Prime Numbers: a Sonar is now 11

Piano, track, Thomas Jefferson, opposition to standardized testing, homemade soap, the Declaration of Independence, Destination Imagination, jalapeños, yarn, peace, creative fireworks, tesselations, books in hand, html, photic sneezes, nonlinearity, monkey aspirations, rocket launcher, golden hair, self assurance, guitar chords, eleven years, love.

Sonar X11 with his Homemade Birthday Rocky Road Ice CreamSome people have birthday cake. Some have birthday pie. This one wanted homemade birthday rocky road ice cream. And not only did he not mind that we didn’t have eleven matching candles, he thought it was cooler that way. Happy birthday to the baby that made me a mama. Keep zooming to the stars!

Collaborative Souvenirs: Destination Imagination and a bunch of knitted vegetables

For the past six months, Sonar X10, his five teammates and two Sponsor Teachers (aka Teachers who have given so much of their time and patience that they deserve cookies, medals, a nice bottle of scotch, and a reality-based legislature) have been preparing for the local Destination Imagination (DI) competition. When people ask me what DI is all about, I always tell them it’s a creative problem-solving activity. But that doesn’t really give DI it’s due, so go check out their website and know what an awesome enrichment opportunity DI is. 

Sonar X10 and his teammates have had a lot of fun, they did great at their competition, and - like any group that works together over time to solve problems, deal with stress, and learn something - they developed some inside jokes. One such joke had to do with jalapeños. The team knows how to say the word ha-la-PEN-yo, but they choose, with a giggle to say ja-LA-pen-o - hard j. This joke amuses them so much that they named the setting in their DI skit Jalopolis. In the skit, which was part of the “Verses! Foiled Again” Challenge, their hero Ace (played by Sonar X10) tried to steal Abraham Lincoln’s platinum pocket watch from the Jalopolis History Museum of History, but he was foiled by his family and a time traveling hat with sparkly hair.

To commemorate the months of work and some of their silly jokes, the Sonar and I decided everyone on the team should have a jalapeño. The teammate implicated in the jalapeño joke’s origins already had her own chili knit, which I talked about here. THAT jalapeño became something of a lucky charm, or perhaps a de facto team mascot. So I made a new batch, a whole carton of jalapeños for the kids and their sponsors. For the teammate already in possession of the lucky jalapeño, I made a carrot. That makes perfect sense, right? 

Six jalapeños and a carrot, knit-wise

Sonar X10 then made tags for each vegetable. The other side says “Minute Green Jalepeno [sic] 2010-2011” plus the school and DI team names. 

Greetings from the Jalopolis History Museum of History Gift Shop. Wish you were here.My method and pattern for these new vegetables was unwavering. I used Acorn Bud’s great carrot pattern for all of them. Because surely there’s no better way to commemorate a bunch of smart kids doing smart stuff than to give them knitted vegetables.

Ma Bell, a Throw Me Prompt

I was reading a Throw Me Thursday post by the lovely E. Victoria Flynn last week on the occasion of her mother’s birthday. Please go read it if you like. EVF feels a disconnection, but also seems to imply a sense of forgiveness of her Ma. Reading the post, I naturally began a reflection about my own mother, on the occasion of her birthday. So, with thanks to EVF for the inspiration, here is what came out.

Ma Bell

I cannot call my mother on the telephone to wish her a happy birthday. I don’t know if I would want to if I could. I found a letter I wrote to her in 2006. Both unfinished and unsent, here with some mild editing of names.

Dear Mom,

I told my oldest child about you today. He’s 6. Beautiful, bright, and perceptive. I didn’t plan to tell him.  Didn’t plan what to say. I just suddenly had a strong feeling that he should know who and where all of his grandparents were. It was selfish in a way. An impulse motivated by me wanting him to know and understand me better.

So I held him in my lap and talked to him.

I told him that you were funny. Fun to be around. With beautiful brown hair that has a lovely white streak in it.  I called you Grandma Cindy.

I told him about dad too. That he was a police officer. Tall with dark hair and blue eyes. Also funny.  That he liked to draw.  I called him Grampa Mac, and explained why.

I told Sonar X6 that I wished he could know you. That you’d be lovely grandparents—full of good stories and good humor.

