Dear Charlie,
I write you letters in my head all the time. All day long it seems you are giving me
reason to compose sentences about your fat, little perfection. I take little word snapshots throughout the
day that I know I should stop and capture in a notebook, but instead I choose
to simply run to the sink to rinse the peanut butter off my hands. This is the truth of my days. I want to be a master historian for my boys,
snapping, cropping, and mounting photos of lunchtime giggles, unexpected
car-seat naps, and the days when that one ringlet in the center of your head
has extra, extra bounce to it. But more
often than not, rather than sit down to the word processor, or the photo
editor, I either collapse in a heap on the couch, or I hurry to bread the
chicken nuggets before dinner.
And now you’re one.
Well, almost fifteen months old, actually, and the storm is moving
in. So, I better hurry, right? I
better hurry up and write it all down while I feel a sense of quiet and
rest because there’s a rumble beneath my feet that tells me the ground beneath
them is about to give way. Hurry up and
write it all down before everything that is normal is all squished up and
packed away with a coat of bubble wrap and a strip of packer’s tape.
So before I forget, before I turn around and you are
eighteen months old and then twenty months old, and I realize I have never told
you about what you are like when you are simply just one, let me whisper in
your ear, just this one little thing, Charlie: I love watching you eat a sliced banana.
I try to make the slices small, but sometimes they’re a
little too thick and you pick them up in your fat, little bear paws and stuff
the whole big slice into your mouth at once.
And I watch. With tremendous
joy. As you puff out your cheeks and
pucker your lips and chew and mash and chew that sweet, soft banana to a nice
slippery state, so that you can gulp and smile and put your paw back out to do
it all over again.
I love that. I love
that like I love just about everything you do.
You should know though that I love so much of who you are right now
mainly because you’re fat. If you were
skinny, I’d probably only kind of like you as one likes a casual
acquaintance. I’d give you forced smiles,
but I wouldn’t razz your belly as much.
Because it wouldn’t be fat enough for me to really get in there.
[Side note: I just realized that this point is totally
without truth or merit because your brother Finny has always been a skinny
little thing, and I would swallow him whole if I could. Man, I’m getting hungry. Must take a pretzel break, so that I don’t
eat my sleeping children. End side note.]
You are in many ways like the late, great Chris Farley,
minus the cocaine and all the other tragic stuff. The main similarities are that you are fat
and funny and that you can’t help but stick your gut waaaaaay out when you
waddle across the kitchen looking for a refrigerator magnet to chew on.
Right now, at the tender age of fifteen months, you have six
little hilarious teeth that pop out when your big duck lips curl up. And you have the best baby fat calves on the
planet, which I am only now getting to really, fully appreciate because you
wear these ridiculous baby shorts.
But here I am beating around the bush, when the point is,
the real heart of the matter is: I love
you for your hair. Any man off the
street could walk up to me right now and say, “Excuse me, Ma’m, I’d like to offer
you this truckload of gold bars, I’ll drop it off next to the grass here, if
you’d just give me the curls off your one-year-old’s head,” and I’d slam the
door in his face.
Because A: What a
weirdo.
And because B: It is
one of the great highlights of my little day to walk into your room in the
morning and discover how your hair has ended up after a full night’s sleep.
[Sidenote: If you have not had a full night’s sleep,
like last night when you decided to party from 12:30-2 a.m., I am slightly less
interested in your hairstyle and a little more interested in getting back that
hour and a half of sleep you robbed from me.]
Much like your brother, you are a friendly little guy. I’ve struggled all through toddlerhood to
keep both of you out of strangers’ laps at the library and the park, and last
week at the grocery store, after learning what it means to say, “Hi!” you
greeted everyone who came within earshot with a, “Hi! Hiya!
Hi!” And of course, everyone who
passed fell to pieces over your head of carrot-top curls and your friendly little
teeth.
You say other things too, not so much words as your own
adorable sounds. These include such gems
as: “Bidoh, biday.” “A-bee, a-bee, a-bee, a-bee.” “Meea, meea, meea.” And our personal favorite,
“NnnnnnnnnnnAAAHHH!!!” You really rev up
for that one and it’s always a sure hit.
You say, “DA-DAHHHH!!” with the fervor of one who is not
greeting his daddy, but rather his old fraternity brother who used to dance
with Christmas trees after keg stands.
And you say, “Ma-ma” in the sweetest, most delicious, most
genuine way that I blush every time and then devour your cheeks with kisses.
You should also know that you are not just my baby. You are not just Daddy’s baby. You are Finny’s baby too. He pushes you over a lot. He takes toys from you. He hits you.
And sometimes even if you are minding your own business, he seeks out
ways to taunt and torment you. But, he also loves
you. He looks out for you. He hugs you.
He delights in making you laugh.
And he talks to you a lot. Even though you can’t understand him, he is often explaining to you about how he will save you from the whale that's going to swallow you whole or making sure that you know that the purple Hot Wheel is the red Hot Wheel's wife. He is a good big brother and he can’t wait
until you’re just a little bigger and can really play with him, you know,
without trying to eat the sidewalk chalk.
You are still a bit of a puzzle though, Charlie. There is no doubt you are a mama’s boy right
now. (My aching back is testimony to how often you want to be picked up and
held these days.) But, even though, you want to be held, you
are a tough guy to console when you’re unhappy.
I can still charm Finny into a trance with a gentle sweeping of the hair
across his forehead, but you, sir, are a different story. When you’re unhappy, you don’t want to be
held, but you don’t want to be put down.
You don’t want to sit or lay or rock or eat. You will toss your milk cup across the room
and you will thrash and kick and cry, cry, cry, and you want nothing to do with
anything. So, at a loss, we all just
sort of hide under the kitchen table and pull our knees to our chest until you decide to simmer down and join the
civilized again.
I guess you think you’re a tough guy. A tough guy who looooooves his mommy.
I could write about you all day long, about everything from
your toes to your great delight in throwing the yellow ball across the room,
but you’re awake now and I have to go get you.
Know this, Charlie:
There are people who bring the fun and people who wait for the fun to
arrive. People are going to be waiting
for you, Charlie VanHimbergen, and they’re never going to want you to leave.
I love you and I’m going to climb the stairs right now and
eat you up.
Love,
Mommy
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