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Some kids have plans to rule the world, some kids have plans to run away
My aunt and uncle on my mother's side are visiting for the next few days, and they have brought their four-year-old grandson with them: this was the good part of today. He is a reading child, incredibly verbal; I was delegated to keep an eye on him and keep him entertained. The latter proved to be entirely unnecessary, since he is capable of conjuring up anything out of nothing.
His grandmother and grandfather call him T, but he explains gravely to me that his real name is Tristan. "I don't tell everyone." He is tall for his age, with silky brown hair and very dark lashes; either he will grow up beautiful or he will hate his face for most of his adolescence, but right now he dances and bounces and bobs and has developed a 1960's model's stance, hipshot, one arm akimbo, head tilted back to look adults in the face, which he might have picked up from anywhere: he assimilates words and cultural references ferociously, although he does not always produce them in intelligible order. "That commercial. With the alligator. Do you remember? The best part was where the chef threw knives at the ratatouille." He is being taught to call me "Aunt Sonya," because it's the nearest uncomplicated relationship—we are probably some kind of cousins-by-marriage once or twice removed; his mother is my aunt's daughter—but he insisted on referring to me for the entire evening as his friend. "Where's my friend? Where is she?" He makes booklets out of folded leaves of paper, crayon-illustrated, which he calls his books. He is not impressed by mine, because I only wrote them. The first one he showed me depicts a piece of logic straight out of The Little Prince: a sort of greenish helmet-shape, which he explains is a winged turtle; the wings are not visible because the turtle is at rest, they are folded up inside its shell for safekeeping. ("My drawing was not a picture of a hat . . .") The next page is the greenish helmet with spiky red lines falling out of it: "This is the inside of the turtle. That's his blood running through him." It's not a dead turtle; it's an anatomical drawing. He wants books on dragons so he can draw them properly. "They're not on the Wildlife Channel." And from somewhere equally nebulous, he has picked up politics—walking into the living room, he asks me, "Did you know our president is evil? The city flooded and he was supposed to build houses, but he only built a few and then he left. I wish I were president. I would build all the houses. Do you know his name? It's Bush." Or he shows me the soft-footed walk he has been practicing, because someone let him watch a Western: "Indians walk like this. Quietly. Quietly. They have to move so the cowboys don't see them. They know the cowboys hate them."
He palms a geometric plastic shape into the air and tells me, "This is the key that unlocks the hidden door. You can come with me," before he mimes opening a door in the air about knee-height, which he then crawls through on his stomach: because hidden doors are not meant for just anyone to pass through. If in ten years he isn't doing theater, I will be very surprised.
His grandmother and grandfather call him T, but he explains gravely to me that his real name is Tristan. "I don't tell everyone." He is tall for his age, with silky brown hair and very dark lashes; either he will grow up beautiful or he will hate his face for most of his adolescence, but right now he dances and bounces and bobs and has developed a 1960's model's stance, hipshot, one arm akimbo, head tilted back to look adults in the face, which he might have picked up from anywhere: he assimilates words and cultural references ferociously, although he does not always produce them in intelligible order. "That commercial. With the alligator. Do you remember? The best part was where the chef threw knives at the ratatouille." He is being taught to call me "Aunt Sonya," because it's the nearest uncomplicated relationship—we are probably some kind of cousins-by-marriage once or twice removed; his mother is my aunt's daughter—but he insisted on referring to me for the entire evening as his friend. "Where's my friend? Where is she?" He makes booklets out of folded leaves of paper, crayon-illustrated, which he calls his books. He is not impressed by mine, because I only wrote them. The first one he showed me depicts a piece of logic straight out of The Little Prince: a sort of greenish helmet-shape, which he explains is a winged turtle; the wings are not visible because the turtle is at rest, they are folded up inside its shell for safekeeping. ("My drawing was not a picture of a hat . . .") The next page is the greenish helmet with spiky red lines falling out of it: "This is the inside of the turtle. That's his blood running through him." It's not a dead turtle; it's an anatomical drawing. He wants books on dragons so he can draw them properly. "They're not on the Wildlife Channel." And from somewhere equally nebulous, he has picked up politics—walking into the living room, he asks me, "Did you know our president is evil? The city flooded and he was supposed to build houses, but he only built a few and then he left. I wish I were president. I would build all the houses. Do you know his name? It's Bush." Or he shows me the soft-footed walk he has been practicing, because someone let him watch a Western: "Indians walk like this. Quietly. Quietly. They have to move so the cowboys don't see them. They know the cowboys hate them."
He palms a geometric plastic shape into the air and tells me, "This is the key that unlocks the hidden door. You can come with me," before he mimes opening a door in the air about knee-height, which he then crawls through on his stomach: because hidden doors are not meant for just anyone to pass through. If in ten years he isn't doing theater, I will be very surprised.
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That's incredibly cool.
He palms a geometric plastic shape into the air and tells me, "This is the key that unlocks the hidden door. You can come with me," before he mimes opening a door in the air about knee-height, which he then crawls through on his stomach: because hidden doors are not meant for just anyone to pass through.
Yowza. All the kids around here just break things and curse at me. Your friend's giving me hope for the future.
If in ten years he isn't doing theater, I will be very surprised.
It sounds like no-one around him would discourage him, either. I've known a couple kids like that who weren't so lucky. More and more, I think you live in some kind of utopia.
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Trust me, I do not. But I have awesome luck in cousins.
They know the cowboys hate them.
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It struck me, actually, as one of the more profound statements I have heard recently. I'm not sure I could better it even if I tried to put it into a poem.
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It's kind of made my week that I've had the chance to meet him.
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It's miraculous when you think about it, there isn't anyone, and then your cousin is pregnant for a few months and then there's a howling baby and then look, there's a person who you can go to the opera with when you're ninety.
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It's wonderful.
(I would take him to operas, too.)
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That's wonderful.
I got a bit teary, reading this. He sounds like the kind of child one makes up inside one's head. Good luck in cousins indeed. ; )
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The others are
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It's lovely that you gave him the appreciative eyes and ears; you've captured some wonderful things here.
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Yes. And what with all the high-profile deaths this week, I think it is important that there are children like him coming up: that there are children.
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And how lovely that he thinks of you as his "friend".
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It made me very happy.
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Would dragons _were_ on the Wildlife Channel.
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Seriously. I'd watch.
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It'd be enough to make me watch televsion. ;-)
Well, I'm saying that--if dragons really were on the Wildlife Channel, it would be probably be a matter of "Oh, ho-hum, another dragon documentary. Let's go watch the hippogriffs in the meadow--they're not quite as cool, but they're _here_. ;-)
I'd like to move to the world of Poul Anderson's _Operation Luna_ and _Operation Chaos_, in case nobody's guessed that already. ;-)
LOL
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Hee. Tell me a story.
LOL
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I've told him he had better come back for another visit soon.
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And it'll be fascinating to see how he grows up.
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Yes! I'm hoping to see him more often now that we each know the other exists.
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He made me feel a lot better about a week in which artists just seemed to be dying every which way.