Bacon, Hotella, Kwassums, Cucumbers and Sprite

This is the menu that my son devised for his birthday today. For those of you who don't speak Alec-ese that translates into lots of grease, sugar, and all his favorite foods in one meal: Hotella=Nutella, Kwassums=Croissants. He has been looking forward to this day for months already. And finally the count down is over. He is 5. For him this means a day blessed with said foods, lots of Lego-oriented presents, a Wii game, some books, a kick board that looks like a hungry shark with flippers and goggles to boot. All these are evidence that he is special, that we love him. In this past year, with the birth of his baby sister and his somewhat homicidal reaction to her, that message has sometimes gotten lost.

This morning, he brought his baby sister a kwassum and cuddled with her without trying to pull her limbs off. She cuddled him right back. Peace abounded. Hope for a more harmonious year dripped about like sticky soda.

He walked around the kitchen in his ski underwear (that he has worn since December as if it were a hair shirt) and talked into the camera as he filmed a movie of the breakfast table.

On the way to the car he was even happy that he bumped his head on our Camry's passenger side mirror. Well, at first he almost cried, but I picked him up and said, "You did that because you're growing! Now that you're five your head is taller." He giggled at this evidence that he was a person to be reckoned with, a person whose head was actually taller than he remembered. Hadley and I drove him to preschool together equipped with a posse of vanilla cupcakes and a bag filled with all the accouterments to decorate them. He pranced about his classroom like a little king, on his toes, nose high.

I can't help wondering if this mood will carry him to give up his hair shirt soon, or possibly grow into Dahlia's knight instead of her tormentor. I have faith that these may come to pass.

Alec has the soul of an artist or a Sicilian as Hadley and I like to joke, and as Hadley likes to say makes him a Holz--after my temperament and that of some of my predecessors. Whereby he can be the most charming person on the planet, so full of life, love, and fun OR an angry, paranoid, petty criminal. At five, this last tendency has made it a hard year for him and us. Keeping him from dropping things on Dahlia's head, detaching said limbs, wrecking Miles's Lego, and refusing to wear any clothing if his ski underwear isn't on underneath have been just some of the ways Alec has marked his fifth whirl around the sun.

By the way, I call his ski underwear his hair shirt because he wears it religiously, fearing who knows what evil fate if he should be caught without it. We have had to carry him naked to school without on those few days when it was still in the wash. In a Boston winter this is no small feat. He recanted each time, getting dressed in the Odyssey with the spirit of a tortured saint. Furthering the hair shirt theme, his long underwear has rubbed his skin raw. Since he started wearing it he has come out with eczema all over his belly and underarms that nothing but Vaseline laced with a trace of cortisone will get rid of.

Today he is wearing his hair shirt. But spring is underway and his head is growing. And in his sugar plumped cells change is afoot.