Oh, wait: that would be “smitten.”

Especially because he left me the cryptic and Rachel the Sudoku. That he filled with the squares in with random letters is beside the point, really; it’s more the spot-on posture he’s adopted, as though he’s watched other people do crosswords his entire life. Just like that. I would have posted pictures of him playing Scrabble — grown-up Scrabble, mind you, not the kids’ version — with his grandmother last week, adding up the scores with his orange, foot-shaped calculator, but the camera ran out of batteries. It’s a whole new generation of word nerds here at Casa Non Grata, pottering around with our cups of cocoa and our dictionaries. He asks things like, “What are all the words in the world and who made them?” and “Why does the C come before the K and which one do you hear when you say ‘back’? And who decided that?”

Yes, who? Who decided that? Because there’s a five-year-old around here who would like a word with you.

Honestly, I stare at these things the way I used to stare at a couple of babies as they slept — sneaking back for just one more peek, scanning them for each new development; each unfolding, each unfurling. It’s addictively satisfying (or is that an oxymoron?), all that potential.

Rowan stares at them, too — his “beautiful seeds.” He pushed for flowers, lots of flowers, over vegetables, and now is the proud papa of an egg carton or two of giant sunflowers, pansies, and delphiniums. Me, I’m all about the beets, bats about the beets, nuts with the beets — you get the idea. Rachel seems to have a soft spot for the peas and beans. The plan is to raise property values by turning our front yard into a series of 16-square-foot, raised vegetable beds — square-foot gardening to replace our sea of anthills and dandelions. (Although, after reading this, I’ve been inspired to gather dandelion greens.)

I stare at the seeds the way someone else very little stares at his new lava lamp. Which is to say, adoringly and obsessively. Yes, of course it makes perfect sense for a nearly three-year-old to have a lava lamp: what could possibly be inappropriate about a toy that heats up to skin-burning temperatures, is made of glass, and filled with liquid? Still, he fell in love with it at a penny auction, and then won it, and now we turn it on at bedtime and at nap time, and he lies there, basking happily in its red glow, until he falls asleep.

And then I sneak into his bedroom and turn it off, but not before staring at him in his dinosaur pajamas for a few minutes, his thumb halfway out of his mouth, various bears scattered around the bed.

Far out.

A week ago, I was performing the quintessentially Thunder Bay action of shoveling my front lawn — trying to even out the piles of snow so that we wouldn’t be stuck again in April with a fossilized mountain of ice and dirt in the northeast corner of the front yard. But today? It’s mid-March, and all the snow is already gone. I find myself feeling oddly unprepared, as though dinner guests have arrived early and the house is still a disaster, the oven still cool to the touch. The little feedback loop inside my brain is saying things like We don’t have spring jackets for the kids yet, and Rowan’s bike needs repairs, and I have not planted any seeds indoors yet, and these kind of things make me feel as though I am late, not that spring is freakishly early, literally sprung upon us, still sleepy-eyed and coming out of hibernation.

In other words, the weather is my fault. How’s that for self-flagellation?

Not that I’m not enjoying it, the slipping on of sandals and following Rowan down the street on the season’s first ride on his mostly usable bicycle. And the kids, for them it’s like winter never happened. They don’t stop to marvel, like Rachel and I do, about the sudden greening of the grass in the backyard and the ability to kick around a soccer ball and the no snowsuits — NO SNOWSUITS! They just do it, in the moment, stripping off winter layers and letting them fall into the spring dirt.

Yesterday, after lunch, I met up with Rowan and Isaac and their babysitter at the park. It’s March break — spring break (and, to quote Rachel over at 6512 and Counting, “a good thing because gosh, those preschoolers have a rough schedule, what with snacktime and recess every two hours”). I met up with them at the park because we had signed Rowan up for gymnastics camp for four afternoons this week, on the assumption that since he loves his weekly gymnastics class and said “Yes” when we asked him, four weeks ago, if he would like to go to said camp, that this was a good idea.

You know where this is going, right? Should I just stop right here and not write any more? What about this: those of you who don’t really need to keep reading to know that, of course, when I showed up to bring him to gymnastics camp yesterday, when I showed up at the sunshiny park where he was merrily digging in the thawed sand with his brother, he didn’t want to go anywhere near gymnastics camp, you guys just go get a coffee or check your e-mail or something for a minute. And then the rest of you can hear about how he refused to get in the car even after I tried to bribe him with a yogurt tube, and so I left him with his babysitter and his brother and came home, defeated.

