Seven years old

Holden,

On your seventh birthday, when I picked you up from your dad’s house, as you were buckling yourself in, I said: “In celebration of your birthday, what song would you like to hear?”

“Any song?” you asked. You already had me trapped and I didn’t even know it. “Any song,” I said.

You wanted to hear the song on the mixed CD in my car that you heard part of once (before I realized what was happening) but that I’ve refused to let you hear since. You wanted to hear the song that is full of words you know you are not supposed to say, because they are grown-up words. It is the explicit version of this song, by Mystikal and Mark Ronson:

Did you know they don’t give out prizes for momming? Plus, I do actually believe it’s important to understand the versatility and breadth of our language, even bad language. So, for your seventh birthday, I let you hear that song. Just once. (And yes, you did get a lecture on how none of those were words you needed to use, especially at school. You seemed to understand your solemn responsibility.) You sat in the back seat, eyes open wide, wheels turning in your head, trying to decipher — and memorize — what your ears were hearing.

 

That’s what you do with songs. You listen hard — sometimes you want a song to be repeated five times — and you deposit the melodies and beats into your memory. Then you pull from them to make your own tunes. You put on little concerts at home or in the car, especially on the way home from baseball games. You use your whole head to make music: Your teeth click, your tongue clacks, your lips poonch, your throat hums and mrrrrrs. It’s a pop symphony inside your mouth. You demand everyone’s attention and sometimes you get annoyed if we try to contribute to the tune. Sometimes you appreciate the collaboration. You are a bit of a mercurial composer.

Lately you’ve been super into Lana Del Rey (you even sighed heavily and declared that you loved her and wanted to smooch her while we were driving to school and listening to her) and Beck. You still love Florence and the Machine. You and Richard get down with some blues music, and he has taught you how to make a stanky blues guitar face. Here’s yours:

It’s been a wild year, sweet man. Yes, I still call you “sweet man” sometimes, because you really are sweet (despite how often you deliberately fart on me). I also call you dude, bro, and dudebro. I didn’t start that; you came home one day calling Richard and me dudes and bros so we have just picked up your dialect. At some point this year, you time-warped past childhood and went straight to teendom in so many ways.

You had said for the six months leading up to your birthday that you wished you were seven years old. Seven-year-olds, you said, didn’t have to be told what to do. They also never do anything wrong, you said. In fact, everywhere we went, when people asked you your age, you lied and told them seven instead of six. You’d always eye me while feeding people this white lie like I was a willing co-conspirator. And then you’d usually add another layer of BS and tell them your name was Carson. Or Carter. (You have informed me that you don’t like your name too much so you pick a new one when we travel.)

You’re a teen in a lot of ways but you still like it when I sing you to sleep. “You sure you want me to keep doing this? You can tell me when you think you’ve outgrown songs,” I said one night. “I’ll never outgrow prayers and songs!” you said, and conked out. I hope you’re right.

Your tastes have certainly come into bloom this year. For a long time you gave zero thought to clothes, except maybe for your cool light-up shoes. But this year, once you started at your new school (more on that in a minute), that completely changed. You have to wear standard school attire every day (collared, solid-color shirts with khakis or navy slacks/shorts), but some of the boys in your class apparently express their individuality through their long socks. You started wearing your baseball socks to school — sometimes layering two colors on top of each other — and now that has totally become The Thing. Your pursuit of fashion has made the transition to cooler weather challenging. You told me the other day, when I insisted that you wear pants instead of shorts, that, “I don’t have pants in my life!” While I sympathize with your plight because I honestly feel similarly about myself, I can’t in good conscience send you to school in shorts when it’s cold no matter how long your socks are.

You also refuse to wear long sleeves. We’ve been fighting a two-week battle over this issue and I’m afeared neither side is ready to back down. It’s going to be a long winter.

So, about that new school. You graduated kindergarten at Dan Mills in May. You had a pretty good year, although you were kind of a class clown who cracked everybody up and gave the teacher a run for her money. The big headline from your kindergarten year is that you became quite the reader! Your dad and I have been reading to you since you were a tiny baby, and as soon as you could, you took the baton and ran with it. You finished kindergarten ahead of the expected reading level for your age.

We were totally surprised when we got word on the second or so day of first grade that you had lotteried into a school we’d been trying to get into for two years. It’s one of the best elementary schools in the state, and it’s a Spanish immersion school. Your dad and I put our heads together to figure out if we could make it work, and we went for it. I was so worried it would be a hard transition for you, but you seem to be doing great.

This new school is keeping your humming little brain quite occupied. You’ve learned so much, and your Spanish vocabulary is growing quickly. Your reading abilities are zooming, and you’ve got a penchant for math (which is done in Spanish and which I have to use Google Translate for when I help you with your homework). You love social studies and come home every day talking about what you’ve learned about the world.

A few months ago I sang the Presidents’ Song to you — this tune we learned in fifth grade. Essentially it’s Yankee Doodle Dandy but the lyrics are the last names of the presidents in chronological order. I also sang the State Song, which is another tune we learned in fifth grade, where we recite all the states in alphabetical order. You asked me to sing those songs again and again to you. You got it in your head that you wanted to learn these bits of trivia too, and flash forward to a few weeks ago, when you got into the car after school and you were reciting the presidents in order — first names and last names. Dudebro, I can’t even do that. You said your dad had gotten you a chapter book about presidents and you’d gone to town learning the first names and pairing them with the last names you’d committed to memory thanks to the song. I was — I am — totally blown away by this. It’s like you saw my party trick and said, “Hold my juice box.”

