On Sunday, we tossed the kids in the stroller and headed out to a street festival.
There was a kids' area with a bouncy house and pony rides and face painting, but the place was jam packed. The wait for the bouncy house was interminable, and in the end we had to leave the line. Kai isn’t good at standing in line. Or at understanding that he can’t jump the line. Or why he’s not in the freaking bouncy house. Right. Now. Ohmygod.
We abandoned the bouncy house scene by carrying the kicking and screaming Kai to wait for the ponies. I’d managed to secure a couple of balloons from a vendor selling mortgages to the desperate souls in line at the bouncy house, and while Ryan and I held our place in line at the ponies, Scott and Kai went exploring. They came back in a few minutes.
“My da-bwoon,” Kai said, and I saw that he still had the ribbon, but the balloon was gone.
“What happened to it?” I asked him.
“It’s up in a twee,” he said.
Scott corroborated Kai’s version of events. Interestingly, it wasn’t because the balloon became untethered from the boy. Rather, it became untethered from the ribbon.
It occurred to me that I’d asked Kai a question and he'd answered it. With a real sentence.
“Well,” I said, impressed. “Let’s go get you a new balloon.”
:::
After waiting in line approximately three weeks, we finally had our turn with the ponies. I would like to say here that I had finally managed to secure the balloons to the squirming and uncooperative children, only to be told that I had to remove the balloons before the kids could ride the ponies because, what? Because the tiny pony tethered to a metal merry-go-round might rampage at the sight of the balloon and cause a stampede? That the 20 healthy and alert adults in the immediate vicinity couldn’t control? I realized why the line was so long—it took 10 minutes to undo the balloon ribbon knots and re-secure the balloons to something that won’t be on the back of a pony, but would, I should add, only be about three feet from the ponies and—oh, Christ. Never mind.
Kai rode this one:
And Ryan rode this one:
What? You say you can’t see her? Oh! That’s right, I forgot. She wanted nothing to do with that pony. Nothing. She started screaming the moment I set her down in the saddle. The people behind us in line were most impressed, watching a coveted pony make its endless loop without a rider, as their children threw their own tantri: “Poneeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee”
Anyway.
One day she’s going to ask me for $1200 a month for equestrian lessons. I tell you that I’m going to pull out this picture and tell her that she doesn’t have the kind of stick-to-itiveness I like to see vis a vis horsebackriding to incur that kind of expense. I’ll bet that will buy me a month or so, until she gets wise and goes around me and asks Scott.
:::
After the pony ride, Scott and I had had enough and decided to take the kids home, but Kai refused to go. We asked him what he wanted to do, but he didn't answer. He just sat on the sidewalk, and when I tried to pick him up, first he went all limp on me, and then, when he realized I was really going to carry him out of there, he started to flail and kick in earnest.
He was fighting me so hard.
“What is it?” I asked. I don't know if I was asking him or myself. Sometimes it's the same thing.
We found our stroller and I tried to set him down in it, but he protested like a cat protests being given a bath in the tub. Trust me that’s an apt simile. Don’t ask why I tried once to bathe a cat.
“What’s wrong?” I asked him. “Can you use your words?”
He let out a string of jibberish.
I looked at Scott, wrestling with the angry tornado that was Ryan. Everyone had kind of had it, and I knew I had a few choices. I could carry him out of the festival. I could put him in the stroller and get enough speed going that he couldn’t jump out. I could hand him my phone and suggest Angry Birds.
But lately, I’ve been getting the distinct impression that Kai has something to communicate to me. It would be easy to dismiss his behavior as annoying or defiant or task avoidance. And don’t get me wrong, sometimes it is. But sometimes, well, sometimes I get the idea that there’s something else there, and it's just that the world turns a little too quickly for Kai to gather his thoughts, to find the right words.
And so, standing there at the festival, with Ryan screaming and the crowd pressing and Scott's head about to explode from the chaos of all of it, I forced myself to be patient.
“Honey,” I said, squatting in front of him, “what’s wrong.”
He mumbled unintelligibly.
“Kai, I don’t understand.”
“Bumblebee.”
Bumblebee? I looked at Scott, who shrugged.
“Can you show me?” I asked.
I put stood up and held his hand and he wove purposefully through the crowd.
He led me past the bouncy house, past the ponies, past the face painting and toward a table with some hats and masks and play swords and capes piled on it.
“Bumblebee,” he said, "It's right there."
“I see,” I said gravely. We picked out a bumblebee hat and tried it on.
“That’s a pretty awesome bumblebee, pal,” I said.
And it was.
"Let's go show Daddy," I suggested.
As we made our way back to Scott and Ryan, Kai's whole countenence seeming lighter, and when we got to the stroller, he sat right down.
"Let's go," he said.
And we did.
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