is a single mama in the city, super-savvy editor, writer, video host and shameless shoe whore.
For luck
Wednesday, March 16, 2011 My boy loves a costume. Always has.
Once, when he was three and going to a home daycare down the street that was run by a lady in her 60s, she stopped him on the sidewalk before we set foot on her property.
"Why are you wearing a chef hat?" she asked, and not in that nice way older ladies do because they are amused by small children. "Is that your Halloween costume or something?"
"No," I said and Lil E shook his head along with me. It was early September, I think. "It's his outfit."
"HIS OUTFIT?!" She looked back and forth from my kid, barely out of Pull-Ups, and me, non-plussed by the whole get-up of shorts, t-shirt, teensy Keens and the big ass chef hat.
"Yup," I said and Lil E nodded. "Just another day's outfit."
"WHY WOULD HE WEAR THAT?" She was not just astounded, she was appalled.
"Because he's three?" I answered.
Didn't she know that? What kind of lady runs a home daycare for a hundred years and spends a thousand hours a week giving kids naps on yoga mats and doling out graham crackers and doesn't notice that they dress like freaks?
We made a wide circle around her and went into the house. I was irritated but I didn't want my boy to think, in his adorableness and quirks and costumes, that anything in the world was the matter with wearing a chef hat for his time gluing marker-decorated macaroni to half-faded construction paper and arguing over who got to go down the little plastic slide next. I thought he was brilliant. I didn't understand how she couldn't see that.
But she didn't. And the next week, we left the daycare. For more reasons than that, but mostly that. It seemed to me she was tired, done, not even seeing the kids, or at least mine. It wasn't enough.
I think of that moment often. Like when Lil E appears in the kitchen in a Jedi robe, a plastic pirate sword stuck into a Tae Kwon Do belt, police helmet, two different socks and a pair of tiny boxer briefs with skulls or goldfish printed all over them. Or when he absolutely insists on wearing the sweatshirt with flames over a neon green skater t-shirt that's too small with red comfy pants, all topped off by a headband tied Ralph Macchio style. Or when he stands expressionless, completely naked except for his underwear on his head, until I laugh.
I never want to squelch that. Life and friends and hormones and Justin Bieber will do their own damage to my child's dramatic flair for costumery. I just want it to be silly, hilarious, normal.
Last night, he told me what he really wanted was a big, tall leprechaun hat, one that everyone could see while they were chasing him to the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. I assured him that his kindergarten teacher wouldn't have that factored into the lesson plans, so maybe the styrofoam hat my mom bought him would do. But before I snap a few pics of him in it, he ran to get the accessories that would complete the outfit.
"Instead of Xs in their eyes, I think dead leprechauns look like this."
A flashing shamrock pin and two gold coins. Of course. He couldn't be fully dressed for St. Patrick's Day -- which he awwwwmannnnn!ed to find out was not celebrated with a day off of school -- without them all.
Tomorrow, I will dig through my closet for something greenish while Lil E's dad helps him get leprauchaned out in the 'burbs. But I will be thinking of how he doesn't think twice about embodying the celebration.
I love that. I forget that. I delight it in it. Years later, I see it.
And if I am lucky, I will for a long, long time.
For you, for my boy lit up (maybe not in the way we generally think of for this holiday) by St. Patrick's Day and any other opportunity to chase rainbows in a giant hat and crazy chonies, and even for the daycare lady, I offer you this lovely blessing for today:
Leprechauns, castles, good luck and laughter
Lullabies, dreams, and love ever after.
Poems and songs with pipes and drums
A thousand welcomes when anyone comes.
~Author Unknown
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