Yellow

We are in bed.

It is morning.

Gabriel opens one very grown-up-looking eye and he is still latched onto my nipple. Yes, I know he is two years and eight months, but...in Japan kids lead the weaning. We are not Japanese, but we both like it. His Ghanaian dad thinks it is way too village that we still breastfeed, but he doesn't live here. And opiates get released in our bloodstreams upon suckling, and without that we'd be too stressed out to enjoy our everyday life, which we do enjoy a lot. Like when we jump in puddles and let disgusting earthworms squirm all over the palms of our hands after the rains.

Gabriel says to me, "Yellow."

He opens the other eye and grins at me knowingly.

"Yellow?" I ask.

"You. You are yellow, Mommy."

"Oh," I say, noting my sallow skin. It hasn't stopped raining in the Bay Area for weeks.

"And you, Gabriel? What are you?"

"I am red."

"And your daddy?"

"Buh-lack. Daddy is black."

Gabriel, 8 months -- December 2003

more on this...

Rain

"Mommy!" exclaims Gabriel.

"Yes?" I say.

"It's raining and WE DON'T CARE!"

Water drips down the tip of his nose and collects in his curls.

He stands on our back deck, waving his arms and legs, as sheets of rain fall from the sky. Thunder roars.

I stand inside.

The other day, we had a play date at the San Francisco Zoo. As we crossed the Bay Bridge, the sunny sky turned into grey, and a light drizzle fell. My cellphone rang.

The play date had been moved to someone's house instead of the zoo, since it was raining.

"Don't worry," I told Gabriel. "We'll go to the zoo later today. It's raining. Some people care if it rains, but we don't care!"

He looks like he's about to say something, but just nods his head.

We politely exit from the play date just an hour before the zoo closes. It is still drizzling.

"Gabriel," I say.

"What Mommy?"

"Let's go to the zoo really quick!"

It is late in the day so we get in free. Most of the animals have already been put away in cages and buildings. But we can peek inside the tall giraffe house and watch giraffes up close, eating leaves from a high loft. And the penguins are still out in their pond, diving under cool water. A popcorn booth is nearly closed, but we get a small bag before the doors shut. A regal peacock begins to follow us in a slow waddle, then runs after us. We realize it is after our popcorn, so we sprinkle a few pieces behind us, before we leave, that rainy evening.

Train

Gabriel and I are surfing the Internet.

He sits on my lap.

We're on the Thomas the Tank Engine site. We are looking at a page that lists the names of all the different vehicles that are part of the Thomas cohort. We click on George, a steamroller with a face vaguely like a North Jersey gangster. Mistaking George for a train car (well, it’s hard to tell in two dimensions, and anyway, the steamroller category is not set up yet), Gabriel’s face lights up.

“Mommy, George is a train and a monkey!”

I’ve often wondered about the ubiquitousness of train mania in preschool boys in the U.S. It seemed like a switch turned on in Gabriel sometime after he turned two, and suddenly he was spending hours hunched on the floor, painstakingly pulling a train made up of Thomas the Tank Engine cars across the hardwood floor. And watching Thomas videos. And playing Thomas matching games online. And yelling “Choo choo! Woo woo!” when hearing a train whistle at night. And what a treat riding the BART to San Francisco is.

Is this obsession the same worldwide? What are San boys on the edge of the Kalahari Desert obsessed with when they turn two? How about Balinese boys sitting on their mothers’ laps during wayang kulit (shadow puppet) performances that retell tales of the Ramayana? Do they have a white monkey obsession? Or do they crave aerial chariots like the one in which Sita was rescued? Or is their desire for a more modern form of transport, such as the Honda Astreas their parents ride through the mud paths that split the rice paddies?

A recent New York Times article discusses a scientific study that shows that human toddlers imitate more than chimps do. For example, if there is a treat inside a latched box, human children, even when already knowing how to procure the treat in a direct manner, would instead follow of set of elaborate steps (such as tapping on the top of the box) in imitation of adults. Chimps would take direct steps needed to procure the treat despite the over-elaborate steps shown them. This study raises intriguing questions: is it imitation which makes us human? Though imitation seems like such a rote, uncreative way of learning, it may very well be our skill in imitating other humans that allows religion, technology, and uniquely hominid forms of culture. For better or worse, we pick up what’s in the culture around us, whether that’s praying to an elephant god, learning to use a computer mouse, or fetishizing human forms of transportation.

Choo choo, woo woo!

Not Old

We are driving. I just picked up Gabriel from his father's place. We are going to a holiday party at Gabriel's preschool. Gabriel is wearing new Sesame Street sneakers his father bought him, with red and green and yellow flashing lights.

"Mommy," says Gabriel, in the dark car.

"Yes," I say, turning the corner.

"I am Nicky the dog."

"Oh?" I say.

"Yes, I have curly hair like Nicky the dog. But I am not old like Nicky."

I didn't quite hear. "You are...?"

"I am new," says Gabriel.

Breathe

The other evening Gabriel kicked and screamed on our hardwood floor, frustrated because his Thomas the Tank underpants had gotten twisted when he tried to put them on.

I tried speakly in a gentle, cajoling voice to calm him.

I tried reasoning with him.

I held up the underpants.

You can try to put them on again, baby.

Nothing worked.

