Unforgettable

I was still cobbling together a routine of sorts with my son. There was a prevailing tentativeness but a parcel of energy to throw into everything, no matter how unfamiliar it was. I tried to introduce my son to penny hockey and managed to hold his attention for while with that. When he expressed an interest in drawing of all things -- I have long joked at my own expense about being the only father who would pressure his son to go to art school and he further entrenched the joke by demonstrating his preference for the sciences and math -- I went along with it and supplied him with the sharpie, paper and how-to videos from YouTube (which may have been the main draw). He did express his frustration with his ability compared to that demonstrated in the video, and i assured him that practice and taking it slow would bring him along with time.

Our camp-out life on the floor was proving to be decent for the first few hours. He got a little fussy about attending his Saturday afternoon music class and after the time to get to class had come and gone, we decided to head out for a while. It was a snowy afternoon, but we still went to the playground. He played on the swings for a while but before long we decided to venture inside in quest for a hot chocolate. He found the one we purchased not to his liking despite my efforts to take the edge off the bitterness with water and milk. We deposited his hot chocolate in the garbage and headed out.

"Can we go in there?"

Don't do it, don't, you know better, you're gonna pay for it, no, don't, watch it. You've been to this movie.

He doesn't have anything to play with.

"Okay."

So we headed into a toy store for a browse. We went through the story and we were fascinated with the items that were in there. There were the futile turns down the aisles such as when he was perusing the toys for 12 month-olds and my own wistfulness at a Lawren Harris jigsaw puzzle. We scanned carefully, exhaustively actually and my son proposed that he come up with three options for me to choose from. I pointed out a STEM themed toy for him to put together various items and sensors that he could use to trigger alarms and such.  Agreed. Settled. Finito. Our conversation overheard, the manager of the store gave a knowing look and a slight nod. A prickle of stigma and empathy touched my back and I tried to shrug it away.

At the cashier's counter, there was a resplendence of other toys, smaller items to mess around with and get familiar with. Most were novelty items. Coinbanks that absorbed their coins in certain ways, little machine and suctioned toys that danced and popped and sprung with surprise. And a cube. The cube held the cashier in its thrall as he played with it to idle away his own time moreso than give it the sell.

STEM kit bagged, my son fell for this item and had to have it. The slide to despairing desire was quick, precipitous and I had to carry him out of the store to keep the reaction from spilling into embarrassment with a captive audience. I managed to get him to stay with me for half a block until we had to stop. I sat down on the ledge of a low window and tried to look him in the eye. He was sobbing with rage at the possibility that he would never see the cube again though it was etched deeply in me already that it meant a great deal to him. I was conscious of giving in, of trying to extract a promise of future behaviour when I knew how those deals had rarely, if ever, worked out.

No matter what I tried to say to assure him that Santa was on it, that he was looking down and noting this, my son hung on to the same question, "What if he forgets?" The questions was pressed with variety as it would apply to every person I could come up with who would remember. His mother, my best friend, Santa (again), friends who knew of my prodigious capacity for recall, there was the risk that this gift or his desire for it or, essentially, he would be forgotten. A word alone would not ease this, least of all mine on this occasion. We were stuck in this loop for about 45 minutes, perhaps a full hour as I surveyed the sympathetic looks of passers-by who had their own backstory for what I hoped was playing out more privately than it was.

I ran out of strategies to ease his mind about being forgotten and tried to bring him back to the calm that had been absent since he saw the toy and fixated on it. I did not want to assuage him with this toy. I did not want to set the precedent, but on this day, perhaps it was the only option I had. I hated the thought of giving in or bribing or inching toward the habits of the weekend dad. During a moment of calm, actually to negotiate a moment of calm I told him that he had to promise me to remember something.

He he took a deep breath and I tried to make it clear to him that time together and connecting were more important. I did not try to cite the fun we had in the morning drawing and playing penny hockey but tried to give him the sense that this was an opportunity for him to have something to remember how important he was to me and that he carry it with him as a token of my remembrance and my attention no matter where he is. Has a precedent been set? Quite possibly, and the questions will remain for a while about the strength of memory, the value of presence and wounds that a parent can inflict with any decision or action.