What was I going to do, I asked Rachel over the phone, short of physically forcing him into the vehicle and hurling him, screaming, onto a balance beam?

In truth, I wasn’t surprised. Since his initial embracing of the gymnastics camp idea, Rowan has steadily backpedaled. “I want to go to the babysitter’s every day,” he kept telling us. “I only go to gymnastics on Thursdays. I don’t want to go to gymnastics CAMP — just gymnastics. On Thursdays.” Still, we persevered, hoping that he might have a sudden change of heart. Why we persevered, I don’t know. We’ve been here, with swimming lessons, with indoor soccer, and now with gymnastics camp: Rowan knows what he wants, and what he likes. As he said to us at the dinner table last night, more calmly than he had in the park yesterday afternoon, “I’m sorry, but that’s just how I do things.”

On Thursdays.

So, we’ve shelved gymnastics camp. And, for some period of time that I cannot quite specify just yet, I’m shelving the idea of signing him up for any prepaid, organized activity. Because, my kid? My kid does what he does, when he does it, and it’s not worth the heartache to try to force him to do things he doesn’t do, when he doesn’t want to do them.

Maybe I would be more worried if he spent all day watching TV, if he wasn’t thrilled to go to gymnastics (on Thursdays) and music classes (on Mondays), if he didn’t want to play soccer in the backyard with us (as opposed to on the Astroturf of the indoor gym) or ride his bike every possible chance he got, if he didn’t read dozens of books weekly. Maybe I would be more worried if I didn’t recognize so much of myself in him. Despite my mother’s exhortations for me to take up what she hilariously called a “social sport” (does pool count?) I never learned to play golf or tennis and I don’t regret that for a minute. I refused to go when she signed me up for baseball, although I managed to swim competitively for years and, like my sons, loved gymnastics. I did — and I do — things how I do things. Why? Because I’m not a joiner. Hi! Look at me! Working by myself in my home office! For the past dozen years!

Still, as much as I recognize myself in Rowan, part of me — and I’m working hard to get over this part — still gets so frustrated at his refusals, still feels as though if I were just a better parent, he’d play indoor soccer and skip off to swimming lessons and gleefully jump in the car to go to gymnastics. Part of me wishes we could spring new things on him — travel, for example? — and that he would rise, gracefully, to the challenge.

But that’s not my boy. My boy does things the way he does them, and, like the weather, he does them neither early nor late but right on his own schedule. It’s not my fault, or his — it’s just how things are. And I can fret about them, or I can revel in the sun on my bare arms, my feet in sandals, my son pedaling his bike down the street, training wheels hovering over the pavement.

 PS: That said, any stories of commiseration most welcome.

“Mom?”

Part of me sighs inwardly — maybe even, I will admit, outwardly — as Rowan props himself up on one elbow and opens his eyes to ask yet one more pre-sleep question. I’m tired. He’s tired. There have been lots of questions already.

“Yes, sweetie?” But I’ll humour him. Because this is the time of day — cuddled up in bed — where he is sometimes most conversational, most able to engage in the back-and-forth of real dialogue as opposed to his usual running-roughshod monologue and random series of segues.

“What did you do after you were borned?”

My mind struggles to process the question. Does he mean the first-breath minutes after delivery? The shift from womb to air and from umbilicus to bottles? (Confession: I was not breast-fed, and still managed to grow to functional adulthood.) From infancy to toddlerhood and so forth?

And then I think I might understand what he means.

“Well, I lived in my house with my parents — your Bubbie Ruthi and Zaidie — and with Uncle Jeff, and I got bigger and bigger and I learned to talk and walk, and I went to school and I grew up.”

Rowan is silent, so I continue.

“And then,” I say brightly, “I got my own house” — actually, a tiny, attic apartment with sloping ceilings, just north of College Street near Dufferin in Toronto’s west end — “and then Rachel and I got our house together. And we moved to Thunder Bay, and had you! And Isaac!”

That’s the gist of it, more or less: my life after I was borned, give or take a few apartments and a couple of degrees and so forth. But it will do at 8:15 on a school night, I think.

“Did you miss them?”

