Kathleen McCall:
Occasional�� Muse�

2001-08-02 - 10:44 a.m.

Portraits

I'm watching the kids get ready to go to their Dad's for a week.

They are such individuals. I don't know why this surprises me, surprises every mother about their kids. I guess because when you combine the same ingredients, in approximately the same way (sorry for the mental pictures, here) you expect the same results. That's not what you get. You get one chocolate cake and one eggplant parmagiana.

Chocolate cake is busy getting ready her own way. She's watching cartoons with her thumb in her mouth. The thumb is still a boon companion - don't write to me about this, I already know - but these days usually appears when she's very tired, or a bit stressed. She's not tired.

Change is a tough one, for her. Makes her mad. She wants to go, and she's excited. She's also apprehensive about spending an entire week away from me. She doesn't really want to participate in the physical part of getting ready. Doesn't want to help me pack her suitcase, or choose any stuff to go. Doesn't want to take her bicycle or her scooter. Wants to watch these cartoons. Yup. Cartoons good. Leaving bad. Uh-oh. Thumb time.

Eggplant, on the other hand, deals with apprehension in a different way. She has been choosing "outfits" to take for days and days now. She's been bugging me to get through all the laundry so she can have all the choices available - never mind that she has enough stuff now, what if the perfect thing is still in the bottom of the hamper? Also, she needs to know the exact time of her next orthodontist appointment, still a month away, and she needs to know it right NOW. She's worried about whether I will let her walk to school next year, and do I know that 8:10 is the LATE bell, not the ON-TIME bell. Uh-oh. Control time.

This makes my kids sound neurotic; they're not. They're kids. Okay, maybe they're neurotic kids - back to the basic ingredients, after all - but no more so than anybody else's. I just like to watch them, handling their own stuff in their individual ways. Different kids, different coping.

Chocolate is a hedonist. You can tell by looking at her. She's the one most affected by the physical world. If it feels good, smells good, tastes good, it IS good. That's it. She loves to be petted.

Eggplant lives in her head. You can tell that by looking at her, too. She's bony and gazellish. She thinks about whether something is good or not. She decides. She loves to read.

Eggplant wants to know what we're doing next, and what time next is. She wants to know what's for dinner tonight, and preferably every night through next Tuesday.

This is the child who, if she comes into my bed in the night, carries not just her stuffed animal, but her CLOCK. She needs to know what time it is, when she wakes up in the night.

I am terrified that someone will clue her in about retirement accounts and the state of the Social Security system. This is the kid who would skip cafeteria lunches to start a secret IRA.

The best gift I have ever given her was an organizer.

Chocolate doesn't care a whole lot about next Tuesday. She cares about today, which is either the best or the worst day of her life, depending on what time you ask her.

This is the child who, if she comes into my bed at night, brings not only a stuffed animal for herself but one for me too, because everyone should have a stuffed animal to sleep with.

I worry that she will discover a whole world of things that feel good in her teen years, and that she won't do a lot of thinking about what happens AFTER next Tuesday.

The best gift I have ever given her is whatever I just gave her.

Two kids, two different people. I will pack Chocolate's bag for her in a little while. It doesn't matter what goes in. She only wears sweats and t-shirts. Nothing with buttons or collars or zippers. Soft things that can be put on easily, and wear comfortably. She'll grab whatever stuffed animals are her current favorites.

I will help Eggplant carry her eight various bags of important items out to the car. She'll ask me to check her main bag to make sure she hasn't forgotten anything, and I will, but the odds are good that she hasn't. She will take the same animal that has slept with her since she was two years old.

I will miss them both so much. They are a part of me, just as I am a part of them.

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