MONDAY: Hanging Tough

BY JANET GARBER

Copyright is held by the author.

PETER’S FACE makes one think of cow’s milk poured steaming into a white porcelain bowl. He looks like he’s come from a farm somewhere in Holland where the bright orange disk of a sun never forgets to shine on little boys and dapple their pale skin with spots of colour. He sits in my kitchen on a rainy afternoon, sipping milk through a straw and absently pushing a cookie around on his place. Thick reddish-blond curls dance around a smooth wide-angled face. His body is solid meat, slightly plump verging on pudgy, and for a ten-year-old, he doesn’t move around much. He likes to talk a great deal though, chatters to himself even when no one is listening, waving his arms around in a loose disconnected kind of way. As he chats with me, the expression on his face doesn’t change much. All movement is on the inside, it turns out. His small blue eyes poke through the creamy complexion and roam around the room and ceiling and zoom back to my face to check if I’m still with him .I  am. How can two boys be so different? My son’s in his bedroom, building castles out of Legos, a bruise forming on his arm. “Watch this,” Peter commands imperiously. He makes a funny car noise. “Let me tell you a story about my nasty temper.” Here we go. “I’ve got a terrible temper,” he confides, nodding his head up and down.

“Really?”

“Yes . . . my friends can tell when I’m getting MAD.”

I wonder about this face, which gives very little away. “How?”

“When I get really mad,” he says, his voice rising to an excited pitch, “my face goes white, you know? My eyes get very blue — even bluer than they are now — and my lips look like I put lipstick on them!” His eyes settle on me once again as he says, “I’m a scary sight, let me tell you!”

“Then what?”

“Then everyone knows I’m about to explode!” He yells at me, impatient, throwing his arms around loosely.

“You have a bad temper,” I sum up. Peter beams at me, glad he’s made me understand at last. His rosebud mouth, a dark red, smiles, showing off lots of gum and pretty, large white teeth.

“You’re proud of it,” I continue, on a roll.

“Well . . . I can’t control myself. I’m WILD!” He smiles and his dimple is showing.

“I guess people better watch out when you’re around?”

“They better!” Peter wags his head up and down a couple of times, then leans his head back and giggles loudly, “HA HA HA,” almost dropping off his chair. I watch him as he fixes his blue eyes on me for a moment, then claps his hands together like a toddler. He looks well fed and content.

“Can I have some more milk, please?” he calmly inquires, picking up the crumbs of his battered cookie with his fingers and sticking them one-by-one into his mouth.

I make a mental note: no more play dates with this kid.