramatic parallels between Romanian food and Russian food, which of course is delicious.

Of course, Ian also had a hankering for nachos and salsa.  It turned out that what he wanted was to pick up some Frito Lays products from a convenience store, but I had something else in mind.  We were already in Manchester, so we went to an indoor taqueria, and he had a couple of steak tacos and a Sprite as we watched Tolua play Morelia in a stirring soccer match broadcast on opposite walls of the eatery.  Apparently the game was taking place in Toluca, and their team colors are red, so the entire crowd, it seemed, was also red, along with big red banners waiving in the crowd which would be enough to awaken Senator McCarthy if it were to happen in the U.S.

But there was one more wish to be fulfilled:  Ian had been longing for Donuts for some time, and since we live in New England, and there's a Dunkin Donuts on nearly every corner, it seems, he was acutely being reminded of this unfulfilled dream.  It turned out that Amy is taking a short moratorium from her no-gluten-for-Ian program, for reasons too elaborate to articulate here, and here we were, passing Dunkin Donuts, and since it was one-on-one time, I figured I'd humor him.  So he ordered a Boston Creme donut.  Why ask why...

The mission complete, we headed home, where Amy, Daniel and Madeleine caught up with us.

Then later in the day it was Daniel and Madeleine's turn.  Ian wasn't interested in going to the beach with us, and Amy was busy at home, so the two first-borns stayed home while the Chaos Clan of Madeleine, Daniel and me, took off for York Beach in Maine.  Daniel built sand castles while Madeleine admired a kite.  Then Daniel and I splashed in the waves while Madeleine watched from the shallowest of water.  Then Madeleine had me carry her around in my arms in the water while Daniel resumed castle-building.  Then it was time to dry off, but Daddy had forgotten to put the huge bag of towels that I assembled into the car, so we ran to a shop on the edge of the beach and bought the Towel of Daniel's Choice (Madeleine graciously acquiesced) - one with a picture of elaborately-painted surf boards lined up on the beach in a place that could only be Hawaii, doubtless outside the cottage of The Big Kahuna himself.

After the beachside showering and subsequent clothes-changing, we went to the children's favorite candy store, where Daniel gathered more gummy gums than I can count - I kid you not - gummy candy in the shape of a pair of gums with teeth protruding from them and sticking to each other.  He also got many other things, while Madeleine settled for quality over quantity, procuring a psychedelic two-foot gummy-snake, a gummy frog, and a few other savory items.  Somehow, Madeleine also ended up with a small, pink stuffed cat in a plastic crate, and Daniel ended up with a plastic Batman.  I took them to a beachside luncheonette for bun-free hotdog and hamburger, and then they ordered ice cream/sorbet - something they clearly felt was needed to fill out the picture.  By the end of the meal, the pink cat had made her debut and Batman was flying around the restaurant booth.  Madeleine mentioned that the cat was sleepy, and I pointed out that she had ahd a big day, meeting her new owners.  I asked Daniel if Batman was also sleepy, and, to my astonishment, he wasn't;  "Batman stays up all night!" it was explained to me more-or-less in those words, with a big smile and a tone of adventure and admiration.  Yet both of these new arrivals slept alongside their doting owners for most of the ride home.  Madeleine told me what a nice time she was having, and she said she would like to be happy every day for the rest of her life.  Of course, I want all that for her, and more.

What really impressed me about Daniel and Madeleine was how happy they were, how talkative, how attention-sopping-up, not competitively, but still blissfully, the entire time, and most especially during supper and ice cream.  Daniel told me, as we stepped out of the restaurant, that he wanted me to carry him on my shoulders to the car.  I wasn't sure what to do with Madeleine in this rather exclusive engagement - I couldn't really carry them both at the same time - but Madeleine graciously acquiesced; it was alright with her if I just carried Daniel.  That kind of magnanimity might be unexpected in everyday life, but on this enchanted evening of special-time-together-in-a-smallish-crowd, everyone seemed not just happier but more generous, thoughtful and cheerful toward each other.

We might need a new name for it, but whatever "it" is, we definitely need it.  There's a whole new kind of "happy" out there when the children get some selective attention that tells them that, no matter how biggish our tribe might seem, each of the three of them is really loved for who they are themselves.

(July 20, 2014)