Did I miss who? Again, it takes me a moment to figure out what he’s asking. Oh!  

“Do you mean did I miss Bubbie Ruthi and Zaidie and Uncle Jeff when I got my own house?”

“Yeah.”

“Well,” I say, hedging a bit — not quite sure how to explain to him that my brother and I (Hi, Jeff!) developed a healthy regard for each other mostly after we both left home, or that leaving the suburbs of suburban Toronto for McGill University and Montréal’s plateau neighborhood was the best possible thing I could have done, not because home was a bad place, but because the plateau was just so good, so necessary for me as a sheltered, bored, somewhat morose 18-year-old — “well, sometimes. But whenever I missed them I could always phone them or go visit them. Or they came to visit me. I left when I was ready to.”

Rowan’s eyes are large, liquid. I’m talking and watching his jawline soften, melt, still racing to keep up with his thought process and wondering what he’s getting at when I finally figure it out.

“Are you worried about missing us when you leave home?”

He nods and gulps and the tears spill over. “I don’t want to miss you and Rachel and Isaac! I want to live with you forever!”

Let me be clear: there are no plans afoot for Rowan to move out, no plans for everyone to live anywhere but here. Rowan lets us know at regular intervals that he intends to live with us, in this house, for his entire life — even after he has the seven children he is planning to have. He would like to marry me, or Rachel, or, in a pinch, Isaac, and we explain that this is not possible, that marriage, should he choose to embrace that particular institution, is about making families bigger, adding to them, bringing in new people to the mix. We tell him that he may change his mind and choose to live with his spouse and their seven children in a different house, and he says, “But you’ll come live in that house with me.” And we say, maybe. And then he says, again, “I’m going to live here forever.” And we say, again, “Of course you are, for as long as you want.” And then he says, “But do I still have to follow the rules?” And I say, “Yes,” and he says, “Even when I’m 12?” And I say, “Yes,” and he says, “Even when I’m 50?” and I say, “Mister, if you’re living in my house with me when you’re 50, you especially have to follow the rules.”

“Sweetheart,” I say, pulling him to me, “nobody’s leaving. Nobody’s leaving for a long, long time.”

“I don’t want them ever to,” he wails, shuddering.

And we go on like this for a little while, him calming down slowly, until he is near sleep, until I can leave his bedroom, lights dimmed, and go downstairs to shrug my shoulders and shake my head, bewildered, at Rachel, as we try to process Rowan’s advance grieving.

Which is why I’m slightly ambivalent about reading Nicola I. Campbell’s Shin-chi’s Canoe with him. Because here’s a book about the unthinkable, a true story about boys and girls taken away — before they’re ready, before they’re old enough — from their homes, their siblings, their parents. The book tells the story of Shin-chi and his older sister, Shi-shi-etko, as they are taken from their families and communities; from their bedtime stories and language and food; from their names and their games and the arms of their parents to Indian residential school: a cold, foreign, hungry world designed to annihilate them under the guise of saving them.

Rachel has ordered the book and it has arrived and we have put it with all the other books. Waiting until the right moment, which means waiting until Rowan takes it out one day and asks to hear the story. I don’t want to tell it, not sure he’s ready for it or will be able to handle it, especially given his fears of leaving home. But I don’t want the story left untold. And I don’t imagine there’s ever going to be a convenient time to tell it.

I let Rachel do the reading, because she has read it already and imagines that she will be able to stay (fairly) calm, whereas I know I will begin to weep immediately, unstoppably, the moment the story begins. Which I do, as the siblings sit with their parents and grandmother and baby sister, waiting for the cattle truck to appear. Which I do through the cutting off of their braids (Shi-shi-etko asks her grandmother to cut their hair to avoid the indignity of having it hacked off by the nuns and priests at the school), through the end-of-summer journey through familiar landscape to, a hard, new, unfamiliar place of hunger and prayer to foreign gods. I weep through the spring and the return — temporary — home to their families and a dugout canoe of their own. The story is beautifully told and spares us the worst details, the outright violence and assault of the system. But it’s brutal enough, even geared towards children.