You saw me playing Monument Valley a few months ago and wanted to try it out. It’s a geometric puzzle game that’s totally beautiful and surreal. At first you were bewildered by it but you caught on quickly. You’ve started building Monument Valley-type obstacle courses with bath toys that you made for me. You pretty much never let me win but I’m fine with that.

There is a story line in Monument Valley 2 where the little girl and her mother have to go on separate journeys. The child gets on a boat and sails away from her mother. You were watching me play this game one night, and you saw this storyline unfold. Before you even really understood what was going on, you had welled up with big tears. You wanted to know why the child would leave the mother. You couldn’t believe it. Why did they separate? How would they reunite? I assured you they would meet up in the end. That they both had to go on their own journey alone, to learn important things. You were wounded by the thought of this. It didn’t sit right with you until you saw the scene where they reunited. But even then, I think it spooked you to think about being alone.

Last year, right before your birthday, my grandmother died. I took you to the visitation so you could pay your respects and tell her goodbye. Then, of course, in December, we lost Etta and Charlie. You helped bury Etta and asked a lot of questions about death then and when Grandmaw died. We’ve tried to be honest with you about death, so that you can come to terms with life and all that we don’t know about what comes after it. Or before. You’re curious but you also tend to be matter-of-fact about these things. A few times you’ve wondered what would happen if me and Richard and your dad and Cheryl all died at the same time. I know you don’t like the thought of being all alone and my heart breaks at the notion of you being frightened by that possibility. The best thing I can tell you about that is that you are so loved by so many, that you will never be alone.

We added a family member this year. Back in December, when Etta and Charlie got sick and died, we brought Sandy into our house. The two of you have been best friends. We brought you to the Humane Association so you could meet her and so we could make sure she could hang with your energy level. Turns out you guys are basically soul mates. Your energy levels are about the same and she possesses exceptional patience and floppiness, which you take full advantage of. I’m really happy that the two of you are going to get to grow up together.

It feels like the year goes so quickly and you go through so many phases that it’s getting harder and harder to keep up.

What else?

You got glasses for your astigmatism. You’ve already destroyed one pair and have moved onto a second since May. You’re hard on them. You’re working on remembering to keep up with them. I totally understand how much of a drag it is, but you’ll get more used to it.

You’re obsessed with flossing. Not the dental hygiene routine. The dance. You do it constantly. Even when you’re out on the baseball field. It’s so weird to see you and a group of friends do it at the same time. Buncha weirdos.

You’re a snaggle tooth! You had both your front teeth and then suddenly in late summer, you didn’t. I don’t know the full story but I think your front teeth got knocked loose (or looser) when your dad accidentally whacked you while you guys were playing.

You’re a storyteller. You like to draw action-packed scenes of people fighting, or people in a band rocking out, or sharks coming up to chomp a boat, or of robots robotting. You don’t care for coloring. You want to make the line drawings, speech bubbles, and action lines. You sometimes like to make “books” for me out of a folded sheet of paper. On the back you always include a reader survey: “Did you like this book? yes or no.” It’s always yes, silly. You wrote a great story about Sandy one day that we have given primo real estate on the fridge.

You’re getting braver around water. You had a real breakthrough at the beach, and we had some choice slip-n-slide moments this summer. And then when we went to Chattanooga a few weeks ago, you were tooling around the shallow end of the hotel pool by yourself with no floaties or anything. Nicely done. We need to keep up the momentum.

You like to be scared but not too scared. You were way into helping decorate for Halloween this year. Every time I peeked outside you were moving our little graves or bones around (even when I had told you to quit it). But you wouldn’t pee in the bathroom if there was a ghost hanging on the door. Sometimes you’ll ask me to pretend to be a zombie but as soon as I do you get freaked out. But then you ask me to do it again. I spooked you with a clown mask and then you turned around and tried to spook me. That’s sportsmanship, son!

You say the funniest stuff. I’ve got to do a better job of capturing the random stuff you say, but here’s one I want to save for posterity: We had just explained what “Rocktober” means to you and you said, “What about COCKTOBER, for people who like cockroaches?!” Ha.

You won’t use silverware. We have threatened and offered bribes. You don’t/can’t care.

You’re quite the little baseballer. You just finished up another season at second base. You have grown into a good hitter and a pretty decent fielder, although sometimes you don’t seem to be very motivated to chase the ball if it goes more than a couple of feet away from where you’re standing. That’s okay. You’ll get it.

Your baseline is bored and hungry. I knew this day would come. I wasn’t prepared for it to happen so fast. The literal second you stop doing something or stop eating, you announce that you are so bored and so hungry. I assume this will be the case for at least the next ten years.

It’s been a wild and challenging year in so many ways. You’re growing up so quickly and you have so many interests and talents. I am really excited to see you continue to shape who you are as you get older. Your imagination is wide open and I love, love, love that about you.

Love,
Mom