Nate stretched out his arms and said “I’m a biiiiiiiiig foooooooouuuuurrrrrr”.

He reclined in my lap, looking up at me, and I cupped one hand on his head and pulled his bangs up off his forehead. Now he resembled nothing so much as a puppy with its ears pulled back, and his mischievously gleeful expression never changed. It’s an expression he wears sometimes when he wakes up first on a Saturday, and quietly dances from one foot to the other towards our bed. It’s an expression that’s all teeth and tongue and sparkly eyes and crinkly nose. It’s that puppy, now with its chest on the ground, paws splayed out front, and looking up sideways. 

So he smiled up at me, and I smiled back down at him. And where there was once a baby, there was now a little boy. I smiled back down, because this was his big day. I smiled back down, because he’s happy and gracious, even when the birthdays aren’t his. I smiled back down, because today, it’s all about him. And he smiled back up at me, well, because he’s Nate.

The time of Three is now gone, and he’s Four Strong. He’s Baby Seal Four, and he smiled and he smiled.

***

And there were giant red poppies, handmade from colored tissue, and each had a Rice Crispy Treat nestled in its center.

And there were exhausted Mum-Mums, Da-das, and Grandys who had stayed up and up.

And there was a great slab of poundcake, cut into the shapes of a rabbit and a magician’s hat, then slathered with homemade buttercream frosting.  

And the kids’ table sat awaiting kids, and there were top hats and stuffed bunnies and wands and draped over small chairs, there were capes that sparkled with glittery red names.

“The Notorious Nate,” said one cape.

“The Amazing Allison,” replied another.

And Zac was Zany, and Clare was Captivating. Rachel was Radiant, and Liam, Lively.

Aleister, Hannah, and Colleen?  Awesome, Heavenly, and Crafty.

There was the Glamorous Grace Margaret, and the Lovely Leia. Elise the Enchanting, and Everett the Energetic.

“Sam the Stinker,” croaked the last, small cape at the end. 

And then there were grandparents and brothers, parents and friends.

And later, there were magic tricks and balloon animals and live bunnies and unexpected doves fluttering from impossible places. And there were bags and scarves and wooden clowns that started off one color but ended up another. And then there were handkerchiefs with disappearing polka-dots and drawings that colored themselves. There were volunteers from the audience, and pileups of hastily shouted magic words. 

And each of these things was punctuated by peals of laughter and claps and occasional looks, stolen briefly over tiny shoulders to assure that we were all watching too. And there, in the first row, was Nate - the Big Four; the Man of the Hour - with his cape falling over his small shoulders and his plastic hat perched perfectly straight atop his head. And he was beaming and bouncing and delighted. He was smiling with his mouth open, and when the magician would do something particularly magical, he and Allison would clap and look at each other. Allison is his best.

And then there was a tight circle of the Glamorous and the Zany, of the Amazing and the Enchanted. And there was the tearing of paper, and there were things that were new. There were things to be coveted by and then shared with the Lively and the Stinker.

And then four striped candles were lit, then not, and shortly afterward, a rabbit disappeared, followed by a hat.

And faces were wiped and hands were washed. Friends were thanked, and poppies were given. And then, one by one, groups of hats and bunnies and wands and capes began to disappear as well.

***

And Nate’s in his bed, and he’s snoring softly. His Big Day is over, and he’s got his ‘baby’ - Curious George in ’RollerMonkey’ Gear - on one side of him, and his much loved Elmo Binky on the other. I pull his robot covers up to his chin, and in his dark outline, I can see both the baby he was, and the boy he will become.

***

click for more pictures of the gala

I am 9 and it’s summer. I’m visiting with my Gram and Papa King who live in the tall, narrow house, a portion of which was once home to chickens before it was remade to be Gram and Papa’s home. We’re on the front porch watching cars full of people wheel lazily past. I commandeer what I consider to be the cat-bird seat…the middle position on the wooden porch swing. I’d prefer to have the swing to myself, but I am sandwiched between two sensible adults. 9-year-olds and grandparents have wildly opposing theories regarding swinging techniques. I am silently frustrated by their conservative to and fro, their feet rocking steadily heel to toe, never leaving the green turf carpeting on the porch. They swing so gently that they don’t pose even the slightest threat to the white wicker table that has ludicrously been placed IN FRONT OF THE SWING! This is blasphemous to my kid brain and I long for a solo test drive in the wooden Buick to see how she really handles. Because, swings, even domesticated, docile porch swings, are surely meant to soar too! It is in the swing’s nature to leave your stomach hovering in the air on the upswing and threaten to dump your skinny ass onto the coarse carpet, which will keep a portion of your palm skin as payment for its use as a landing pad, on the downswing. Beware little wicker table! If you stand your ground, you risk being punted to the end of the porch when I get to man the giant battering ram!

