Monday, May 31, 2010

Rolling Thunder

I found out something interesting this Memorial Day weekend. The DC area becomes inundated by Harleys. Evidently, they come from all around the country (we even saw a sag wagon supporting the LA to DC crew), saturating the streets with their pipes, to drive up and down and around the Mall in support of their fallen brothers. Every night this weekend, before Elise and I go to bed, we sit on the couch, listening to the roar and cough of their mufflers bounce off the buildings around us and echo in the alleys. We pray the cacophony doesn't wake Sam or Pete.

We laid low this weekend (which had us climbing the walls by Monday afternoon...). I have yet to utter a single word in Portuguese, though Elise has been working diligently in between various adventures. Saturday, Sam and I left the house on an errand no fewer than five times. I went to Harris Teeter (the grocery store) three times in the span of an hour! We were procuring supplies for Elise to make my sitti's famous frozen key lime pie that we were bringing to dinner in the 'burbs later that day. Sam loved it. Every time we returned from one of our outings, we would walk into the house, put our bags on the counter and get ready to go back out again. No sooner had I dropped the groceries off in the kitchen, Sam was opening the door to the hall, yelling, "No house! No house!" At various times, we all--Pete included--feel stifled by our temporary home.

After naps, we drove out to the 'burbs to meet up with a few families from work, gathering at the home of another family headed to Brasilia with us. The city gradually gave way to rolling hills, white picket fences and strip malls. Elise remarked that she felt like she was in Wellington. We soon found ourselves at the corner of Opportunity and Laughter in a master-planned community that had somehow eluded both Elise's GPS and Google Earth. I quipped that we I had yet see Success--both literally and figuratively. We eventually found our bearings. Sam enjoyed playing downstairs in the play room with the older kids.

As old as he sometimes thinks he is or acts, he has a way of reminding us that he is still our little boy. Like when he watches the Alvin and the Chipmunks movie and bursts into tears when the live action people come on the screen. Later that same evening, I would hear the theme from Indiana Jones trumpeting from below. I went rushing down the stairs, recalling what that movie had done to my psyche when I first saw the faces melt off the Nazis when they opened up the Lost Ark...and I think I was in middle-school. Fortunately, it was just the music from the Indiana Jones Lego video game, and I returned to the party, relieved.

The summer days are long here...and it's only the end of May. The sun seems to come up at 4 a.m. and set at 9:30. It was quickly 8:00, though it could have just as easily been high noon, and we headed home. Sam didn't eat much. It took all I had in me to get him away from the toys and upstairs long enough to swallow whole four pieces of hot dog and slam a cup of milk. We could tell he'd been overstimulated as we drove home. This, coupled with the lack of food, usually spelled disaster in the back seat of the car. We distracted him when we came up with the idea of a good behavior chart. We would draw out a chart and put it on the wall and document his good behaviors with stickers. At the end of the week, if he had enough stickers (I don't think Elise and I ever agreed upon how many stickers were 'enough'....some undetermined, hypothetical number. In truth, he would have to mess up pretty bad not to get a reward) he would earn a new Matchbox car race track. We felt like parenting geniuses as we thought this up. It was one of those seminal moments that made me feel like maybe I was a better than average dad. Sam fell asleep. When we were 2 blocks from home, he woke and threw up, so I unlatched the entire car seat and toted him upstairs as if he had been ejected from the cockpit of an F-14.

Sunday morning, we took the Metro to our favorite breakfast spot, Le Pain Quotidian, and walked home to work off the waffles. The pool in our apartment building open this weekend and we headed down at exactly 10:00. Unfortunately, the pool isn't heated and the water is freezing, and Sam made me get it not once, but twice.

The next morning, we drove to the 'airplane park', a small park at the foot of the runway at Reagan airport where you can watch the planes take-off and land right over your head! Picture this: the planes are taking off in the opposite direction, south or southeast, I think, headed away from us and into the vaguely smoggy, stark white hot summer morning, leading a vapor trail and a gush of sound. They take-off and land in waves. Five or so planes take-off, then the runway clears. Sam and I turn and look behind us, but the sky is clear. We don't see any incoming planes. We turn around to look at the runway. It's still clear. We spin and glimpse lights coming over the tops of the trees like 50 feet away! The planes come in so low, you don't see them until they are literally right on top of you! Then, they whoosh by and Sam and I wave, yelling, "Hi! Welcome to DC!" and they touch down so close you feel as though you could touch them.

I know I won't forget that moment, holding Sam because he didn't want to go down, for a long time. I hope he remembers, too.

We went to bed, early. No clouds in the sky, but thunder rumbling below.

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