Sunday, Jul 20, 2008
Smash, bash, whack. He swung at branches above him like forehand volleys. Sometimes I get so worried that he takes such joy in wrecking things. When he was 2, being awful and destructive on every level of his pitiful loathsome poopy existence, I said to my friend Pammy, calmly, "He's a bad person. He's already ruined."
Pammy said something that I have clung to like the last heel of bread, "Sam has a deep core of sweetness within him." She was right. He's deeply compassionate, and fair, but he also loves knives, and air-soft guns, and paintball guns, and Ninja blades, and violence. Maybe it was inconsistent for us to watch "Touched by an Angel" together, right before we watched "South Park." Maybe it confused him that we go to church on Sundays, and then we watch "The Sopranos."
He has always said the funniest things, but until he was 5, he couldn't say "L's." He pronounced them "Y." "Yeaf," "yunch," "yove," the "Yord," and "Sam Yamott." One day he came home from school and said slowly that he had llloved his lllunch. His teacher had finally taught him "L's." He ran to the house next door to show off for the teenagers he adored. It was such a bittersweet moment: Your kid can't get a job on CNN if he can't say his "L's," but it meant he was growing up; he would be dating soon, and mouthing off and sneering at me when he's furious. And that has all come true, though now he's the teenager all the little kids love.
He still says things that I scribble down on index cards. Just this morning on the way to school, we were talking about politics, and he said, "Mom, you know -- you have a very rich vocabulary." And he can make words all his own. "Random" is the latest favorite. I'll blurt out something I've been meaning to tell him all day, and he'll look at me askance, and say, "Wow, that's a little random." Or, driving along with his close friend the other day, I suddenly said to Nick, "You know, I'll always be one of the adults who is on your side, if you need me." Nick said, "Oh, thanks, Annie," and then there was silence in the car until Sam said, "God, that was random."
He walked along pushing the tip of his branch into the pebbly ground like a divining rod, splitting the road in two, making a great noise unto the Yord. He exerts a tremendous energy, and it builds up and he sends it forth with his tools, his swords. It's art, it's an installation; it's the American way: "We're big and strong and male, and this thing is about to get seriously small, and be in shreds, because I am about to heavily fuck with it." He finds where something has a weak spot, picks up a branch, and jabs it. It's like a physical yell.
He can say such terrible, mean things to me, and then, later that day, be so kind and sensitive that it brings tears to my eyes. He was always this way, accepting and fair, but capable of casual meanness; but he's mostly quite accepting of people. When he was 7 and we first started looking for his father, I asked him what he would do if it turned out that his father was strange, or standoffish, and Sam said genuinely, "Oh, I wouldn't care. I wouldn't care if he was a crook. I wouldn't care if he had a gun. I wouldn't care if he cut down trees and didn't replant." You can see that we live in an ecologically correct area.
I pulled over by the side of the road to write this down, pretending I was making a shopping list. I always write down his exact quotes. He is an exact person, like we all are, even though I mostly sense that there is only one of us; that we are mosaic chips of that One. He's very stylish, oddly enough, as I'm not stylish at all. His hair always looks good. And I was always a great student, whereas he isn't, in the classic sense, if by "a great student" you mean someone who studies hard, likes to read, and hands in his homework. He's a great student in the reform sense: He's fascinated by life, he's funny and he participates eagerly in discussions. I've never yelled at anyone in my whole life, except for him, and he yells at me, too. We fight about homework and his mouthiness and the laundry. I no longer wash his dirty clothes for him, because he will not put them away, so he does his own, and keeps it unfolded in a basket, with an empty basket beside it so he can transfer the clothes rapidly from one to another while finding something to wear, like a fabric Slinky. There's a third basket, for dirty clothes, which is usually empty, as the clothes are strewn all over his bedroom floor.
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