Cars pass by us steadily on the road that arcs past Gram and Papa’s house and they wave to nearly every one. Not because they are being polite, but because they know the people inside the cars who thrust their sunburned arms out of rolled-down windows and smack their horns in greeting. I love this game and am completely uncool in my execution, hollering ‘hellos’ and flailing my little girl arms at strangers, like a parade float queen being electrocuted. When Papa waves, his is a large, graceful gesture, his hand shooting into the air and hanging motionless there for a beat as he subtly drops his chin to his chest in head-nod acknowledgement until the car rounds the bend. Sometimes a friend slows down and turns into their driveway, making the powdery limestone rocks ping and pop under the slow-rolling tires.

For lunch, Papa brings in tomatoes from their garden. Gram pulls the kitchen table out from the wall so I can sit on the built-in, vinyl bench, making the kitchen seem like a tiny restaurant that is open only for me. My finger worries at the small tear in the bench’s green skin and I bounce gently on the springy seat. Giant yellow and orange daisies grin down at me from the wallpaper. “Oooooh…You’re going to like this,” the flowers whisper as they watch Gram slice the still-warm-from-the-sun tomatoes into thick, red slabs. She spreads a smear of mayonnaise on each, and tops them with salt and pepper. And the flowers are right. The tomatoes are simple in their perfection and they are the best thing I’ve ever eaten in my life.

Papa does shift work and is working midnights. Gram makes his lunch and packs his shiny silver dinner bucket with sandwiches, fruit, and a thermos of coffee. I decide that this is a fantastic concept and that I, too, will go to work at midnight when I’m an adult, breaking the rules and obeying them at the same time. I love the juxtaposition of this world, of smelling the richness of morning coffee at 11:00 o’clock at night, of seeing Gram soft and lotion-y in her sleeveless summer nightgown kiss Papa, freshly shaved and dressed in his dark, rugged work clothes good-bye as he disappears out the door and into his pick-up truck.

I sleep with softly-snoring-Gram on the nights Papa works. The screened bedroom windows keep the bugs out, but allow their blaring, untuned, orchestral sounds to travel in, escorted on the arm of chilly night air. I lie awake on my back and listen to the harmony played by the single-note whine of tires on the road as a few straggling friends make their way past our home to their own. Their headlight beams chase each other in silent, white, zig-zagging arcs from one corner of the ceiling to the other, waving to me as I drift off.

On the nights that Papa doesn’t have to work, they take me with them to the VFW. All the people who drove by the house and waved, apparently, were headed here to wait for my Gram and Papa. They know everyone and they are celebrities. I am a celebrity by association. Gram drinks whiskey sours, Papa drinks beer from dark amber bottles, and I drink Shirley Temples that the brilliant bartender fills with equal parts ginger ale/grenadine and maraschino cherries. I love him immediately. I’m given an endless supply of quarters which I use to begin a long love affair with a juke box and a shuffle board table. Gram and her friends have me play Juice Newton’s “Queen of Hearts” over and over again. They are trying to capture the lyrics with paper and pen as Juice sings them from the jukebox, but Juice doesn’t know this and won’t slow down. “The Joker ain’t the only fooool-ool-ool-ool, who’ll do anything for you!” They include me in the game and whoop and holler when I catch a random bit of the song and shout it out so they can scribble it down.

Memory is a fickle thing, holding tightly to certain bits of information while letting others slip away before they can be tucked into a gray brain wrinkle. If you ask me how long I stayed with Gram and Papa that summer or why I was there, I wouldn’t be able to tell you. It could have been two days or two weeks. I might have been there because my parents were out of town or because Mum was ready to hang me from the porch railing with my own jump rope and decided to ship me out of the house for a while rather than resorting to murder and almost guaranteed jail time. Whatever those answers are, they are the smooth, wan bits of information with rounded edges that were too slippery for my brain to hang onto. But, the sensory laden memories of warm tomatoes and belly-turning porch swing rides and Juice Newton lyrics are rich with dimension, color, and texture. And these bits of information are much bigger and messier because of that and have no choice but to stick.

I don’t know if my Gram and Papa remember my visit with them like I do or if they remember it at all. It was business as usual for them, and I think that’s the magic. Like the warm tomatoes from their garden, the memories I have are organic. I hope that we’re creating memories like this for our boys…that we’re not trying too hard…forcing the fun.

I am 36 and it’s almost summer again. Bill and I have three little boys who we sandwich between us on our own porch swing now.

I have a hankering to grow some tomatoes.