Bubblegum bugs for breakfast

January 23, 2010

I ski down mountains in my living room.  Every day, I am either rescued from a burning building or a tall tower in a castle guarded by a snake (not a dragon).  I build the hugest houses and fire stations ever.  I eat bubblegum bugs for breakfast. 

After breakfast I build toys in preparation for next Christmas, pounding my son’s existing toys with wooden hammers and dismantling and reassembling them with the giant screwdrivers from his toddler toolbox. 

I build a lot more toys for boys than girls, because, according to my three-year-old son, girls are usually naughty.  (It may also have something to do with our obvious lack of dolls to “build.”) 

I then fill up the sleigh and take it for a test drive.  It’s important to make sure your sleigh stays in good working order, even in the off season. 

We have frequent dinner guests – usually a monkey named Douglas or a bear named Worker Guy – sometimes both.  If my son doesn’t like something, he generously offers it to our guests, who happily gobble it up. 

When I encourage (beg, entreat, threaten) him to finish his meal, he informs me that his plate is empty.  “My friends ate my dinner,” he explains.  It doesn’t matter that he’s only eaten a few bites.  When he looks at his plate, all he sees is crumbs. 

My mom calls it the Magic Three. Apparently, it happened with me and my three brothers. We turned three, and suddenly, the world was teeming with monsters and princesses and adventure.  Couch cushions became boats.  A cardboard box became a space suit.  A board balanced on a tinker toy box became a catapult. 

My son travels the galaxy in his spaceship.  He covers the narrow space between my bed and the wall with pillows, grabs his flashlight, and crawls into another world. 

“Bye, Mom!” he says with a wave.  “See you later!”  And he’s gone.

My son’s imaginary life has created a whole new world for me as well.  I can actually read the entire newspaper while he plays quietly in his bedroom. 

He still likes to play with Mom, but he often gets frustrated when I can’t see what is obvious to him – the giant hole in the ground that I just fell into, the burning door that must be chopped down before I can pass from the kitchen to the living room, the kid sitting at the table that I just squished when I sat down to eat.

“Me do it,” evolved into “I can do it myself, Mom.”

And now, an irritated, “What are you doing?” 

This question is usually accompanied by a sad head shake at my cluelessness. 

“You just walked off the side of the boat, Mom.” 

Good thing I can swim. 

I want desperately to look at a cardboard box and see what he sees.  Like Peter Pan’s Lost Boys, he looks at an empty table and sees a feast.  The world is limitless. 

But I can’t come along.  I don’t fit into the space between my bed and the wall.  I look at an empty table and my stomach just rumbles.  When he crawls into my bed to catch the bubblegum bugs that fly above our heads in the early morning half-light, he snatches them up to savor their sugary sweetness in his mouth.  All I taste is air. 

He is off on his life’s journey towards independence without Mom.  And it’s as it should be.

This article first appeared in the Lewistown News-Argus and the Sidney (Mont.) Herald on January 23, 2010.