Doors: Part I

I saw Ruth on Facebook chat, I said hi, and she immediately signed off.

Then she came back.

And we talked. She and Nora are going through formal divorce proceedings now, and Ruth and her boyfriend are taking a break. (I’ve finally updated my “about me” page to reflect some of the changes in our relationships.) They are required to make a “parenting plan,” which she described as like the open adoption agreement; somehow, I think that doesn’t mean the same thing to her that it does to me. She told me that “[Cricket]’s doing well,” but otherwise didn’t talk about how things are going for him, and I didn’t push it. She must know that I’m most interested in him, and if she’s not talking about him, she doesn’t want to. I talked about Kit and Joey—she did tell me that Cricket had a dairy sensitivity like Kit’s when he was a baby, and had entirely outgrown it by toddlerhood.

Joey’s starting to do things that I remember Cricket doing—just little kid stuff, ways of speaking or being silly—and I keep being slightly startled by it. His brain is growing. The other day, I said to him “I’m finding this ‘throwing everything’ phase you’re going through very annoying,” and he looked at me seriously and said, “I see.”  When there’s a dvd on, he explains what we’re seeing to me; I’ve been watching season three of The West Wing for the re-election goodness, and when the president announces his intention to run for re-election, Joey was happy to point out the salient facts: “Rain! Rain! Outside! Rain!” That’s right, buddy—in the show, it’s raining outside. He also pointed out windows, doors, and open doors. Kid’s just nuts about doors.