MY BOYO

Today is my grandson's birthday: Max is three years old, a remarkable human being.

Any grampa would say the same thing. Perhaps we'd all be right. But I hold that Maxwell Ulysses Burger is, on his third birthday, an astonishingly well-spoken and thoughtful person, the beginnings of a citizen and a raconteuer. He has phrase and grace in his speech and he plays with language. He displays an enjoyment with saying something just so, the way he wants it. He reminds me of the cautionary definition of my own profession from the Irish: "A writer is a failed conversationalist."

His early gifts were mechanical. Things in my daughter's household were retro-engineered by Max.

The kid was and is preternaturally diagnostic. He takes stuff apart. Most often, he puts them back together as well.

He sat on my lap when he was just turned two and plucked a ballpoint pen out of my pocket. He looked at it solemnly and set to work. He took it apart, disassembled it into its component parts – barrel, cap, spring, refill laid out on the counter in front of us – then reassembled it. Once he’d screwed it together, he tested it to make sure it worked, click, click, click, click, then put it back into my pocket.

One morning Sally noticed that while she was cooking something he pushed his little kitchen dining table to a cabinet, climbed onto his chair, thence to the table top, thence to the counter top beside the refrigerator. He stood on the toaster oven and retrieved the sack of coffee beans from the refrigerator top. He dumped some beans into the grinder, fumbled the top on, ground some beans (more or less), pulled the top and dumped the ground beans into the filter of the coffee machine, which he carefully fit into its place. He turned it on (no water) and climbed down to his table. Arriving at floor level, he announced brew’s up casually, “Coffee!”

I asked Sally, “You didn’t stop him?”

“No, I was too fascinated. He watches Patrick make coffee every morning and he remembered the steps. For Max it was no big deal, but it floored me.”

Something that floored me was his cognizance of batteries. Nothing in the remote control line works in Max's house. Batteries gone, You can only detect the absence by the weight, since he generally replaces the battery cover. If you want to use the remote, you get Maxwell’s attention: “Max. Can you find the batteries for this remote control for me, please?” Immediate locomotion toward a chair or couch, a disruption of cushions and/or pillows, Max returns with the correct batteries without comment as if to say, “Here, dufous, why didn’t you get them yourself?”

When I was young there was a kind of string-tension toy. It was a dog or cat or horse made of hollow wooden beads (they probably don’t allow them today; choking hazard) strung together and attached to a spring-loaded base. When the string was tensioned, the animal stood upright, if a little silly. If you pushed the big button under the base, the string went slack and the creature fell into a pile of bead-parts. It was a great little toy because the animal stood there one moment, then fell into a pile.

I mention this because it’s the only way I can describe Max’s Terrible Two tantrums: a space of loud whining, no, no, no, he wants it the OTHER way, he doesn’t want THAT, he won’t eat (wear, carry, wash, drink) THAT, mommy, no, no, give me the OTHER, I want the OTHER. The Other is refused. Time Out is threatened. The count to five begins. “Max, I’m counting. One, two, three, four, five . . . Okay then, Time Out.”

Someone in a neighboring yard has eviscerated a swine or a panther: one hears a siren-loud screech. Max is creating a noise louder than any creature smaller than a city bus is capable of producing. It’s an unsettling howl, the noise of a desert djinn or a hurtling bomb. At this instant the boy we know as Max ceases to exist as a cohesive unit and falls into a pile of trunk, head and limbs in a liquid rush to the floor. This sudden dissolution is entertainingly like that string-toy, a complete collapse. The awful noise continues. Tantrum. Off to the Time Out Place of Penitence and Reflection: the stair landing, a place more barren and uninteresting than Devil’s Island or even Bayonne, New Jersey, the very seat of horrors. The bone-bag that was Max is poured onto the Chair of Correction and a timer is set for two, three, or even (life sentence) five minutes depending on the gravity of the offense.

Mutters and two-year-old curses (“Poopie, bad, booger, poopie!”), a diminishing wail, sobbing, cries for forgiveness, vows of being a good boy, now. Accusations of mommy’s impaired judgment, her mean and even wicked nature (“Bad mommy!”). Then a silence. Occasionally this is accompanied by inexpert creeping away scuffs and creaks but largely the time runs out and the timer bell rings.

“I’m done, mommy!” Reconciliation. Obligatory apologies, “I’m sorry that I _________,” fill in the blank. Order restored, authority maintained, chaos and the encroaching jungle held back another day.

Except that Max’s Time Outs were sometimes suspiciously short. Of course. The boyo was mechanically subverting justice. He’d determined the nature of the timer, climbed up onto the Dread Chair of Detention, retrieved the timer, and reset it to something under a minute. Ding! “I’m done, mommy!”

As the parent of a little person, you must be firm but open to friendly compromise. But remember: they’re all sea-lawyers. They’ll argue until hell freezes over, doggedly and energetically. Anyone who thinks that kids have no attention span has never argued with a two-year-old. Avoid negotiation. You always lose, one way or another, today or down the road.

But time off for good behavior – for inventive re-engineering, is only fair, yes?

BRAXINOSO SPEAKS

Being close to Himself, I see how deeply and enthusiastically he loves Max and his little brother, Luc. He has a bushel of surrogate grandchildren in the Bay Area whom he loves – Hannah Rose, the Dread Pirate Davis, Julianna, Kent, Ainsley, Elizabeth, et als. But if he has learned anything from these surrogates and his joy at being close to them, it is that he needs family. He loves this place, this topography, this particular micro-climate. He loves his friends here. But it's become apparent to him that being a part of Max's and Luc's lives is essential to his heart. Being a part of his daughter's life is much more important than she acknowledges. The time has come for Himself to make a move away from Mt. Burdell and Indian Valley Road and the Pacific. How he'll relocate to Gainesville, Florida, is logistically nightmarish, especially for a man with a definite phobia about moving. It's a painful time, professionally and personally, for the Old Guy.