Yesterday, it was sunny and warm (enough) to head to the neighborhood playground and indulge in some bike riding and outdoor frolic. Compare this to last Saturday, when we were being blanketed by 5-6 inches of fluffy white powder that quickly vanished under subsequent warm temperatures and rain. What a sad little winter we’re having. But for Little Boy, that snow was good enough for an afternoon of sledding; on the playground’s adjoining rec field, there’s this slope (can’t bring myself to call it a hill) that takes about three seconds to descend via sled; his bouts of sledding were punctuated by little breaks to clean off the ball field’s bleachers.
Last week's snow
Cleaning the bike rack
So Little Boy no longer calls the playground “funglasses,” but “funground.” Which is really cute, of course. Yesterday he rode his bicycle to the funground while I ran behind him, our usual routine. The funground proper was soggy from rain, so we romped around the deserted basketball court, playing tag (which he initiates by yelling “no get me!” or “no get you!”) We found sticks, which we threw across the empty court. We played with the toy cars and digger that I had stashed in my purse. We balanced on the narrow concrete boundary that surrounds the basketball court, walking wobbly and jumping on/off. It was then that Little Boy spied the worm.
“Look! Worm!” he announced, looking concerned. He is fascinated by all animals but very cautious; last week while sledding, a little dog (and I mean cat-sized) ambushed him while he was sitting in his sled post-run. He freaked out, shouting “Mommy! Mommy!” as the dog yipped and jumped around him, and it took about five seconds for the tears to start. I sound sadistic, but it was a little cute, and as I quickly gathered him in my arms murmuring reassurances, I was stifling a giggle. Poor Little Boy, surprised by a 5-pound terror dog!
Anyway, I looked at the big, fat worm and immediately assumed it was dead. I mean, it’s January and this worm is laying motionless in the middle of an expanse of concrete. “It’s okay,” I told him. “I think this worm is dead.”
Of course, “dead” is a concept that Little Boy doesn’t understand, but I’m trying to casual mention it once in a while. He understands that batteries can be “dead,” but not people and animals. (Although he knows from nature documentaries that animals eat other animals. He’s constantly asking me, for instance, if monkeys eat birds, if lions eat bears, if elephants eat turtles, etc.)
“Worm is sleeping,” I added. “Really big sleep.”
This he understands, as I’ve previously told him that when it’s cold outside, some animals go to sleep. “Too cold for worm-y?” he asked.
“Yes, too cold,” I agreed. We continued walking around the basketball court on the concrete boundary, then threw some more sticks.
Then the sun came out from underneath the white fluffy clouds, and it felt so good on my face that I remarked, “Doesn’t the sun feel good? Nice and warm.”
“Worm?” Little Boy asked.
“No, warm,” I carefully enunciated. These two words “warm” and “worm” are a perpetual source of confusion for Little Boy, and our conversation quickly turned into an Abbott and Costello exchange.
“Worm-y warm?”
“Warm, we are warm from the sun.”
“Warm worm?”
“Warm, warm,” I repeated.
“No, worm! Warm?” He pointed to the direction of the worm. “Mama, come on!” He ran over to the worm and I realized he assumed that because it was warmer, the worm would be awake. I was telling him that it wasn’t warm enough for the worm to wake up when he shouted “Look! Worm-y warm! Worm-y moving!”
Indeed, ever so slightly, the end of the worm that I assume is the head was moving. Little Boy looked at me with a look of delighted repulsion. “Oh, look! It was warm and the worm woke up!” I remarked, pretending to be overjoyed. “Little Boy, we have to help the worm! We have to move him to the grass!”
“You move it,” he told me. So we retrieved our sticks and I carefully prodded the worm onto one end so its long, fat body was draped over it. I brandished the worm stick at Little Boy to invoke the squeamish outrage that I knew it would. We walked over to the grass and placed the worm under a tree, where I hoped it wouldn’t get eaten by one of the birds that had been serenading us as we played.
“Mama, we need to get food for worm-y,” Little Boy told me urgently, and began piling a pile of sticks next to the worm’s motionless body.
“I don’t think worms eat sticks, I think they eat dirt,” I told him, and he ran to get his digger so we could dig into the semi-frozen ground for some dirt. It took about ten minutes, but he made a large pile of dirt next to the worm, and to our surprise, the worm began burrowing its head in the pile. It looked like it was really eating the dirt, and Little Boy was so excited and proud of himself.
Little Boy and worm (in pile of dirt)
By then, it was 12:30 and time to head home for lunch. Little Boy was extremely reluctant to leave his worm, and I assured him we’d come back to visit. The empathy he had, and the initial concerns over whether the worm was hungry, made me so happy and so sad. This Little Boy has known hunger. He doesn’t wish it on anyone, not even a worm.
