The boy of my dreams

My little Pterodactyl is an enigmatic soul. At night, snuggled in his bed, he pulls my face to his and locks lips with me. “I love you, Mom,” he says.
That happens often, I should say. Other times, he screeches, “GET ME A BOPPY!” and kicks me in the ribs while I’m trying to say good night.
He loves to stroke his big sister’s hair and tell her how beautiful she looks. He also likes to throw his little sister’s beloved Teddy against the wall. The other day while in Time Out, he leaned over and repeatedly deposited globs of saliva on the floor until there was a puddle. Then he rubbed his fuzzy blanket on his upper lip and fell asleep in the fetal position.
He once, in the middle of the night, flushed his nightlight down the toilet where it lodged so perfectly that I had to replace the whole flipping toilet. Then he proudly woke me up so he could show me what he’d done.
This boy, he is kicking my ass. There are times when I think I might die of love for him, when tears sting my eyes just thinking about his toothy grin and sticky-uppy hair and the way he loves to have his ears cleaned. I also often would feel perfectly justified hanging him on a hook by his shirt collar, if I had a hook strong enough to hold him there.
I’d give anything to rid him of his middle-child syndrome (short of having another child, that is), to restore in him the confidence of his baby years, when he knew our world revolved around him. “I wish (the Tyrant) wasn’t in our family!” he tells me all the time. “I told you we shouldn’t have buyed another baby!”
The Tyrant was already 13 months old when she came home, old enough to act adorable and steal toys and generally steal the spotlight from her 2-year-old brother. He tortured her mercilessly until she grew up enough to fight back. Now she’s almost 3 and he’s 4, and they are like two little magnets spiked with explosives. They can’t stay away from each other, but nearly every contact ends badly.
He tries so hard to love her, he really does. When she wakes up, he’ll gently approach her and touch her hair and say, “Good morning!” in his sweetest voice. But the Tyrant, wary after two years of abuse, usually responds with a quick right hook and a growl, and so hurts my poor little boy’s feelings that he dissolves into big fat tears.
So last night, after the Tyrant had called him WEENER BUTT! WEENER BUTT! WEENER BUTT! for no reason, I pulled him into my lap and whispered, “Let’s go for a bike ride. I want to take you someplace special, just you and me.” Normally he argues about alone time with parents because he’s afraid it means he’s being left out of something. But last night, beleaguered, he agreed.
He rode in the bike carrier behind me and I pedaled through the neighborhood. Within 10 minutes, I pulled over in front of a lake surrounded by tree canopy. Hanging in front of us was an old-fashioned swing, fastened by ropes to a high oak branch.
We had to descend the bank slightly to get on the swing. I pulled him into my lap. I walked backwards as far as I could, then let go, and in a magical swoosh, we soared through the air and peaked over the water. I believed in that moment I felt my boy’s heart flying upward with mine, like together we were lifting ourselves above a world filled with pesky little sisters and cranky mothers and weener butts, and at least for a moment, we became part of the very air beneath us.
We kept swinging. We watched little turtle heads pop up in the lake and waterbugs making circles, and listened to the crickets chirp. I nuzzled his neck with kisses and nibbled his ear, which is one of his most favorite things in the world besides airplanes.
“Mom. It’s peace out here,” he said.
We swung and swung. I got vertigo and felt nauseated. I threw up a little in my mouth, and felt a headache looming. But I could not break this fairy spell, this rare moment when my boy felt, more than learned, the meaning of peace.
“Could you take a picture of us so we can remember this?” he asked.
I didn’t have my camera. Of course I would remember it, I told him. But I knew what he meant. Memories morph into blurry versions of reality, particularly for little children who struggle so hard to understand the complexities of a grown-up world. He’s the one who needed the photo, or some other tangible proof of my love that he could turn to the next time he found himself on the wrong side of trouble.
Finally, the sun started setting and tiny no-see-ums buzzed into our noses and mouths, and he said he was ready to go.
We rode home without talking, but I could feel his contentment. When we walked back into the house, the usual chaos reigned. The Diva had taken a shower with the Tyrant, who was screaming that she had soap in her eyes. The bathroom floor was flooded. It was nearing 9 p.m. and no one seemed interested in going to bed. Husband sat on the couch watching preseason football as though armed robbers had told him he’d be killed if he moved.
The Pterodactyl joined the fray, and within minutes, the three were involved in a fracas worthy of being televised.
But later that night, after the household had settled for the evening and I lay in bed mentally steeling myself for the next day, I thought about the secret swing, my beautiful boy, and the way he looked at me when he crawled into my lap to swing. And I thought about his favorite moment of the excursion, when, as he soared over the grassy slope over the calm clear water, I heard a little noise followed by inexorable giggles and his delighted announcement: “I gassed-ed!”