Rowan is confused. “Why did they do that?” he keeps asking. “The people who took the children away — why did they do that?” And, “what happened to them because they did that?” When he asks where, we tell him, here, right here. On this land. Not any more, but not so very long ago — as the book tells us, the last government-operated residential school in Canada did not close until 1996. And he says, “I don’t want them to do that here! I want them to do that somewhere else” — and he thinks of the place he imagines is furthest away from him — “in … in China! Not here!” And (as my mind flashes to the thousands — millions? — of baby girls given up in that country, other countries) we try to explain that we don’t want children to be taken from their parents, anywhere.

This is a child who has never known hunger, whose parents have spent all of three nights away from him his entire life, never more than a cell phone call or short flight away. And yet who is so spooked at the thought of leaving us that he can’t fathom that this happened all the time. And why should he? That kind of thing — it won’t happen to us, right? We’ll all get to live together in our house, until we’re good and ready not to?

Probably we will. But my son, my sons, need to understand that their own human rights — and sometimes, their lack thereof — have a long history in this country, and that the horrors perpetrated in Indian residential schools have an important, ongoing, chapter in that history. They need to know that their story is tangled up in those of the First Nations in this country; that important, horrific injustices were perpetrated; and that one way to prevent further injustice and possibly further some form of healing is to learn the history, tell the stories. Everyone’s stories. No matter how much they hurt. They need to know that no one is safe unless everyone is safe.

So, we can all — my two kids and their two moms —  live here together, forever? That’s what I tell my kid as I tuck him into bed after the story. Mostly, I believe it’s true.

Mostly. 

Hey folks! It’s time for another episode of Talking about Death.

Actually, probably not so much episodes as commercial breaks, small interruptions in our regular programming to discuss life’s big, unanswerable questions in manageable chunks.

Rowan is back on his “figuring out death” focus, looping round as he does to the subject every few months or seasons or so. Last week, he woke me up with a chipper “Rachel and I talked about dead people last night!” In fact, he and I had talked about dead people as I lay with him before he went to sleep — what it means to be dead: that you can’t see, or hear, or feel, or know about the people still living. He had sobbed at the thought of leaving me, Rachel, his brother; missing us too much already; not yet ready to not be. I rubbed his back, held him close, tried to explain about probabilities, how memories and lessons and the wonderful things that we do live on. But mostly I was quiet, letting him have his grief, work through it.

Which he continues to do, in slightly macabre — if generally quite pragmatic — ways.

“I love this cat,” Isaac said on Saturday morning, nuzzling Lola, our increasingly tolerant alpha feline, as she stretched across the kitchen floor. And from the dining room came sound of the voice of five-year-old wisdom, intoning: “You know that cat’s going to die one day.”

I went to sit with Rowan at the table. “Who will you be sadder,” he asked me between bites of oatmeal with milk and brown sugar: “when the cats die or we?”

“When you die,” I told him. Because it’s true.

This morning, on the way to school: “If a giant pancake runned over you, would you get dead?”

“No,” I answer, “I doubt it. It would have to be a really giant pancake.”

“But if a car runned over you, you’d get dead, right?”

“Yes, probably. Or at least very hurt.”

“But you would only get dead if it runned over your heart and your head, right? Your heart or your head?”

“If it ran over your heart or your head, yes, you would probably die.”

Small pause.

“Hey, head, dead! That rhymes!”

He says “hi” to himself, over and over, convinced that he can get the attention of that baby on the screen. That baby on the screen, meanwhile, is oblivious to his real-life incarnation, oblivious to the idea that time passes, that eight months or so hence he will look out from the screen to seemingly gaze at, talk to, a slightly more sophisticated version of himself.

But not that much more sophisticated.

It’s the same toddler mindset that lets Isaac relay information as though he is its sole conduit, as though Rachel and I are incapable of hearing each other’s words without him parroting them back to each of us. “Would you like a cup of tea?” Rachel will ask me, and Isaac will turn to me to inquire, “Susan, you like a cup of tea?” “No, thank you,” I’ll say, and he will turn to Rachel, sitting across the table from me, and tell her, “Susan say, ‘No, thank you.’” And then settle himself, satisfied, more firmly into her lap.

Last night I hoisted Isaac onto my hip and opened the mirrored bathroom cabinets so that he could, as per his request, “see two Susans, see two Isaacs” — in fact, a neverending field of Susans and Isaacs — all smiling and gazing and talking at the same time. I’m sure he thinks that each reflection lives its own life, safe in its own house. And that the bathroom mirror is simply a portal, the place we all meet to say hi, see how everyone’s doing in our parallel universes.

