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My internet addiction has spawned Henry’s television addiction. When Medium and Large are off at school, it is oftentimes too easy to start my morning with a cup of joe, Facebook, and the New York Times online.
I closed the laptop. “I’m going upstairs to fold laundry, Henry. When this show is over, please turn off the TV, come upstairs and get dressed.” His drool output was low; he must have heard me. Guilt battered my heart. “I love you,” I said.
Unable to tear his eyes away from PBS’ Dinosaur Train, he mumbled, “I wuv you, too.”
At what age do the adorable -isms become less adorable? I worry that he’ll be twenty years old saying things like, “I want you to meet my famiwy. They’re jutht gonna wuv you.”
“Henry, say ‘love’.”
He removed the thumb plugging his mouth. “Wuv.”
“Not ‘wuv,’ love.” I knelt in front of the armchair in which he was sprawled. “Look at my tongue. I put it on the roof of my mouth–behind my teeth–and say l-l-l-ove.”
Our faces were inches apart. His dark brown eyes searched mine. He was earnest. “I wuv you, I wuv you, I wuv you, Mommy.”
There is no other response to an expression of adoration like that, except: “I love you too, buddy.”
Bawbawa Walters did alright for herself.
We spent the weekend in Boston with the kids—packing in the memories like sardines in a can. The Children’s Museum. The Barking Crab. Nantasket Beach. The Red Parrot. U2 at Gillette Stadium (this last was only for Liam and Brendan). We stopped fifty miles from home to return the borrowed stroller to my in-laws and to pick up our other car. I offered to drive the sedan in a selfish ploy for an hour of peace and quiet.
“Anyone coming with?” I called, hurling myself from the still moving vehicle. “No? See you at home!”
I was opening the car’s door when I heard the van pull in behind me. It had been too good to be true.
“Medium and Large are coming with you,” my husband announced, gripping the steering wheel with one hand and his Blackberry with the other. He continued perusing his email inbox and didn’t notice the glare I gave him.
“Are you kidding?”
“Nope. They want to be with you.”
I am almost never alone. This is one of the hard truths I have faced while morphing from Woman-With-A-Career to OINK. I am constantly accompanied by, or in the company of, others. Usually very small others. Don’t get me wrong. I’m a people person. I like people and I like to believe that they like me. But there are times when I pause to think longingly about closing the door to my office and sending the calls to voicemail; about the rental cars where I listened to whatever caught my fancy on the radio; about the airports where I sat blanketed in anonymity—just a speck in the endlessly amusing spectacle of humanity.
In those spaces, no little voices were ordering me to turn up the volume on “Crazy Frog,” whining about needing a snack ten minutes after we finished breakfast, sobbing that someone had poked them. And while I had other voices in my head—the ones reminding me to finish this proposal or that brief, nagging me to return phone calls and emails, chastising me for being the parent who was always late picking up her kids from daycare—they were all my own.
I miss my own company.
My husband interrupted my reverie. “Liam didn’t want you to be lonely.” The side of the van slid open and Liam jumped out, followed closely by his sister. In spite of myself, I was touched by my son’s thoughtfulness. He gave me an awkward, one-armed hug and ducked his head. He and Nora scurried off.
“Well, that was sweet of them.” I tried to sound positive.
My husband chuckled. “Nora is only coming with you because she wants to be with Liam. When Liam worried you’d be lonely, she told us, ‘Mommy’s not lonely–she’s fine! Liam, you stay with me!’”
Either she knows me better than I realize or she is more like me than I know.
I love my kids, but what I need is a Fortress of Solitude.
I was more than irritated when I discovered another scribbled-upon wall. Liam was ensconced safely at camp; Nora has never drawn on anything but paper. That left but one suspect.
“Henry! Please come in here!”
“What’s going on?” asked my husband, wandering in from the kitchen. I said nothing. He followed my gaze to the wall and then snorted in disbelief.
“I’m gonna kill him,” I whispered.
Henry bounced into the room. He looked from me to the wall to Brendan. “Nah-uh, Mommy.” He smiled, confident in his knowledge that I would never, could never, hurt him. “’Cuz of God,” he said solemnly.
I turned away to smother a disrespectful smirk. Fixing my frown, I leaned over him. “Do you know why Mommy is not happy?”