Apparently I didn't understand the gravity of the situation.

Gabriel kicked and kicked, and screamed, and screamed.

Finally, in exasperation, I said, "Gabriel, breathe! Just breathe if you're frustrated!" and I took a deep breath, showing him what I meant.

Suddenly, the room quieted. I heard a rasping breath as he filled his little lungs with air.

"I breathed, Mommy!"

I was amazed. Recently, I have been trying to meditate as a way to reduce stress, imagining a lotus flower opening with the in-breath, and closing with the out-breath. But I never imagined that at two, a kid could start focusing on his breath to reduce anxiety. The child-mind of Zen held a whole new meaning.

The next morning, I drove Gabriel to his daycare. It had taken two hours just to get out of the house. I was late to work, and stressed out. I opened the car door and unbuckled Gabriel from his car seat, and he climbed out into the parking lot. Then I opened the front door and he grabbed a plastic bag that his lunch was in and immediately dumped out a cheese stick, an orange, and a hummus sandwich.

"Rrrrghhh!" I growled.

"Mommy," said Gabriel, looking at me as if I were a child.

"You have to breathe!"

Gabriel and Michael Rey

Great Grandmoms

Yesterday when I was putting Gabriel's pants on, he turned to me, face scrunched up, and started counting on the fingers of his right hand.

"I have four grandmoms and grandpops," he announced.

His father's father died years ago, so I was about to correct him.

Then Gabriel, while counting his fingers, said: "Grandmom Patience, Grandmom Honey, Grandpop Larry, and Great-Grandmom Esther!"

Great-Grandmom Esther was my grandmom. She died when I was twenty-six, but lived five blocks away from me in New Jersey. She used to bake chocolate cupcakes for us, and she came to the U.S. in the early 1900's from a village in Hungary called Munkach. I was strangely touched by Gabriel mentioning her, like she continued to exist in Berkeley in 2005 and now had a presence in Gabriel's brain, part of his biology and spirit.

Then I remembered Gabriel has another great-grandmother who is still alive. She lives in the Volta Region of Ghana in a small village called Kadjebei. She is somewhere in her eighties. We haven't met her yet.

He is not Gabriel

His full name is Gabriel Enam Pernell. His dad, Jahsway, forgot he had nixed the name Gabriel in about month six and when I brought it up again at month eight, liked it. Enam was selected from the few male Ewe tribal names that Jahsway's brother Richard would come up with, but I liked it since it started with an E like my grandfather Edward, and it meant "gift from God." I don't really believe in God, but I liked the name Enam. Note that if the letters are rearranged, Enam is name. I pushed for Enam to be the first name, but Jahsway wanted an American-sounding first name. I figured that was okay, Gabriel could always rearrange later if he wanted.

And then he is also Kofi, because he was born on Friday. I didn't put that down on the birth certificate, but to the Ghanaians, he is Kofi. When I was first in Ghana, I thought that it was a nice gesture of respect that so many Ghanaian men were named after Kofi Annan, but then I realized that all males born on Friday are Kofi.

Pernell is a made-up name. It comes from the boxer Pernell Whittaker. His original last name is Azizaglo, but Jahsway took on the name of a fighter.

I love the sound of the African name Azizaglo, it zings off my tongue, much more than the soft plod of the British-originated-boxer-name, but that was the father's chosen name so we gave it to Gabriel. I try to stealthily introduce Azizaglo once in awhile. And from time to time mention the Russian name Karasic which is my father's surname, and was given to his Jewish family generations ago by the Tsar for the men's battlefield bravery. For all their courage, they got a name that is a diminutive form of a kind of carp. I know that's not Gabriel's name, but I want him to be familar with it.

He also has two Hebrew names, after my grandfathers' Hebrew names, Yitzhak and Reuven. So sometimes I can't help but call him Kofi Gabriel Enam Yitzhak Reuven Karasic Azizaglo Pernell.

Nicky the Apricot Poodle

Mommy: "So, Gabriel, when I was a kid I had this dog with red curly hair and he even slept in my bed!"

Gabriel: "Where is it?"

Mommy: "Well, he got old. Because he got old, he died."

Pause. Look of deep concentration.

Gabriel: "But...you're not dead."

Samosa

This morning, I heated up a samosa from Vik's and tore off a piece for Gabriel. He held it in his hand, examined it, and then tasted it. It was quite spicy, but he ate the whole piece.

"Mommy, is this Ghanaian food?" he asked.

I am not Gabriel

"I am not Gabriel," announces Gabriel, age two-and-a-half.

I am driving.

"Who are you?" I say to my son, as I steer the car through Berkeley traffic, narrowly missing a truck as I crane my neck toward the back seat.

Pause. Face scrunches up in concentration. Face suddenly brightens.

"I am the Mommy and you are the Gabriel."

We play that for awhile, and so he is driving the car and I am sitting in his carseat, and then I am Greta the dachshund and he is Pretzel the long dog, and he rescues me from a hole, and then he is Katy the kangaroo and I am Freddy the joey, and then we are stegasauruses and crocodiles and giraffes riding a pterodactyl to the moon.

Or going to the petting farm in Tilden Park. Or eating grass-fed beef tacos at Tacubaya. Or playing Thomas trains in the El Cerrito Barnes & Noble at 10 PM.

Bedtime? What bedtime?