He’ll wake up, slowly, slowly, from this version of reality. But it’s an incremental, stuttering, awakening, as if from an early morning, dream-filled sleep. Rowan, for example, is savvy enough to realize that his reflection in the mirror is simply that. But he and I still have long conversations about who is real on television and who is not, and whether God exists and where the dead people are if God doesn’t. Who keeps them? He still thinks that the car drives itself, and not the other way around, that we simply buckle ourselves in and — hey presto! — it shudders to life and takes us exactly where we need to be. His various grandparents have visited over the past month, and each time we painstakingly enumerate whose parents are whose, whose brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles are whose. And then, a few nights ago, he asked me, “And does Rachel have any children?” “Yes,” I told him. “And which ones are they?” he asked. This, only moments after telling Rachel, “You’re my best mom ever.”

In the very first house I ever lived in, my parents decided to wallpaper the downstairs powder room with the covers of old Time magazines. I have no idea why; the decor concept is completely incongruous with my mental image of them, but I’m sure it happened, because I couldn’t make this up: me, age six? Seven? Sitting on the toilet and staring at a cartoon image of Joe Namath to the upper left of the bathroom mirror, practicing my whistling skills and realizing, suddenly, I am me. Just a kid, one person among millions, billions. None of them know me. None of them aware that I have managed to, finally, purse my lips in just the right way so as to emit a clear, high tone.

 The computer screen. The television. The bathroom mirror. Me, age six, seven, thirty-eight, gazing at my own reflection, surrounded — literally — by Time, Time, Time. 

For the greater good of art, I present to you this unflattering photograph of my back to the camera, as an illustration of this morning’s ritual Making of the Challah.

Do you like my apron? It was my grandmother’s: my father’s mother, who, during my childhood, made the journey from the steppes of Russia her apartment in Winnipeg to our house in Toronto twice a year, at Passover and Rosh Hashanah, and cooked her heart out. Traditional stuff: gefilte fish, honey cake, Passover rolls, kugel. She and I had a little bit of a tortured relationship in my late teens, her being all about tradition and me being, well, not so much traditional. But I do like to think that she would be pleased to see me sporting the halushious apron each week as my sons and I make Friday-night challah. Even if we do use a bread maker.

Sometimes, when time and patience are in short supply, I wait until after the kids have left for the babysitter before I get going on the braided bread routine. But this morning (despite the fact that it started, as per the current usual, at 5 AM) everything was going so swimmingly that I decided what the hell. Rowan was so eager to help that he went as far as to get his own self dressed — right down to his Home Depot apron — in order to participate. Then Isaac got in on the action, and demanded his own apron, too: we improvised with a vintage yellow bib with a Mickey Mouse decal painstakingly handstitched onto it. With him perched on the counter and Rowan on the stool, we were ready to go.

Baking with Rowan used to completely unnerve me: all those jerky movements and flying flour and overzealous mixing and the hands in the batter and the way he’d tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap an egg on the counter for a full minute without so much as bruising the shell, only to crush the thing in his fist a moment later. These days, it’s either that I’m more relaxed or he’s more skilled, because he doesn’t faze me the way he used to. Even with Isaac sitting crosslegged on the counter, repeating, “I help!” and poking teaspoons into everything, it was an entirely enjoyable exercise.

And just look at this!

Every week, it’s a struggle not to tear into one of these babies, just warm from the oven, instead of waiting until we’re at the table and the candles are lit. But I don’t, because to do that would mess with tradition, which around here dictates that Friday night dinner consists of challah and roast chicken, yam frites and broccoli. We’ve fallen into the pattern, and now there is no deviating. Not even for, say, the organic wild salmon fillets purchased for last night’s dinner that never got cooked because we were too busy enjoying soccer in the park. At snack time before bed last night, I casually put the question to Rowan as to whether he’d mind if we skipped roast chicken in favour of salmon, and he burst into tears. Don’t fuck with tradition, man. Or the wrath of the bubbies and the four-year-olds will be upon you.

There’s this meme going around Facebook that asks you to write 25 random things about yourself. I swore I wouldn’t do it because I overshare enough here already. But I thought I’d borrow the format to account for last week’s adventures down south.