“’Cuz you uthin’ dat voice.”
Sighing, I pointed to the wall.
“Oh!” He jumped in front of his latest masterpiece with his arms extended—trying to block my view. “Oh, dat! Thorry, Mommy.”
I explained to Henry why it was not okay to write on walls. I reminded him that we had had this conversation before and firmly informed him that I did not want to have it again.
He looked down at the floor and shuffled his feet. He was obviously feeling guilty. Just as my attitude started to soften, a paradigm shift. His eyes blazed with the Greatness of his idea. “It not me! Piggy did it!” He thrust the purported offender forward.
I was at a loss. This was a new one.
“Well…,” I stalled, casting around for the right response. Was I going to have to lecture him about lying? Was this the time to analyze the differences between what is real vs. pretending something is real? “Well…,” and then it came to me. “YOU [and I prodded his chest for emphasis] are responsible for Piggy. You know that you are not allowed to write on the wall. And SO, you should not let Piggy write on the wall either.” I paused, pleased with myself for having out-argued a three-year-old. “Now, you and Piggy need to clean up your mess.”
He nodded at me. “OK, Mommy.”
Later, I was gulping a glass of wine and reviewing the tapes inside my head. Even though Henry had tried to blame his alter-ego, ultimately, he had admitted his misconduct, expressed remorse, and received an appropriate consequence. He was learning to accept personal responsibility.
Brendan touched my shoulder. “Honey? Did you happen to notice the ‘pictures’ Henry drew on the tan chair?”
She’s only 75 feet away from me but I know that she has gone further. Much further.
She’s with a group of kids we met just a few days ago. This amalgamation of youth is camp magic: 5 + 2 + 3 + 1 = 11 children, ages 3 to 12; separate clusters now established as a pack. I hear her voice lifting above the indistinguishable murmur of sopranos and altos. They are gathering sticks to roast marshmallows. Her words are an incomprehensible string, but her timbre is unmistakeable. She sounds thrilled.
The screened porch is my observation deck. I trust that I am unseen in the shadows of the gloaming. She is holding hands with two girls, a forever friend and one newly minted. They are skipping together. Their giggles tinkle on the breeze.
She is delighted by this spoonful of independence.
I am struck with melancholy for the baby she was. She who clung to my breast in what I grimly referred to as my “fourth trimester,” who flatly refused to acknowledge strangers’ salutations even when prompted by a parent, whose outraged screams reverberated in my head long after I had departed from her daycare.
She’s growing up. She’ll need me less in some ways, more in others. My heart swells and minutes pass as I stand motionless.
I endeavor to prevent Piggy from joining us on family excursions but my efforts are for naught as Henry tries equally hard to keep Piggy with him at all times.
Piggy is Henry’s first great love. 
When he presses her snout to his nose and gazes adoringly into her black eyes, the rest of the world stops and it is only them — a pig and her boy.
When Henry is hurt, he wants Piggy’s comfort. When he is elated, Piggy helps him celebrate. When he is tired, only Piggy’s snuggles suffice.
And just the other day, we lost her. In a department store.
We were almost at our vehicle when I looked down and realized that Piggy was missing. I stopped dead in my tracks. “Henry, where’s Pig?”
He stared at the cement sidewalk as though she might materialize. Shrugging his shoulders, he mumbled, “I dunno.”
I was disturbed by his blasé reaction. His one-and-only Piggy might never be seen again and his response was to shrug?
Henry’s attitude was casual, at first. But when the porcine puff was nowhere to be found, he began to search the store in earnest. “Mommy! What if we don’ find her?”
Moments later, his worried tone turned gleeful: “Dere she ith! Thee, Mommy, I find her!” He buried his face in her body and cooed.
Driving home, a flash of pink caught my eye. Piggy was hanging out the window; her red and purple ears flapped wildly in the breeze. I yelled for Henry to bring Piggy inside the van.
“But she’th hot!” he protested. “She wathn’t thcared! She liketh it!”
My voice shook with exasperation. “And what if you dropped her? You should be keeping her safe. Let’s not lose her twice in one day!”
Why are we careless with the ones we love?
Piggy may know, but she isn’t telling.
OINKtales 
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