And then I told him about the hard part. About how he and his brothers won’t ever have the chance to know you that way.

I told Sonar X6 that your mind was sick. That in your illness you made some bad choices. That one of them resulted in you using a gun and shooting dad with it. That you killed him. And now he’s dead and you live in a prison far away.

I told him that it’s hard to talk about. That it was hard to lose you both. That I miss you both.

He was remarkable. He comforted me. That beautiful boy.

Part of me wants to torture you with the joy and beauty of the things you’re missing. All three boys are delicious. I’ve grown so much with them. They inspire me. They make me want to be the best I can be.  And the best of me does not aspire to torture anyone, especially my own mother.

The best of me aspires to be humane to all people. To empathize with each person I meet and to treat him or her with respect and compassion.

It’s relatively easy to be compassionate toward a stranger. There’s no baggage. No heartbreak. No thundering crash as the world crumbles underneath my feet and I’m left choking on the dust and stumbling over the rubble.

With family, with my mother, who has made choices that have shaken my trust in everything I have ever known, compassion is hard to muster. The best respect I have been able to gather is silence.

I know you’ve changed, but I’m not sure I want to know how. I know you have needs, but I’m not sure how or whether they can be satisfied or reconciled or healed. I’m not sure I want to talk with you.  Most days I want my life now to remain anonymous for you. To have a barrier that guards my family from the nebulous threat you might pose to us and our understanding of the world. To keep at arm’s length the pain and struggle that connecting with you would involve. To contain the messiness, keeping it sequestered from my life.

You stung me once, in a hurt that has been miserably hard to release. You said I lived in a dream world.  I don’t even really know what you meant by it. I suppose it implied to me that I was disconnected from the reality of your life somehow.

Full disclosure: I wrote that letter for me. To help me remember. I don’t think I ever intended to send it to my mother. So if it doesn’t sound like the sort of private letter you’d actually mail to someone, that’s why.  

In 2008 I felt compelled to write again. That time the struggle came out not as a letter, but as a blog post. It was the first time I had spoken broadly and openly about my mom to anyone outside of my close confidants. You can read that one here.

When I reflect on these two things I’ve written, my writer brain sees a shift. There is a quiet tender hurt in the pride I felt in talking with the Sonar. There is a bolder desire to move forward and be strong and forceful in the second. The lingering pain seems different somehow. There is more bitterness in the second. In both I show my desire to hold on to the good, even as some form of pain lingers.

I sit here today and know that I have changed.

I clutch close to my heart the parts of my mother that were good and beautiful. I feel like I have allowed some of my long hurt to float free. I still wouldn’t call or write to her. But I can ring a bell, and think of her, and put the words out on the breeze with love.

Happy Birthday, Ma.

Sonar Scrabble

A recent round of Sonar ScrabbleThat purple table in the background, the one covered with years of stickery goo, is our coffee table, called—oddly enough—the Purple Table.

And now he is Six

Re-posted and tidied up. One of these days I’ll figure out this whole scheduling thing. One of these days.

I know that I posted this same poem back when Sonar X7 first became Sonar X6, but it is just so lovely and so perfect for becoming six that I can’t help but repeat it now that Sonar X5 is turning into Sonar X6. Are you confused yet? Don’t be. Someone had a birthday, a scrumptious someone. 

Here’s what he looked like when we brought him home on Christmas eve, six years ago. I know you all wanted to see the one where we put him under the tree like a package, with a bow on his head, but it turns out you can’t see the bow in the picture and he’s screaming and unhappy. Trust me when I tell you that this one is much cuter. And it features the hand-knitting that my luscious friends made for us. And tea. Because I love tea.  

Sonar X4Days 

He has grown, just a little bit, that pudgy little monkey, and now he is six. Let’s all have a collective sigh of relief that he has made it this far. 

A freshly minted Sonar X6 dressed up as Peter Pan playing soccer and pretending to be a cowboy 

“The End” from Now We Are Six by A. A. Milne

When I was one, I had just begun.

When I was Two, I was nearly new. 

When I was Three, I was hardly me. 

When I was Four, I was not much more. 

When I was Five, I was just alive. 

But now I am Six, I am clever as clever, 

So I think I’ll be Six now for ever and ever.