Son

These are stories about my son.

He cracks me up. Tell him he walks too slow and he’ll say you walk too fast.

Skip the cake. He’ll go for the fruit salad any day. Then ask for seconds. Fire engines? They’re cool. So are cars, policemen and dinosaurs. But not sea lions – they stink!

He likes to count cows in a field. He’s mildly autistic.

Charlie and the Fruit Factory

WHO NEEDS CHOCOLATES and candies when you have dozens of sampling trays of grapes, peaches, plums and strawberries? We’re at the farmers’ market in Brentwood, a Sunday tradition in front of my old school, Brentwood Elementary, on Gretna Green. My Dad’s stocking up for the week, content with the fresher fruits and vegetables, the lower [...]

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An Ambitious Appetite

MY FOUR-YEAR-OLD SON has never had trouble eating. He’ll polish off a plate of pasta with Bolognese sauce and hold out his plate and say, “More. . . please.” He’ll then make a good go at a second helping, followed by large gulps of water. Today, the reason of why such a voluminous appetite for [...]

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Mortified

MY SON IS refusing to go to the doctors. He suffers chronic bronchitis so trips to the clinic and the hospital are frequent. But he doesn’t want to go now because Tommy went. “No, mummy,” the four-year-old says, “Tommy went.” Tommy, aka Tomas, is our neurotic cat. You may know from a post last month [...]

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Excavating

MY SON IS finally getting the hang of pooing in the toilet. Oh, the relief for us parents. Bye, bye to soiled pants and floors, and mishaps at restaurants and in the garden and at parks. We’re on a roll. He’ gone a couple of weeks with clean pants. And he’s into it. He’ll run [...]

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Who’s The Boss?

MY DAD CAME for a visit. He’s the most vivacious eighty-something you’ll meet. He does tai chi in the morning, in the forest behind the house. Then after a breakfast of nearly black coffee, fruit and toasted rice cakes (often burnt, by mistake), he walks to the beach and back through town, a round trip [...]

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