A Pearl of a Boy

The grandchildren will be returning from Wisconsin this evening. Hopefully, there will be no ill effects suffered by their innocent psyches from spending too much time in the State of Cheese. Eleven-year-old Ethan continues to be a hardcore Green Bay Packer fan despite numerous rehab committals. Why do we have a problems with Wisconsians? Just get behind one in traffic.
This is Adam. Eight years old and developing definite gangster tendencies. Actually, he makes a fairly good traveling companion. Interesting observer and a heck of a burper. Once he ate an entire sheet of paper to impress three girls. Teachers fear him. His older brother Ethan is a star in every capacity. He has a gentle spirit and a generous nature. He wrote a poem for his fifth-grade girlfriend using the letters in her name and spelling out a positive attribute with each one. He will have his heart broken a few times, this sensitive boy. He takes misfit kids under his wing and always does the fair and decent thing. His mother is a psychologist and his grandmother, an old-fashioned social worker so, he is destined to help the world.

Adam knows what the fair and decent thing is but frequently chooses to take the road less traveled. And in his case it may cost him time away from his precious computer. Who would have known that our burgeoning new technology would provide an excellent means of keeping our children in line?

He has a creative flair that is astonishingly sophisticated for his young age. He sees the world with drama and imagination. When he was three years old we were walking on the beach of the Mississippi and I saw what appeared to be the tracks of a big old Lab. What made these prints, I asked. Two toes were smudged out and he said, a three-toed sloth? As we were leaving he pointed at the mountains of road salt partially covered with black tarps waiting for the winter slush and ice. Look, grandma, he said, it looks like penguins melting. Damn, that's good. He can mimic Elvis Presley, a Briton asking for "a cuppa of tea," and those irritating Teletubbies. He does a great bump and grind, can spend an hour devising war strategy between two plastic army men, and sing a medley of several hundred TV commercial jingles.

He loves all four-footed creatures and wants to be a veterinarian. He already grieves the two pets that have passed away in his short life and he speaks of them as trusted friends. He would also like to be an artist and his work can show people jumping out of burning buildings (isn't that how serial killers start?) or the river as a flowing current of layered blues and greens. He has emptied an entire box of food coloring into a sinkful of water. He has created imaginary friends out of potatoes and cereal boxes. I love when he looks at me and says, "hey Grandma, what if . . . ." I know I am to be treated to the inner workings of an interesting and clever wit.

The world is his oyster and he, the pearl.