1. Toddlers’ eyes and sunscreen do not mix. On two separate occasions, Isaac spent a couple of miserable hours weeping in his stroller and wailing, “Eye! Eye!” We decided to go with longsleeved shirts and pants rather than exposed skin.

2. Northwest Airlines routinely overbooks its Thunder Bay–Minneapolis route. Arrive early, or risk being bumped — as we were — to the next day. At least we got vouchers.

3. Despite their name, sandwiches do not taste better with sand in them.

4. Global Positioning Systems rock, and I will never drive in an unknown city without one again.

5. Our rental car was “upgraded” to a white Chrysler 300 — which ensured that we fit in well with the geriatric populations of Boca Raton. On the plus side, given that I normally drive my parents’ hand-me-down Buick, I felt right at home.

6. Isaac can sit, perfectly content, for hours at a time on the top step of a swimming pool, playing with a cup.

7. Ice cream cures almost anything that ails you.

8. Rowan asked, as we watched planes take off for two hours in the Thunder Bay airport, “Where’s the hill?” “What hill?” we asked. “The one the planes go up up up up…” he explained.

9. A disposable diaper can hold a vast amount of chlorinated water.

10. I have never been on a beach holiday where I cared less about getting a suntan.

11. Boca Raton is a strange, strange place, filled with gated communities and strip malls.

12. Shopping for bathing suits tests many of my feminist principles.

13. My dad and his wife were extraordinarily gracious and generous hosts.

14. Let Rowan press the buttons on the elevator, EVERY TIME.

15. Although I worried that we might get bashed, I also couldn’t resist asking the car rental guy if Rachel really had to pay for the privilege of being a second driver on the car. My exact phrasing: “Even if we live in the same household?” Once he confirmed that we were indeed “on the same insurance policy,” he put her on for free. So, folks, at Avis, the codes for “same-sex couple” are “same household” and “same insurance policy.” Stick that in your Pride parade.

16. I like the idea of shopping at Target better than actually shopping at Target.

17. No theme park beats making sand castles on the beach.

18. When on holiday with small children at your parents’ place, it is vital (or at least recommended) to commiserate and commune with your friends who are also on holiday with their small children at their parents’ place. Go to the zoo. Get the grandparents to babysit. Have dinner out. Drink lots of wine. Go to bed at midnight and get up at 5:30 with your toddler.

19. Although I have a mild phobia around butterflies, I enjoyed walking through the butterfly garden at Gumbo Limbo nature preserve.

20. Isaac climbed all six flights of stairs to the top of the observatory deck at Gumbo Limbo, and then insisted on bumping down the same six flights of stairs on his bum, followed by a horde of impatient 11-year-olds.

21. You never know what will end up on your camera when you hand it to a four-year-old.

22. Isaac is now big enough to go on a carousel horse on the merry-go-round, just like his brother.

23. The best thing about parenting principles is letting so many of them go while on holiday.

24. Isaac literally fell asleep as our return flight to Minneapolis taxied to the gate, after three and a half hours of ridiculous in-flight energy.

25. On our flight home to Thunder Bay, Northwest offered us $400 each in vouchers and hotel accommodations for the night if we would volunteer to fly out the next day. We seriously considered it, but decided we were too exhausted. Both kids slept the entire flight home.

Hey! An entire blog entry, and no need to worry about narrative cohesion. Cool.

So, this guy gets on this train, and he’s settling in with his magazine, when the old man across the aisle starts complaining: “Oy, am I thirsty. Oy, am I thirsty!”

Every 20 or 30 seconds, just as the guy manages to read a couple of sentences, it’s the same thing: “Oy, am I thirsty!”

This goes on for about 20 minutes, with the old man yelling and the guy getting progressively more annoyed, until finally he gets up, walks through three cars to the dining car, gets a huge glass of ice water, carries it back to his car, and hands it to the old man. Who thanks him profusely and drinks the water.

And all is quiet.

And then, just as the guy is really getting into his magazine article, the old man sighs. “Oy, was I thirsty!”

Sometimes, Rowan is kind of like that

I’m thinking in particular of this thing that happened, oh, last May, when we woke him up at 4 a.m. because he and Rachel were catching a 6 a.m. flight to Vancouver, via Winnipeg. We thought she’d just carry him to the waiting taxi and that he would sleep through the first part of the trip.

