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We try a slide, but Seth is a bit too young to handle it on his own and he squirms ferociously when I try to place him at the top. Instead, he sits on the ground near the bottom and begins digging happily in the sand and pebbles – a new experience for him. I sit down and do the same and for a moment am returned to my childhood days of backyard sandcastles besieged by Matchbox cars and armymen. I sift the sand through my fingers nostalgically, and then reach up to scratch my itchy nose. The stench of cigarette butts and cat feces is overwhelming. I jump to my feet, grab Seth and quickly brush off his fingers, which were surely headed for his mouth. Figuring that the swings would keep Seth from digging in this neighborhood catbox, I head him in that direction. A mother and her son had arrived and were swinging on one of the swings. I put Seth in another and wonder what to say, nervous as a person on the first day of a new job – and a minority to boot. “Ready, Seth?” I ask, rhetorically. “Here we go.” “Oh, how old is he?” asks the mother, breaking the ice with the parent’s equivalent of “What’s your major?” “He’s going on a year-and-a-half . . . uh, let’s see. He just turned sixteen months, I guess.” I correct my reply into that new-parent jargon I’ve been learning from my wife, which defines children’s ages in increments of months, weeks, and even days, depending on the need. Parents seem to use this terminology for purposes of comparison, tending to be more vague if their child hasn’t reached the same plateau as its peer of the moment. “How old is your boy?” “Oh, he’s a little over eighteen months,” she says. “Is yours talking yet?” I quickly calculate her kid’s age into about a year-and-a-half in people years. It makes me feel somewhat relieved to be welcomed into this relatively exclusive club of mothers and children, but at the same time, realizing that this woman is trying to lowball her son’s age, I have an uneasy feeling where this conversation is going. “Yeah, Seth is starting to say a lot of words,” I reply, cautiously. “My wife and I really get a kick out of it.” “Really? Well, my Dustin has been talking for months,” she says. “We were surprised how fast he picks things up. He talks all the time.” I glance at Dustin, who is strangely silent. One of the neighborhood cats must have his tongue. He does take a keen interest in Seth, however, who is obliviously and deliriously enjoying his ride on the swing. “It’s been quite nice,” she continues. “From very early on, we’ve always been able to understand what Dustin wanted. His older brother was the same way.” “That’s nice,” I say to her, but I really want to tell her that Seth was working with isosceles triangles in the womb – we knew because we could see him trace them on his mother’s belly. Instead, I change the subject, fishing for some information for future reference. “Do you come here often?” “Oh, yes – Dustin loves it here,” she says, just as Dustin the Articulate prepares to utter his first sound. His keen eye on Seth had become increasingly jaundiced as time went on and suddenly, in response to Seth’s laughter, Dustin makes a noise that is half whine and half whimper. “It’s kind of interesting,” his mother immediately interjects. “Every time Dustin comes here, he wants to swing on all the swings. I’m not sure exactly why, but we can’t go until he has swung on them all.” “Hmmm,” is all I can respond, thinking it could be interesting only to a mother and perhaps to the psychoanalyst who tries to unravel Dustin’s compulsive behavior someday. Seth and I say goodbye to the Great Communicator and his mother, and leave the play area altogether, out of fear of what other territory Dustin might have to mark. We wander over to the nearby high school, where some teenagers are practicing on the football field and tennis courts. As I watch the football players butting heads, knocking each other back and forth to acquire a piece of green real estate, I realize that I don’t miss the futile competition of the office place. Every week, we would burn ourselves out putting out a new issue of our newspaper, and nothing earth-shattering ever came from it. Only a handful of letters would trickle in, reminding us that we moved a few readers in our audience. Not enough, I think, to justify having to reacquaint myself with my family at the end of each week. I glance over at the tennis courts and see a group of high-school girls practicing, and I realize that adult company might come at a premium out here in the suburbs. Suddenly, I miss the busy world of downtown Minneapolis, alive with my working contemporaries. Seeing and being seen is going to be a whole new ballgame in the suburbs. “Isn’t he cute?” Instinctively, I straighten my posture and look to see which of the tennis players had noticed me. Instead, I see three of the girls giggling and cooing at Seth as he tries to grab a fluorescent green tennis ball through the chain- link fence. At that moment, I know that I am no longer the focal point of my own daily drama. I am in Seth’s world now – he is the star, and I am basically hired help. Here, the competitions are his to win and the spoils his to earn. In the wider world, nothing has really changed – but for me, from here on everything is going to be different. |