We were wrong. He threw a huge fit, crying and flailing and going on and on about how he didn’t want to get in a taxi, that he just wanted to go to sleep, in his own bed, and why why why did we wake him up? He didn’t want to go to Vancouver, he didn’t want anything, and no.

Rachel managed to shove him in the cab and eventually get him on the airplane, but he wasn’t really over it until somewhere over the Prairies. And even now, he’s not really over it. Eight months later, we’ll be going about some routine part of the day when will say, “Remember that time you woke me up?”

How could we forget?

I mention this only because next week we are going to Florida — no snowsuits for an entire week! I swear, even if there is a freak blizzard in Florida I will not put snowsuits on those boys — and our return flight leaves at 6:30 a.m.

So, if, sometime next Saturday, very early in the morning, you hear screaming from somewhere in the southern United States, don’t worry. We’ll have it under control.

Rowan takes me by both hands and leads me to the couch, where we sit, side by side. He looks at me solemnly, earnestly. Still holding my hands, he gazes deep into my eyes and says, “Okay, Umom, now we’re going to talk about when your mom died.”

And so we go through the story, again: how my mom was sick, very sick, with a disease called cancer. Not sick like bronchitis or an ear infection or a cold, where you get better. A different kind of sick that she couldn’t get better from. And that she was very tired of being so sick. So all her family came to visit her and they got to see her and tell her how much they loved her. And then she closed her eyes and she died.

“And then what happened?”

And then lots of people came to say goodbye to her and tell us, her family, how much they loved her and how wonderful she was.

“And you were sad?”

Yes, I say. I was very sad.

And then I tell Rowan how he and my mother never met, but that he was just a tiny baby inside my belly when she died, and that she was so happy to know that he was going to be born. Which he was, three days after what would have been her 60th birthday. And that the reason his name starts with R is because her name did, too.

“You miss your mom?”

Yes, I say. I miss my mom. I wish that she could have met you and Isaac. She would have loved you so much.

I tell the whole story from the neck up, a technique I’ve practiced for getting through these conversations. It helps if I don’t have to look at Rowan — or, God forbid, Rachel — directly in the eyes the entire time but can focus instead on some spot in the distance just above his head or, if necessary, his eyebrows. It helps that the story is of necessity simplified.

Because if I got into the details, if I let the telling sink down to heart level, things might get a bit overwhelming. Not just for a four-year-old who is just beginning to wrestle with the concept of death and its finality, but for his mothers, who still struggle with the fact that Bubbie Ruthi is never coming back, no matter how good we are or how long we wait. I can’t yet tell Rowan that the death of my mother remains my life’s biggest heartbreak, that I have to refrain from making Faustian bargains in my head about what I’d trade to have her back, to be able to call her to report each milestone, to tell her what we’re making for dinner.

I don’t mention that she had cancer three times and that the first time she got sick I was nine years old. I don’t tell him that her funeral was standing-room only. I don’t say that the reason her entire family came to see her was that Rachel and I were supposed to be married that morning — a hastily thrown-together ceremony meant to outrun the course of her disease. And that she must have known, because she was that classy, that the two events — a wedding and a funeral — needed more than a day’s space apart. I don’t say that, in fact, she died and then I closed her eyes. I just say that I miss her. And that I was very sad.

And then Rowan pats my knees, rises from the couch, walks over to Rachel, sitting on a black leather chair, squeezes in beside her, and takes her two hands in his. “Okay, This Mom,” he says. “Now we’re going to talk about when your dad died.”

He’s been doing this often in the last month or two. And we tell him our stories. And it all percolates, until a few nights ago, when, sitting in a black leather chair, he said, seemingly out of the blue, “What if you die?”

And I said the only thing I felt I could say in that moment: “I won’t.”

Of course, we’ve had conversations since then, conversations about how everybody dies one day, but that most people die when they’re very, very old. About how Rachel and I won’t die until we’re very, very old and Rowan and Isaac are old enough to take care of themselves. About how if anything ever happened to me and to Rachel — which it won’t, but just in case — that we know who will take good care of him and of Isaac, where they would live, what they would eat.

I can’t guarantee that I’ll keep my promise. But I don’t think Rowan is old enough yet to handle the thought of my death, or of Rachel’s, as a conditional maybe.

And I don’t think either of us can handle, at least not yet, telling the full story.